Temple Timber Trail

A temple needs wood, a million board feet, and the desert around St. George had none worth cutting. So they went to the mountains. Pine Valley timber was already spoken for, sold to mining towns that paid cash, so in 1874 crews cut a road south to Mount Trumbull, a forested height eighty miles off on the Arizona Strip, and built a sawmill there. For years the wagons ran a steady line across that hard country, hauling hand-hewn beams to the rising walls. This trail remembers that haul: the long, dusty distance between a forest and a temple.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm — 7.0 mi
  Real dinosaur footprints preserved in ancient sandstone
• Snow Canyon State Park — 9.1 mi
  Red and white sandstone cliffs with ancient lava flows
• Hurricane Canal Trail — 13 mi
  The hand-dug canal that built Hurricane, now a walking trail blasted into the Virgin River gorge
• Grafton Ghost Town — 24 mi
  A photogenic ghost town used in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

More markers nearby

• Lucy Bigelow Young — 4.7 mi
• The Temple Quarry — 6.0 mi
• Monument to Harrisburg Pioneers — 8.2 mi
• Santa Clara Heritage Monument — 8.2 mi