Utah Centennial County History Series - Iron County 1998

A HIS TO RY 0 F =====================

Iron County Community YLbove self"

Janet Burton Seegmiller I UTAH CENTENNIAL COUNTY HISTORY SERIES I

A HISTORY OF

Iron County Janet Burton Seegmiller Without question, Iron County is accurately named. Within its borders lie the richest and most accessible iron ore bodies in the western United States. The discovery of these ore deposits led Brigham Young to establish Mormon colonies at Parowan and Cedar City in 1851 on the southern route to the Pacific Coast and the southern edge of the Great Basin. Despite the natural resources of iron, coal, forests, and great scenic beauty, struggle and sacrifice have marked the history of all peoples who have occupied the semiarid valleys and rugged mountains of the county.

This book traces some of the historical events in the Iron County area from its geologic beginning to the present, and it recalls the many enterprises made successful by the cooperative effort of the county's citizens.

From early choirs and dramatic societies to iron production, from water projects to construction of schools and churches, from roads and airports to hospitals and recreational sites, there are few areas of human endeavor untouched by this cooperative spirit.

While much has been written about pioneers of the county, this volume emphasizes twentieth-century achievements and looks ahead to the challenges of the future.

ISBN: 0-913738-19-0

A HISTORY OF

Iron County

A HIS TO RY 0 F ========================

Iron County Community Ylbove Seif

Janet Burton Seegmiller

1998 Utah State Historical Society Iron County Commission

Copyright Š 1998 by Iron County Commission All rights reserved ISBN 0-913738-19-0 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 96-62120 Map by Automated Geographic Reference Center-State of Utah Printed in the United States of America Utah State Historical Society 300 Rio Grande Salt Lake City, Utah 84101-1182

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................

Vll

GENERAL INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IX

INTRODUCTION The Face and Faces of Iron County . . . . . . .

1

CHAPTER 1

Physical Characteristics ................ .

7

CHAPTER 2

Ancient Peoples ...................... .

20

CHAPTER 3

Explorers, Traders, Trappers and Expeditions ...................... .

29

CHAPTER 4

Mormon Exploration and Colonization .. .

41

CHAPTER 5

Establishing Cedar City and the Iron Works

57

CHAPTER 6

Nineteenth Century Pioneering ......... .

73

CHAPTER 7

The Early Twentieth Century: 1900-1940 ..

96

CHAPTER 8

Prosperity With a Price: 1940-1960 ...... .

128

CHAPTER 9

Native American Influence in Recent Times

155

CHAPTER 10

Place Names and Community History ....

167

v

CONTENTS

VI

CHAPTER

11

Education and Schools ... . ............ .

190

CHAPTER

12

From Normal School to University

203

CHAPTER

13

Health Care: Herbal Medicines to Modern Hospitals .................... .

222

CHAPTER

14

The Arts: To Lift the Spirits ............. .

237

CHAPTER

15

Religious Expression .................. .

266

CHAPTER

16

Water Resources ...................... .

281

CHAPTER

17

Public Lands and Forests ............... .

301

CHAPTER

18

Mining ............................. .

320

CHAPTER

19

Agriculture and Livesstock Industries .... .

351

CHAPTER

20

Roads, Railroads, and Airports .......... .

378

CHAPTER

21

Tourism and Recreation ............... .

398

Iron County: Economics, Population, and the Twenty-first Century ........... .

415

Iron County Officials since 1896 ........ .

425

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

431

INDEX. . . ... . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. .. . . . .. . .

439

EPILOGUE

ApPENDIX

Acknowledgments

Writing community history requires the involvement of many individuals to gather, shape, and digest all the available information.

Many people have contributed to A History of Iron County and the author gratefully recognizes their assistance and encouragement.

First, members of the Iron County History Committee: Alan (Bud) Garfield, chairman, Jim Robinson, county commissioner, Alan Jones, project chairman, Diana Graff, and LaRee Garfield. They have given overall guidance and have carefully read chapter drafts and the completed manuscript over a period of five years. Commissioners Robert L. Gardner, Roy (Pug) Urie, Thomas Cardon, and Dennis Stowell, county clerk David Yardley, and other officials have sup ported this lengthy effort.

Second, six county residents researched and wrote topical chapters and contributed research in other areas. Their contribution is significant. They are Blair Maxfield, Jim Bowns, York Jones, Clemont Adams, Norman Laub, and Fay Frahske Burns. In every instance, they provided more information than could be printed and it is available with the author's files in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt VII

VI11

A C KN OWLED GMENTS

Library. Special mention is due Dr. Morris Shirts who shared his research files and manuscript on the Iron Mission and answered many questions before his death in 1997. In addition, York and Evelyn Jones, Leilani Bentley, Marian Ashdown, Fay F. Burns, Dr. Douglas Alder, and particularly Dr. Wayne Hinton and Steven H. Heath read the complete manuscript and made many helpful suggestions. Others with interest or expertise in particular communities and subjects willingly shared information. These include Ed Hahne, Grant Tucker, Marian Jacklin, Kathryn Shirts, Florian Warby, Nancy Dalton, Dr. Marshall Bowen, Anne Leavitt, Al Klein, Sandy Gilles, Paul Larson, Brent Drew, DeeEI Stapley, Paul Radmall, Waldo Topham, Sally Melling, Max Bonzo, Alva and ZelIa Matheson, Leon Matheson, Mary MacDonald,Cynthia Williams Dunaway, Gary Tom, Ira Schoppmann and others. Lois Whetman's ninth grade students shared their oral history projects covering a number of Iron County families. I am deeply indebted to all who have shown interest in this project.

Third, Kent Powell and Craig Fuller of the Utah State Historical Society and Dr. Charles S. Peterson have been untiring in their research and editorial support. Without their guidance, this project would have languished long ago. Dr. Diana Graff, Library Director at Southern Utah University, provided moral support and other coworkers have patiently listened to many Iron County stories over the past five years. Blanche Clegg, retired special collections coordinator, was always helpful in locating resources, as were the librarians at Cedar Public Library.

Last of all, thanks is due my husband and children who have sacrificed without complaint while I seemed to live more in the past than the present. My husband's parents, Winston and Ruby Seegmiller, answered hundreds of questions about living in Iron County for which I am very grateful. How much I have missed Ruby's amazing memory since her sudden death!

This is only an overview history of Iron County and more remains to be published. The committee and the author encourage others to write family and community histories to fill in the details.

We have inherited both a wonderful heritage and the responsibility to preserve it for generations to come.

JANET BURTON SEEGMILLER

General Introduction

When Utah was granted statehood on 4 January 1896, twentyseven counties comprised the nation's new forty-fifth state.

Subsequently two counties, Duchesne in 1914 and Daggett in 1917, were created. These twenty-nine counties have been the stage on which much of the history of Utah has been played.

Recognizing the importance of Utah's counties, the Utah State Legislature established in 1991 a Centennial History Project to write and publish county histories as part of Utah's statehood centennial commemoration. The Division of State History was given the assignment to administer the project. The county commissioners, or their designees, were responsible for selecting the author or authors for their individual histories, and funds were provided by the state legislature to cover most research and writing costs as well as to provide each public school and library with a copy of each history. Writers worked under general guidelines provided by the Division of State History and in cooperation with county history committees. The counties also established a Utah Centennial County History Council lX

x

G ENE RAL I NTRODU CTIO N

to help develop policies for distribution of state-appropriated funds and plans for publication.

Each volume in the series reflects the scholarship and interpretation of the individual author. The general guidelines provided by the Utah State Legislature included coverage of five broad themes encompassing the economic, religious, educational, social, and political history of the county. Authors were encouraged to cover a vast period of time stretching from geologic and prehistoric times to the present. Since Utah's statehood centennial celebration falls just four years before the arrival of the twenty-first century, authors were encouraged to give particular attention to the history of their respective counties during the twentieth century.

Still, each history is at best a brief synopsis of what has transpired within the political boundaries of each county. No history can do justice to every theme or event or individual that is part of an area's past.

Readers are asked to consider these volumes as an introduction to the history of the county, for it is expected that other researchers and writers will extend beyond the limits of time, space, and detail imposed on this volume to add to the wealth of knowledge about the county and its people. In understanding the history of our counties, we come to understand better the history of our state, our nation, our world, and ourselves.

In addition to the authors, local history committee members, and county commissioners, who deserve praise for their outstanding efforts and important contributions, special recognition is given to Joseph Francis, chairman of the Morgan County Historical Society, for his role in conceiving the idea of the centennial county history project and for his energetic efforts in working with the Utah State Legislature and State of Utah officials to make the project a reality.

Mr. Francis is proof that one person does make a difference.

ALLAN KENT POW ELL CRAIG FULLER GENERAL EDITORS

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INTRODUCTION

THE FACE AND FACES OF IRON COUNTY

T

he political unit known as Iron County begins with land millions of years old formed into layers of rock and altered by the actions of oceans, earthquakes, floods, and erosion. These landforms and their associated natural resources, scenery, and landscape have dictated the positioning of towns, routing of roads, and uses of the land, in turn influencing the vocations and lifestyles of the people.

Millions of years ago, the natural corridor of Utah which runs west of the mountains north to south from Salt Lake City to St. George probably ran east and west along a hinge-like line parallel to the position of the Earth's equator along the continental margin.! The counterclockwise motion of the continent gradually turned the line north to south. Along the stable continental shelf, once south but now east of the line, many thin layers made up of brightly colored sediments were deposited. This is the plateau country, which rose some five thousand feet during Miocene times, causing fast and great erosion from water and in areas where faults and folds divided the plateaus. The westernmost plateaus, including the Markagunt in east1

2

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

The Flanigan Arch is a little-known geologic wonder on the Markagunt plateau, 500 feet above Ashdown Creek which drains Ashdown Gorge and Cedar Breaks. This photo was taken the week after its discovery in August 1916 as William Flanigan and several friends returned to measured the arch.

(Parley Dalley Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

ern Iron County, are the highest and serve as Utah's backbone down the center of the state.

West of this hingeline the continent sagged, forming a deep basin where sediments were deposited in thick layers, some measured in

INTRODUCTION

3

thousands of feet. Also in Miocene times, some 18 million years ago, stretching, thinning, and breaking of the earth's crust began to create the Basin and Range physiogeographic province of western Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California. Volcanic activity brought with it many igneous intrusions of gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and other valuable ores.

Iron County includes plateaus on the east and basins and ranges on the west. The division is unequal, but that has little affected the people, who have made the most of the resources. Indians, Spanish traders, and white settlers learned the importance of the cool streams and springs fed by winter's mantle melting off the mountains to the east. Indian villages and later pioneer communities were located where the water left the plateaus. Iron provided the impetus for white settlement in the 1850s; the later discovery of gold, silver, lead, and other minerals created more excitement but little wealth. Iron County became the second wealthiest county in Utah in the 1950s when its iron mines were producing millions of tons of ore for steel plants in northern Utah, California, and Colorado.

Livestock men have used both regions of the county for grazing cattle and sheep, and the high mountain valleys provided ideallocations for mountain dairies between 1870 and 1930. Water or the lack thereof in Iron County is tied to the basins and plateaus, and has influenced agriculture for better or worse since pioneer times.

The concept of tourism began early in the twentieth century as attention was drawn to southern Utah's magnificent scenery and the famous rock formations at Zion Park, Bryce Canyon, and Cedar Breaks. Although all are not in Iron County, the county's centrallocation brought the railroad and tourist facilities into its borders. What has been called the Grand Circle Tour commonly begins in Cedar City and attracts millions of visitors to the area every year. The area's mountains and ranges also provide outdoor recreational activities including hunting, fishing, skiing, mountain biking, three- or fourwheeling, backpacking, and camping.

From the journals of Escalante to the Mormon pioneers, early records tell of the attraction of the land. Isaac C. Haight wrote in 1850, "I shall leave this place [Little Salt Lake Valley] with regret. It is one of the most lovely places in the Great Basin. On the east high

4

HISTORY O F IRON COUNTY

towering mountains covered with evergreen forests and one of the most beautiful creeks running from them, on the west and south a large valley of the most beautifullands."2 A midwestern farmer and his wife endured jackrabbits, wolves, bobcats, other creatures, wind, and blowing sand in proving up a homestead on the Escalante Desert. Years later she recalled, "Some days, however, the weather was perfect, the water was wonderful, and the country grew on you until by the time we had proved up on our claim, we loved it there and did not want to Ie ave." 3 If there is a theme to Iron County history, it could be seen as that of individual sacrifice for the benefit of community and state, hence the subtitle of this book, "Community above Self." Long before political Iron County was formed, the land was inhabited by ancient people whose histories are brief compared to the extensive records kept since the Mormon arrival in 1851. Nonetheless, individual sacrifice and cooperation within the community apply as much to the ancients as they do to recent arrivals. Ancient peoples cooperated to survive or were swept from the land. Generally, white settlers worked to advance their communities and succeeded, although not always as expected. Most who came for personal advantage gained little for themselves and did not stay long.

From the Iron County Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, or Mormon) to the present, the list of successes realized by cooperation spans every generation and reveals great personal sacrifice. Noted Utah historian Leonard Arrington summarized the task of the Iron missionaries as "awesome by any measure, and the tenacity with which they pursued it has become an epochal tale in the history of industrial development in the West."4 The first generation of white settlers built the Parowan Rock Church and Cedar City LDS Tabernacle, established dramatic associations, and built two opera houses; they also formed choirs and brass bands that were known throughout the territory. The crowning event of the nineteenth century in the county, the founding of the Branch Normal School at Cedar City in 1897, is a story of sacrifice noteworthy in education history. And that was only the beginning, as it was a struggle to keep the school open during wars and depressions and to finally bring it to prominence as a university.

INTRODUCTION

5

El Escalante Hotel in 1924. (Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

In the twentieth century, members of Parowan and Cedar City commercial clubs volunteered to build roads for automobiles, publicized scenic wonders, purchased the right-of-way for a railroad spur into Cedar City, and began the EI Escalante Hotel as a community project. Citizens voted to bond themselves to build the Iron County Hospital in 1922 and then volunteered land and labor to save construction costs. During the Depression, Cedar City's residents raised $90,000 to reopen the Bank of Southern Utah (the only bank in Utah reopened in this difficult economic period).

The Zion Easter Pageant, annual performances of Handel's Messiah, the Music Arts Council, the "College Cabin;' Brian Head ski resort, the Spring Art Festival, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Ashcroft Observatory, Southern Utah University Centrum, Utah Summer Games, Renaissance Faire, Paiute Pow-Wows, Parowan Heritage Park, and the Iron County Centennial Circle owe their existence to cooperation among businesses, city councils, and willing volunteers. All

6

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

this is in addition to service clubs which sponsor 4 July and 24 July celebrations and help at the Iron County Fair and volunteers who coach Little League sports, serve as scoutmasters and 4-H Club leaders, and clean up after all-to- frequent summer floods.

Keeping records and writing history have their own kind of volunteer devotees. To those with foresight enough to write or collect historical records and individual journals, this history is dedicated.

Joseph Fish, William R. Palmer, Luella Adams Dalton, Gladys McConnell, Belle Armstrong, Rhoda Matheson Wood, Alva Matheson, York and Evelyn Jones, and Morris Shirts represent a few who have kept alive the history of Iron County. Future generations must carry this responsibility into the next century.

In 1922, William R. Palmer penned a brief "History of Iron County;' expressing concern that the stories of the past were becoming folklore and noting the need to preserve facts for the use of historians and writers to come. He predicted that the county's "greatest growth" was still ahead: "We are standing at the dawn of a day of great advancement socially, educationally, and industrially." He was right. This volume illustrates the personal commitment of county citizens to work individually and collectively to advance their neighborhoods' communities, and southwestern Utah. It serves to recall and rekindle the spirit of cooperation which has made Iron County one of the most desirable places to live in the West.

ENDNOTES

1. Halka Chronic, Roadside Geology of Utah (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Co., 1990), 16.

2. Isaac C. Haight, Journal, 1842-62,9 January 1850, typescript, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

3. Corda E. Stafford, "The Corda E. Stafford Story of Lund, Utah circa 1916-1921," typescript, March 1960, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

4. Leonard Arrington, "Cedar City: The Building of a Community," address delivered on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Cedar City, in Evelyn K. Jones and York F. Jones, Mayors of Cedar City (Cedar City: Southern Utah State College, 1986),491.

CHAPTER

1

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Topographyl Iron County overlaps two of Utah's three major physiographic provinces. The eastern portion is part of the Colorado Plateau and the western portion is part of the Basin and Range Province, known as the Great Basin.

The Colorado Plateaus Province 2 is an area of strongly carved, table-like relief, here and there modified by volcanic action.

Dominant topographic features are plateaus, cliffs, canyons, volcanic cones, and lava fields. The sedimentary rocks and thicker lava flows are displayed as platforms at different altitudes, bordered by slopes of imposing height. The platforms are bordered by broad terraces on which are developed benches that record the different erosion of both more-resistant and fragile stratigraphic formations.

There are four contrasting plateau districts in the county: 1. The belt that includes the Hurricane Cliffs is a fault escarpment marking the division between the arid lowlands of the Great Basin to the west and the highlands of the Colorado Plateau to the east.

7

8

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

2. The Kolob Terrace area has low, rounded ridges and mounds with broad shallow valleys, roughened by volcanic cones and streams of lava. Its edge is deeply trenched by canyons.

3. The Paiute Highlands is a rugged highland area of sandstone and lava ridges. The once continuous surface has been sliced by faults into long blocks trending northwestward. The area stretches from the Red Hill east of Cedar City to the pink cliffs of the Markagunt Plateau in the Cedar Breaks area and north through Summit and Parowan canyons.

4. The Markagunt Plateau is a high, cold, forested rock platform bordered by the lofty pink cliffs of Cedar Breaks and the igneous Black Ledge. Brian Head, at 11,307 feet, is the highest point in the county and on the plateau. The plateau is characterized by rounded ridges, gentle slopes, broad shallow valleys, and conspicuous canyons.

The western portion of Iron County is an area of generally north-south-trending mountain blocks and broad, sediment-filled valleys. Some of these mountain blocks are composed of sedimentary rocks, mostly Cretaceous and Tertiary period sandstones and shales; others are igneous, ranging from volcanic-welded tuffs and ash -fall tuffs to granitoid intrusive rocks.

The Red Hills west of Parowan are sandstone and shale, with some volcanic tuffs in the northern part and cinder cones and lava flows in the southern part. The mountains of the Pinto and Iron Springs mining districts-Three Peaks, Granite Mountain, and Iron Mountain-are Tertiary period quartz monzonite intrusives surrounded by sedimentary rocks.

The Swett and Harmony mountains southwest of Cedar City are mostly Tertiary volcanic tuffs with some younger sedimentary rocks.

Other ranges surrounding the Escalante Desert are composed of a wide variety of Tertiary volcanics.

The most extensive valley is the Escalante Valley or Desert.

Extending from Milford to Enterprise, this relatively flat valley is covered by alluvial sediments.

Geologic History For hundreds of millions of years, the ground surface of Utah was relatively flat, built up by layer upon layer of sediments, chiefly

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

9

sandstone, shale, and limestone, laid down by ancient oceans and seas which encroached and retreated over the western part of the American continent. 3 During the Cambrian period, approximately 575 million years ago, an ocean from the west encroached over the western part of the North American continent. At that time, beach sands were deposited over the area of Iron County, accumulating to an average thickness of approximately 3,000 feet. The encroachment was not at a steady pace-there were pauses and even slight retreats. As the water deepened, deposits of limestones, shales, and some sandstones accumulated until the total accumulation of sediment was between 2,000 and 5,000 feet. These warm, shallow seas teemed with marine life such as brachiopods, sponges, echinoderms, gastropods, and graptolites.

Although they are not exposed in the Iron County area, there have been extensive collections from Cambrian sediments to the north and south of Iron County.

During the Ordovician period, beginning about 500 million years ago, shallow warm seas covered much of the area north of Iron County; but, from evidence gathered both north and south of the county, this area appears to have remained high and did not receive deposition.

During the Silurian and Devonian periods, 440 to 360 million years ago, the shallow seas continued over most of the area to the north. The seas of the Mississippian period were widespread, inundating all of Utah and most of the adjoining states. These warm, shallow seas may have deposited as much as 1,000 feet of carbonate sediments over the Iron County area. They teemed with marine life typical of that age, particularly crinoids.

During the Pennsylvanian and Permian periods, beginning approximately 320 million years ago and ending approximately 225 million years ago, the seas that covered the area were still shallow and warm. When they covered an area, limestone was deposited; after they retreated, shale and sandstone were deposited. The Oquirrh Basin to the north and the Paradox Basin to the east received great thicknesses of sediment during these periods. However, the Iron County area was located upon what has been called the Callville Platform and received less accumulation, only 600 feet of sediment. A

10

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

prolific fauna of marine brachiopods, corals, bryozoans, sponges, and fusulinids are found in sedimentary deposits of this age.

Triassic, meaning ÂŤthreefold," is divided into Early, Middle, and Late periods. Iron County's Early Triassic strata have marine affinities, Middle Triassic rock is missing, and Late Triassic rocks are contin ental.

The Early Triassic Moenkopi Formation lends its reddish-brown colors to the sculptured canyonlands of southern Utah. The formation is predominantly a mudstone deposited on a broad coastal plain that sloped gently westward towards the sea, then located in southern Nevada. Thin tongues of marine limestone and gypsum (Timpoweap, Virgin, and Shnabkaib) indicate times when the seas spread from Nevada across the Moenkopi flats. The Moenkopi Formation is nearly 2,000 feet thick in the Iron County area.

Moenkopi environments, as interpreted from sedimentary fossils, include stream channels, floodplains, fresh or brackish ponds, playas, and shallow seas. Beds of gypsum and casts of salt cubes preserved in the red beds indicate periodic extensive evaporation. Large reptiles, represented by their tracks, and big amphibian skeletons in the stream deposits suggest warm climates.

The Late Triassic is represented by the Chinle Formation, with two members present in the area. The Petrified Forest Member, 200-400 feet thick, consists of a multicolored shale. The Shinarump Conglomerate Member is only 40-80 feet thick. Petrified wood fragments can be found in most Chinle rock. In some instances, the cellular tissues of the wood have been replaced by silica in exquisite detail. Although conifers are the most common plants preserved in the Chinle Formation, it also yields fossil cycads, ferns, and horsetails.

Strata of the Jurassic period, approximately 180 to 135 million years ago, are among Utah's most scenic and include the Navajo Sandstone that makes the great monoliths of Zion National Park, the Kolob Canyons, and the massive pyramids in Shirts Canyon. 4 Jurassic strata in Utah fall naturally into three catagories, but only early Jurassic non-marine sandstones and middle Jurassic deposits are represented in Iron County.

During the Cretaceous period, the last sea covered Utah. Marine waters extended from arctic Canada to Texas, separating North

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

11

America into an Appalachian mega-island of low relief and a western mountain chain. Erosion in western Utah provided materials to central and eastern Utah. Iron County was near the western shoreline of the seaway. In Parowan Gap, the Cretaceous rock generally consists of a stacked sequence of non-marine sandstone and shale units about 2,000 feet thick. In the Cedar Canyon area, the Cretaceous consists of a marine shale unit, the Tropic Shale, about 1,100 feet thick, capped by a series of beach and shallow marine shale deposits over 2,000 feet thick.

Before the lowest Tertiary formation of the region (Wasatch) was laid down, the Cretaceous formations were deeply eroded and partly or wholly stripped away. In eastern Iron County, the break between the Cretaceous and the Tertiary rocks is easily recognized. On top of the Kaiparowits Formation, the surface is marked by gullies and shallow valleys. On this rough surface, streams of considerable strength deposited sand, gravel, and cobbles. The rocks above the conglomerate are chiefly limestone from Eocene times. Along the Kanarra Fold, which extends from Spring Creek northward to the mouth of Fiddlers Canyon, the upturned and heavily eroded Cretaceous strata and the overlying Wasatch sediments are strikingly discordant. s The earliest Tertiary period (the Paleocene) is represented in the Iron County area in the rosy-pink and other pastel-colored beds of the Wasatch Formation that make up the picturesque Cedar Breaks on the western rim of the Markagunt Plateau. The quartz monzonite intrusions of the Iron Mountain area have been dated at 20 million years ago, and during this period the iron ores were deposited.

The Pliocene, from 1 million to 13 million years ago, was a time of deep valley fill, alluvial fan and channel deposits, lake beds, and older basalt flows. As much as 6,000 feet of sediment were deposited in some of the deeper valleys. Most of the basalt cones and flows have been dated from 1.7 to 0.3 million years ago.

During the later Tertiary period, massive disturbances in the depths of the earth radically changed the earth's crust. Flat lands were warped, faulted, turned over, and left in disarray. In southern Utah, many of the faults that affect the present topography date from this period, which would be in the last million years. One of the remarkable features in the history of southern Utah is the late geologic date

12

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

of tectonic movements. The amazing display of plateaus, terraces, cliffs, and canyons in southwestern Utah is the result of these relatively late structural adjustments. Vast areas of originally flat sediments and lava have been uplifted and broken into tabular masses by faults, providing favorable conditions for rapid and profound eroSIon. In eastern Iron County, volcanic action created cones, streams of lava, and detached sheets that owe their isolation to faulting or erosion. On Kolob Terrace, they include Black Mountain, Square Mountain, Three Knolls, the flatland and mounds around Pryor Peak (an old volcano), the East Fork of Deep Creek, and part of the valley fill along the North Fork of the Virgin River. On the Paiute Highlands they constitute parts of the high Navajo, Parowan, Summit, Elephant, and other ridges. On the Markagunt Plateau they form the Black Ledge. Large lava flows are displayed along the roads through Green's Hollow, Summit Canyon, Parowan Canyon, and Cedar Canyon.

The geology of Iron County has profoundly affected recent human history, including mining, agriculture, and tourism, as the county's spectacular canyons and vistas created over millions of years beckon visitors to observe with awe the geologic wonders of the area.

Climate Weather, wind, and temperature dictate an arid Great Basin-type climate for most of Iron County. The county lies in the zone of westerly winds. Winter precipitation occurs as frontal storms originating in the Pacific Ocean. Summer moisture during June, July, and August is generally received in the form of convectional storms coming from Baja of California or the Gulf of Mexico and moving northward into southern Utah. Strong convectional currents result from rapid heating of the earth, which triggers heavy and often violent thunderstorms in moisture-laden air.

Official weather stations are located at the Parowan Power Plant, Cedar City Airport, and at Modena, which has had a weather observation station for almost a hundred years. The average annual precipitation at Parowan was 12.46 inches in the years between 1935 and 1995. Annual average precipitation at Cedar City Airport was 10.80

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

13

inches from 1951 to 1995, while the average figure for Modena was 10.38 inches from 1936 to 1995. 6 The precipitation in the county ranges on average from five inches to almost nineteen inches a year. Most area rainfall patterns are typical of the Great Basin, with a maximum of thunderstorm activity during July, August, and September, and normal winter averages of less than an inch per month, except for October and March.

On the Markagunt Plateau, however, snowfall averages fifty inches in a season, with extremes of more than one hundred inches being recorded.

The climate can govern the activities of Iron County's residents, despite great efforts to control and use the limited water resources since the time of settlement. Many have struggled to tame or reclaim water for power, agriculture, manufacturing, and a constantly growing population. Water resources are essential to communities and farmers; however, either too much or too little brings tribulation.

Most residents enjoy the pattern of four distinct seasons, adjusting their outdoor chores and recreational activities to the quarterly changes.

Ecology Iron County is located near the southwestern corner of the state of Utah between 113째 and 114째 west longitude and between 37째30' and 38째 north latitude. The great range in elevation-from a low of approximately 5,080 feet to a high of 11,307 feet-results in dramatic differences in the county in precipitation and temperature and subsequent changes in life zones and ecological communities, providing scientists and casual observers with great ecological diversity.

Salt desert shrub communities are found at the lowest elevations of the county. This biome contains a variety of grasses and other herbaceous plants, but the dominant plants are low-growing shrubs, many of which are tolerant of soil salt. The soils in the low-lying valleys are salty because water escapes from the enclosed basins only through evaporation and transpiration by plants. This allows minerals and salts that were in the evaporated water to accumulate on or near the soil surface. Salt-tolerant plants (halophytes) are able to colonize and dominate these sites. Distinct plant zones result from dif-

14

HI STORY OF IRON COUNTY

ferent levels of salinity. The most salt-tolerant plants are characterized by fleshy and juicy (succulent) leaves. Other plants such as shadscale are able to "pump" excess salts onto the surface of their leaves; the salts are removed by snow and rain. The most salt-tolerant plant is pickleweed. Other plants tolerant of high salinity are salt grass, greasewood, alkali sacaton, various saltbushes, and the poisonous introduced halogeton, which occupies disturbed areas.

At progressively higher elevations, the species composition varies according to soil type, slope, and elevation. One of the most important of these shrubs is basin big sagebrush. It is found on deep, fert ile soils with low salt and was used by early settlers to indicate good agricultural soil; therefore, many of those sites have been converted to agricultural land. Wyoming big sagebrush is found on slopes with shallow rocky soils, and black sagebrush grows where soils are underlain with an impenetrable caliche layer.

Pronghorn antelope are the most common large hoofed animals of the cold desert; coyotes are the most common large carnivores.

Other mammalian carnivores are the gray and kit foxes and the burrowing badger. The once common and widespread Utah prairie dog is now categorized as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. This small burrowing animal is most abundant on agricultural lands. Ground squirrels, kangaroo rats, mice, blacktailed jackrabbits, and cottontail rabbits are resident small mammals.

Various species of lizards and snakes, including rattlesnakes, inhabit the deserts. Many of these species are nocturnal, so an evening visit to the desert can be an exciting experience. Predator birds such as the golden eagle, various species of hawks, and owls, including the burrowing owl, are common residents. The endangered bald eagle is also a winter resident to this area. Ravens are common and their populations have probably increased due to human activities.

Occasional discoveries of bones and hunting artifacts from prehistoric times indicate that megafauna roamed this area in late Pleistocene times. The lower jawbone of a mammoth (probably Mammuthus columbi) was uncovered in the spring of 1996 at a gravel pit between Newcastle and Beryl. The jawbone has influenced studies at Southern Utah University to possibly determine environmental conditions during the animal's lifespan. Its presence may be an

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

15

important clue in trying to solve the mystery of where the shoreline of Lake Bonneville in the Southern Great Basin should be drawn. 7 The first written description of the ecology of the Basin and Range areas of Iron County is from the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776 that described Horse Hollow as a spreading narrow valley with much pasturage, and later described some hills fully clad with pastures. The explorers named Cedar Valley, also an area with abundant pasturage, the Valley Rio del Senor San Jose. They described some marshy places to the south and «a big marsh with much water and pasturage through the middle of which another parcel of water flowed as though it were an irrigation ditch." They then traveled south and camped at a small stream (Kanarra Creek) where there was pasturage as good as they found in Cedar Valley. They estimated Cedar Valley to be thirty-one miles long, eight miles wide in some places, and five miles or less in others. The area obviously impressed them with its pasture lands, large meadows, middling marshes, and land sufficient for a good settlement. They reported «a great source of timber and firewood of ponderosa pine, and pinyon, and good sites for raising large and small livestock." 8 Cedar Valley presently shows little resemblance to the description of the friars of 1776. It is largely cultivated and the marshes and meadows have long since dried up because surface water has been diverted for agriculture and groundwater has been pumped out for agriculture and culinary purposes. Good to excellent rangelands still exist in the vicinity of Horse Hollow, and domestic cattle and sheep still graze the area.

