The Honeymoon Trail

UTAH ARIZONA THE HONEYMOON TRAIL

Imagine, if you can, an extremely low-cost honeymoon in the incomparably beautiful desert Southwest totally free of “no vacancy” signs or shifty-eyed room clerks, without the hassle of credit cards or freeways, devoid of golden arches and the odor of doughnuts frying in ran-cid cooking oil. But with such advantages as: Hard to imagine? Virtually impossible in this year of 1978.

But in 1878 and for 50 years afterwards it was commonplace in Arizona. Hundreds of couples some say thousands enjoyed such experiences along the romantic Honeymoon Trail, combining the splendors of economic outdoor travel in northern Arizona with the fulfillment of their religious obligations and beliefs.

Until the Arizona Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was completed in Mesa, and put in use early in 1928, devout members of the Mormon faith living in Arizona traveled over the Honeymoon Trail to the closest temple at St. George, Utah, there to take their holy marriage vows in the manner prescribed.

Originally the old rutted Mormon Wagon Road, which colonists to Arizona, New Mexico, and eventually Mexico had followed southward from central Utah, the Honeymoon Trail linked the most remote frontier settlements to the temple at St. George: settlements such as Lehi and Mesa in the Salt River Valley and St. David on the San Pedro River and Bryce, Eden, Glenbar, Pima, Central, Thatcher and Safford in the upper Gila Valley, as well as settlements tucked into the mountains of western New Mexico.

While not outright rejecting civil marriage, because of its obvious legal implications, the Mormon faithful did not consider a marriage wholly consummated unless it was performed with proper temple rites. While the bishop of a local ward, who often would be the local justice of the peace as well, might perform a marriage that was legal for couples not ready for the long journey to St. George for sanctified marriage, it was not unusual for a lapse of weeks, months, or even years to transpire until couples had the time and funds for the long overland trip to the temple. Sometimes two or three couples who had lived in a state of married bliss in their local settlements would wait until the crops were in or funds were available for a shared journey to St. George. Thus the holiday air of the trip might be enhanced by the company of equallyjoyous companions.

Tradition has it, in the gossipy but logical pattern of folklore, that one Arizona Mormon patriarch who adhered to plural marriage despite the federal law and revised church doctrine which banned it, traveled to St. George with a new wife, accompanied by an earlier, older spouse who not only thus appeared to approve of her younger sister in marriage, but who willingly or otherwise went along to help with camp chores and driving. Additionally she could have been an acceptable if not necessarily an approving witness at the marriage.

Not all members of the Mormon church could be married or even enter a temple. A member of the church had to arrive at the temple office bearing a "recommend" from his local bishop. This was, as the name implied, testimony from a neighbor and co-religionist that the individual had been leading a moral, acceptable life in keeping with the LDS ordinances, responsibilities, and beliefs. All witnesses at such marriages likewise had to have recommends issued within a year of the event. This demanding requirement for temple admittance often has been misunderstood or misinterpreted. Requirements imposed to guarantee the sanctity of the temple have been wrongfully or critically described as a coverup for secret or mystic rites. But solemn and sacred does not necessarily imply secret, and exclusiveness is not a maze to mask mysticism. The Mormons lived voluntarily in a theocratic community in which their business, social, and recreational activities, as well as religious practices, were governed by widely-known standards of conduct, unity and preponderance of co-religionists, high principles, and intense devotion.

