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Pipe Spring
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Glimpses of Our National Monuments PIPE SPRING NATIONAL MONUMENT |
Ruins of old stone fort at Pipe spring.
Pipe Spring is famous in Utah and Arizona history. In 1858 William Hamblin was sent by President Brigham Young, of the Mormon Church, to visit the Hopi Indians in northern Arizona. His party consisted of 10, including a Piute Indian guide, and, so the story goes, they camped by a marvelous spring in the midst of the desert. Hamblin was a noted rifle shot and the conversation turned on the question of marksmanship. A wager was made that he could not shoot a hole through a handkerchief at 20 yards. Hamblin fired several shots at the square of silk hung by the upper two corners, but the force of the bullet only swept the handkerchief back without penetrating it. Stung by his failure and his friend's laughing remark that he could not shoot straight, Hamblin declared that if he would stick his pipe up as a target he would shoot the bottom out without breaking the bowl. Up went the pipe and crack the rifle. Hamblin made good his word and from that time on the spring has been called Pipe Spring.
The monument, about 40 acres in extent, was created May 31, 1923, to preserve the ruined old stone fort, a relic of pioneer days. In the early sixties the Mormons established a cattle ranch here, and the fort was erected as a protection against marauding Indians. It consisted of two houses of two stories each, built facing each other across a courtyard which was closed at both ends by heavy double gates. The spring came up in the courtyard and flowed out through the lower of the two houses through a stone-paved room.
In the heart of the desert, Pipe Spring, with its wonderful spring of cold, pure water flowing at the rate of over 100,000 gallons a day, its great cottonwoods affording abundant shade and associations of early western pioneer life, is a refreshing oasis and scenic accent on the way of the main-traveled road between Zion's colorful canyon and the mighty chasm of the Colorado.
Charles Leonard Heaton, whose address is Moccasin, Ariz., is custodian of Pipe Spring Monument, and resides within the reservation.
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Last Modified: Thurs, Oct 19 2000 10:00:00 pm PDT
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/glimpses2/glimpses24.htm
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