An increase in elevation from the valley floor to the surrounding foothills places one in the pinyon-juniper zone. This is the lowest elevation at which a coniferous zone is found; it is appropriate to refer to this as woodland or pygmy forest. The dominant trees are Utah juniper, two-needle pinyon pine, and single-needle pinyon pine. The pinyons are segregated geographically; the single-needle pinyon is the source of the prized «pine nuts" and is found in the western part of the county. Pine nuts were an extremely important source of food for the Indians and are still a prized confection. High in both fat and protein, they are also a significant wildlife food. Pinyons are in demand for firewood and are highly regarded as Christmas trees

16

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

because of their symmetrical shape and strong pine fragrance. The Utah juniper is known locally as "cedar" and is the tree from which the name Cedar City is derived. It is more drought tolerant than the pines and is therefore found at lower elevations, often to the exclusion of the pines. Juniper is heavily utilized for fence posts and to a lesser extent for fuel.

The pinyon-juniper zone has always been the major life zone of the foothills. There is photographic evidence, however, that this zone has expanded during the past century. Junipers, once established, are highly competitive and utilize most of the soil moisture at lower elevations. This excludes understory grasses and shrubs, a fact which concerns ranchers, wildlife biologists, and land managers because this zone is critical mule deer winter range and important spring and fall range for livestock. To remove these trees in order to restore the understory vegetation, forest managers have chained the mature trees and reseeded sites to reintroduce grasses and native shrubs. It is claimed by proponents that these procedures both improve watershed conditions and increase much-needed forage for wildlife and livestock, although some people vigorously oppose this human intrusion on the land.

Immediately above the pinyon and juniper is the oak brush or mountain brush zone. In Iron County, Gambel oak is the dominant t ree in this zone. It is often called scrub oak, but large trees of this species are often found. Oak is an important plant for watershed protection and wildlife food and cover. The acorns are extremely important for fat accumulation on mule deer prior to winter and are a primary food source for wild turkeys and forest grouse. Deer inhabit this zone in spring, summer, and fall, and it is excellent summer and fall range for domestic sheep. Cattle also use the area, but oak contains tannic acid, which will poison cattle in the spring if consumption is high.

Where oak is found on deep, rich, well-drained soils, introduced grasses have been seeded with beneficial results. On cooler north-facing slopes, birchleaf mahogany, antelope bitterbrush, big-tooth maple, chokecherry, and other species replace the oak. Utah serviceberry, an important source of fruits for birds, is common on the hotter and drier sites with shallow soils.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

17

Cougars, coyotes, gray fox, and badgers are common mammalian carnivores, and black bears are occasional residents of the zone.

Herbivorous mammals include tree squirrels, mice, pocket gophers, jackrabbits, chipmunks, porcupines, and marmots. Golden eagles, several species of hawks and owls, both turkey and black vultures, blue grouse, various songbirds, and ravens are common residents.

Above the oak brush zone grow ponderosa pines. This zone is no longer as well represented in Iron County as it is in adjacent Kane and Garfield counties. Two possible reasons for this are that the mature trees have been harvested for building materials and the elevation changes precipitously in Iron County where this species should occur. Ponderosa pine is the most important lumber-producing species in southern Utah, and it provides important wildlife habitat. Mature trees are prime roosting sites for turkeys, and old dead trees (snags) are crucial for cavity-nesting birds and as perches for avian predators.

Above ponderosa pine is the spruce-fIr-aspen zone. The lower portion of this zone (below 9,000 feet) is best described as a mixed conifer zone. Characteristic trees are Douglas fir, white fir, and blue spruce. Several old abandoned sawmills and numerous tree stumps attest to the fact that these forests have been logged in the county in the past. Quaking aspen is a common tree in this zone. It is, however, a temporary community which, on most sites, will eventually be replaced by spruce and fir. On the Kolob Plateau, however, aspen appears to be a permanent type. Aspen is an attractive and important tree. It is particularly attractive in the fall when shorter days and longer nights cause the leaves to turn various colors of orange, yellow, and red.

The spruce-fir-aspen zone is considered the most productive and diverse community. It is excellent range for cattle and sheep and is unsurpassed habitat for deer, elk, turkeys, grouse, and numerous other wildlife species. The understory vegetation is a diverse mixture of grasses, forbs, and shrubs.

Above the mixed conifer zone is a forest dominated by Englemann spruce and subalpine fir. Englemann spruce is one of Utah's most important lumber species. At the present time, these stands of conifers are being killed by epidemic populations of bark

18

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

beetles. Attempts are being made to salvage the dead or dying trees still suitable for lumber and to reduce the density of trees in order to lessen the competitive stress on the trees and reduce susceptibility to subsequent beetle infestations.

On top of Cedar Mountain the trees are largely confined to the ridges, with meadows being interspersed between the ridges. The meadows provide a picturesque variety of wildflowers and grasses.

This forest-meadow ecosystem is prime summer habitat for mule deer, elk, coyotes, cougars, and an occasional bear. Meadows are prime habitat for the seldom-observed subterranean pocket gopher.

The primary predator of the gopher is the weasel, which is brown in the summer and pure white, except for the tip of its tail, in the winter.

Clarks nutcracker, referred to by campers as the camp robber, is a common avian resident.

The spruce-fir zone gradually grades into the alpine tundra at approximately 11,000 feet elevation on top of Brian Head Peak.

Trees are absent and the vegetation consists of a variety of matforming flowering plants, grasses, and sedges. Soils are extremely rocky and very shallow. Alpine tundra is the most severe environment in the entire county. Marmots, locally referred to as rockchucks or whistlers, are commonly observed in the rock piles.

Pikas, or rock rabbits, are also common residents, and their dens are easily recognized by the "hay stacks" of vegetation they harvest and cache outside their dens.

Exposed ridges near Cedar Breaks National Monument provide habitat for two other interesting trees, bristlecone pine and limber pine. While not commercially important, they are ecologically important and are the dominant trees in these harsh environments. Neither of these trees grows in dense stands, so they are much less susceptible to lightning-caused fires. Bristlecone pine is generally accepted as the world's longest living organism; some are known to live for 5,000 years; its Latin name, Pinus longaeva, means long-lived. 9 Iron County is home to the state tree (blue spruce), the state flower (sego lily), the state animal (elk), the state fish (rainbow trout), the state grass (Indian rice grass ), and it provides some habitat for the migrating state bird (seagull).

19

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

ENDNOTES

1. The sections on topography and geology were compiled by Blair Maxfield, emeritus professor of physical science, Southern Utah University; the section on ecology was prepared by Dr. James E. Bowns, professor of biological science, Southern Utah University.

2. Colorado Plateaus is the correct scientific and geologic term, but the province is commonly referred to in the singular.

3. For detailed information on the geology of Iron County see Herbert E. Gregory, Geology of Eastern Iron County, Utah, United States Geological Survey Bulletin No. 37, 1950.

4. Most U.S. Geologic Survey publications show this as Shurtz, but since they were named for pioneer Peter Shirts, "Shirts" remains the preferred spelling in the area.

5. Gregory, Geology of Eastern Iron County, 115-17.

6. See D.V. Allen, J.I. Steiger, et al. Ground- Water Conditions in Utah, Spring of 1995, Utah Department of Natural Resources, Cooperative Investigations Report Number 35, 1995, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

7. Paul R. Larson, "The Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) from Escalante Valley, Iron County, Utah," in Vertebrate Fossils of Utah, David B. Gillette, ed., in press, 1998; Amy K. Stewart, "Mammoth Discovery in Newcastle," Spectrum, 21 May 1996, A1-A2.

8. The Dominguez-Escalante Journal, Fray Angelico Chavez, trans., and Ted J. Warner, ed. (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1976), 77-78.

9. Steven H. Heath, "The Biography of Nature's Oldest Living TreeThe Bristlecone Pine," paper delivered at Utah Academy Annual Meeting, 12 April 1996, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

CHAPTER 2

ANCIENT PEOPLES

Much like the great oceans which swept in and out of the western deserts millions of years ago, there have been early people who crossed the landscape that is now Iron County only to retreat or disappear. Their existence is documented through artifacts discovered and studied over the past one hundred and fifty years. Weapons, projectile points, tools, pottery, bone remains, and pictures carved into rock walls tell about Iron County's prehistoric people, but they do not answer the important questions of where they came from and why they left. 1 Generally, the ancient peoples of Utah are divided into three groups: the Paleo-Indians, who lived perhaps 12,000 to 8,000 years ago; the Archaic peoples, including the so-called Desert Culture, who came and went between 9,000 and 1,500 years ago; and the betterknown Formative societies from about the time of Christ until historic times in the eighteenth century. The Formative societies, which developed horticulture and ceramic technology, include the Anasazi and the Fremont till about A.D. 1300 and the Numic-speaking peoples 20

ANCIENT PEOPLES

21

The Bristlecone pine, world's oldest living tree, grows on the exposed ridges near Cedar Breaks and has been used with the motto of Southern Utah University, "Learning Lives Forever." (Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

such as Goshutes, Utes, and Southern Paiutes from A.D. 1300 to the time of white settlement. 2 Paleo-Indians hunted large mammals known as megafauna, including mammoths and wild bison. The earliest Paleo-Indians used crudely flaked choppers and scrapers, which have been found on the western high plains and in the Great Basin. Later Paleo-Indian sites are characterized by chipped-stone projectile points. The most common diagnostic feature for Paleo-Indian cultures up to 10,000 B.C. are called Clovis and Folsom points. In western Iron County, a Clovis point and a Folsom point were found at different sites. Others have been found in nearby counties. Professor Richard Thompson, archaeologist at Southern Utah University, concluded that these finds represent good evidence of a Paleo-Indian occupation in southwestern Utah. 3 A transitional period with the emerging Archaic culture of hunt-

22

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

ing and gathering then occurred. Archaic cultures utilized an extremely wide spectrum of resources obtained through migratory hunting and gathering. The Archaic ÂŤDesert Culture" of the Great Basin was adapted to the resources of a dry climate, and evidence of the hunting-and-gathering way of life may be found from the eastern Great Basin and northern Colorado Plateau to the central and western Great Basin. 4 Artifacts defining Archaic occupation include millstones, basketry, a large assortment of projectile points, fur cloth, fiber sandals, hide moccasins, atlatls, dart shafts, digging sticks, clubs, bone awls, and scapula saws or grass cutters. 5 While there are more than 250 recorded Archaic sites within the borders of Iron County, Thompson concludes that these figures inadequately represent the Archaic presence in the area because much evidence was disrupted by the Formative peoples who followed and by modern activities. 6 Some plants which grow today in the Escalante Desert were present as early as 9,000 B.C. and were available to the Archaic people.

Sagebrush, squawbrush, creosote bush, pickleweed, and coarse grasses covered the valleys, while the mountain ranges supported large stands of pinyon and juniper. Archaic people hunted large game such as antelope and mountain sheep but also ate smaller animals and fish. However, plant resources provided the major portion of their diet. Archaic people lived in small groups, probably consisting of extended families, and occupied both open sites and caves in settlement patterns which were likely based on changing seasonal resources/ While the people of the southern Great Basin may have had much in common with others of the Desert Culture, adaptation to their environment and a variety of ecological zones created some specialization.

Just as the transition period between Paleo-Indian and Archaic people is blurred in the emerging of Archaic ways, the transition between the Archaic/Desert cultures and the Formative societies is not distinct. By A.D. 400, an agriculture-type economy is recognizable among the Desert peoples along with other significant changes from the Archaic hunting and gathering ways. Instead of living in caves, people began building shelters, mostly underground, but with adobe or unmortared stone storage structures or granaries above ground.

ANCIENT PEOPLES

23

They grew maize, or corn, and later beans and squash. These changes set apart the Formative cultures of the Fremont and the Anasazi.

While the Anasazi, including the Western or Virgin Anasazi in Washington and Kane counties, is evident from about A.D. 1, the Fremont culture started later and covered a larger area of Utah. The southernmost extension of the Fremont culture borders the Virgin Anasazi region between Iron and Washington counties, allowing for an Anasazi influence among the Parowan Fremont people who lived in the Iron County area.

The Fremont take their name from the Fremont River in central Utah where their culture was first identified. Because the culture covered a wide geographical area and a great diversity of lifestyles, perhaps there is no single basic Fremont culture. Archeologists divide the Fremont into five variants based on cultural attributes of the regional variations, including the Parowan Fremont, Sevier Fremont, Great Salt Lake Fremont, Uinta Fremont, and San Rafael F,~emont. 8 The Parowan Fremont occupied the region between Sevier Lake on the north, the Harmony Mountains on the south, the east fork of the Sevier River on the east, and an unknown distance into presentday Nevada on the west, with Iron Country in the center. While it is the most short-lived variant, dating from approximately A.D. 900 to 1300, its many sites are one portion of regional prehistory that have been intensively studied by archaeological excavation. 9 Petroglyph figures abound that suggest the overlapping of Archaic, Fremont, and Anasazi styles.

The first petroglyph site was discovered and sketched by Parley P. Pratt's ex pedition exploring the area around Little Salt Lake in January 1850. Preserved as a Bureau of Land Management site, these Parowan Gap petroglyphs are on the National Register of Historic Places. The vast number of figures made by Archaic, Fremont, and later peoples sets this place apart as a cultural treasure. Physically, Parowan Gap is a natural access route from the Little Salt Lake Valley through a wind-cut and faulted pass to a large, shallow lake surrounded by marshes, a good hunting site for waterfowl and aquatic animals. Although early peoples may have pecked pictures and symbols on large, smooth-faced boulders while migrating through the area, recent investigations point to such prominent features as

24

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Pit house foundations of the Fremont culture, Paragonah Phase, A.D. 1050 to 1300, were excavated in the 1950s by UCLA faculty and students at sites near Paragonah, Parowan, and Summit. (Jean Bethers Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU).

ancient calendars that tracked the seasons for the Parowan Fremont people. lo In 1872 G.M. Wheeler noted Iron County archaeological sites in his geographical survey for the United States, and excavations began that year when Dr. Edward Palmer dug at Paragonah to obtain specimens for museums in the East. Collections were made into the 1890s. In 1917 excavation of a large mound was begun at Paragonah

by Neil M. Judd of the University of Utah and later the Smithsonian Institution. The University of California at Los Angeles conducted large-scale excavations in Paragonah, Parowan, and Evans Mound sites from 1954 to 1964. The Evans Mound and Median Village sites were also studied by teams from the University of Utah and Southern Utah State College (now Southern Utah University) from 1964 to 1973. 11 The people living in Parowan Valley between A.D. 900 and 1050

ANCIENT PEOPLES

25

are identified as the Summit Phase. One village, known as Median Village, was about one-half mile north of Summit on a gently sloping alluvial fan originating at the mouth of Summit Canyon.

Characteristics of the Summit Phase include pit dwellings and a great variety of ceramics. Seventeen structures were uncovered at Median Village, including sixteen round or oval pit dwellings and one adobe surface structure w ith three units or ÂŤbins" placed end to end and probably used for storage.

Many ceramic vessels-called Snake Valley Gray or Black on Gray-were discovered at Median Village. Indeed, Median Village may have been the ceramic focal point for Parowan Valley.1 2 The canyons above Parowan Valley are known as a source for fine clay.

At Evans Mound, a little more than a mile north of Median Village, evidence is found of culture change during the transition between the Summit and Paragonah phases. The Paragonah Phase is marked by the introduction of Snake Valley corrugated ceramics and the appearance of square pit dwellings, uniformly oriented. Dated from A.D. 1050 to 1300, the Paragonah changes in architecture and pottery may have come through interaction with the Anasazi to the south, as corrugated pottery originated south of Fremont areas between A.D. 900 and 1100. 13 Many chipped and ground stone artifacts as well as worked bone and antler artifacts were also uncovered.

Bone gaming pieces, beads, pendants, awls, and other tools reveal a people with many skills. In addition, the discovery of obsidian and shell at Evans Mound indicates wide-ranging direct or indirect contacts with peoples to the north and south. Obsidian could have come from the Mineral Mountains forty-five miles to the north, but shell would have had to come from either the Gulf of California or the Pacific Ocean.14 These discoveries reveal a people who adopted cultural influences of surrounding peoples and who took survival skills from all directions as they tried to endure in the harsh environment they inhabited. Nevertheless, they did not endure. Whether natural calamity, assimilation or invasion by others, or some other force is to be blamed, the Parowan Fremont passed from the area about A.D. 1300, leaving abandoned villages and artifacts as well as calendars and figures on the rocks at Parowan Gap and other sites.

26

HIS T ORY OF IRON COUNTY

Sometime around A.D. 1300, there was a transplantation of other people into the area. These new people may have forced out the Anasazi and Fremont, or perhaps they absorbed them and altered their cultures. The new peoples spoke Numic languages. Settling into areas of the Great Basin and the Wasatch Mountains, they practiced a hunting-and-gathering lifestyle somewhere between that of the Fremont and the earlier peoples of the Desert Culture.

There were five main bands of Numic Shoshoneans that inhabited areas of Utah when white trappers and settlers arrived in the nineteenth century. The Western Shoshoni occupied northwestern Utah, and the Northern Shoshoni extended from extreme northern Utah to cover much of southern Idaho. The Utes occupied the central part of the state from Sevier Lake east to Denver and from Utah Valley and the Uinta Basin south to the San Juan River. The Southern Paiutes lived south of Sevier Lake to the Colorado River in northern Arizona and west of the Colorado and Dirty Devil rivers in eastern Utah to Death Valley in California, with a finger of territory extending south along the western bank of the Colorado River to Blythe, California. The Northern Paiutes occupied the western third of Nevada north to eastern Oregon. 1S The lives of these early Numic Indians appear to have been very stable, as they used traditional clothing, tools, food, and housing for several hundred years. They did not inhabit the pithouses of the Fremont, preferring instead temporary brush shelters or wickiups.

The most reliable staple in their diet was the pinyon nut. They also caught fish, ate small animals, and sometimes cultivated corn in their small family bands. 16 The Paiute lifestyle in southwestern Utah was tied to the aweinspiring land which surrounded them. They were involved in the cycles of nature and were dependent on living in harmony with the surrounding world. They ranged across the high mountain plateaus which still have Paiute names: Kaiparowits, Kaibab, Paunsagunt, Markagunt, and Uinkaret. Between the Tushar Mountains and the Virgin River and its tributaries, the southern end of the Great Basin was firmly within the control of the Southern Paiutes. I? Small groups clustered near streams or springs in the same areas of eastern Iron County inhabited by the earlier Fremont. However, they were a for-

27

ANCIENT PEOPLES

aging people only marginally dependent on agriculture. They moved seasonally to utilize the resources of the varied environments in the area, usually returning to a base area they considered their own.

Although families lived separately, most considered themselves part of a larger band with a similar language who visited, hunted, or gathered food together. They were skilled with the bow and arrow and became excellent basketmakers, using intricate techniques to create containers of many sizes and shapes to process and transport both wild and cultivated plant foods. 18 Because of their isolation, the Paiutes lived peacefully for centuries and used weapons mostly for hunting. Since they had few skills for self-protection, they were easy prey when the Spanish arrived in the late eighteenth century. Adoption of the horse by some Indians in the mid-1700s changed the more powerful Ute bands into wideranging aggressors who raided Goshute and Paiute villages, plundering their goods and kidnapping women and children to be sold into Spanish slavery. 19 The first recorded contact of Spanish explorers with the Paiutes, was the Dominguez-Escalante party. Fray Escalante characterized them as a peaceful, even timid, society of foragers and horticulturalists. Contact with the Spanish brought swift, devastating changes, however. With their written descriptions, the Spanish brought to an end the prehistory of the ancient peoples, and, by opening up their lands to travel and trade, the Paiutes lost their land base and eventually their peaceful way of life.

ENDNOTES

1. Robert Campbell, a member of Parley P. Pratt's 1849-50 expedition in southern Utah, left the first modern record of petroglyphs discovered in Iron County. He sket ched two figures in his journal, representing petroglyphs discovered while camped on Clear Creek in January 1850. See Rick J. Fish, "The Southern Utah Expedition of Parley P. Pratt 1849-1850Âť (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1992).

2. Prominent Utah archaeologists differ in their chronological dates for various stages. For further information see Richard A. Thompson et al. Class I Cultural Resource Inventory for the Cedar City District of the Bureau of Land Management, Part I, Cultural Resource Overview, 1983,81; Jesse D. Jennings,

28

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Prehistory of Utah and the Eastern Great Basin, University of Utah Anthropological Papers, No. 98, 1978, 3-5, 17, 29, 95, 155-56.

3. Thompson, Class I Cultural Resource Inventory, 81-86.

4. "Desert Culture" was defined by University of Utah professor Jesse D. Jennings in his studies of Danger and Hogup Coves in northwestern Utah. See Thompson, Class I Cultural Resource Inventory, ix, 88-91.

5. Jennings, Prehistory of Utah, 29-75.

6. Thompson, Class I Cultural Resource Inventory, 91-94.

7. Ibid., ix.

8. Ibid., x-xiii.

9. John P. Marwitt, Median Village and Fremont Culture Regional Variation, University of Utah Anthropological Papers, No. 95, December 1970, 135-37. Details of various sites are listed in Kenneth B. Castleton, Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Utah, vol. 2, The South, Central, West and Northwest (Salt Lake City: Utah Museum of Natural History, 1979), 103-16 10. Detailed interpretations of the calendars are found in Nowell L. Morris, Space, Time, Light and Number at Parowan Gap, A Preliminary Report (Salt Lake City, Solarnetics, Inc., 1995).

11. Marwitt, Median Village,S, 8.

12. Ibid., 54-69.

13. Walter A. Dodd, Jr., Final Year Excavations at the Evans Mound Site, University of Utah Anthropological Papers, No. 106, 1982, 103-4.

14. Ibid., 105.

15. Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, Nuwuvi: A Southern Paiute History (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Printing Service, 1976), 5.

16. Wayne K. Hinton, Utah: Unusual Beginnings to Unique Present (Northridge, CA: Windsor Publications, 1988), 30-32. See also Warren L. D'Azevedo, ed., Handbook of North American Indians: Great Basin, vol. 11 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1986).

17. Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, Nuwuvi, 7.

18. Ibid., 5-8; Ronald L. Holt Beneath These Red Cliffs, an Ethnohistory of the Utah Paiutes (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 3-6.

19. Hinton, Utah: Unusual Beginnings, 31.

CHAPTER 3

EXPLORERS, TRADERS, TRAPPERS AND EXPEDITIONS On the tenth of October 1776, Catholic fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante climbed a very low hill in a plain they called La Luz, ÂŤso as to survey by eye the extent of this valley," becoming the first white explorers to gaze upon the landscape of Iron County. The diary of Escalante contains the first written comment on this land and its inhabitants. 1 Before British colonists established a single colony along the eastern seaboard of North America, the Spanish came northward from Mexico in 1540 to explore and in 1598 to place missions in their province of New Mexico. The settlement of San Diego in 1769 and Monterey a year later created a need for a route between the fledgling California missions and the better-established outpost at Santa Fe. Efforts to open a direct southern route from New Mexico to California were thwarted by the rugged terrain and hostile Indian tribes. Consequently, in 1776, Father Dominguez was commissioned to find a feasible route from Santa Fe to Monterey by going north, then west. He choose twenty-four-year-old Fray Escalante as second in command and to serve as party diarist. It was the diary of 29

30

HISTORY OF IRON CO UNTY

Escalante and the maps of party member Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco which opened up Utah to European awareness.

The Dominguez-Escalante Expedition began its 1,700-mile trek at Santa Fe on 29 July 1776, traveling with extra riding and pack horses, plus a small herd of cattle for fresh meat. They meandered northward through Colorado and turned west, entering the area that would be Utah on 11 September, crossing the Green River near present-day Jensen. Led by two Indian guides, they ventured west from the Green River, crossed the Wasatch Mountains, and entered Utah Valley through Spanish Fork Canyon on 23 September. The days were growing shorter and the nights colder. Although impressed by the land and the Yutah Indians of the valley, the travelers dared not stay longer than three days at Utah Lake. They departed with a promise to return, settle, and baptize the Indians.

Still intent upon reaching California, they turned southward, led by a new Ute guide, Jose Maria, who deserted them a few days later.

An early winter storm overtook them in the Black Rock Desert east of Sevier Lake and north of present-day Milford. Their route through this area parallels the later railroad line between the San Francisco and Mineral mountains, turning southwest where it enters Iron County. Believing they were close in latitude to Monterey, they were surprised to find that Indians in the area knew nothing of other Spaniards. They then estimated they had many leagues to travel westward.

The next day a north wind howled and they made only nine miles. Unaccustomed to such severe winter weather and with no way of knowing that this was an unusually early storm, Dominguez and Escalante began to discuss a change of plans. Three members of the party vigorously opposed continuing south to the Colorado River and a return to New Mexico, hoping instead for the honors and profits they would reap by reaching Monterey. Escalante wrote that Don Bernardo Miera, Don Joaquin Lain, and Andres Muniz "came along very peevishly; everything was extremely onerous, and all unbearably irksome."2 Such dissent was almost unbearable to the two priests, who sincerely believed that "in this journey we had no other destination than the one which God would grant us; nor did this tempt us to any

EXPLORERS, TRADERS, TRAPPERS AND EXPEDITIONS

31

worldly purpose whatsoever." So a plan was devised to "search anew God's will" by casting lots-putting Monterey on one and Cosnina (toward Santa Fe) on the other. After all agreed to submit to God's will and prayed «with fervent piety," the lots were cast and Cosnina came out. According to Escalante, the men «heartily accepted" the outcome and quickened their pace toward the south-southeast. 3 The site of the «casting of the lots" is marked by a monument in northern Iron County, about seven miles south of the Beaver-Iron County border, and five miles off the road which connects Minersville and Lund. It has been suggested that the hill, identified on USGS maps as Hill 5243, be renamed «Dominguez Dome," in honor of the expedition leader who conceived this unifying strategy on this spot.

Escalante was soon describing «woods of pinon and juniper along a spreading narrow valley with much pasturage [Horse Hollow] , and afterward some hills fully clad with pastures." The party crossed «a beautiful valley" (Cedar Valley) and camped along the stream, after traveling approximately twenty-six miles in a day. They called this the Valle Rio del Senor San Jose, or the Valley and River of Lord Saint Joseph, spouse of the Virgin Mary.

The next morning an advance party of the explorers surprised a group of twenty Indian women gathering seeds in the meadow. These women, who had never seen white men, ran from the intruders. Two were captured and held until Dominguez and Escalante arrived. The women were so frightened that they could not speak. Every attempt was made to alleviate their fear. Finally, they were sent to tell their people that the explorers came in peace, hoping to learn from them how close they were to the Colorado River. However, as they proceeded through the valley, the Indians ran. They captured another who was "so intimidated that he appeared to be out of his mind."

They could get few answers from him or from an old Indian at a camp nearby. The Indians did not know of any Spaniards-all the people of the area were of their own language and race. Escalante found these Indians different from the Lagunas and full-bearded Barbones of northern Utah. «They dress very poorly, eat wild plant seeds, jackrabbits, pinon nuts in season, and yucca dates. Maize they

32

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

do not plant, and they acquire very little of it as we saw. They are extremely low-spirited," he wrote. 4 The route of the expedition was southward through Cedar Valley, west of the Cross Hollow Hills and east of Quichapa Lake, heading toward the headwaters of Kanarra Creek. The two Indians led them along Kanarra Creek between the Cedar and the Harmony Mountains to Ash Creek Canyon and "entered a ridge-cut entirely of black lava rock which lies between two high sierra by way of a gap;' at which point the Indians deserted them. "We applauded their cleverness in having brought us through a place so well suited for carrying out their ruse so surely and easily." The Black Ridge was a major obstacle to the party, as the Indians knew it would be, so they went down again to Rio del Pilar (Ash Creek) and camped the night of 13 October.

At this point, Escalante summarized his impressions of Cedar Valley: It ,greatly abounds in pasturelands, has large meadows and middling marshes, and very fine land sufficient for a good settlement for dry-farming because, although it has no water for irrigating more than some land by the rivulets of San Jose and El Pilar, the great moisture of the terrain can supply this lack without irrigation being missed; for the moisture throughout the rest of the valley is so great that not only the meadows and lowlands but even the elevations now had pastures as green and as fresh as the most fertile of river meadows during the months of June and July.

Very close to its circumference there is a great source of timber and firewood of ponderosa pine and pifton, and good sites for raising large and small livestock. 5

The Spaniards who came after the Dominguez-Escalante party were of a different mind. Although some were missionaries or padres, most were intent upon settling verdant California or making their fortune trading goods, cattle, and slaves for horses and returning to Santa Fe. Before 1800, they followed the Dominguez-Escalante route from the Dolores River in Colorado into Utah Valley, where they exchanged their wares for tanned buckskins, furs, dried buffalo, and venison. The traders followed the natural trails known to prehistoric people and Indians for centuries. So eager were the Utes and Navajos

EXPLORERS, TRADERS, TRAPPERS AND EXPEDITIONS

33

to obtain goods that they began raiding the villages of their weaker neighbors, capturing their children and women to barter for guns and horses. The gentle Paiutes were especially exploited-their children were taken to New Mexico and sold in to slavery and their women were sold as consorts for the Mexicans. Additionally, traffic in stolen horses, cattle, and sheep became so great that the route to Santa Fe became known as the "Horsethief Trail."6 Spain lost its possessions in North America in the Mexican Revolution of 1821, and commercial traffic began in 1822 between California and New Mexico over the Santa Fe Trail. American and British fur trappers roamed the interior wildernesses of the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin during the 1820s and 1830s. In 1826, American trapper Jedediah Smith became the first to travel overland from the mountain interior to California. In 1829, a Mexican, Antonio Armijo, carried commercial goods from New Mexico to California, using major portions of what would become the Old Spanish Trail, and in the winter of 1830-31, American trappers William Wolfskill and George C. Yount and a party of twenty men journeyed from Santa Fe to Los Angeles by way of the Great Basin, covering the entire general route. Thereafter, it became a major thoroughfare, as traders passed going both directions, carrying guns, goods, and Indian slaves to be traded for horses, cattle, and liquor/ The Spanish Trail entered Utah east of Monticello and went north to cross the Colorado River near Moab and the Green River near the town of Green River. After passing through Emery County, it came down Salina Canyon to the Sevier Valley and proceeded southward through Marysvale Canyon and up the Sevier River, roughly following the route of present-day U.S. 89. Seventeen miles past Circleville at the head of Circleville Canyon, the trail turned abruptly westward at present-day Orton, or Bear Valley Junction. Here it entered what is now Iron County and followed Bear Creek through Lower and Upper Bear valleys, the natural route across the northern end of the Paiute Highlands of the Markagunt Plateau. After crossing the divide, the trail headed down Little Creek, a rough and rocky canyon route, passing through the upthrust Hurricane Cliffs to break out in the open near the later site of Paragonah.

