Dewey is a ghost town in southeastern Grand County, Utah, located along the Colorado River (historically called the Grand River) near its confluence with the Dolores River, at coordinates approximately 38°48′37″N 109°18′06″W and an elevation of about 4,140 feet (1,262 m). It originated in the 1880s as a small ferry settlement (sometimes associated with the name Kingsferry) and was largely abandoned after the Dewey Bridge opened in 1916, which eliminated the need for the ferry and related stopover services. Today the site features remnants of the historic bridge, a BLM campground and boat ramp, traces of foundations, an icehouse cave carved into sandstone cliffs, and some old fruit trees.
Geographic Importance and Early Settlement
The Colorado River’s steep canyon walls made crossings rare and difficult across much of Utah. Dewey occupied one of the few accessible spots with gradual approaches on both banks, allowing wagons to reach the river. This made it a vital transportation link between isolated southeastern Utah communities (such as those in Castle Valley, the La Sal Mountains, and Miners Basin) and points east toward Grand Junction, Colorado, and the railroad at nearby Cisco.
Miners were among the earliest non-Native American visitors, building log cabins and panning for gold. Ranchers followed, including C.R. McKerry and Samuel King. In the 1880s, Samuel King established and operated a ferry at the site. A small community grew around it, supporting travelers, farmers, prospectors, and the movement of cargo, passengers, and livestock. Silver mining occurred nearby near the Dolores-Colorado confluence. Supplies arriving by rail at Cisco were often wagoned to the river, ferried across, or floated downstream toward places like Richardson (near Professor Valley) before overland transport to more remote settlements.
Naming and Community Development
The name “Dewey” has two main origin theories: one credits a prospector named Dewey Smith who camped near the river ford around 1880; the other links it to a supply raft named for Admiral George Dewey. The settlement was also known as Kingsferry in honor of Samuel King. In 1902 residents briefly sought an official name change to Kingsferry and operated a post office under that name for about two months, but postal authorities retained “Dewey.” Samuel King applied for the Dewey post office on August 30, 1898; Samuel J. Scharf followed in 1902.
The community remained small—typically described as a few dozen residents at most—and never became a major commercial center. Key features included the ferry, a boarding/halfway house, a post office, and a school. Daily life centered on river commerce, ranching, limited farming, and serving travelers and stage traffic.
Richard “Dick” Westwood (who later served as Grand County’s first elected sheriff) and his wife Martha moved to Dewey around 1902–1903 to operate the ferry (Grand County commissioned a new one in 1903 after earlier ice damage). Martha ran the boarding house and handled mail. She charged 25 cents per meal for steady boarders and 35 cents for transients. Stage mail from Cisco to Castleton and other outlying areas arrived around 11 a.m.; she prepared dinner by 11:30 while sorting mail. The Westwoods and other families faced challenges of isolation, including educating children. Martha sometimes enrolled herself and a young daughter to meet minimum pupil numbers for a teacher. A one-room schoolhouse (16 by 24 feet, built for about $400, later described with local lumber lined with muslin) operated from roughly 1902/1906 until around 1914. The family sometimes boarded extra children to maintain enrollment.
Ferry operations were unreliable and costly. An earlier ferry was destroyed by ice in the winter of 1902–03; another sank in March 1913 when ice tore a hole in it, isolating residents for days. Operators over time included Dick Eastwood, George Coombs (1909 contract at $20/month plus tolls), Gay Brown, and the Westwoods. Tolls were modest (e.g., low rates for sheep in groups; up to about $1.50 round-trip for a six-horse team and wagon). Samuel King also built or contracted for related roads, including a toll road toward Moab.
The Dewey Bridge and Decline
Recognizing the ferry’s limitations, Grand County pursued a bridge. Construction began around 1913–1915 by the Midland Bridge Company of Kansas City, Missouri (the same firm that built the Cameron Suspension Bridge in Arizona). The Dewey Bridge, completed in 1916 at a cost of about $25,000, was a one-lane suspension bridge roughly 502 feet long, with an all-wood deck about 8–10 feet wide (from rail to rail or support to support), two metal towers, and multiple cables on each side. It was designed to carry the weight of six horses, three wagons, and 9,000 pounds of freight. At the time it was the second-longest suspension bridge west of the Mississippi and later Utah’s longest. It provided a reliable year-round link, connecting southeastern Utah more directly to Colorado markets and supplies.
The bridge rendered the ferry and stopover services obsolete. Residents, including the Westwoods (who returned to Moab), moved away. Buildings fell into disrepair. Ranching continued for a time on free range, with cattle and sheep, but overgrazing and the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 contributed to further decline of small operations in the area. By the mid-20th century Dewey was a ghost town.
A later modern highway bridge (completed in the 1980s, with traffic shifted around 1986–1988) carried vehicles on Utah State Route 128. The historic bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, restored in the late 1990s/early 2000s for pedestrian and bicycle use as part of the Kokopelli Trail, and then destroyed by fire on April 6, 2008. A 7-year-old boy playing with matches at a nearby campground started a brush fire that, fanned by wind, rapidly consumed the wooden deck and rails (steel towers, main cables, and anchors largely survived). Reconstruction efforts were discussed but the bridge remains a skeletal remnant.
Later History and Present Day
A proposed Dewey Dam (studied from the 1920s into the 1940s for hydroelectric power and other uses, including potential magnesium development) was ultimately canceled due to concerns such as high evaporation from a shallow reservoir. Some private homes and limited activity (including a service station operated by Ballard and Maxine Harris in later decades) appeared near the site, but the original settlement never revived.
Today the area is managed in part by the Bureau of Land Management, with a campground, boat launch, and recreational access. Visible traces of the town include foundation outlines, the icehouse cave, and fruit trees. The burned bridge towers and cables remain a striking historic landmark along the scenic Utah Route 128 corridor between Moab and the Colorado border. Dewey illustrates the role of geography and transportation infrastructure in the settlement (and abandonment) of remote canyon-country communities during Utah’s frontier and early 20th-century periods.