Moab, Utah

Moab is a regional center of southeastern Utah. The county seat of Grand County, it is in a valley near the east bank of the Colorado River on the west side of the 12,500-foot-high La Sal Mountains. It is also identified as Grand Valley, Spanish Valley, and Mormon Fort. The biblical name Moab was adopted in 1880 when a mail route was established between Salina, Utah, and Ouray, Colorado. The name Moab comes from a mountainous strip of land in Jordan that runs along the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The first stable settlers arrived in 1878–1879. Before that date, Native Americans, including the Sabuagana Utes, had long occupied the valley and used the nearby crossing of the Colorado River.

The Moab area had a long and colorful history, even before settlement. Late in 1765, Juan Maria Antonio de Rivera reached the Moab area with an expedition sent north from New Mexico to investigate the land on both sides of the Colorado River. Although other New Mexican traders had almost certainly used the crossing, their travels had gone unrecorded. It was not until 1830, when the Spanish Trail was opened between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Los Angeles, California, that the river crossing became of great importance.

Mormon leaders called 41 men in April 1855 to establish the Elk Mountain Mission at present-day Moab to control the crossing of the Colorado River. They were also to carry out missionary work among the Indians of southeastern Utah, but the excursion was ineffective. The group traveled from Sanpete Valley along the Old Spanish Trail. They crossed the Colorado River in mid-June and commenced construction of a rock fort. They remained until late September 1855, at which time they returned to Sanpete Valley after Indian attacks destroyed their crops and left three men dead.

Mapmakers and geologists came to the area from the 1850s through the 1870s and recorded what they observed. John Wesley Powell was inspired by their words and visited the area. Prospectors came into the area looking for gold in the 1870s. Permanent settlers returned to Moab to establish farms and ranches in 1878. A Mormon ward and a community school were established in 1881 as the community evolved. Construction of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad between Denver and Salt Lake City brought the railroad to within 35 miles of Moab at Thompson Springs, supplying a much-desired railroad connection.

[Page 462]A ferry across the Colorado River was in operation by 1885. Butch Cassidy once boarded the old Moab Ferry by force and took it across the Colorado River when he was fleeing from the scene of his first bank robbery in Telluride, Colorado. A three-span steel bridge, the first bridge across the Colorado, was completed in 1912. Moab had developed as one of Utah's premium fruit-growing areas in the first decade of the 20th century, producing peaches, apples, and grapes. The town became the county seat when Grand County was created from portions of Emery and Uintah Counties in 1890. Moab was incorporated as a town in January 1903 and became a third-class city in December 1936.

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