In southwestern Utah are geological peaks, arches and canyons with such names as Kolob, Mount Moroni, Tabernacle Dome, West Temple and East Temple. Those familiar with LDS history and doctrine find the appellations fitting for the scenic wonders in a national park called Zion.
Some 2 million visitors a year come to Zion National Park, designated as a national park in 1919 and consisting today of 229 square miles of sandstone vistas and desert flora and fauna. The region was discovered in 1858 by Nephi Johnson, who was sent by Brigham Young to explore the Virgin River upstream from settlements begun by Latter-day Saints called to colonize Utah's "Dixie."In 1944, Zion National Park's first naturalist and a historian, Angus M. Woodbury, wrote an article for the Utah State Historical Society's quarterly periodical (Vol. 12) in which he speculated that Johnson was the first white man to venture into the canyons of the present-day park. (Woodbury noted that a party of Spaniards - led by Catholic priests Dominguez and Escalante - passed through the region in 1776, but they skirted by 20 miles the area that is now Zion National Park. Other explorers also came close, including Jedediah Strong Smith, a trapper and trader who was in the region in 1826, and Capt. John C. Fremont of the U.S. Army who was in the vicinity in 1844.)
Woodbury described Johnson as "a young missionary among the Virgin River Indians" who had been an interpreter for many settlers and travelers along the Mormon Trail.
Apparently Johnson didn't leave a written account of his explorations, nor were his findings reported widely.
Later President Young issued calls for 250 men to colonize this part of southwestern Utah. The first town established was Virgin, named after the river that upstream cuts through the two main canyons of the present-day park. Also established along the Virgin River were the towns of Grafton and Adventure, both of which were flooded by the river, forcing their settlers to relocate. When Adventure's residents relocated, they named their new settlement Rockville. Other towns established were Shunesburg, located a few miles up the East Fork of the Virgin River in Parunuweap Canyon, one of the two main canyons in what is now the national park; and Springdale, today's "gateway" to the park.
The principal canyon in the park, which eventually was named Zion, remained unexplored by the early settlers until one of them, Joseph Black, ventured into the canyon in the late fall of 1862. When he returned, he tried to describe to fellow settlers what he had seen. As later discovered, he found awe-inspiring formations of sandstone, some reaching as towers toward heaven or temples of stone with colors of purple, red, white and gray.
When the Mormon settlers arrived, Zion Canyon, formed by the North Fork of the Virgin River, was known as Mukuntuweap (pronounced Mu-koon-tu-weap). According to a 1981 brochure published by the U.S. Parks Service, the name undoubtedly was of American Indian origin, although its meaning and source remain unknown. The earliest known people to live in the area were the Anasazi or "Ancient Ones," who were here from about 500 A.D. until about 1200 A.D. when they mysteriously vanished from the region. Later groups lived in the area, including Paiutes, Navajos, Utes and others.
Woodbury explained that it seems to have been Isaac Behunin, an early settler, who gave the canyon the name "Zion."
Woodbury wrote: "Isaac Behunin had been with the Mormons ever since they left New York. He had helped build the Temple at Kirtland, Ohio. . . . He had been through all the drivings of the Saints' in Missouri and Illinois and nourished the typically bitter resentment towards theenemies' who had been responsible for such `atrocities.' Here in Zion he felt that at last he had reached a place of safety where he could rest assured of no more harryings and persecutions. No wonder he proposed the name Zion, which implies a resting place. He went even further, maintaining that should the Saints again be harassed by their enemies, this would become their place of refuge."
Woodbury recounted that when Brigham Young visited in 1870 and was told the place was called Zion, he questioned the propriety of the name. He said "it is not Zion." Woodbury noted that some of President Young's more literal-minded followers thereafter called the place "Not Zion."
Most Mormons who settled in the canyon had left by 1874, but residents of Springdale and Rockville continued to farm in the canyon until the early 1920s. J.L. Crawford, 78, now a member of the St. George 17th Ward, St. George Utah West Stake, was born in a house located about 200 yards from the site of the park's present-day visitors center near the mouth of the canyon. His grandfather, William R. Crawford, came West in the 1860s and settled here.
