Mormon Pioneer, California, and Pony Express Trails: Echo Canyon Itinerary

Echo Canyon is a natural conduit through the Wasatch Mountains, used for thousands of years by wildlife and native people migrating between the Rockies and the Great Basin. Once discovered by mountain men in the early 1800s, the 24-mile passage eventually became a thoroughfare for pack trains, commercial and emigrant wagons, Forty-niner brigades, military columns, handcart processions, the Pony Express, the Overland Stage, and the transcontinental telegraph.

Echo Canyon Road evolved from an Indian trail into a wagon road, an early automobile highway (the Old Lincoln Highway), and a federal highway (U.S.-30). Today it is a narrow, winding frontage road. Proceed slowly and be prepared to stop along the road shoulder to view the historical features described in the entries below. Many of these historic features are on private land; please observe them from the public right-of-way.

The Hanging Rock Pony Express Station (Echo Canyon), also called Halfway Station, was located near a spring about halfway down the canyon. Nothing remains of the relay station but a pony express marker post standing in a trowel-like wagon swale marks it’s approximate location. The "hanging rock" itself a small natural bridge is just around the curve to the south. The area was an immigrant campground. 

Mormon militiamen, fearing an attack on Salt Lake City by the U.S. Army, built the low rubble walls above the emigrant road in 1857. Before modern highways were built, this segment of Echo Canyon was narrow, forcing wagon traffic to travel single-file. For the Mormon militia, this seemed a strategic location to stop or delay approaching federal troops.

This site is named for a fatal incident that occurred when a Mormon militiaman, during horseplay, shot and killed a fellow militiaman who was standing on the rocky crag. The victim was the only Mormon to die in the 1857 troubles between Utah Territory and the federal government. (The only U.S. Army death, which occurred in Wyoming, resulted from a heart attack.)

The Steamboat Rocks (Echo Canyon), a series of geological formations that protrude into the canyon like a row of great ships at dock, were another emigrant landmark. They were called by other names, as well, including The Great Eastern and Noah’s Ark. Southwest of Steamboat Rocks is a meadow where Brigham Young’s 1847 company and later emigrants camped.

A second Cliff-face Billboard is painted on the rock wall at the base of the Steamboat Rocks. One of the ads promotes Salt Lake House, a stagecoach stop and comfortable hotel on downtown Salt Lake City’s Main Street. This historical site is located in Echo Canyon, Utah.

The Weber Station (Echo, UT) began as a settler’s isolated log cabin and blacksmith shop in 1854 and later served as a stage stop and Pony Express home station. A granite memorial commemorating the station (nothing remains of the building itself) is at a turnout on the right at odometer mile 11.3. The site is also marked with Summit County’s brown tour sign No. 17 and with a silver-colored Pony Express marker post.