Travelers had an easy time crossing the open valley east of Little

34

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Salt Lake and southwest to San Jose Spring, described as "one of the finest fountains and streams of water on the entire route."8 John C. Fremont called it St. Joseph's Spring; later it was Elkhorn Springs, then Johnson's Springs, and finally Enoch. The trail turned west, then southwest, staying in open country for approximately forty-five miles across Cedar Valley and the southern edge of the Escalante Desert, with key watering holes at Iron Springs, Antelope Springs, and Pinto Creek. From Pinto Creek it passed up Holt Canyon, where it left Iron County to go south to Mountain Meadows, known as a place to recuperate animals before or after the long haul across the desert of southern Nevada and California. 9 There are few records of those who traversed the meadows and camped beside Iron County's streams and springs before 1847, except for the journals of Jedediah Smith's explorations overland to California in 1826 and John C. Fremont's 1844 expedition.

Unique among frontiersmen, Smith was modest, unassuming, quiet, devoted to the Bible he carried, indifferent to privation and personal suffering, courageous, and intelligent. He established himself as a partner in the trapping firm of Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, successors to William Ashley, just days before leaving the 1826 rendezvous in Cache Valley and heading southwest of the Great Salt Lake to look for beaver. Leading fifteen men and looking for the fabled Rio Buenaventura, Smith may not have intended to go all the way to California until the party was so far south and low on provisions that it seemed logical to keep going. 10 They left "the Little Uta Lake" in August. After traveling up the Sevier River, the party turned westward up Clear Creek and crossed the mountains to the rolling, sage-covered valley where Cove Fort was built years later. Through September, they marched along the base of the mountains. A few days after passing a stream they called Lost River (present-day Beaver), they noticed the changing color of the earth, the red tinge to the mountains, and the reddish sand that marks Iron County. This was not beaver country and the men were unruly and quarrelsome in the landscape with sagebrush and junipers on every side. They were soon over the rim of. the Great Basin and following Ash Creek to the Virgin River. Although they must have seen Indians or the evidence of them along the streams

EXPLORERS, TRADERS, TRAPPERS AND EXPEDITIONS

35

later called Red Creek, Center Creek, and Coal Creek, Smith did not comment on the natives who called themselves Pa-utches until his party reached the confluence of the Santa Clara and Virgin rivers, where he saw rude patches of corn and pumpkins, the first Indian agriculture he had seen since leaving the Mandans in the Dakotas.

Smith went on to the Colorado River, turned west at the Mohave Villages (Needles), and reached Mission San Gabriel in late fall 1826.

Smith and two of his men returned to northern Utah in the spring of 1827, crossing the Sierra Nevada and 600 miles of trackless, waterless desert to get to the rendezvous at Bear Lake. They left California with seven horses and two mules and arrived at Great Salt Lake with one horse and one mule, having eaten the others. Ignoring the privations, Jedediah Smith rested only ten days before heading southwest again, to retrace his route through the Great Basin and southwestern Utah and rejoin his men left at the Stanislaus River.l1 As Smith passed twice through Iron County, his path from Cove Fort to Ash Creek was almost identical to the route of U.S. Highway 91 through Beaver, Parowan, and Cedar City, following neither Escalante's route miles to the west nor much of the Spanish Trail.

Almost eighteen years later, American explorer John C. Fremont led a party through Iron County in the opposite direction. His party traveled down the west side of the Sierra Nevada from northern California and intersected the Spanish Trail in the Mojave Desert, thirty miles from modern -day Victorville. Heading northward, they were soon at Las Vegas, before crossing more desert and sparring with hostile Paiutes along the Virgin River. Fremont wrote detailed reports of plants, animals, peoples, and landscapes as he traveled up the Virgin River and north along the Santa Clara to Mountain Meadows at the summit of the ridge.

On 13 May 1844 the party entered Cedar Valley from the west.

Fremont commented upon the broad valley and the little streams, which he assumed went to Sevier Lake. On 16 May they camped at the northern end of "a small salt lake, about seven miles long and one broad .... This little lake, which well merits its characteristic name, lies immediately at the base of the Wah -satch range, and nearly opposite a gap in that chain of mountains through which the Spanish

36

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

trail passes."12 Fremont left the Spanish Trail when it bore east, choosing to travel north toward the valley of the Great Salt Lake.

Ten years later, during the winter of 1853-54, Fremont returned under harrowing circumstances. While leading a self-financed expedition to prove that a route across southern Colorado was the best central railway route from the Mississippi River to California, Fremont and twenty-one men passed without great difficulty through the Sangre de Christo Range and the valleys of the Rockies along the general line of his disastrous 1848-49 exploration in the San Juan Mountains. However, after following the Gunnison and Colorado rivers to the Green River, the party found themselves in an unknown country of mountains and canyons. Out of provisions and weary from forging a trail through snow during extremely cold weather, the prospect of death and the specter of cannibalism again faced a Fremont party. They were forced to eat their horses, killing t he last one somewhere along the Sevier River. The party cached excess baggage, including pack saddles, traveling bags, scientific instruments, gunpowder, and lead. Snow was up to the bellies of their mules and temperatures were below zero. None of the men had shoes; they strapped rawhide on their feet or wore worn-out stockings and moccasins. Their ration of horse meat ran out forty-eight hours before their rescue. For three days they wandered through the mountains northwest of Panguitch, eventually passing through Dog Valley, across Fremont Pass, and down Fremont Wash into the Great Basin.

The men were despairing of rescue and suffering dreadfully when Solomon N. Carvalho, expedition artist and diarist, observed what he thought were wagon wheel ruts beneath the snow. He wrote, "I stopped my mule and with very great difficulty alighted, and thrust my hand into the snow, where to my great delight I distinctly felt the ruts caused by wagon wheels.' " 13 Fremont knew there were Mormon settlements by the Little Salt Lake and went ahead for help, following the wheel ruts.

On the bitterly cold evening of 7 February 1854, John C.L. Smith of Parowan heard cries for help. He discovered a lone white stranger weak from starvation and almost frozen. As Smith and his wife brought him inside, Fremont told them who he was and that his

EXPLORERS, TRADERS, TRAPPERS AND EXPEDITIONS

37

party of men was behind him some miles. Rescuers found the party in desperate plight. All were exhausted and many had to be carried into Parowan. One man, Oliver Fuller, had died on the trail. I 4 By the next morning, the survivors were recuperating in the care of families throughout the city. IS Fremont's wife, Jessie, received a letter from Fremont, written from Parowan, that he and his men owed their lives to the Mormons: "The Mormons took us in, one or two of us in each house, and they fed us and nursed us back to health."16 Fremont's 1844 explorations of the Great Basin had determined that it was an interior drainage area, walled in from the ocean by high mountain ranges and huge deserts. His reports and maps, published in 1845, had a great influence on future settlement of the area.

Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders read them with great interest as they prepared to leave Nauvoo, Illinois.

In 1845, the area that would become Utah was criss-crossed by the trails of Spanish travelers and traders, British, French, and American trappers and explorers, and roaming Native Americans.

The Mexican government officially claimed the land. Travel was by horse and pack animal. The first wagon trains to California crossed the northern valleys in 1846, when the ill-fated Donner party and others followed the advice of Lansford W. Hastings that his route past the Great Salt Lake and the salt flats to the Humboldt River could save several hundred miles. Following that same rugged Hastings track from Fort Bridger, in July 1847 the first company of Mormon pioneers entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake.

In late 1847, Jefferson Hunt and seventeen men and boys became the first Mormons to cross Iron County as they traveled the southern route to California from Salt Lake City.I7 A captain in the Mormon Battalion, Hunt and other discharged battalion members traveled from San Diego to Great Salt Lake City by way of Sutter's Fort and the northern California route. When Hunt arrived in October 1847, he was "troubled by the obvious lack of food supplies in the valley." 18 He proposed to church leaders that an expedition return to California by the southern route described by Fremont to purchase cows, bulls, horses, wheat, and other seeds. He believed that seeds could be purchased at San Bernardino and brought to the valley to

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

be planted long before Brigham Young and other pioneers would arrive in the summer of 1848.

Hunt's suggestion was accepted, and on 16 November 1847 Horace K. Lathrop, E.K. Fuller, Orrin Porter Rockwell, Hunt, and fourteen others left for southern California using directions furnished by a trapper, "Duff" Weber. John Hunt, fourteen-year-old son of Jefferson Hunt and one of the party, recalled that although they took provisions for thirty days, "we found the directions of Weber very hard to follow and lost the trail so often, and spent so much time hunting it again, that we finally ran out of provisions before we had reached the vicinity of Las Vegas." Two of the strongest men rode ahead for help, and the other sixteen men were brought to San Bernardino on Christmas Day.19 When it was time to return, Hunt and Rockwell separated. Hunt, Fuller, and six others left on 14 February 1848 with 200 cows, forty bulls, some mares, and pack animals loaded with a few bushels of potatoes and wheat. They arrived in Salt Lake in May 1848 with only one hundred cows and one bull. The rest died of thirst or were killed

by Indians. The potatoes were planted by 10 May; the wheat was also used for seed. 20 Rockwell stayed to lead back twenty-five men recently discharged from the Mormon Battalion who spent a reenlistment from the spring of 1847 to 1848. His company of thirty-five men left San Bernardino 12 April 1848 with 135 mules and at least one wagon loaded with seeds, fruit-tree cuttings, and other provisions. This was the first wagon to come up the Spanish Trail, and the men had to work hard to make a wagon road out of a pack trail. Rockwell led this company across the Escalante Desert from Pinto Creek to Beaver Creek, bypassing Cedar Valley and the Spanish Trail springs at Antelope, Iron Mountain, and Elkhorn. They arrived in Salt Lake City on 6 June 1848. Hunt looked for this route across the desert from Beaver Creek when he piloted a company composed of church missionaries and California gold seekers along the southern route in October 1849. He failed to find the way and spent a very frustrating and dry week on the Escalante Desert before returning to the Spanish Trail. It cost him the confidence of his followers and led the gold seekers to take the ill-fated Walker Cutoff and end in Death Valley.21

EXPLORERS, TRADERS, TRAPPERS AND EXPEDITIONS

39

The scene was set for settleIT1ent of the Great Basin, which

included on its southern boundary the valley of the Little Salt Lake and the nearby iron mountains.

ENDNOTES

1. The Dominguez-Escalante Journal, Fray Angelico Chavez, trans., and Ted J. Warner, ed. (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1976),72.

2. Ibid., 72.

3. Ibid., 73-74.

4. Ibid., 78.

5. Ibid.

6. "The Old Spanish Trail," Geology and Economic Deposits of East Central Utah, James A. Peterson, ed., Intermountain Association of Petroleum Geologists Seventh Annual Field Conference, 1956, 84.

7. Ibid.; C. Gregory Crampton and Steven K. Madsen, In Search of the Spanish Trail (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1994), 10-11.

8. Quoted in Crampton and Madsen, In Search of the Spanish Trail, 70-71.

9. Crampton and Madsen, In Search of the Spanish Trail, 70-72. See also C. Gregory Crampton, "Utah's Spanish Trail," Utah Historical Quarterly 47 (Fall 1979): 361-83; and Leland Hargrave Creer, The Founding of an Empire, the Exploration and Colonization of Utah, 1776-1856 (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1947),31. Mountain Meadows, later made infamous, was known to many as Mountain Meadow and was so distinguished in many maps and memoirs; however, it has become better known as Mountain Meadows, and will be referred to as such in this book.

10. Dale L. Morgan, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1953), 193-97.

11. Ibid., 211-15.

12. John C. Fremont, The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988), 270-71. See also Ferrol Egan, Fremont: Explorer for a Restless Nation (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1985),235-51; and Crampton and Madsen, In Search of the Spanish Trail, 70.

13. S. N. Carvalho, Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West; with Col. Fremont's Last Expedition (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1857), 135.

14. Wayne Hinton, "Parowan Mormons Rescue the Great Pathfinder," Southwest Utah Magazine 2 (Winter 1994): 8-10; Carvalho, Incidents of

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Travel and Adventure, 134-35; Nevada W. Driggs, "When Captain Fremont Slept in Grandma McGregor's Bed," Utah Historical Quarterly 41 (Spring 1973): 178-8l.

15. Carvalho's remarkable journal gives details of their pitiable condition and the kindness of their Mormon rescuers. He was tended by the wives of a Mr. Heap and later taken for medical care to Salt Lake City.

Carvalho was a guest of Ezra T. Benson in Salt Lake City, painted Brigham Young's portrait, and enjoyed Salt Lake society for several weeks before returning to Parowan and visiting Cedar City en route to Los Angeles. See Carvalho, Incidents of Travel and Adventure, 136-214.

16. Quoted in Luella Adams Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 4-5. See also Irving Stone, Immortal Wife: The Biographical Novel of Jessie Benton Fremont (Chicago: Consolidated Book Publishers, 1946),302-8.

17. Steven H. Heath, "Jefferson Hunt-Bad Judgment, the 4gers, and the Mormon Battalion," Pioneer (Summer 1995): 6-7.

18. Harold Schindler, Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God, Son of Thunder (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1966), 175.

19. Deseret News, 7 October 1905,27. This description of a difficult and perilous journey was given by Jefferson Hunt's son many years later. See also E.K. Fuller's account of the trip recorded in John Urie, "History of John Urie," 48-49, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

20. Urie, "History of John Urie," 48-49.

21. Heath, "Jefferson Hunt," 7.

CHAPTER 4

MORMON EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION Brigham Young envisioned a vast Mormon empire called the State of Deseret. The proposed state would have covered some 265)000 square miles of deserts) mountains) valleys) and plateaus from the Rockies to the Sierra Nevadas) the Great Basin to the Gila River in Arizona) and southwest to the Pacific Ocean port of San Diego. Young believed a port on the Pacific was essential to allow Latter-day Saint immigrants to approach from the west instead of by the laborious overland route. He also intended to establish a corridor of communities between the Salt Lake Valley and southern California. The communities of early Iron County were among the first established along this ÂŤMormon corridor.Âť Captain Jefferson Hunt traversed the route from Great Salt Lake City to the Little Salt Lake and west on the Spanish Trail to California at least once a year between 1847 and 1851) and he may have told Brigham Young of the vast field of iron ore near the Little Salt Lake.

The deposit is noted in the journal of Addison Pratt) who was with Jefferson Hunt in 1849 as Hunt guided a company of missionaries and California-bound gold miners. Pratt described Little Salt Lake 41

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

J. C. Armstrong left his ÂŤsignature" on a canyon wall as he waited for members of Parley P. Pratt's exploration company in December 1849. The taxing ordeal through the Tushar Mountains to the Little Salt Lake Valley . ended as the party exited the canyon on 23 December. Other Armstrongs added their marks in later years. (Courtesy Steven H. Heath) Valley: "This is a large valley and affords a great abundance of grass, but is not well watered enough to accommodate a large settlement."

He wrote of Iron Springs, "Near this spring is immense quantities of rich iron ore."l In November 1849 Brigham Young and the Legislative Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret commissioned Parley P. Pratt to conduct an expedition south to the Virgin River to determine prospects for colonization. With fifty seasoned men, including eight who later settled in Iron County, Pratt undertook a hazardous winter journey into what he called the "dreary and almost unknown regions of Southern Utah."2 Bad weather plagued the expedition. Snow was falling as they left Salt Lake Valley on 24 November, and a foot of snow blanketed Utah Valley, hindering travel. The temperature plunged to twenty-one degrees below zero on 10 December. The party detoured east at Salt Creek (Nephi) to visit the new settlement at Manti. Two wagons and five men joined the company there. After trading with Ute Indian chief Walkara, they followed the San Pitch River to the Sevier River, traveling south through the Sevier River Valley and forging a road as

MORMON E XPLORATION AND COLONIZATION

43

they went. At a narrow canyon south of present-day Circleville, they turned west and began a harrowing five-day ordeal through the mountains at the southern end of the Tushar Range. This mountain crossing taxed the limits of their endurance, faith, and pioneering skills as they encountered high winds and drifted snow more than two feet deep.3 Once over the pass, John Brown and Parley Pratt explored ahead to the Little Salt Lake Valley. So dramatically different was the landscape, barely covered as it was with light snow, that Pratt called the narrow approach into the valley ÂŤSummer's Gate," because they found only two or three inches of snow at the top of what became known as Fremont Wash at the northern end of Little Salt Lake Valley.4 They camped on Red Creek (Paragonah) on 23 December and the next day camped in the protection of the hills near Heap's Spring at Parowan. Beneath the skiff of snow, feed and fuel seemed abundant.

Pratt wisely divided the party, leaving thirty men with the cattle and oxen at this camp. They spent the next fourteen days exploring the area. Pratt took twenty men on horseback over the rim of the Great Basin to the mouth of Santa Clara Creek on the Virgin River and returned along the Spanish Trail through Mountain Meadows and past the ore deposits which they called Iron Mountain. Pratt returned ahead of his party on 7 January and was met with cheers.

When the rest of Pratt's party arrived, they enjoyed a feast. Pratt addressed the company, calling attention to the freedom enjoyed in the Great Basin and suggesting that the day should be celebrated as the anniversary of the City of Little Salt Lake ÂŤas long as the sun shone upon it."s While preparing to return northward the next day, Isaac C .

Haight, who was to have a role in establishing Iron County, wrote of his attraction to the area: I shall leave this place with regret. It is one of the most lovely places in the Great Basin. On the east high towering mountains covered with evergreen forests and one of the most beautiful creeks running from them, on the west and south a large valley of the most beautiful lands. Little Salt Lake bordering the valley on the west and beyond a range of hills covered with verdure and backed

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

with high towering mountains covered with eternal snows, all of which contributed to beautify the scenery and while the clouds hang heavily on the mountains and the storms and tempests are roaring[,] the valley enjoys a beautiful serenity.6

The return trip to Salt Lake proved difficult. Men and animals were exhausted from pushing through heavy snow and constant wind. Some were left near Fillmore. When food ran low, Pratt and Chauncey West went alone the last fifty miles to Provo and roused a posse to rescue the men left behind. 7 In spite of difficulties, Pratt reported to the assembly there were b eautiful valleys with ample supplies of water, although often the snow was so deep they could not see either the ground or the wagon t rail they were following. He confirmed that settlements on Center Creek and Little Muddy Creek (later Coal Creek) should take priority, based upon his assessment that there were thousands of acres of cedar, constituting an inexhaustible supply of fuel, which makes excellent [char] coal. In the center of these forests rises a hill of the richest iron ore. The water, soil, fuel, timber and mineral wealth of this [Cedar] and Little Salt Lake Valley, it is judged were capable of sustaining and employing from 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, all of which would have these resources more conveniently situated than any other settlements the company had seen west of the states. 8

In anticipation of Pratt's report, the General Assembly of Deseret on 31 January 1850 created six counties, with boundaries determined by reference to geographic features in areas where colonization had or would occur. The six were Weber, Great Salt Lake, Tuilla, Utah Valley, San Pete, and Little Salt Lake. By November 1850 the name of Little Salt Lake County was changed to Iron County in recognition of the reserves of iron ore therein, and the territory was defined as ÂŤ â&#x20AC;˘ . . all that portion of country, lying in the southeast corner of the Great Basin, and being south of the divide between Beaver Creek and the Sevier River, and east of the Desert Range, extending south to the rim of the Basin, and east to the Wasatch Range of mountains."9 Three objectives were envisioned in settling Iron County: placing strong settlements along the corridor to San Diego, developing

MORMON EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION

45

the agricultural resources of the alluvial valleys, and establishing an iron industry to "relieve an ever present iron famine in the Great Basin."10 During the April 1850 LDS conference, apostles George A. Smith and Ezra T. Benson were appointed to establish settlements and the iron industry in Iron County. That summer, the first call for volunteers to the Iron Mission was published in the Deseret News. The announcement proposed that the company "sow, build and fence; erect a saw and grist mill; establish an iron foundry as speedily as possible; and do all other acts and things necessary for the preservation & safety of an infant settlement among the indians." It requested tradesmen for establishing such a colony, including farmers, blacksmiths, carpenters, joiners, millwrights, bloomers, molders, smelters, stone cutters, bricklayers, stone masons, a shoemaker, and a tailor.

Leaders knew that a self-sufficient community must be established to build, herd, and plant so that others could devote their time to the task of iron making. 11 Henry Lunt, a recent arrival in Salt Lake City, was caught up in the enthusiasm. Unmarried and without ties to Salt Lake City, he volunteered for the mission. Although unexperienced in mining, he was formally educated and his writing abilities proved useful to George A. Smith in sending back frequent reports to church leaders and the Deseret News on the progress of the mission. The announcement did not entice enough volunteers, however, and George A. Smith and Brigham Young used the podium at a 26 October 1850 meeting to call one hundred men for twelve months to labor "in the neighborhood of Little Salt Lake where we want to plant a colony."12 Understandably, married men were reluctant to volunteer. No one was more than three years removed from the trek to the Salt Lake Valley. They had just begun working the land and building homes; it was difficult to leave and great sacrifice would be required of members to the Iron Mission. When BrighamYoung offered his financial help and personal attention to some of John D. Lee's unfinished business, Lee agreed to go. He left his "house uncovered and his business unsettled." By 11 December, he and two wives, two wagons, two teamsters, and necessary provisions were on their way. 13 Iron Mission membership lists include: a "called list," a "travel-

46

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

ing roster," an "arrived roster," and a "census list"-each different from the others. The "called list" published in the Deseret News on 16 November 1850 included the names of 119 men and a request for additional volunteers. Some who were called did not make the trip and others not called took their places. Even co-president Ezra T. Benson was released, leaving the jovial and efficient George A. Smith in command. The "arrived roster" has 120 men, thirty women, and approximately eighteen children in the company. The presence of women and children indicates a change in initial policy. Some men agreed to go only after their wives and children were permitted to accompany them. Some who went without wives returned north after the initial pioneering period and did not settle permanently in the area. A "census" taken in May 1851 shows triple the population of the first company, including some of the "called" group that traveled in the second company, plus wives and families that followed in the spnng.

The Old Fort in Provo was the rendezvous point for the first company; members of the company gathered there in late November and early December. When George A. Smith arrived, he addressed the camp, designating them the "Iron County Mission" because "we were as much on a mission as though we were sent to Preach the Gospel."

He was unanimously supported as leader. The camp was organized in companies of fifty and tens, with Anson Call and Simon Baker as captains of fifty, and Aaron B. Cherry, Elijah F. Sheets, Elijah Newman, William H. Dame, Orson B. Adams, William C. Mitchell, Tarlton Lewis, John Bernard, Andrew Love, and Samuel Bringhurst as captains of tens. Joseph Horne was guide because he had been with Pratt's party. Smith appointed two military leaders, Almon L. Fullmer as captain of a horse company and James A. Little as captain of a foot company. He concluded, "We are the citizens of Iron County and do not want a mean man to settle in that country."14 John D. Lee was appointed as clerk with Henry Lunt as agent for the Deseret News and private secretary to Smith. Both kept journals and assisted Smith in keeping his journal for the trip. From these accounts, each different according to the personality of the author, many histories of the twenty-nine day trip have been written. is The two companies and 101 wagons left Provo on 16 December.

MORMON EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION

47

Temperatures were in the 20°-45° range. Most wagons were fitted with stoves so passengers could travel in some comfort if fuel could be found to keep the fires going. Smith thought the wagons looked like steamboats crossing the snow-covered valleys as smoke curled upward from chimney pipes. Then, skies cleared and temperatures dropped. Christmas morning was ten to twelve degrees below zero, still Smith called for men to clear the bank and by 11 :00 A.M. fording began. Oxen and horses reluctantly inched their way into the icy stream. Its two-foot depth brought the frigid waters to the animals' bellies and almost to the bottoms of the wagon boxes.

The morning of 26 December, several oxen were missing, including two driven by George A. Smith. Henry Lunt discovered the trail of the oxen heading into the mountains and followed it. Lunt brought in the oxen, each shot with arrows, and a posse brought in two Indians-an older brave and a boy-caught hiding in the brush. The next morning, the older Indian was given the dead ox in exchange for his twelve-year-old brother. The Indian had expected a much harsher punishment and went away with his meat and a stern warning that further stealing from the Mormons would not be tolerated. William Empey took the lad to raise and everyone seemed pleased with the outcome. l6 The camp moved on in two companies, strung out along the canyon road, but more together than earlier. Morning temperatures remained below zero. Cattle were weary. The passes were treacherous. Broken wagons slowed the companies causing delays for repairs, but George A. Smith expressed satisfaction with the conduct of the camp: "better feelings he said he never saw in a camp under the same conditions."l? Snow blindness became a problem for men and animals as they passed through Pahvant Valley and over the summit.

Smith reluctantly allowed a layover on New Year's Day, which they celebrated with a dance around large fires within the circled wagons.

As they passed through Beaver Valley, many of the travelers noted the rich soil, the streams and springs, and extensive timber. John D. Lee called it a "splendid situation" for a large settlement. Two days later, with great difficulty, they went over the ridge between Beaver and Little Salt Lake valleys by double-teaming. From the summit, the Little Salt Lake Valley was in sight.

48

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

By this time, Baker's company, the second fifty, had gained two days on Call's company by finding a quicker and easier pass after Pahvant Valley and by dropping off slower wagons, including George A. Smith's. It appeared that an ox-team race was developing, with the men of Baker's company anticipating first choice of land; however, Smith sent word for them to remain at Red Creek until all the wagons were in. When they were together again, he praised the men and commended their zeal but squelched the rivalry between the two captains by declaring that all would take their proper places as in the beginning. 18 On Monday, 13 January, the companies reached Center Creek and camped on the north bank near the mouth of the canyon. They had accomplished the trip with no loss of human life and minimal loss of livestock, but they had little time to revel in their accomplishment. Explorers were sent up three nearby canyons to locate the closest timber supply. Early Tuesday morning, Smith led a party to explore to the southwest. He wanted to be sure that Center Creek, recommended by Parley P. Pratt for the agricultural settlement, was the best possible site for the mission. Iron manufacturing was their ultimate objective, but the immediate practical challenge was food and shelter for survival. The farmers of the company, many of whom were English, did not like the look of the "bloody red" soil. Smith wrote: ÂŤI found a tract of land which pleased me, but not so with a great majority of our farmers who make up wry faces and say they can see no facilities here."19 Smith came upon Jefferson Hunt and seven men returning from California. The men rested their animals for a few days at Center Creek while Hunt assisted Smith in examining the soil and the ore deposits. Hunt led them to the area known as Iron Springs, where chunks of iron ore were plainly visible along with many outcroppings of solid iron ore ledges. The site was thought ideal for an iron foundry, with ore, fuel (trees), and water in close proximity.

The exploration was interrupted by the arrival of the Indian Peteetneet and his small band. Hunt had had recent experience with hostile Indians, so the arrival of this small force under a well-known war chief was alarming. The encounter was peaceful, but it made

MORMON EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION

49

settlers cautious in choosing a settlement site and in deciding where to build a fort.

Returning to Center Creek, Smith lost no time in organizing Iron County so Hunt could report their actions in Salt Lake City. The first election in Iron County, on 17 January, showed 100 percent support for a ticket named the previous evening in a political convention of the ÂŤCottonwood Precinct." Jefferson Hunt was elected representative to the General Assembly, State of Deseret, with the following county officers elected: Elisha H. Groves and Edson Whipple, associate judges; James Little, sheriff; James Lewis, recorder; Joseph Horne, assessor and collector; Almon L. Fullmer, supervisor of roads; Anson Call and Tarlton Lewis, magistrates; Phillip B. Lewis, weigher and sealer; and Zachariah B. Decker and Charles Hall, constables. 20 Center Creek (Parowan) was confirmed as the site of the first community, with plans for an iron company to establish a foundry twenty miles south at the ore deposits.

The first campsite at the mouth of the canyon was directly in the path of the chilling canyon winds. On 18 January, the entire camp moved across and down the creek about three-quarters of a mile to the shelter of the hills surrounding Heap's Spring. On the knoll overlooking the camp remained the Liberty Pole erected by Parley P. Pratt's company twelve months earlier.

George A. Smith called for an assembly and chided those disappointed in the area saying that if ÂŤthis Bloody soil was turned into a black loam & the burden of the land was here sage grass 6 feet high & so thick that a rabbit dare not enter & small rivers running out of every kanyon alive with fish & above all gold mixed with the soil instead of gravel, it might have met their expectations in some small degree."21 However, those who had building the kingdom in view would be willing to put up with the country and its disadvantages and be thankful it is no worse. He proposed construction of a compact fort, with a council house for meetings, schools, and worship, and a road up the canyon. All motions were finally carried and the next day the company went to work building their community.

William H. Dame, Edward Dalton, and others laid out the townsite and began surveying a location for a fort, fifty-six rods (308 yards) square and divided into ninety-two lots. It was to be north of

50

HI STORY OF IRO N COUNTY

their campground and set on the east side of Center Creek. Today, the center of Parowan conforms to the old fort, with the Old Rock Church sitting in the middle of the square. The southeast corner was reserved for a Liberty Pole, and later a United States flag flew there. 22 Town lots were drawn on 4 February. The move onto lots in the fort was exciting, and individual cabins were begun as soon as sufficient progress was made in the public work projects. Charles and Job Hall raised the first log cabin and Jonathan Pugmire put up a blacksmith's shop. A sayvmill on Center Creek aided the construction of cabins after it began producing small amounts of lumber in March 1851. George A. Smith obtained the right of control for mill sites and power on the creek, but he was aided by James McGuffy, George Wood, and Joseph Walker in getting the simple upright mill in production. 23 The labor of eighty men was required to build a road up Center Creek Canyon to the heart of the timber, a distance of about four miles. By 27 January, public labor was divided between hauling and laying rock for the foundation of the council house and hauling logs for its walls. It was laid out at twenty-two by forty-five feet and was two stories high.24 The council house was finished in 1852. The roof later was raised to make a large classroom above the auditorium. The b uilding served as church house, community center, theater, schoolh ouse, and dance hall. Canvas curtains divided five classrooms for school, and a stage occupied the north end. A bowery was built to the west to provide a cool, shady place for summer meetings and civic occasions.

George A. Smith officially named the new location "Fort Louisa;' in honor of Louisa Beaman, the first documented woman to marry into polygamy among the Latter-day Saints.25 He also organized the camp into four wards. Twenty lots on the fort's south side w ere the First Ward, with Anson Call as bishop. Twenty-six lots on the west side were the Second Ward and Tarlton Lewis was bishop. Twenty lots on the north side made up the Third Ward, with Daniel Miller as bishop. Finally, the twenty-six lots on the east side were in the Fourth Ward and Joseph L. Robinson was bishop. 26 During ChiefWalkara's visit in March 1851, Smith showed him a copy of Fremont's map and pointed out Little Salt Lake. Walkara said

MORMON EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION

51

its name was Parowan Lake and that the valley bore that name. The young colony was visited by numerous Indian parties, some curious, some seeking to trade. A guard was posted at the fort and men kept their guns at the ready. Charles Y. Webb, Zachariah B. Decker, and Charles Hall were in charge of 500 head of cattle and horses, which had to be herded day and night. Although the Indians seemed friendly, they had no qualms about appropriating livestock, because the settlers had taken their land and killed their wild game. An eightfoot-high stockade, enclosing about two acres, was built at the sinks of Red Creek and the cattle were driven into it at night. 27 William H. Dame surveyed and laid out the town and fields according to the typical Mormon "City of Zion" plan, which provided for all to live in the city, with farms outside. He used a grid system that neatly divided the farmlands into half-mile blocks laid out on a base line running east and west, and quarter-mile-wide ranges laid out on a north-south meridian. Farmers were permitted to apply for the size and type farm they desired. When many objected to the benchland lots covered with sage and greasewood because they thought sage was a sign of sterility and greasewood loaded the earth with poison, George A. Smith took this land and by the year's end proved that the red soil was fertile. 28 Although farmers were cautioned not to "overcrop"-that is, to plow and plant more than they could tend, by June it was evident that the land was oversubscribed, as water fell far short of needs for the Big Field. A seven-mile-Iong canal from Red Creek to the Big Field was hastily dug, but water did not reach the land in time to save all the grain. After the scanty harvest of the first summer, the Big Field was abandoned and a new area surveyed and farmed the second year.