"When Brigham Young called for people to settle Dixie, my grandfather volunteered, feeling that those who responded to the call would be blessed," Brother Crawford recounted. "He and my great-grandmother were among the first three families to settle in Rockville. When my father [William Louis Crawford] was about 5, my grandfather bought a piece of land about where the visitors center is located in Zion National Park and homesteaded the balance of that area. I was born in the house he built there. We had quite a little village called Oak Creek that existed until all the Crawfords sold their land to the government in 1931. I grew up in the best playground in the world."
According to a brochure published by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Zion Canyon and its environs were proclaimed a national monument in 1909; it was then called Mukuntuweap National Monument. The park was enlarged in 1918 and its name changed to Zion National Monument; by an act of Congress it became Zion National Park in 1919. A second Zion National Monument adjoining the park was established by presidential proclamation in 1937 and was added to the park in 1956.
Brother Crawford said he was 10 when the first graded road came to Zion Canyon in 1924, and 20 before the road had anything better than a gravel surface. He and his brother were among the first to sell scenic postcards in the canyon. "My father was a farmer and an occasional photographer," Brother Crawford related. "Whenever a car stopped in front of our house, we'd run out to sell my father's postcard pictures. We also sold cantaloupes that we raised."
He was 11 when Angus Woodbury became Zion National Park's first naturalist. A descendent of Mormon pioneers and a member of the faculty at Dixie Junior College in St. George, Woodbury was park naturalist from 1925 to 1933.
Young J.L. Crawford and his brother, Lloyd, followed the naturalist around as he collected reptiles, insects and plants for exhibits and scientific collections.
"I'm sure I took the whole place for granted," Brother Crawford reflected. "How was I to know that the rest of the world didn't look like this, wasn't this beautiful? I began to realize we had something really different here when tourists started coming."
Brother Crawford said many people came to Zion park as skeptics. "A lot of folks couldn't believe this place really existed," he related. "They heard descriptions of the scenery, but they couldn't believe what they heard; they couldn't even believe photographs.
"Some pictures [of what is the park] were exhibited at the World's Fair in St. Louis [Mo.T in 1904. Some fair visitors claimed that such a place couldn't possibly exist. A missionary who grew up in Rockville [David Hirschi] was on his way home from Europe and stopped at the fair. He became upset when he overheard some people saying that the pictures were phony. He pointed to his buckskin shoelaces and then to a hill in one of the pictures and said, `This is where I killed the deer from which these laces were made.' A crowd gathered to listen to the young man describe the hills, canyons and mountains of his home."
In his youth, Brother Crawford worked in the park, sometimes washing dishes at the lodge that housed visitors. He liked the job because if he finished quickly, he was able to sit in on the evening programs presented for guests by Woodbury and other park staff members. Most often, the program consisted of talks and the showing of lantern slides - positive prints on glass that were hand-colored.
He remembers programs presented by Church groups. In the early 1930s, members of LDS stakes in the area met in the park for songfests, Easter programs and other special events, using the majestic landscape for a backdrop. And for years some local members presented "campfire talks" that included anecdotes of the park's Mormon history.
After World War II, Brother Crawford worked for two summers as a seasonal naturalist at Zion National Park and Cedar Breaks National Monument, east of Cedar City, Utah. When he completed his university studies (which took him 14 years), he was appointed as a park ranger, a position he held until 1953 when he resigned and went into the motel business and worked as a county welfare director. He returned to the park as assistant chief park naturalist from 1973 until his retirement in 1980.
He and his wife, Fern, still spend a lot of time at the park, serving as volunteers. He has written books, brochures and poems about Zion National Park, and has taken thousands of photographs in all seasons.
He said he remains drawn to the hills that nurtured him. "I don't think anyone ever really leaves Zion," he reflected. "It sort of captures a part of you and holds on forever."
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