Cove Fort has always been a crossroads. Before LDS church President Brigham Young sent Ira Hinckley and his family to Cove Creek to establish a fort, the area stood at the head of a direct route to southern Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and California.

On many of his trips to the south, Young occupied a private room at Cove Fort. The site was considered a perfect halfway point between Kanosh and Beaver - only a full day's journey by wagon.

Today, the fort also serves as a crossroads. Travelers from every part of the world will rest their engines in Cove Fort's parking lot, only to be greeted by a small throng of senior missionaries ready to direct a tour of the historic site.

But in July 2007, Utah's crossroad nearly fell victim to the devastation of the largest wildfire in state history, the Milford Flats Fire.

Flight of the missionaries

Fifteen minutes before midnight on July 6, 2007, Elder Floyd and Sister Connie Calkins of Boise, Idaho, heard a knock at their trailer door. Sister Calkins climbed out of bed, while her husband slept soundly beside her, and walked toward the locked door. As she prepared to step out into the summer night, a Millard County sheriff stared back at her.

"Good evening, ma'am," the sheriff said.

"What's the problem, officer?" Sister Calkins asked.

"We need to evacuate this trailer park as soon as we can," the sheriff replied. "Do you have anywhere you can go?"

Sister Calkins remembered the emergency evacuation plan Elder Kent and Sister Dixie Jones, the Cove Fort site supervisors, had explained to her when they started their missionary service only a few months earlier. The plan was to go to Beaver and meet in the parking lot of the stake center until every missionary was counted.

She woke up her husband and the two of them began to prepare to move their trailer out of the RV park that housed the majority of the couples serving missions at the Cove Fort Historic Site, sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her husband hitched the trailer to the back of their truck, and they drove toward I-15, heading south to Beaver.

When the Calkins arrived at Beaver, they met up with the Jones and the rest of the Cove Fort missionaries. But their stay at the stake center didn't last long.

By 8 a.m. the next morning, each couple was back at the fort, greeting the usual number of tourists and taking them on tours. The Calkins remained at the RV park until the afternoon. Only the "locals," or missionaries who stayed at the fort longer than the summer, were scheduled to work that day's two shifts at the fort.

At 3 p.m., another sheriff's deputy told the missionaries they had to evacuate, again. This time, the couples were prepared and most of the trailers were left hitched to the trucks from the night before. The Calkins headed out to Beaver, but as they followed other missionary vehicles, the group was separated and two-thirds of the couples spent the night in the Monroe Stake Center near Richfield.

Elder Donald Turnbull and his wife, Sandra, two missionaries from Knox, Maine, didn't expect to be evacuated that day at all.

"The fire had burnt by us, so we figured we were all well and good," Elder Turnbull said.

When the call came to evacuate a second time, the Turnbulls followed a line of seven or eight other missionaries into Beaver. They didn't have to be warned twice.

"You could feel the heat from the fire long before it got there," Turnbull said. "As soon as the wind shifted and we could see [through the smoke] as far as the gas station, we rushed out."

Trying to evacuate wasn't easy, though. Sister Calkins said the smoke was so thick, she couldn't tell if she was on the road or not. To stay on the road during the evacuation, the couple followed the taillights on the car in front of them to make it safely to Richfield.

When you play with fire...

Life-threatening wildfires are not a new thing for the residents and missionaries at Cove Fort.

Some of the earliest records tell about the area's constant battle between man and the elements, especially wildfire. According to a southern Utah Native American legend known as "the pit of Hades," a group of demons tried to break out of Hell through a pit in the Earth in the southern Utah desert. The Earth called in a medicine man to resolve the problem by using a myriad of elements to do battle with the fiery foes.

First, he called on the winds of the West to fill in the demon's pit.

Next, he called for the rain god to drop water in "clouds and torrents" to put out the fire. When the rain god's tactic didn't work, he called on the god of the North to bring ice and snow to put out the flames.

The hellish minions didn't know how to handle the cold, and unable to return to their home through the now-sealed pit, froze in the southern Utah landscape, eventually solidifying into the rock formations that can still be seen today.

In 1867, Ira and Adelaide Hinckley, grandparents of the late President Gordon B. Hinckley, established a fort at Cove Creek. The church president and then-territorial governor of Deseret, Brigham Young, wanted to secure a relay station halfway between communities in Beaver and Fillmore, the territorial capitol. The fort at Cove Creek eventually proved so useful to the church that, even after he left the fort in the care of his brother, Arza, Ira Hinckley maintained the property rights to the settlement until 1890.

