When the “Devil” was finally conquered in Weber Canyon

  An alcove, all that's left of Devil's Gate today in Weber Canyon,    Photo by Whitney Arave

THE bugaboo of Devil’s Gate in lower Weber Canyon plagued travelers for well over a century.

The single geological feature of Devil’s Gate is what detoured the 1847 Mormon Pioneers through Emigration Canyon, instead of lower Weber Canyon.

Narrow, curvy and sometimes called “Scrambled Egg Curve” in the mid-20^th Century for all the overturned trucks, it wasn’t until the freeway came along that the “Devil” was finally conquered.

In 1966, the freeway finally opened through Devils Gate and Weber Canyon. That section of freeway in the lower canyon cost $3.5 million. 1 million cubic yards of material were removed from Peterson to Gateway in Weber Canyon.

The Standard-Examiner of May 22, 1964 stated there were great advantages to eliminating the horseshoe bend at Devil’s Gate.

                      The I-84 freeway bridge span, east of Devil's Gate today.

“A huge overpass at the Devil’s Gate curve was built over the Union Pacific tracks in order to eliminate the treacherous curve,” the Standard of Feb. 26, 1965 reported.

“The river, railroad and highway squeak through the practically vertical cliffs at Devil’s Gate,” the Salt Lake Tribune of May 26, 1965 reported.

All 63 miles of freeway, I-80, from Uintah to Wyoming were open by late 1967.
Truckers during the Weber Canyon freeway construction process were told to keep their windows shut and use the air conditioning -- no matter what. That's because there were sometimes rattlesnakes lurking in the debris they were hauling away and more than one truck driver got spooked when a rattler crawled to the cab and stuck his head inside the window!




(Note: There is at least one other "Devils Gate" in Utah. There is another feature with the name found in the extreme northwest corner of the state, in the Grouse Creek area.)

More historical tidbits:

-“Fined for riding on the sidewalks” was a July 6, 1917 headline in the Standard.

Back then, violators to Ogden City ordinance who rode their bicycles on city sidewalks were fined $2.

“It is the aim of the court to break up this practice as soon as possible and every person found riding on the sidewalk will be brought to court,” the story stated.

According to the Standard on April 5, 1910, all sidewalks were then made off limits to bikes, not just certain ones. This law also included motorcycles and even tricycles. Motorcycles were also henceforth required to carry a gong and headlight, to warn others of their approach.

And, the same law meant that cafes and saloons then had to be separate – without connecting doors – or face closure. Each café-saloon had two weeks time to remodel, or lose their saloon license.

-The same 1917 story also reported that a man was fined $5 for driving at a reckless speed in his Ford delivery truck, with nine girls as passengers.

-Bicycles had been a controversial form of travel, even in late 19^th Century Ogden. “License the bicycle” was a Feb. 7, 1897 editorial in the Standard.

At that time, some 1,000 bicycles (“wheels”) were estimated to exist in Ogden and for a proposed $1 a year license, many road improvements could be done.

-“Kept pigs near his home and is arrested” was a June 1, 1915 Standard headline.

The owner of a fruit and commission store at 2227 Washington Avenue pleaded guilty to charge of maintaining a nuisance – having a number of pigs at the rear of his property. The Italian man said he never intended to keep the pigs long, but a prospective sale of the swine had fallen through.

(-Originally published on-line and in print in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on June 25-26 by Lynn Arave.)

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net

When Devil’s Slide was really a slide and more

                                 Devil’s Slide today.

DEVIL'S Slide is a bizarre, giant-size limestone chute, located on the south side of I-84 in Weber Canyon, near Croydon, and about eight miles east of Morgan.

Composed of two parallel slabs of rock about 20 feet apart, some 40 feet high and about 200 feet long, this odd phenomenon has attracted the curious gaze of passerbys since Pioneer times.

The first pioneers through the area in the 1840s (and their maps) referred to the Croydon area of upper Weber Canyon as “Gutter Defile,” in honor of what would eventually become famous as Devil’s Slide.

Who named the rock formation Devil’s Slide?

James John Walker (1830-1896), an early resident of Croydon and a railroad worker, is very likely the first person to have called it Devil’s Slide.

