During the early seventies the mail from St. George to Kanab was routed via Shunesburg. It was lifted over the 1,500 foot cliff at the head of Shunesburg canyon on wires[63] arranged in such a way that the man at the top bringing the mail from Kanab could exchange with the man below, carrying it down the river. This short-cut saved a day’s travel over the road via Pipe Springs and the Arizona Strip. It was not until the new century had dawned, however, that young David Flanigan, who was but a small boy in the days of the Shunesburg wire-pulley apparatus, conceived the idea of lowering lumber over the cliffs by means of cables. As a lad of 15, in the spring of 1888, he and three other boys hunting on the East Rim of Zion had seen a large grove of yellow pine sawtimber and had stood at the top of the cliff later known as Cable Mountain, where the precipice appeared to reach almost to the floor of the canyon. The problem of lumber remained as acute then as it was in the days of his parents. Ten years later, needing lumber for himself, he was forced to go to the Trumbull or Kaibab mountains, a trip requiring a full week. The advantage of obtaining lumber nearer home on the rim of Zion thus impressed itself upon him. He advocated the idea of lowering it on a cable but found no supporters. Convinced of the practical wisdom of the idea, he undertook the work alone in 1900. He bought 50,000 feet of wire and stretched it around pulleys and drums at top and bottom making a circular series, half of which had three wires, and half five. The five-ply half was to run around the drum where the weight would be greatest. After two or three years of experimenting with pulleys and wire tension, he finally perfected his device. To cut the timber, he bought an old saw-mill in the summer or fall of 1904. Thus Flanigan’s ingenuity made it possible for vast quantities of lumber to go down Zion Canyon. By Christmas, 1906, two hundred thousand feet of sawed lumber had actually been lowered on his cable. It was during the summer of 1906 that the writer first visited Zion Canyon. From Orderville he faced a trip by horse to his home in St. George. Rather than retrace his steps by way of Kanab and Pipe Springs, he inquired about the short-cut via Zion and was directed cross-country to the head of the old East Rim trail, which John Winder had recently made barely passable. Belated, he reached the top of the trail at sundown, and familiar as he was with mountaineering, started unhesitatingly on the 3,000 foot descent. Darkness found him well along the trail which grew increasingly hard to follow. About half way down, he met Winder and some cowboys coming up. They described the trail and said they had just lost a pack horse which had rolled over the cliffs below and they had been delayed in retrieving the pack.