Riding the cable proved an attraction for those gifted with strong nerves. At a later date, Frank Petty came to operate the sawmill at the top of the cliff. He was a large man, weighing nearly 300 pounds, too heavy to travel comfortably up and down the trails, and the road around the Arizona strip to his home in Rockville being too long for convenience, he took to riding the cable. On one occasion, as he started down, the lumber on which he was riding struck the top of the cliff and loosened the chain holding one end of the load. His son, Frank, operating the brakes at the top, seeing the mishap, applied the brakes just in time to prevent his father from falling down the face of the 1,800 foot declivity. With a few inches of the lumber still clinging to the edge and his father paralyzed with fear and afraid to move for fear of jarring it loose, Frank climbed underneath and re-fastened the chain. With a sigh of relief, he then lowered his father in safety to the bottom. Kane County and Arizona Just as the settlement of Iron County had provided a stepping stone to the exploration and settlement of the Virgin River Valley, so in turn, the latter served in like stead in opening up Kane County and the Kaibab National Forest of northern Arizona. In the fall of 1858, after Albert Sydney Johnston’s army had entered Utah, Brigham Young, still doubtful about the future, instructed missionaries under Jacob Hamblin’s leadership to cross the Colorado River to the southeast and visit the Moquis or Town Indians with the object of exploring the possibilities of retreating with his people to this region should the difficulties with the army become unbearable.[65] Accordingly, Jacob Hamblin, one of the leading figures in Utah’s southern frontier, left the Santa Clara on October 28, 1858, with a party of twelve, including an Indian guide, a Spanish interpreter, and a Welsh interpreter, the last because of wildly erroneous reports that the Moquis spoke a variant of that tongue. The Indian led them through the Arizona strip via Pipe Springs and Kaibab to the old Ute ford where Escalante had crossed eighty-two years earlier. The visit to the Moquis was brief, some of the men returning in November, the others later in the winter. This expedition revealed the general topography between the Virgin and Colorado. [Illustration: Zion Lodge in 1925; Angel Landing in the distance.] [Illustration: Riding the cable in Zion Canyon in 1912. _Courtesy D. D. Rust._]