Utah's Scenic Byway 12 northern junction ends at Scenic Byway 24, which runs through Capitol Reef National Park. We stopped to enjoy a picnic lunch in a peaceful valley beside the Fremont River in the historic district of Fruita.  Settled in 1879, this small self-sufficient Mormon community was home to just ten families who planted crops and orchards of fruit trees. Their descendants lived quietly in the sheltered valley until 1959 when Fruita was merged into Capitol Reef National Park. In the spring, visitors can still pick ripe fruit from Fruita orchards.

Here and there, the grassy picnic area was shaded by towering cottonwood trees with gnarled, twisted bark. One of these massive trees was known as the "Mail Tree," for under its branches mail was collected for the community. With a trunk diameter of 2-3 feet, Fremont cottonwood trees grow up to 90 feet tall and can live for 150 years. They grow near streams and rivers.

Long before the community of Fruita was settled, this lovely valley was home to a native people group now known as the Fremont. Like the Ancestral Puebloans, the Fremont lived in pit houses, hunted, and farmed. They made distinctive tightly woven baskets and wore leather moccasins, unlike the Ancestral Puebloans who wore sandals made from yucca fiber. The Fremont culture disappeared after 1300 AD, but numerous small clay figurines and rock art remain. Several panels of petroglyphs are carved into the sheer rock face in the Fremont river valley.

​Petroglyphs are images that are carved or pecked into a rock surface, whereas pictographs are painted. The Fremont petroglyphs depict a variety of human-like figures, animals, abstract designs and geometric shapes. The human-like figures are ornately decorated.

There are dozens of petroglyphs on these rock panels. Some are easier to see than others, but the more I looked, the more I saw. I could imagine Fremont mothers and fathers playing a game of I Spy with their children as they gazed at the pictures etched in stone that decorated their river valley home.

The next stop on our tour through Utah would take us to a dusty valley with fantastic rock sculptures that were carved by the mighty hand of One Who uses the forces of nature to leave His mark on His world, so that people can gaze and wonder, and perhaps seek to know Him.

This is the second in a series of posts about my visit through parts of Arizona and Utah.

The next day, we left the Sonoran Desert behind and traveled north from Phoenix, towards Sedona, stopping along the way at a National Monument, which gave us a view back to a time long ago.

Life in the Middle Ages was complicated. From 1100 - 1400 AD in the Old World, popes and emperors struggled for power,  crusades and wars were fought, cathedrals and universities were built, and commerce expanded to the Far East. But long before Columbus set foot in the New World, scattered people groups roamed the North American continent and lived relatively simple lives. One such people group settled for a time in the green valley along the Verde River in the area that later became central Arizona. Historians call these native people the Southern Sinagua.

The Sinagua were mainly farmers, hunters and gatherers. There is evidence that they traded with their neighbors to the north and east, and as far south as Mexico. They built small structures and pueblos on hilltops or in cliff alcoves. Although by 1400, the Southern Sinagua had abandoned their pueblos, some remains of their homes still stand, including an imposing building that early American settlers of the 1860s called Montezuma's Castle.

This stone and mortar masonry structure looms 100 feet above Beaver Creek in a limestone cliff alcove. It was built five stories high and had multiple rooms that housed many families. Entrance into the dwelling was via portable ladders. Although the castle is deteriorating, it still stands after 700 years, sheltered in the mountain and partially protected from erosion and the effects of time, and the annual flooding of the creek during the summer monsoon season.

This prehistoric apartment-like dwelling is one of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in North America. It was constructed from native materials beginning around 1125 AD and expanded until the population peaked around 1300 AD. Materials used were readily available - limestone chunks, mud and clay from the creek bed, and beams made from native sycamore trees. There was a larger dwelling nearby in the same cliff, but only its stone foundations are left after its artifacts were excavated. Numerous caves that dot the cliff were also part of the complex.

Meanwhile in the Old World another grand building was being constructed during the same time frame - The Notre-Dame in Paris. This famous cathedral was built from 1163-1345 AD and stands twice as tall as Montezuma's Castle. It has stood 700 years towering above the Seine River in France. The Notre-Dame was a complex structure for a complex civilization. Montezuma's Castle was a simpler dwelling place for a simpler civilization. And both remain as historic remnants of another age once upon time.

Thanks for stopping by for a look at the view! Next stop - Sedona.
In case you missed the first stop, click here.
​~Debbie

On a windy March morning during Spring Break, my husband and I decided to drive out to a site that I'd heard about but had never visited - Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island north of Jacksonville, Florida. Even now, the plantation seems remote and secluded. I can only imagine what it must have been like over 200 years ago. The main house was built just a few years before 1800 and is the oldest surviving plantation house in the state of Florida. Since 1991, it has been part of the National Parks Service. At one time the plantation was 1000 acres; today the park encompasses 60 acres.

The main house is only open for tours on the weekend, but we walked through the kitchen house and peeked in the windows of the house. The kitchen house was probably added during the 1820s and has floors made of tabby, a concrete like building material made by burning oyster shells to create lime, and mixing it with sand, water, ash, and oyster shell fragments. Over time, the roughness of the tabby became smoother as it was walked on. I imagine it would be quite uncomfortable to walk on without shoes! In the above picture, the kitchen house is connected to the main house by a covered walkway. Anna and her children lived on the second floor of the kitchen house.  

The Kingsley family lived on Fort George for 25 years. An unusual aspect of the Kingsley household was that it was polygamous. Kingsley had children with three other slave women who were treated as co-wives and later granted their freedom, but Anna was the matriarch of the family. He was proud of his multiracial family and believed that society should be modeled after the Spanish three-tier system of white landowners, slaves, and freed blacks.

There were 60 slaves that worked the plantation on Fort George Island. Besides farming, Kingsley trained his slaves in carpentry, blacksmithing, and cotton ginning. They labored under a task system where each slave had a quota of work to be accomplished. When they finished their tasks, they were free to do as they pleased, usually tending their individual gardens, fishing, and even selling their produce. It seems that Kingsley was a more lenient slave holder than some. Thirty two slave cabins were constructed out of tabby and were arranged in a semicircular arc within view of the main house, an arrangement that was unique among the plantations of that era. Each cabin had two rooms, one with a fireplace, and a sleeping loft. Today, these remains are some of the best examples of the use of tabby as a construction material.

Because of increasingly restrictive racial laws leading up to the Civil War, Zephaniah Kingsley sold his plantation and moved with his family and slaves to Haiti in 1839. The plantation on Fort George Island changed ownership several times until 1955 when the Florida Park Service acquired most of Fort George Island, including the plantation grounds and called it Kingsley Plantation State Historic Site. 
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Today the plantation grounds are forested where fields and gardens were once cultivated. Ancient oak trees draped in Spanish moss keep watch over the remains of the slave cabins. Scattered wild flowers add to the quiet dignity of the area. They whisper of the people who lived, labored, and loved here long ago.

We enjoyed our visit to Kingsley Plantation and learned more about the people whose influence still lingers here, in the area where we live.

Thanks for stopping by!

​~Debbie