Behunin Cabin

The Behunin cabin measures thirteen feet by sixteen and a half — one sandstone room for a family of fifteen. When Elijah Cutler and Tabitha Jane Behunin homesteaded this bend of the Fremont River in 1883, only the parents and youngest children slept inside; the older boys took a sandstone alcove, the older girls a covered wagon box. Flash floods wrecked the crops within a year and the family moved on — first to Caineville, later back to Fruita, where a daughter married Nels Johnson, its first settler. The park keeps it as its most intact settler home.

What the plaque says

The modest home before you stands as a reminder of the hardships of early settlers. The desire to exercise religious freedom and create new self-sufficient communities ultimately led many Mormon settlers to the remote part of Utah. This one-room cabin was built in 1882 by Elijah Cutler Behunin and his family. They were some of the earliest pioneers to attempt to establish homesteads in the Capitol Reef area. Homesteading in the rugged, unforgiving landscape brought constant challenges. Isolation and rigorous work allowed little opportunity for socializing with other settlers. The same desert climate that provided fine growing conditions for crops also brought summer thunderstorms and frequent flash floods. Torrential floodwaters often covered wagon roads with boulders and plant debris, and regularly obliterated diversion dams and ditches. Repairs were always needed. Within a year of building this cabin, the Behunin family moved away in search of a more suitable location. Repeated floods on the Fremont River had quickly ruined their irrigation system and washed out their crops. They eventually moved up-canyon to the higher ground of Fruita, becoming one of the first families to settle in that area. Would you survive in this environment? Is this place even suitable for human settlement? In some cases, wild landscapes such as this may be more suited to, and have more value as, a preserved wild space than a place to be “harnessed” for human use.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hickman Bridge Trail — 3.3 mi
  A natural stone bridge framing Capitol Reefs layered cliffs
• Gifford Homestead — 4.2 mi
  A pioneer homestead famous for its fresh-baked pies
• Fruita Historic District — 4.2 mi
  A pioneer orchard oasis in the red-rock heart of Capitol Reef.
• Capitol Reef National Park — 4.2 mi
  Utah's most underrated national park — a 100-mile wrinkle in the Earth

More markers nearby

• Images in Stone — 3.9 mi
• Fruita Schoolhouse — 4.3 mi
• Caineville — 8.2 mi
• First Public Building — 17 mi