“In south-central Utah, where the topography is spectacular, desolate, and extreme, the pessimistic tradition in place-names runs strong. Head south from Poverty Flat and you’ll end up in Death Hollow. Head east from Dead Mare Wash and you’ll end up on Deadman Ridge, looking out toward Last Chance Creek and down into Carcass Canyon. During the Great Depression, when the whole state turned into a kind of Poverty Flat, the Civilian Conservation Corps sent a group of men to the region to carve a byway out of a virtually impassable landscape of cliffs and chasms. The men nicknamed the project Poison Road: so steep that a single drop would kill them. Midway up, the ridge they were following gaped open and plunged fifteen hundred feet to the canyon floor. They laid a span across it, and called it Hell’s Backbone Bridge.”
— Kathryn Schultz
We fell in love with Hell’s Backbone Grill before we’d ever visited.
On a road trip to Bryce Canyon and Zion with Mars’ parents, we read Kathryn Schultz’s New Yorker article aloud in the car. Months later, as we were thinking about where we might want to get married, Hell’s Backbone Grill was the first place that came to mind.