The pioneer party that headed up Salt Creek Canyon in the icy rain of a mid-November morning in 1849 knew its destination.
In the guttural speech of Chief Walker, sometime friend of Brigham Young, it was a high mountain valley he called San-p-eech. And there, the elders of the party knew they were to establish the first settlement south of Provo.What the men didn't know as they began their four-day climb up Salt Creek was that the brush-covered mountain on their right was actually a hugh heap of gypsum and that the ruts of their wagons in the churned-up earth along the creek would someday become a binding link in the state's transportation chain.
It was four long days up Salt Creek - four days in the muck and mud, clearing away the boulders and underbrush, filling gullies with logs and rocks, double-teaming their wagons - hauled mainly by oxen - to reach the high plateau that has Fountain Green as its centerpiece.
From then on, it was easier travel past springs, across meadows and around hills to the place now called Temple Hill. They arrived on Nov. 22, 1849.
Winter caught up with them that night and 2 feet of snow had them chopping out dugouts in the slopes of the hill.
Sixty years later, almost to the month, the United States Gypsum Co. began digging gypsum out of the mountain at the bottom of Salt Creek, conveying it in an aerial tram across the road that had been a pioneer trail in 1849. The gypsum was transformed into plaster in a one-story plant topped by three tall smokestacks.
The gypsum was unusual for its color-retaining quality, and the plaster that was manufactured at the site went into the walls of thousands of homes, the exteriors and statues at the San Diego Fair in 1915, the palaces at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915 and the plaster works at the San Francisco Golden Gate Exposition in 1939.
The historic trail along Salt Creek, from the beginning a main outlet out of the mountain-ringed valley that Walker called San-p-eech, has had its evolution, too.
Since 1849 it was the favored route to Salt Lake City. In time it was graveled - sort of - and eventually paved. It acquired a number - 189 - on road maps, and it acquired a companion.
The Sanpete Valley Railroad, a narrow-gauge line, paralleled its route up Salt Creek and then struck off on its own to what was once Coal Bed but is now Wales. It then continued another 20 miles to the Morrison Mine up Six Mile Canyon. Flooding ended that operation.
The ox trail of 1849 has a new number now - it's 132. But the number in no way defines its role in the state's highway system. At an interchange at the bottom of Salt Creek, it intersects with I-15 and miles away, across a mountain range and a valley, it ties into U-89 at a place called Pigeon Hollow Junction.
"The Salt Creek road is our lifeline," says Bob Bessey, chairman of the Sanpete County Commission. And it is also, he adds, a lifeline for Sevier, Garfield and Kane counties. Together, the counties are trying to persuade the Utah Department of Transportation to provide another lane in some areas, as well as more scenic viewpoint areas. They say the highway is the bridge leading to scenic Utah.