History

Native Americans and Mormon settlers are part of the history of Bryce Canyon.

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History Details

The land currently occupied by Bryce Canyon National Park has been inhabited by humans for at least 10,000 years, including by Anasazi and Fremont culture peoples and later by the Paiute tribe. It was the Paiutes who developed the mythology around the "hoodoos" of the Bryce Amphitheater, which they believed to be the remnants of the "Legend People" who were turned to stone by the trickster spirit Coyote. Mormon scouts were among the first Europeans to visit this remote part of Utah in the mid 1800s, and the famous scientific expedition led by U.S. Army Major John Wesley Powell surveyed the Bryce Canyon area in 1872. Mormons and cattle ranchers were among the first settlers in the region, establishing towns and ranches along the Paria River; among the former was the Bryce family, who lived immediately below the Bryce Amphitheater. (Ebenezer Bryce, who grazed his cattle on land that's now part of the park, said that the hoodoo filled Amphitheater was a "helluva place to lose a cow.") Drought drove many of these early settlers away from the area, including the Bryce family, but the scenic wonders of Bryce Canyon would not remain hidden for long: railroad magazines and conservationists promoted the beauty of the Bryce Amphitheater in the early decades of the 20th century, and the first tourist facilities were built. Still, visitation remained modest even as concerns piled up about the impact of grazing and logging were having on the Bryce Plateau. That led to a campaign to have Bryce Canyon designated as a park, a wish that was fulfilled when President Warren G. Harding established Bryce Canyon National Monument in 1923. Roads and the Bryce Canyon Lodge were built soon thereafter, and with the addition of more land Bryce Canyon was upgraded from a National Monument to a National Park in 1928. The Rim Road was built in 1934, and further land acquisition in the 1930s and 1940s brought the park up to its current size of 35,835 acres.

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