William Grandstaff

William Grandstaff (~1830s or 1840s – 1901) was an American cowboy and frontiersman who lived in Ohio before settling in Utah Territory and Colorado. Born into slavery, verified information about Grandstaff's life is sporadic, but he's believed to have served in the Black Brigade of Cincinnati during the Civil War; to have been one of the two first successful non-indigenous settlers of Moab, Utah; and to have been well-respected in his community when he died near Glenwood Springs in 1901. He is the namesake of Moab's Grandstaff Canyon, and in recent years has received renewed attention from historians and artists.

Life

Early Life and War Service William Grandstaff was born enslaved at some point during the 1830s or 1840s. Differing records mark his place of birth as either having been in Virginia or Alabama. He is thought to have been of mixed race. He either escaped or was released from slavery at some time during the 1850s.

Settlement of Moab And Flight Therefrom, 1877–1881 An ice house built in Moab, Utah by William Grandstaff; now somewhat refurbished. Following a possible foray in Omaha, Grandstaff traveled to Utah Territory in 1877, where (accompanied by a French-Canadian trapper known to posterity simply as "Frenchie") he occupied the by-then abandoned fort of the Elk Mountain Mission, a Mormon settlement in present-day Moab whose original inhabitants had been driven out by the local Ute people in 1855 when the former attempted to usurp land of key agricultural importance to the latter. Having brought little besides a single pack donkey to a desert location that then provided little food, the pair, who had come to prospect in the area, only survived at first by eating a lone cow that had been left behind at the fort by a previous pair of settlers: the brothers Silas and George Green, who had been killed while trying to resettle the same empty fort, likely by the Ute. After agreeing to divide the space of the valley as well as the grounds of the fort into equal parcels for each to separately occupy and lay claim, Grandstaff and Frenchie then sustained themselves by growing watermelon, squash, and corn. Grandstaff had meanwhile discovered what remained of the Elk Mountain Mission's and Green Brothers' relict cattle, which he then rounded up and kept penned within the slot canyon that would later bear his name . He also may have distilled his own liquor and traded it to the Ute, who purportedly took a substantially greater liking to Grandstaff than they had ever had to Moab's earlier white and Mormon settlers. :

An embarrassment of squash, such as with Bill and Frenchie might have been beset during their occupancy of the Elk Mountain Mission Fort. The Mormon newcomers themselves craved fresh produce after weeks of dry trail-rations: predictably, the pioneers and the prospectors traded their foodstuffs to mutual satisfaction, and continued doing so as long as both parties remained in the valley. This last mentioned condition, however, was not to endure.

At some point that same autumn, a new settler called John Shafer stayed in the fort with Grandstaff and Frenchie. Shafer claimed that during his stay, Frenchie attempted to murder Grandstaff, the latter being just barely saved when Shafer "knocked the gun away" from Frenchie. Regardless of what may have truly occurred, Frenchie did flee the fort, and for a time trapped fur downstream the Colorado before ultimately selling his parcel of the valley, absconding from the historical record as well as from Moab

The same year, a battle broke out in nearby Castle Valley between newer white settlers and a small coalition of Ute, Paiute, and Diné warriors. The fight was essentially a victory for the indigenous, who lost only two men, whereas ten white gunmen died. The white posse, among whom was a cousin of the slain Green Brothers , may also have come into near-violent conflict with a few companies of Buffalo Soldiers during their return journey from the battle. Prior to the shootout, angry rumors about Grandstaff's putative bootlegging to the local Ute (rumors no doubt invigorated not only by the growing tensions between the local white and indigenous populations, but also by widespread knowledge of the mutual amity between Grandstaff and the local tribes) had already begun to mill around what was by then the town of Moab. That Grandstaff was well-apprised of these scurrilities and the violent intent they bore is evidenced in the following remark he is reported to have made to a friend at that time :

Thus, in the aftermath of the violence, fearing he would be used as a scapegoat for the whites' defeat in battle and lynched, Grandstaff escaped Moab on horseback: his flight was so hasty that he was forced to leave his cattle behind. ), from which he resumed prospecting, and erected atop the mountain a tremendous cross by affixing a crossbeam to a standing tree . In Glenwood Springs, Grandstaff married again, opened a saloon, ran a hot springs, mined,

Legacy Recent research into the life of William Grandstaff has been divulged by genealogist Nick Sheedy and shared by historical associations in Utah such as the Moab Museum.

The cross that Grandstaff installed upon Red Mountain eventually gave way, but Glenwood Springs residents at some point replaced its remains with a large electrically-lit cross that remains on the mountain to this day, maintained by a small private association that activates the cross's lights on holidays though the particular manner of that naming has been historically fraught. Soon after Grandstaff left Moab, the same white settlers whose hostility drove Grandstaff from the area named the canyon after a nickname for Grandstaff that involved use of the n-word; the name was changed to "Negro Bill Canyon" in the 1960s, and finally to "Grandstaff Canyon" in 2017.