Some places have great stories, and popular hiking destination Cohab Canyon in Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park is exactly one of those places. For the Mormon faith’s remaining polygamists in Utah, the late 1800s were a trying time: the state had just consented to the Edmunds Act, which bans the practice. Federal law enforcement officials were intermittently sent to the state’s most remote corners, including the tiny town of Fruita, to stamp out plural marriage. As legend has it, Fruita’s polygamists evaded suspicion by hiding their many wives in a nearby canyon—hence the name of today: Cohab (for “cohabitation”) Canyon.
