Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
From a regional stake conference broadcast address delivered on September 12, 2010, at Brigham Young University.
We all must have a conviction burning in our hearts that this is the work of God and that it requires the best we can give to building up "waste place[s] in Zion."
In 1849, just two years after the Saints had entered the Salt Lake Valley, Elder Parley P. Pratt of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles led an expedition to the south. The farther south the expedition went, the more difficult the terrain became. After the men had dropped 3,000 feet (914 m) from the rim of the Great Basin to the convergence of the Virgin and the Santa Clara Rivers (south of modern-day St. George, Utah), the terrain became dry and sandy, volcanic and rugged. The scouts were not impressed. A journal says:
"Passed … over a rugged, stony, sandy almost indescribable country, thrown together in dreadful confusion. …
"A wide expanse of chaotic matter presented itself, consisting of huge hills, [red] deserts, cheerless, grassless plains, perpendicular rocks, loose barren clay, … sandstone … lying in inconceivable confusion—in short, a country in ruins, … turned inside out, upside down, by terrible convulsions in some former age."1
But however rugged the land looked going south, the wind-whipped, erosion-gutted cliffs and canyon wilderness of San Juan country to the east looked a lot tougher. Church leaders knew that taming that rough, unchartered corner of the territory would be difficult, but they nevertheless wanted to establish communities for the Church there. At the quarterly conference of the Parowan Stake in 1879, 250 people accepted the call by President John Taylor to establish the San Juan Mission. With 80 wagons and nearly 1,000 head of cattle and horses, they began to cut their way toward and through imposing, unexplored territory of snow-capped mountains and towering stone pinnacles.
Seeking the shortest route to San Juan, those first explorers overcame one obstacle after another but soon faced the largest and most intimidating barrier of all: the impassable gulf of the Colorado River gorge. Miraculously their weary scouts found a narrow slit in the canyon—a crevice running 2,000 feet (610 m) down the red cliffs to the Colorado River below. This lone, near-lethal "hole in the rock" seemed to offer the only possible passage to the eastern side.
For the most part, the slice in the sandstone was too narrow for horses and in some places too narrow even for a man or woman to pass through. Sheer drops of as much as 75 feet (23 m) would seem to have made it impossible for a mountain sheep, let alone loaded wagons. But the hardy Saints were not going to turn back, so with blasting powder and tools, working most of December 1879 and January 1880, they cut a precarious, primitive road into the face of the canyon precipice.
With this roadbed finished, such as it was, the task was now to get the first 40 wagons down the "hole." The other wagons, waiting five miles (8 km) back at Fifty-Mile Spring, would follow later.
They organized themselves in such a way "that a dozen or more men could hang on behind the wagon" with long ropes to slow its descent. Then the wheels were brake-locked with chains, allowing them to slide but avoiding the catastrophe of the wheels actually rolling.
In one of the great moments of pioneer history, one by one the company took the wagons down the treacherous precipice. When they reached the canyon floor, they eagerly started to ferry across the river with a flatbed boat they had fashioned for that purpose. As it turned out, the Joseph Stanford Smith family was in the last wagon to descend that day.
Stanford Smith had systematically helped the preceding wagons down, but somehow the company apparently forgot that Brother Smith's family would still need help as the tailenders. Deeply disturbed that he and his family seemed abandoned, Stanford moved his team, wagon, and family to the edge of the precipice. The team was placed in front and a third horse was hitched behind the wagon to the rear axle. The Smiths stood for a moment and looked down the treacherous hole. Stanford turned to his wife, Arabella, and said, "I am afraid we can't make it."
She replied, "But we've got to make it."
He said, "If we only had a few men to hold the wagon back, we might make it."
Replied his wife, "I'll do the holding back."
She laid a quilt on the ground, and there she placed her infant son in the care of her three-year-old, Roy, and five-year-old, Ada. "Hold little brother 'til papa comes for you," she said. Then positioning herself behind the wagon, Belle Smith grasped the reins of the horse hitched to the back of the rig. Stanford started the team down the hole. The wagon lurched downward. With the first jolt the rear horse fell. Sister Smith raced after him and the wagon, pulling on the lines with all her strength and courage. She soon fell too, and as she was dragged along with the horse, a jagged rock cut a cruel gash in her leg from heel to hip. That gallant woman, with clothes torn and a grievous wound, hung on to those lines with all her might and faith the full length of the incline all the way to the river's edge.
On reaching the bottom and almost in disbelief at their accomplishment, Stanford immediately raced the 2,000 feet (607 m) back up to the top of the cliff, fearful for the welfare of the children. When he climbed over the rim, there he saw them literally unmoved from their position. Carrying the baby, with the other two children clinging to him and to each other, he led them down the rocky crack to their anxious mother below. In the distance they saw five men moving toward them carrying chains and ropes. Realizing the plight the Smiths were in, these men were coming to help. Stanford called out, "Forget it, fellows. We managed fine. Belle here is all the help a fellow needs [to make this journey]."2