Trails – Big Cottonwood Canyon UT

Description

Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) company 3340 worked out of camp F-38 at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, Salt Lake County UT, from the summer of 1935 through 1942.

The hundreds of CCC enrollees assigned to camp F-38 during those years built many trails in lower Big Cottonwood Canyon.  These are the ones locally attributed to the CCC:

On the south side moving up the canyon, there are two short and three long trails up the ridge between Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood Canyons: Storm Mountain trail (short, unmarked); Lake Blanche trail (formerly Mill B South Fork); Donut Falls/Cardiff Pass/Kessler Peak trails (formerly Mill D South Fork); Days Fork trail; and Greens Basin trail (short, unmarked).

On the north side moving up the canyon, there are three long trails up to the ridge between Big Cottonwood and Mill Creek Canyons:  Mill B North Fork trail (which connects to Mill A trail in its upper reaches); Butler Fork trail (which goes to Dog Lake), and Mill D North Fork trail.  Running along the crest and connecting these three trails east to Desolation Lake and Scott’s Pass is the Desolation Trail, also CCC built.

The CCC also built the Church Fork trail to Grandeur Peak in Mill Creek Canyon, and probably other trails there, as well.

Some of the trails are marked on the trail maps shown below.

The CCC also built trails in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Lacking further good information on those, we simply show the trailhead of the Alta-Brighton trail that goes over the ridge between Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons, which almost certainly was built by the CCC.