Cables from the Rim
Barely visible on the canyon rim are the ruins of a cableworks from the early 1900s. Mormon pioneers in the Zion area needed lumber for construction, but the good timber - ponderosa pine - was out of reach on the mesa above. Settlers had to haul lumber by wagon from as far away as Arizona's Kaibab Forest, a two-week trip.
In 1900 Springdale resident David Flanigan began looping 50,000 feet of telegraph wire through a series of drums and pulleys in the cableworks above and down to a second framework on the mound behind you.
When the cable system was completed, boards could travel down from the clifftop in 2½ minutes - not two weeks. With the cable operation modern building began in Zion. The park's original lodge and cabins, and many of the buildings in Springdale, made use of lumber lowered from the canyon rim.
Courtesy hmdb.org
