Visit Historic Sawmill Site, Nixon Spring & Mt Trumbull Trailhead, Arizona

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There are no ruins remaining here but this is where the lumber mill processed the giant ponderosas for the frame of the St. George LDS Temple. The sounds of the steam-powered lumber mill would have rumbled in this valley, punctuated by the metallic screams of a blade cutting logs to size. The boards were loaded onto wagons and ox teams pulled the wagons over 80 miles back to St. George in the 1870s.Nixon Spring still produces water today. It is now capped to support the Administrative Site and fire fighting efforts. A spigot at the Mt. Trumbull trailhead may have water in summer but the water has not been treated. It must be boiled before drinking.Hikers who want to climb to the top of Mt. Trumbull should be advised that while the rim seems close, the trail gains 1,400 feet to the top. Sign at Mount Trumbull Sawmill. "Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument. U.S. Department of the Interior. Bureau of Land Management. National Park Service. From a Forest Cathedral to a Desert Temple. This sawmill was one of several that supplied lumber to build the Mormon Temple in Saint George, Utah. A wooden flume brought water from a spring on Mount Trumbull down to large steam boilers that generated power. One million board feet of lumber for the temple came from this forest. You can still see remnants of sawmill supports and rock cairns that held up the flume. After the trees were sawed some timbers were 46 feet long--tough to move. Ox team drivers Frederick Blake, Benjamin Blake, and William McCullough hauled lumber down the Temple Trail to Saint George. The dangerous 80-mile trip took five days. This sawmill once supported a village--a commissary, a boarding house, and corrals. Forty men worked for this lumber operation. A half-dozen women cooked and did other chores at the boarding house. Today, only the tracks of forgotten roads and decayed lumber linger as reminders of an industry that once prospered at Mount Trumbull. No photos of the sawmill that stood here survive. Probably this sawmill looked like the Blake mill seen in this 1919 photo. Saint George Mormon Temple under construction around 1875. Logging on Mount Trumbull."

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