The journals of George A. Smith, Henry Lunt, and John D. Lee reveal that the colonists were busy in many activities necessary for a permanent community. Men, women, and children were involved from dawn to dusk in road building, cutting and hauling logs, building log houses, m aking furniture, working on the fort, clearing and breaking land for planting, damming creeks, digging ditches, repairing damages after every summer storm, planting crops, building a sawmill and mill races, surveying, building fences, dealing with Indians, standing guard, exploring, washing, making and mending

52

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

clothes, preparing meals on open fires, planting and tending small gardens, raising chickens, having babies, teaching grammar school, working out the details for civic and religious organizations, and more.

Several women were pregnant when they arrived in Parowan.

The first baby was born on 1 March 1851 and named New Samuel Whitney. Eleven other babies were born the first year.29 Travel along the Mormon corridor began with the arrival of spring, and colonists eagerly welcomed visitors or new residents. The LDS church had purchased a 100,OOO-acre ranch in San Bernardino, California, and a much larger than desired colonizing company assembled in March, bound for California under the leadership of Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich. Wagons began arriving in Parowan on 11 April and kept coming until 18 April. Some Iron Mission folks may have arrived with these companies, and some from Iron County apparently decided to leave and go to California with Lyman and Rich. Parley P. Pratt and other missionaries destined for the islands of the Pacific also traveled with this company. Pratt wrote his positive impressions of the progress made in Parowan in such short time: I found . . . the settlement in a truly flourishing condition.

Hundreds of acres of grain had been sown, gardens planted, etc., and the farming land nearly enclosed; ... many houses of wood and sun dried brick, built and in progress ... water ditches were flowing for mills and irrigation purposes in many directions."3o

Some of the California company camped at Heap's Spring, but most moved five miles south to Summit Creek. An incident within this wagon train led to a significant and history-altering discovery.

Three wagons were detained beside the stream known as the Little Muddy, twenty miles from Parowan. A woman died there in childbirth, and five people returned to Fort Louisa with her body. She was buried 28 April 1851 northeast of Fort Louisa in a cedar grove. The waiting travelers camped on the Little Muddy noticed some stone coal which had washed down the creek and reported it to George A. Smith. The next day, Peter Shirts and three others went to locate the source of the coal and returned after three days with coal samples

MORMON EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION

53

from two veins of coal located about five miles up the canyon. The report was so exciting that another exploring party was immediately organized, headed by Smith. After three days in the area, they had evidence for President Brigham Young (then en route from Salt Lake City) for locating a city on the newly named "Coal Creek" five miles from the beds of coal and ten miles from the iron mountains, with large tracts of farming land nearby. George A. Smith visualized this as the site of "a fine flourishing manufacturing town."3l Three days later, Brigham Young and a large company arrived on the first of his annual tours of the southern settlements. Young inspected the improvements on Center Creek and the proposed site for the iron works on Coal Creek. He organized the settlement at Center Creek during meetings on 16 May, naming it the Indian name Parowan. Shortly thereafter, William H. Dame became Parowan's first mayor, with four aldermen and nine councilors to assist him.32 Colonization north and south of Parowan commenced after Young's visit. The pioneers were beginning to feel somewhat safer among the local Indians. Red Creek was a fine stream flowing from the canyon four miles north of Parowan, and nearby meadows had potential for agriculture. The Indians called the area "Pa-ra-goon-ah;' which may have described "many watering holes," or springs and marshes in the area before the water was diverted into the fields. Job and Charles Hall from Parowan began farming forty acres in Paragonah. They traveled back and forth to Parowan.

In the summer of 1852, additional men began farming on Red Creek. Among them were Charles Webb, William H. Dame, John Topham, Robert E. Miller, William Barton, and Benjamin Watts.

They also left their families in Parowan and dwelt in crude huts while clearing, planting, and harvesting 300 acres. Encouraged by a prosperous harvest, at least seven families moved to the area by October 1852, at which time George A. Smith directed a survey of the town.

The first homes were dugouts, but in the spring of 1853 some families moved log cabins intact from Parowan while others built adobe dwellings. By summer there were twenty-five families in the community.33 Johnson's Spring (later Enoch) also started with two dugout shelters. Joel H. Johnson brought his family and cattle to Parowan in the

54

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Joel H. Johnson claimed the former Elk Horn Springs as site for a large cattle stockade in 1851. This cabin remained in the 1970s from structures at Johnson's Fort built in 1854 for protection and later used as a mail and stagecoach station. Johnson's Fort became Enoch in 1884. (Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU; donor-Warren Anderson)

spring of 1851. While exploring south and west of the Little Salt Lake, he came upon an area of large green meadows fed by a clear spring and reportedly claimed it on the spot for himself and his family.

Keeping cattle near Parowan was already a problem. George A. Smith encouraged Johnson to move to the spring and build a big stockade to protect the cattle while they were away from the settlement. Cattle from both Parowan and Cedar City were kept there after 1852, and by the year's end seven families were residents at Johnson's Spring.34

By January 1852, Parowan's citizens had enclosed the stockade fort, hung the gates, finished the log council house, and built an adobe schoolhouse. Their numbers were reduced by the colonists sent to start iron manufacturing in Cedar City. This pattern was repeated many times over the next five decades, as Parowan was destined to be the "mother town" of communities in southern Utah, northern Arizona, eastern Nevada, and western Colorado. Despite hardships, on its first anniversary, leaders John C. L. Smith and James Lewis reported to the Deseret News, "The inhabitants of this city are

MORMON EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION

55

enjoying good health; peace and happiness reigns among and around us." 5 ENDNOTES

1. Addison Pratt, The Journals of Addison Pratt, S. George Ellsworth, ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990),384-85.

2. Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1968), 365.

3. Isaac C. Haight, Journal, 1842-62, 16-23 December 1850, typescript, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

4. Donna T. Smart, "Over the Rim to Red Rock Country: The Parley P. Pratt Exploring Company of 1849," Utah Historical Quarterly 62 (Spring 1994): 177.

5. Haight, "Journal," 8 January 1850.

6. Ibid., 9 January 1850.

7. Pratt, Autobiography, 369.

8. Parley P. Pratt, quoted in Journal History, 28-29 December 1849, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah.

9. Ordinances of the General Assembly of the State of Deseret (1851), 1. See also James B. Allen, "The Evolution of County Boundaries in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 23 (July 1955): 261-78.

10. William R. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History (transcripts of his radio broadcasts), vol. I, no. 2, January 1951, I, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

11. Deseret News, 27 July 1850.

12. Deseret News, 2 November 1850.

13. John D. Lee, "Journal of the Iron County Mission, December 10, 1850-March I, 1851," Gustive O. Larson, ed., Utah Historical Quarterly 20 (Spring, Summer, Fall 1952): 114-15.

14. Ibid., 116, 118.

15. Detailed histories include: Morris A. Shirts, Trial Furnace: The Story of the Iron Mission, 1850-1861 (forthcoming, Brigham Young University Press); Luella Adams Dalton, History of the Iron County Mission and Parowan, the Mother Town (n.p., n.d.); Andrew Jenson, "Parowan Ward History," typescripts in Americana Collection, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, and Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University; and Evelyn K. Jones, Henry Lunt Biography, (Provo: n.p., 1996), 20-34.

56

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

16. Zora Smith Jarvis, Ancestry Biography and Family of George A. Smith (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1962), 150; Lee, "Journal of the Iron County Mission," 127-28.

17. Lee, "Journal of the Iron County Mission," 131-32.

18. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. I, no. 2,1-2.

19. George A. Smith, Journal, 13 January 1851; quoted in Jarvis, Ancestry, 152.

20. Smith, Journal, 17 January 1851, quoted in Jarvis, Ancestry, 152- 53, and in Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 27-28.

21. Lee, "Journal of the Iron County Mission," 355.

22. Smith, Journal, 25 January 1851, quoted in Jarvis, Ancestry, 154; Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 31- 32.

23. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. I, no. 35, 2 September 1951; Smith, Journal, 18 February 1851.

24. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 34-35.

25. Jenson, "Parowan Ward History," 9 February 1851; Lee, "Journal of the Iron County Mission," 375.

26. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 35.

27. Ibid., 39 . . 28. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. I, no. 12, 29 March 1951,1.

29. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 66.

30. Pratt, Autobiography, 374-75.

31. Smith, Journal, 28 April to May 1851, quoted in Jones, Henry Lunt Biography, 53.

32. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 40. The aldermen were Richard Harrison, Tarleton Lewis, John D. Lee, and Matthew Carruthers; the city council was composed of Andrew Love, Joel H. Johnson, William A. Morse, William Laney, Dr. Priddy Meeks, Elijah Newman, Robert Wiley, John A. Woolf, and John Dalton.

33. A Memory Bank for Paragonah (Provo: Betsy Topham Camp, Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, 1990),8-9; Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 81,170-71.

34. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 178; John Lee Jones, Biography of John Lee Jones 1841-1935, compo Clynn L. Davenport, from 1942 copy made by Brigham Young University, 1.

35. Jenson, "Parowan Ward History," 12 January 1852.

CHAPTER 5

ESTABLISHING CEDAR CITY AND THE IRON WORKS Confident that the pioneer community at Parowan was successfully established, George A. Smith returned to Salt Lake City to appeal for reinforcements to colonize the south. His request at the October 1851 LDS conference resulted in approval of two new settlements, one on Coal Creek, twenty miles beyond Parowan and ten miles from the iron mountains, and a second at the junction of the Virgin and Santa Clara rivers. Three companies started south within two weeks and arrived at Parowdn in early November. They were led

by Peter Shirts, John A. Woolf, and Andrew Love. John D. Lee was to move from Parowan to settle on the Virgin, but he took his group only to Ash Creek, where he established Fort Harmony. 1 George A. Smith, William H. Dame, Henry Lunt, and others spent 3 and 4 November on Coal Creek staking out a small fort and a large cattle corral at the place Smith called Cedar City.2 He dedicated the land, minerals, water, timber, and grass to the service of God in the manufacture of iron and machinery. 3 A company of menmostly English, Irish, Scotch, and Welsh miners and iron workerswas selected from the pioneers at Parowan and from new arrivals to 57

58

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

establish this second major Iron County settlement. Smith organized them into two military companies. This accomplished, George A. Smith's responsibilities in Iron County were discharged and he returned to Provo to preside over Utah LDS Stake. For his leadership and vision, he is called the "father" of southern Utah. Elisha H. Groves was left in charge at Parowan, and Matthew Carruthers was named presiding elder at Cedar City.

On 10 and 11 November, Henry Lunt led eleven wagons with members of the two military companies from Parowan to Coal Creek and founded Cedar City.4Work began immediately on the stockade.

Wagons were soon traveling between Parowan and Cedar City, as men went for supplies and family visits. Several recent arrivals, who had crossed the plains in the summer of 1851 as part the Scotch Independent Company, brought some of their family members to Cedar City on 18 November. Ellen Whittaker (Lunt), who went to Cedar City to cook for her father and brother, James Whittaker Sr. and Jr., was the first woman resident. Over the next few weeks, the population more than tripled.

Between 300 and 500 Indians lived near Cedar City, according to local historian William R. Palmer,s making this the largest Paiute population in Utah. Paiutes were divided into clans, and their chief at Cedar City, Cal-o-e-chipe, was also head of the Paiute council made up of all the heads of the bands. Even though relations between the Paiutes and the white settlers had been good, a fort and stockade were considered absolutely necessary for the new community. The men worked on the stockade first, then on the ditch. When they had a secure place for animals and a water supply to the fort area, they moved their wagons and began a picket fort. 6 Explorers discovered another outcropping of coal within seven or eight miles and more sources of iron ore, including low-grade "bog ore," on nearby Red Hill. On 21 December, William H. Dame began surveying the fields north of the fort site. Through the winter, spring, and summer of 1852, settlers repeated the community-building tasks that had consumed the Parowan settlers: fencing, ditching, plowing, planting, guarding, and building fort and homes.

Ties to Parowan continued; its mills were essential and the local church leadership was centered there, so it hosted the most impor-

ESTABLISHING C EDAR CITY AND THE IRON WORKS

59

tant church meetings and celebrations. However, making Cedar City the center of iron manufacturing changed Parowan)s role to one of support. Although it remained the county seat, its citizens became reluctant to support the iron industry. Some worked out their territorial taxes by building the road up Cedar Canyon to within a mile of the coal deposits, but the major responsibility to make iron rested on Cedar City)s citizens. 7 The rivalry started at this time between these communities has persisted, especially over the location of the county seat, which remains in Parowan despite periodic debates and three countywide referendums.

From November to June, Cedar City settlers concentrated on home building and neglected the iron works. Many Sunday sermons centered on a theme of unity as quarrels developed over a number of issues, but mainly over dividing the work. On 7 June 1852, the settlers met to discuss the lack of progress. Henry Lunt counseled them to divide the work so those who felt like spending their time in iron manufacture would be freed from field work and those who were farmers could unite in taking care of the fields. After this, sixteen men concentrated on iron manufacture, while the others did the farming.

Spirits improved, and on 24 June, Lunt wrote to the Deseret News that considerable work had been done on the iron works. He predicted they would see iron of their own manufacture in "a very few weeks."8 A monumental effort was required through the summer to build the blast furnace, finish the road and open coal deposits in Cedar Canyon, haul and coke one hundred loads of coal, haul one hundred loads of pitch pine to mix with the coke in the furnace and many loads of limestone to use in the furnace charge, and open a road ten miles west to Iron Springs, where iron ore was crushed with sledgehammers, manually loaded into wagons, and hauled to the furnace site. The entire population gathered at the furnace the evening of 29 September to watch the first loading. They spent the night in song and prayer until, at daybreak, the first tapping brought forth a stream of molten iron. The pig iron was rushed to October conference in Salt Lake City and displayed as proof that the iron mission could succeed with adequate workers and funding. 9 Additional iron missionaries were called to Cedar City during conference and a plan was devised to gather much-needed capital for

60

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

the iron works from church members in Europe. George A. Smith was sent to visit Cedar City to relocate the fort, which Brigham Young said was indefensible because Indians could fire into it from a nearby knoll. The original fort was also much too small for the numbers of people needed to manufacture iron. The new site was south and west of what William H. Dame's Coal Creek Survey called ÂŤOld Fort" and is identified as ÂŤCedar City Plat A."l0 Late in the fall of 1852, the move from the first fort began, as new residents drove their wagons onto property drawn by lot according to Mormon custom. Settlers remained uncertain about Indians. The Paiutes at Center Creek and Coal Creek seemed peaceful. Elisha Groves was assigned to trade with them and keep good, consistent relationships. Generally, the settlers followed Brigham Young's advice that it was better to feed the Indians than to fight them. The whites had taken over the finest lands without recompense and settled at the mouths of canyons where Native Americans had lived for centuries.

Some believed Indians were generally justified in taking stray cattle or horses, ÂŤtithing" the Mormon herds, as George A. Smith put it.

Porting Up However, Utes and Navajos traveling through the area on horseback looking for livestock or for Paiute children and women to trade or sell into slavery were more aggressive. During the summer of 1853 there were a number of incidents between Mormons and Utes under Chief Walkara, which resulted in the death of an Indian and a settler at Payson Fort and rumors that Walkara and his band were massing for attack. The Utah Territorial Legion was mobilized as fear swept communities south of Provo. Six Indians were killed east of Manti and two near Fillmore. On 26 October 1853 the Indians took revenge by killing Captain John W. Gunnison and seven of his surveying party along the Sevier River. 11 General Daniel H. Wells placed all militia units south of Provo under the command of Col. George A. Smith, counseled settlers to gather in the large forts, and ordered them to drive all surplus stock to Salt Lake City for protection against Indian raids. Paragonah's twenty-five families returned to Parowan. Those with log houses simply put them on wagons and moved them. Johnson's Spring and

61

ESTABLISHING CEDAR CITY AND THE IRON WORKS

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Cedar Fort (Plat A) was surveyed by William H. Dame in 1852-53 after Brigham Young counseled the pioneers to move away from the knoll. The heavy dotted line outlines the adobe wall finished by New Years Day 1854.

Current data was super-imposed to show 1-15 intersecting the site.

(Research and field work by Morris A. Shirts; engineering and map details

by York F. Jones, 1984)

Walker Fort (later Hamilton Fort) were also abandoned, and families took refuge in Parowan or Cedar City.

E.P. Beale, superintendent of Indian Affairs for California, was in Paragonah when the order came and described the response of the settlers: "It was to us a strange sight to witness the alacrity with which these people obeyed an order which compelled them to destroy in an instant the fruits of two years labor, and no time was lost in commencing the work of destruction:' Houses were demolished; doors, windows, and all portable woodwork were reserved for future dwellings. 12

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

At Parowan, an adobe wall six feet thick at the bottom was finished in 1853. It was twelve feet high and enclosed a quarter-mile square. 13 At Cedar City, leaders decided to enclose only nine of the sixteen city blocks. The fort wall was also adobe, three feet thick at the base, nine feet high, and one foot wide on the top, built between September 1853 and New Year's Day 1854.

Some Cedar City settlers opposed the order to send surplus cattle to Salt Lake City. The central figures in this episode were some of the Scotch coal miners, including Alexander Kier and Robert Easton.

George A. Smith arrested several, including Robert Easton, for refusing to turn over surplus cattle. Easton's Scotch friends were informed he would be released for the price of the livestock they were supposed to give up. In their minds, this was ransom for their countryman.

Afterward, since they had defied military orders, some of them decided it would be better to leave Utah. They eventually settled in San Bernardino. On 20 November 1853, Cedar City church leaders excommunicated in absentia twenty-six persons who had left for California. Of this group, seven were court-martialed for breaches of discipline during the Walker War. 14 In the spring 1854, Brigham Young met with Walkara and fifteen chiefs near Fillmore, bringing cattle and other gifts, and finally extracting a promise of peace. After the peace council, Walkara and others accompanied Young to Iron County. Young told the people, "The war is over; I have the war with me," pointing to Walkara. He advised honesty and kindness in dealing with the Indians, but told the leaders to be firm with them and not kill their game. 15 Vigilance and caution remained the rule in rural Utah for years thereafter. In addition to building forts for protection, males over sixteen were organized into military companies for regular military drilling and guarding exercises.

Settlers returned to Johnson's Springs in May 1854 and obeyed counsel to build a fort. The settlement was thereafter called Johnson's Fort.

When the settlers moved back to Paragonah in 1855 to plant crops, they also planned a fort. After hordes of grasshoppers devoured their tender crops leaving them little else to do, they began Fort Paragonah. The first story was one hundred feet square; a sec-

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63

This bell made in 1855 is the only casting of the Deseret Mining Company still in existence. Once hung in the belfry of the Lunt Hotel and Stagestop and rung to call townspeople for meetings, school, funerals, and dances, it is now at the Iron Mission State Park. (Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU; donor-York Jones)

ond story was finished in 1857. The fort occupied the center of town until the early 1860s.

Peter Shirts, John Hamilton, and Peter Fife left a wooden structure known as Walker Fort on Sidon, or Shirts, Creek and came into

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Cedar City in 1853. Their families returned in 1854 and built an adobe fort enclosing a quarter acre called Fort Sidon. By 1860 the settlement was known as Hamilton's Fort.

At Ash Creek, John D. Lee, Elisha Groves, and fifteen men built a fort called Fort Harmony. Originally in Iron County, when Washington County was created in March 1852, Harmony became that county's first settlement and county seat. The Southern Indian Mission was first headquartered at Fort Harmony.

Hardships and Persecution The iron missionaries endured many hardships, as the iron industry suffered setbacks. Some iron was produced and small items made; but, for many reasons, the project was doomed. The years 1855, 1856, and 1857 were disastrous, as most crops were lost to grasshoppers and other pests. The people endured three long, hard, cold winters in contrast to the first three relatively mild ones. They lived in isolation and dire poverty, often going without shoes and warm clothing. However, only a small minority moved from the area before 1857, and most of them were replaced with new workers. The missionary nature of their call to Iron County accounted for this persistence. However, the larger tangle of Mormon-United States relationships soon complicated their lives.

When Mormon leaders began preaching "reformation" in the fall of 1856, they found receptive members in Iron County. The intent was to counter a tide of secularism creeping into their lives. Church leaders and missionaries campaigned in every community in the territory, calling people to repent and recommit to Christian principles and loyalty to the church. Members who did not support their leaders were cut off from the church.

In Cedar City, the reformation brought about the organization of the church's Female Benevolent Society, patterned after the Relief Society of Nauvoo. Meetings were conducted and attended by women, but male priesthood leaders were usually present. At the first meeting, President Isaac C. Haight expounded upon the need to repent: "While the men are reforming, Sisters it is for you to see that you murmur not."16 The reformation was followed closely by the Utah War of 1857.

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It may be that the campaign to purify the Latter-day Saints set the Mormons against territorial judicial officials and increased tensions between Mormons and gentiles (non-Mormons) in Salt Lake and Utah valleys. Territorial superior court judges George P. Stiles and W.W. Drummond charged that court records were destroyed with the knowledge and approval of Brigham Young and that officers of the government were continually harassed. Early in 1857 Drummond went to Washington, D.C., to report to President James Buchanan that affairs in Utah were in a treasonable and disgraceful state.

Without investigating the half-true charges, or telling territorial governor Brigham Young of his actions, President Buchanan sent an army to Utah to accompany a newly appointed governor and to quell the "rebellion." It was officially called the Utah Expedition but is better known as Johnston's Army, after its commander, Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston.

With military machinery in place and confident of their position, Brigham Young and his military leaders decided to resist the invasion of the territory. Mormons were commanded to preserve grain and "report without delay any person ... that disposes of a Kernel of grain to any Gentile merchant or temporary sojourner, or suffers it to go to waste." l7 Excitement, fear, and righteous anger spread throughout the territory. Local church leaders preached against gentiles and apostates.

In early August, George A. Smith visited the southern towns-Nephi, Fillmore, Parowan, Cedar City, and Pinto-where he delivered military orders to local commanders and called on the people to resist the invasion. He spoke at least twice in Iron County, on 9 and 23 August, and his words were inflammatory: Take care of your provisions, for we will need them. If the troops come among us, and we have to flee into the mountains, we will haunt them as long as they live, unless they live longer than we do.

Will we sell them grain or forage? I say damn the man who feeds [the troops]; I say damn the man who sympathizes with them."18

His fiery speeches were met with enthusiasm. He had found the people in Parowan making preparations "to strike in any direction and march to such places as ... necessary in the defense of their

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HI ST ORY OF IRON COUNTY

homes;' and willing to torch their homes and hide themselves in the mountains and in other ways defend «their country to the very last extremity." However, Smith noted, «There was only one thing that I dreaded and that was a spirit in the breasts of some to wish that vengeance for the cruelties that had been inflicted upon us in the states."19 Several men and women among the iron missionaries had been driven by mobs from Missouri and Illinois.

Settlers in southern Utah were warned to watch all approaches to the territory from the western borders «lest we be surprised by a detachment of U.S. troops." There were frightening rumors that a force of 600 dragoons would enter the territory through the southern settlements. During August 1857 military drills increased, iron manufacture stopped, and citizens stored meager supplies against the time they might have to flee from their homes into the hills.

At the same time, Mormon leaders were advised to secure an alliance with the Indians against the U.S. Army. Brigham Young wrote Jacob Hamblin early in August that he should «Continue the conciliatory policy towards the Indians ... and seek by works of righteousness to obtain their love and confidence, for they must learn that they have either got to help us or the United States will kill us both."20 Hamblin gathered together Paiute chief Tutsegabit and eleven other chiefs and took them to meet Young in Salt Lake City to further cement their allegiance. Word reached the settlements that Young had changed the policy from one which protected emigrants from Indian depredations to one which encouraged Indians to strip the emigrants of their property and livestock. 21 Within days after George A. Smith left the southern settlers thinking about vengeance and how to protect their homes, local Indian chiefs returned from Salt Lake and found their warriors ready to attack wagon trains traveling the southern route and take their horses and cattle. The first wagon train going south was the FancherBaker party, which consisted of 135 men, women, and children from Arkansas. 22 The train had a large number of horses and oxen and probably 600 head of cattle. Whether the Indians were angry at this company for refusing their begging or for giving them poisoned meat, as was claimed later, or were helping their Mormon friends by

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67

taking cattle from the gentiles as Brigham Young had permitted, the tragic ending was the same.

As the train passed the Iron County settlements, the gates of the forts were closed against them. Although they purchased some flour and perishable foods, they could not obtain grain for their horses and cattle. Indians and the local militia watched as the train moved on to camp at Mountain Meadows, where the Indians commenced to harass and attack the train, killing and wounding several of the emigrants. At this point, the fiery sermons of the reformation, anger toward the government and all gentile enemies, hysteria over the invasion of Johnston's Army, and fear of the Indians came together at the now infamous meadow on the southern rim of the Great Basin.

The events of September 6 to 13 at Mountain Meadows are shrouded in secrecy and conflicting testimony. 23 It is generally thought that the first Indian attack was on 7 September. The emigrants were taken by surprise and quickly circled their wagons as the siege began. John D. Lee, known as "Farmer to the Piedes;' went to manage the Indians at the meadows. The Indians became angry when they could not quickly overcome the emigrants and turned to Lee, demanding that he get the Mormons to help finish off the beleaguered company. Lee sent for the Iron County militia, which was gathered from various communities of the district-Cedar City, Johnson's Fort, Harmony, Washington, and Santa Clara.

There were many heated discussions between the whites and the Indians at the edge of the meadow, and messages went to and from Col. William H. Dame in Parowan. John Higbee claimed Dame wanted compromise with the Indians to allow them to take all the stock and save the company but advised, "you are not to precipitate a war with Indians while there is an army marching against our people."24 There would be no compromise. The fate of the emigrants was decided on Friday, 11 September. Under a flag of t r uce, John D. Lee entered the emigrant camp and convinced them to lay down their arms by promising safe conduct back to Cedar City. The smallest children and a few wounded men were sent ahead in two wagons, then came the women and older children, and finally the disarmed men marching in single file in the rear, where they were to be killed

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

by the militia acting under military orders. The men probably died in a single volley. The women, older children, and wounded were attacked by Indians running from hiding places along the road.

Militiamen who refused to kill were told they could shoot in the air and then squat down so the Indians could finish the savage work. The massacre was quickly over. Higbee said, ÂŤIt did not seem five minutes from the time the Indians rushed past us until all was still as death."25 Around them lay the bodies of ninety-five to one hundred twenty men, women, and older children. Surely the participants were shocked and horrified at what had been done. Only seventeen or eighteen children too young to tell what had happened were saved and taken into homes to be cared for and eventually returned by the government to relatives in Arkansas.

Afterward, no one wished to accept responsibility for the episode.

The men had sworn not to tell what had happened, which created both in the days immediately after the tragedy and over the next 140 years a variety of conflicting explanations and extensive excuses for the participation of the southern Utah men. It was a bizarre aberration in behavior of people who settled southern Utah and cast a shadow over families and communities for more than a century. The federal government spent two decades trying to apprehend and punish participants; but its efforts failed as the tight-knit Mormon society closed ranks and protected its members. In November 1874, however, John D. Lee was arrested. He stood trial twice in district court at Beaver. The first jury was divided, with eight Mormon jurors agreeing on acquittal and four other jurors for conviction. In a second and much different trial, Lee was convicted and eventually executed in March 1877 at Mountain Meadows. Others lived hunted and haunted lives and bore the remorse of their involvement until their natural deaths. The men who were considered leaders at the time spent long periods in hiding and some reportedly were punished by LDS church courts for brief periods of time.

In 1990, at the instigation of descendants of Alexander Fancher and John D. Lee, a new memorial was erected in honor of those who died at Mountain Meadows. In Cedar City prior to the memorial dedication, descendants of Mormon militiamen, Arkansas families, Paiute Indians, and leaders of the Utah legislature and LDS church

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69

gathered in a ceremony designed to put behind them the bitterness of 133 years. Ironically, the Utah Expedition was never closer than two hundred miles to Iron County, but the tragedy at Mountain Meadows represents the only blood shed in the Utah War. The coming of Johnston's Army did affect Iron County in other ways. The expedition brought great stores of goods to Utah, including iron tools, wagon wheels, and other implements, ending the pressing need to produce iron from ore in Utah. Shortly thereafter, the Iron Mission ended.

On 8 October 1858, Brigham Young issued orders to Isaac C. Haight, manager of the iron works, to close down the Deseret Iron Company, saying ... it would be well to abandon the idea of making Iron for the present and let all the brethren pursue those avocations which they please. Put everything in as good a condition for preservation as possible, and let it rest. Such fruitless exertions to make Iron seems to be exhausting not only the patience, but the vital energies, and power of the settlement. 26

The mission ended without producing iron of a quality and quantity needed for the pioneer effort. This was due not to any lack of courage or commitment from iron missionaries, but because of circumstances-from technical to geographical to financial-they did not understand and could not control. These problems, three ferocious winters, famine from drought and pests, and the shadow cast by the tragedy at Mountain Meadows caused a number of Iron County families to look for better opportunities elsewhere. Indeed, some had wished to stop at Fillmore or Beaver when they first came through those valleys while headed to Parowan, and they left to settle these areas. Iron County pioneers were also among early settlers in Panguitch, Washington, Toquerville, St. George, Santa Clara, and the Sevier Valley.

Bishop Henry Lunt said that "the majority of those who remained were persons who had no teams to take them away, and were, perforce, compelled by their poverty to stay."27 Lunt himself had taken the iron off his new wagon to use in making iron products and therefore had no wagon to move with. 28 Real estate and farms could

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

hardly be given away. Over half the field land was abandoned-there was no one to buy it and not enough men left to farm it. Those who stayed, however, did have land for homes.

Twenty years later, Cedar City resident John Urie observed that Iron County's first ten years were a partial success in many things and a great decline in others. He lamented that the iron works were at a standstill, but he predicted that "Iron County, with her vast coal fields and an inexhaustible amount of the best iron ore in the world, is destined ... to be a vast business center. It needs but the magic touch of money, railroads, and business tact." Despite their poverty, the people of Iron County were rich in all they had learned and accomplished. "[We] have enjoyed our home dramatic talent, our bands of music, the dance, and the different outdoor games common to a country community. The social gathering of families and friends were ... of frequent occurrence and bring much pleasure."29 ENDNOTES 1. Journal History, 6 October 1851, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, UT.

2. "Cedar City was so named from the fact that the first day of its settlement the settlers camped in some Cedars that were growing on the East Bank of the creek, where the North field is located." John Chatterley, "History of Cedar City," n.d., typescript, Cedar City Public Library.

