Native Americans

While Zion National Park is mostly attributed to the Mormons that settled there, it has been inhabitated for thousands of years by multiple native American tribes. And while most of these tribes are lost to time the most recent ones were the Southern Paiute Tribe, and they are were the orginal name for the canyn came from,"Mukuntuweap" or Straight Canyon, named by John Weasley Powell to honor the Native Americans. This would be the name of the national park for eight years until it was changed to Zion National Park to give it an easier name to say to attract tourism, and to tie the canyon to the mormons who settled it.

The Mormon Settlers

The first mormon to set foot in Zion Canyon was translator Nephi Johnson, a person who was directed to check if they could farm and settle there. Upon his return, he said that it was okay to settle there, and they built the town named "Springdale". One of the settlers, a farmer named Isaac Behunin would be the first to call the canyon "Zion Canyon". Over the years, the Mormons would continue to grow their community, at the cost of the Southern Paiutes dying of plagues the mormon settlers carried, and most eventually moved South. Over time the Mormon settlers would get more aggressive towards emigrants and "invaders" but none of these events would ever happen in Zion Canyon.

Creation of the National Park

In 1908, William Howard Taft would create the National Park and name it Mukuntuweap National Park, the named Powell had given it decades before. This angered the Mormon church and local residents, seeing it as the government not giving them credit for being among the first to actually live in the Canyon. They would not have to complain long, because the director of the National Park Service, Horace Albright, would rename it to Zion National Park to attract more visitors, believing people would not visit if they could not say the name. In 1919, the National Park was enlarged to include more of the area, and the Kolob section of the park was added in 1956.