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Dave Rust's Fourteen Points

by Fred Swanson

Dave Rust (1874-1963) was a Kanab, Utah educator and part-time rancher who guided numerous Eastern visitors to remote scenic spots in southern Utah and northern Arizona. He helped build a cable crossing and tramway at Bright Angel Creek in the Grand Canyon and served one term in the Utah legislature. He always tried to show his clients the best "lookoff" points from which to view the amazing landscape of the Colorado Plateau. Often at these viewpoints he would read to his clients excerpts from the writings of Clarence Dutton or John Wesley Powell. An admirer of President Woodrow Wilson, Rust compiled an ever-changing list of fourteen of his favorite viewpoints, in humorous honor of Wilson's postwar plan for international peace. The above list comes from a letter that one of his clients, Henry Dodge Freeman, sent to Ken Sleight on March 6, 1965. It is found in the papers of river historian Otis R. "Dock" Marston at the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (box 202, folder 17).

As recalled by his friend, Henry Dodge Freeman, Dave's "Fourteen Point Plan" was as follows:

  1. Navajo Mountain
  2. Mount Ellen
  3. Horse Mountain (Elk Ridge)
  4. Bowns Point (Aquarius)
  5. Table CliffÑSouth tip
  6. Tip of Paunsaugunt (Bryce Park)
  7. Bears Ears
  8. Mount Hillers
  9. Tip of Kaiparowits
  10. Toroweap
  11. Mount Ellsworth
  12. Grand View Point
  13. Point Sublime
  14. Cape Royal and Cape Final


Salt Lake City writer Fred Swanson is writing a book about Dave Rust.


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