Just 22 weeks left!
A time line of the original road.
April 13, 1879, Silas Smith and an exploratory party left Paragonah (near Cedar City, Utah) to blaze a trail to the four-corners area of the San Juan River. The Smith party crossed the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry. After reaching Montezuma Creek, men built two cabins and worked on irrigation ditches for the Harrison H. Harriman and James L. Davis families. The two families planned to stay on Montezuma Creek. Five other families were located not far away on McElmo Creek—four of the families were non-Mormon. The Smith party left Montezuma Creek and headed north towards Moab. They found the old Spanish Trail at the edge of the La Salle Mountains, and followed it back to Paragonah. The Smith Expedition had taken five months. It was decided to search for a more direct route. Charles Hall of Escalante was sent to find a wagon route to the Colorado River. Fifty-five miles southeast of Escalante, Hall found a narrow cleft in the canyon rim. Andrew Schow and Rueban Collett were sent to explorer a possible trail on the other side of the Colorado River. A few miles above the Hole-in-the-Rock opening, the two men lowered a wagon box off the cliff. Using the wagon box to cross the river, the men climbed up high enough to see the San Juan and Colorado River junction. Satisfied, the two men returned to Escalante and reported it could be done. The canyon rim route was chosen because it was shorter than the northern alternative and safer than the southern route through Navajo Indian lands. The distance from Escalante to the San Juan was estimated at two hundred and fifty miles and would require about six weeks.
On October 22, 1879, men, women, and children started for Escalante.
By the twentieth of November, two hundred people with eighty-three wagons and well over a thousand head of horses and cattle were at Forty-mile Spring. Jens Nielson sent four men to explorer from the Colorado River to the San Juan River. Gone a week, only one of them, George C. Hobbs, thought it was possible to continue with wagons. The other three men believed wagons could not reach the San Juan area.
A meeting was held on the fourth of December, and after a long deliberation, the vote to continue was nearly unanimous. By the tenth of December, the Forty-mile camp had moved to Fifty-mile Spring.
On the seventeenth of December, a scouting party was sent to Montezuma with two horses and two pack mules. The men marked the trail with rock cairns.
The exploratory party returned on the ninth of January to report a road would be difficult, but possible. While workers were carving out the Hole-in-the-Rock road, Charles Hall was working on the ferry. Lumber for the ferry was cut in Escalante and hauled to the Rim—by this time, the opening was wide enough to carry and lower the timber to the river. Charles Hall’s workers built a ferry wide enough to carry two wagons at a time. The ferry was moved over the slow water with a pair of oars.
The wagon teams had to be forced into the slot—the best team was a pair blinded by pinkeye. With the back wheels locked, and up to twenty men and boys hanging onto long ropes, the first wagon started down on the twenty-sixth of January. Twenty-six wagons were taken down the first day. On the steepest slopes, horses fell and were dragged, or pushed, but none were seriously injured.
By the thirtieth of January, all of the wagons had reached a level area with cottonwood trees and a good stream. This was the first opportunity for the women to wash clothes. The wagons remained in the Cottonwood Canyon camp for ten days while the road was built out of the canyon—it was still five miles to the top of Grey Mesa.
By the tenth of February, the Cottonwood Hill road was ready. It took seven teams to pull wagons up the steep grade.
Off of Comb Ridge and across Butler Wash the settlers reached the Bluff area on April 6, 1880. Though several miles short of Montezuma Creek, the weary travelers could go no farther.
The Charles Hall family built a cabin and remained at the Hole-in-the-Rock ferry crossing. When an easier route was found from Escalante down Harris Wash to the Colorado River, Charles Hall moved the ferry upriver to present day Hall’s Crossing on Lake Powell. Hall’s Crossing is across the lake from Bullfrog Basin.
http://www.thefurtrapper.com/Hole_Rock.htm
Hall began operating the ferry in 1881. In 1884, the ferry was lost when it either broke its moorings or was cut loose by cattlemen to prevent its use by rustlers. It was not replaced and the Hall family left the area.
http://www.nationalparktravel.com/lakepowell_history.htm
