The photograph shows archeology, a rock and mortar pestle, from the Dominguez Exploration period. The handiwork of early Spanish explorers who were evidently the first to discover gold-bearing deposits in the Henry Mountains. It was found near Straight Creek on the east flank of Mt. Pennell, Two miles above the gold mine operated early in the nineteenth century. The slab is of igneous rock into which the mortar groove was cut approx. 1×3 feet and the groove is about 4 inches wide and approx. 4 inches deep in the center of the sloping cut. The hand powered pestle was pushed through the groove in the mortar by inserting the thumbs in the end holes with the fingers firmly grasping the ends of the pestle.

The photograph shows an area soon to be flooded by Lake Powell, with Gunsight Butte on left, Navajo Mountain in distance, Dominguez Butte at the right.

According to John C. Fremont, a scientifically-trained government explorer, the old Santa Fe Trail on which the large Spanish caravans or pack trains traveled from San Pedro to Santa Fe in May and October of each year, came across the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas, then to Virgin and Santa Clara Rivers and up to the Mountain Meadows. From there to Parowan Lake, then across the hills easterly to the Sevier River, thence south to the Colorado River. The Milton Gentry “Fremont Ranch,” of the present day, is located on this old Fremont Pass, thus, the name. According to the “Old Timers “, including . C. C. Woodhouse and Doctor John W. Christian, a Spanish trail came down Fremont Pass and across the bench to the Lee Ranch on South Creek, then down “Pot Gut” to the mouth of Birch Creek Canyon, crossing the South Bench (now Jackson County Hill) thence, coming down the Spanish Trail Hollow (The Big Hollow), the only way of getting off the Bench into Beaver Valley proper. The trail crossed North Creek at the John Willden Home-stead entry, then across Last Chance Bench and turned west to go down the hollow where the old Pioneer Road went to Indian Creek, now called Manderfield, thence north.

This is a copy of a Spanish map showing the route of the Dominguez-Escalante party through the American Southwest in 1776, the area later surveyed by the Herbert Gregory expeditions in the early 20th centuries.

Photograph of an illustration in an unidentified publication, artist’s rendition of a party of Spanish explorers in the American Southwest (probably the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776).

The art piece shows a Native American man guiding a White, Catholic priest of some sort through a mountain region.

This is a 1976 Bicentennial Commission Monument. On 13 September 1776 Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Fray Silvestre de Escalante crossed the Green River at about the location of this marker in Jensen, Utah. See also Historical Markers and Monuments: www.uintahbasintah.org.