FEATURE — Atop the monolith named for it sits the remaining framework of a testament to pioneer ingenuity and determination. However, very few visitors to Zion National Park actually see it. Most don’t even know it’s there.

Only hardy hikers reach the remnants of the Cable Mountain Draw Works. Other than seeing a storied historic relic, the trek rewards them with a fantastic birds eye view of the most visited portion of the park, Zion Canyon itself.

The draw works’ story is one of vision, failure, but ultimately success. It’s also a tale of a prophecy fulfilled coupled with, unfortunately, prejudice exacted towards the man behind its establishment.

David Flanigan: The visionary

Alice Isom Gubler Stratton, in her story “It Can Be Done,” an account of the Cable Mountain Draw Works written to communicate the message of hard work and determination, chronicled Brigham Young’s 1863 visit to the settlements on the eastern end of the Virgin River.

“The people were lamenting the lack of timber for flooring their cabins,” she noted. “They were living on hard packed earth.”

Stratton wrote that Young had promised them that the day would come when hundreds of thousands of feet of lumber would be brought down the canyon.

“One stalwart pioneer shook hands with the prophet after the meeting,” she wrote. “‘Brother Brigham’ he said, ‘I’m afraid you’ve made one prophecy this time that can never come true. There is no conceivable way for lumber to ever come down this canyon.’ However, Dave Flanigan believed that when the Prophet Brigham Young spoke, he expected someone to prepare for action.”

David Flanigan himself was proud of the draw works. In his recollection entitled “The Story of the Wire” written in 1926 at the request of his friends, he described it as “one of the wonders of the world.”

Flanigan, born in 1872, was an adventurous teen who shot a bighorn sheep while exploring the climes northeast of Springdale in the Spring of 1888. When he returned, he decided to invite some friends along for a similar adventure. It was on this excursion that the idea for the future draw works hatched.

“We discovered a point, now known as Cable Mountain, which overlooked the floor of Zion Canyon and where the vertical cliff appeared to extend almost to the floor of the Canyon,” he wrote. “Some time after this I recalled that we had passed through some nice timber while wandering around the east rim of Zion Canyon, and it seemed to me that a cable tram might be constructed at the point overlooking Zion Canyon for running this lumber down.”

At that time, most of the lumber used for the construction of buildings in Southern Utah came from Mount Trumbull in Northern Arizona, approximately 65 miles from St. George. At the time, the trip to Mt. Trumbull and back took on average 10 days to complete. Flanigan felt like using a lumber source nearer at hand would be more efficient.

“I tried to interest others in the project, but could find no one who seemed to share my belief that it could be done,” he wrote.

It wasn’t until 1900 that Flanigan started to put a plan together. He hoped to demonstrate that his idea was feasible and tried to generate support from others to make the cable works a reality. He purchased a bale of more than 6,000 feet of wire weighing more than 100 pounds to the top of Cable Mountain.

“It required the honest efforts of three men for the greater part of a day to accomplish this, for there was nothing worthy of being called a trail at the time,” Flanigan wrote in his recollection.

Some of the wire became entangled in a pine tree on the way up and they “cut away” the limb by continuously firing at it in the same place with a Winchester rifle, he explained.

The span of the wire from the top of the mountain to the floor of the canyon was between 2,000 to 3,000 feet. Flanigan and his posse arranged the wire on pulleys and drums at the top and bottom, with five-ply thick wire on one side and three-ply thick wire on the other. The five-ply wire was for carrying the load and the three-ply was for guiding the load to the floor of the canyon.

The dimensions of the framework at the top of the canyon are approximately 30 feet in length, 16 feet wide and 14 feet high. At the bottom of the canyon were two snubbing posts set in the ground at the base of the cliff. They were used to separate the endless cable and provide tracking width for the cable as it carried down lumber on a trolley device, the National Historic Register form for the draw works explained.

“About seven or eight months had been required for this work and it was getting late in the fall before everything was ready for the test,” Flanigan wrote. “A load was put on but the machinery would not start. I had depended upon the power of gravitation running a load down with a lighter load coming up on the other side and when the machinery did not start we took hold of the wire and helped start it.”

Flanigan said they oiled the machinery and made adjustments, but it would not run on its own power and it took the efforts of seven men half a day to run a load halfway down when it became dark.

“A cold rain was falling which added to the general gloom occasioned by the failure of the wire to run with any measure of satisfaction,” Flanigan noted of the occasion.

The next day, they got the load down by noon but realized that it would be necessary to move the pulleys out hundreds of feet further on the floor of the canyon in order for the load to carry over the incline.

“After this was done it was found that a moderate load would carry over the incline and run much easier than it did before,” he wrote. “By putting a crank on one end of a large drum at the top over which the wire passed I was now able to run it of my own efforts, and in this way was able to run down several thousand barrel staves by working only as a man can work who his trying to justify himself in attempting to do something that is generally believed to be impractical, if not impossible.”