Armed with their recommends, the young couples set out for St. George. The outfit put together for the trip to the temple was as plain or as elaborate as economic resources permitted. Usually, drawing upon equipment at hand, it was a simple farm wagon covered with wooden hoops and a canvas cover. Some few travelers were known to make the trip in surreys or buggies or surplus Daugherty wagons, also called ambulances, which offered upholstered seats and some comfort from springs. Most often the vehicles were farm wagons that could be spared from farm or ranch, pulled by a pair of animals known for docility and endurance. The ultimate in traveling equipage on the Honeymoon Trail was the 19th century equivalent of today's elaborate recreational vehicles: the sheepherder's wagon. In a day when rangelands of the Far West were not yet fenced, but were roamed by vast herds of grazing sheep and cattle, wide-canopied wagons sometimes were borrowed from Basque herdsmen who used it extensively. They were roomy enough to keep spare food, clothing, veterinary supplies, cooking outfit, bed and an inside stove, offering protection to the herders and their dogs during storms. They were as wide as 8 feet and as much as 12 to 16 feet long, lending the spacious interior to division into sleeping and eating quarters or even separate roomlets. They did not have portable generators and cooling systems, nor showers and water closets like modern recreational vehicles, but neither were the Mormon pioneers spoiled by the extravagance and affluence of modern travel. Water "This road presented obstacles, especially in one section of the Buckskin Mountains where wagons had to be lowered with ropes."

Hole In The Rock, - D. E. Miller

Water was drawn by bucket from creek, spring, or well, an ax provided fuel for cooking and washing, and there were always bushes and boulders to provide hidden spots to bespeak the magnificence of nature's call to the outdoors.

The bride might have packed away in a valise or trunk the white gown and shoes her mother or an older sister or a relative had worn for a similar wedding at St. George, or at one of the older temples of Manti, Logan, Ogden, or Provo, Utah, or farther back in time, at Nauvoo before the western exodus began in 1846. The groom might pack his Sunday-go-to-meeting suit, if he had one, not for the wedding, but to wear at following receptions or while calling on friends and relatives in St. George or elsewhere in southern Utah, from whence many colonists were called by church authorities to settle beyond the Colorado River in Arizona.

At the wedding itself the groom would wear white garments required in the temple by custom and regulation.

As the temple-goers bade goodby to friends at Winslow or Joseph City, they turned north into a land of overwhelming beauty, unsullied skies, and vistas that merged imperceptibly into the heavens.

A day's journey north of Winslow, starting point of the trail, was the site of Sunset, one of the very first Mormon towns established during the colonizing effort of 1876. It had not completely succeeded, but neither has it ever completely vanished. Most of the weary settlers left, some returning to Utah in disappointment, others moving up the river to more promising sites at St. Johns, Snowflake, Eager, Springerville, or Show Low, or to the vicinity of Ramah, Luna and Pleasantton, New Mexico, a few miles beyond Alpine, perched almost on the Arizona-New Mexico line. Still, a few of the hardiest remained as ranchers. Old houses not washed away in floods were converted to ranch outhouses, some still surviving. And the cemetery on higher ground became the final resting place of wearried or sickened colonists. For some honeymoon couples, a tearful visit to the graves of friends or relatives was part of the overnight stop.

Here they would realize that tragedy could accompany adventure. The graves here and at isolated camping places beyond testified that the road between Utah and Arizona was a trail of sweat and tears, of accidents and of sickness that brought the despair of death. But most travelers on the Honeymoon Trail were young, and they moved on with the joy and hope of the young of heart.

Following the course of the river, which sometimes was “too thin to plough but too thick to drink,” or was devoid of a visible stream, the travelers had no great difficulty in obtaining water by digging a few feet into the sands for seepage from underground flow. Its north bank was the western borderland of the Navajo country. So it was not unusual to meet male horsemen offering to sell bridles encrusted with fancy silver, heavy concho belts and turquoise jewelry, or Navajo blankets woven by their wives and mothers. There was no danger from these colorfully-clad native Americans, who long before had been brought to friendly council fires with the Mormons by Jacob Hamblin, who as early as 1859 had come out of Utah to visit among the Hopis and Navajos, seeking their friendship and alliance as he recounted the LDS belief that the Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, and in the Book of Mormon were called Lamanites.

Two or three days and 45 miles after the journey began depending upon weather and therefore road conditions, as well as the haste or ease of the travelers they came to spectacular Grand Falls. Here, an ancient flow of lava from the San Francisco Peaks to the west had poured across the river's bed, leaving a stairstep falls with an overall drop of 185 feet, unbelievably 18 feet higher than the American Falls between Goat Island and the New York shore at famous Niagara Falls. What honeymoon couple would not be thrilled by this cascade in the middle of the Arizona desert, even if when the river was in flood, heavy with silt, the stream looked like frothy cocoa plunging on toward the Grand Canyon!

