USA > Utah > Salt Lake County > Salt Lake > Utah gazatteer and directory of Logan, Ogden, Provo and Salt Lake cities, for 1884 > Part 23
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"The city has pleasant hotel accommodations and a good market, insur- ing comfort at reasonable prices; it has the electric light, gas, excellent water, supplied from City Creek by means of piping laid under the streets, with frequent hydrants and head sufficient to force it over the tops of the highest buildings; it has churches of the principal Christian denominations and fair schools; twelve miles of street car lines, and two fine theatres. It is peaceful and orderly; taxes are very moderate; and from it the most popu- lar places of resort-the Warm Springs, Great Salt Lake. the Cottonwoods, Bingham and American Fork Canyons and Parley's Park-are easily access- ible: that is, one can visit most of these places and return the same day if he chooses. One goes to Alta, in Little Cottonwood, by rail, in twenty-five miles; thence horseback into Big Cottonwood, Parley's Park, or American Fork. The first two are reached by wagon in a few hours' ride, if preferred; the last by rail to the village of American Fork, and then by horses or car- riages. Bingham Canyon is the same distance from the city by rail as Alta.
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"One of the most interesting points in the vicinity is Fort Douglas, a well-built, full-regiment post, located on a plateau about three miles east of and 500 feet above the city. The post and grounds are laid out with taste, a small stream of mountain water making the culture of trees, shrubbery, grass, and flowers possible. The elevation gives almost a bird's-eye view of the city and valley. In the distance lies the Dead Sea of America, a blue band drawn along the base of island mountains, the vistas between which are closed by more distant ranges. In the north the Promontory divides the waters, extending far out in the lake. Across Jordan Valley the Oquirrh rises, white with snow.part of the year, and often veiled by clouds. On the south, low hills, appearing to be thrown out in echelon, complete the enclosure of Jordan Valley, which lies an unrolled map at one's feet. An even finer view, and one much sought, is afforded from Ensign Peak, north of the city-one might say at the head of Main Street. Its ascent may be made on horseback. Among the attractive objects in the city are the Tab- . ernacle, a unique structure, with its immense org in and seating capacity of
. over 8,000; the rising white walls of the Temple, 100x200 feet on the ground; the Salt Lake Museum, and the Mining Institute in Commercial Block, valu- able collections of Utah's minerals and of curiosities from many lands; and the Warm Springs, with conveniences for all sorts of bathing. There are some good public buildings and many fine private residences and beautiful grounds. A drive round the city and to Fort Douglas is interesting and enjoyable. It might well extend to Emigration Canyon, near the Fort, or to Parley's Canyon, further south. The country on the Cottonwoods, adjoining the city southward, is highly improved for several miles out. The system of city streets, making blocks of ten acres, is extended over this rural suburb, where they become country lanes, and afford delightful drives through cultivated fields, orchards, and improvised groves of trees. Occa- sionally there is a small sheet of artificial or natural water, which has been improved and beautified with especial reference to the wants of pleasure seekers. Street cars run to Liberty Park, a locust grove of 110 acres, belonging to the city."
MOUNTAINS AND CANYONS.
