The Tunnel Builders

Water was the whole problem, and the settlers who took up land on the Muddy northeast of Emery answered it with four years of brutal hand labor. From 1885 to 1889 they bored a tunnel twelve hundred feet through blue slate rock — pick, shovel, and blasting powder their only tools — hauling out the spoil in a two-wheeled cart and hoisting it from three sunk shafts in wooden buckets pulled by horses. They lived in dugouts along the creek while they worked. The tunnel finally brought the town its water; the marker on Highway 10 remembers the cost.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Manti-La Sal National Forest — 27 mi
  Alpine peaks rising above red rock desert
• Palisade State Park — 30 mi
  A pioneer-built lake turned central Utah's favorite state park
• Manti — 32 mi
  Sanpete's first settlement, crowned by an 1888 oolite temple
• Manti Temple — 32 mi
  A striking pioneer-era temple crowning a hilltop above the Sanpete Valley

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church of Manti — 31 mi
• Manti Carnegie Library — 32 mi
• Manti Bell Tower — 32 mi
• Manti City Hall — 32 mi