About five miles east of Grand Falls was one of two practical fording places on the Little Colorado River before it plunged into the deep canyon that dropped it to the level of the mother Colorado. Travelers on the Mormon Wagon Road before it became the Honeymoon Trail had found passageways on both sides of the river in their explorations, avoiding sand dunes on the north side. So honeymooners also exercised that option, but eventually had to move to the east or north bank to continue the journey northward.

Beyond Grand Falls the travelers were poised between two dramatic sights. To the north, beyond where Dinnebito Wash emerged from Garces Mesa, the latter named for the Franciscan priest who in July of 1776 had visited the area, were the fingeredmesas of the Hopi Indians, a land continuously occupied for several centuries. Its major settlement, Oraibi, has been called the oldest occupied town in the United States. Directly opposite, to the west of the river, on a little mountain nearly a mile above sea level, but silhouetted against the snowy tri-cones of the San Francisco Peaks, looming almost to 13,000 feet, were the spectacular walls of Wupatki, an Indian habitation, or fortress, older, some archeologists believe, than the Hopi villages. Now it is a national monument easily reached by paved highway.

A few miles more brought them to Black Falls, much smaller than Grand Falls, also caused by an errant lava flow when volcanoes erupted milleniums ago. Near this site the grazing generally was good, making it an ideal location for nooning or an overnight stop.

A few miles southeast of the highway bridge on U.S. 89, which crosses the Little Colorado near Cameron, was another good ford, called Tanner's Crossing. It marked the point of departure of the wagon road north from the river. Here the deepest ruts coursed directly north toward Lee's Ferry, if the shortest trail was to be followed, or a side road angled northeast to the oasis of Moenkopi and nearby Tuba City, the latter named for the first Hopi Indian of prominence to yield to the missionary efforts of the Mormons during their first entry into Arizona. In 1879 the Mormons erected a woolen mill here, buying fleece from the Navajos and employing Hopis to work alongside their own people at the looms, but the enterprise failed. The Moenkopi Mission was maintained until the federal government in 1903 bought the colonists' farms and houses, to add their fields as a supplement to the Hopi reservation.

In a few miles more the trail led to green fields among rows of Lombard poplars marking Moenave, which had been an outpost ranch utilized at times by Jacob Hamblin and John Doyle Lee. Moenave was at the southern end of the Echo Cliffs, a hundred-mile parapet of supreme beauty marking the edge of the Colorado Plateau. Now the trail led along endless Hamblin Wash, at the foot of the cliffs, where Hopi and Navajo farmers planted corn in the broad sandy fields without any sign of water, knowing that drainage from the cliffs burrowing under the sand would provide enough moisture in favorable summers to produce a crop. North of Moenave a day they came to the Times Square of the desert Willow Springs, where both water and grass promised nourishment for the animals.

Here the humans enjoyed a spell of reading and writing. On huge sandstone boulders near the springs the earliest Mormon travelers had made this site a permanent register of their passing.

Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works.

Nearby yet apart, startling for their primitive beauty and artistic form, was a collection of several thousand figures carved in the standstone by Hopi Indians.

Here, too, small quantities of salt could be collected, layered conspicuously between sheets of sandstone and exposed at a height convenient for sheep and goats to lick.

On June 4, 1873, B. Y. Perkins, who, unlike several of his relatives, did not carve his name on the stone, wrote instead in his diary that a party was camped here which consisted of 54 wagons, 115 animals, 112 men and boys, 6 women and 1 child and he added, laconically, "the grass soon began to grow scarce for the animals."

The pulling was heavy for the animals in the sandy road, but it was an area where a leisurely pace enabled the travelers to absorb the beauties of the scene. Puffy clouds sometimes skipped across the vaulted turquoise sky, moving from the Pacific Ocean far off to the left to disappear across the top of the cliffs to form in thunderheads that each August answered the Hopis' supplications for rain.

Whenever rain had fallen in recent days or weeks, the travelers would search at the bottom of cliffs for holes or sinks where the life-giving fluid was slow in sinking or evaporating.

