The Undaunted : The Miracle of the Hole-In-The-Rock Pioneers

by Gerald N. Lund

  “And then you simply fill in the base with brush, then bring in dirt and gravel on top of that until you have a road wide enough and strong enough to carry a loaded wagon.”

  “And teams,” his father added. “That be it, me boy. Brilliant, eh?”

  David let his eyes run along the whole length of the cliff, trying to picture how it would work. “Absolutely astonishing. If you can’t blast one out, just tack a road onto the mountainside.”

  His father slapped David on the shoulder. “Ben prefers ta think of it more like nailin’ a shelf against a wall, but it be the same principle.” He turned abruptly and started back the way they had come. “Cum. Ah’ll show you how ’e plans ta do it.”2

  Thursday, January 22, 1880

  David paused momentarily as he and his father and several others approached the top of the Hole where the narrow road had now been cut through solid rock. It was late afternoon, and their work was ended for the day. To his surprise, as he looked up toward the top, he saw Molly standing off to one side. Seeing that they had seen her, she waved. David waved back.

  “Noow thare be a breath of sunshine on a foggy day,” John said, waving too. “An’ that smile of ’ers be e’nuff to melt solid rock into mud puddles.”

  David gave him a sidewards glance. “Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked.

  He laughed and shook his head. “Naw. Ah joost be thinkin’ she gonna be quite the catch fur the reet man.”

  “But not me.”

  John laughed again, then broke into a trot, leaving David behind, taking the grade as easily as if he were passing over an anthill. As he passed by Molly, he sang out, “G’d aft’noon ta ya, Molly gurl. Ya be a reet pleasin’ sight fur weary eyes.” And leaving her laughing and pleased, he trotted on.

  When David reached the top, he moved over to stand beside her. “This is a nice surprise. Is everything all right?”

  “Better than all right. Two men arrived from Kanosh today. They brought that keg of black powder Silas Smith promised was coming.” Then she withdrew an envelope from her apron pocket and waved it at him. “They also brought some mail.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  She handed him the envelope and let him read the return address. His eyebrows lifted slightly. “So Carl made it back to Cedar City all right. That’s good.”

  “He wrote Daddy to say that he has worked out the situation on the sale of our home.”

  He examined the envelope again, then gave her a quizzical look. “This is addressed to you.”

  She snatched it from him and put it back in her pocket. “It’s not what you think. He just wrote to tell me how things were back home.”

  “Did he write to Abby, too?”

  “Will you stop it?” she laughed. “You make it sound sinister.” Then her smile faded. “The men also brought some bad news about Silas Smith.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s taken seriously ill. He won’t be returning anytime soon.”

  David’s shoulders slumped. That was bad news. His leadership had been a powerful influence in this undertaking and for David personally as well. “Any idea what it is?”

  She shook her head. “They didn’t say.”

  She turned and glanced at the sun, now low in the sky. “Mama will have supper on soon. We’d better start.” But when she began walking, it was very slowly. David fell in beside her. Sensing she wanted to talk, he said nothing.

  “David?”

  “Yes?”

  “How long do you think it will take us to get to Montezuma Creek?”

  That took him aback a little. “I . . . we told Jim and Mary Davis not to look for us much before the first part of April.”

  “Two more months!” She looked stricken.

  “If not more.”

  “So instead of six weeks, like they told us, the trip is going to take six months.”

  “Yes, very likely.”

  She said nothing. Her step slowed even more.

  “Are you thinking of going back to Cedar?” he asked quietly.

  She stiffened. “Why do you ask that?”

  Knowing he had just stepped out onto thin ice, he chose his words carefully. “I don’t know. As you spoke about Carl being home I thought I heard just a touch of envy in your voice.”

  “Well, I’m not,” she snapped. “You think I would just leave my family?”

  “I was just asking,” he said quickly. “I wasn’t assuming anything.”

  “Yes, you were,” she pouted.

  “Molly, I was just asking.”