3. John Urie, "History of Cedar City," 1880, reprinted in York and Evelyn Jones, Mayors of Cedar City (Cedar City: Southern Utah State College, 1986),473.

4. William R. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 1, no. 45, 11 November 1951, 1. See also Morris Shirts, Trial Furnace (Provo: Brigham Young U nivesity Press, forthcoming) for a discussion of the names and numbers of the first settlers at Coal Creek.

5. William R. Palmer was a Cedar City native whose lifetime passion was gathering, recording, and sharing the history of southern Utah, including the history of the Paiutes. His records and artifacts make up the William R. Palmer Collection at the Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University. Through his active participation in business, civic, and church affairs from 1900 to 1960, Palmer also helped make history. He was cashier of one bank and director of another, as well as secretary and treasurer of the Iron Springs Sheep Association and secretary/treasurer and manager of Cedar Mercantile and Livestock Company. He was Iron County Assessor

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for 1909 and 1910 and Parowan LDS Stake President from 1925 to 1940.

Active in administration of emergency relief funds during the 1930s and Home Service Chairman during W orId War II, when the Historical Records Survey began in March 1936 as part of the WPA Federal Writers' Project, Palmer devoted his energies to collecting records of southern Utah. As a member of the Board of State History, he collected records of local governmental units, and he subsequently served as state archivist for the Utah State Historical Society from 1947 to 1949. His research led to the publication of articles and books on the Paiutes as well as articles about southern Utah history. For a number of years, Palmer delivered radio addresses on Sunday evenings, called "Tidbits from History" during the 1940s and "Forgotten Chapters of History" in the 1950s. See Gustive O. Larson, "William R. Palmer," Utah Historical Quarterly 31 (Winter 1963): 34-36.

6. James Whittaker, Journal, 25 November 1851, original in possession of Paul Lunt, Cedar City, Utah ..

7. Deseret News, 24 July 1852.

8. Henry Lunt, Journal, 7 June 1852, and Deseret News, 24 July 1852, quoted in Jones, Henry Lunt Biography (Cedar City: privately published, 1996),90-9l.

9. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 2, no. 92, 5 October 1952; G.D. MacDonald III, The Magnet: Iron Ore in Iron County Utah (Cedar City, privately published, 1991), 6-7.

10. Original Coal Creek Survey is in Old Map Book, Iron County Recorder's Office, Parowan, Utah.

11. Howard A. Christy, "The Walker War: Defense and Conciliation as Strategy," Utah Historical Quarterly 47 (Fall 1979): 403-4.

12. Quoted in Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 8l.

13. Joseph Fish, The Life and Times of Joseph Fish, Mormon Pioneer, John H. Krenkel, ed. (Danville, IL: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1970), 42.

14. Christy, "The Walker War," 405-8; Edward Leo Lyman, San Bernardino: The Rise and Fall of a California Community (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996) 111-12; Journal History, 20 November and 6 December 1853.

15. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 86-87.

16. "Minutes of the Female Benevolent Society of Cedar City," in Cedar City Ward Relief Society Minute Book "A" 1856 to 1875, entry for 20 November 1856. Holograph original in LDS Church Archives; copy in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

17. Quoted in Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1950), 13.

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

18. George A. Smith, 9 August 1857, address summarized in "James H. Martineau Record, Parowan, Utah, 1855-1860,» 23, typescript copy in William R. Palmer Collection, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

19. Deseret News, 23 September 1857.

20. Brigham Young to Jacob Hamblin, 4 August 1857, quoted in Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 22, 39n. 4. Brooks found the letter in "Church Letter Book, No.3,» 737-38.

21. Lawrence Coates, "Mormon War Hysteria and the Mountain Meadows Massacre,» paper delivered at Mormon History Association Annual Meeting, 19 May 1994,17-26.

22. Lawrence G. Coates, "The Fancher Party Before the Mountain Meadows Massacre,» paper delivered at Mormon History Association Annual Meeting, St. George, Utah, 29 April 1992, 26. Coates has identified 114 persons who were with the Fancher Party through using the 1850 census. The other twenty-one members of the party were children born after the census was taken. None of them fit the description of "Missouri Wildcats,» sometimes claimed as fellow travelers of the party. All members were tied to at least one of the nineteen families identified as joining the wagon train from their homes in northwestern Arkansas.

23. For recent research and comment on the Fancher-Baker wagon train and the tragedy at Mountain Meadow, see three papers by Lawrence W. Coates, "The Fancher Party Before the Mountain Meadows Massacre» (1992), "The Fancher/Baker Train from Salt Lake City to Mountain Meadows» (1993), and "Mormon War Hysteria and the Mountain Meadows Massacre» (1994), copies in author's possession. Noted histories discussing the Utah War and the incident at Mountain Meadows include Donald R. Moorman, Camp Floyd and the Mormons (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992); Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre; and Leonard Arrington, Brigham Young, American Moses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985),256-60.

24. Brooks, Mountain Meadows Massacre, 173.

25. Ibid., 175.

26. Letter from Brigham Young to Isaac C. Haight, Brigham Young's letterbook of 1858, LDS Church Archives; also quoted in Morris Shirts, "The Demise of the Deseret Iron Company,» paper delivered at the Mormon History Association Annual Meeting, 3 May 1986, Salt Lake City, 23.

27. Deseret News, 12 May 1870.

28. Jones, Henry Lunt Biography, 92.

29. Urie, "History of Cedar City,» in Jones and Jones, Cedar City Mayors, 476-77.

CHAPTER

6

NINETEENTH-CENTURY PIONEERING Citizens of Utah's predominantly Mormon population were relieved when Johnston's Army withdrew from the territory on the eve of the Civil War. However, the supply of consumer goods from the East and the South dwindled after the army left. As the Civil War began, Brigham Young once again preached self-sufficiency in the territory. He also pushed a major geographic expansion to accommodate immigration of Latter-day Saints from England and Europe.

Thirty new settlements were founded in 1859, sixteen in 1860, thirty from 1861 to 1863, thirty-one in 1864, and thirty from 1865 to 1868.

Young fully intended to occupy the mountains and valleys throughout the West during the time when the attention of America was on the Civil War. The expansion of Mormon colonies affected Iron County in two ways. First, many settlers were more than anxious to move to new areas. Some wanted to distance themselves from Mountain Meadows; others were discouraged with making a living in Iron County.

Second, new settlements in next -door Washington County were the most important established during the 1860s. Experiments demon73

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HI STORY OF IRO N COUNTY

strated that cotton, sugar, grapes, figs, olive oil, almonds, and even tobacco could be grown in the area, and Young was anxious to have these products available without having to import them. The need for cotton was intensified by the Civil War. Three thousand people were called to Utah's Dixie in the early 1860s; some were from Iron County, and almost all went through the county.

There were barely 1,000 people left in 1860, although Iron County still occupied 33,000 square miles and extended partway across what is now Nevada and Colorado. Two-thirds of Cedar City's pioneer population was gone; there were just 301 persons and at least thirty-five unoccupied houses when the 1860 census was taken. 1 Parowan had 526 residents. From that low point, however, population began to climb. By 1870, there were 2,277 in Iron County, even though the size of the county was reduced to 13,000 square miles after Congress created Nevada Territory on the west and Colorado Territory on the east, taking 20,000 square miles from Iron County.2 Of fifty-nine Cedar City households in 1860, fifty-five were headed by recent immigrants from the British Isles and Scandinavia.

They came to make iron and were poorly prepared to farm at the edge of a harsh desert. They adapted by turning to dairying and livestock raising, freighting, and manufacturing. Farming continued, but the fields around Cedar City were reduced to 400 acres, which some thought was all the acreage that could be watered by Coal Creek.

Parowan's families as well as those of the smaller settlements were also poor and endured years of crop failures as they struggled against drought, rabbits, grasshoppers, and other pests.

The people of Iron County rose from their poverty because they worked hard. While men freighted, farmed, and manufactured goods, women and children worked at home manufacture and became the Inainstay of dairying. Freighting was hard on families, as fathers and sons were gone for weeks and months at a time hauling to California or east to the Missouri River. But the local bullwhackers brought back needed goods, such as calico from California and stoves from the East. Samuel Hamilton, Jr., of Hamilton's Fort and Harrisburg worked in the summer for the Union Pacific Company in Wyoming helping to build the transcontinental railroad; he worked in the winter for George Crismon of Salt Lake City covering the inland trade

NINETEENTH-CENTURY PIONEERING

75

route between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Hamilton had two big wagons and eight mules and hauled calico cloth for the stores in Utah. Others brought fruits and vegetables. Before the coming of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, wagon shipments of fresh produce and supplies were important to the citizens of Utah Territory.3 Men from southern Utah also answered the call from Mormon church leaders to help bring immigrants to Utah. The most successful immigration method during the 1860s was the church train system-each ward and settlement was assigned to send a certain number of drivers, teams, and wagons to the Missouri River for a "down and back" trip.

As farming improved and the dairies and mills yielded their products, the county's surplus grain, flour, vegetables, butter, cheese, lumber, and shingles were carried to the mining communities of Pioche and De La Mar, Nevada, and eventually to Silver Reef in Washington County. Lumber and shingles to build the mills and smelters in Lincoln County, Nevada, came from mountains and sawmills above Parowan. After the railroad came to Milford in 1880, men from Iron County freighted goods to the mines and then filled their wagons with ore to be delivered to Milford before returning home. 4 Home manufacture provided products for local use as well as for trade or sale. Spinning wool and cotton, knitting, weaving, quilting, and sewing were important contributions made by women and girls in the 1860s, often in groups that provided opportunities to socialize. As sheep herds increased in size, so did the manufacture of yard goods, blankets, and rugs made of wool.

Between 1862 and 1866, cotton was carded and spun at a factory in Parowan, owned by Ebenezer Hanks and managed by William Marsden. After a cotton mill was built at Washington in 1866, the Parowan cotton factory became a wool scouring and carding plant, which mechanized two of the time-consuming steps in preparing wool for spinning.5 Spinning and weaving occupied many hours in the lives of southern Utah women. It was a skill passed from mother to daughter. Families with looms often kept them busy all day long. 6 Pioneer women were fastidious about sewing and took great pains to make fine clothing for their families. This became much easier after

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

freighters brought sewing machines from the east. Parowan sisters Ruth and Lorana Page Rogers, for example, shared the seventy-fivedollar cost of purchasing a sewing machine in 1875. 7 Women made hats from straw and rabbit fur, as both were easy to come by. Gloves, moccasins, jackets, and pants were sewn from buckskin which settlers sometimes obtained in trade with the Indians. Soap, candles, glue, herb medicines, rag rugs, and quilts were all made at home. 8 Women also carried the responsibility in each community of nursing, midwifery, and laying out the dead, and some became adept at telegraphy once the telegraph arrived.

Deseret Telegraph In 1861, the east-west transcontinental telegraph line was completed through Salt Lake City bringing instantaneous communication with the rest of the country. A plan to build a regional telegraph line to connect Utah's settlements was delayed by the Civil War, but it resumed in 1865 under Brigham Young's direction. He asked that the Deseret Telegraph line from St. Charles on the north through Iron County to St. George on the south be built as a cooperative effort of the LDS wards. During his visits to the settlements in 1865, he preached that the telegraph should be built entirely by church members, who would cut and plant the poles, pay for the wire by donations, and freight everything themselves.

In Cedar City, each family head was assessed nine poles to be delivered and accepted in town that winter. Funds were collected after harvest to purchase the ward's share of the wire. Every city that wanted a telegraph station sent ÂŤone or two of its most suitable young men" to Salt Lake City for training. William Douglas came to Parowan to operate its first office, but was replaced by Josiah Rogerson. After 1884, members of the Adams family, including Francella, Joseph B., Will L., and their mother, ran the Parowan office. 9 In Cedar City, Mary C. Corlett and Alice B. Bulloch were trained by Rogerson as the first telegraph operators.

The line was finished through Iron County sometime in 1866, and communication between Logan and St. George commenced on 15 January 1867. Telegraph offices were usually in the community LDS tithing office. The immediate reward was a public news service.

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77

On Wednesday and Saturday evenings, people gathered at the tithing office to hear the operator give a summary of world happenings gleaned from the wire. Later, the operator posted it on a bulletin board on Main Street. The board was particularly busy during election time. Often, important messages were bulletins from the settlements to the south. The telegraph operator at Pipe Springs kept settlers informed of the movements of Indians, thus hindering their raids. Later, using code messages, operators warned of federal marshals coming to arrest Mormon men wanted for "unlawful cohabitation" during the polygamy raids. 10

Black Hawk War In March 1864, colonists from Parowan, Paragonah, and Beaver relocated across the Markagunt Plateau to a site on the upper Sevier River. The name "Panguitch" came from the Indian word for big fish, "pang-we," and was given to the settlement, to the large lake in the mountains above it, and to the tributary creek from the lake to the Sevier River. An 1852 exploration party, led by John C. L. Smith of Parowan, had recommended the area for lumber. Due east of Parowan, Panguitch was in Iron County until March 1882 when Garfield County was created by division of Iron County.

When the Black Hawk War broke out in the spring of 1866, it was thought wise to have a military post downriver from Panguitch to protect the settlement and its livestock. Fifty men from the Beaver and Iron county militia were sent to this post. Within a short time they erected a picket stockade, named Fort Sanford. Men at Fort Sanford endured many skirmishes with Indians and many hardships in guarding captive Indians, carrying messages, watching the stock, and assisting settlers to move their houses into the fort. All was accomplished, yet in June the orders came to abandon the settlement and the fort. Most settlers returned to Parowan and Paragonah. Units of the Iron County militia filled other assignments until peace returned. 11 Loss of stock to raiders was a serious problem before, during, and after the Black Hawk War. In one year Cedar City lost livestock worth $28,269. 12 Leaders of Parowan and Paragonah got together in June 1867 to discuss ways to protect stock. Unfortunately, they sharply dis-

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agreed. William H. Dame wanted to herd stock during the day and corral them in town every night. Silas S. Smith and Jesse N. Smith proposed letting the stock run on the range with a picket guard day and night, believing it would be too hard on the stock to bring them back to town each night. The disagreement went so far that President Dame took umbrage at the Smiths and dropped them from their church positions. Jesse Smith was counselor in the stake presidency and Silas Smith was bishop at Paragonah. The breach later was mended and the plan of the Smiths adopted, even though Dame predicted bloodshed for the picket guard at Paragonah bottoms. Guards Joseph Fish, John Lowder, James Butler, and William Lefever circled the stock often and changed camp every night to foil attack. 13 On 21 July, an Indian band rushed in and drove off the herd toward the mouth of Little Creek. Alerted by the guards, men from Paragonah charged the raiding party at the mouth of Little Creek Canyon and stampeded the herd back toward the bottoms. The Indians got only a few head up the canyon. Edward Dalton led a party up Cottonwood Canyon, intercepted their trail, charged, and sent the Indians fleeing. The settlers recovered all the stolen stock and many Indian horses, saddles, and blankets. 14 Years of ample water with flooding in the early 1860s were followed by years of drought coupled with a scourge of grasshoppers and jackrabbits. Almost every possible tactic was used against the rabbits: contests were held, young boys paid a bounty, traps set. Some farmers tried to build rabbit-proof fences, which only occasionally helped. People worked together to plant crops, then had to replant after the grasshoppers came. They built irrigation ditches and then rebuilt after floods. In the spring of 1865 the farmers of Cedar City accomplished what Henry Lunt called "an immense work"-to make a canal to carry water to the recently surveyed fields on the south side of town.

Cooperative Organizations The formal cooperative movement began in the late 1860s, led by the Mormon church's "School of the Prophets." Men over the age of sixteen met in these "schools," which were somewhat like modernday chambers of commerce. The formation of Zion's Cooperative

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Cedar City Co-op Store. (Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU; donor-Alice Leigh Jones)

Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) ensued in October 1868. Cedar City and Parowan established the Cedar Cooperative Mercantile Company and the Parowan United Mercantile and Manufacturing Institution (PUMI) in 1869. The Paragonah Co-op Company was founded in 1870, although its store was not built until 1879. The coops included tanneries, gristmills, dairies, blacksmith shops, sawmills, and other self-sufficient enterprises. Cattle and sheep herds were also combined into cooperative associations. In the northern Utah communities, the cooperative movement countered the challenge to local merchants and manufacturers presented by the coming railroads; in southern Utah, the co-ops allowed development of industries where capital was lacking and maintained prices and the distribution of goods, especially in the Nevada mining camps.

The mining camps provided markets for almost all surplus commodities produced by southern Utah farmers and ranchers. In the 1860s individuals carried goods to the camps and sold them; but Nevada store owners didn't like competition from individual ped-

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dIers, so they worked out arrangements with Utah's farmers to sell their goods through the established stores. This worked as long as the store owners and peddlers dealt fairly with each other; but, by the 1870s, storekeepers were paying only one-half to one-third value for the goods brought from Utah. In addition, outlaws stalked the roads and southern Utah's dealers risked losing their meager earnings as they journeyed home.

During his winter visit in 1873-74, Brigham Young found the people discouraged and communities economically depressed. The national economic panic of 1873 had repercussions even in remote southern Utah. Young learned of the problems encountered selling goods to the mining camps, which were the primary source for cash in Iron and Washington counties, and he advised them to stop hauling their products to the camps. He then organized the people of Parowan and Cedar City into the Order of Enoch, or the United Order, which expanded the idea of cooperative labor to include the entire community economically and spiritually. Under the United Order, one agent in each town was designated to handle all business with the mining camps. Soon store owners from the camps were forced to come to Utah and contract for much-needed supplies, paying for both the goods and the freighting. Now they willingly paid four to six cents a pound for grain, about a two-cent raise for the farmer, plus they paid Mormon freighters in advance for delivery in Nevada, which lessened the number of robberies on the road. Is The united orders lasted only two or three years in Cedar City, Parowan, Paragonah, and Summit, however. In nearby Beaver, initiation of the United Order increased persecution from a large gentile population, and this influence spilled over into Iron County. There was already disharmony in Parowan; apostates and gentiles were numerous and the Mormons were divided into factions, some favoring the leadership of William H. Dame and others supporting Jesse N. Smith. In April 1877 President Brigham Young sought to reorganize the Parowan Stake but found that many objected to his choice of Jesse N. Smith as president, so he left without making the change.

Joseph Fish felt the division among the members "was a great drawback to the place and was the root and foundation of many bitter and lasting feelings among many of the Saints."16

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Land Laws The founding of a School of the Prophets in both Parowan and Cedar City occurred as federal land laws were being extended to Utah Territory in 1869, and one function of the schools was to educate members about applying for land patents. Congress changed the policy in an attempt to allow non-Mormons to obtain legal title to land as a means of breaking the Mormon monopoly, so it was important for settlers to obtain legal title to the land they had occupied by squatter's rights since settlement. Once land surveys were completed, residents began filing to obtain title. The General Land Office regarded all of Utah Territory as federal land. Within four months of the opening of the land office in Salt Lake City in March 1869, over 148,000 acres were claimed, about one-third through purchase and two-thirds under the terms of the Homestead acts of 1862 and 1866. 17 Homesteading altered land settlement and social life in Iron County, marking a major departure from the Mormon village settlement pattern in the county. Filing on homesteads became popular in the valleys west of Parowan, Cedar City, and Kanarraville wherever there was unclaimed flat land near springs or creeks for irrigation.

Dry farming began in Kanarraville in 1868, and corn and wheat were raised; it was also tried in other areas, but it didn't achieve success or popularity until the 1900s.

In the late 1860s, people discovered the value of the mountain land. Early residents feared Indians and wild animals in the mountains, but lack of feed in the valleys finally forced people to venture to the high mountains with their cattle and sheep. They found conditions suited to pleasant living from April to October. Thereafter, many families ran stock on mountain acreage in the spring, summer, and early fall months, and family dairies made a significant contribution to the economy of the county. The Forest Homestead Act did not require five years of continuous residence on the claim as a condition to receive the patent.

Women as well as men filed for homesteads in Iron County, with the largest number of filings taking place in the 1890s. A few women desired permanent farms, others filed to provide themselves with a land dowry or to protect property their families had run by squatter's

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right for years. Such appears to be the case of Mary Stephens Gower, a widow with six children, who proved up on 160 acres of the family ranch on 21 March 1913 and kept a mountain dairy. Her homestead was sold to Utah State Agricultural College in the 1940s and became part of the BAC/USAC experimental ranch. 18 About 1868 several men established a private iron-making enterprise that lasted into the 1880s at a site south of Iron Mountain, twenty miles west of Cedar City. Ebenezer Banks, Peter Shirts, Robert Richey, Homer Duncan, Chapman Duncan, and Seth Blair called their venture Union Iron Works as well as Pinto Iron Works. It included a smelting furnace, three beehive-shaped charcoal ovens, and a number of shops at Iron City along Little Pinto Creek. Iron City's population ranged from 89 in 1870 to several hundred in 1875.

Substantial brick and frame buildings were built in town, including a brick schoolhouse where Miss Deseret Page taught school. The iron works produced pig iron for stoves, dutch ovens, other household items, and for machinery used at the Nevada mines. It sent several tons to Salt Lake City, where it was cast into twelve oxen statues for the baptismal font in the St. George LDS Temple. However, lack of capital, litigation over claims, and finally the onset of government polygamy raids closed out this last era of iron making in the nineteenth century.19 Latter-day Saints in Iron County contributed to the building of St. George's LDS tabernacle and temple, two significant projects which subsidized the struggling colony while its settlers attempted to conquer the desert. In directing Erastus Snow to build the tabernacle in 1862, Brigham Young placed at his disposal "labor, molasses, vegetable and grain tithing of Cedar City and all other places south ... and with the aid thereby given, to speedily prosecute the work to completion."20 After the temple was announced in 1871, the tithing of Latter-day Saints from Beaver south was dedicated toward completion of the tabernacle and building the temple. Many Iron County family histories recall sacrifices to finish the temple in St. George. As the first temple completed in Utah, the people of southern Utah considered it a regional achievement. 21

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Census of 1880 Iron County at the time of the 1880 census extended border to border across the territory and encompassed 13,000 square miles.

The county population of 4,013 included people living in settlements which would soon be in Garfield and San Juan counties. Parowan, the county seat, was the largest community. Almost one-fourth of the population lived in Parowan-976 people in 177 households. By comparison, Cedar City had 700 whites living in 142 households and forty-nine Indians. 22 In the original Iron Mission plan, Parowan was to have been the farming community and Cedar City the manufacturing center.

However, by 1880, Parowan had a range of trades indicative of a small manufacturing center, which is exactly what the Parowan United Mercantile Institution (PUMI) was. Thirty-nine men were tradesmen: six cabinetmakers, three tanners, four shoemakers (including one who specialized in bootmaking), five blacksmiths, a saddlemaker, a tailor, a hornmaker, a painter, a clockmaker, two shinglemakers, two mechanics, seven carpenters, three sawyers, a turner, and a miller.

Sixty men were laborers and likely assisted in the shops and mills of PUMI. Eighty-eight residents were farmers; only three of these were livestock men or herdsmen. Arthur Robinson deemed himself a gardener, while Joshua Chidester called himself a fisherman. There were three employed as miners and seven active in freighting. Finally, there were ten professionals or business owners, including John Brown, county attorney; William Mitchell, assessor/ collector; William Dame, co-op manager; two merchants; two traders; James Benett, an artist/photographer; Robert Quarm, Parowan's first telegraph operator; and John Dalley, a schoolteacher.

A number of women listed occupations as well. Ellen McGregor was postmistress and Anna Bayles indicated she was a doctor, although nurse or midwife is more accurate. A dressmaker, two seamstresses, a milliner, and two schoolteachers are also listed. Most women were shown as kitchen help, although their range of skills extended far beyond the kitchen.

By comparison, Cedar City's men were overwhelmingly involved

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in farming and stock raising. Approximately 80 percent were farmers, farm laborers, gardeners, freighters, and livestock raisers or herders. The few tradesmen were carpenters, brick masons, blacksmiths, or millers rather than manufacturers. There were two merchants, one clerk, and a bookkeeper.

In two-thirds of Parowan and Cedar City households one or both parents were foreign-born, adding an element of cultural diversity common to settlements throughout central and southern Utah.

There were 496 foreign-born residents; many others were first-generation Americans. Of 365 from the British Isles, 277 were from England, fifty-four from Wales, twenty-eight from Scotland, six from Ireland, and three from Australia. There were fifty-seven from Denmark, ten from Sweden, seven from both Germany and Switzerland, one from France, two from Russia, and two born in East Indies/India. Other Iron County settlements had a similar ratio of immigrants.

Diaries and community histories indicate music, dancing, and drama were favorite activities. For participant or spectator, the arts helped people forget for an hour or two the hardships and sorrows of pioneer life. Immigrants brought with them instruments, musical training, play scripts, and memories of jigs, rills, and flings. By 1880, the national rivalries of the early years were largely forgotten.

Parowan and Cedar City were no longer entirely Mormon.

Census takers of 1880 indicated by an "AM" a person who was apostate Mormon or a "G" if a gentile, or non-Mormon. In Parowan, there were thirty-nine apostates and twenty-five gentiles. Most gentiles were children of apostates, although two young men were gentiles with no family affiliation with the Mormon church. In Cedar City there were ten apostate Mormons, three gentile children of apostates, and two gentile men. Perhaps these numbers help explain the bitter factions that grew in Parowan during the government's antipolygamy crusade in the 1880s and the success of a Presbyterian church and school which opened in the fall of 1880 under the direction of Reverend W. C. Cort.

About one-fifth of Iron County residents lived in a polygamous household. There were at least forty-five men with plural wives in 1880, on the eve of the anti-polygamy campaign, but there appears

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to have been no attempt to hide family relationships. Multiple wives were listed with their husband if they shared a home.

Anti-Polygamy Crusade The Edmunds Bill passed in 1882 made the contracting of a polygamous marriage a felony, punishable by a fine of up to $500 and up to five years in prison. «Unlawful cohabitation," living together without a legal marriage, was declared a misdemeanor, with a fine of up to $300 and imprisonment for up to six months. From this definition came the label «cohab." The Edmunds Bill also made polygamists ineligible to vote, to hold elective or appointive public office, or to serve on juries. Those who believed in the principle were also excluded from jury service. Implementation of the bill was slow, but eventually federal officials began a crusade to arrest and imprison hundreds of Mormons in a concerted effort to stamp out polygamy.

Posters offered rewards for information leading to the arrest of polygamists, with higher rewards for more prominent polygamists.

Polygamy indictments for southern Utah came from the second judicial district court in Beaver; federal marshals were dispatched from there to track down and arrest the offenders.

In Iron County as elsewhere in the territory, offenders played hide and seek with marshals. To avoid arrest, they began «living on the underground," which consisted of elaborate warning systems, secret hiding places, mission calls, trips to other areas of the country, and moves to Mexico and Canada. When the telegraph message at the Lunt Hotel read, «Please send up another chair," it meant a marshal was on his way. Children ran to spread the word and to take meals to fathers in hiding. As much as a polygamist dreaded capture and sentencing, it was also a point of pride to go to jail rather than disown or disavow wives and children. Many from Iron County were fined and sentenced to the penitentiary in Salt Lake City. There, they found themselves among hundreds of prominent church members who were also enduring the privations of an over-populated prison.

The crusade turned neighbors and even relatives into enemies as distrust widened between those who practiced or supported polygamy and those who opposed it and assisted the marshals. The large number of apostates and gentiles in Parowan provoked strong

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feelings and divided the community, factors which led to the only killing of a polygamist by a marshal during the crusade.

Edward Meeks Dalton, known as "Young Ed" to distinguish him from his prominent father, Edward Dalton, was indicted for unlawful cohabitation in early 1885 and arrested by deputy marshal William Orton. He escaped in the spring of 1886 and fled to Arizona for a few months before returning to Parowan to see his mother and care for his family. Marshals William Thompson and William Orton learned that Dalton was driving a herd of stock to the range and would pass Daniel Page's house. Riding slowly behind the stock, Dalton was unarmed and unaware of the marshals' presence. They hailed him and ordered him to stop; then, reportedly, a shot was immediately fired from their location in Page's backyard which struck Dalton in the back, mortally wounding him.23 Townspeople pronounced the tragedy a "cold-blooded murder" committed because Dalton had embarrassed the marshals by easily escaping from their custody. Thompson was arrested, and a coroner's inquest ruled the shooting was "feloniously done." Threats of lynching and retaliation were stopped by pleas from Sheriff Hugh L. Adams, Bishop Morgan Richards, and Dalton's father, who said, "Two wrongs won't mend one." At his trial for manslaughter, Thompson declared he had fired his gun with the intention of shooting over Dalton's head. An all-gentile jury returned a "not guilty" verdict, with the case turning on whether Thompson had the right to shoot when arresting someone indicted for cohabitation. The lawyers disagreed over whether this was a misdemeanor or a felony.

Dalton's funeral on 18 December 1886 was attended by twothirds of the population of Parowan, including a number of Dalton's Indian friends who protected him during his flights from the marshals. Marking Edward M. Dalton's grave in the Parowan Cemetery is a large monument. He remains a hero and a martyr to many in Parowan. 24 The imprisonment of some and the slaying of Dalton added to the anxiety of other Iron County men under indictment. When a warning reached Cedar City in February 1887 that marshals were planning a mid-winter raid because suspects were most likely to be home, Henry Lunt, Francis Webster, and Christopher J. Arthur took

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Marking Edward M. Dalton's grave in the Parowan Cemetery is a large monument built with donations from the young people of the Mutual Improvement Association. (Utah State Historical Society, Charles Kelly Collection. )

to the mountains to avoid capture. The first ten days of exile at Andrew Corry's mine southeast of Square Mountain they endured severe weather, as a bitter wind blew snow and cold between the logs of the shelter. Supplies, reading materials, letters, and news were brought to their hiding place regularly by the Lunt and Webster boys.25

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Since deputy marshals covered all of southern Utah, it was sometimes safer for fugitives to move to a different community. For example, later in 1887 Christopher J. Arthur hid out in St. George, where he and one of his wives lived in a large house of a Mormon woman. Not all men left their wives and children, and some women went underground by returning to their parents' homes or moving to remote places in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Mexico. Family members lived in fear, always guarding their conversation so as not to give away relationships. Wives and children were subpoenaed to testify against husbands and fathers, and a number were cited for contempt of court and imprisoned until they agreed to testify.

Eventually, President Grover Cleveland changed the judicial campaign against individual polygamists. He replaced Charles Zane with Elliot F. Sandford as chief justice of Utah. Judge Sandford's policy of adjudication purged the third district court in Salt Lake City of its crusading spirit. Earlier, polygamists who turned themselves in were scorned by church peers. Now, the majority of polygamists under indictment came out of hiding, pled guilty, and accepted less severe punishments. Christopher J. Arthur delivered himself to marshals on 24 March 1889, admitting that he had had children by two wives since the passage of the Edmunds Act in 1882. He was given a lecture, a fine of $300, and a sentence of six months in prison at Salt Lake City. His list of Iron County men in the Utah Penitentiary while he was an inmate includes Sylvester F. Jones, Frances Webster, Simon T. Topham, Peter Barton, Thomas Bulloch, and Charles Hall. Arthur concluded his penitentiary journal: "My experience in Utah Penitentiary was fraught with much enjoyment. Liberty to go to my home and family and associate with the people of Cedar City was the only drawback."26 Polygamist families at home did not enjoy the time the men were in prison, although there was an element of pride for those who bravely went to prison. The crusade brought financial hardship to families and to the Mormon church. Hard-working women, who became quite independent, kept families going while older sons carried much of the responsibility for farms and manufacturing. As men submitted themselves to the courts, families were left in confusion over their relationships, since men had to promise to live with only

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one wife. Although church leaders insisted that fathers were responsible to provide for all their families, during this period many families separated. In some cases, wives went to live with grown children or took their children to homestead new areas in order to provide for themselves. For many, family life was never the same after the crusade.