A Walker family history states that James Walker was a contractor on the railroad, installing the first tracks through upper Weber Canyon. Probably around 1868, he was asked (being a local resident) by a railroad crew what to call this unusual rocky chute and his reply was Devil’s Slide and the title stuck.

The first official mention of that name for the rock formation in a newspaper was in 1875.

"Looking like a large playground slide fit only for the Devil, this site is a tilted remnant of sediments deposited in a sea that occupied Utah's distant geologic past," Carl Ege of the Utah Geological Survey explains on geology.utah.gov.

By 1904, limestone was found in abundance in the area of Devil’s Slide and soon a cement worker’s town sprung up there. Workers initially began calling the new community Portland, in honor of the Union Portland Cement Company.

However, railroad people objected to that name and insisted on a Devil’s Slide moniker instead. They won out and by 1907 the local post office was also called Devils Slide. (Note that there was no apostrophe to the town's name.)

The cement company’s packages even sported the startling image of the devil sliding down the rock chute on his pitchfork for many years. The company’s baseball team was also called the Red Devils.

The town reached its heyday in the late 1920s, before the Great Depression, when it boasted 529 residents. By the 1940s, its school closed and by the 1980s, only a few families still resided there. Soon after, the cement company closed the town and today a gravel pit and rubble mostly cover what remains of this ghost town.

      A 1947 photo of Devil’s Slide shows visitor Venice Carson Flygare of Grouse Creek/Ogden.                     Note how close the viewpoint to the Slide was back then, in the pre-freeway era.

Going back in time again, “Mystic Shriners at Devil’s Slide” was an Aug. 22, 1911 headline in the Standard, The Shriners held special ceremonies and initiations around the formation. Included was a hike to the top of Devil’s Slide, followed by an optional, daring slide downward.

Did this really happen? Perhaps, but the natural rock slide ends dozens of feet away from the Weber River, which is why a special pool of water was apparently set up at the bottom by the Shriners.

 “Devil’s Slide jinks success; El Kalah Temple Mystic Shrine holds unique ceremonial at that spot; Novices slide incline into fathomless pool” ” was a Sept. 16, 1910 headline in the Salt Lake Tribune, showing they had also used the Slide a year earlier.

Several hundred Shriners took a special train to the Slide and even set up tents in the area. Sliding down the Slide was also featured that year.

Ogden began promoting Devil’s Slide as a tourist attraction in the mid 1920s, with signs. Devil’s Gate, at the lower end of Weber Canyon, was also boasted of in numerous Standard-Examiner reports of the 1920s.

Today, there are posted turnouts to view the slide just off both directions of I-84. However, in the pre-freeway era, a 1947 picture of Devil’s Slide shows the viewing area much closer to the formation than it is today. Back then, the dirt access road (in front of Devil’s Slide today) may have been the main road before the Interstate came along.

Now, the slide’s bottom is choked with brush and some private land fronts the Slide.

Hauntingly, there are also "Witch Rocks" and the small "Goblin Slides" rock formations in the same area of upper Weber Canyon.

The Salt Lake Tribune ran a story on June 28, 1888 that told the tale of an out-of-stater fishing the Weber River in that area with an Indian guide. This Native American believed the area to be the Devil’s territory and even pointed out another nearby rock formation that was said to be the “Devil’s War Club.”

-As unusual as the Top of Utah’s Devil’s Slide may seem, it is not unique. There is a same-named and similar rock formation about five miles north of Gardiner, Mont. Just north of Yellowstone National Park, off U.S. 89, this Devil's Slide, though has a twist — a big curve in its slabs of parallel rock.

(-Originally published in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on Sept. 26, 2014 by Lynn Arave.)

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net  

Ogden: 'This is the Place?'

                     

                    The Devil's Gate area today, not so rugged.

By Lynn Arave

"Ogden might have been the one big city in the State of Utah."
That's was the headline in the June 13, 1914 Ogden Standard-Examiner.
After all, Weber Canyon's Devil's Gate rerouted the Mormon Pioneers a different way than they intended into the Salt Lake Valley. Here's a "What if?" scenario:

It is July 21, 1847 and Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow, advance scouts for the Mormon Pioneers, emerge into the valley of the Great Salt Lake and survey the area as the first of their group, composed of 143 men, three women and two children.
A day later, on July 22, the first wagons enter the valley. A survey of the area continues.
Then, on July 24, Brigham Young's wagon leaves Weber Canyon and enters the valley at today's South Weber/Uintah.
 "This is the right place," Young proclaims, "Drive on."

