Travels With Brewer: Bloody Canyon

After crossing the pass, the way leads down Bloody Canyon—a terrible trail. You would all pronounce it utterly inaccessible to horses, yet pack trains come down, but the bones of several horses or mules and the stench of another told that all had not passed safely. The trail comes down three thousand feet in less than four miles, over rocks and loose stones, in narrow canyons and along by precipices. It was a bold man who first took a horse up there. The horses were so cut by sharp rocks that they named it “Bloody Canyon,” and it has held the name—and it is appropriate—part of the way the rocks in the trail are literally sprinkled with blood from the animals.
--William H. Brewer, July 1863