Gerald Lund highlights pioneers' struggle across untamed southern Utah

Even today the land in Utah's Four Corners region can be forbidding and treacherous. High, stony cliffs. Slickrock formations. Dry, dusty desert. It's not a place to be treated lightly, and even now must be taken on its own terms.

In the late 1870s, it was also virtually unknown.

By that time, numerous settlements had been established by the Mormon pioneers in what is now southern Utah, but none had ventured east of the Colorado River into what is now San Juan County.

LDS Church leaders were becoming increasingly concerned about the area. "It was being used by outlaws and cattle rustlers; there were conflicts with the Indians, and the church felt it needed a settlement there to bring peace to the area," author Gerald N. Lund says.

A call to the San Juan mission went out in 1878-79, and in the fall of 1879, an expedition of approximately 250 men, women and children, some 80 wagons and more than 1,000 head of livestock set out from Escalante. What was expected to take six weeks took one week shy of six months, as they had to cut and blast their way to their destination.

"No pioneer company ever built a wagon road through wilder, rougher, more inhospitable country," noted historian David Miller. "No one ever demonstrated more courage, faith and devotion to a cause than this group."

It is against this backdrop that Lund, probably best-known for his nine-volume novel series on LDS Church history, The Work and the Glory, has set his latest story, "The Undaunted: The Miracle of the Hole-in-the-Rock Pioneers" (Deseret Book, $34.95).

Lund hopes to bring attention to one of the greatest stories in Utah history, he says. "I'm surprised how many people don't know it. I didn't really know it until 1996, when I was in charge of teacher training for the Church Educational System, and we were taking our teachers on a series of tours relating to church history."

A teacher in San Juan County invited them to come see some of the trail that the pioneers had blasted through the wilderness.

"I'd had a vague idea; I'd heard the name of the Hole-in-the-Rock pioneers. But by the time that trip was over, I was blown away with what they did. I was stunned by the country through which we traveled, and came away completely amazed, deeply awed and profoundly moved by the story we were told. I vowed someday I would tell those people's story."

That someday had to wait, however. At the time, he was finishing the last of The Work and the Glory and was starting his The Kingdom and the Crown trilogy, which told the story of Christ's ministry. Then there was a story of the Willie and Martin handcart companies, "Fire of the Covenant."