                        A newspaper graphic from 1946, in the Iron County Record.


If, for example, Devil's Gate, near the mouth of Weber Canyon, had not been so formidable of a fiendish gorge, this actually would have likely happened.
A Weber Canyon entrance into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake was the most direct access for the Mormon Pioneers and is where they would have traveled, if they could have.
Weber Canyon was a section of what was then called the Hastings Cutoff. An 1846 map made by T.H. Jefferson identified the Devil's Gate area as "Granite Canyon."

The wild Weber River roared over rocks in a deep, narrow crevice at the bottom of Devil's Gate. The canyon was only wide enough to handle the river, let alone wagons. 

Heinrich Lienhard, a frontiersman in Jefferson's frontier party, described his wagon passage through Devil's Gate as the wildest part of his journey across the wilderness of the west. 
In his diary account for Aug. 6, 1846, he recorded:

"The Weber River had broken down the steep, high Wasatch Mountains; it was a deep cleft through which the waters foamed and roared over the rocks.

"We ventured upon this furious passage, up to this point decidedly the wildest we had encountered, if not the most dangerous. We devoted the entire forenoon and until fully one o'clock in the afternoon to the task of getting our four wagons though. . . .

"In going back for each wagon we had to be very careful lest we lose our footing on the slippery rocks under the water and ourselves be swept down the rapid, foaming torrent."

That same year, the Allen and Avery group recorded its passage through the "Granite Canyon" area and for them it required grueling teamwork and sturdy rope to hoist wagons and oxen through the narrow passage. 

(However, the Granite Canyon name on that early map apparently wasn't scary enough for the Mormon Pioneers. After all, they had likely thought that the Devil himself may have stirred people to force them westward. So, the `devil' was a perfect name for a natural gorge that prevented safe wagon passage to their promised land -- and it was the more unpleasant cousin of the "Devil's Slide, " 23 miles to the east, that they had passed by days earlier.)
 The legendary Porter Rockwell led some advance Mormon Pioneer scouts in a survey of lower Weber Canyon.

They found the gorge worse than Hastings had described it. 
The 1914 Standard article stated that wagons had to be taken piece meal through the Gate in pioneer times and their loads had to be taken separately on pack horses on a nearby narrow Indian path.
The article also speculated that if the Donner Party had also traveled down Weber Canyon instead, perhaps The Mormon Pioneers would have done so too.
But, the scouts' recommendation to Brigham Young was to go through Emigration Canyon instead, as the Donner Party had done in early September of 1846.
Now Brigham Young was said to have seen a divine vision of the area of the Salt Lake Valley the pioneers were to settle in. Hence, why the pioneers still might have turned south and went some 30 miles to today's Salt Lake City from South Weber/Uintah, had they somehow emerged from Weber Canyon, instead of Emigration Canyon.
(If not that, then South Weber, Layton, or some nearby town, or towns, might have been today's Salt Lake City, as Miles Goodyear had already laid claim to everything between Weber and Ogden canyons.)

                                       Mouth of Weber Canyon.

For the Mormon Pioneers, it would not be until eight years later, in 1855, that Devil's Gate was partially tamed. Then, Thomas Jefferson Thurston, Abiah Wadsworth (one of my ancestors), Ira Spaulding, Charles Peterson, Roswell Stevens and other prospective settlers had built a road from South Weber and by Devil's Gate into the Morgan Valley. 

Thurston had viewed the Morgan Valley accidentally while scrambling over the mountain ridge above his Centerville home. He thought the lush valley similar to his former home in Ohio. Only primitive tools were used for this road building, and sometimes huge rocks would simply be pushed off from the walls above the gorge so that the road could be made on top of such fill material. That first road was completed by 1856.

(Thurston is today's namesake for Thurston Park, the highest point in both Davis and Morgan counties.)

There was one angelic side to Devil's Gate too, in that the railroad having to conquer it gave Mormon settlers two years of employment by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1868-69 in Weber Canyon and areas east. This paid labor was timely, since the pioneers were struggling after the grasshopper invasions of 1866-67.