  She was in a huff now. “You think of me as some little cute powder puff, ready to blow away with the first breeze of adversity.”

  He laughed easily. “I can honestly say, I have never thought of you as a powder puff. Look, Molly, you’re out here, aren’t you? You’ve stuck it out for over three months, making the best of things. That’s hardly a powder puff. I can’t picture you being blown away by anything.”

  “You’d better do some fast talking, mister,” she growled.

  “Molly, you’ve got more than your fair share of stickity tootie, as Bishop Nielson calls it.”

  She waved the envelope at him. “Carl asked me if I want to come back. If I say yes, he’ll make the arrangements.”

  David blinked. “Arrangements?”

  “Yes. He said he’ll give me a room in the hotel for as long as I want it.” She smiled briefly. “Says he needs a good postal clerk.”

  “But . . . ?” Then his eyes narrowed. “Did he ask you to marry him?”

  She visibly started. “No!”

  “Is that what he’s got on his mind?”

  She started to shake her head, but couldn’t. She had asked herself that same question. “He may be hoping that down the road . . .” She shrugged.

  “Well, well,” he said, not sure exactly how to respond to that. “You can’t fault him for his good taste.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, David, I would never marry Carl Bradford. He’s more like a big brother than a beau.” When he only grunted, she hurried on. “But I don’t want to go back. I am not envious, as you suppose. I will see this through. I would never leave my family until I knew they were safely in San Juan.”

  She stopped, startled by the realization that she had used the word until. Why had she said that? And had David picked up on it?

  But if he had, he gave no sign. “I know that, Molly. I’ve never thought otherwise.”

  “There’s another reason I can’t leave,” she said after a moment.

  “What’s that?”

  “Did you see me talking to the young Decker girls after worship services last Sunday?”

  Surprised by that sudden turn, he slowly nodded. “Yes.”

  “Know what they were asking me? They wanted to know if I was going to marry you.”

  That wasn’t what he expected. “And what did you tell them?”

  “I told them that we had no agreement. We would have to wait and see what happened. Know what they said next?”

  He shook his head.

  “They said that if we didn’t marry, would I please ask you to wait long enough for them to grow up so you could marry one of them.”

  She laughed as he colored deeply. “You never told me that,” he said.

  “Well, the point is, David Draper, with that kind of competition—young, cute, giggly—I can’t just walk away and leave the field. So there.”

  He laughed a little awkwardly, not quite sure how to respond to that.

  She gave him a little shove. “Mama is waiting supper. Why don’t you go on and wash up.” She turned to the west. “It’s going to be a beautiful sunset. I’ll be along shortly.”

  As he walked away, she couldn’t bear to watch him. She turned her face to the west, barely seeing the spectacular oranges and reds that had transformed the high, thin clouds over Fifty Mile Mountain. And then the tears came.

  Finally, when she was sure that David had reached the camp and could no lo
nger see her, she took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes. “You are such a liar, Molly Jean McKenna,” she said in a fierce whisper. “Such a shameless liar.”

  Then her eyes raised upward. Why? The cry rose up from somewhere deep inside her. Why, when we finally resolve our differences, are we farther apart than ever before?

  Then her Irish heritage kicked in, and the grit for which the McKennas were known rose to the surface. She tossed her head angrily, wiped the tears away with two hard swipes of the handkerchief, and shoved it back into her apron pocket. She took out Carl’s letter and tore it into tiny shreds, then threw it to the wind. “You have two months, Molly Jean McKenna,” she told herself sternly. “Two months to get this longing for home out of your heart. Two months to become the woman that David Draper is looking for.” She sniffed back the tears. “So stop your bawling or he will end up marrying one of those darling little Decker girls.”

  Notes

  ^1. In his biography of Jens Nielson, Carpenter gives credit for the word slantindicular to Nathaniel Decker, one of the married sons in the extended Decker family (Jens Nielson, 47).

