Notes On The History Of The Kolob Canyons… A Two Year Mapping Project

Issue 43.10

Part 6

The first formal study and mapping of the Kolob region was made in 1872 and 1873 by John Wesley Powell and his Colorado River Survey.  Powell, who traveled down the Colorado River in 1869, returned for a two year mapping project on the river in 1871 and 1872.  The survey established winter quarters in Kanab, Utah and from there they began a systematic survey of southern Utah and northern Arizona.  They would spend most of the rest of the decade at this pioneering work.

            In the fall of 1872, a party of Powell’s men was at Glendale, Utah on the east fork of the Virgin River.  Stephen V. Jones, leader of the group, was charged with finding the headwaters of the Springdale branch of the Virgin {North Fork} and then return to the Virgin River below Springdale.  From Glendale, the route took the party up the east fork of the river, west to the edge of the pink cliffs near present-day Strawberry Point, across the head of Deep Creek, southwest across the Kolob Plateau to the western  edge of the Kolob Canyons, onto North Creek and finally to Virgin, Utah.  On 22 October, Jones described in a succinct journal entry:  “Still South 2 miles over a plateau rising fast, no timber, until suddenly we came to a sharp line of cliffs down which we could look 1500 feet.  A stream {LaVerkin Creek} rose out of the foot of the cliff and ran nearly south into a deep canon far below us.” [UHQ 16-17:165-166]  Later on the same day, the Jones party met a Mr. Berry who was tending a community cattle herd.  He told them that they could not get down LaVerkin Creek.  Jones used the word “Colob” many times in his journal on this trip clearly indicating common usage of the name by 1872.

Part 6 will be concluded next week.