Traveler: Floyd Duncan
When and Where: Rode a section of the Old Spanish Trail on horseback in 1930 from Meadow, Millard County, Utah to Sevier County, Utah and around Fish Lake, Utah
Submitted by: Dayle D. White, Salt Lake City, Utah
Relationship: Floyd Duncan was my father
Profile:
Floyd Duncan was a young nineteen-year old when he decided to ride on horseback over parts of the Old Spanish Trail in 1930. According to his daughter, he used a handbraided one piece leather bridle made by William Hyrum Bennett who later became his father-in-law.
Duncan rode from Meadow in Millard County, Utah to Sevier County stopping off at Fish Lake where he visited the beautiful Pando Aspen Grove filled with giant trees. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the Grove, which has one root system, is called the “largest aspen clone- and the most massive single living thing- known on Earth.” Duncan also visited the Fish Lake Lodge which was under construction during the Great Depression and built from native spruce logs between 1928 and 1933.
Dayle White described her father as a “renaissance man” who spent his whole life as a farmer, sheepherder, hunter and fisherman and lived in the spirit of those travelers who rode the Old Spanish Trail a century earlier.