Dutch Oven Cook-Off

1873. Other early settlers were Simon Hansen, Christian Hansen, Hans Tuft and C.A. Madsen. Twenty families from Ephraim joined the colony in 1875 and John Williams opened the first store.

In 1875, the settlement was increased by the addition of 20 families from Ephraim and a town started. The first store was opened that year in a tent and was owned by John Williams, who later sold it to the people and the business was incorporated as the Mayfield Co-op. The affairs were operated for some years under the wise management of Ole C. Olsen, president of the company, and later by Joseph Christiansen.

In 1894, the company sold out, and in a history of Sanpete County published in 1898, the store was then owned by Henry Jensen “who operates a north and south branch, and does a good business.” At that time (1898) there were three stores, the third owned by O.C. Larsen; two blacksmith shops, owned by Arthur H. Campbell and Jorgeu Knudsen; a fine 40-barrel roller mill, owned by the Willardson family; three well-conducted district schools, under able instructors; a Relief Society hall used for amusements and religious services; and a ward of the Latter-day Saints under the wise counsel of Bishop Parley Christiansen.

The population consisted of farmers and stock raisers and numbered probably 800 people “noted for their honesty, industry and enterprise in conquering the desert and building magnificent homes in this mountain vale.”

MORONI

Moroni was founded by George Washington Bradley in 1859 and was settled by families from Nephi, but it had a real identity crisis. It went through the names Sanpitch, Mego, Little Rome and Duck Springs before Sanpete’s first probate judge named it Moroni after a Nephite Prophet in The Book of Mormon.

Moroni sits midway between Nephi and Manti on the most pronounced “North Bend” of the San Pitch River. Families from Nephi moved there early in 1859. High water in 1862 forced the town’s founders to move away from the river site and spread north over the rolling hills, a setting best seen when approaching Moroni from the south.

For water, they tapped the San Pitch farther east with an intricate and expensive system of canals and ditches that stretched from Mt. Pleasant to Fountain Green’s south fields. Reaching out in all directions, the city was big enough by 1891 to support an “opera house” that seated 1,000 persons. That opera house has been renovated and used regularly today.

STERLING

Sterling was originally named Pettyville. The town was surveyed by James Snow in 1881 after securing rights to former Indian reservation land from the government. Most of the Pettyville settlers moved to this higher bench above Six Mile Creek, six miles south of Manti, and the main road was eventually rerouted to service them.

Scandinavian-style stone mileage markers once signed the old route along the San Pitch. Teacher Gus Clark won the then considerable sum of $5 in a contest to name the place. One sore loser was so vexed that he slugged Clark, tarnishing the town’s “sterling” reputation.

A quiet village with several pioneer adobe houses, the place still maintains a small store that, along with a warehouse, functions as a community center. Sterling is the gateway to Palisade State Park and Six-Mile Canyon, which leads to the top of Skyline Drive.