Ashley Gorge: A History of Use and Stewardship

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Angela Hawkins, Uintah County

Ashley Gorge is as beautiful as it is important. For centuries, the landscape surrounding Ashley Creek has been a place of both form and function; providing water, food, shelter, a route through the landscape and, eventually, recreation. The people who have relied upon it and the ways they have used it have changed, but the relationship between the land, the water and the people of Ashley Valley has endured.

Fremont petroglyphs at McConkie Ranch, Dry Fork, Vernal, Utah
Long before modern settlement, Fremont people lived and farmed throughout this region. In an arid landscape, the year-round water of Ashley Creek would have been an important resource. Later came explorers and trappers. The Domínguez-Escalante expedition traveled through Ashley Valley in 1776, and William H. Ashley entered the area during a trapping expedition in 1825, eventually leaving his name on the creek and valley.

By the 1870s, that relationship with Ashley Creek was becoming increasingly agricultural. Bureau of Reclamation histories identify Pardon Dodds as the first white settler in Ashley Valley and the first to use Ashley Creek for irrigation. 

Pardon Dodd and Wife with first cabin. Photo by Leo Thorne

Dodds established his ranch in 1873, and by 1874 water from the creek was being diverted through a ditch to irrigate his land. Five years later, area farmers joined together to build the Ashley Central Canal. Water from Ashley Creek was becoming not simply a feature of the landscape, but part of the foundation upon which a growing community depended.

Water Shapes a Valley

That dependence only grew as Ashley Valley did. In the middle of the 20th century, the Bureau of Reclamation began development of the Vernal Unit of the Central Utah Project, creating a larger system to store and distribute water from Ashley Creek. Fort Thornburgh Diversion Dam, the Steinaker Feeder Canal, Steinaker Reservoir and the Steinaker Service Canal became part of an interconnected system that helped support homes, farms and communities throughout the valley.

Steinakar Feeder Canal, 1968 Permission by Bureau of Reclamation

The infrastructure changed the way water moved through Ashley Valley, but it did not change something much more fundamental: this is an arid place, and water is precious. Ashley Springs is part of a complex and sensitive groundwater system that supplies drinking water to the community. Protecting the springs means understanding not only what can be seen at the surface, but the underground karst system through which water can travel.

Uintah County recognized the importance of that resource through the establishment of the Ashley Springs Protection Zone, intended to protect the geologically and environmentally sensitive area and the water associated with it. It was an acknowledgment of something generations of people in Ashley Valley had understood in different ways: what happens on this landscape can affect the water on which the community depends. That responsibility took on another dimension in 2019.

A Place to Protect and a Place to Experience

Congress passed the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act in 2019, and directed approximately 790 acres of the Ashley Springs property to be conveyed to Uintah County. The Bureau of Land Management completed the conveyance the following year. The transfer entrusted the County with an extraordinary piece of public land and clear responsibilities for its future.

Former BLM Utah Director Greg Sheehan signs patent for conveyance. 

Congress required the property to remain open space and be managed to protect the watershed, underground karst system and aquifer. Mining and mineral development are prohibited, as is the construction of new roads on the conveyed property. At the same time, the law requires Uintah County to allow access for non-motorized public recreation.

Congress did not ask the County to choose between protecting Ashley Springs and allowing people to experience the land surrounding it. It required both. That creates another opportunity: helping visitors understand what they are being asked to protect.

A visitor viewing Ashley Creek may see a beautiful mountain stream without realizing that the landscape around it is part of a system that provides drinking water to the community. Recreation gives us an opportunity to make that connection visible. To educate where our water comes from, why the watershed matters and how simple choices such as staying on designated routes, respecting closures and properly disposing of waste help protect it.

Utah already has a powerful example of recreation and watershed protection existing side by side. Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons host an estimated 5 million recreational visits each year while also providing a significant share of the drinking water used along the Wasatch Front. People ski, hike, climb and cycle in a protected watershed, while regulations, infrastructure and public education help safeguard the water flowing from it.

Big Cottonwood Canyon, Uinta-Wasatch-Cache Photo by US Forest Service

There is a lesson in that balance for Ashley Gorge. Protecting water and providing recreation are not inherently at odds, but doing both well requires thoughtful management and an informed public. The more people understand where their water comes from and why the landscape around it matters, the better equipped they are to help care for it. In that sense, Ashley Gorge offers more than an opportunity to recreate. It offers an opportunity to build better stewards of the resource itself.