It is a serious question whether all the cities in the Territory combined. with all the attractions that ingenious artificers and the industry of a people have contributed, manifold and remarkable though they be, can equal the effect on the mind open'to sensation, the presence of novelty, beauty and grandeur, that the mountains of the Wasatch and its canyons produce. This range presents a momentarily varying picture, never the same for two moments, and on which the eye, educated to the perception of artistic beau- ties, can forever rest unwearied; while the heart, sensible to the nobility and grandeur of the Creator's works, drinks deep of sentiments beyond the capacity of words clearly to express. These mountains rise from varying elevations to a height of 8,000 feet above the valley, with no accompaniment of foot hills to conceal or dwarf their proportions. "Much of the year it is white with snow. In the autum it wears all the colors of the rainbow in succession as its shrubbery is touched more and more severely by the frosts. In the spring only do its lower slopes present a green appearance. On north- ern exposures it is dark with pines. Its general summer hue is gray, although its light and shade and color are as variable as the wind that plays about its craggy summits, invades their recesses, and in its persistent efforts to crumble them, has chisled out gorges in the solid rock thousands of feet deep, giving infinite variety of form and outline. These are but surface aspects, however. The interest in them is ever renewed, because they per- petually change with the seasons or with the point of view. The range gets a deeper hold of one from its suggestions of primary forces and principles,
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such as had to do with the forming of the globe itself, and are now busying themselves with its destiny. It seems to materialize the idea of endurance, to be the emblem of strength, from everlasting to everlasting the same. Yet it has been gas in the fervent heat of the sun. It has been an ocean of liquid fire. It has been held in solution by primeval scas. They laid its foundation rela- tively six miles deeper than they now stand. The crust of the earth was broken through when it was upraised and this enormous fault made. The impalpable ether which bathes its lofty heights has reduced them by many miles and will, in few years, spread its entire mass upon the floor of the ocean where it has rested before. We must look to the sun for immutability, and may not find it even there. 'But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a sea- son; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning.' The basic rocks of the Wasatch are quartzose, mica and hornblendic schists. Next above these is a heavy bed of stratified quartzites. Next above, a bed of gray limestone, probably of Silurian age, and a group of shales, clays and quartzites intervenes between this and another limestone formation which belongs to the Carboniferous age. The range extends throughout Utah and far into Montana, but it is seen to greatest advantage from Salt Lake City and from the valley for 200 miles north and south. Its canyons are the result of erosion, and are due to the quantity of snow precipitated upon its higher regions. Many of its summits exceed 12,000 feet in altitude. The Twin Peaks, overshadowing Jordan Valley, rise 12,000 feet above the sea. Some reaching an elevation of 13, 500. Everywhere it is an imposing and picturesque object, but overlooking the Salt Lake Basin from Mount Nebo to Bear River Gates, it is a Titanic mon- ument of nature's rearing upon which, with incomparable touch, a new picture is painted by the same great artist every day."*
An attempt to picture the evanescent beauty of the mountains in autumn, the grandeur of the evening sky, with its manifold cloud-towers of gorgeous hues, the effects of light and shade, the reflections of the sinking sun cast from the tinted trees and shrubs on mountain and hill, serve only to show how limited are human powers and how painful is the poverty of language to express that which the eye beholds on all sides, and which dis- plays, in marvelous wonder and magnificence, the works of the Great Father.
The Wasatch Mountains, like other great chains, are in many places a series of parallel ranges enclosing the head of lateral streams, which form canyons only occasionally in breaking through into the Great Basin or the Col- orado River or Snake River Basins. The divide between the waters flowing into the Colorado and the Great Basin is crossed by the Union Pacific Rail- road at Reed's Summit, 7,463 feet above the sea. Descending a few miles it crosses Bear River at an altitude of 6,969 feet, here flowing generally north- ward, follows it down ten miles, leaving it 6,656 feet above the sea, thence surmounting Echo Pass, 6,785 in height, it begins the direct descent into the Great Basin, through Echo and Weber Canyons, crossing Weber River at an elevation of 5,240 feet, and striking the level of Salt Lake at Ogden, 4, 290 feet. Echo Canyon is no canyon in the true sense. A wall of sand- stone rises perpendicularly on the north 300 or 400 feet; on the south there is no wall and little rock, but a succession of grassy ridges sloping smoothly toward the stream. It strikes Weber River, another northward-flowing stream, about midway of its course, and the railroad follows it down through a valley for five or six miles below Echo City to the "Thousand Mile Tree," where the mountains draw together and the first canyon commences. The valley suddenly narrows to a gorge, the rended rocks tower to the sky and almost overhang the train. Through tunnels and over bridges this is cleared in half a dozen miles, the mountains recede again and soften down into mere hills in comparison. An oval valley like the one above is passed, the .Resources of Utah.
