Saga of the Sanpitch Volume 13, 1981 - Sanpete County

Early traveling was done with a team of horses and a wagon or with a horse and buggy. In the 1920's
the Model T Ford came into use. This was followed by modern cars and an increase from the twenty or
twenty-five mile speed limit to seventy miles, then back to the fifty-five mile-per-hour limit.
Perhaps the first routes from the pioneer homes led up through Fairview, past the Indianola flats into
Salt Lake City by wagon team to the Endowment House for performance of marriages. That early generation
also traveled southward to Manti and to St. George, at the extreme southern end of the state, to help erect
the temples there. Later, many of them went by horse and buggy to these temples to be married.
The wagon ruts or a one-horse track went to many places within the county. The first generation
traveled east and west of the small towns and found farmland, covered with sagebrush, to be homesteaded, a
place where they could build a log cabin, plant grain, alfalfa and potatoes...places like "Manasseh,"
"Johnstown," and "The Farm," close to the hills. Others in this generation bought farm lands and toiled from
daylight to dark to make the lands produce food for their livestock and a living for their families.
Early trails led also into the mountains and to the desert. Men and boys followed small herds of sheep
or cattle to green pastures, tramping the hills, walking miles and miles to care for their flocks.
As the second generation grew, some of them stayed with the farms, some left to pursue other
occupations, but the roadways to the farms were always well traveled. Sometimes trips were made in a wagon
box filled with straw, sometimes in a buggy or on a favorite gentle horse. In winter the bob sleigh was a most
used means of transportation. Whatever the mode of travel, there was always singing of happy songs or
telling of stories and happenings of the day.
These ways may have been designated as the "Work Trails," paths that were traveled day in and day
out, rain or shine, thoroughfares that established patterns of industry and thrift for another generation to
follow.
There were fun highways also, a deviation from the work that was so needful. There were roads that
took young fishermen down the river lane, out to Nine Mile, up Six Mile...other courses that hunters used to
explore the Blue Ridge, Horseshoe, North Fork, Willow Creek, the Blue Slide, the west hills. Eyes shone with
excitement when the deer hunters brought home a six pointer and hung it proudly where all could see it.
There were hikes and picnics, at Easter time and on special Saturdays, to Guard Knoll, the Candland
Ranch, Gunnison Reservoir and Maple Canyon, over dusty trails, through scrub oaks, marshy swamp and rocky
hillsides.
There were trips to basketball and football games, excited cheers for Pep and Rastus as they were
exchanged between Manti and Mt. Pleasant. There were streets where young people marched, playing a
drum, clarinet or cornet in gay parades along the Main Streets of the communities. There were hidden trails
for fun, through the barnyards, over the fences, under the bushes, from one lot to another as neighborhood
children played "run sheep run." Other well marked lines were on a baseball diamond in the pasture lot, or
through tall grass, trodden under the hedges, where busy hands set tables for a little doll's tea.
Dancing was an integral part of life for all generations. Fiddler's Green, Dreamland Hall, Millstream, The
Barn were some of the places where young and old danced until it was strange that the floors didn't give way
under them. Here again, the buggy, the early Model T Ford and later, modern cars traveled the happy roads to
where the crowds were.
In orchards, tall grasses lay flat where young people walked in search of violets in the spring or picked
prunes, greengages and apples in the fall. Footprints led along the picket fence, across the street or up the
block to the neighbor's houses. They followed down the street to the church, where on Sundays families
walked, talked, sang and prayed together.
Along with the work, the fun and the worshipping also came the learning, avenues that directed active
minds to the stories of Gene Stratton Porter, Edgar Allen Poe, Poems of Longfellow, Edna St. Vincent Millay,
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