Years later, Devil's Gate was opened to one-lane passage with the construction of "Horseshoe Bend," a loop in the road around Devil's Gate.

 Families entering from either side of Devil's Gate by horse and buggy would send one person ahead on foot to stop traffic on the narrow path while they passed through.

An 1887 article in the Ogden Standard-Examiner referred to the west end of Weber Canyon as "The Devil's Road," thanks to the rough and rocky conditions of Devil's Gate. And, disputes over which county, Weber or Morgan, would maintain the bridge at Devil's Gate also reached a climax then.

At that time, a "Devil's Chair" rock formation was also infamous, just east of Devil's Gate.

"A snow slide and wreck at Devil's Gate" was a Jan. 10, 1892 headline in the Salt Lake Herald newspaper.

An 80-foot deep and 100-foot wide slide happened in Devil's Gate and a freight train going through couldn't stop and smashed into it. The result were six smashed rail cars and a dead engineer.

A Dec. 21, 1893 story in the Davis County Clipper newspaper described Devil's Gate/Horseshoe bend as a "man trap."

This article described passage through the area as not just perilous because of the "old banging bridge" that had to be crossed (and that hung precariously by the side of the mountain), but because the greater danger was 100 tons of rock hanging over head and about ready to cut loose and fall downward.
The article also mentioned Devil's Gate as truly lurking in the realm of "Satanic majesty" and that anyone who safely crossed through the place would thank God on the other side for safely haven done so.

Yet, by the early automobile age, the road through Devil's Gate was widened dramatically to two lanes.However, it also earned several new nicknames, like "Scrambled-Egg Curve," because of the frequent accidents involving egg transports there --  as well as other cargo spills -- livestock, vegetables and even oil. "Horseshoe Bend" was another moniker for the area.

 This spot simply had more accidents than any other portion of Weber Canyon. So, the "Devil" was still not conquered.

 After the wet winter of 1952, flood waters cut off travel through Devil's Gate for several weeks. Commuters from Morgan County to the west had to park their vehicles on the east side and walk around Devil's Gate to get rides to work from the other side.

It required  lots of dynamite and heavy equipment in the early 1960s to clear the path for the construction of two 583-foot-long concrete bridges, key components of creating Interstate 80-North (now I-84), finally conquering the bugaboo of Devil's Gate/"Scrambled Egg Curve" and the like. (It cost $2.5 million then, or $19.4 million in 2014 dollars to build the three-mile section of freeway in the area of Devil's Gate.)

Today, it is not easy to spot Devil's Gate. Motorists zoom through the area at 65 mph, hardly slowing down for what might have been the only insurmountable barrier the Mormon Pioneers faced in their historic trek.
With more and faster freeway traffic than ever, there doesn't seem to be a safe place to even visit the site anymore.
There's just a slight bend in the interstate highway at Devil's Gate now, located just west of the Weber-Morgan county line.
The Weber River still makes a loop northward at Devil's Gate and some remains of the old Horseshoe Bend highway are there. It is more of an isolated, rocky alcove now, probably frequented only by an occasional fisherman.
A large train trestle, reminiscent of the original 1860s train bridge that crossed Devil's Gate, is found nearby too.

(-A shorter version of this article was originally published by Lynn Arave in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on July 17. 2014.)

                         Devil's Gate area and I-84 westbound.

. .

                       I-84 over the Weber River today at Devil's Gate.

               Center and left of the power pole: A look inside Devil's Gate Alcove today.

    I-84 westbound and into the curve that is all that's left of Devil's Gate travel today.

    South Weber City today ... it could have been "This is the Place," if not for Devil's Gate.

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net  

'Scrambled Egg Curve' and 'Utah Hill' -- Forgotten Obstacles

              The Devil's Gate I-80 span over the Weber River today.

EVER hear of "Scrambled Egg Curve" or "Utah Hill"?

In the high-tech 21st century, travelers speed through two notorious Intermountain canyons -- Weber Canyon and the Virgin River Gorge -- on freeways with little thought of how restrictive these paths were prior to the interstate.

In fact, travel through the Virgin River Gorge didn't exist prior to 1973 and the opening of I-15 there. Motorists spent up to twice as long (and trucks even more) traversing the alternate Highway 91 route west of Santa Clara, which climbed the notorious "Utah Hill."

