Hiking the Pioneer Road

“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.¨ Kahlil Gibran
Our Jeep jolted over what looked like huge slickrock slabs punctuated by polished river rocks. Our niece, her husband, and four of their children followed in their Tahoe.
They’d recently moved to Blanding from the St. George area, and since we had no other close relatives living nearby, we were excited to hike an old pioneer road with them.
We parked near the rim of Lower Butler Wash, donned our jackets and packs, and prepared for the descent into the gulch.
The youngest child was just over a year old, so he rode in his daddy’s arms, transportation he obviously relished. The other children ranged in ages from ten to seventeen.
As we hiked down the road, Ted surged ahead to spot the historical markers, the ten-year-old girl stuck close to her mom and me, dad and baby followed, and the teenagers did their own things.
Butler Wash, which runs east of Comb Ridge, holds some of the most fascinating archaeological sites in the country.
Although it’s been the home and hunting grounds of Native peoples for hundreds of years, it was named after John Butler, a member of the San Juan Expedition.
The San Juan Expedition started from Cedar City in April of 1879 with the mission to scout the best route to Montezuma Creek.
Once they arrived at the mouth of the creek, they sent out small exploring parties to determine the most effective path for the settlers who planned to follow.
The scouts eventually returned to Cedar City by way of Moab, Richfield, and Salina with their recommendations.
However, in 1880, instead of following those recommendations, the Hole-in-the-Rock pioneers traveled directly across the rugged desert and canyon country toward their destination, hoping to arrive in six weeks.
Six months later, exhausted and low on supplies, they faced the steep barrier of Comb Ridge. Unwilling to be stopped, these intrepid travelers carved out a primitive road, now known as San Juan Hill, for their wagons and livestock.
After successfully, if painfully, summiting the ridge, however, they decided to curtail any more travel and settled Bluff. For about a year, they used part of their original road to transport supplies until they developed an easier route.
The old wagon road we were hiking, called the Lower Butler Wash Road or the Alternate San Juan Hill, was that easier route.
It snaked down into the wash about a mile-and-a-half away from the original. It may have first been used as a stock trail, but after William Hyde established a trading post at the Rincon, where Comb Ridge and the San Juan River meet, he created a cable ferry across the river and further developed the trail to transport merchandise.
His son-in-law, Amasa Barton, eventually owned the post, but later died there in a tragic fight with a Navajo called the Bully. Although the ferry was then abandoned, the post remained in operation, and gold prospectors continued to improve the road in the 1890’s.
As we hiked, we could see wagon wheel indentations in the rock and the carved outlines of a horse, dog, and long horn steers, evidence of the cowboys who once camped along the road.
Other travelers also left their marks by inscribing their names and sometimes dates on the cliff walls.
I felt a deep admiration for those long-ago travelers and their resourcefulness in surviving and thriving in such an isolated land, but history and culture, time and tradition are deeply layered in our country, and they weren’t the first to live, work, and die there.
We walked to the bottom of the wash where cottonwoods, tamarisks, and willows grew along the stream, hopped over the water, and then clambered up to some Ancestral Puebloan ruins sheltered in an alcove on the west side of the gulch.
When his tired daddy finally set him down, our great nephew held onto his mom’s fingers and toddled where Puebloan children may have once played.
Then, with the baby once again cradled in daddy’s arms, we descended from the ruins and continued to the San Juan River and the Butler Wash Petroglyph Panel—also known as the Big Kachina Panel.
Hundreds of rock art images decorate the cliffs, some overlaying others and some so high and inaccessible we couldn’t image how the Puebloans had created them even using ladders.
Several of the images have been identified as kachinas, meaning, among other things, “life bringers.” They’re divine or ancestral spirits, serving as intermediaries between earth and heaven and aiding the Pueblo people in blessing their families and communities.
After exploring the trails along the river cliffs, also rich with petroglyphs, we ate lunch overlooking the San Juan River with the kids quickly downing their sandwiches, chips, and water.
By then the little one was tired and crying, but when his daddy sang to him, he quieted and soon fell asleep.
As we started back to our vehicles, that tender dad, although he was soon soaked with sweat from the effort, carried his son without complaint.
We chatted along the way, but the layering of history remained palpable. If we listened carefully enough, I wondered, would we detect those other, older conversations submerged now beneath the sounds of our passage.
No doubt those long-ago sojourners, like our niece and her husband, worked hard, sacrificed much, and served as living bows from which their children were sent forth.