  ^2. Any person who has stood either at the base or near the top of the Hole in the Rock and taken in its awesome and rugged majesty finds it almost inconceivable to believe that the pioneers, with nothing but black powder and hand tools, built a wagon road down the entire length of the notch. Words like heroic, bold, resolute, intrepid, indomitable, and undaunted all come to mind in an attempt to describe the men and women, but all fall short of adequately describing the enormity of their accomplishment.

  The details of the construction of a wagon road down through the Hole in the Rock—including the three stages of the work, the number of workers, the tools and equipment used, and the support from outside sources—come from original sources and represent the situation as described therein (see Miller, Hole, 100–108, 117; Redd, “Short Cut,” 10, 12, 14–15; Reay, Incredible Passage, 45–48; “Life Sketch of Mary Jane Wilson,” 12).

  In what was a series of astonishing and remarkable feats, perhaps the most remarkable and astonishing of all was the building of “Uncle Ben’s Dugway.” Once again, Miller’s description provides one of the best accounts of this incredible feat of amateur engineering.

  “At the bottom of the notch, about a third of the total distance to the river, was another sheer drop of approximately fifty feet. This had to be blasted away or otherwise disposed of. Well aware of the shortage of blasting powder and of the difficulty being experienced at the top of the Hole, Benjamin Perkins conceived the idea of avoiding this second sheer drop by tacking a road on to the face of the cliff and thus building a by-pass around that fifty-foot chasm. At this point the notch widens out into a sort of canyon, affording enough room for this type of construction.

  “For a distance of some fifty feet along the face of this solid rock wall men were instructed to chisel and pick out a shelf wide enough to accommodate the inside wheels of the wagons. Perkins declared that he would now build the face of the cliff up so that the outside wheels would be level with the inside ones. To accomplish this he instructed the blacksmith to widen the blades of the drills to two-and-a-half inches; then with these tools men were instructed to drill a line of holes, each ten inches deep and about a foot-and-a-half apart, parallel with the shelf that had been chiseled out, and about five feet below it. [Redd says these holes were four feet apart. There are only a few holes still visible today, and these are about three to four feet apart.] Perkins is said to have marked the spot for each hole. At that point the cliff falls off at about a 50 degree angle, so that while they swung the sledges the workmen had to be held in place with ropes secured by their fellows.

  “In the meantime men had been sent to scour the river bank and adjacent areas as far back as the Kaiparowits Plateau for oak that could be cut into stakes. When the row of holes was completed, approximately twenty-five feet along the face of the cliff, these stakes, each two feet in length [i.e., two feet above the rock face], were driven firmly into the holes. On top of the stakes poles were secured to the ledge and brush, rock and gravel added until the face of the cliff had actually been lifted and a wagon road literally tacked on. This is one of the most remarkable portions of the whole road. It is rightly named ‘Uncle Ben’s Dugway’ in honor of its engineer. Although the stakes have long since vanished, allowing the poles, brush, and gravel to slip into the canyons below, the drilled holes are still clearly visible and some of the masonry rock work is still in place” (Miller, Hole, 105–6).

  For modern readers who visit the Hole and try to picture how the road actually looked back then, Miller adds this reminder:

  “Most of [the] artificial fill has been eroded away, leaving the bottom of the notch very rough and rugged, much as it must have been before the pioneers began to work on it. Still to be seen, however, are some of the points of jagged rock cliffs picked off to allow the wagon hubs to scrape by, and some of these points are twenty feet above the present floor of the gorge. There are also names of some of the pioneers chiseled in the face of the crevice wall at least twenty feet above the present floor. Nearby are deep scratches, where wagon hubs scarred the wall in 1880 and 1881. . . . One massive block tumbled into the crevice early in 1956, almost completely blocking the upper part of the notch” (ibid., 107).

  It should be noted that Miller’s book was first published in 1959. In the nearly forty years since that time, further erosion has changed the Hole in the Rock even more, including having an effect on what can be seen on the walls of the crevice.