Northward they trekked, sparingly using water themselves and doling it out to their animals from kegs and barrels carried on the wagons, for use when none was available in seeps, springs, or holes. Two or three days' travel brought them to the Gap, and then to Cedar Ridge, both camping and watering spots. It was in an area of bad roads and stark desert, but the scenerycompensated for the sterility, the stimulating esthetics transmitted by the optic nerve at times dulling the pain of parched throats and legs weary from plodding in sand. Limestone Tanks was the next stop going north, and beyond it lay Bitter Springs, exactly what the name told, water so bitter it had to be gulped and endured to prevent the greater suffer ing that would come without it.

More frequently now the honeymooners would see Navajo riders and herders. As they drew closer to the apex formed by the the Echo Cliffs on their right and Glen Canyon of the Colorado on their left, they were approaching the last good watering place this side of the ferry crossing. At Navajo Springs the wind gusts sharply, and it could be piercingly cold or like the mouth of a furnace, depending upon the season. Here there often were Navajo visitors, friendly in a shy way, anxious to do a little bartering, politely curious about the bride, but more concerned about the speed of any riding horse the groom might have. Navajo men were inveterate gamblers, willing to race their ponies against any animal the travelers offered in competition, wagering almost any material possession on the outcome.

Navajo visitors, friendly in a shy way, anxious to do a little bartering, politely curious about the bride, but more concerned about the speed of any riding horse the groom might have. Navajo men were inveterate gamblers, willing to race their ponies against any animal the travelers offered in competition, wagering almost any material possession on the outcome.

They came in sight of Lee's Backbone with undisguised excitement. If they had not themselves traversed this precipitous road, their parents and relatives had done so years before in coming out from Utah to the Arizona settlements. If they came during the season of low water in the river - usually midsummer to early spring they could avoid the widely-known passage of the mountain. The trail was easier forking to the left, following a breathtaking dugway down to the river opposite the mouth of the Paria River and in full sight of Lonely Dell, the home ranch of John Doyle Lee and his wife Emma at Lee's Ferry. This low-water dugway route had been hacked from the mountain's side by tithing faithful after Lee's death in 1877 and purchase of the ferry by church authorities.

But every Mormon traveler had heard of the hardships encountered in cross-ing Lee's Backbone. The ascent on the river side was one and a half miles long, rising sharply from the bank over tortu-ous bare rock ridges to a summit that seemed unreachable to exhausted ani-mals. Once at the peak, despite the magnificent panorama of the Colorado River plunging out of Glen Canyon to move with a roar into the little known and greatly feared Grand Canyon to the west, the descent toward the south was a frightening experience, on a road so narrow and impeded by rocks and sheer cliffs that the finest horseman-ship was necessary, with locked wheels and safety ropes often needed to pre-vent wagon and teams from tumbling to death. It was a 350-foot descent, extended over about four miles, every bit dangerous and harrowing. No mat-ter which direction they went, north or south, travelers said Lee's Backbone was the most difficult road they had ever experienced.

But once at the water's brink and awaiting the ferry coming for them from the north bank, the most difficult half of the upward journey was over. Ahead was the prospect of rest in the tranquil delta of the Paria River, encom-passing green fields, lovely shade trees, old log buildings, and the heroic remem-brance of the establishment of Lee's Ferry as the funnel for colonists moving from Utah to Arizona and back again.

If the season was right, the fertile acres of Lonely Dell yielded fresh melons that universally were the favor-ite food delight of the garden spot. Potatoes, onions, cabbage, squash, corn and dried peaches could be obtained here at almost any season from the surplus of the hardy resident farmers.

After a day or two at Lonely Dell, a rest welcomed by the animals which here could enjoy all the grazing and sweet water desired, the travelers moved up the Paria, climbing out of Marble Canyon to the shelf above, then turned southwest on the second leg of the road to St. George.

On their right again loomed flaming cliffs of sandstone, geologically an extension of the Echo Cliffs that had been their companion since leaving Moenave. Here they appropriately were called the Vermillion Cliffs. The road moved southwest, between the eroded tallus slopes and the visible yawning gap of the Grand Canyon on their left, broadening and growing more colorful as they moved in.

