Town #28: PANGUITCH est. 1864

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.

Town #18: CEDAR CITY est. 1851

Out of the desert around Lund, we arrived at Cedar City. Cedar City is the largest city in Iron County. It was first established in 1851, when Henry Lunt led a group to the area to start an iron works. The residents worked on the iron works for a short time then turned their hands to agriculture instead. In the twentieth century, Cedar City became the hub of national park tourism.


Here is John talking to a statue of Henry Lunt on Main Street. There are several of these statues along Main Street of Cedar City's founding fathers. What an interesting way to help residents and tourists learn about local history.

I almost always have fun when I come to Cedar City. The Shakespeare Festival that takes place every summer at Southern Utah University is great entertainment. We couldn't go this year to any of the plays, but we did spend an evening watching the Green Show that is held on the lawn every evening for free. Even the kids enjoyed it. Huzzah!

Cedar Breaks National Monument is just up the road from Cedar City. That was a fun place for a quick hike and a picnic even though it turned cold and threatened to rain on us.

Town #8: Moab est. 1878

Moab sits about one southeast of Green River along the Colorado River. It is the county seat of Grand County. The Old Spanish Trail crossed the Colorado River at this point. It was settled briefly in the 1850s, but the settlement was abandoned after some problems with the local Native Americans. Farmers came back in 1878 and started a thriving, if small, farming community. The population of Moab grew and fell along with the uranium boom of the Cold War era, and now it caters heavily to the tourists who come to experience the rocky grandeur around it. Arches and Canyonlands National Parks lie just beyond the borders of the town. The town's name hasn't always been popular with its residents, but I think it is a much better name than Uvadalia.


This mural was painted on the wall of a bike shop in Moab. The mountain bikers are common around Moab, but I don't think I have ever seen a gigantic spider in "them thar' hills". This E trying to look scared for the camera, but I think she looks more like she is trying to help the spider scare the bikers instead.


Here is the family by Delicate Arch in Arches National Park which is why we drove out here in the first place. Reproductions of this arch are all over Utah. If you look closely at the welcome to Moab sign, you can see it there. It isn't a very hard 1 1/2 mile hike to the arch, but you need to do it early in the morning because those rocks get hot really fast. We started at 7 in the morning, and the temperature was just about right. By the time we got back to the parking lot, around 10, it was getting really warm. The people just starting out were already sweating after a few hundred feet. It was worth all the driving to see that arch in person. Very impressive. The arch is also a good place to mingle with an international crowd.

Town #2: Deseret est. 1860

Deseret was our next town. It is a small farming community southwest of Delta, and it was one of the first places settled in the area. The Sevier River runs close by, and in the early days, the people of Deseret ate a lot of fish. Just north of town is an alfalfa cubing plant. Our oldest daughter thought it smelt like grapes when we drove by. Our youngest daughter didn't like the smell. Deseret doesn't have a fancy welcome sign, so we had to take our picture by the small green town sign. Our son elected to stay in the car. B is standing on one leg because she said that the dry grass made her leg itch.

Here is the Great Stone Face. It towers over an old lava flow southwest of Deseret. This is what we drove down south to see. It does indeed look like the face of Joseph Smith just like everyone says. That is pretty cool! Look at it closely, and you can see him smiling. In the 1950s, there was a local 65-voice male chorus named after it called "The Desert Sentinels".

Something else we saw while near Deseret was the old Fort Deseret. It sits just south of Deseret. It is an adobe fort built by the settlers during the Black Hawk War in 1865. They were afraid that the natives were getting restless. They built it in 18 days. The work force was spilt into 2 groups each with one half of the wall to build. There was a deal struck that which ever team could build their section of wall the fastest would be treated to dinner and entertainment by the losers. One group won by half a day, but when part of their wall collapsed it was call a draw. They had a big opening celebration on July 24, 1865. Not even hostile neighbors can stop a party.

This is the monument erected in the 1930s about the fort. I like it because of the variety of rock in it including a piece of petrified wood. Each rock was donated by a descendant of one of the builders of the fort.