In 1897, Mormon Walter C. Lyman and his brother Joseph loaded a buckboard with supplies and left Bluff to investigate White Mesa’s potential for a community. Lyman supposedly had a vision that one day this isolated area full of sagebrush would have an LDS temple. Soon, digging began on a canal from Johnson Creek, which was completed in 1905 and still waters abundant crops of hay and grain.
First known as Grayson (after Nellie Grayson Lyman, wife of Joseph), the town changed its name in 1914 when a wealthy easterner, Thomas F. Bicknell, offered a thousand-volume library to any Utah town that would adopt his name. Grayson competed with Thurber (renamed Bicknell) for the prize; the two towns split the books and Grayson was renamed for Bicknell’s wife’s maiden name, Blanding.
Blanding received notoriety for its involvement in the 1923 Posey War, called by some the last Indian uprising in the US. But the “war” was really a final bid for freedom by desperate Utes living on the edge of Blanding.*
Blanding Posts:
- Alkali Ridge
- Blanding Ward Chapel
- Defiance House
- Edge of Cedars Indian Ruin
- Patio Diner
- Recapture Reservoir
- Rock Arches
- San Juan Theater
- Settlement of Blanding
- The Old Settler’s “Swallow’s Nest”