Badger Creek was the first watering spot, several miles west of the Paria, to be followed soon by Soap Creek, both deriving their names from an anecdote of early Mormon explorers, which told of a badger shot nearby with a carcass so fat it yielded soap when ashes from a campfire were kicked into the pot in which the animal had been boiled for food during a time of sparse rations. Both creeks were mere trickles coming out of the cliffs, where fallen slabs also provided shelter if storms happened to sweep in.

At a place where the cliffs receded a bit they came to a series of springs and pools and the ruins of old rock houses and stone corrals. This was a site that at various times has been called Jacob's Pool and then Rachel's Pool. It had first been a watering spot during Hamblin's early explorations. When John Doyle Lee established his ferry, he kept some cattle at the pool and thus secured water rights. Later, seeking a refuge even more isolated, he moved to the little farm Hamblin had established at Moe-nave during his missionary work among the Hopis. Thereafter Jacob's Pool became the home of another of Lee's loyal wives, Rachel. It was a desolate spot, more barren even than the ferry crossing which Emma had named Lonely Dell.

The road veered toward the north, stretching out into a vast valley covered with grass and sage, bordered on the east by the Vermillion Cliffs, turning north, and on the west by the Buckskin Mountains, at which top was spread the Kaibab Forest. This expanse was House Rock Valley, where in the third decade of this century, domestically-bred buffalo would be introduced to roam here west of the Rockies, far from their native home east of the Pecos. Up the easy valley the road went for a full, fast day, then veered and climbed to the left, over rocky hills, up and up from sage and cedar and pinyon to ponderosa pine, Douglas fir and aspen, bursting into open parks in the glorious Kaibab. An unforgettable camping place. Then with sunup they moved on, downgrade the road led to Navajo Wells, a few miles north of the Utah border, and then coursed northwest-ward a short ride to the isolated little town of Johnson, an early outpost for plural families on Utah's hemline. Habitations were growing more numerous, most of them small ranches with little orchards and garden plots and white picket fences, in contrast to the rows of poplar trees. Home-like. The pace quickened as the honeymooners topped a ridge and descended into the pretty little town of Kanab. It had long been the southern gateway of Utah, guarding the main Mormon Wagon Road. Here the road divided, the deeper tracks heading north, and a branch pointing southwestward, again in the direction of the Grand Canyon, which now was flanked to the north by lofty, pinecovered mountains. The road led them next to Pipe Spring, an idyllic location on a slight rise overlooking the plateau that stretched southward to the Grand Canyon, whose painted temples and walls were sometimes visible when the road topped ridges. Here at Pipe Spring was a fortress-like structure built as Winsor's Fort or Castle, another cattle-raising outpost on the hairline of Arizona north of the canyon.

Fear of Paiute Indians living in the area had never resolved into conflict. The rifle loopholes in the walls were never used in anger, although a militia company was stationed here for a short while when Indian unrest called for a pacification force.

Time had preserved immense cottonwoods beside a quiet reservoir where ducks swam. Water replenished it from a pipe emerging from the chilly spring room within the walled compound, which once had safeguarded the dairy and cheese factory providing butter and cheese for residents of St. George.

The honeymooners particularly if they were from the St. Johns area could have special interest in Pipe Spring because of its history as a relay station on an early telegraph line connecting Salt Lake City with outlying Mormon communities. The line reached down to St. George, then swept in a southern arc through Pipe Spring to Kanab, the southernmost town on the Mormon Wagon Road. The telegraph operator at Pipe Spring was Luella Stewart, the teenage daughter of a local rancher. She had largely taught herself Morse code in a few weeks in order to relay messages, and never forgot it in a long lifetime. Later she married David King Udall, an English-born convert to Mormonism, and with him answered a call to settle at St. Johns. Thus Ella Udall became the matriarch of the extensive Udall family in Arizona, the mother of Supreme Court Justice Levi Udall, and grandmother of Congressman Morris K. Udall and his brother, the former Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall.

