Timpanogos Cave National Monument: Cave Trail Extension – Mount Timpanogos UT

Description

Timpanogos Cave was designated a national monument on October 14, 1922 and was initially developed and maintained by the U.S. Forest Service and volunteer organizations.  The National Park Service took over responsibility for the monument in 1933 but did not undertake full management until 1954. (Wadsworth 2018)

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) set up camp F-5 in the National Monument, at Granite Flat, in the summer of 1933 and worked on trails and other improvements for public use of the monument.

The most important trail work by the CCC enrollees of Company 940 was to extend the original trail up the sheer cliff to Timpanogos Cave, which had been built in 1921-22 by the Forest Service with the help of the Timpanogos Cave Committee.  The CCC built the branch of the trail to the entrance of Hansen’s Cave and then added tunnels inside the mountain connecting Hansen’s to Middle Cave to Timpanogos Cave, making it possible for visitors to follow a direct loop through the caves (see map).

Other CCC companies may have finished the trail work, because the full job was not completed until 1939, according to Wadsworth (2018).

In 1937, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built a stone comfort station (restroom) part of the way up the cave trail. (NPS 1982)

The CCC built other trails in or around the National Monument (Baldridge, p 33), but we do not have specifics on those.