Why Being Outside Matters

There are easy ways to quantify some of the value of outdoor recreation. Visitors stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, purchase fuel, shop in local businesses and spend money in the communities they visit. For rural communities looking to strengthen and diversify their economies, those dollars matter.

McCoy Flat Bike Riding Photo by Bob Wick for BLM

Not everything valuable about the outdoors can be measured in dollars. Access to our beautiful part of this world is important to residents of Uintah County as outdoor recreation provides residents with a better quality of life. Time outside gives us opportunities to move our bodies, disconnect from daily distractions and spend meaningful time with other people. It can also ask something of us. A steep trail, an unfamiliar route or a view from a height we aren't entirely comfortable with can force us to test the boundaries we have quietly set for ourselves. 

That challenge is part of the value. There is a particular satisfaction in looking back across a stretch of trail or canyon and realizing that something that felt intimidating an hour earlier is now behind you. Outdoor recreation can build confidence and resilience alongside physical fitness, while time spent in nature is associated with benefits to mental well-being and social connection.

A climber on the Via Ferrata above Ashley Springs. Photo by Uintah County

Outdoor recreation isn't only about where we go, often it's about who we become while we're there. This concept matters when we talk about public access. Access to public land is not simply about creating another attraction or adding another activity to a tourism brochure. It gives people an opportunity to develop a relationship with the landscapes around them. Those relationships can begin with a family walk, a fishing trip, or an afternoon beside the water. They can also begin by clipping into a cable above a canyon and doing something you weren't entirely sure you could do.

Learning From Ouray

Communities across the West have wrestled with the question of how to share extraordinary landscapes without losing what makes them extraordinary. Ouray, Colorado, provides an interesting comparison. The community did not create the mountains and canyon that surround it; those landscapes were already there. Over time, however, Ouray found ways to build experiences around those natural assets, including trails, climbing, the Ouray Ice Park and its Via Ferrata.

Ouray, Colorado Photo by Mike McBey

A lesson that a rural community can recognize the value of what already surrounds it and create thoughtful ways for people to experience it. Uintah County does not need to manufacture an outdoor identity. We already have one. Mountains rise above a high-desert landscape cut by rivers and canyons. Reservoirs sit alongside red rock. Fossils and traces of people who lived here centuries ago share the landscape with ranches, farms and energy development. Millions of acres of public land surround our communities. Ashley Gorge is one remarkable piece of that much larger story. The opportunity is to recognize what is uniquely ours, protect it and find responsible ways to invite people into it.

The Newest Chapter

The Ashley Gorge Via Ferrata is one of those ways. It did not create the significance of Ashley Gorge, and the history of the canyon certainly did not begin when the first cable or rung was installed. Instead, the Via Ferrata represents the newest chapter in a relationship between people and this landscape that stretches back centuries.

Via Ferrata means “iron path,” a climbing system that uses fixed cables, rungs and other features to allow participants to travel through steep terrain while attached to a safety cable. In Ashley Gorge, the routes allow people to move through and above the canyon in a way that would otherwise be available primarily to experienced technical climbers.

Two adventurers take a moment to appreciate the wonder of Ashley Gorge. Photo by Travis Campbell

The experience is intentionally challenging. Participants have to trust their equipment, pay attention to their surroundings and, at times, move beyond their comfort zones. The reward isn't only the view. For many, it is the realization that they were capable of doing something that initially looked intimidating.

That experience also brings people into a landscape with a much deeper story. Below them is Ashley Creek, the water helped sustain the earliest agricultural settlement of Ashley Valley. Around them is a watershed the community has worked for decades to protect. Beyond the route is public land Congress entrusted to Uintah County with instructions both to protect its natural resources and to allow people to experience it.

Seen in that context, the Via Ferrata is not the Ashley Gorge story. It is simply one more way this landscape is serving people.

Access to Ashley Gorge did not begin with the Via Ferrata. For generations, people have come to Ashley Gorge and Ashley Creek for different reasons. They have found water and sustenance here, built infrastructure and livelihoods around it, and recognized that some places are valuable enough to protect. Today, people come looking for quiet, time with family, a spectacular view, or an adventure that asks them to take one more step beyond what feels comfortable.

Ashley Gorge. Photo by Leo Thorne
Our responsibility is to make sure the generations that follow us have that opportunity, too. That means protecting the water, caring for the land, respecting existing rights and preserving appropriate public access. It means recognizing that stewardship isn't simply about keeping people out or inviting people in; it is about understanding what makes a place important and managing it accordingly.

Ashley Gorge has been serving this community for generations. If we do our job well, it will continue doing so for generations to come. That is good news for Uintah County.

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