July 29th-1
Vernal Utah to Cedar City Utah via HELPER Utah( 350 miles & 5.5 hours give or take)
Significance of the place
Towards the last stop on our way back home (Las Vegas) but John & Helen had to go on to Palm Springs where they live.. It was a long drive and we had to stop for the night.
Brief History:
Helper is a city in Carbon County, Utah, United States, about 110 miles (180 km) southeast of Salt Lake City and 7 miles (11 km) northwest of the city of Price. Helper is situated at the mouth of Price Canyon, alongside the Price River, on the eastern side of the Wasatch Plateau in Central Utah. Trains traveling westward from the Price side to the Salt Lake City side of the plateau required additional "helper" engines in order to make the steep (2.4% grade) 15-mile (24 km) climb up Price Canyon to the town of Soldier Summit. Helper was named after these helper engines, which the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad stationed in the city.
Cedar City is a city in southeastern Iron County, Utah, United States, 250 miles (400 km) south of Salt Lake City, and 170 miles (270 km) north of Las Vegas on Interstate 15. It is the home of Southern Utah University, the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Utah Summer Games, the Neil Simon Theatre Festival, and other events. As of the 2010 census the city had a population of 28,857,[4] up from 20,257 in 2000. As of 2016 the estimated population was 31,223. The presence of prehistoric people in the Cedar City area is revealed by rock art found in Parowan Gap to the north and Fremont sites dated to A.D. 1000 and 1300. Ancestors of the present-day Southern Paiute people met the Dominguez–Escalante expedition in this area in 1776. Fifty years later, in 1826, mountain man and fur trader Jedediah Smith traveled through the area exploring a route from Utah to California. Cedar City was originally settled in late 1851 by Mormon pioneers originating from Parowan, Utah, who were sent to build an iron works. The site, known as "Fort Cedar" or "Cedar City", was equidistant from vast iron deposits 10 miles (16 km) west and coal resources 10 miles (16 km) east up Cedar Canyon, but was named after the abundant local trees (which are actually junipers instead of cedar). Two companies of men led by Henry Lunt reached the fort site in a blizzard on November 11, 1851, making that date the official founding. In 1855, a new site, closer to the iron works and out of the flood plain of Coal Creek,[6] was established at the suggestion of Brigham Young; present-day Cedar City is located at this site. Cedar City was incorporated on February 18, 1868.
Drive there:
The drive there was interesting until we came down from the mountains. We came into flat featureless country with land covered by chaparral. But on our way to Cedar City we came through a small town called Helper which was so interesting that we stopped for an hour.
What we did:
We walked around Main Street for an hour. It was almost deserted - being Sunday morning of course. We drove on to Cedar City.
Impressions:
The best experience of the day was discovering the town of Helper. Main Street is just as if one is suddenly dropped into the 1940s-1950s. We took a lot of pictures - a hidden gem in Utah.
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