Name repetition confusion abounds in Utah’s outdoors -- Don’t get lost in a ‘Dry Canyon’

    The north end of “Dry Canyon,” along Highway 89, between Brigham City and Logan, headed down to “Dry Lake.” (“Sardine Canyon” is the popular nickname for this entire area.) Forty-six Utah canyons are named Dry Canyon, making it the most overused place name in the entire State.

By Lynn Arave

IT is rather surprising how many place names are duplicated in the State of Utah. Unique names are a rarity.

You would think that Weber County settlers would NOT have named two canyons “Cold Water Canyon,” but they did – even though they are only about six air miles apart.

In Salt Lake County it is even worse. There are three different “Twin Peaks” in 20 miles of the Wasatch Mountains, stretching from above the University of Utah to just south of Snowbird. (And, state-wide there are another 12 other Twin Peaks to be found.)

However, Carbon County is the granddaddy of duplicates with six different “Bear” Canyons.

And, if you ever become lost in Utah’s outdoors, hope it is NOT in a “Dry Canyon.” There are some 46 canyons in the Beehive State sharing that title and so rescuers could easily become confused.

The nation’s second driest state has a fleet of Dry Canyons. Tooele County alone contains five different Dry Canyons. Kane and Duchesne counties have four each. Of Utah’s 29 counties, only five lack a Dry Canyon.

There are also Dry Canyons northeast of Brigham City; by the North Ogden Divide; in Ogden Canyon; east of the town of Uintah; and one in Morgan County too.

"Dry" is also one the more popular geographical monikers Utah overall. There are some 250 “Dry” names, counting canyons, hollows, forks, creeks, lakes and washes.

The second most popular name is “Cottonwood,” with 40 different versions. Grand and San Juan counties each boast four different Cottonwood Canyons.

“Pole” is the third most popular title with 38 variations and Utah County has four Pole Canyons.

Plus, to round out the 10 most common Utah canyon  place names, there are 30 separate Rock Canyons; 30 Spring Canyons; 29 Water Canyons; 29 Trail Canyons; 26 Bear Canyon; 22 Long Canyons and 20 Horse Canyons.

Big, Black, Box Elder, Broad, Bull, Coal, Corral, Cow, Coyote, Deep, Fish, Flat, Maple, Mill, Pine, Red and Sawmill are all monikers in 10 or more Utah canyons.

Besides Canyons, there are at least two dozen different “Narrows" in Utah, including the world-famous Zion Narrows.

In addition, there are 16 different Black Mountains to hike in Utah; 14 Little Mountains and 11 different Bald Mountains.

 Mud Springs boasts 50 versions; Willow Springs, 40;  Cottonwood Springs, 26; Rock Springs, 26; and Cold Springs, 21, comprise other heavily used Utah monikers.

The Little Valley name is the most used valley term, with 29 versions – including a Little Valley that’s above South Farmington. Birch Creek has 32 renditions; Willow Creek 26; and Cottonwood Creek 24 total.

There are more than two dozen Spring Hollows and Dry Forks in Utah; plus more Left-Hand this and Right-Hand that places than anyone would want to total.

Lake names too may not be unique. There are 15 Blue Lakes; 15 Dry Lakes; 13 Mud Lakes; seven Big Lakes and four separate Bear Lakes in the Beehive State.

The High Uintas contains many duplicate names too. For example, there are at least two Lost Lakes, a pair of Wall Lakes, several Island Lakes and two Lilly Lakes there.

          Noah’s Ark in southern Utah is one of the State’s more unusual of place names.

-To be fair, Utah does contain some unique and colorful place names too. Among them are:

Accident Canyon, Ant Peak, Baboon Seep, Bellyache Canyon, Beer Bottle Spring, Blubber Creek, Brew Canyon, Convulsion Canyon, Dead Ox Peak, Girl Hollow, Hang Dog Creek, Horsethief Canyon, Keg Spring, Noah’s Ark, No Man's Mountain, No Man's Canyon , Shoofly Hill, Skull Crack Canyon, Sunday Canyon and Weed Basin.

Finally, Hell Canyon, Morgan County, is not an unusual title, but it does connect directly with Paradise Canyon.

SOURCE: United State Geological Survey database.

(-Published in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on July 13, 2015.).

-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.)