A couple miles up Provo Canyon, you’ll encounter one of the loveliest sights Utah has to offer: Bridal Veil Falls, a 600-foot-tall cascade of water that plunges down a sheer cliff face, then rolls across a little terrace and down again, before spreading across a rough talus incline and finally merging gently with the Provo River. I see the falls at least once a summer — Provo Canyon is one of my favorite top-down drives — and they always take my breath away.
These days, if you want to see the falls from any other angle except “beneath,” you need to have a good pair of hiking boots and some technical knowledge, but up until just a few years ago, we, how shall I say it, less physically inclined people could just take the tram to the top of the falls.
The tram was a tourist attraction in its own right, billed as the steepest in the world, and if you ever stood at the bottom, trying to work up the courage to pay your fare and take the ride, you could believe it. The cables running up from the little concession stand at the base of the falls had to be angled at about 70 degrees or so, and the one time I ever rode the thing, I couldn’t believe how quickly the cars parked along the side of the road dwindled into Hot Wheels toys.
The tram’s upper terminus was a good-sized building perched right out at the edge of the cliff, a restaurant with lots of windows that offered spectacular views of the falls and the surrounding canyon. I never ate there, nor did I ever attend the Saturday-night dances they used to talk so much about on on K-96 right around the same time I was aching to see Heavy Metal. By the time I acquired my driver’s license and enough confidence behind the wheel to travel that far from home, the restaurant had gone under. But the tram continued on without it, ferrying wide-eyed tourists through the mist of the falls and then back down again.
The first few years I drove the canyon, there was a pleasantly quaint aspect to the tram operation. There was no parking lot or turn-off; there wasn’t room for it. The canyon road was a narrow two-lane, and to reach the concession stand and tram station, you just pulled off the side of the road. Then, in the mid-90s, amid much protest from canyon-lovers (including Robert Redford, who own a considerable chunk of land in the area) and tossing about of statistics from the DOT, the road was widened and elevated, becoming more like a freeway. Much safer, no doubt, but much less appealing, too. The days of pulling over in any old wide spot you might fancy were gone. Now there’s a barrier along the edge of the road, and you have to take off-ramps to reach planned and designated viewpoints. The tram station became harder to see, because it was down below the level of the road, and harder to reach, because of the off-ramp situation.
I never stopped there at the tram station again after the road was changed. I always had good intentions, but told myself, “next time” and contented myself with glimpses of the falls from the comfort of my car as I zoomed past at 45 mph.
About a decade ago, the lower tram station was obliterated by an avalanche. The cables and the upper station, the old restaurant, remained intact, however, and I always hoped the tram would someday be rebuilt. But this weekend’s news that the old restaurant has been destroyed by fire makes that seem considerably less likely. Authorities are certain it was human-caused — it’d have to be, wouldn’t it, since gas and electricity in the old building have been shut off for years — but there’s no word yet on whether it was accidentally caused by squatters or teenagers on a lark, or if vandals deliberately torched the place. My first thought was insurance fraud.
Whatever may have caused it, I suspect rebuilding the place will be deemed too expensive, and so one more aspect of the landscape I knew growing up will recede into memory.
I wish now I’d stopped a few more times, before the avalanche…
