While we
have been here in Glendale I’ve been doing some reading about the local area. We are in an area of Kane County called Long
Valley. Kane County contains 4,373
square miles – larger than the states of Delaware, Rhode Island and the
District of Columbia combined. 3,718 of
its square miles is Bureau of Land Management land, the state owns 437 square
miles while only 218 square miles is privately owned.
Long Valley
is comprised of several very small towns.
The largest is Orderville with a population of 600 people.
We have gone
into Orderville a couple of times to get a few groceries. Terry’s Food & Drug, Hardware, Feed &
Craft Store is neat but rather unassuming on the outside. In fact, we were a little hesitant to stop
the first time but this is the only game in town(s). Once inside we were quite impressed, like the
name says you can find almost anything here (except sodium free canned goods). The only thing that wasn’t great was a few of
the more perishable produce goods, like berries and cilantro. I can see where those things would be hard to
keep. The celery we bought here is some
of the best we’ve ever had. Greg was
happy, they even had a few bottles of the Sobi drink he likes. I’m disappointed that a Dollar General store
is going in on the other side of town, I hope they don’t put this lovely little
place out of business. They also have
the most beautiful vegetable and flower plants I have seen anywhere – I almost
couldn’t resist.
Orderville
was the pride of the Mormon Church in the late 1800’s. Under the direction of the Latter Day Saints
President, Brigham Young, a “United Order” or co-operative system, was
established and was successful from 1875 to 1890’s. We went in town today hoping to be able to
see a handmade diorama of the old Orderville United Order but the building
where it is housed was closed.
We did have
a wonderful lunch at the Soup Town Café.
Soup Town is an old nickname for Orderville. The soup today was Fiesta Tortilla and it was
wonderful. We also had half a club
sandwich that was on what appeared to be homemade whole grain bread. The café opens into the faithfully restored
old mercantile, one of the last remaining rural Zions Cooperative Mercantile
Institution buildings.
We’ve been
through Orderville at least half a dozen times and today was the first time we
noticed the paintings on the mountain.
Back in 1930 the students of the local Valley High School choose
Orderville’s Chimney Rock as the location of their hillside letter “V”. The rock was named after the Chimney Rock in
Nebraska that was a landmark to many settlers coming west. Those settlers would sometimes carve their
name and the date they passed through on the rock. Instead of carvings, the last week of school
the graduating class paints their year of graduation on the mountain side near
the “V”. At the same time the “V” is
touched up if needed.
We have
enjoyed our time here. We’ll be moving
on tomorrow morning. We are only going a
couple of hours for an overnight stay in Richfield, UT where we think we will
be able to do some major grocery shopping and get fuel.
No comments:
Post a Comment