OCR Text |
Show Early Day Lumbering in Zion National Park Unique Accomplishment oi So. Utah Pioneer Zion National Park, Utah, May 28 Thlrty-eight billion board feet of lumber were produced in the United States last year, but none of it ever took the sky high ride David Flanigan gave this rugged park's yellow pine a half centry ago. The little known story of Zion's timbering days was developed when Union Pacific Railroad photographer pho-tographer R. V. Herre made the strenuous trip to the top of the park's Cable Mountain. A veteran veter-an photographer in the Utah-Ari-Tona national parks, he is probably prob-ably the first professional cameraman cam-eraman to have visited the site in 30 years. The story dates from 1863 when Mormon Leader Brlgham Young visited colonists along Utah's upper up-per Virgin River. Finding them in dire need of timber. Young prophesied pro-phesied that some day their lumber lum-ber would come down Xrom the high ledges above Zion Canyon , "Like a hawk flying." However, it was not until 1893 that David Flanigan, a youthful settler conceived the Idea of lowering cut lumber by cable from the canyon rim to the floor. Recalling that while on a hunting hunt-ing trip 10 years earlier as a lad of 15, he had come across a fine stand of yellow pine on the east rim of Zion, Flanigan attempted to sell his cable idea but found . no takers, so with the help of his brothers, young Flanigan shouldered the project himself. First he spent two or three years experimenting with pulleys and wire tension to perfect his device. The 50,000 feet of wire needed was packed -up a precipitous preci-pitous Indian trail to the top of the 2,640-foot cliff that subse-qently subse-qently became known as Cable Mountain. The windlass was completed in the summer of 1901 and a sawmill saw-mill was set up on top of Cable Mountain in 1904. Thus the Ingenuity Inge-nuity of David Flanigan fulfilled Brigham Young's prophesy, and by the close of 1906 200,000 feet of sawed lumber had been lowered low-ered to the canyon floor. William J. Flanigan of Cedar City, one of the brothers still living reports that during 1906 there were days when as high as 10,000 feet of lumber was run down the cable. However, In 1907 David Flanigan sold the layout. Beginning In 1910. the cable carried an occasional rider. The practice was started by an Iron-nerved Iron-nerved youth named Qulmby Stewart, who made the trip down to participate In a watermelon feed. The cable also carried a good share of the lumber used In the construction of Zion Lodge. However, How-ever, the operation was closed down In the middle 1920s by the National Park Service, although the cable tower at the top of the mountain is still visible to Zion vacationists. |