Although Daggett County is politically one of the youngest in the West, we have seen that it was the first place to be settled in the Great Basin. From the time of Ashley’s visit in 1825, Baptistie Brown’s settling in Brown’s Hole in 1827, Fort Davy Crockett, and the trading posts of Jim Bridger and Uncle Jack Robinson in the thirties, it was the favorite wintering place for trappers and mountain men; and at the close of the great fur trapping period of 1839, most of them settled down to stay in this region. So that Daggett County has a record of one hundred twenty years of continuous occupation.
Henry’s Fork and Brown’s Hole were the first places in the West where stock was wintered in any quantity; and with Uncle Jack Robinson grazing his stock here as early as 1843, and Phil Mass in 1859, Daggett County can certainly claim to have pioneered in the great livestock industry of the West.
The Uinta Mountains are unique in themselves, being the only east-west range on the American continent, and the only mountains whose drainage is entirely to the east. They are unique in structure also, being the only great monoclinal uplift known, and the great Uinta fault, as seen at Palisades Park, is one of the most spectacular of its kind.
Daggett County, although primarily devoted to stock-raising, has the largest deposit of rock phosphate in Utah. And practically all the natural gas produced in the State comes from Clay Basin in the eastern end of the county. It also has large undeveloped deposits of manganese, oil, coal, copper, and oil-bearing shales, as well as gilsonite, or Uintaite, as it is sometimes called.
Scenically, Daggett County is one of the show places of the West. Sheep Creek Canyon rivals Bryce and Zion; the canyons of the Green River—Flaming Gorge, Horseshoe, Hideout, and Red Canyons— are unique in their wild and rugged beauty. Here are Utah’s most beautiful lakes, scores of them; stately forests of pines, swift-running streams. Here, nearby are the impressive badland buttes. Here, too, are the picturesque hogbacks, shaped in fantastic and eye-catching forms—the Boar’s Tusk, Jesson’s Butte, the Causeway, fantastic road of giants. Here you will find that most of the ranches still retain the beautiful old log houses with shingle or sod roofs, the typical, almost native architecture of the mountain West, comfortable to live in, warm in winter, cool in summer, and blending harmoniously with their setting. And towering above all these are the massive snowcapped peaks of the “Ballies,” the high Uintas.
Desert, valleys and mountains alike teem with wild flowers, which, through the spring and summer, make the whole country one vast garden. Here are the commoner flowers in huge, colorful beds— larkspur, prickly pear, bluebells, columbines, sand lilies, and a thousand others. Here are rarer species, too, for only in and around Daggett County is found the rare and beautiful penstemon acaulis.
Contents
- First Glimpses, p. 1
- Columbus Discovers Daggett County, p. 3
- We Have Visitors, p. 5
- People Move In, p. 14
- — And Settle Down To Stay, p. 22
- Rocks And Bones, p. 28
- — And Precious Stones, p. 32
- With Rope And Branding Iron, p. 37
- Roads And Ranches, p. 48
- Robin Hood In Brown’s Park, p. 55
- Murder In The Park, p. 61
- Sandtown, p. 71
- Boom Town, p. 78
- A County Is Born, p. 83
- Uinta Yarns, p. 89
- Much To Be Proud Of, p. 105
Source
Dunham, Dick, Our Strip of Land : A History of Daggett County, Utah, Manila, Utah : Daggett County Lions Club, 1947.