Old Spanish Trail

For twenty years mule trains carried Santa Fe's woolens to Los Angeles and horses back east along the Old Spanish Trail, watering at the spring the traders called San Jose — the reason a town would later rise here at Enoch. Nothing wheeled had crossed it until May 1848, when twenty-five Mormon Battalion men coming home from California, piloted by Porter Rockwell and James Shaw, hacked the western half into a wagon road. Fifty wagons rolled west that fall, and the pack trail became the Southern California Emigrant Route. Boy Scouts raised this marker to the crossing in 1948.

What the plaque says

The first wagon over the Old Spanish Trail came into Iron County, Utah, May 15, 1848, with 25 Mormon Battalion men returning from California under Captain Henry G. Boyle. Piloted by Porter Rockwell & James Shaw, they converted the western half of the old pack trail into a road over which 50 wagons went westward in the fall of 1848. The old trail was thereafter known as the Southern California Emigrant Route Spanish Trail Association May 15, 1948.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Parowan Gap Petroglyphs — 7.0 mi
  An ancient rock art gallery hidden in a desert canyon
• Brian Head — 12 mi
  Utah's highest town — a ski-and-bike base camp at the top of Parowan Canyon
• Cedar Breaks National Monument — 14 mi
  A 2,000-foot-deep amphitheater of vivid orange and red rock
• Panguitch Lake — 22 mi
  A Blue Ribbon trout lake at 8,400 feet on the Patchwork Parkway

More markers nearby

• Johnson's Fort — 0.8 mi
• Enoch Schoolhouse & Tithing Office — 1.1 mi
• Pioneer Cabin — 5.3 mi
• Deseret Iron Works (2) Markers — 5.6 mi