The Wild and Beautiful San Rafael Swell

The San Rafael Swell has a 75 x 40 mile giant dome of sandstone, shale and limestone along with a lot of interesting geology to explore. It’s surrounded by mesas, buttes, canyons and gorges which make it great for hiking, rock hunting, and photography.

Although there’s supposed to be a lot of wildlife, all we saw was one coyote, birds, lizards, and a few antelope.  Since there wasn’t much wildlife to watch, we had fun hunting for rocks, taking photos, hiking through washes and into canyons, and visiting an old historic ranch.

To my great surprise, the swell is full of history as well. The Old Spanish Trail crossed it in the 1800’s and was a major trade route between Santa Fe and Los Angeles.

In addition to the Spanish, ancient Indians and Mormon pioneers traveled the area as well as John C. Fremont, Orson Pratt, and John Wesley Powell. There isn’t really anything left to see from that era, but it’s interesting to think that others from so long ago walked the same trails as us.

We also found the remains of the Transcontinental Railroad Grade built by Chinese workers in the 1800’s. They were only paid a little over a dollar a day for their work. Much of the railroad grade was chiseled from hard Limestone. I can’t begin to imagine how much work it was for them with no power saws or bulldozers to use. The grade goes on for many, many miles through the unforgiving desert.

The weather in the Swell is extreme. It’s hot and windy at times, and brutally cold at others.  And there are bugs and lizards to deal with too. It must have been a very trying time and very exhausting work!

The Chinese workers used limestone to build huts to live in, and some of them are still remaining. We drove down the grade and found some of their dwellings in the gulch. It would have been a hard life for these workers.

We drove on the grade for many miles in the shadow of Cedar Mountain.

It’s a huge mountain with giant boulders strung below the cliffs. Indian rock art and pioneer writings can be found on the boulders. The dates of the pioneer inscriptions suggest that they were probably railroad workers too or maybe ranchers running cattle there.

The view from the base of Cedar Mountain is incredible. You can look out into the horizon and see what seems like forever!

In the swell we also found the Morrison Knudsen Tunnels. In 1948 the US Department of Defense hired local Utah contractors to drill through the Navajo Sandstone mountainside.  The project was top secret and employees didn’t know what the government was doing. They were performing a series of tests using surface explosives. I would really like to know their motives! The tunnels can still be seen in the hillsides.

It was so remote and rugged that we didn’t see a single car in over 24 hours! The wind howled hard and threw dirt in our eyes. We camped above a big canyon where the wind howled all night long.

I had just finished reading a book on Indian legend that was quite frightening, so knowing that the canyon below us was rich in petroglyphs and obviously an ancient Indian dwelling place made the sounds coming from that dark canyon at night a little freaky. I was awakened several times in the night by strange sounds that got my imagination going!

The next day it was time to head home, but it was hard to leave with so many unexplored places we wished he had time to see. We finally surrendered and headed home. But, we’ll be back. It was really an amazing trip and we had a great time!