Incredible Passage Through the Hole in the Rock Rating :
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A book about Hole-in-the-Rock
By Mike Smith
This is one of many books on the infamous Mormon Hole-in-the-Rock expedition. It needs better editing, and is somewhat basic, but it's a good read for someone who wants to familiarize themselves with the subject but doesn't want an assault of information.
The Hole-in-the-Rock Expedition was a two-mile-long caravan of horse-drawn Mormon wagons and livestock that travelled across the West in the 1870s, on the way to establish a new settlement in the untamed, southeast corner of Utah. The Mormons at that time thought that if white, Mormon families settled in this sparsely populated area, they might have a "civilizing" effect on the local Indians, who had been stealing their cattle. The group was decently prepared in most respects, but they failed to realize that the land they would be in would have little grass to feed the cattle they brought--causing many of their animals to starve to death--and they based their route on the reports of three overly optimistic scouts. The scouts' report of the area said the route would be difficult but possible--which was true--but until the group found itself high on the edge of a cliff, two thousand feet above the Colorado River, none of them realized just HOW difficult.
Heavy snow made the road behind them impossible to use, so instead of turning around, fifty of the group's men worked hard dynamiting what had been a narrow, one hundred-foot-deep, two thousand-foot-high crack in the cliff into a dangerous, almost vertical wagon road. Others managed to ford the Colorado River and develop a road out of Glen Canyon on the river's other side, and others found, cut, and hauled trees to use in building a ferry for all the wagons to cross the river. The route down the Hole-in-the-Rock was so steep that sloping wooden platforms had to be attached to cliff walls at points, and when the group finally descended down the insane route, after six weeks of blasting, picking, removing rock, and building, teams of men had to lower the wagons down with ropes tied to the wagons' rear axles.
Eighty-three wagons, over two hundred people, and over a thousand cows and horses went down, and though there were minor injuries to people and animals--especially to the animals--no humans or animals lost their lives in the descent. The people crossed the river on the new ferry--two wagons at a time--and when they had gone as far as their bodies, animals, and supplies would allow, they just unpacked and stopped-founding what would become the towns of Bluff and Montezuma Creek, Utah.
The expedition was an amazing one, and this book does a decent job at expressing the extreme degree of hardship this hardy group experienced, especially in the later part of its journey when the group had already crossed the river.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1730366 in Books
- Published on: 1981-06
- Original language:English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 128 pages
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