Toquerville is a small town between Cedar City and Zion National Park. It is named after a Piute chief named Toquer. Chief Toquer was friendly to the Mormon pioneers, and some of them wanted to settle near his tribe. It was for a short time the county seat of Kane County until the county borders were changed, and it became a part of Washington County.
Just before you reach the west entrance of Zion National Park, you drive through the little town of Springdale. It has pretty much given up everything but tourism to survive. The town is full of hotels, restaurants and anything else that caters to the millions of tourists who travel to Zion every year. It isn't like it was in 1920 when Anne Widtsoe described it this way:"I went for a ride down to Springdale, just at the mouth of the canyon. A quiet secluded spot where the inhabitants are years behind the times. Quaint store and little church with a bell, little gardens, they live and die and know no other life - many never having seen a railroad, etc. That is the life."
This little town does enjoy some the most gorgeous surroundings in the state. It just takes your breathe away.
As the road follows the Virgin River east from the town of Virgin, you come to the town of Rockville. It was named after it's rocky soil. See here I am holding one of those rocks. It was easy to find. Rockville was almost called Adventure. I don't know why. Rockville managed to survive the problems with the Virgin River in its early settlement and is now, in my opinion, the cutest town on the way to Zion National Park.
Across an old steel bridge over the Virgin River from Rockville and a little further west is the ghost town of Grafton. Grafton was a settlement that did not survive the raging river. The settlers here kept having their farms and homes washed down river to Virgin until they just gave up. This is a picture of the adobe school/church in Grafton. Ten years ago it was in a lot worse shape, but since then, a preservation group has been slowly restoring the church and several homes in the town. They have even installed cameras to keep down the vandalism. They have done a great job. Grafton has been used as a background for several movies including Robert Redford's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. For more information on the restoration project go to www.graftonheritage.org. Grafton also has a great pioneer cemetery.
East of La Verkin is the little town of Virgin. It is named after the nearby Virgin River, but it was almost called Pocketville. We didn't know if this was an official town sign, but it was much more interesting than the little green sign on the outskirts. It was the first of several towns situated right nest to the Virgin River on the way to Zion National Park. All the towns along the river depended on the river in their early development, but the river, like an angry child, would occasionally throw a fit and have flash floods that would destroy half the farms. I think that the people of Virgin should have skipped the farms and just provided sacrificial victims for volcanoes, dragons and big hairy apes. Someone always needs a virgin.
One gets the feeling that La Verkin residents like their bridge. Their welcome sign is located just a few hundred feet and on the other side of the Hurricane sign. The sign is shaped just like the steel bridge that spans across the Virgin River just before entering the town. I took a picture of the bridge just to prove it. (See below.)
La Verkin is nestled between Hurricane to the south and Toquerville to the north. It's history is similar to Hurricane in that it wasn't settled until the settlers figured out how to bring water up from the Virgin River. There seems to be some question an how the town got it's name. If you are visiting Zion National Park from the west you have to go thru La Verkin, and that was our goal on this trip.
Isn't it a little strange to have a town named after a tropical storm out here in the desert? The story goes that, in the 1860s, Erastus Snow was leading a team of surveyors in the area when he had the top of his buggy blown off in a gust wind. His comment, "Well, that was a Hurricane. We'll name this Hurricane Hill.", stuck to the place. For some reason the residents of Hurricane like to pronounce the town name "Her-ah-Kun". That always throws me off. The town wasn't established until 1906 because that is when it was finally figured out how to bring water up from the Virgin River to the plateau that Hurricane sits on. Like so many other towns around Utah, water was a major issue. Once it had water, though, Hurricane's farms were able to produce quite the crops, I guess, because it earned the nickname "The Fruit Basket of Southern Utah".