  Chapter 61

  Monday, January 26, 1880

  “All right,” Platte Lyman hollered, “I know you’re all excited, but let’s have your attention for a few moments, then we’ll get this show on the road.”

  He was standing on the back tailgate of his wagon. The entire company of the Hole in the Rock camp stood around him. There was definitely great excitement in the air. Finally, the day had come. The road down to the river was complete. Before this day was out, if all went as planned, the camp would be empty and about three dozen wagons would be on the east side of the Colorado River. They had been waiting for this day now for over a month.

  He waited until they were quiet, then, still speaking loudly so all could hear, went on. “As you know, when we first started on this mission, the plan was to take a southern route to bypass the Colorado River gorge. Well, that didn’t work. There wasn’t enough water, it was too long, and we had some rather hostile natives who didn’t want us coming through their land. So we came this way instead. Which was a good idea, except for one thing. We had the Colorado River gorge blocking our way—fifteen hundred feet of sheer cliffs and no way through it.”

  He grinned broadly. “But now, thanks to Ben Perkins and the other boys, we’ve busted that gorge open and made a wagon road straight down the face of it. And today, we’re ready to start sending wagons down that road and across the river.”

  He took a breath, then went on quickly. “We plan to take all of the outfits from our camp down today. That’s about forty wagons. I’m sure that will take us all day. Tomorrow, the camp at Fifty Mile Springs will move up here. Weather permitting, they’ll follow us down as quickly as possible. So, as soon as you reach the bottom of the cleft, just follow the road down to the ferry. Brother Hall and his boys will be waiting to take you across the river. Once on the other side, continue on to what we are calling Cottonwood Camp. You’ll find it to be a delightful change from the barrenness of our camp here. But please note, the ferry can take only two wagons at a time, and the round trip over and back takes roughly half an hour, if you count loading and unloading. So it is not likely that we can get all the wagons across today. Some of you later ones may have to camp on this side of the river tonight.”

  He paused, waiting for questions, but hardly anyone even moved. “Many of you have taken the opportunity to walk down our new road, so you know that the first hundred and fifty or two hundred feet are pretty s
teep, about a forty-five or fifty percent grade, what Nate Decker calls ‘slantindicular.’” A slow smile stole across his face. “For any of you ladies who didn’t get a chance to curl your hair this morning, don’t worry about it. This will do it for you.”

  That won him a chuckle of appreciation and not a few rather anxious looks.

  “The best part of that is that most of that stretch is narrow enough that you can’t overturn your wagons. In some ways, it’s going to be like a log going down a three- or four-story log flume. The rest of the crevasse is pretty steep too, but nothing like that initial chute.”

  “So,” Joe Nielson called out, “could you say we’re about to ‘shoot the chute’?”

  “That’s a good description, Brother Joe.” He paused for effect. “Not very comforting, but a good description.” He looked around at what was rapidly becoming a very sober group. “Women and children and those not needed as drivers should walk down to the bottom. Mothers, stay with the smaller children. It’s precipitous and rough and we don’t want someone tripping and falling off the mountain.” The last was said with a sardonic smile.

  “I’m not walking,” Molly whispered.

  Abby turned in surprise. “Why not?”

  “Because if I walk, I have to keep my eyes open.”

  “A word of caution for all drivers,” Platte was saying. “If you haven’t yet seen what we are calling Uncle Ben’s Dugway, you will marvel at that remarkable engineering feat. Thank you, Ben. Only a stubborn old Welshman would simply hang a road on the side of a cliff.”

  There were cheers and a few whistles and many hats were lifted and waved back and forth as Ben lifted a hand in acknowledgment.

  “Drivers, don’t be going fast across the dugway. Remember, it is a dirt road hanging in midair. It wasn’t designed to take a pounding. Once past that, the rest of the road down is easy.”

  Jens Nielson stepped forward. “Brodders and sisters, be shure you do not bunch up too close to each odder. Vee cannot be runnink into vun anodder.”