The spirit of place: 'If we only had a few men to hold the wagon back'
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President John Taylor called about 250 people in 1879 to leave their established homes in the Cedar City area to colonize the San Juan Mission in southeastern Utah. Their six-month ordeal of traversing through much uncharted territory has been described by descendants as a feat of "unparalleled difficulty." They blasted rock and carved a passageway through a sheer 1,300-foot crevice now known as Hole in the Rock. Such faith may be obscured by the remoteness of the area. Descendants are honoring their ancestors by re-creating the original fort with cabins.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve delivered the following account during a 2007 eastern and southern Utah stake conference.
With blasting powder and tools, working most of December and January of 1879-80, they (pioneers) cut a precipitous, primitive road into the face of the canyon precipice.
With this roadbed ...the task was now to get the first 40 wagons down the "Hole."
Twenty men and boys would hold long ropes at the back of each wagon. The wheels were then brake-locked with chains, allowing them to slide (while) avoiding the catastrophe of the wheels actually rolling.
In one of the great moments of pioneer history, one by one the company took the wagons down the treacherous precipice. When, miracle of miracles, they reached the canyon floor, they eagerly started to ferry across the river with a flatbed boat they had fashioned for that purpose. As it turned out, the Joseph Stanford Smith family was the last wagon to descend that day.
Stanford Smith had systematically helped the preceding wagons down, but somehow in their one-by-one success and consequent disappearance, the others apparently forgot that Brother Smith's family would still need help as the tail enders. Deeply disturbed that he and his family seemed abandoned,... (Stanford) stood for a moment and looked down the treacherous "Hole."
(He) turned to his wife and said, "Belle, I am afraid we can't make it."
"We must make it," she replied.
"If we only had a few men to hold the wagon back we might make it," he said.
"I'll do the holding back. We will make it," she said.
Positioning herself behind the wagon, Belle Smith grasped the reins of the horse hitched to the back of the rig.
Stanford started the team down the "Hole." The wagon lurched downward. With the first jolt the rear horse and Sister Smith were literally catapulted into the air. Recovering, she hung back, pulling on the lines with all her strength and courage. A jagged rock cut a cruel gash in her leg from heel to hip. The horse behind the wagon fell to his haunches. The half-dead animal was literally dragged most of the way down the incline. That gallant woman, clothes torn, with a grievous wound, hung on to those lines with all her might and faith, and with her husband muscled that wagon the full length of the incline all the way to the river's edge.
On reaching the bottom, and almost in disbelief at their accomplishment, Stanford immediately raced (1,300) feet back up to the top of the cliff fearful for the welfare of the children. When he climbed over the rim, he saw his three children literally unmoved from the position their mother had placed them in.
Carrying the baby, with the other two children clinging to him and to each other, he led them down the rocky (path) to their anxious mother below. At that point, in the distance they saw five men moving toward them carrying chains and ropes.
The Smiths had been missed from the larger party. Realizing the plight they were in, these men were coming to help.
Stanford called out, "Forget it fellows ... (Belle) here is all the help a (man) needs (to make this journey)."
Elder Holland's account was adapted from David E. Miller, "Hole-in-the-Rock: An Epic in the Colonization of the Great American West," 1959.
"Places of historic, religious and personal significance carry with them a special and distinctive spirit. We know it as 'the spirit of place.'
This spirit unlocks feelings and understanding that invite us to be a part of things bigger than ourselves. We sense that the ground upon which we walk is sacred....
In Bible texts it is not only the appearance of God or angels that makes a particular place sacred, but the faith and sacrifice that it called forth.
By such a standard, Bluff, Utah, founded April 6, 1880, by a hardy company of Mormon pioneers whose faith and "stickety tootie" is unmatched in the annals of pioneering has claim to being sacred ground."
— Joseph Fielding McConkie
(Jens Nielson was a convert from Denmark and the first bishop of Bluff who said that,"... with a little stickety tootie we cannot fail.")