Justifying himself became a theme of Flanigan’s life from then on. A few years of trial and error like this initial encounter finally yielded a successful design, doing things such as extending the pulleys out further on the floor of the canyon so the loads would land in the right place as well as installing a brake so the speed of the loads could be better controlled.

During this time of experimentation, Flanigan wrote about a test he could not help himself from trying. He wanted to see what the state of a tree would be that free fell from near the draw works to the canyon floor. A man chopped the tree near the edge of the cliff, and Flanigan explained what happened next:

When the tree fell it plunged entirely free of the cliff into mid air and shortly after, limbs and branches were torn off and the trunk stripped practically clean. The great weight of the trunk carried it through the air so rapidly that the limbs and branches could not withstand the terrific air resistance. When the trunk landed at the base of the cliff, although it landed in soft sand, it was literally dashed to pieces.

By 1904, he had perfected the design so the next task was to convince others of its usefulness and turn it into a commercial operation. He hoped to convince someone to move a saw mill to the east rim of Zion Canyon and started his promotional campaign.

“After some investigation, the recognized lumber merchant of Washington County, who had been operating a saw mill for some years on Trumbull Mountain, Arizona, entered into an agreement with me to move his mill from Arizona and have ready for operation on the east rim of Zion Canyon the following spring,” Flanigan wrote.

Soon after striking the deal with the lumber merchant, Flanigan said that Springdale decided to construct a public building and would need about 10,000 feet of lumber to do so. In this situation, Flanigan saw an opportunity and tried to convince the town’s leaders to obtain the lumber from a saw mill in Long Valley, 30 miles to the east. He told them they should haul the lumber to the top of the draw works and then he would run the lumber down the wire free of charge. If they accepted his proposition, he felt he could cement himself as a legitimate operation and people would have faith in it.

Unfortunately for Flanigan, Springdale ordered its lumber from the Mt. Trumbull sawmill, after which the mill operator reneged on the deal for him to move his sawmill above Zion Canyon. The man told Flanigan that he was told the “tram” had little promise of being a success. Misinformation about the cable works was being spread.

This obviously dealt a major blow to Flanigan’s promotional efforts to get locals to believe in his operation. He felt like locals were against him because of his “theology” and that he “was hardly the type of man to be permitted or expected” to bring Brigham Young’s earlier prophecy to fulfillment.

“I must confess that I had not been a good boy, and I was not a good man from the viewpoint of theology,” he lamented in his recollection. “It seemed that I naturally liked to say and do, eat, drink, smoke and chew things which theology said were not good for me, and there were duties which theology said I should attend to that I neglected.”

He went on to say that he sometimes disturbed the peace on the Sabbath with his rifle “which was considered very wicked” and that he smoked a pipe which, he said, at times made “a public sacrifice of him.”

Flanigan hoped that the intolerance kindled against him would “burn itself out.” In the meantime, he decided he better take matters into his own hands and establish a sawmill on the rim of Zion Canyon himself. He bought a second-hand sawmill, his father and brothers furnishing the “security” to get him the loan. He did not want to go into debt to make it happen, but saw it as the only way he could bring his plan to fruition.

Despite the opposition, Flanigan went on to operate the draw works and the accompanying sawmill for just under two years. The first commercial load came down on January 2, 1905 with a crowd gathered on the canyon floor to witness it, as recorded in the journal of Flanigan’s brother, William. The last load under Flanigan’s direction descended into the canyon on Christmas Eve, 1906. Under Flanigan’s care, over 200,000 feet of sawed lumber made its way down the wire into Zion Canyon. Even though the venture proved a success at transporting lumber, it was not successful financially.

“The expense of repair work together with other annoyances and the lack of general support finally forced me to admit that the industry under these conditions was not a financial success,” he recorded in his recollection.

“I have always been glad there were some extra men to hang onto my arms which acted as shock absorbers for some of my blows,” he wrote. “It looked like the public sacrifice which the people of Springdale had talked of making of the man who smoked a pipe was about to be offered up, and under such conditions a man may do things beyond his natural strength.”

The whole experience of developing the draw works developed a feeling of contempt towards “theology,” Flanigan wrote, but it “awakened in me a feeling of reverence for the Divine power of the Infinite, which I have learned to bow in silent worship.”

New owners

Flanigan sold the draw works to new owners in 1906, Alfred Stout and O. D. Gifford of Springdale. In 1908, Frank H. Petty took over. Petty was an experienced sawmill operator, helping operate a mill on Mount Trumbull.