For Weber Canyon, the pre-Interstate 84 days included Devil's Gate ("Scrambled Egg Curve,") a bottleneck in a critical highway and a nightmare for truckers.

In 1847, Devil's Gate was such an obstacle that the Mormon Pioneers decided to enter the Salt Lake Valley through Emigration Canyon instead. If this had not been so, This is the Place monument might have been in a very different location.

Heinrich Lienhard, a frontiersman in T.H. Jefferson's traveling party, described their Aug. 6, 1846, wagon passage through Devil's Gate as the wildest part of their journey across the western wilderness.

It wasn't until 1856 that Thomas Jefferson Thurston and other prospective settlers built and opened a narrow road from the west side and through the lower portion of Weber Canyon and Devil's Gate into the Morgan Valley.

Families entering or leaving Devil's Gate (not to be confused with "Devil's Slide," some 20 miles to the east) by horse and buggy would send one family member ahead on foot to stop traffic bound the other way on the one-lane route while they passed through the narrow, natural gate.


The road through Devil's Gate was widened dramatically in the automobile age, but it also gained a new nickname — "Scrambled-Egg Curve," because of the many accidents involving egg transports there, as well as spills of oil, livestock and vegetables. The spot had more accidents than any other part of the canyon.

For example on Feb. 3, 1949, a Deseret News headline read: "Weber Canyon blocked by egg cargoes," as two semitrailer trucks overturned near Devil's Gate, because of the sharp turn and icy conditions. A month earlier, another semi had overturned there, blocking the narrow canyon road.

After the wet winter of 1952, floodwaters cut off travel through Devil's Gate for weeks. Commuters had to park their cars on the east side and walk around Horseshoe Bend to get rides to work from the west side.

In the early 1960s it took explosives and heavy equipment to clear the way for two 583-foot-long concrete bridges during construction of Interstate 80-North (now I-84), finally conquering the bugaboo of Devil's Gate and Horseshoe Bend. It cost $2.5 million (more than $18 million in today's dollars) to build the three-mile section of interstate near Devil's Gate. The road completely bypasses the bend itself.

Truckers during the construction process were told to keep their windows shut and use the air conditioning -- no matter what. That's because there were sometimes rattlesnakes lurking in the debris they were hauling away and more than one truck driver got spooked when a rattler crawled to the cab and stuck his head inside the window!

--Construction on the I-15 freeway through the Virgin River Gorge cost $10 million per mile (almost $50 million a mile in today's dollars.) It was the most expensive rural freeway in the nation at the time.
Required were five long bridges over the Virgin River, as well as rechanneling the water 12 different times to accommodate the approximate 18-mile section of freeway through the gorge itself. More than four miles of freeway travel right over the original river bed.

High winds, flash flooding and quicksand hindered construction. A helicopter surveying ther area crashed in 1969, killing the pilot. A dune buggy from Texas was eventually brought in to traverse the rugged gorge during early construction.

I-15 in the Virgin River Gorge finally opened, about 25 years ago, on Dec. 14, 1973 after a decade of work.

The Virgin River Gorge traverses a remote section of the Arizona strip. It is the most vital link between Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

A million cubic yards of granite were removed in several locations to rechannel the river.

Utah, Arizona and Nevada opposed the proposed route through the Virgin River Gorge as early as 1955, because the first plans included just a two-lane road and sections without passing capability for as long as four miles at a time.

The three states supported and eventually got a wider, four-lane highway approved.

The Virgin River Gorge is a scenic area and cliffs rise as high as 500 feet above the interstate.

-"Still beautiful, but mighty dangerous" was a Dec. 1, 1979 headline in the Washington County News of St. George. The story stated how almost five years after the curvy steep road opened, it had yet to have a major snow accident. However, that streak came to an ended on Jan. 26 of that year when there were a dozen vehicles which slid off the freeway in the gorge and three people were injured.
The story said the storm had a perfectly icy combination of cold and snow, creating black ice in the gorge, so bad that "the surface of the freeway was so slick that you couldn't stand up without support." This all happened in the often shaded, south end of the gorge, located in Arizona.




(-Distilled from an article by Lynn Arave, originally published in the Deseret News on Jan. 19, 2009.)