Pioneer Mill on Temple Fork, Logan Canyon
07/31/2007 09:40 p.m.
I made an extraordinary hike yesterday, up Logan Canyon’s Temple Fork (about 20 miles east of my home in Beaver Dam, “as the crow flies”) to the old pioneer Temple Saw Mill. I’ve known about it for most of my life, and that my Great-great-Grandfather Wight worked there over one-hundred years ago, and that he moved to Canada shortly thereafter. I always thought that the mill was located in the narrow part of Temple Fork near where the Temple Fork Road leaves the Logan Canyon Road (Hwy 89), but in reading a book on Logan Canyon last week, I realized that the mill was located further up the canyon. Since I had yesterday free, and it was fresh on my mind, I went there.

It was surprisingly cool yesterday morning. Sometimes the 24th of July really does mark a difference in weather (cooler nights, a chance of thunderstorms). When I got up at 6:00, it was almost chilly in just a shirt and shorts. And it was even cooler up the canyon. I was surprised at how many mobile homes, trailers, and large boats were going up the canyon on an early Monday morning--I suppose they were vacationers bound for Bear Lake. When I got to Temple Fork, I stopped and read the monument and looked at the Forest Service information posted at the turn of. It said that the mill was about 4 miles up the canyon and that the trail head was about 3 miles up the canyon--I thought “easy walk!” But as I drove up the (much improved) road it forked about one mile up; about where the narrow part widens out into the broad open rolling incline that forms most of the Temple Fork area. I just followed the main road, the south fork, thinking I’d come to the trail head. I went far enough that I reached a summit and could see over toward Old Ephraim’s Grave (the Scout’s monument for last grizzly bear killed in our area back in the 1920’s), and by the odometer I’d already gone well over four miles, so I turned around and went back down, passing a cowboy on horseback as I went down. He had a whole pack of dogs running around him and his horse. I waved, but he wasn’t friendly which might have meant that he wasn’t a real cowboy, just someone up riding.

I got back to the fork in the road and took the north fork which went immediately to a well established trail head. I could see some trailers (They looked like they were from cattlemen--there were cows in the area.), and even a rough corral. Before I got to them, I saw the sign that said “Mill Trailhead,” and I thought, “Clear down here, maybe I was right about the mill before.” I parked, got my pack, and headed up the trail.

It followed the north side of the creek (Spawn Creek, Temple Fork Creek) and though it was a narrow foot trail, it looked like it ran along an old road. Like most of Utah in July it was dry and dusty. The dirt was that brownish-red color of so much of the upper plateau areas of the Northern Wasatch, and there was grass, dry grass, sagebrush, wild geraniums, a couple kinds of asters, some thistles and other dry-land plants. Just feet away, near the creek, there was moist green grass, some sparse willows and other water-loving plants (even yellow monkey flowers). It made for varied and interesting botany, anyway. Only a few yards eastward, the trail went into a rather narrow gorge-like passage, the rocky ledges to the South were obviously that same limestone that’s found in Logan Canyon. After the gorge the creek went through rather wide open, real Temple Fork looking terrain. Here in this wide open area there was a family camped in a tent and fishing. We acknowledged each other’s presence with a wave, but nothing more. There were also two rather new well-constructed bridges along this part of the trail. I actually thought that the first one was the main trail and crossed it and went up that trail for several hundred feet but changed my mind and came back down to the creek; after all, the mill had to be on the creek and near good timber--which I had seen off to the northeast as I had driven on the southern portion of the Temple Fork Road earlier.

About this point I saw that the creek had been straightened and channeled and wondered if it was the “mill race,” but no. Really, I had gone close to a couple of miles, that must make it close to 4 miles, surely it was here close, but the trail simply went on east-north-east up along the north side of the creek and upon what really did look like an old road. I had been hiking about forty-five minutes.

Again the trail passed into a canyon-like narrow area with the trail somewhat elevated on the north side, and the creek flowing in the bottom. The creek was even clearer here and only a few yards up the “canyon,” it was bordered with beautiful, healthy narrow-leaf cottonwood trees. I note “healthy,” because so often wild cottonwood trees are half-dead, broken, and in various states of decay, but these were really “picture perfect” and the creek here too was rocky, its banks green with fresh grass. “I would camp here,” was my thought. And some June I just might. This type of trail and canyon continued for several more hundred yards and I noted the thick dense stand of Douglas Fir on the north slope to my right.

Where the creek forked--one to the north, one to the south east-- there was a little raised triangle of land. It was here I found the mill monument, a few bent rusty narrow-gage rails, a couple of other rusted old parts of the mill works, the place where the mill race had run, and a wooden corner constructed of two-inch lapped boards still standing by the southern creek. It was also obvious that the dirt there had plenty of old saw dust mixed in and even old charcoal, no doubt from the burned down mill. One-hundred thirty years had passed since the mill’s establishment.

There were no ghosts. Sometimes old places have strong spirits, I certainly have felt them many times, but this was a mountain place somehow put to rest. I thought of those who had worked there. Especially about how life would have been in the cold snows of winter. I wondered about Great-great grandfather there with his teenage wife, while Grandma Mary with her crippled leg from the Willy Handcart difficulties was living no doubt much more comfortably with the family in Brigham City. Was he there on a Church calling? Was he there simply out of choice? What was he like? What was their life like? What was their polygamist marriage like--I don’t think his and Grandma Mary’s was very good. I wandered around for about a half-hour looking for some small metallic token to take back with me. I found something that looked like an old can, except that the rolled edge wasn’t like a can. I only took a fragment, and with it a piece of glass old enough to have the “rainbows” on it, a chunk of charcoal, something else melted, and a Douglas Fir cone. After all, it was the “red pine,” Douglas Fir, that had brought them here.

The hike back down was of course reciprocal, though with familiarity I watched anxiously for the beautiful Cottonwood Islands. And much sooner than I had expected, I emerged out into the open Temple Fork portion of the trail. The family was still there fishing, their truck still parked to the south up on the main road. Part way down I stopped for a drink (the stream looked much more satisfying than my water bottle) and even ate some apple sauce I had brought along. The creek there had been “improved” by adding logs to make little pools for the fish. There were a couple of beaver dams, though they didn’t look lived in. I saw two five-inch trout facing up stream; the movement of their tails was almost not perceivable.

Such clear water, such a very typical Wasatch Mountain landscape: like I’ve seen hundreds of times in my life, it was comfortable; it was a gift of my home. It was a gift of God, passed on to me by those very pioneers who had built the mill. Their blood was literally in me; I was seeing, unchanged, much of what they too had seen. Yes, one-hundred thirty years later, this was still life in the west, and I loved it.

I am currently Reflective
I am listening to The blowing of the air conditioner