Named after North Horn Mountain, near Castle Dale, this formation in Emery County contain numerous Cretaceous- and Tertiary-era fossil invertebrates, microfossils and palynomorphs.

The Fremont River in Utah flows from the Johnson Valley Reservoir near Fish Lake east through Capitol Reef National Park to Muddy Creek, whose headwaters begin just north of Emery.

Artifacts such as pottery, manos and metates (millingstones), and weaponry have been found along Muddy and Ivie creeks.

Coil pottery, which is most often used to identify archaeological sites as Fremont, is not very different from that made by other Southwestern groups, nor are its vessel forms and designs distinct.

Variations in temper, the granular rock or sand added to wet clay to ensure even drying and to prevent cracking, have been used to identify five major Fremont ceramic types.

A unique and beautiful painted bowl form, Ivie Creek black-on-white, is found along either side of the southern Wasatch Plateau.

In addition to these five major types found at Fremont villages, a variety of locally made pottery wares are found on the fringes of the Fremont region in areas occupied by people who seem to have been principally hunters and gatherers rather than farmers.

[7] The earliest known entrance into the region known as Castle Valley by Europeans dates back to the Spanish explorers.

These wild horses and burros have occupied the San Rafael Swell area since the beginning of the Old Spanish Trail in the early 19th century.

By the early 20th century, wild horse and burro numbers had soared and were captured and sold by local mustangers.

[9] In the summer of 1853, Captain John W. Gunnison was sent by the War Department of the United States to explore a railroad route to the Pacific coast.

The plain lying between us and the Wasatch Range, one hundred miles to the west, is a series of rocky, parallel chasms, and fantastic sandstone ridges.

Unless this interior country possesses undiscovered minerals of great value, it can contribute but the merest trifle towards the maintenance of a railroad through it after it has been constructed.

The first attempt at settlement was made at Muddy Creek, a stream following down a wide canyon and eventually emptying into the Dirty Devil River.

The Muddy Creek vegetation included tall grass, sage, greasewood, rabbit brush, tender shad scale or Castle Valley clover, prickly pear cacti, and yucca.

These berries, when beaten off onto a canvas, could be dried, made into jams, jellies, or even eaten raw.

Casper Christensen and Fred Acord also brought their families and began to build cabins and plant crops.

In the 1870s, Brigham Young called on several families from Sanpete County to settle on Muddy Creek.

The windows were small openings made in the front wall and covered with heavy greased paper or white canvas.

Another great inconvenience of these roofs was the fact that they were a home for snakes, rats, mice and spiders.

A few of them were Jedediah Knight, Joseph Nielson, Pleasant Minchey, Frank Foote, Charley and Ammon Foote, George Merrick, Oscar Beebe, Orson Davis, Heber C. K. Petty, Sr., Joseph Evans, Rasmus Johnson, Carl Magnus Olsen, Peter Nielson, Peter Hansen, Heber Broderick, Peter Christensen, George A. Whitlock, Peter Victor Bunderson, Rasmus Albrechtsen, Christian A. Larsen, Lafe Allred, Hyrum Strong, Peter Jensen, Isaac Kimball, William George Petty, Niels Jensen, Wiley Payne Allred, Andrew C. Anderson, Stephen Williams and David Pratt.

[10] The settling of this land required bringing the waters of Muddy Creek through a tunnel that took nearly three years to dig.

With no trained engineering assistance, the settlers made their calculations, started from opposite sides of the hill, dodged numerous cave-ins of the treacherous Mancos shale, maintained the correct level inside the tunnel, and connected both tunnels nearly perfectly.

On April 15, he was set apart as the Presiding Elder of the Muddy Creek Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Then on November 19, he was officially appointed postmaster at Muddy, in the County of Emery in the Utah Territory.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.2 square miles (3.0 km2), all land.