Pioneer Architecture Despite the disruptions of these years, Iron County's cities grew more populous. Citizens worked together on the first substantial buildings, including churches, schools, social halls, and theaters. Each building required sacrifice and cooperation from the people, and every community member participated through donations of cash, materials, labor, or by doing someone else's tasks so they were free to help build.

The Parowan Rock Church came first and is today the only edifice preserved and restored from this time period. Located originally in the center of Fort Parowan, it is now a museum, a historic treasure set in the center of the town square. 27 Two days after it was proposed on 17 November 1861, Ebenezer Hanks, Daniel Page, and LDS bishop William S. Warren submitted a plan for a three-story structure, fifty-four feet long by forty-four feet wide, made of yellow sandstone quarried locally, with anticipated costs of $8,000. When Bishop Warren submitted the project to church members a week later and called for donations, eighty-two men subscribed $7,495. The first load of rocks for the foundation arrived before Christmas.

Thomas Richards completed excavation work in 1862; stone masons John Parry, Samuel Edwards, and Robert Wiley worked through 1863. Huge square timbers were furnished by A.G. Hadden and were hewn by an adz in the hands of Hadden, Horace Fish, and Jessie Lowder. Timbers used as beams and ceiling joists were fastened with hard, wooden pegs and tied with rawhide. Roofing and inside work occupied the years 1866 and 1867. By the fall of 1867, the basement was near enough completion to accommodate church meetings, school, dances, and performances of the Parowan Dramatic Society.

The hand-finished woodwork, one of the most beautiful features

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of the church, was crafted by Lewis Root of Cedar City. The LDS Relief Society made rag carpet to cover the stand and line the aisles.

Plastering by Morgan Richards, Sr., and John Eyre included beautifully molded wagon wheels. The south end was finished with studs, lath, and plaster, which could be removed to enlarge the building.

The extension was never built; however, after a few years, a two-story ((vestry" was made on the north end to add classrooms and a Relief Society room. Construction of a gallery encompassing three sides and supported by yellow pine pillars turned on a handmade lathe increased chapel seating. Two sets of double doors are prominent on the south end. In early days, women entered the east door and sat on the east side; men entered the west doors and sat on the west side.

The story is told that while William C. McGregor was bishop Lorenzo D. Watson came in the east side and sat down with his wife Malissa.

Eventually everyone began sitting with family.28 The chapel was first used during Brigham Young's spring tour of 1870 and was continuously used as a church until 1916, when a new wardhouse was built on the southeast corner of the square. Parowan High School used the building in 1917-18. In the early 1920s, it fell into disrepair, especially during the years the public square was used as a campground for travelers and tourists. After 1927 it was leased by the Parowan chapter of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers (DUP) to save it from being torn down. A more complete restoration and preservation was completed through joint efforts of the DUP and a WPA work project in 1939 and 1940. As the oldest standing church in Utah south of Provo, the Parowan Rock Church is a significant example of early building styles and the New England building tradition of the settlers, a rare remaining example of the pioneer cultural and spiritual heritage.

The Parowan Bishop's Storehouse and Tithing Office built in the 1860s is also standing at the end of the twentieth century. It has been refurbished and added to and stands near the corner of Center Street and 100 West.

In January 1868 a public library was proposed in Parowan. There were only a few books available, so those at the organization meeting were invited to donate more. Unfortunately, the organization went to

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pieces before much was accomplished, but they had a start toward something better for the future. 29 In Cedar City, the people used the old adobe social hall as a place for worship, school, and amusement from 1862 to the mid-1890s. A brick schoolhouse was built in 1881 and a tabernacle from 1882 to 1888, leaving the social hall for recreation and civic meetings until it was replaced by the Ward Hall in 1897.

While Christopher J. Arthur was bishop of Cedar Ward, cornerstones were laid for a tabernacle in 1877, although actual construction was a few years off. Mahew Dalley, a young schoolteacher, drew the building plans. In early 1883, the first of 82,000 bricks was fired, rock was hauled for the foundation, and twenty-two-foot-long timbers brought for joists. Donation lists indicate that between 1883 and 1888 almost every man in town donated time or materials and women raised money for windows and other cash items by giving concerts, dinners, plays, and donating their Sunday eggs. Minutes say that the first sacrament meeting was held 20 March 1887, although plastering and other details were not completed until 1888.

Cedar City's tabernacle was a stately building with a three-story west tower and a steeple containing the town clock. Arched windows graced the north, south, and west walls, as well as the steeple.

Stairways rose from the foyer entrance to a gallery and to four classrooms. The building was the religious and cultural focal point of the city for fifty years and many still scorn the decision to tear it down in 1932 to make way for a new post office and federal building. 30 The last major changes in Iron County's boundaries occurred in 1880, 1882, 1884, and 1892. San Juan County was formed in 1880 from the land east of the Colorado River belonging to Paiute, Iron, and Kane counties. Garfield County was created in 1882, taking the communities of Panguitch, Cannonville, and Escalante, and over half the remaining acreage of Iron County. At the same time, boundaries between Iron, Washington, and Kane counties were redefined according to range and township lines, so that Washington County was enlarged on the north and east. Two years later, the line between Iron and Garfield counties was changed slightly to give the section containing Panguitch Lake to Garfield County. Finally, an adjustment was made in the Washington-Iron County border in 1892, when a

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Cedar City Tabernacle, 1887 to 1932. (William R. Palmer Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

small portion of the northeast corner of Washington County was returned to Iron County, which was about 3,300 square miles in size, with 2.1 million acres. 31 The population of Iron County was 4,013 in 1880 but was only 2,683 in 1890. Cedar City, Parowan, and Paragonah each lost about fifty residents to the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition and also sent other families to colonize in Colorado, Arizona, and Mexico. In 1890 Cedar City had 1,053 residents and was larger than Parowan (937) for the first time since 1857. Growth during the 1890s brought the county population to 3,500 by the turn of the century.

In the mid-1890s, Iron County families were recovering from the separations and financial difficulties incurred during the polygamy raids and working together to build better schools, finer homes and churches, and brick theaters. Drama troupes and choirs traveled between communities even though roads were primitive, and the hopes of railroads tying the cities together rose and fell with

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Building the Cedar City sewer system, circa 1935.

the frequent announcements of railroading ventures that never came to be.

Citizens were kept apprised of world events by telegraph and the weekly Salt Lake City newspapers. The message that President Grover Cleveland had signed the Utah statehood bill came by telegraph to Iron County on Saturday morning, 4 January 1896, and was announced by ringing the bells on Parowan's Rock Church and the Cedar tabernacle. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the prospects for a more prosperous Iron County were built on hopes

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that the railroad would come to Parowan and Cedar City, that the new Branch Normal School would develop, that the sheep industry would continue its precipitous growth, and that gold and silver mines in the western part of the county would flourish.

ENDNOTES

1. The Native American population was not counted in the census until 1880.

2. The first Nevada-Utah border was at 116° west longitude in 1861. A year later, it was moved to 115°, and, after silver and gold were discovered in 1866 in what would have been western Iron County at Pioche, the border was set at 114°. See James B. Allen, "The Evolution of County Boundaries in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 23 (July 1955): 268-70.

3. See John R. Signor, The Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad, Union Pacific's Historic Salt Lake Route (San Marino, CA: Golden West Books, 1988), 12.

4. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 432.

5. Ibid., 359-60.

6. Lucy White Flake, Diary, edited with notes by Chad J. Flake and Hyrum F. Boone, typescript, Brigham Young University Library,S, 10, 17-18; Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, "Women's Work on the Mormon Frontier," Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (Summer 1981): 287.

7. William R. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 2, no. 97, 9 November 1952; Ruth Page Rogers, Diary, 1823-1887, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, 40.

8. Rogers, Diary, 23-24; Rhoda M. Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, 12.

9. Palmer, "Telegraph Lines," Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 2, no.

75,8 June 1952; Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch," 67-68; Joseph Fish, The Life ,and Times of Joseph Fish, Mormon Pioneer (Danville, IL: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1970), 104-5.

10. Palmer, "Telegraph Lines," 3.

11. Joseph Fish, Life and Times, 92-98; Dalton, History of the Iron County Mission, 202-4; William R. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 2, no. 67, 13 April 1952, 1. By the time Brigham Young recommended resettlement of Panguitch in 1871, most of the original settlers had permanent homes elsewhere and did not return.

12. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 2, no. 66, 6 April 1952, 2.

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13. Fish, Life and Times, 106.

14. Ibid., 107-13.

15. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 2, no. 83,3 August 1952.

16. Fish, Life and Times, 168-69.

17. See Joel E. Ricks, "The Early Land System of Utah, 1847-1870" (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1920), and Lawrence L. Linford "Establishing and Maintaining Land Ownership in Utah Prior to 1869," Utah Historical Quarterly 42 (Spring 1974): 126-43.

18. Lawrence B. Lee, "Homesteading in Zion," Utah Historical Quarterly 28 (Winter 1960): 29-38. See also Jill Thorley Warnick, "Women Homesteaders in Utah, 1869-1934," (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1985), a significant source of information about women and homesteading for a fifty-year period; and McRay Cloward, And We Build a Cabin (Cedar City: Southern Utah University, 1994), 90-103.

19. Kerry William Bate, "Iron City, Mormon Mining Town," Utah Historical Quarterly 50 (Winter 1982): 47-58.

20. Brigham Young to Erastus Snow, in James G. Bleak, "Annals of the Southern Utah Mission," Book A, 151-52.

21. Douglas D. Alder and Karl F. Brooks, History of Washington County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Washington County Commission, 1996),54-65.

22. 1880 census taker Robert W. Heybourne listed forty-nine Indians whom he considered civilized because of their agricultural pursuits.

23. Fae Decker Dix, "Unwilling Martyr: The Case of Young Ed Dalton," Utah Historical Quarterly 40 (Spring 1972): 163-77.

24. Ibid., 166.

25. Christopher J. Arthur, "Records of Christopher J. Arthur, 1860-1900," typescript, Brigham Young University Library, part V, 28-37.

26. Ibid., 61-62 .

27. Information about the Parowan Rock Church is found in Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 319-30, and Cindy Rice, "Museum Feasibility Study Parowan Rock Church," WICHE project, September 1973, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

28. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 325.

29. Fish, Life and Times, 113.

30. Alva Matheson, Cedar City Reflections (Cedar City: Southern Utah State College Press, 1988),44-48.

31. Allen, "The Evolution of County Boundaries in Utah," 268-77. New Harmony was within the borders of Washington County when it was created in 1852. Kanarraville did change from Iron to Kane to Washington and back to Iron County.

CHAPTER 7

THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY:

1900 TO 1940 Statehood in 1896, gold and silver mining in 1896 and 1897, the founding of the Branch Normal School in 1897, and the railroad coming to Iron County in 1899 were stepping stones to the twentieth century for Iron County residents. Long accustomed to its position on the southern corridor, at the turn of the century Iron County was becoming more like the hub of a wheel, with spokes radiating out to communities in almost every direction. There was competition and envy from towns in Beaver, Garfield, Kane, Washington, and Lincoln (Nevada) counties; but Iron County's development worked to the advantage of all southwestern Utah in the long run.

The years from 1895 to 1910 are noted in Utah history for political, social, and agricultural developments. The state's influence was keenly felt in the first expenditures for higher education, and, at the same time, the federal government was asserting an active role as administrator of public lands. The village landscape was altered by homesteading laws requiring families to live on their acreage, and agriculture shifted from self-sufficient, subsistence farming to commercial farming. Large-scale water projects in the county were antic96

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ipated, but sheep and cattle were the major commercial products, with sheep replacing cattle as the dominant livestock about 1900.

County news could be read in a local newspaper. The county's first paper, the Iron County News, lasted barely four months in 1890-91; however,the Iron County Record that began publishing weekly in December 1893 was thriving under the direction of its second editor, Charles Wilkinson. 1 It provided news coverage, publicity of social and cultural events, editorial comment, and local advertising for over seventy years. Alex Rollo, who worked for the Record, started the Parowan Times in 1915 but came back to the Iron County Record in 1921.2 Most of the county's 3,546 citizens lived in its original six communities: Cedar City, Parowan, Paragonah, Summit, Enoch, and Kanarraville; but 201 people were scattered in western Iron County's railroad and mining camps. Outlaws existed, too, but were not likely to be counted by the census takers tallying names, ages, birthplaces, and occupations in 1900.

Homesteaders filed on mountain land for grazing and summer dairying. Automobiles and roads introduced a second phase of homesteading in the valleys. This was accompanied by land and water reclamation projects and increasing population diversity as new settlers came from California, the Midwest, and Europe. Times were generally prosperous. Brick homes, city halls, schools, churches, and theaters dotted the skylines in Parowan and Cedar City.

Parowan's Equitable Cooperative Store had its best years between 1898 and 1910. From its sawmill, lumberyard, and general merchandise store, lumber, grain, eggs, cheese, and butter were shipped to communities from Beaver to St. George. Lucius N. Marsden was superintendent until 1908, when he became the cashier of the newly organized Bank of Iron County. The Parowan Opera House was finished in 1897 and was considered the finest stage south of Salt Lake City. 3 As Alexander Matheson moved his family by wagon from Parowan into Cedar City in September 1901, his ten-year-old daughter Rhoda memorized details about her new hometown. She recalled fifty years later that the cemetery was enclosed by a rock wall. 4 Beyond the bridge over Coal Creek, several outfits were drawn up at

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"Doc Corry's" camphouse, where for twenty-five cents a night freighters and travelers could cook indoors, buy hay, and water their animals at the creek. George Wood's new brick house was on the east side of the road, opposite the unornate, two-storied Wood Furniture Store. It was immediately next to the family's little log cabin, which can be seen today at Iron Mission State Park. Homes and businesses lined both sides of Main Street. A high rock wall enclosed the tithing office on the southwest corner of Second North and Main. The community in 1900 had three blacksmith shops, stores for music, sheep supplies, and general merchandise, a newspaper office, tailor and cobbler shops, and George Wood's store, where a sign advertised "Choice Wines, Liquors, and IXL Bitters for Sale."

The Cedar Canyon road on the south side of the creek was used for hauling coal from the mines as well as by herds of sheep and cattle being driven to or from the mountains. Alexander Matheson ran the Cedar Coop flour mill on the north side of the creek. Another road, now called the Greens Lake Road, wound up the face of Cedar Mountain leading to ranches and mines.

Inventions, Public Utilities, and Modernization Modern inventions of the twentieth century arrived in Iron County months or years after they came to the cities of northern Utah. The first automobile arrived in September 1907, although they had been on the streets of Salt Lake City as early as 1899. The Gem Theater, a show house for motion pictures, was built in Cedar City about 1905. Owners Wilkinson and Corry joined with J.M. Halterman to open the Rex Hall in Parowan on 15 April 1910. Shows usually played three nights a week and an orchestra or pianist provided background music. Talkies were still many years away.

Telephone lines reached Parowan and Cedar City in the summer of 1903. Although there were few private telephones for several years, Cedar City and Parowan were connected to major communities northward as far as Montana in August 1903. John S. Woodbury was the first manager of Cedar City's telephone company.

After a line was built from Cedar City to Enoch in 1905, William H. Grimshaw decided to have a telephone in his home northwest of Enoch. The cost of bringing a line to his home was more than he

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wanted to pay, so Grimshaw used the wire fences which enclosed the fields as his telephone line. Wherever there was a road, gate, or gap in the fence, he bridged it with extensions and insulators on the posts on each side. After he had connected his home via the fences to the central office, he asked Woodbury to bring out a phone. Woodbury was somewhat skeptical and said if he installed it Grimshaw would have to pay the monthly rate whether it worked or not. Grimshaw agreed and after installation rang up central and heard the voice of Arabella Jones saying, "Number, please? Who is this?" Grimshaw responded, "This is William H. Grimshaw on Linger Longer Lane talking on the barbed wire fence." "You are?" she said. "Oh, Mr. Grimshaw, its coming in just as clear as if it was on smooth wire."

Afterwards, many families used this method to connect their valley farms to the telephone system. 5 Electric power came in 1907, with separate companies for Parowan and Cedar City. Discussions on developing electric power for Cedar City began in 1900. In 1906 the Cedar City Light and Power Co. obtained a franchise from the city council. The first electric lights were turned on at Lehi W. Jones's home for Christmas 1907. Jones was vice-president of the power company and superintendent of the power plant on the north side of Coal Creek in Cedar Canyon. 6 Poles for telephone wire and electricity were placed in the middle of Cedar's Main Street about 1907. In Parowan, lights came on 10 November 1907. In 1909 power was extended to Paragonah through a private contract with Robert R. Reid. Early systems were fraught with problems. Power was supplied only on certain days and certain hours of the day. In Parowan in 1910 two nights were designated for women to use their electric washers and flat irons. Similarly, in Cedar City, the light plant operated from sundown until 11 :30 P.M. and for two half-days each week for community washing and ironing chores. 7 Alva Matheson recalled the first radio broadcast he heard in November 1920. He was at a dance in the old Ward Hall when an announcement was made that word had been received by radio that Warren G. Harding had defeated James M. Cox in the presidential election. Matheson and many others went to see the new appliance at a local garage. 8 For many years, Iron County residents received

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

broadcasts from KNX (Los Angeles) or KGO (Illinois), and eventually KSL (Salt Lake City) and KLO (Ogden). Iron County's first station, KSUB, went on the air Saturday, 3 July 1937. Leland Perry and Harold Johnson were owners of the station. 9 Even though the railroad crossed Iron County in 1899, it was almost six years before rails linked southern Utah with southern California. Lund was the closest railway station to Parowan and Cedar City, while Modena served the communities of Washington County and western Iron County. Auto roads throughout the state were dirt at the turn of the century, and county residents thought little of improving them before the second decade of the century.

They had anticipated that travel and freight would move on regional railroads; but, instead, automobiles, trucks, and buses replaced wagons and buggies. The development of good roads became a necessity.

Although the state legislature created the Utah State Road Commission in 1909, road construction was poorly funded until 1919.10 Iron County's property tax assessment roll in 1910 reveals that the wealth of the county was in sheep, whose value exceeded that of all grazing, farmland, and town property. The county's property was valued at $1,549,516, with sheep accounting for $394,638. 11

New Homesteads Prior to the turn of the century, when homestead entries were made away from the main settlements, farmers camped on their property or stayed in a wagon for the summer to prove up and kept permanent homes in town. In 1893 people from Pinto made the first homestead entries in the New Castle area; they raised hay and corn for several summers before the first house was built in 1903. In the next few years, several families moved on to the desert, and in 1909 the New Castle townsite was created. These new homesteaders were second- and third-generation Utah families who moved onto the marginal lands to establish their own farms or ranches.

In 1906 Will and May Grimshaw took beehives to a homestead in Midvalley and soon discovered that bees and alfalfa-seed-raising went together. The Matheson brothers-William, Lorenzo, Owen, and Daniel-followed and homesteaded northwest of the

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Grimshaws. In 1910 the Stevens brothers settled in the area and raised horses and cattle. During high-water years, the Midvalley farms flourished, but water shortages caused the fields of alfalfa to die out. Culinary wells were drilled by Johnny Lang, Will Grimshaw, and Owen Matheson. 12 By 1910 Dr. John A. Widtsoe of Utah State Agricultural College was promoting d r y farming, based on experiments which showed that a limited and measured amount of water would mature certain crops and that soil on some irrigated farms had been leached by too much watering. A number of third-generation area families began homesteading and practicing these new methods.

For a few years, as mining flourished at Stateline and Gold Springs, small towns grew in the hills beyond the Escalante desert.

Mining camps were made up mostly of single men, but enough families lived at Stateline in 1900 for a school to be started. As ore values dropped and the mining camp dwindled, nearby Hamlin Valley was opened for homesteading. The mines seldom completely closed down, and some mining continued at both locations through the mid-1930s.

Modena was both a railroad town and commercial center for miners and homesteading families. Its population grew from thirtytwo in 1900 to 300 in the 1930s. Between Modena and the IronBeaver county line were railroad sidings almost every five miles.

These became small communities as the Escalante Valley was opened to dry farming after passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909.

Communities were named Heist, Yale, Beryl, Sahara (later Zane), Lund, Latimer, and Nada. Encouragement to settle in the western counties of Utah came from the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, but it was also championed by agricultural leaders and businessmen who were involved in water and land-reclamation projects.

World War I Great international events of the 1910s were felt in every corner of the county. The first news of the great war in Europe may have come from newspapers, since news via telegraph ended when telephone service was established, except along the railroad. More per-

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sonal word came in letters from England, Ireland, and Scotland. After Germany proclaimed unrestricted submarine warfare, many Americans realized United States involvement in the war was inevitable. The 13 April 1917 Iron County Record announced the sinking of the first armed U.S. steamer, President Wilson's request to Congress for a declaration of war, a plan to recruit large numbers of "desirable young men" for the Reserve Officers Corps as a first step to training a United States Army, and the first area editorial asking for conservation of resources.

Calls for patriotism and sacrifice filled newspaper columns and became the subject of Sunday sermons, as congregations were counseled to raise and save all the food and grains that they could. Citizen committees, called "councils of defense," were formed at the state level and in each county. In Iron County, Wilford Day was chairman and J. Clayton Mitchell, secretary. 13 World War I involved the entire population. The people of Iron County sacrificed along with their countrymen. They increased their agricultural production and developed coal resources; they bought Liberty Bonds and sent their young men into the armed services.

Some were not convinced that the United States should be involved, but still they contributed time and money to assist the soldiers.

The national conscription law set 5 June 1917 for registration of all males between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. Governor Simon Bamberger declared a public holiday, with an evening meeting "in every city and town" to congratulate the young men "on their opportunity of entering the service of their country." The "gala day" included a patriotic meeting in the Cedar City tabernacle at 10:00 A.M. and an evening grand ball. Five hundred and fifty-seven Iron County men registered. Six days later, an impromptu ceremony honored nine from Iron County and seven from Washington County who had volunteered. In July a conscription list of 202 men was drawn to meet the county's quota of forty-six; however, when many failed the physical examination or filed affidavits of exemption, another sixty-two men were called up to take the examination.

Three Liberty Loan drives were held. Names of donors were published in the newspaper. In Kanarraville, children gleaned beans and

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Grimshaws. In 1910 the Stevens brothers settled in the area and raised horses and cattle. During high-water years, the Midvalley farms flourished, but water shortages caused the fields of alfalfa to die out. Culinary wells were drilled by Johnny Lang, Will Grimshaw, and Owen Matheson. 12 By 1910 Dr. John A. Widtsoe of Utah State Agricultural College was promoting dry farming, based on experiments which showed that a limited and measured amount of water would mature certain crops and that soil on some irrigated farms had been leached by too much watering. A number of third-generation area families began homesteading and practicing these new methods.

For a few years, as mining flourished at Stateline and Gold Springs, small towns grew in the hills beyond the Escalante desert.

Mining camps were made up mostly of single men, but enough families lived at Stateline in 1900 for a school to be started. As ore values dropped and the mining camp dwindled, nearby Hamlin Valley was opened for homesteading. The mines seldom completely closed down, and some mining continued at both locations through the mid-1930s.

Modena was both a railroad town and commercial center for miners and homesteading families. Its population grew from thirtytwo in 1900 to 300 in the 1930s. Between Modena and the IronBeaver county line were railroad sidings almost every five miles.

These became small communities as the Escalante Valley was opened to dry farming after passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909.

Communities were named Heist, Yale, Beryl, Sahara (later Zane), Lund, Latimer, and Nada. Encouragement to settle in the western counties of Utah came from the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, but it was also championed by agricultural leaders and businessmen who were involved in water and land-reclamation projects.

World War I Great international events of the 1910s were felt in every corner of the county. The first news of the great war in Europe may have come from newspapers, since news via telegraph ended when telephone service was established, except along the railroad. More per-

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

sonal word came in letters from England, Ireland, and Scotland. After Germany proclaimed unrestricted submarine warfare, many Americans realized United States involvement in the war was inevitable. The 13 April 1917 Iron County Record announced the sinking of the first armed U.S. steamer, President Wilson's request to Congress for a declaration of war, a plan to recruit large numbers of «desirable young men" for the Reserve Officers Corps as a first step to training a United States Army, and the first area editorial asking for conservation of resources.

Calls for patriotism and sacrifice filled newspaper columns and became the subject of Sunday sermons, as congregations were counseled to raise and save all the food and grains that they could. Citizen committees, called «councils of defense," were formed at the state level and in each county. In Iron County, Wilford Day was chairman and J. Clayton Mitchell, secretary. 13 World War I involved the entire population. The people of Iron County sacrificed along with their countrymen. They increased their agricultural production and developed coal resources; they bought Liberty Bonds and sent their young men into the armed services.

Some were not convinced that the United States should be involved, but still they contributed time and money to assist the soldiers.

The national conscription law set 5 June 1917 for registration of all males between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. Governor Simon Bamberger declared a public holiday, with an evening meeting «in every city and town" to congratulate the young men «on their opportunity of entering the service of their country." The «gala day" included a patriotic meeting in the Cedar City tabernacle at 10:00 A.M. and an evening grand ball. Five hundred and fifty-seven Iron County men registered. Six days later, an impromptu ceremony honored nine from Iron County and seven from Washington County who had volunteered. In July a conscription list of 202 men was drawn to meet the county's quota of forty-six; however, when many failed the physical examination or filed affidavits of exemption, another sixty-two men were called up to take the examination.

Three Liberty Loan drives were held. Names of donors were published in the newspaper. In Kanarraville, children gleaned beans and

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sold them to purchase a war bond. Later the war bond was redeemed to purchase a record player for the school.

Those at home were asked to help the war effort by doing without and avoiding waste. The Federal Food Commission appealed to the housewives, chefs, and caterers of the country to save fuel and perishable foods. General slogans and rules asked them to «Buy less, serve smaller portions. Preach the 'Gospel of the Clean Plate'....

Watch out for the wastes in the community. Full garbage pails in America mean empty dinner pails in America and Europe." The commission also campaigned for increased production. In the first year of America's involvement in the war, acreage of wheat and rye increased thirty percent. Food commissioners asked for more.

Commissioner W.W. Armstrong met with Iron County's farmers in the Cedar City tabernacle on 20 March 1918 to discuss ways of redistributing water from the old fields so that 3,000 more acres of wheat could be planted in 1918. 14 School boys above the age of twelve were registered into the Working Reserve Organization, and boys above the age of sixteen were released from high schools with full credits for the year on condition they would become employed on farms or in other ways increase the food supply of the nation.

The Red Cross organized chapters throughout the state, mostly made up of women. The Iron County chapter was headquartered in Parowan; the Cedar City branch gathered items from Hamilton Fort, Kanarra, and Enoch. Women met in schools or Relief Society halls to knit socks and sweaters and sew bed shirts, handkerchiefs, napkins, towels, and bandages. Red Cross projects were financed by dues and fundraisers, but it took only three months' labor to use up the local treasury. The local newspaper editor thought it would be «quite unthinkable that a class of service which is devoted to such noble ends and for which there is such desperate need, should languish for want of financial support."IS Individual involvement was personal. No one dared waste food for fear a brother or cousin or neighbor in camp or on the battlefield might go hungr y. Recipes for «Wheat Substitutes in Wartime Cooking" were supplied; however, the principle did not always make sense to the rural families who were asked to ship wheat out of the

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Soldiers line up in Lund prior to departing by train for World War 1. (Utah State Historical Society; donor-Ann Brest Van Kempen) county and purchase substitutes (principally rice and beans) not locally grown that had to be brought in.

Iron County's men served in almost every theater during America's eighteen-month participation in the war and later in fighting in Russia. Leon Davis of Kanarraville had a unique overseas assignment of going to Siberia to fight the Red Army, the Bolsheviks.

In all, some 21,000 Utah boys served during World War I and 665 died, 219 on the battlefield or from wounds received in action, thirtytwo in accidents, and 414 from disease. Iron County sent its fair share to the war, and four died in action-Elmer V. Jesperson and Lionel C. Dover of Cedar City, Henry M. Jones of Enoch, and Harry Keith of Nada. Three others died from influenza-Harold McConnell and Logan Bryant of Cedar City and John H. Clark of Parowan.

Flu Epidemic The influenza epidemic started in army camps in the Midwest in March 1918. The first wave was relatively mild but surprisingly took the lives of a few young and vigorous adults. The epidemic reappeared in European ports and battlefields, sapping the strength of German and Allied armies during the summer of 1918. At times it caused more soldiers' deaths than did battle. Within five months, influenza circled the globe. This second wave took on a vicious character. Sometimes called Spanish influenza because some 8 million Spaniards came down with it, this strain was unprecedented for its

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ferocity, and again young adults died more frequently than children or the elderly. 16 Cases were reported in Cedar City as early as August 1918 but increased in early October among residents who had been to Salt Lake City for the state fair and LDS general conference. On 11 October 1918 Dr. Menzies J. Macfarlane, acting for the Cedar City Board of Health and following orders of the Utah Board of Health, closed all places of amusement and all public gatherings. Public schools shut down, BAC students were sent home, and church meetings were canceled. Still, influenza spread quickly throughout the city and into neighboring communities. Anna Pendleton, a young teacher from Cedar City, died from influenza at Los Angeles. The first two deaths within the county were well-known young women Florence Mitchell Bergstrom and Urania Jones Foster. Each left a young child.

Dr. Macfarlane asked young women to serve as nursing aids in homes where parents were too ill to care for young children.

Volunteer nurses were assured that proper use of a Red Cross mask would render nursing ÂŤcomparatively safe." 17 Mary and Evelyn Palmer and their mother, Mary Ann Middleton Palmer, all recovered patients, were among those who nursed the sick. In many cases, it was the sick helping the sick. Dr. Macfarlane was himself confined to bed with flu symptoms, but he recovered rapidly. I S Strict measures prescribed for those with flu symptoms included complete physical rest.

Facilities at the Branch Agricultural College were turned into a hospital for 200 patients because it had the only buildings in town with furnaces. Deaths almost always came from the complicat ion of pneumonia. In Parowan, there were nine deaths from pneumonia in the first year. Of sixteen people in Cedar City who had pneumonia in November 1918, five died.

By 20 December 1918, restrictions were lifted so that masking was not required on the street. Theaters reopened and churches resumed services. But precautions ended too early. A third wave of the disease occurred in March 1919, bringing more deaths. A fourth wave began in January 1920. During this outbreak, an influenza hospital was opened at the Cedar City district school. Minor epidemics occurred throughout the decade, bringing fear and occasional

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deaths. 19 Jacob B. Gould and his wife, Phoebe, long-time residents of Parowan, both succumbed to influenza in March 1922.

