GUNLOCK — Things have settled down in the river and the town, in that order.
No one's sleeping in the church any more, no one's without electricity, no one's wondering if the dam's going to burst and send Gunlock State Park and Reservoir 20 miles downstream to Santa Clara.
Gunlock has returned to normal.
At high noon, it's quiet as a tomb.
The waters, and all the fuss, have subsided.
Tucked into a corner of the state that the freeways, and thus time, bypassed, Gunlock is used to isolation. Beyond its July Fourth rodeo, it has little to draw the masses. There are no services. No gas station, no convenience store, no cafes, no cute little bed and breakfasts. There is a post office, but it's usually closed.
That makes it all the more ironic that when the Santa Clara River flooded its banks in January and washed out bridges at both ends of town, it was isolation that brought Gunlock a rush of unprecedented attention.
Suddenly, the fact that you couldn't get into or out of a place that few people ever want to get into and out of became front-page news.
"Gunlock landlocked!" blared the headlines as helicopters ferried in drinking water to Utah's newest island.
Both bridges are still a mangled mess, but dirt dikes have been constructed allowing temporary, if slightly iffy, passage (the south dike was washed out by rains again this week but should soon be back in operation).
In any case, the river is no longer in charge. It's all over but the story-telling . . . and a little blaming.
Rod Leavitt is a Gunlock fixture. At 79, he has personally been a part of more than half of the town's history. He can trace his roots directly back to the town's namesake, one William Haynes "Gunlock" Hamblin, a polygamist (and a crack shot) who married Mary A. and Betsy Leavitt and helped settle the area in the 1850s.
As a lifelong resident, farmer and rancher, Rod Leavitt has spent a lot of time with the Santa Clara River that flows through town. Twenty-five years ago, he was named state water commissioner for the Santa Clara River Basin, a position he holds to this day.
It is Rod's view that the flood of 2005 was exacerbated because the river channel was in poor repair.
"We used to maintain the channel," he says as he sits in an easy chair in his home near the river. "But the last several years, the Army Corps of Engineers stopped us from working on it. There were fish, they said, that were endangered. We argued and argued, but they just said no. There was a heavy fine and people were scared of them, so the channel just got left the way it was. We knew there was danger. We knew it for quite a long time."
(The fish in question, according to Tom Chart of Wildlife Resources, is the virgin spinedace, a small 3-inch-long species that isn't officially endangered but is on a "conservation" list. Grady McNure of the St. George office of the Army Corps of Engineers said, "You do need a permit if you're adding or rearranging material in the river, but I'm not aware of any blanket prohibition (of clearing the channel) by the Corps of Engineers.")
Rod wryly notes that the January flood that knocked out power in Gunlock for nearly a week and set up emergency housing in the LDS ward house has changed things.
"Now they're cleaning the creek," the old-timer says as he motions toward the river benignly running in its banks, again leaving Gunlock to its customary peace and quiet.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.