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mountains again close in on the river, and the train enters Devil's Gate Canyon, where the naked rocks rise half a mile in the air. Ages ago they presented a fixed rock dam which it seems the river could never have con- quered, but it has, and through the passage made by its persistence, the road soon emerges from Devil's Gate into the summer airs of the valley. The scenery has been described and illustrated until the traveling public is familiar with it. But one gets only a slight idea of its beauty and grandeur from a ride through it on the rails. He must stop off and, on foot or horse- back, explore the side streams and reach various elevations half a mile above the river before he can be said to have seen it all .*
Logan Canyon has long been noted as remarkable for its beautiful scen- ery, and the whole county excellent as a country for the sportsman. No better trout stream is to be found in the Territory: and there is excellent fishing from the mouth to a point up the canyon eighteen to twenty-five miles distant. An excellent road is maintained and a ride up this sublime gorge over the divide and down into the valley of the Bear Lake is a trip full of great pleasure. Various kinds of winged game abound, while deer and bear are frequently met with, and the latter at times when an acquaint- anceship is anything but desirable. Not only is the canyon scenery sublime and awe-inspiring, but in following the course of some of the tributaries of the Logan River, the most delightful bits of country, long groves of thick pines and charming recesses, are met with. No canyon in the Territory is more generally visited by parties desiring to leave toil and heat behind them for ten days to two weeks than Logan, and it is never possible to return without having seen new places and been awakened to beauties the most familiar had not previously observed.
Ogden Canyon is shorter than any of the others of note. There is a good carriage road through the canyon, which is ten or twelve miles long, and the passage presents the same variety of immense, close, towering rocky walls, broken apart by the full roaring stream, common to all the Wasatch canyons. Power of resistance on the one hand and of attack on the other are well symbolized. There are minerals and mineral springs along the way. Through the outlying range one enters Ogden Valley, an enclosed park, with its settlements and farms, beyond which the drive extends into both Bear Lake and Cache Valleys. All the streams in that part of the Territory afford good sport for the angler, and the valleys and hills are grass grown and alive with grouse and snipe, sage hens and prairie chickens.
"From Salt Lake City, Parley's Park, Big Cottonwood Lake and American Fork Canyons are the favorite resorts. The Park is about twenty- five miles from Salt Lake City, just over the crest of the Wasatch on the sources of the Weber and nearly as high as the mountains themselves. The road ascends through Parley's Canyon and is a fine drive. There is a hotel in the Park, but visitors usually prefer taking along with their teams their own camping outfit. The elevation insures refreshing coolness, especially of the nights. The Park is quite extensive in area, affords good drives, fishing and hunting, stretches for horseback riding, and, among other objects of interest, Park City and the Ontario mill and mine. One can get a fair idea of the ways and means of mining by a visit to this town, mine and mining district. Excursions may be made eastward to the sources of the Weber and Provo Rivers, the whole region being full of interest. It is an old formation, apparently, giving evidence of the mighty action of water or ice, or both, geological ages ago.
"There are a series of small lakes at the head of Big Cottonwood, at the most picturesque of which, named Mary's, a hotel has been built for the accommodation of summer visitors. For many years it has * Resources of Utah.
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been a famous mountain resort, and the number of persons seeking its cool, fresh air, and the enjoyment to be derived from a study of nature in its grandest aspects, is yearly increasing. Excursions must be afoot or horse- back. They may include visits to Park City, to Heber City, Midway or Kamas; to the Big and Little Cottonwood mines, to other rock-bound tarns, and to sightly peaks. From any of these one can look out over Jordan Valley, the lower section of the Oquirrh, Rush Valley, and in clear weather, upon the far summits of the Deep Creek Mountains, glittering like silver points in the distance. Perhaps the finest view is from Bald Peak, among the highest of the range. Standing on its top, twenty thousand square miles of mountains, gorge, lake and valley may be swept by the eye. Eighty m.les south, Mount Nebo bounds the view. Beneath lies Utah Lake, a clear mirror bordered by grassy slopes, and Salt Lake City embowered in foliage, with Salt Lake roning its white caps and glittering in the sunshine beyond, its islands and all the valley ranges dwarfed to hills. Northward, the higher points of the Wasatch catch the eye until they are lost in the dis- tance. Eastward, the sources of the Weber and Provo Rivers fill the fore- ground, while successive mountain ranges bound the view in that direction. Words can give but a faint idea of the magnificence of the outlook from Bald Peak, or Kesler's Peak, or Mount Clayton, the corner of three counties, and trom whose bare sides start Snake Creek, the Cottonwoods and Ameri- can Fork, or any other of the higher summits in the vicinity of Mary's Lake.