Meanwhile, in November 1918, the people of Iron County twice celebrated the end of war in Europe. A premature and erroneous telegraph message that Germany had accepted terms of armistice sent residents into a wild frenzy on the streets of Cedar City and other southern Utah towns on Thursday, 7 November. Four days later, they repeated the celebration when the armistice was indeed signed. Along with many Americans, people in Iron County were disillusioned by the Treaty of Versailles and wondered whether the sacrifices "to make the world safe for democracy" had only made the world safer for British imperialism. 20 People were not generally happy about sending their young men to fight so far away, but they relished reading their letters printed in the Iron County Record and appropriately honored the young men as they returned.

Development of wartime industries brought attention to the valuable natural resources of Iron County. Dr. Ernest Green was developing the old Corry coal mine on the face of Cedar Mountain and anticipated delivering up to 1,000 tons of coal a day via an elaborate tramway. Unfortunately, it was not producing when the armistice was signed and quickly became one of the first casualties of the postwar depression. Other mining areas received scrutiny, as lead, copper, gold, and silver were much in demand. Iron mining did not resume, but war industries led to the start of a large western steel industry in California, which did lead to the opening of local iron mines in the 1920s. As before, development of area mining was held up by the lack of a railroad.

For years county residents looked forward to having railroad service. So many announcements were made that a railroad would "soon" link Parowan, Cedar City, and St. George with the Union Pacific or Denver & Rio Grande that a 11 March 1910 editorial in the Iron County Record dripped with sarcasm: "We have had our usual 'newspaper railroad' this spring so can wait patiently for the fall one.

For the last 40 years this has happened regularly and the people would now feel lonesome without the usual excitement twice a year."

Assuming that rail service would solve their transportation problems, little was done to improve existing roads or extend new roads.

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Suddenly, however, in 1907 and 1908 people were driving new-fangled automobiles to southern Utah and community leaders began to catch the vision of attracting tourists to visit Little Zion Canyon (named "Mukuntuweap" when it was made a national monument in 1909) . The campaign was supported by J.H. Manderfield, railroad agent and president of the Arrowhead Trail Association, who called for "road conventions" at all the cities along the route from Salt Lake to Los Angeles. Funds were raised for local road projects to expedite the goal of the Arrowhead Trail Association to have a road passable by automobiles for Utah's entire length.

Commercial Club members in Cedar City championed Iron County as the gateway to the scenic beauty of all southern Utah. To accommodate visitors, the club formed a committee in 1917 to begin a 100-room hotel in downtown Cedar City. Unfortunately, within days, the United States entered World War 1. At the next Commercial Club meeting, good roads received more attention than the hotel, as roads were essential for war preparedness. A "Road Day" was held on Arbor Day, with citizens working together on the road from Cedar City to Iron Springs. Work on the road up Cedar Canyon also continued on a volunteer basis.

At war's end there was still no railroad spur between Lund and Cedar City. Poor roads joined Cedar City and Parowan with Lund.

Enterprising Cedar City and Parowan commercial club members decided that a better highway had to be built, with or without the spur. They obtained a federal appropriation of funds set aside to improve postal roads and used it between 1920 and 1922 to build the Lund Highway. Bypassing Iron Springs, the new road went north through Cedar Valley and intersected with a road from Parowan.

A Railroad Spur at Last!

Even as local contractors were working on the highway, surveyors were busy a few miles to the west surveying a route for the Union Pacific from Lund to Iron Springs and into Cedar City. After years of rumor and false starts, the Union Pacific was serious about building a railroad spur, which it expected would enhance passenger ticket sales and freight profits after the inevitable opening of the iron mines. Carl R. Gray, president of Union Pacific, came to Iron County in March

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1922 and again in July 1922 to visit the region's scenic attractions, including Cedar Breaks, Zion Canyon, and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. He said that the unsurpassed scenic attractions of the area and the demand for steel made it so the railroad industry could no longer overlook the vast iron resources of the county.21 The Union Pacific placed an advertisement in the 3 November 1922 Iron County Record to convince county residents that its plans were in earnest. The ad indicated that $5 million would be spent in developing the industrial and scenic resources of southern Utah, including construction of branch lines from Fillmore to Delta and Lund to Cedar City, completion of the Cedar City hotel, and construction of hotels at Zion and Bryce canyons. The UP purchased the unfinished EI Escalante Hotel for $80,000. The railroad agreed to spend $70,000 to purchase track right-of-way within the city limits and property opposite the new hotel where a magnificent depot would rise. In exchange, Cedar's leading citizens, under the auspices of the new chamber of commerce guaranteed right-of-way into Cedar City free of cost to the railroad and right-of-way in the city limits above the $70,000 offered. Committees were formed to acquire the right-of-way by purchase or donation. Within a few weeks the committees successfully obtained rights-of-way and funds for the project.

The first train into Cedar City on 17 June 1923 came only to Leigh Hill, where Mayor Parley Dalley and other prominent citizens greeted railroad officials. The big ceremony was saved for the visit of the president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, who arrived 27 June 1923 with his wife and a large entourage of government, church, railroad, and civic dignitaries . An estimated 6,000 Iron County citizens gathered to welcome President Harding in downtown Cedar City, and the roadways through Kanarraville and other communities were lined with enthusiastic southern Utahns, waving flags and cheering as the president's convoy traveled to Zion National Park and back that day. That evening, President Harding spoke to the people of Cedar City: We have had a wonderful day today-wonderful in many ways.

We have come to have a new love for the beautiful. We have found

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a new charm in the marvelous works of nature .... To you men and women who carne with your families in covered wagons into this country ... the nation owes a debt of gratitude. I am the first President of the United States to corne and express that gratitude, but I feel sure when I tell of this trip to my successors, all future Presidents will corne to visit this country ofwonders.22

Hard Times Despite the railroad boom, the county economy was uneven during the 1920s. The promise of prosperity from iron mining and tourism kept spirits high, but most residents depended on agriculture, which had plummeted from wartime highs. High demand and grain prices during the war prompted farmers and new homesteaders to plow thousands of acres of rangeland and plant winter wheat. At war's end, grain prices fell drastically as exports to Europe ended, leaving a domestic surplus. There were no government protections for farmers who had increased grain production, and prices in 1921 were less than half the 1919 levels. Wheat dropped from $3.50 per bushel in 1919 to ninety-eight cents a bushel in November 1921.

Wool, lambs, grain, and cheese prices returned to 1913-14 levels, and the price of cattle was even lower.23 Land speculation on the Escalante Desert brought higher property valuations, but recurrent drought and low prices caused many homesteaders to leave their land, although a few survived by working for the railroad or turning to stock raising after livestock prices recovered more quickly than farming. Delinquent taxes hurt county and city governments and the school district.

While the county population grew from 5,787 to 7,227 between 1920 and 1930, almost all the growth was in Cedar City, which experienced a 52 percent increase-from 2,557 to 3,893. Newcomers were mostly miners and tradesmen who worked for the railroad or iron mines. The population of communities dependent on agriculture stagnated or decreased. Cedar City's growth precipitated the first vote to move the county seat from Parowan to Cedar City in 1930, an issue that had been on the agenda of many people in Cedar City since the turn of the century. About thirty-five years earlier, Cedar City passed Parowan in size. Proponents of the move also argued that

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Cedar City was centrally located for conducting county business.

Utah law required a two-thirds majority of the votes cast to change the site of a county seat. After a lengthy and spirited battle, the measure was narrowly defeated, with 2,056 voting in favor of the move and 1,199 voting against it. However, the issue was to rise again.

In general, Utah did not participate fully in the business recovery and prosperity of the mid-1920s, and the agricultural-based economy did not recover before the Great Depression and the drought of the 1930s struck. During these years, more Americans came to realize what many Utahns, particularly miners and farmers, had endured throughout the 1920s.24

Post Office and Federal Building Just before the decline, the federal government offered to build a much-needed federal building and post office in Cedar City. The ultimate decision to build on the tabernacle corner at Main and Center streets was not made without dissent. Some thought the federal building would be more convenient on 100 West; others objected to tearing down the tabernacle even though it needed repair and no longer met the needs of the congregation. The choice apparently was not the government's, but was one made locally after months of negotiation. The decision hinged on business and professional men anticipating increased business from a Main Street location. The construction of the new federal building benefited the local economy by providing employment during difficult times.

The decision to tear down the tabernacle left the LDS First Ward needing a new meetinghouse, however. Bishop Franklin B. Wood and his counselors were determined to build on the lot east of the tabernacle. George A. (Bert) Wood, former superintendent of construction for the Utah Parks Company, was selected as contractor. Wood recommended a design like that of Tudor steeple chapels he had seen in Europe and proposed using native rock and wood. Opposition came from committee members and church officials who could not visualize the finished building, but Bert Wood's plan prevailed because he and Bishop Wood convinced President Heber J. Grant and church architects that they had to use the local rock and wood to save money.25

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Once again the local LDS people cooperated and sacrificed to build the church. Laborers were offered wages of a dollar a day, but many donated their time or accepted food from ward members for pay. Basement walls were built of salvaged brick and lumber. Bishop Wood proclaimed 15-20 June as "Rock Week," and men, women, and children took to the hills to collect rock and pile it in assorted colors on the grounds. Bert Wood then brought in the Worthen brothers of Panguitch, the stone masons who built the Grand Canyon North Rim lodge, to put up exterior walls, fireplaces, and the baptismal font. As the walls went up and the effect improved, dissenters turned to admirers who willingly watched for rocks as they traveled and brought them to the building site. 26 Local pine and red cedar wood was used for the roof and interior; gypsum from Cedar Canyon, granite from Iron Springs, and iron mined locally for chandeliers and hinges were also used. Women wove wool carpets from homegrown wool dyed to harmonize with the cedar trim and pews. The church cost $60,000, with $29,000 coming from the sale of the tabernacle to the federal government; members raised or donated the remainder. The building was first used in February 1932 and was dedicated 27 May 1934. 27 It is known as Cedar City's Rock Church, a monument to ingenuity born of the Depression years. The church currently is used by two Mormon congregations. Tours are offered in the summer, and it is a favorite place for town meetings and wedding receptions.

In Parowan, a meetinghouse designed by Salt Lake City architect Miles F. Miller after the Prairie School architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and built of native materials was dedicated in 1918. However, a second meetinghouse was built on the northwest corner of the Town Square in 1929 for the West Ward. Brick and flooring from the old opera house were used in the chapel and recreation hall. This was the first church in Parowan to have a kitchen, banquet hall, recreation hall, and stage. 28

Harder Times The impact of the stock market crash crept slowly into Iron County. Farmers already knew about hard times, but Cedar City's economy was strong as the decade of the 1930s approached. With the

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iron mines producing and the Utah Parks Company anticipating a record number of tourists in 1930, citizens remained optimistic. The first sign of trouble was the crash of Foshay Electric Company, which had purchased Dixie Power Company in April 1929. Foshay went into receivership in November and was sold at auction in December 1929. Dixie Power, with offices in Cedar City, had four plants in Washington County and a plant in Cedar City.29 Due' to excessive delinquent property taxes, a financial crisis also faced the Iron County school district. The delinquent amount increased dramatically in 1930. The superintendent announced in March 1930 that $10,000 needed to be collected immediately in order to finish the school year. As homesteaders let their land revert to the county in lieu of paying taxes, property values dropped. Stockmen bought the land and returned it to rangeland. Iron County still boasted large sheep herds; but, in July 1930, fat range lambs were selling 50 percent below the July 1929 price. The situation worsened in the dry years from 1931 to 1934, as overgrazed rangelands parched and sheep starved.

In Iron County, men who had followed the railroad and mining boom were some of the first to become unemployed, as mines and railroads reduced their crews. The school district cut personnel and programs, reducing expenditures by 18 percent between 1929 and 1932. Banks retrenched by granting loans with greater care. The Bank of Southern Utah reduced employee salaries by 1 percent in April 1931. Utah Parks Company cut employee wages, reduced its lodging and restaurant fees, and changed its services to attract middle-class t ourists looking for an economy vacation.

°

Bank Closures The reality of the Great Depression really hit home in Iron County when its two banks closed in December 1931. Bank failures t reated rich and poor alike-all lost their savings. Stories are numerous of families losing all they had labored for. Dick Johnston, growing up in LuIld, recalled bringing home the mail one day from the post office in Sam Johnson's store. He wrote, "My mother opened an envelope, screamed, and almost fainted. It was a notice that our bank in Cedar City had failed and wiped out all of the family's savings." 3o Dr. Menzies Macfarlane left for a meeting of the Bank of Southern

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Utah board of directors on Christmas night 1931. When he returned, his four sons saw that he was not the happy man they expected. ''As he came into the living room he reached into his pocket and took out the change he had there-73 [cents]. Holding it out for all to see, he remarked, 'There, that is what I have to show for a life of toil.' "31 Many banks suspended operations, not because they were insolvent but because they did not have enough legal reserves, which was cash equal to fifteen percent of demand deposits and five percent of savings and time deposits. 32 Such was the case with the Bank of Southern Utah in Cedar City and Bank of Iron County in Parowan.

Financial statements through the fall of 1931 showed the Bank of Southern Utah to be among the strongest in the state. In October 1931 it had a surplus of assets over liabilities, and local citizens believed the bank was sound.

In 1931, to help hard-pressed taxpayers, Iron County postponed the tax payment due date from 30 November to 20 December. While providing relief to taxpayers, it was a crushing blow to the Bank of Southern Utah, delaying expected deposits. Directors left their own tax money on deposit and liquidated other assets to add cash to the bank. Despite these efforts, they concluded that the legal reserves could not be quickly replenished. The board of directors had no choice except to close the bank as of 24 December 1931. 33 In order to protect its depositors and prevent a run, Parowan's Bank of Iron County likewise decided to close for business on Monday, 28 December. It was taken over by the state bank commissioner. Depositors received full compensation in 1940, and some years later another bank was chartered as the Bank of Iron County.34 Iron County citizens reacted to the failures with shock and disbelief. New Year's Eve festivities were canceled and a funeral-like pall descended on the communities. Uncertainty faced residents as it appeared all schools would be closed because district money was tied up in the banks. Drastic measures were taken. The school board asked teachers to donate two weeks of service, and county taxpayers were asked to underwrite a $40,000 bond to keep schools open.

Teachers and taxpayers approved the measures and schools opened as usual the Monday after New Year's Day.35 The state bank commissioner took over the affairs of the Bank of

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Southern Utah, intending to liquidate its assets. Since the bank was not insolvent, its stockholders stubbornly resisted wastefulliquidation. After the local chamber of commerce launched a campaign to reopen the bank, the bank commissioner agreed to cooperate in working out a reorganization plan. Severe conditions were imposed by the bank commissioner. To recapitalize the bank, stockholders were to purchase at face value $100,000 of the poorest of the discarded loans, thus putting $100,000 of new money into the bank. In order to forestall a run when the bank reopened, depositors were asked not to withdraw money faster than 20 percent a year for four years. Stockholders and depositors agreed to the plan. 36 A ÂŤherculean task" began to raise $100,000 of new money from a community beset by financial paralysis. Citizens came forward to the best of their ability. Some borrowed on insurance programs, others mortgaged their homes. Money came as gifts and donations from businesses. Even schoolteachers who had already given two weeks service without pay raised three thousand dollars. 37 When the fund reached $90,000, the community had been drained and there was no more cash to be found. Finally, the bank, the federal reserve, the commissioner, and other creditors agreed to open the bank with this amount. When it reopened on 4 May 1932, barely four months after closure, there were long lines of citizens at the doors. The run on the bank was not a run for withdrawals but a run to see who could make the first deposit. The first day's deposits were $33,000, while withdrawals totaled only $7,000. The city held a big celebration capped with a grand ball that night. State Bank Commissioner Walter H. Hadlock recognized Cedar City as the only city in Utah to reopen a closed bank. 38 The initial burden of meeting human needs during the first years of the Great Depression came from Utah's churches, private charities, and county governments. In an effort to keep county men employed, Iron County commissioners spent $10,000 in 1930 and $12,000 in 1931 on road construction, some of it as matching funds for state or federal money. Conservative leadership in both the state and country emphasized private and voluntary charity and budget balancing as revenue fell, but everywhere the unemployed demanded relief.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt promised a new approach to relief

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through federal legislation in the 1932 presidential campaign, the nation and Utah voted to give his promised New Deal a try. Iron County remained stubbornly Republican in this election, even though three popular local Democrats were voted into office-Walter Granger as state representative, Warren Bulloch as four-year county commissioner, and Scott Matheson as county attorney. 39 In 1936, after four years of economic assistance from New Deal programs, Roosevelt received the majority vote in Iron County.

Federal Relief President Roosevelt's massive infusion of federal relief included direct cash grants to states to provide welfare payments for needy citizens, public works projects, and a job corps for the unemployed. The first New Deal programs were approved between March and June 1933, and in July the Utah Legislature voted to participate. New Deal programs were known by their acronyms, such as FERA, PWA, CWA, WPA, and CCC. Relief payments came through the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Welfare expenditures in Utah jumped from less than 1 percent of state spending in the fiscal year ending June 1933 to 20 percent the next year using FERA grants, and then to 50 percent in 1935. 40 The Public Works Administration (PWA) was designed to prime the economic pump by financing improvements in roads, sewer and water systems, and public buildings. However, it quickly bogged down as state and local boards sifted through applications for appropriate projects. The Civil Works Administration (CWA) was created in the fall of 1933 to put the unemployed to work immediately in their own communities. Iron County received $50,000 of CWA funding to pay for painting and repairing school buildings, work at the airport, and other projects between November 1933 and March 1934, for which the county only had to supply materials which cost about $14,000. PWA projects between 1933 and 1935 included the installation of new sewer lines in Cedar City, improving roads, sidewalks, and ditches, and work on the Cedar Canyon road. Some $103,000 of federal money was spent in the county. Since the goal was to provide employment, labor was frequently done by hand. Seventy percent of federal expenditures in the county went for wages and salaries. The

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rock Modena schoolhouse was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, as were the landscaping of school grounds and parks.

In Summit, rock irrigation ditches built by the WPA still line the roadway. Other projects included repairing the municipal power system, canning fruits and vegetables, and providing school lunches. 4 1 One of the more interesting programs developed in Iron County was a brick making project funded by the Emergency Educational Program for men who were not eligible for relief employment, or CCC placement.42 Relief also came in the form of grants for droughtstricken farmers and livestockmen. From 1928 to 1934, precipitation was generally two-thirds of normal. Twenty wells were drilled, six on public lands, and some stocked with pumps and storage tanks or troughs. Stock-watering reservoirs were also built as WPA or CCC projects. 43 Between 1933 and 1935, one-quarter of the population of Iron County received either direct relief or work relief, and nearly $450,000 of local, state, and federal funds were expended in the county.

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and National Youth Administration (NYA) programs were Roosevelt's answer to rampant unemployment of young men across the nation and were based on his personal interest in conservation and forestry. With such a large percentage of public land in southern Utah, the area was destined to profit from the Civilian Conservation Corps program. The CCC accomplished many long-range projects for the National Forest Service, National Park Service, and Division of Grazing that might never have been funded in normal economic times. Projects to prevent forest fires, floods, and soil erosion, improve water resources, control pests and plant diseases, and construct paths, trails, and fire lanes greatly benefited the counties, national parks, forests, and grazing land.

The NYA provided jobs to help pay educational costs for young men. The men's dormitory at the BAC was built in 1937 as a NYA project, benefiting the school threefold: student workers learned construction skills and earned wages to pay their school expenses, and the campus gained a much-needed dorm.

Iron County also profited from having hundreds of CCC men

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CCC camp east of Coal Creek in Cedar City. (Courtesy Ernest Gasperik) assigned to camps in nearby locations from 1933 to 1942. Food and supplies purchased locally brought important economic benefits to communities, farmers, and merchants. The county was entitled to sign up thirty-eight men in the initial CCC enrollment, five inexperienced and thirty-three experienced. These ÂŤlocal experienced men" (LEMs) were project leaders.44 In June 1933, two hundred men were assigned to the Zion Park Camp and sent to Blue Springs east of Cedar City; others were sent to the Duck Creek Camp. Fifteen men were from Iron County. The economic and social impact was immediate. In addition to salaries, supplies were purchased locally when possible. 45 Hyrum Kunz, a builder known for his work on the Utah Parks lodges, was recruited in June 1933 to supervise CCC construction of twenty-six buildings for the forest service. Projects included the ranger stations, campground buildings, and a reservoir at Duck Creek built in the summers of 1933 and 1936-42, the Santa Clara Dam built in the winter of 1933-34, and forest service buildings on Panguitch Lake built by Blue Springs camp enrollees in the summer of 1934. 46

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Many citizens were wary of the young men from other states who came as part of the expanding program, fearing eastern states would round up "undesirables" and send them west. Enrollees were encouraged to develop good relationships with nearby communities. In the summer of 1933, the public was invited to ÂŤeat real army food" for just twenty-five cents a meal at either the Blue Springs or Duck Creek camp, where they could see the CCC men first hand. 47 Local concern increased when a camp was built right in Cedar City in October 1934. Camp PE-222 was one of four new soil-erosion camps in Utah. The city leased the site and allowed the government to use it rent free. Since the corps was run in military style, camp life was highly structured. However, the young men did have to be disciplined from time to time for misbehavior. CCC veteran Ron Glass recalled that one time an officer confined the entire camp to the compound, forbidding them to go into town; this meant they could not cross Coal Creek only ten feet away.48 Ernest Gasperik's CCC company came from Illinois to replace a camp from Tennessee that did not get along with the local citizens. 49 One time, some of the enrollees from the Cedar Breaks camp were arrested for drunkenness and thrown into the Cedar City jail. When their comrades broke into the jail at night and freed them, they also let out the other prisoners. 50 Despite the minor problems, the CCC program was beneficial to the county, the corpsmen, and their families. Each enrollee earned thirty dollars per month but received only five dollars; twenty-five dollars was sent to his family, which in many cases was its entire cash income. In addition to many public lands projects, the CCC fought forest fires during the years when severe drought turned much of the West tinderbox dry. When nature changed its course and brought fierce winter blizzards in 1936-37, crews from the Cedar City camp (DG-30) opened thirty miles of road to Newcastle which had been cut off during the storm, rescuing eighteen forest service men stranded at Pinto and a spike camp crew at Enterprise. By opening back roads during the winter months, the DG-30 crews saved up to 15,000 sheep and brought out children who had missed school for over two weeks. 51 CCC camps provided their own recreation. Favorite pastimes were boxing and baseball. Camp teams competed in community

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leagues and against other camps. Training was emphasized through an education system which offered high school classes, and books circulated through camp libraries. Pederson's Drug Store in Cedar City donated left-over magazines to the Duck Creek camp.52 Local dances and even church socials brought together the local girls and the CCC men; resulting romances led to a number of marriages. Most couples settled down in southern Utah, many after the men completed service in World War II, although undoubtedly some took their Utah brides home with them. 53 After the Cedar City camp switched from soil-erosion control (PE-222) to a Division of Grazing camp (DG-30), it accomplished several notable projects, including a flood-control trench and wall above Summit, the Big Hollow reservoir west of Cedar City, a 3.5mile fenced stock driveway through rugged timber, and stock trails which stretched north and south from border to border and out into the Escalante Desert. The most hazardous task assigned DG-30 men was blowing out a twenty-two-foot cut on Kanarra Mountain to link two sections of road for the benefit of fifty local stockmen; Iron County provided the powder, fuses, and caps. The Cedar City camp also assisted the St. George camp in building a steel-truss bridge across Fort Pierce Wash to give year-round access for sheepmen to the Arizona Strip.54 In 1939 the Cedar City camp was dismantled and moved to Modena as DG-156; it lasted until late in 1941.

No exhaustive list exists of projects completed by the CCC in Iron County or surrounding areas by men from Iron County's camps; however, many projects are still visible throughout the county. The best known are the buildings at Cedar Breaks and the lookout shelter on Brian Head Peak, which was refurbished in 1996.

Livestock still drink from water-collection reservoirs on the Escalante Desert, and remains of small dams or flood-control projects can be found at Fiddlers Canyon and Summit Canyon. In all, CCC crews developed water-storage facilities, erected fencing for range management, transplanted wildlife, planted and reseeded overgrazed and depleted forest land, constructed telephone lines and ranger and guard stations, and worked to control rodents, insects, soil erosion, and improve timber stands. The Civilian Conservation Corps left

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deep, positive marks on Iron County, just as the area left a deep impression on some 4,000 young corpsmen.

Filmmaking Another economic boost to southern Utah during the 1930s came from the fledgling Hollywood movie industry, which spent some $250,000 on location in the area. Chauncey, Gronway, and Whitney Parry were first to entice filmmakers to use area scenic resources and nineteenth-century buildings as locations. Chauncey Parry traveled by car, horseback, and on foot to photograph the grand vistas of southern Utah, then spent weeks in Hollywood showing his stunning photographs to producers and directors. The 1924 Tom Mix movie Deadwood Coach, filmed near Kanab and in Zion National Park, opened an era of movie making. The Parry brothers ran the concessions for the Union Pacific, which brought the crews and movie stars into Cedar City on the railroad. The Parrys arranged transportation to and from filming locations, meals, housing, and even prop wagons and livestock as needed. Local residents hired on as "extras;' stunt riders, or technicians. The arrival of movie stars was grist for local newspaper columns, and movies even partially filmed in the area were popular at local showhouses.

In 1927 two rival companies fought over the right to use Inspiration Point at Cedar Breaks as a location. Although the locals could never decide if the battle was a publicity stunt or a "real, honest to goodness controversy," the episode was splashed across newspapers from Los Angeles to Chicago, bringing attention to the scenery as well as the forthcoming movies. Crews for The Shepherd of the Hills and for Ramona each claimed the point for its location. The Record reported on 16 September: "'The Shepherd of the Hills' Co., held at bay with sawed off shot guns loaded with salt the 'Ramona' company Saturday, until finally the latter decided to give and use other locations for its purposes." The two managers arbitrated the matter and ordered a "peace banquet" at the Escalante Hote1. 55 Major motion pictures filmed in or near Iron County during the 1930s included Cecil B. DeMille's Union Pacific (1938), and John Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk (1939). 56 For Union Pacific, Iron Springs was turned into bustling Cheyenne of 1865, while the rail

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spur to the mines was used for Topeka and other points along the UP route. Cedar City residents were pleased when the first showing of Union Pacific was at the Thorley Theater in Cedar City rather than in Los Angeles or New York. Later, the "world premier" was held at Omaha, Nebraska, headquarters of the Union Pacific Railroad. 57

County Seat The question of moving the county seat to Cedar City came up again in the fall of 1938. The narrow defeat of the measure in 1930 gave proponents hope that it would be only a matter of time before they would succeed, because there now were even more voters in Cedar City. A petition with 2,172 signatures was filed in September 1938. Supporters used rhetoric, reason, and statistics to predict an economic benefit to all the county if the site of county government was changed to Cedar City, while opponents appealed to history and emotions. The opposition frequently mentioned that taxes would have to be raised to build a new courthouse and administration building if the seat was changed. Neither mentioned how many government services were already available in Cedar City.

The Iron County Record in Cedar City and the Parowan Times in Parowan sharply divided over the issue, as the two editors devoted many column inches to persuasive appeals. Even in defeat, the Record kept up the campaign, and, in victory, the Times posted a front-page editorial to the citizens of Cedar City. From the Iron County Record, 10 November 1938: A total of 2471 people voted in favor of moving the Iron County Seat from Parowan to Cedar City ... but that was just 20 votes too few to make the needed two-thirds majority. Thus by the will of the minority the County Seat will remain in Parowan .... If seven of the no votes had been voted yes instead) the County Seat would have been moved.

The paper chided 128 people in Cedar City who voted against removal and fifty-four who failed to vote on their ballots for or against the issue. "Thus a few disloyal Cedar City residents were responsible for the defeat," the editor continued.

The Times editor spoke for a return of peace and harmony between the two communities, but cautioned that Cedar City should

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Original Iron County courthouse and jail in Parowan, built in 189l.

(Courtesy Parowan Main Street Program)

accept this defeat or face future boycotts of its business district or the Branch Agricultural College or even voter reprisals in which Parowan's 800 voters would take sides against the voters of Cedar City. The tone of each newspaper left no doubt that the issue was anything but amicably ended.

Thirty-four years passed before the issue came again before the voters. After the eighty-year-old county courthouse was damaged by fire in January 1971, the Cedar City Chamber of Commerce initiated a petition to move the county seat; the issue was on the ballot in November 1972. The issues were still convenience for the majority of residents and having a central location; however, by the 1970s most county services were available in Cedar City. Once again the measure failed to obtain a two-thirds majority. A new courthouse was built in Parowan and the issue has not come up again. 58

Looking Ahead As a more prosperous nation and state stood at the brink of the 1940s, optimism and concern characterized the outlook of Iron County residents. Having overcome the obstacles brought by the Depression and anticipating economic benefits from increasing demand for iron ore and the return of tourists to nearby national

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Iron County National Guardsmen on duty in Korea. (Utah National Guard)

parks, only the specter of war diminished the confident spirit of Iron County. By 1940, population was up 15 percent from 1930, with a total of 8,331 residents. The trend for a faster-growing Cedar City continued. Its 4,695 residents were 56.4 percent of the county total; Parowan had 1,525, or 18.3 percent. Growth at the Branch Agricultural College led administrators in 1938 to divide the high school and college, each with about 300 students, in anticipation of the college becoming a full-fledged four-year institution. Stockmen were still recovering, but agricultural development of the Escalante Valley was imminent, utilizing irrigation pumped from groundwater resources. Hoping and praying that the United States could stay out of the conflicts in Europe and the Far East, Iron County residents faced the new decade.

ENDNOTES

1. Reinhard Maeser, son of Karl Maeser and a former teacher, was editor of the Iron County News, which began publication on 22 November 1890

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in an eight-page format and contained mostly school news. The last issue was in March 189I. 2. William C. Higgins started the Iron County Record on 16 December 1893 and sold it in 1895 to Charles S. Wilkinson and Dan Matheson. In 1897 Matheson sold out to Wilkinson, who published it until 1903.

Management switched back and forth between Wilkinson and Alex Rollo between 1905 and 1911, when Rollo started up a competing paper, The Observer. In 1915 the Observer and the Record consolidated, with Wilkinson as editor and Rollo as business manager. Rollo started the Parowan Times in 1915 and operated it until 1919. It was sold to Warner Mitchell in 1919, and Rollo and Lafe McConnell took over the Record by 1921. After 27 January 1922 Rollo's sons Morgan and Ezra bought the McConnell share, and the Record was published the Rollo family until 1980. During 1980 the Spectrum of St. George began a daily newspaper in Cedar City called the Cedar City Spectrum, which has been published since under a number of different titles: Spectrum-Record, Color Country Spectrum, and The Spectrum, High Country Edition. A weekly, the Cedar City Advocate, was published for a few years in the early 1990s.

3. Luella Adams Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 302-3; Albert o. Mitchell, "Dramatics in Southern Utah" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1935), 65.

4. Rhoda Matheson Wood, "As I Remember Things in Cedar City Fifty Years Ago!!" Sourdough Times (Cedar City: SourDough Restaurant, n.d.).

