Exploring Utah Heritage Hwy 89

Highway 89 through the heart of Utah was named The Mormon Pioneer Heritage Area by President Bush in 2006. It runs through farmland and small communities in Central Utah where you can, indeed, see the pioneer heritage that has helped to make Utah great.

Travel writer Dave Zuchowski describes the highway in this article, published in the Bluefield (WV) Daily Telegraph newspaper. Below I give the headline and then excerpts.

National Heritage Area in Utah offers quite a story

In mid-spring, I managed to take an auto tour of a portion of the Utah Mormon Pioneer NHA, which extends all the way from the Arizona border in the South 250 miles north just beyond the town of Fairview.

One of the reasons for traveling a NHA is to sample not only the historic sites and scenic treasures but also to get a look at local crafts and art galleries and a taste of the indigenous foods.

In the old cowboy town of Salina, I stopped at Mom’s Café, a homey, unpretentious eatery that’s been around for more than 80 years and is famous for its pie. Not that the down-home service and atmosphere isn’t a draw, it’s just that pies, especially the mouth-watering blueberry sour cream, have made Mom’s famous in these parts.

In Manti, home of one of Utah’s earliest (and most beautiful) Mormon temples, I got to watch as Joseph Bennion fired up his large outdoor kiln to demonstrate how he makes scores of clay artifacts for his Horseshoe Mountain Pottery enterprise.

Utah’s Cowboy past (and present) came alive in Mt. Pleasant at the ConToy Arena, where I saw modern day ranch hands rope cattle and do fancy equestrian maneuvers...