“Petty installed a braided steel cable, moved a mill onto the mountain, and for the next eight years he and his two sons, Charles B. and ‘Little Frank’ sent lumber down the thin steel strands,” Earl Spendlove wrote in his article “Like a Hawk Flying” in the November 1971 issue of Desert Magazine.

Hall mentioned that a man named Quimby Stewart deserves fame as the first human cable passenger. In 1910, he was in the park as part of the survey crew after it became Mukuntuweap National Monument and straddled a pile of boards and rode them to the canyon floor.

“He was enticed to take the ride by an offer of watermelon that awaited him at the bottom,” Hall wrote of Stewart. According to Spendlove, ‘Little Frank’ Petty, who was 6-foot-2 and 180 pounds, followed Stewart down the cable.

“A few days later Big Frank, who weighed almost 300 pounds, decided he would ride the lumber to the bottom rather than make the long walk down the trail,” Spendlove wrote. “Under his great weight, the cable sagged, the boards dragged over the rock and scraped the chain off one end of the lumber. The drum was stopped just in time to keep him from plunging to his death.”

For almost an hour, Petty “hung on for dear life,” Spendlove wrote.

“Finally the crew got another chain around the lumber and fastened it to the cable,” Spendlove continued. “Then he glided gracefully to the bottom and enjoyed every minute of the ride.”

Despite the close call during this first attempt, according to Hall, “Big Frank” Petty began utilizing the cable for getting to and from work every day. “His three hundred pounds made the dizzying fear of riding the cable a small price to pay when compared to alternatives such as hiking up and down the trail.”

No one was killed riding the cable, but there were a few later close calls. In 1908, a lightning strike killed two young men picnicking near the draw works frame on top of the cliff. A fire in 1909 destroyed some of the structure on the edge of the cliff and the cable dropped into the canyon. It took several days to get the tangled cable back up to the top of the cliff, Spendlove wrote. The destroyed portion was soon repaired.

Petty sold the mill in the fall of 1915 to David Lemmon.

Lemmon experienced tragedy while operating the cable when he, his wife and daughter, were on their way to the cable with a load of lumber. The wagon tipped over on a dugway, killing his daughter instantly and seriously injuring Mrs. Lemmon.

Descendants of those who worked on the draw works are proud of their ancestors.

“Most of my ancestors in the Zion area were involved with it in one way or another,” Hurricane resident Colton Winder said. “John A. Winder built the trail that allowed David Flanigan to access the top, and provided quite a bit of help getting the cable up.”

 At one point, John Winder had partial ownership in the sawmill and cable works, Colton Winder said.

“His son, Ether Winder, was killed in a fire at the sawmill,” Colton Winder explained of the 1921 tragedy. “They used the cable to lower his remains to the canyon floor. It was also used to lower the body of the victim of a lightning strike.”

Colton Winder’s great grandfather, Daniel Winder (John Winder’s son), was one of the last men to use the cable works to lower a commercial load of lumber, which was used in the construction of the original Zion Lodge. That last commercial load of lumber came down in 1926 as, over the years, the lumber supply was significantly depleted.

That same year, the last tragedy associated with the draw works occurred. A group of students from Orderville were playing on the wire. Their teacher, Albin Brooksby, saw a large iron coming down the wire and hurriedly pushed the students to safety but took the full brunt of the blow, which killed him instantly.

The National Park Service dismantled the frames for the cable at the bottom of the canyon in 1927 and removed the cable completely in 1930, cementing the draw works as a relic of yesteryear rather than an active commercial operation, which would have been frowned on in a national park anyway.

“The old scaffold on Cable Mountain can still be seen, bearing silent tribute to the boy Dave Flanigan, who believed that you can do anything in this world you want to, if you are willing to sacrifice enough, work hard enough, believe strong enough and suffer enough,” Stratton wrote at the end of her story.

Visiting the Cable Mountain Draw Works

The remains of the framework for the draw works still sit atop Cable Mountain but are literally a skeleton of what they used to be. They can only be reached on foot by several hiking options, the shortest of which is approximately eight miles round trip.

To view the hiking options, visit the Zion National Park web page which contains a map and description of the routes.

Zion also has its own page about the draw works, which shows different pictures than contained in this story.

There is also a video posted on YouTube of Samuel Crawford explaining the history of the draw works from the Utah Folklife Festival years ago. It also shows footage of a model showing how it worked.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: All excerpts from David Flanigan’s recollections used in this story corrected and spelling errors and modernized the punctuation.

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About the series “Days”

“Days” is a series of stories about people and places, industry and history in and surrounding the region of southwestern Utah.

“I write stories to help residents of southwestern Utah enjoy the region’s history as much as its scenery,” St. George News contributor Reuben Wadsworth said.

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Wadsworth has also released a book compilation of many of the historical features written about Washington County as well as a second volume containing stories about other places in Southern Utah, Northern Arizona and Southern Nevada.

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