![]() The water provided by the reservoir during this time was unfiltered, which meant that contamination could easily lead to widespread illness. The construction of the reservoir would have negative consequences for a community named Mountain Dell. It was Utah’s first municipal culinary water storage reservoir. In 1892 Salt Lake City officials built a reservoir adjacent to the rock in order to supply culinary water from Parleys Creek to the valley. ![]() Various locations across the country picked up on the theme and used it in order to promote tourism. The popularity of this trope over a wide variety of areas makes it unlikely to be factual, and it possibly emerged as a response to Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel Ramona, published in 1884, which popularized the tale. A similar story is told about “Squaw Peak” in Utah county of “one squaw killing herself falling from a precipice” following a military skirmish, and Suicide Rock in Idyllwild, California bears a legend of an American Indian princess and her lover committing suicide rather than being separated. The name Suicide Rock became more popular after a story circulated about an American Indian maiden who threw herself off of the rock out of the grief of losing her brave lover. The sandstone rock formation that is known today as Suicide Rock was also known as Sentinel Rock, because it is thought that it was used as a lookout point for American Indians long before the arrival of Mormon settlers. Pratt who had scouted the canyon in 1848. Suicide Rock is located at the mouth of Parleys Canyon, a canyon named after the Mormon pioneer Parley P. 79 Holladay Chapter, Sons of Utah Pioneers Dedicated 1996 Of the stream, the roadway, and the railroad line that ran in the narrow spaces between the rock and canyon sidewalls, only the stream remains.” Culinary water supplies had been further enhanced by this time and a direct connection was made to use Parley’s Canyon water, so the reservoir was never replaced. This reservoir served for many years until an extremely wet spring one year washed out part of the reservoir and some of the railroad tracks and roadway in the canyon. From this reservoir, and ditches from the canyon stream above the reservoir, culinary along with irrigation water was conveyed to the various farms below as well as up to the plateaus on the north and south sides of the hollow which were located above the canal. In about 1891 a reservoir was built on the east side of Suicide Rock to help contain the spring run-off from washing out the farms west of the canyon mouth, as well as to help provide a way of getting water from the stream to where it was needed. The canyon streams were thereafter enhanced with reservoirs to catch and retain the spring runoff, for use in the drier seasons. The Jordan and Salt Lake City Canal was begun in 1879, and completed in 1882, and has remained in constant use since. In order to free up more of the canyon water for culinary use, a canal was built from Jordan Narrows conveying Jordan River water to the east bench of the Salt Lake valley. In the settlement of the valley with a constant increase in population, the water from the various canyon streams of the Wasatch Range provided irrigation as well as culinary water for the people. Now, it is a billboard for the youth who dare to climb its heights with a paint brush or spray can. It consisted mainly of red sandstone and had stood as a sentinel for centuries.įor hundreds of years, it stood as a watchtower for the Indians until, as the story goes, an Indian maiden upon learning of the death of her brave, leaped from the top, to her death on the rocks below, giving it the name of Suicide Rock. “One of the foremost sights that met the eye of the early travelers when they reached the mouth of Parley’s Canyon before entering into the valley of the Great Salt Lake, was a huge mass of red rock which stood in the middle of the mouth of the canyon. Location of the Historical Marker near Suicide Rock ![]() Placed by: Sons of Utah Pioneers Holladay Chapter, No. Suicide Rock and Reservoir Historical Marker
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