Panguitch is the largest town in Garfield County. It doesn't take much to get that distinction. Panguitch is a Piute word for 'big fish'. No one has ever explained to me why they named the town Big Fish. Are there huge fish in the local river? Maybe the settlers just liked the way that Panguitch rolled off the tongue. The town's big festival is the Quilt Walk Festival, which celebrates when 7 men crossed the snow covered mountains using quilts to get supplies to the starving settlers the first winter. I'll have to remember that the next time I am trapped by snow with only a couple of quilts to my name.
Panguitch caters to the tourists who come to see Bryce Canyon National Park which is not too far away in the mountains east of town. This is Byrce as the sun is rising. It is quite spectacular.
I couldn't find very much information on this little farming town of Fremont. It was named for explorer, John C. Fremont who explored this region in the 1850s. His name was found carved into a tree near the current town site. I wonder if it is still there.
This is what we saw for the majority of the time as we drove through Fremont. It made my nose twitch.
Panguitch is the largest town in Garfield County. It doesn't take much to get that distinction. Panguitch is a Piute word for 'big fish'. No one has ever explained to me why they named the town Big Fish. Are there huge fish in the local river? Maybe the settlers just liked the way that Panguitch rolled off the tongue. The town's big festival is the Quilt Walk Festival, which celebrates when 7 men crossed the snow covered mountains using quilts to get supplies to the starving settlers the first winter. I'll have to remember that the next time I am trapped by snow with only a couple of quilts to my name.
Panguitch caters to the tourists who come to see Bryce Canyon National Park which is not too far away in the mountains east of town. This is Byrce as the sun is rising. It is quite spectacular.
Driving north along highway 89, we next came to the little town of Hatch. It was named after Meltiar Hatch who settled here with his two wives. Because of flooding problems with the Sevier River, in 1901 to 1904, the town site was moved one and a half miles and combined with other small communities. I like that in this picture you can start to see the red rocks of Red Canyon behind me. We were coming on Bryce Canyon country.