"South of the Cottonwoods, American Fork Canyon opens into the Utah Lake Basin. It has been called the Yosemite of Utah, and undoubtedly its succession of wild gorges and timbered vales make it the most picturesque and interesting of any of the canyons of the Wasatch. Formerly a narrow- gauge railroad, intersecting the Utah Southern at the city of American Fork, thirty-two miles south of Salt Lake City, enabled the visitor to see a part of it with little trouble. This canyon is noted not only for the tower- ing altitude of its enclosing walls, but for the picturesqueness of the infinite shapes, resembling artificial objects, towers, pinnacles, and minarets chiefly, into which the elements have worn them. At first the formation is granite and the cliffs rise to a lofty height almost vertically. Then come quartzite or rocks of looser texture, conglomerates and sandstones; the canyon opens to the sky and you enter a long gallery, the sides of which recede at an angle of 45° to a dizzy height, profusely set with these elemental sculptures in endless variety of size and pattern, often stained with rich colors. 'Towers, battlements, shattered castles, and the images of mighty sentinels,' says one, 'exhibit their outlines against the sky. Rocks twisted, gnarled, and distorted; here a mass like the skeleton of some colossal tree which lightning had wrenched and burnt to fixed cinder; there another, vast and overhanging, apparently crumbling and threatening to fall and ruin.' At Deer Creek the canyon proper ceases, the road having climbed out of it, 2, 500 feet in eight miles. This is the main resort of pleasure parties. Since the railroad was taken up, its bed has become a wagon road, which continues to Forest City, eight miles above. The surroundings are still mountainous, but there are breaks where the brooks come in, grassy hills, aspens and pines. Forest City has been a great charcoaling station for many years.
"To the sublimity of the canyon scenery in summer an indescribable beauty is added in the autumn, when the deciduous trees and shrubbery on a thousand slopes, touched by the frost, present the colors of a rich painting and meet the eye wherever it rests. To get the full benefit of this, one must go up and up till there is nothing higher to climb. In winter another and very different phase succeeds. The snows, descending for days and days in blinding clouds, bury the forests and fill the canyons. Accumulating to a great depth on high and steep acclivities, it starts without warning and
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buries in ruin whatever may be in its track. Hardly a year passes that miners and teamsters, wagons and cabins are not swept away and buried out of sight for months. The avalanche of the Wasatch is as formidable as that of the Alps. Probably forty feet of snow falls on the main range every winter."
The Provo Canyon is another of the same series. Down it flows the Timpanogos or Provo River, a magnificent stream not inferior to any for the beauty of scenery through which it passes, nor as a trout stream. It breaks through the mountains into the valley about three miles north of Provo City, from which point there is an excellent road all the way up the canyon to a succession of settled Alpine Valleys to Kamas Prairie, which Captain Stansbury describes as "a most lovely, fertile, level prairie, ten or twelve miles long and six or seven miles wide," where the affluents of the Provo and Weber interlock. The drive may proceed down the Weber to Ogden if one desired, with the same alternation of land-locked valleys and mountain gorges. Many fine and lovely scenes will have been passed and rare water effects observed by the interested. A few miles up the canyon is a small tributary which falls over a cliff and breaks in a white spray, hover- ing over which is ever to be seen a miniature rainbow. It is very appropri- ately termed "Bridal Veil."
