I usually come into Moab from the south. There aren't a lot of ways you can do it - State 191 runs through town, and that's about it. Any other way you can find is likely to be a rough drive, and you won't be sure it's going to take you where you want to go until you get there.
It's a long trip to get to any place of any account. The nearest town of any size is Monticello, an hour's drive south, and the nearest shopping mall is two hours away, in Grand Junction, Colorado. Most people don't even know those towns exist.
Taking the 191 up from Monument Valley into Utah, you eventually come to the town of Bluff, on the San Juan River. Bluff is a tiny place which seems to barely exist, perched between the river and the high sandstone bluffs that gave the town its name. Bluff is the first place we come to that has any significance in the Wilson story - many of the Indians who were involved in Joe Wilson's shooting and the deaths of two of his brothers escaped the reservation and came here to live. One of them, Posey, seemed to be the center of trouble between the Indians and the whites until 1923, when he died on the run after another in a series of low-grade skirmishes.
North of Bluff is Blanding, a somewhat larger town that had its own trouble with Posey's Paiute Indians. A number of them spent part of 1923 in a barbed wire enclosure in the middle of town.
Farther north, Monticello is at the edge of Moab country. Joe Wilson is buried in Monticello, or at least that's what they say. There is a headstone there that says Joseph Henry Wilson, dates unknown. It's probably him. There's a slim chance that somebody else is buried there - someone with a completely different name. In 1881, a band of troublesome Indians who had just killed some white men in Utah passed by here, leaving one prospector dead. They were being chased by a posse of men from Colorado, where they had killed some settlers. They were headed for the LaSal mountains, not far north of Moab.
Heading north from Monticello, the road dives down from the foothills of the Blue Mountains into semi-desert. The first thing you notice is Church Rock, which is unusual enough to hint that you may be entering a place where the sights are a little out of the ordinary. About halfway to Moab you'll drive by Wilson Arch, a spectacular natural arch cut into the sandstone. It's named after Joe Wilson. His ranch was here, just off the road, the place where he lived out his life after being lamed and disfigured. It's probably where he died.
A few miles north of Joe Wilson's ranch is the turnoff to Brown's Hole, where my grandfather raised cattle and my mother not long after Joe's death. Farther still you'll pass the road to the town of LaSal, originally Coyote, the town that Ervin Wilson fled to after Joe was shot, chased all the way by an Indian. Probably. It may not have happened that way. By this point you're well aware of the LaSal Mountains looming over you, not far to the northeast.
A few more miles north and you've entered Spanish Valley. The Spanish Trail used to run through here, and hundreds of years ago this was a major trade route for Indians and the Spanish, the major road for traffic between what would be California, South America, and points East. Off to your right as you enter Spanish Valley - probably up on the LaSal foothills a little way - is the spot where, in 1880, Joe and Ervin Wilson ran into a band of hostile Indians - probably the only hostile Indians in the area, since the Mormon settlers made it a point to get along with them any way they could. Ervin escaped, but Joe didn't. He lived, but he was severely injured.
Moab lies at the north end of Spanish Valley, and if you stay on route 191 you'll drive right through town. It might be more interesting, though, to make a right turn on Mill Creek Drive, if you can spot it. Mill Creek Drive was the original road through town, before any part of 191 was built. As you pull off the main road onto the back way into Moab, you notice that the desert has somehow turned into old, lush greenery. Crossing Mill Creek and driving up a hill, you can see the old Moab Cemetery. Most of Joe Wilson's immediate family are buried there.
Turning left at the cemetery, the road meanders into town. If you head north on 400 East, you can make a left turn onto 1st South, which runs to the center of town. On the way, a drive of less than a mile, you'll pass the houses where my mother and my father a grew up, houses that were built over a hundred years ago. A few more blocks and you are again at state 191, which here doubles as Moab's Main Street. Turning right will take you through the downtown area and out to the Colorado River, but we're going to go straight one more block, where we'll turn right and park. We're on what used to be the Wilson Ranch, the home of the first white family that ever lived here in Moab.
The old houses on the east side of the street are all gone now, replaced by modern houses of various shapes and sizes. On the west side of the street there is a large, fairly modern-looking building that is said to be, underneath the modern additions and new paint, a very old farmhouse that was built and owned by the Wilson family. Directly to the south there is a foot bridge. If you cross the footbridge and take the footpath to the west you are immediately lost in the hidden, overgrown jungle that still runs along Mill Creek all the way to the Colorado River, and that must look very much like it did in 1878 when the Wilsons came here. Not too far north of where the creek ends, the river bends to the east, and right about there is the shallow ford where the Wilsons crossed after their rough trip through the desert.
If we get back on Main Street - where Butch Cassidy and his bunch used to carouse and run horse races - you can head north to where 191 crosses the river. You'll pass the site of the Elk Mountain Mission, a fort built during the first attempt to colonize the valley. In 1878, when the A.G. and Jane Wilson came here, their two oldest sons were waiting for them in what was left of the mission.
Now it might be a good idea to leave 191 and head north along the river. The road is narrow and winds along a ledge cut into the side of the canyon, but the scenery is astonishing and there is one more landmark in the lives of the Wilson family to be seen.
Half an hour's drive up the river gets you to the Porcupine Valley road and up into Castle Valley. Drive up to the top of Castle Valley and up into the foothills of the LaSal Mountains and you'll eventually find a deserted-looking turnoff called the Loop Road, because it forms a loop across the side of the mountain and eventually comes out at the south end of Moab. If you keep on going straight here - and if you know the way - you can make it to my grandfather's old cabin in Willow Basin.
But if you turn south on the Loop Road - you'll want cameras because you won't want to forget the view from up there - you can find something interesting. If you can find the turnoff, it's a short walk to a clearing in the middle of the scrub oak, where you'll find a rough-looking rock monument standing at the head of what is obviously a large grave. Isadore and Alfred Wilson, two of Joe Wilson's brothers, are buried here, along with others. Their names are written on the monument - eight men from a posse that chased a band of Indians here from Colorado in 1881, and two boys from Moab, who were up here tending cattle and ran into some unfriendly Indians, like their brothers had the year before. The Pinhook Battle was the last battle between the whites and the American Indians that ever took place.
It's pretty lonesome up there. There's an account of one of the survivors of the battle who came back to Moab years later and wanted to see the monument. He was told not to try - there was no way to get there. The Loop Road passes nearby now, but the gravesite is hard to find and easy to miss. Hardly anybody ever comes up here.