Pipe Spring

Pipe

… in the shade of the silent trees a monument in shining stone to remind us, not of the men who went against the Indians with guns and violence, but of the man, Jacob Hamblin, who walked among them without weapons and without fear… (Photos by National Park Service.)

Spring... a Monument TO THE PIONEERS

THE TRAVELER coming down the long backbone of the Kaibab glimpsing through the pines the prismatic plains north ward and to the north west the long line of palisades glittering in the sun the Vermilion Cliffs has little thought of battles and human struggles. Here is beauty to make him forget man and his strivings. It is only when he turns off the highway at Fredonia, near the Utah border, and goes westward to where a point of the Vermilion reaches out toward the wide mesas, holding on its fingertip the old Mormon Fort at Pipe Springs, that he begins to think of men and the struggle they had to bring this wilderness under control.

Pipe Spring stands today cool-shaded, screen ed-in by silver leaf cottonwood and ailanthus

JANUARY, 1943

trees about a large, clear pool in front of its red sandstone walls. It is a place where one gladly stops to rest out of the hot sun and drink of the cold, sweet water of the spring, for here is the only available spring water for almost twenty miles each way. Through the tall trees here, one may look out over the seventy miles of grey-green mesas to the north rim of the Grand Canyon southward, to the long dark hump of the Kaibab rising to a high eastern horizon, to the dim mountains of Trumbull and the Uinkarets far to the southwest. Then if one cares to go west over the fifty miles of dirt road toward the Mormon towns of Hurricane and St. George he passes under the Vermilion Cliffs most of the way. These, in themselves are worth any traveler's time, if he has an eye for color and form and majesty. Viewed under the midday sun these cliffs are peculiarly colorless. The shadows, glare It seems to drain away the hues of the sandstone, and shrink the majestic heights into a drab monotony of desert greys and shimmering heat waves. It is in the evening when the sun's rays slant upward from the ridges, when the cliffs stand like pillars of red and orange flame

"... Pipe Spring in its homely strength and simple dignity typifies the life and character of early Mormons. It made possible the work they did in bringing into cultivation their little valleys along creeks and rivers, so that they might live and worship and build to the glory of God and for the security of their children..." (Photo by Chuck Abbott.)

Fitted with the furnishings of the period of its historical importance, Pipe Spring will remain as a monument to the pioneer era.

against the purple depths of their canyons and wade in the dark shadows of the valley, that the soul of man is magnified and the body dwarfed. Every hour of the day the colors of the cliffs vary in their tints and their intensity, like a perpetual backdrop played upon by shifting lights arranged for a drama that never happens, or that is too trivial to detract from its setting. From hour to hour, from day to day, from season to season, the mood changes, never the same again. There are mists today, softening the outlines of the highlights, deepening the shadows; there will be clouds tomorrow, and a liquid quality in the atmosphere to make the cliffs shimmer like those fanciful underwater structures made to exalt or contest the fishes in an aquarium. Maybe just maybe there will be rain, then the sun to make the washed faces of the cliffs to blush and glow with gleaming streaks of water still pouring down from their brows. Sometimes the rocks are capped and fringed with snow, while their high perpendicular shafts glow ruddy in the winter sun, the only color in all the white expanse of the Uinkaret, except the black-green cedars dotted here and there. There are times when the cliffs tower above a valley fog and old Tumurru is like the vividly painted prow of some boat strayed into a quiet sea. Sometimes the winds come up from the plateau to assail the cliffs with cloud after cloud of blinding snow, or cutting sand.

The Mormons made a road over this route, by which they could travel back and forth between the Virgin River Settlement and Kanab and Long Valley.

Pipe Spring, a cool, sweet little stream flowing out of a point in the Vermilions, was one of the main watering places on this route.

The names on most of this Arizona Strip country, like Wolfhole, Clayhole, Bullrush, Yellowstone, Littletanks, Cane Beds, Short Creek, sprang full fledged from the unspoiled brain of some early cowboy or traveler. The origination of the name Pipe Spring was more devious.

It is said that a party of missionaries led by Jacob Hamblin and sent by Brigham Young to make peace with the Navajo in 1858 stopped at this spring; that among their number was William (Gunlock Bill) Hamblin, sharpshooter among sharpshooters. A wager was made that he could not shoot a hole through a silk handkerchief at fifty paces. Someone held up the handkerchef and Hamblin's bullet hit it, but the slick cloth gave away and there was no puncture. Irked that any cloud should be thrown on his ability as a marksman, Hamb lin bet he could shoot the bottom out of Dudley Leavitt's pipe. Leavitt put the pipe on a rock and Hamblin drilled the bottom out of it neatly with the first shot. Hence the name Pipe Spring.

In 1863 Dr. James M. Whitmore came through the Strip country, was excited by its miles and miles of waving grass, and decided to start a cattle ranch here. He and his brother-in-law, Robert McIntyre, built a dugout in the east side of the hill near Pipe Spring and made their headquarters for livestock oper-ations on the territory from the Kai-bab to the Hurricane Fault, from the Grand Canyon to the Vermilion Cliffs. On the night of January 8, 1866 Whitmore and McIntyre and Whit-more's eleven year old son son, James, were in the dugout. They heard a noise among some cattle and sheep they had in the small pasture near the dugout. They opened the door to look out but it was snowing and they could see nothing. Next morning the cattle and sheep were gone. The men saddled their horses and rode out to follow their tracks, leaving the boy in the dugout.

All day and through the night the boy waited. No father or uncle came back. Once in the night he heard a noise outside the noise of stealthy feet. He hid behind the stove. Sometimes the door rattled as though someone tried to get in. But the door was water flowed through the south building, thus assuring a plentiful supply.

Barred, and the footsteps went away suddenly. Next morning the boy started afoot for St. George, ninety-six miles away. He had gone ten miles through the deep snow when he met a party of Mormon Elders, who turned about and went to St. George with news of the men's disappearance.

That night when the men arrived in St. George the people were gathered in the meeting house for a dance. They had taken partners for the cotillion and the music had started up, when the leader raised his hand for silence, and announced that Whitmore and McIntyre had disappeared. It was believed they had been killed. A posse was to leave the next morning to hunt for the men and capture their attackers. An air of fear and gloom hung over the people as many of the men left the dance to prepare to go with the posse.

A militia of about fifty men was organized under the command of Colonel D. D. McArthur and Captain James Andrus. They were ill-equipped, each man taking his own provisions, some poorly dressed for the cold they were to find when they came out of the Virgin River Valleys. Some had no saddles, but rode astride their bedding on their horses.

It is said the party plunged through eighteen inches of snow in the plateau, and the air was bitter cold.When the posses arrived at Pipe Spring they divided into two parties, one, under Colonel McArthur, going southwestward, the other,