Bluff, Canyon and Mountain Road -- The 3 main pioneer trails in the Layton area

THE Layton area had three main pioneer trails back in the day.

According to Ken Day, the first curator of Layton's Heritage Museum, the forerunner of Church Street was Canyon Road, a path that followed the ridge above Kays Creek. Day said this Canyon Road used to go from Weber Canyon all the way southwest to today's Dawson and Weaver Lanes and eventually to where the Bluff Road used to traverse west Layton.
"The Kays Creen Corridor is loaded with history . . . It had to have been a known route," Day said of Canyon Road, explaining it was probably an Indian trail used by the Lienhard pioneer party in 1846 - one year before the Mormon pioneers arrived in Utah.

Day said journals from the Heinrich Lienhard party describe coming down Weber Canyon, crossing to the south side of the Weber River, going up a hill and then turning southwest along a good path toward the Great Salt Lake.

The three oldest paths or trails in the Layton area are Mountain Road, Canyon Road and Bluff Road. However, Day said Mountain Road was too rough and that's why Canyon and Bluff were used more often.

He also said trapper/explorer Jedediah S. Smith went through west Layton along the Bluff Road trail in 1826. Today the Bluff Road ends in southern Syracuse because construction of West Gentile Street in 1880 provided better east-west access into Layton.

                             Highway 89 today, at Oak Hills Drive.

The Mormon Pioneers also constructed a "Little Fort" along Canyon Road, which gave rise to the Fort Lane name for one of the city's major north-south roads. At that time, the big fort was in Kaysville - the larger settlement.

SOURCE: Deseret News Archives.