IRON COUNTY, Utah — Places in Utah that are now considered desolate and largely uninhabited once had more than a moment in the spotlight — and you see some of them along Highway 56 in Iron County.
Highway 56 is a short one — just 60 miles. Those miles start on the Nevada state line near the town of Panaca, and they end in Cedar City, the prosperous college town that's now the clear center of activity for the region, though Parowan to the north remains the county seat.
If you've seen Max Tracks before, you know my inclination is to wander the wilderness and find history. But the big city beckoned.
Cedar City is actually the largest metro I've visited for Max Tracks! It offers many more opportunities than I could take in. With my limited time, I considered: a play on at Southern Utah University, singer-songwriters performing in a local café, a high school basketball game, and the local hockey team called the Yetis.
Then I went to the farmer's market and met Christian Lee Simmons. He made the decision easy.
I hope you'll watch the story, because Christian is a local treasure who deserves to be seen rather than just described. He volunteers at the Festival City Farmers market every Saturday, and he does a lot more.
On any given day, you'll see him downtown holding a sign for a locally owned business. He doesn't do it to make money — he just loves playing a part in his hometown.
Christian guided me around the market. We tasted bread, macarons and salsa. I bought a new mug that Christian helped me pick out before I headed out to explore the highway west to Nevada.
Close to the state line, Modena, Utah is nearly a ghost town. There are a few families in what was once a main railroad hub on the Utah Pacific line running from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles.
When diesel engines replaced steam, Modena lost its economic purpose, but if you visit, there's a wonderful old General Store and Hotel still standing, if barely.
The nearby cemetery still shows the love from visitors who have dropped off flowers, toys, flags, and all kinds of other mementos to honor former residents.
Like so many rural areas, the cemetery shows that Modena contributed more than its share of young men to the wars of the 20th Century.
Further along the trip east, Old Irontown is now preserved by the Division of State Parks, and the short interpretive trail around the ruins taught me more about the process of producing iron from mine to metal than I had ever known.
It's also a lesson in the cruel realities of pioneer industry.
In 1868, it was called Iron City, and when Brigham Young sent men to build it, it was meant to produce tools for generations of Utahns building up what they considered Zion.
The leader, Ebenezer Hanks, and the pioneers with him built up a large operation that succeeded for a time. But the challenge of production in the remote area and the difficulty of transporting so much heavy material north doomed the enterprise.
Historians call it Utah's first ghost town. It shuttered operations in the mid 1870s. While the site is a ghost town, it's now surrounded by a neighborhood of vacation cabins and full-time residences.
Travel a few more miles towards Cedar City and you find Lion's Mouth Cave, named because its entrance resembles ... wait for it ... the mouth of a lion! It's a short uphill hike to the cave that contains petroglyphs likely from ancestors of the local Paiutes and the Fremont culture.
