VERNAL, UTAH

This week I am spending the week in Vernal, Utah with my two grandsons. What do I know about Vernal? Really nothing. So I googled up Vernal and learned some very interesting things about it I did not know....Vernal is 175 miles east of Salt Lake City. It is nestled in the midst of beautiful scenic mountains, rivers and colorful deserts. Vernal is in eastern Utah near the Colorado state line, bordered on the north by the Unita mountains, one of the few mountain ranges in the world which lie in an east-west rather than the north-south direction. Vernal lies in Ashley valley named in honor of William H. Ashley, an early fur trader who entered this area in 1825 by floating down the Green River in a bull boat made of animal hides. Vernal, unlike the majority of Utah towns was not settled by Mormon pioneers. Scouts sent out by Brigham Young reported back to him, the area was good for nothing but hunting grounds for the Indians and "to hold the world together." The same year President Abraham Lincoln set the area aside as the Uintah Indian Reservation. The major economy of the town is derived from extracting natural resources through out Uintah County including petroleum, natural gas, phosphate and gilsonite. Tourism also plays a major role in Vernals economy. People have been drawn to the dinosaur fossil beds (bone beds) that were discovered in 1909. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the dinosaur beds as Dinosaur National Monument in 1915. Dinosaurs once roamed here. Their fantastic remains are still visible embedded in the rocks. Petroglyphs hint at earlier cultures in the area. When excavation eventually ended, over 1,500 fossils were left in place on the cliff face so visitors can view them in the position they were found. I have been up to see them, the children love them. So I will continue to enjoy the Christenson's beautiful big house that has a great view of the lake, and the biggest big blue barn in Utah!