Bluff Road: The most popular pioneer route through Layton

THE most common of corridors through Layton City today involve I-15, Main Street and Highway 89. However, in Layton’s earliest years, it was Bluff Road on Layton City’s far west side that was both the first and perhaps the most reliable of routes used by explorers, pioneers and early settlers.

Trapper/explorer Jedediah S. Smith is believed to have gone through west Layton along the Bluff Road trail in 1826.

The mountain route, basically today’s Highway 89 through Layton, was considered a very rugged path in pioneer times. Some other routes were often too muddy for usage.

However, the Bluff Road area was generally elevated above some of the swampy areas around the Great Salt Lake and often received less snowfall than areas eastward. The Bluff area was also flat, not very sandy and featured feed and water for livestock along its route. Thus, its path was much more reliable than most in the area.

                                    The historical monument to Bluff Road in Syracuse.

The Bluff Road corridor was also part of the Old Emigrant Road that started at Salt Lake City and ended at the City of the Rocks, Idaho, where it formed a junction with the California Trail. This road was also known as the “Old Traveled Road,” and the “Salt Lake Cutoff.”

The road was also used by Captain Samuel Hensley with ten men in August 1848. Upon his advice, Mormon Battalion members returning from California also traveled the Bluff Road. This contingent of forty-five men and one woman, with seventeen wagons took this trail on their way to Salt Lake City.

In 1849-1850 an estimated 22,500 gold seekers followed this northern route to the California gold fields. From 1852 to 1857 homeseeking emigrants with their families used the road on their way to Oregon and California.

-The forerunner of Church Street was Canyon Road, a path that followed the ridge above Kays Creek. 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.

This path was also probably an Indian trail used by the Lienhard pioneer party in 1846 -- one year before the Mormon pioneers arrived in Utah. 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.

SOURCES: Deseret News Archives and Daughters of Utah Pioneers pioneer markers.