Emigration Canyon: Its historical significance, offbeat aura lend the area plenty of flavor

EMIGRATION CANYON — It tickles Cindy Furse to see the old Pink Garage standing sentinel at the entrance to tony Emigration Oaks.

Rumored as a one-time house of ill repute, the dilapidated shack is an Emigration Canyon icon. Its flagging pink siding marks a stark contrast to the stylish stone and stucco mansions in the exclusive hillside subdivision.

"It's so funky. It's so dichotomous to have it in front of million-dollar houses," Furse said. "It just makes Emigration Oaks not so posh. It gives it flavor."

Flavor is one thing Emigration Canyon does not lack. From its lasting historic significance to Utah and the West to its offbeat aura today, there is no place like it along the Wasatch Front.

"There's no vanilla about it," Furse said.

Emigration is a 9-mile-long, 2-mile-wide stretch of forest, brushy hillside and canyon bottom east of Salt Lake City. It is home to about 1,200 people, slightly fewer than the initial waves of Mormon pioneers who passed through it 159 years ago, in 1847.

Brigham Young led a wagon train down the canyon into the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, following a route the ill-fated Donner-Reed party forged a year before. The Donner company hacked away scrub oak and river willows in the steep canyon, a task that set them back a deadly three weeks en route to California.

The Mormon Trail became a thoroughfare for scouts, emigrants, Pony Express riders, teamsters and gold miners. The driving of the Golden Spike in 1869 eventually slowed the stream of travelers. Instead of a passageway, the canyon became a place to live. Logger John Killian was the first resident. Though misspelled, a fork called Killyon's Canyon bears his name.

'True funk'

"It's a very historic place," says longtime resident Stan Fishler, chairman of the Emigration Canyon Historical Society. "You're dealing with, in my opinion, the most historic canyon in the whole valley."

President Calvin Coolidge considered it for a summer White House. One of the largest breweries west of the Mississippi River sat at the canyon mouth. An electric railroad once ran top to bottom. LDS Church President Heber J. Grant conducted ecclesiastical business from his family cabin.

In 2003, residents Cindy Furse and Jeff Carlstrom captured the canyon's past in a book titled "The History of Emigration Canyon — Gateway to Salt Lake Valley."