Never mind that Utah is home to heavenly choirs and that much of TV's popular "Touched by an Angel" is regularly filmed here, many explorers and settlers saw in it a devil of a place.
The region hosts some extremely rugged, inhospitable and downright infernal territory, and those inclined to give certain spots names in pioneer times weren't shy about calling them as they saw them. As a result, Utah has 61 geographical places and landmarks that contain the word "devil" — but only 11 names with the word "angel."
Devil's Hole, Devil's Steps and Devil's Kitchen call Juab County home.
Devil's Den, Devil's Kitchen and Devil's Twist can be found in Millard County.
Devil's Playground is farther north, in Box Elder County.
There's a Devil's Castle and a Devil's Dance Floor in Sevier County; Devil's Pocket and Devil's Window in San Juan County; a Devil's Peak in Sanpete County — and many more.
"That tells you something about how hard it was here," said Linda Smith, historian for Morgan County, where Devil's Slide and Devil's Gate are to be found.
To be fair, Zion National Park has towering Angel's Landing and Canyonlands National Park has the striking Angel Arch, but they have only nine other seraphim to keep them company in a state beset by more than five dozen devils.
Many a pioneer traveler's diary laments the diabolic physical obstacles Utah posed. Indeed, the ill-fated Donner-Reed Party of 1846 lost several weeks of potential travel time in Utah, much of it while bogged down in the canyons northeast of Salt Lake City. That delay, perhaps more than anything, led to their tragic fate in the stormy Sierra Nevada.
Nowhere is Utah's ghoulish side more bedeviled than Weber Canyon, home to Devil's Slide and Devil's Gate — two historic landmarks that have been noted by those traveling through the territory since pioneer and early railroad days.
Roy Tea, a member of the Utah Crossroads Chapter of the Oregon-California Trails Association, said all these devilish names reveal just how tough Utah was on pioneers.
"They had to travel in the streams a lot of the time," he said of the canyons north and east of Salt Lake City.
Weber Canyon is divided into two sections, an upper and a lower part. Devil's Gate, a narrow, rocky gorge only about three miles east of the canyon's mouth, was perhaps the most formidable obstacle in all the area, Smith said.
However, it was actually some of the rugged upper canyon around Devil's Slide near Morgan that detoured pioneer wagons southwest to enter the Salt Lake Valley from Emigration Canyon.
"This was a terribly narrow area of the canyon," Smith said.
If not for this rugged spot, as well as torturous Devil's Gate, would Brigham Young have instead emerged from Weber Canyon to proclaim, "This is the place"?
If so, imagine a Salt Lake City perhaps built around the present day towns of Uintah, South Weber, South Ogden, Layton and Ogden, with Temple Square in Ogden rather than Salt Lake City.
Among the geographic features that bedeviled early Utahns:
Devil's Slide, a strange, giant-size limestone chute, looks as imposing today as it probably did in the 19th century. Composed of two parallel slabs of rock about 20 feet apart, 40 feet high and some 200 feet long, this phenomenon is located about eight miles east of Morgan.
According to a description from the late Walter R. Buss, former professor of geology and geography at Weber State University, the Devil's Slide formation originally was made up of horizontal limestone ridges formed by deposits in a shallow sea. Then, about 75 million years ago, when huge layers of rock were pushed up to form such ranges as the Rocky Mountains, the ridges were tilted to a vertical position.
A layer of shale between the limestone ridges eroded over time because it was less resistant, and thus the chute was formed.
Hauntingly, there are also "Witch Rocks" and the small "Goblin Slides" in the same area of upper Weber Canyon.
Devil's Gate was a narrow slit in sheer rock walls, and the only way for wagons to pass through was in the swift-moving Weber River.
"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," Heinrich Lienhard, a frontiersman who passed through the area with a wagon group on Aug. 6, 1846, wrote in his diary. "We ventured upon this furious passage, up to this point decidedly the wildest we had encountered, if not the most dangerous. "
Devil's Gate continued as a barrier for more than a century more. Even by the 1950s, the paved road there, also known as "Scrambled Egg Curve" and "Horseshoe Bend," was the site of regular truck accidents.
It required tons of explosives and lots of heavy equipment in the early 1960s to clear passage directly through the canyon for two 600-foot interstate highway bridges. Today, drivers race along at 65 mph, unaware of the barrier that once blocked the canyon.
Devil's Gate is more or less a deserted, windy alcove today — visible north of the main canyon — where only the occasional fisherman goes.
Utah's Devil's Gate is not to be confused with a natural feature of the same name in Wyoming, near Martin's Cove.
Angels and devils have plenty of company in Utah. Other geographical features boast names with biblical and religious themes, including, of course, Zion National Park and Valley of the Gods.
E-MAIL: lynn@desnews.com