Earn Cliff in the Narrows

 I couldn't get the photos to transfer from my phone to the Blogspot, so you will have to go to Facebook to see what I am describing.

"The Narrows" is the area just south east of Almo where the Raft Rivers flows between the end of the Jim Sage Mountains and two small hills that look like they slid off the end of the Jim Sage.  There is a lot of history in that area.

I was driving home from Logan the other day and stopped to take these photos.  The sun wasn't just right, so you will have to look closely at the photos.  From a distance, it looks like a tiny piece of the mountain broke off, likely along a fault line.  When you get closer, you realize that it was a significant chunk of the mountainside that sloughed off.  The cliffs are tall and rough.  They are quite stunning, in fact.  

In 1886, a post office was started there, officially known as  "Earn Cliff". "Earn" was said to signify eagles that nested and lived in the area---so Earn Cliff.  It is sometimes spelled as Ern Clif, but Earn Cliff is the official spelling on the Post Office records available at the National Archives Records.  The Post Office was 9 miles from Bridge, 10 miles from Almo, 25 miles from Conant, and 35 miles from Kelton.  It was about a mile from the Raft River and a mile from One Mile Creek.  That should help us locate it a little more closely.  It was to serve about 50 families.  

I have an audio recording of a trip from Almo to Bridge that was made several years ago with then 90 year old Glen Olsen as the guide.  I will try to post it soon on our you tube channel at mini cassia heritage hub.  

Glen's parents were early settlers in the Bridge area, and his father ran the post office there.  He shared lots of stories about the area.  It seems that the postman at Earn Cliff saved his wages and hid them on the property for safety.  It was rumored that he had a lot of money.  Some scoundrels thought they would scare the poor man into giving up the location of his savings.  They put a noose around his neck and hoisted him up just enough to make him talk---they thought!  They ended up killing him before he told them what they were after.  

One of the Womack girls who grew up on the Jim Sage Mountain not far from there recorded that it was the stage station keeper there in the Narrows who was hung, but the other details were pretty close.  There isn't any indication of who the bad guys might have been or if they were ever caught.