'THE NAME, MOAB, is a Biblical name for a land
just short of the Promised Land. The Moabites
were historically regarded as the perpetual enemy
of the Israelites -God's Chosen People.
Physically, the region was a green, verdant
valley in the middle of a serious desert; an
emerald in the sand, so to speak. Because of
those similarities, our little town was dubbed
Moab by Mormon settlers in the 1800's.' (Moab
tourism website)
The following story of Moab has been compiled
from a number of sources. A history of Moab
written by Margaret S Bearnson for a Utah
Government website has been most helpful. Due
acknowledgement is given to Ms Bearnson and the
Utah Government for the quotation of some of her
material below. The full text of Margaret
Bearnson's article may be found here.
Moab, the county seat of Grand
County, is located in the Colorado Plateau and
close to the Colorado River. Native Americans had
occupied the locality over a long period and used
a nearby river crossing.
In 1765 Juan Maria Antonio de
Rivera reached the area during an exploratory
expedition from New Mexico but it was not until
the opening of the Spanish Trail between Santa Fe
in New Mexico and Los Angeles in California in
1830 that the river crossing became increasingly
significant. In April 1855 the Mormons arrived in
the area to establish the Elk Mountain Mission.
Later that year, after Indian attacks destroyed
their crops and left three men dead, they
returned to Sanpete Valley.
The first permanent settlers
arrived in 1878 and the town's name, Moab, was
adopted in 1880. A ferry across the Colorado
River was in operation by 1885 but it was not
until 1912 that the first bridge across the
Colorado was completed. By that time Moab had
developed as one of Utah's finest fruit-growing
areas. Uranium was also extracted from near Moab
at that time and 1911 saw the first attempt to
drill a commercial oil well between Thompson and
Moab.
In the words of Margaret Bearnson:
'Oil promised to enrich the Moab economy during
the 1920s, but it was not until 1957 when three
oil-producing fields were opened near Moab that
something of an oil boom hit the area, a boom
that lasted into the 1960s. The uranium boom of
the early 1950s brought in scores of prospectors,
miners, workers, and speculators, increasing the
population of Moab from 1,275 in 1950 to 4,682 in
1960. During the boom, the nation's second
largest uranium processing mill was completed
just outside Moab in 1956, employing more than
two hundred workers.
'As the demand for uranium began to
decrease in the early 1960s, potash became the
most recent boom industry to hit Moab. A modern
potash plant was built in 1963 and a railroad
spur line completed from the Denver and Rio
Grande Western Railroad at Crescent Junction to
the Texas Gulf Sulphur Company mill outside
Moab.
'As early as 1906 the Grand Valley
Times began promoting the tourism possibilities
of the area, and in 1909 the Moab Commercial Club
was organized to advertise the scenic attractions
and recreational advantages of the Moab
region.
'A significant boost to tourism
came with the designation of Arches National
Monument in 1929; however, the Great Depression
and World War II brought few visitors to the Moab
area. After World War II the river-running craze
began slowly in the 1950s, gained momentum in the
1960s, and became a staple of the region's
tourist industry by the early 1970s.
'The establishment in 1964 of
Canyonlands National Park, for which Moab serves
as the northern gateway, was another milepost
along the way to Moab's becoming an important
tourist and recreation destination. During the
1980s Moab, with its hundreds of miles of
slickrock trails, gained worldwide fame as a
mountain-biking center.'
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