San Rafael Back County Horsemen Improve Swinging Bridge Campground

Press Release

About 30 miles southeast of Castle Dale is the San Rafael (Swinging Bridge) Campground. This campground is next to the San Rafael River with towering cliffs to the north and two major peaks to the south.

In 2002, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) expanded the San Rafael (Swinging Bridge) Campground to the north and took in an area heavily used by equestrian campers. The San Rafael Back Country Horsemen (SRBCH) contacted the Price BLM Field office in 2009 with an offer to replace the lost equestrian use area with a new equestrian campground to the east. The BLM, with the cooperation of Emery County and the San Rafael Back Country Horsemen, utilized a Federal Recreational Trails Grant to construct a five-site campground suitable for equestrian use.

Last year, the San Rafael Back County Horsemen, in discussions with the BLM, applied for a grant to expand the number of corrals both in number and size. Again, with help from a Recreation Restoration Infrastructure Grant issued by the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation, the BLM, Emery County and SRBCH replaced the old, rotten posts and rails with boundary markers of large rocks and built five new 16′ x16′ corrals at the campsites.

The old posts and rails were removed by the Mountain Ridge Back Country Horsemen from Riverton, Utah last fall. They regularly use the campground and saw an opportunity to benefit the campground. They cut the posts and rails into firewood to be used in the campsite. The BLM, using a small track hoe, moved rocks provided by Emery County to mark the boundaries of the campground.

On March 17, two BLM employees, three volunteers with an Emery County track hoe and nine San Rafael Back Country Horsemen met at the campground to finish the upgrade. They removed tamarisks, leveled ground and put up the corrals. The corrals were constructed of panels, one of which contains a four-foot gate. These panels were welded to drill stem that was set into the ground with sackrete. A drag behind an UTV was also used to level the road and to move gravel into potholes and back onto the road.

The San Rafael Back Country Horsemen have donated thousands of dollars in labor and equipment to improve equestrian access on BLM and Forest Service lands, including this equestrian campground, Engineer Canyon Trailhead and Electric Lake Trailhead. The group has also cleared trees off of 50 miles of trails. If local horsemen (and women) have ideas for other projects that would benefit horseback riding in the area, they should contact the San Rafael Back Country Horsemen on their Facebook page.