In the late 1870s, 70 families and a number of single men received assignments from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to establish a settlement in the Four Corners region. Those able to accept, along with volunteers, left their various hometowns in southwestern Utah in October 1879 and, after reaching Escalante, the last established town on their route, blasted a wagon road through the Colorado River gorge, cut paths up and down solid sandstone cliffs, crossed deep ravines, and chopped a path through a juniper forest that many scouts had judged impassable. Referred to as the Hole-in-the-Rock Trail after the crevice used to access the gorge, the route demanded extraordinary labor, including six weeks to build a wagon road down the Hole-in-the-Rock crevice, which dropped 1300 feet. In April 1880, 260 pioneers arrived here, ending a six-month journey of exceptional difficulty during one of the severest winters, a passage later remembered by Kumen Jones as having been preserved by Providence without serious accidents.