At last, after four to five weeks, the honeymooners could finally look forward to fulfilling their mission in the temple...

From Pipe Spring the road angles to the north and west, past isolated set-tlements of pluralists at Moccasin and Cane Beds, and onto slightly lower ground in a little valley running west along Short Creek, bisected by the Utah-Arizona line. This refuge for plural families has been occupied until this day by outcast or renegade Mor-mon sects who refuse to accept the revised doctrine of the church banning plural marriage.

In 1950 Arizona officials staged a raid on polygamists living at Short Creek, in an effort to stamp out the practice, but the undertaking failed. With the name of the community now changed to Colorado City, dissidents continue to live there with multiple wives in defiance of legal opposition and public condemnation from author-ities of the Salt Lake City church, from which they have been excommunicated.

At Short Creek the honeymooners were only about 35 miles from their destination, and now the road was in descending terrain, leading westerly. The brink of the Hurricane Cliffs was an easy day's journey on a clear day, giving travelers a distant glimpse of the Promised Land the valley where the Santa Clara and Virgin rivers joined, providing a fertile and picturesque set-ting for St. George and its stunning white temple.

The horses couldn't travel fast enough as the valley unfolded, checkered with fields and orchards, dotted with houses and corrals, with all byroads and trails leading to the tem-ple. At last, after four to five weeks, depending, upon their starting place in Arizona, and an arduous journey of 400 to 600 miles, the honeymooners could finally look forward to fulfilling their mission in the temple, where they would be sealed in marriage for time and eternity.

Then, once their endowments were performed and the wedding rites solemnized, there might be time to relax for a few days and visit with relatives in some of the nearby towns. Or the more adventurous could take a loop trip around the area which would bring them east to the eroded grandeur of Bryce Canyon and the old towns of Orderville and Glendale. Then turning south they would once again strike the Honeymoon Trail at Kanab and begin the long journey home to Arizona.

Epilogue

The historic Honeymoon Trail, which dogged the wagon ruts of the old Mormonroad, became a veritable social institution for 50 years, carrying an indeterminable number of happy couples to a rendezvous with their faith in the temple at St. George, Utah.

But linked as it was to the hardships of team and wagon transportation, however, its importance was overshadowed in many cases by the arrival of the transcontinental railroads in the 1880s. Mormon couples planning to be married at the temple in St. George certainly couldn't be blamed for wanting to exchange the strains and discomforts of travel their parents and grandparents had endured for the comparative comfort of luxury trains gliding effortlessly across the country on smooth steel rails.

But such progress oftimes has its drawbacks too. Surely the trip by iron horse could not compare scenically or romantically with the old wilderness wagon trek... which today, almost 100 years later, still remains one of the most colorful features of Mormon history in the Great Southwest.

Editor's note: Once each year history buffs and old trail enthusiasts can treat themselves to watching an exciting part of the Mormon past come to life, when friends of Pipe Spring National Monument present the annual Pipe Spring Wagon Track pageant. The drama is a full-dress reenactment of the hazardous wagon trip 19th century Saints made routinely along the northern end of the Honeymoon Trail, transporting butter and cheese in wooden barrels from Pipe Spring, at one time a Mormon dairy, to the temple at St. George, Utah. The authentic reenactment, complete with covered wagons and teams plus a host of participants in period clothing, happens on the weekend closest to the middle of September, to coincide with the Dixie Rodeo Round-up Parade in St. George.

In all, the trek takes 41/2 days to complete. The caravan itself can be seen at both the start of the trek at Pipe Spring and at the completion in St. George, when the butter and cheese are ceremoniously presented to the president of the temple. It can also be seen and this is said to be the most exciting viewpoint on a well-dressed road within shouting distance of the top or bottom of the Old Rock Canyon Dugway on Hurricane Fault. Here muscle and ingenuity are put to work straining to secure the heavy wagons with ropes so they can be lowered down the almost vertical track, just as it was done in the 1800s.

For specific dates and more information, call or write Mel Heaton, Moccasin, Az. 86022. (602) 643-5584.