Mistakes and tragedies were a way of life at the fort, and nobody was immune.

When Bryant Hinckley, Ira's son by his second wife, Angelina, was a young child, he became the only person at Cove Fort to take a bullet.

While Bryant and his older brother were playing in their father's bedroom, they came upon a .45-caliber pistol. Not realizing the gun was fully loaded, they used the "prop" for a game of cowboys and Indians; Bryant always loved to be the Indian. The cowboy pulled the trigger, striking the "Indian" in the leg.

When Ira discovered Bryant had been shot, he immediately took his son to see a doctor in Beaver, but lack of facilities and education prevented the physician from safely removing the slug. For the rest of his life, Bryant Hinckley would carry that bullet in his leg, a reminder to him and his children of the "special place" Cove Fort always held in their hearts.

In May 1992, President Hinckley, then a member of The First Presidency, dedicated the newly restored site and blessed it to be "protected by the hand of the Lord."

Following the dedication, President Hinckley returned to his car and opened the trunk, pulling out a small wooden chair just large enough to sit a toddler or small child.

Rumors say he then placed it in one of the restored bedrooms at the fort and said, "I think this belongs here more than at my house." The chair had belonged to his father, Bryant, when he lived at the fort.

In 1996, a fire directly to the north of the fort was one of the most threatening natural disasters the church historical site ever experienced. In 2006, a fire directly to the south of the fort also threatened to destroy the site.

"They don't know if it was started by someone coming down the highway dragging a chain, or whether they set the fire intentionally," said Dave Christensen, the physical facilities representative for the LDS Church in Millard County. "But the fire started in three spots along the freeway [south of the fort]. That's the fire that almost wiped us out. A lot of the danger [in this area] is that if these fires get started out here, then once they get to the [east] side of the freeway, they could speed up the side of the mountain and onto the other side [of the mountain toward Richfield]."

The 2007 fire tried hard to do just that, approaching the fort on the west side of the freeway at speeds estimated at 70 miles per hour, a speed few firefighters have ever encountered. Around the same time, the 30-foot tall wall of flame came within 100 feet of the fort and stopped, preserved only by a shift in the wind. The same fire jumped the freeway farther up the road, at a nearby Chevron gas station.

By 4 p.m. on July 7, Christensen was one of the only people near the fort. Sleeping in the back of his truck, with the words "Cove Fort Hilton" scrawled near his makeshift bed, he had the best seat in the house for the spectacle that went on around him.

The wall of flame raced eastward toward the barn and only Christensen, along with a Millard County sheriff's deputy and the Kanosh fire truck stood in its path, determined to halt the beast that tried to topple the historic site to the ground.

Knowing they had to do something, Christensen and his group raced to the barn. As the fire drew closer to the barn, the flames became slightly smaller. When they were about 100 feet away, the flames were small enough they moved the truck within range of the wall of fire. After hosing down the side of the barn, and battling back a few flames while they were at it, their attention turned to the southwest.

Another wall of fire was approaching them, possibly faster than the first.

"When you've got a fire coming at you at 30 miles per hour, at 30 feet high, it's scary," Christensen said. "It was a scary time for everyone."

Herds of cattle to the southwest of the barn began to panic and scatter. The group of mostly volunteers could feel the heat of the fire penetrating through their shirts. Christensen wasn't certain if they could fight back another wall of flames.

But right before the wall hit the barn, a firefighting bomber plane parted the heavens, swooped down toward the flames and dropped a load of fire retardant on the wall of fire.

Miracle at Cove Fort

When President Hinckley blessed the fort in his dedicatory prayer, many of those present said they could feel the spirit of the Lord present at that moment. Elder Jones said he believes the salvation of the fort from the Milford Flats Fire, while buildings and wildlife literally burned around them, is a manifestation of that blessing.

"It was a real testimony building experience when it was all over," he said. "People in the area really love Cove Fort, and they rallied around us."

Even Cove Fort's neighbor Alan Peacock, who says he's a non-practicing Mormon, struggles to describe why the fort was spared.

"I have no explanation why it didn't burn everything there," Peacock said.

"Everything burned except what you see [today]. It burned right up to that fort and turned around. Whatever it was, I have no explanation for it."

Copyright Brigham Young University 30 Jun 2008