The “Legend People” lived here.

 Northeast of Zion National Park is another area of unusual geographic significance. A Paiute Indian once said “Before there were any Indians, The Legend People, To-when-an-ung-wa, lived in that place.”

Paiute Indians inhabited this region for hundreds of years before the arrival of European Americans. A sacred oral tradition of the Paiutes states that the hoodoos are ancient “Legend People”  turned into stone by Coyote as a punishment for bad deeds.


Scottish-born Ebenezer Bryce apprenticed as a shipwright. In 1850, the 18-year-old converted to Mormonism, moved to Utah, and married Mary Ann Park. At the direction of church officials, the Bryces became serial homesteaders - moving from place to place helping to establish communities. Settling near Tropic, UT in 1876, Bryce built a road into an adjacent amphitheater to harvest timber; locals began calling it “Bryce’s Canyon”. In 1880 they moved again, leaving behind the name that would be immortalized in 1928 with the establishment of Bryce Canyon National Park. In all, the couple pioneered 12 locations in Utah and Arizona, and managed to raise 12 children to adulthood!

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On our first morning in Bryce, we rented a UTV and took a drive to the edge of the canyon (it really is an amphitheater and not a canyon), and afterwards spent another 45 minutes riding through the fields and woods that border its perimeter.  In a wooded area we came across a small herd of Pronghorn (neither an antelope or a deer). They weren’t phased by us at all.







In the afternoon, we drove the entire 18 mile length of the Bryce Park road out to Rainbow Point, stopping at a number of pull-outs along the way to admire the view and take some pictures.









In the evening we attended a dinner and country music show at Ebenezer’s featuring the Bryce Canyon Wranglers.




On our last day we hiked the Hoodoos along the trail to Mossy Cave, featuring a beautiful waterfall and more scenery along the Tropic Ditch, a canal built by pioneers from 1890-1892 to provide water to the semi-arid valley below. Except for a severe drought in 2002, the water has flowed continuously for over a century, benefiting the residents in and around the town of Tropic.





















That afternoon we hiked again, this time from Sunrise Point to Sunset Point along the Bryce Park Road.








Next, heading further east.

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