Utah Lake Basin may be said to end in the vicinity of Nephi, under Mount Nebo, where Onapah (Salt Creek) Canyon opens the way for another side railroad into Sanpete Valley, with its eighteen settlements . and 15,000 to 16,000 inhabitants. From the head of Sanpete one may find his way northward into Spanish Fork, or eastward over a mountain into Thistle or Castle Valleys. Southward the valley opens on the Sevier River, a world in itself, with passes of the most majestic grandeur through ranges on either hand into adjoining valleys. A journey up the Sevier in fine weather is very interesting, and so is the region about its heads, where the waters divide and flow apart. The town of Kanara makes the crest of the rim, the waters flowing from the village north and south. The character of the Colorado River scenery is well known. A high sandstone plateau, cut by the river and side streams a mile in depth, too dry for animal or veg- etable life, worthless for the most part unless for minerals. The river is hardly navigable above Fort Yuma. The scenery is described as more ter- rible than beautiful, and traveling through the country is difficult, and not at times without danger. For those in search of scenery wild and weird beyond description no place will afford greater satisfaction than the basin of the Colorado River. The river runs through pleasant valleys made by the erosion of the river itself, over which hang solid sandstone cliffs, rising thousands of feet into the air, almost perpendicular, without a blade of grass or the vestige of a shrub to relieve the monotony of color. From some of these heights the stream glides through its green and verdure-covered banks in endless windings, and seems as a silver thread, so far is it below. The existence of the historical cliff builders, evidenced by remains yet to be seen in the cliffs overhanging the Colorado River Valley, make another interesting feature and are full of matter fraught with thought to the antiquarian and to those interested in the history of the aboriginees who inhabited this section centuries ago. The great distance from any centre, and the difficulty and sometimes danger of visiting the scene, preserves it in that original condition which is found only in places of note and especial interest removed from the sphere of the idle traveler whose only desire is to say he has seen.
MINERAL SPRINGS.
The mineral springs of Utah alone are sufficient to give her world-wide celebrity, were they advertised properly and made the most of. A painful indifference in this regard has made their reputation of slow growth, and to
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the present date no efforts have been taken to show that their health-giving properties are excelled by none. Not only are the waters from these springs recommended as excellent for drinking, but they are no less desirable because of their exhilarating effect upon bathers. There is no legitimate reason why, if proper steps were taken, the mineral springs should not yearly attract thousands in search of rest and health, while an industry could be built up by shipping to all parts of the world, bottled mineral water. Analyses show it to contain elements, the general effect of which is health- producing upon all, while in specific cases the effect is unsurpassed. As it is, they are visited more as a matter of curiosity than as a natural condition calculated to benefit mankind. The indifference of persons interested is something shameful. The same is true of the Great Salt Lake, of world- wide reputation, both as to pleasureable and to healthful effects resulting from bathing in its dense waters, and yet inadequate and few accommoda- tions are offered those who might reside months every year on its shore, were surroundings made pleasant and comfortable. The mineral springs are various: Salt, sulphur, soda and iron. There are, also, calcareous springs in different parts of the Territory, notably in Wasatch County. in the vicinity of Heber City, where the deposits have created a number of vessel-shaped calcareous formations, known as the "Pots." Of the varieties of springs in the Territory, the most noted and the best known are the Warm Springs, within the corporate limits of Salt Lake City. The waters are limpid and smell very strongly of sulphureted hydrogen, and are charged with gas, as combined with the mineral basis and as absorbed by the waters themselves. Dr. Gale is authority for the assertion that it is a Harrowgate water, abound- ing in sulphur. Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, gives the appended analysis:
"Three fluid ounces of the water, on evaporation to entire dryness in a platina capsule, gave 8.25 grains of solid, dry, saline matter, as follows:
Carbonate of lime and magnesia,
0.240
Peroxide of iron, .
0.040
Lime, ,
0.545
Chlorine,
Soda, 3.454
2.877
Magnesia,
0.370
Sulphuric acid,
0.703
"It is slightly charged with hydro-sulphuric acid gas, and with carbonic acid gas, and is a pleasant, saline mineral water, having the valuable proper- ties belonging to saline sulphur springs."
It issues from the mountain side in large volume; temperature, 95° to 104°. The water is conveyed in pipes into two or three bathing houses, containing plunge, shower and tub baths and dressing and waiting rooms. The property is owned by the city, is connected with the leading hotels by the street cars, and is visited very generally, the waters being very effica- cious in the cure of many diseases, notably paralytic, rheumatic and scrofu- lous.
A mile and a half beyond the Warm Springs are the Hot Springs, which boil up from under a huge rock, forming a clear and transparent pool of a bluish shade. The water runs off into a lake, formed mainly by these waters, which is about two miles square. The temperature is about 1. 28, and the waters smell strongly of sulphur as they emerge from their cavern- ous source. They are not utilized for any purpose, though their healing properties are admitted by citizens, and the waters are often used in cases where experience has shown them to be efficacious.
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