In 1960 part of the original rock wall was taken out in a flood and in 1988 the remainder of it was demolished by city maintenance crews. Angry Cedar City citizens formed a committee to raise funds and work on reconstruction. The city appropriated $42,000 toward the project, and twenty-five citizens worked on the restoration project, headed by Peg and Howard Thorley, Lois and Rulan Woodbury, McKay Nelson, Jeanne Ahern, and Dee Little. The new wall surrounds the oldest part of the cemetery on the east and south sides. See Leah Wood, "Cemetery monument needs funds for completion," University journal, 14 October 1994, II. 5. Richard M. Webster, "Enoch History Review," 20 August 1994, copy of remarks at Enoch birthday celebration. See also Alva Matheson, "The Radio Story/' March 1994, 3, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, for his description of the barbed-wire fence telephone line. There were eventually twenty-six phone connections on the fence.

6. York Jones and Evelyn Jones, Lehi Willard jones, 163-7I. 7. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 106; Jones and Jones, Lehi Willard jones, 168.

8. Matheson, "Radio Story."

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9. Rhoda M. Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," 61; Iron County Record, 8 July 1937; The Spectrum, 7 July 1997.

10. See Ezra C. Knowlton, History of Highway Development in Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah Road Commission, c. 1963), 135-77.

11. Iron County Record, 13 May 1910,1.

12. Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch," 47-48; Pratt Bethers, A History of Schools in Iron County, 1851-1970 (Cedar City, n.p., c. 1972),263.

13. Noble Warrum, Utah in the World War (Salt Lake City: Utah State Council of Defense, 1924),99; Iron County Record, 20 April 1917, 1.

14. Iron County Record, 22 March 1918.

15. Iron County Record, 15 March 1918.

16. L.W. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac: the Man, his Land, and his People (Cedar City: Southern Utah State College Press, 1985) 137-47; Leonard J. Arrington, "The Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19 in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 58 (Spring 1990): 165-82.

17. Iron County Record, 11 October 1918, 1; see also Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 137-40.

18. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 140-43.

19. Ibid., 144-46.

20. See Kerry William Bate, "Kanarraville Fights World War I," Utah Historical Quarterly 63 (Winter 1995): 45-49.

21. Iron County Record, 14 July 1922.

22. Salt Lake Tribune, 28 June 1923; Deseret News, 28 June 1923; Iron County Record, 29 June 1923.

23. Thomas G. Alexander, "From War to Depression," in Utah's History, edited by Richard D. Poll (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1978),465-67.

24. Wayne K. Hinton, "The Economics of Ambivalence: Utah's Depression Experience," Utah Historical Quarterly 54 (Summer 1986): 271.

25. "Brief History of the Rock Church," unpublished pamphlet, n.d., 4-5, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

26. Ibid., 5-6.

27. Ibid., 8.

28. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 302-3.

29. Iron County Record, 6 November 1929, 18 December 1929.

30. Dick Johnston, "The Johnston Family in Lund, Utah," typescript copy in author's possession, 1-2.

31. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 199.

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

32. Palmer, ((Bank History," Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 4, no.

172, 25 April 1954.

33. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 198-99; Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, no. 173,2 May 1954, 2.

34. See Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 198-99; Harry P. Bluhm, Lucius Nelson Marsden Prominent Southern Utah Banker, Merchant, Livestockman and Church Leader, 1862-1931 (n.p., 1993), 37-38; Palmer, ((To Parley E. Anderson," Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 2, no. 68, 20 April 1952, 1.

35. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 200.

36. Palmer, ((Bank History Concluded," Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 4, no. 174, 25 April 1954, 1-2.

37. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 220-1.

38. Palmer, ((To Parley E. Anderson," 1; Palmer, ((Bank History Concluded," 2; Iron County Record, 7 April 1932; Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 202-3.

39. Iron County Record, 10 November 1932. Iron County is generally considered strongly Republican; the average vote is over 55 percent Republican and the vote does not usually drop below 50 percent even during the 1930s and 1940s.

40. John F. Bluth and Wayne K. Hinton, ((The Great Depression," in Utah's History, 486, 494.

41. Iron County Record, 18 January 1934; Jones and Jones, Mayors of Cedar City, 292-93; ((A Report of the Works Division, April 15, 1934-0ctober 31, 1935," (Salt Lake City: Utah Emergency Relief Administration, 1936), 173-77, Utah State Historical Society Library.

42. ((A Report of the Works Division," 91.

43. H.E. Thomas and G.H. Taylor, "Geology and Ground-Water Resources of Cedar City and Parowan Valley, Iron County, Utah," WaterSupply Paper 993 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1946),6-8; ((A Report of the Works Division," 173.

44. Utah was allowed a larger number of ((local experienced men" (1,300) than inexperienced and unmarried men (1,000), leading to the hiring of project supervisors such as Hyrum Kunz and William L. Jones.

Kenneth W. Baldridge, ((Nine Years of Achievement: The Civilian Conservation Corps in Utah" (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1971), 19.

45. Iron County Record, 20 July 1933; Baldridge, ((Nine Years of Achievement," 327-28.

46. Evelyn Kunz Jones, Kunz Family History (n.p., 1995),29-33.

47. Iron County Record, 22 June 1933.

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48. Stephanie Jewett, "The Civilian Conservation Corps in Iron County and Surrounding Areas," 1994, 16, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

49. Earnest Gasperik, interview with author, Cedar City, 10 October 1995.

50. The incident inspired Sammy Taylor to write a song:

''I'm a stranger in your city, my name is Charlie Flynn I got drunk in town one night and the sheriff run me in.

I've got no money to pay my fine, no one to go my bail, So I got soaked for 90 days in the Cedar City jail. ...

"Oh what a bunch of hoodlums, the worst you ever saw, All the robbers, thieves, and burglars, all breakers of the law.

They all sang songs the whole night through, their curses fell like hail, I'll bless the day when they take me away from the Cedar City jail."

See Baldridge, "Nine Years of Achievement," 307.

51. Baldridge, "Nine Years of Achievement," 349-50.

52. Iron County Record, 14 July 1933.

53. Jewett, "The Civilian Conservation Corps in Iron County," 15; Kelli Scott, "Putting American Back to Work: The Civilian Conservation Corps," Southwest Utah Magazine 2 (Spring 1994): 14.

54. Baldridge, "Nine Years of Achievement," 154, 159, 162, 169, 172-73,176-77.

55. Iron County Record, 2 September 1927,9 September 1927, 16 September 1927.

56. Film historian James D'Arc of the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University also lists Smokey (1936), The Painted Stallion (1937), and Oh Susanna with Gene Autrey (1938) as being partially filmed in or near Iron County.

57. James V. D'Arc, "They Came This'A Way," Mountainwest Magazine (March 1978): 23.

58. Of 6,681 voters, 4,103 voted to move the county seat and 2,578 were opposed. The proposal lacked 346 votes to be a two -thirds majority vote.

See Iron County Record, 28 January 1971, 4 February 1971, 12 October 1972, 19 October 1972, 26 October 1972, 9 November 1972.

CHAPTER

8

PROSPERITY WITH A PRICE:

1940-1960 DesPite New Deal programs, economic depression lasted until World War II brought full recovery in Iron County as in much of the rest of the state and nation. Most of those who grew up during the 1930s recall being poor. But change was coming. There was increased interest in county iron deposits; US Steel was already demanding more iron ore for its plant at Ironton, Utah County.

Like most Americans, Iron County residents were not interested in getting involved in another war in far-off Asia and Europe. When involvement became unavoidable, however, they responded wholeheartedly even though the loss of manpower hurt farms, crippled a number of local businesses, and almost caused the closing of the Branch Agricultural College (BAC). The location of an army air corps training program on the BAC campus saved the college and, like the earlier CCC program, brought into the community a number of single young men. As they marched to the campus from their quarters at the El Escalante Hotel and Utah Parks Company garages, they brought a military presence to community life.

Only at the iron mines did the work force grow; but that growth 128

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W orId War II brought Army Air Corps cadets to the BAC campus for preflight training between March 1943 and June 1944. (Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

was dramatic. The number of mine workers increased from twentyone in 1940 to 300 by 1944 as the tonnage of ore shipped quadrupled. The mines were supplying the steel plant at Geneva, run for the government by Columbia Steel, as well as the Colorado Fuel and Iron plant near Pueblo, Colorado, and the Kaiser Steel plant at Fontana, California.

As historian Thomas Alexander has pointed out, the massive expenditures of World War II "fundamentally refashioned Utah's economy and society."l Enormous economic growth during the war reversed the pattern of out-migration that dominated Utah during the 1920s and 1930s. Although migration patterns are not available for Iron County during the 1940s, employment statistics reveal how much the county benefited from the economic upturn. In 1940, 2,108 were employed and 626 (22.6 percent of the labor force) were unemployed in Iron County. Ten years later, the labor force had grown by 25 percent to 3,423, with 3,253 employed and only 170 (5 percent) unemployed. Although population growth was less dramatic than during the 1920s, the economy was stimulated by much greater

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expenditures for mining development, higher salaries, and increased tax revenues to the county. The economy remained strong through the 1960s.

However, the positive was offset by absence from home of so many young men and a few women who were serving in the military.

Two involved early in the war were Roscoe Booth and Antone Webster, trained as pilots in a local Civil Aeronautics Aviation course.

Booth joined the Army Air Corps and was in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was in the later attack on the Japanese fleet at Midway Island. Webster was also in the Army Air Corps and flew nearly fifty fighter missions during the North African campaign and the invasions of Sicily and Italy. His early enlistment and action inspired the admiration of the young people of Cedar City. 2 In the fall of 1940, as war heated up in Europe and Asia, the Utah National Guard was called into service to help train the first contingent of thousands of men needed for the country's defense. Iron County's guard unit of 130 men, Battery F, 222nd Field Artillery, was sent to San Louis Obispo, California, in March 1941. 3 This unit had been assigned to Cedar City in April 1926 and trained in a new armory built as a WPA project in 1938.

At almost the same time, the first young men were drafted for military service in what was still being called a "peace-time draft."

Registration began in October 1940, and throughout 1941 Iron County volunteers and inductees reported for service according to assigned quotas. As one of the less-populated counties, the quotas started low, six men in February and two in March 1941.

On the Home Front On the home front, wartime changes also came gradually. In the summer of 1941, citizens were asked to donate old aluminum ware.

Rationing of food, gas, and going without tires, nylons, and other luxuries came later.

As early as March 1941, discussions were held about relocation plans for Japanese evacuees from California to areas of western Utah.

Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 19 February 1942 mandated moving all people of Japanese ancestry from the west coast states. A plan to relocate some of them in Iron

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County, possibly in Cedar Valley, was strongly opposed, although the Iron County Record reported some unidentified citizens having no serious objection "to a group being located in the Beryl section ... provided they are under army supervision and are not allowed to acquire title to any property."4 Anti- Japanese feelings were evident in the county despite a Japanese presence long before World War II. Men of Japanese ancestry worked on Union Pacific section crews long before Pearl Harbor, and sometimes their wives and children lived in section houses in Lund, Beryl, and Modena. Japanese families had good truck farms near Beryl in the 1920s and 1930s. They were known as hard workers and their children were fine students. After Pearl Harbor, however, community groups opposed selling property to Japanese people. The Central Utah Relocation Center, Topaz, was eventually located in Millard County, fifteen miles west of Delta, while Iron County sheltered only a few families, brought there by a compassionate native son, Lowell H. Sherratt. 5 Sherratt found employment in California after World War I, where he met and married Elva Lamb from Toquerville. During the 1930s, Sherratt worked for the A & M Seed Company and became friendly with several Japanese customers. When the Japanese were ordered to leave the West Coast, Sherratt took the future of ten Japanese families into his own hands to save them from the ordeal of relocation. Through his wife's family, he had acquired Page's Ranch, twenty-eight miles west of Cedar City. Once a busy freighting stop, in 1940 the area was a peaceful, secluded place. These families were allowed to leave California with a sponsor if they were out by a set deadline. Sherratt led the caravan of trucks piled high with belongings across the border with just minutes to spare. They arrived safely at Page's Ranch to find they were not necessarily welcome; but the newcomers were industrious and kept busy farming. Gerald Sherratt, who was eleven years old, reported that the Japanese could not trade with local merchants by day but that they conducted business in the dark of night. After a year or two at Page's Ranch, each family branched out on its own. Several went to Idaho. The Soman and Iwata families moved to Hamilton Fort and ran a truck farm for the duration of the war; their children attended school in Cedar City.

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Page's Ranch House, where ten Japanese-American families took refuge during the early years of World War II. (Iron County Centennial Circle picture).

Ten-year-old Akiyoshi Iwata made friends among farm boys living nearby; he later said that he never felt rejection during the four war years his family lived in Iron County.6 Once America declared war, county residents pulled together to gather funds for the Red Cross and to purchase war bonds. A county defense council was organized in October 1941, and a Cedar City unit of the Utah State Guard was chartered as a volunteer patriotic organization to replace the National Guard while it was in federal serVICe.

Citizens began gathering scrap metal, rubber, and other salvageable materials in 1942. Evelyn Webster led the salvage effort with a committee of seven women representing each community and others who were known as Utah Minute Women. Four hundred pounds of silk stockings, hundreds of pounds of rags, and over 200,000 pounds of salvage paper were shipped from the county. Cedar City gathered 643 tons of metal in 1942, with schoolchildren collecting fifty tons during a ten-day drive in October.7 Modena's five schoolchildren won a one hundred dollar war bond for ÂŤthe greatest per capita collection" of tin cans in Utah, a total of 1,744 tin cans, or 348

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per student. Beginning in May 1942, families received one book of ration stamps for each family member and sugar ration stamps for the first commodity rationed.

CCC camps were phased out late in 1941, and in the summer of 1942 the CCC repair shop at Cedar City was transferred to the army.

Fifty local men were employed to overhaul and repair CCC trucks and tractors turned over to the army for construction work. 8 The 316th Army Air Corps Training Detachment was established at the BAC in March 1943. The cadets arrived in groups of 300, replacing approximately 300 local men who were in the service. Cadets studied at the college, took flight instruction, and enjoyed socials planned by community and church volunteers, who hoped that Iron County soldiers would find similar hospitality in the communities where they were stationed. Some of the airmen returned after the war to work or attend the BAC. Several married local girls and settled in Iron County.

Iron County's monthly draft quota passed twenty in 1942 and jumped to more than thirty in 1943. Farmers were asked to increase production by 12 percent, double the increases achieved during World War I, and these increases had to be accomplished with less labor, machinery, and supplies. With most young men in the service, businesses and government agencies turned to hiring women, who ran stores and took over school classes.

While schoolchildren traded their rubber boots or collected scrap metal for the war effort, high school boys helped on local farms and ranches. To accommodate harvesting in 1942, the school district sent male students with their teachers to farms which requested help, with the provisions that a fair wage would be paid the young laborers and that they would be properly supervised. To assist with spring planting, the board of education decided to hold Saturday classes during March and April and close school on 30 April. High school girls voluntarily tended children for women who were in training or working as nurses aides for the understaffed Iron County hospital.

Draftees and Volunteers At first, only single men were inducted by the military. Iron County filled its quota with a combination of volunteers and draftees

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every month until September 1943, when there were only three unmarried men left on the selective service rolls. Beginning in September, married men (and eventually married men with children) went off to war, but many enlisted in the service of their choice rather ¡ than waiting to be drafted. The service of Iron County's men would fill a volume. Stories of a few represent the hundreds of servicemen and women in World War II. Like many other soldiers, Dewey Topham of Paragonah worked with the CCC prior to the war. Topham was drafted at age twentyone in January 1942. A year later, his brother Waldo followed him into the service. The brothers got together twice in England in the months after D-Day. Dewey's unit went to France and immediately moved to the front lines, where it was involved in fierce fighting during the months of November and December 1944. When the German Army made its all-out assault during the "Battle of the Bulge," its large pincer move encircled many American units, including Dewey's. He spent three days without food trying to make his way to safety in the rear. Unable to reach the Allied position, he finally surrendered, expecting to be fed as a prisoner; however, the Germans were out of food. For four months he got little to eat but occasional potato peelings. As Allied troops pushed the German Army back, Dewey and a thousand other prisoners were marched across Germany ahead of the army through the dead of winter toward the Russian front. When spring came, the starving men fought to get even dandelions to eat. The weak prisoners who could not keep up were shot. This was a great incentive to keep going. 9 On 13 April 1945, the surviving prisoners were liberated and Dewey was brought to a field hospital in France. Waldo Topham hurried to see his brother. Dewey had weighed about 175 pounds at the time of his capture, but he was just 85 pounds as he lay in the hospital bed. He was not only malnourished but had pneumonia, a high fever, and other ailments brought on from starvation. Dewey told Waldo the details of his capture and the torturous march.

Throughout the ordeal, he was sustained by reading a little military Bible he had left during the battle, but miraculously found after his capture. Dewey Topham died in a Paris hospital on 24 June 1945. He was twenty-six years old. He was buried in France in a military ceme-

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tery, but his parents had his body returned to Paragonah, where every Memorial Day the veterans' graves are adorned with American flags to remind the people of Iron County of their service and sacrifice. 1o Wayne G. Jackson of Cedar City became a bomber pilot in the Army Air Corps after completing ten months of flight training. He was the co-pilot and oldest in his crew of a B-24 bomber in England.

He wrote: When we arrived there, we understood that we were to fly 25 missions. They were very "encouraging" when they told us that our expected life span was 14 to 15 missions. We would be lucky to make that many . . .. When we had gotten in about 15 missions, they raised the number of missions we had to fly to 30, and when I had my 29th mission in, they raised the ante to 35. I flew a total of 31 missions-far above the average. 11

Jackson volunteered for extra missions to get his quota in more quickly. His thirty-one missions took place in just over sixty days from 24 May to 29 July 1944. He kept a diary of each mission, with details of targets and close calls, such as his last mission when flak knocked out an engine and the crew had to throw out everything on board to keep altitude. The plane put down on the first airfield in England they found. After flying flour and gasoline to the French people and supplies to General Patton's army, he returned to America in November 1944, one pilot who beat the odds during World War II.12 Two brothers, Norman and Merril Laub from Escalante Valley, enlisted together in the u.s. Cavalry and were never separated or assigned to different units. On 20 October 1944, during General Douglas MacArthur's return to the Philippines on Leyte Beach, Norman saw Merril shot down as he led his squad into enemy fire.

Merril was still alive when Norman reached him, although a bullet had shattered his spine. He died before he could be transported to the hospital ship. Norman turned his grief inward, locking the hurt of that tragedy deep in his soul, as he watched the massive sea battle for Leyte Gulf from a nearby hill. 13 Laub participated in a flying column that drove one hundred miles through Japanese enemy lines to Manila in the Philippines to

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rescue 3,785 American and British civilian prisoners of war confined for over three years. Laub learned, however, that taking revenge on the Japanese did not ease his hurt or bring him comfort. He had lost all desire to return home, fearing to face his family alone. One day while on a one-man patrol in "no mans land," he came upon a small deserted village graced by a Catholic cathedral. Pecking out a familiar t une on an old pump organ, he recalled the words of a hymn his mother played and he sang and sang. His cathedral experience b rought peace as he realized his "dark midnight" was over. He finally could say, "Mom, Dad, I'm alive and I want to come home." 14 It is difficult to determine the total number of Iron County men and women who served in the armed forces in World War II. In June 1943 the Iron County Civil Defense Office listed 391 men and seven women from Cedar City who had been or were in the armed forces.

Kanarraville had the highest percentage of servicemen and servicewomen overseas. Everyone in the county was affected by the war and h ad a brother, husband, uncle, father, grandchild, cousin, daughter, nephew, or niece in the armed forces. During the years from 1943 to 1945, war stories headlined most issues of the local papers, including a column, "News From Our Boys in Service," which also carried news of the women on occasion. Women who served included Phyllis Adams, Jennie Cox, and Maude Munford in the WAACs; Darlene Cline and Norine Hunter as Women Marines; Enid Knight in the California State Guard, and Francell Leigh in the WAVES. IS In addition, nurses Mildred Jones and Emma Holyoak were commissioned second lieutenants in the Army Nurse Corps. IS

War Bonds and Rationing Civilians were constantly admonished to support the war effort through conservation, rationing, and buying war bonds. State bond drives established quotas for Iron County of $28,100 in August 1942, $200,000 in April 1943, and $303,500 in September 1943. While Utah failed miserably to reach its statewide goals, Iron County surpassed early goals and made a valiant effort to reach later ones. Special events, such as a follies presented by the men of the 316th Army Air Corps, were held for which purchase of a war bond was the admission fee.

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Food rationing fell largely upon the shoulders of women, but conservation of other goods required the attention of the whole family. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) tightly controlled many consumer goods and issued volumes of price regulations. O.C. Bowman was the OPA field representative headquartered in Cedar City in 1943, responsible for public service advertisements such as one in the 17 June 1943 Iron County Record: Black markets can get their start in what seems the most innocent way-through honest, patriotic people like you who wouldn't do one thing to handicap the war effort-people who don't even realize they are misusing their rationing books, or violating the rationing rules .... Multiply one innocent violation by all the innocent, careless violators and we'll be a nation of cheaters-and starvers.

Tire purchases required certificates of necessity or tire inspection forms. To conserve both gasoline and tires, the Cedar City Chamber of Commerce sponsored a ÂŤshare the ride" program for people who needed to travel out of town.

VE Day and VJ Day Victory in Europe came in May 1945. Because war continued in the Pacific, there was not a lot of celebrating; however, families of prisoners of war liberated from the Germans were elated. The summer of 1945 was a mix of war and peace. Several Iron County men were flying bomb raids on Japan and there were reports of several others taken prisoner or killed in action in the Pacific theater. At home, however, servicemen returning from the European theater walked their hometown streets enjoying furloughs before reporting to stateside duty. Joyous homecomings were tempered with reports of deaths, such as those of Dewey Topham and Dwight Jones in Europe and Maurice Clothier and Brin Pendleton in the Pacific-all announced in the 5 July 1945 Iron County Record.

War-bond drives continued through the summer and into the fall, even after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced the surrender of Japan on 14 August 1945. There was a huge war debt to be paid and funds were needed to relieve suffering in the liberated countries, so ÂŤBe Generous in Victory" was the theme of the last war

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fund appeal in September 1945. The news of Japan's surrender brought business throughout the county to a standstill. A spontaneous "burst of celebration" hit the streets of Cedar City, with sirens blowing and people parading up and down Main Street. Many businesses closed to give employees a two-day holiday before attention turned to postwar problems. 17 An Iron County Post-war Planning Committee had been meeting for many months, preparing to quickly employ returning servicemen and to attract industries that would provide lasting employment in a strong economy. Increased tourism and mining were obvious solutions, but the immediate problem was finding help to harvest acres of carrots, potatoes, and cabbages that were almost overly ripe in the fields. Adults and high school students were asked to volunteer a day or two to save these crops.18 Coal and iron mining were to become the principal solution for employing Iron County veterans, but the government had closed down the Geneva Mill in September 1945 and miners waited through the long winter of 1945-46 to find out if it would reopen. In June 1946 Geneva was sold to US Steel for one-fourth of its construction price. The mill was greatly expanded as demand for peacetime goods sent steel production soaring. In addition, there were ads for men to work in the Carbon County coal mines. The railroads also recruited thousands of workers, anticipating redeployment of servicemen and war materials.

Since the local National Guard unit had been called into service in the fall of 1940, the return of guard members in October 1945 marked a milestone in closing the war. Howard Betensen, Corry Olson, Pratt Smith, and other local guardsmen had served for fiftyfive months, the longest tours of all. 19

The Forties and Films In anticipation of a banner tourist season, the El Escalante Hotel was renovated and reopened to the public on 29 September 1945 with dinner and dancing. Army air cadets who had filled its rooms were long gone, and its only other guests during the war had been occasional motion picture companies. Filmmaking was only slowed a little by World War II, and war movies about a war still being fought

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were not considered inappropriate. One of these was filmed on Cedar Mountain in May 1943 and released as Days of Glory, with Gregory Peck in his screen debut. Peck played a Russian peasant bravely fighting the Nazi blitzkrieg. Since local members of the Utah State Guard were used as movie soldiers, citizens were warned not to be ÂŤstartled if they saw German Soldiers parading the streets of Cedar City."20 In 1943 My Friend Flicka was filmed at Cedar Breaks, Duck Creek, and Strawberry Point, and the railroad depot and other sites in Iron and Washington counties were used for the John Wayne movie In Old Oklahoma. A year later, crews returned to Duck Creek for a follow-up Flicka picture, Thunderhead, Son of Flicka, and Universal Pictures brought in singing and dancing stars Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly for Can't Help Singing, with a memorable Durbin solo filmed on the rim of Cedar Breaks. 21 Although movie budgets in the 1940s were a fraction of today's, it was estimated in 1946 that some $10 million had been spent by moviemakers in Utah over twenty-six years, the majority in southwestern and southeastern Utah. Typically, local residents were paid ten dollars a day as extras or in bit parts or riding roles. Vendors of food, the hotel and motel industry, and the ranchers who supplied the cattle, horses, and wagons for the movies also benefited. Iron County was frequently headquarters for crews filming throughout the area, and the economic benefits of filmmaking were significant clear through the 19 50s. 22 The end of the war and the curtailment of defense spending in 1945 threatened to send Utah's economy into a nosedive. However, the postwar increase in tourism and demand for iron produced the best economic years Iron County had ever seen. Population growth between 1940 and 1950 matched the 15 percent increase of the 1930s, and the labor force grew by 25 percent. The greatest job increases were in mining, but manufacturing, transportation, communication, utilities, retail trade, and the service sectors all showed healthy growth through the 1950s and 1960s. Only agricultural job numbers declined as mechanization allowed fewer employees to do mor e work. The number of individual farms decreased while acres of land in agriculture increased and the value of products and livestock sold nearly doubled. Livestock raising once again shifted toward cattle, includ-

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ing dairy cows, while sheep herds were about 50 percent of their size in 1930. Unemployment, which had been at 23 percent in 1940, dropped to 5 percent in 1950 and to 3.5 percent by 1960.23 Ten thousand Iron County residents enjoyed the benefits of a healthy economy. New schools were built and the college added a new auditorium and library building to enhance rapidly growing programs. On the Escalante Desert, electric power, deep wells, and turbine pumps ended the risk of drought for farmers growing potatoes, alfalfa, and grain.

With few exceptions, front-page news in Iron County's newspapers of the late 1940s focused on good local happenings, such as reports on schools, livestock, power projects, elections, art shows, concerts, and church events. But momentous changes were taking place internationally that would intimately affect the people of Iron County. Descriptions of an "Iron Curtain" falling across eastern Europe and of a "Bamboo Curtain" in the Orient brought apprehension to KSUB's radio audience in Cedar City and the surrounding area.

"Police Action" in Korea In August 1949 Russia exploded its first nuclear device, launching the nuclear arms race. Ten months later, war broke out between North Korea and South Korea. President Harry S. Truman established the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and answered the Russian challenge with plans to build an enlarged atomic-weapons arsenal, which required intensive and expensive testing. Truman kept his word and did not use atomic weapons even in the darkest hours of the Korean War; however, as one commentator wrote, "the distrust and ideological enmities that fueled the engines of the Cold War forced the leaders of the two superpowers to make decisions that plunged them into a forty-year race of nuclear one-upmanship and put the whole human enterprise in peril."24 During the Korean War, trained national guard troops including the Utah National Guard were quickly called to action. Utahns were generally more opposed to the commitment of U.S. troops in Korea than in the previous world wars because it was a limited war, technically a police action of the United Nations, in which some citizens

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were asked to make sacrifices while others went on with little or no discomfort or even benefited economically from increased defense spending. Sixty percent of the Utah Army National Guard and all of the Utah Air National Guard were called up, while other states sent virtually no national guard troops. Five Utah battalions were activated, including the 213th Armored Field Artillery Battalion headquartered in Cedar City. The 213th had its Service Battery in Beaver, Battery A at Richfield, Battery B at St. George, and Battery C at Fillmore.

The departure of over 200 soldiers from the Cedar City depot on 29 August 1950 reminded many of March 1941 when the 222nd Battalion entered/World War II. At Fort Lewis, the 213th Battalion was brought up to full strength with personnel from the officer and enlisted reserve corps, so that only sixty percent of the battalion were Utah guardsmen. After four months of combat training, the 213th was ordered to Korea in January 1951. Once in Korea, Corporal Klien Rollo, son of newspaper editor Alex Rollo, began sending reports to the Iron County Record that were published within days of action.

Southern Utahns heard for the first time of places like Hwachon, Chunchon, Kapyong, and the 38th parallel.

Within days of reaching the combat zone northeast of Seoul, the 213th was engaged in heavy combat, sent north to reinforce a Marine battalion fighting with the U.N. forces at Hwachon. Chinese Communist forces attacked Hwachon on 22 April. From the center of town, the 213th fought all night, but U.N. troops in the area were forced to withdraw. The 213th was assigned to ÂŤrear-guard protection" and was left in the direct line of the Chinese drive while the Chinese also held the hilltops surrounding them.

The 213th withdrew ÂŤin blackout over a narrow mountain road."

They battled fiercely as Chinese troops had circled behind them and cut off retreat. At this point, the unit was given up as lost, but it continued to fire all through the night, aided by air strikes on the Chinese troops. The 213th and British troops eventually broke out of the trap to safety, having successfully stalled the drive of the Chinese and prevented a major breakthrough that would have been disastrous.

After two weeks rest, the 213th was back into the thick of the campaign. In May the tide turned and the Chinese began retreating.

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On 23 May the 213th was ordered back to Kapyong with a task force to keep the enemy in retreat. Rollo reported, "It is worth mentioning that we were the last artillery outfit to leave Kapyong during the Red's offensive in April and the first to return."25 A Chinese regiment had been encircled by U.N. forces and now made a desperate bid to break through by the only escape route available, the narrow valley where 240 men of the 213th Headquarters Battery and Battery A were camped. During the early hours of 27 May, Chinese communist forces opened fire from a canyon to the northeast of the 213th batteries. All available men from both batteries were deployed. The enemy fought fiercely to break through, and some artillerymen engaged in hand -to-hand combat. Captain Ray E. Cox, commander of Battery A, organized a counterattack with approximately fifty men from the two batteries. The men engaged and routed the enemy. As enemy troops tried to ascend the surrounding slopes, intense firing convinced them escape was impossible and they turned back in massive surrender. In that engagement, 831 prisoners were taken and 105 enemy dead were counted, with another 200 estimated as dead; 145 others were captured later in mopping-up operations. On the American side, there were four men wounded in the two batteries, but not a single guardsman was killed. Battery A and the Headquarters Battery had scored a remarkable victory, and members received a Distinguished Unit Citation, recognizing "outstanding performance of duty and extraordinary heroism," and further stating that the batteries displayed such unshakable determination and gallantry in accomplishing their mission under extremely difficult and hazardous conditions as to set them apart and above other units participating in the action. The extraordinary heroism displayed by the members of these units reflects great credit on themselves and upholds the highest traditions of the military service of the United States. 26

After this, other war experiences seemed anti-climatic, but the 213th continued to provide outstanding artillery support wherever it was assigned. By 31 December 1951 the 213th Field Artillery Battalion, in almost constant combat since April, had fired 95,004

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rounds and inflicted 6,891 casualties. Many guardsmen had earned enough points for rotation horne. The first enlisted men left as early as November, and commander Lt. Col. Frank J. Dalley returned to the United States in mid-December. The 213th Field Artillery Battalion stayed on active duty in Korea until the armistice in 1953 and was finally returned to state control and the Utah National Guard on 29 October 1954, bringing horne its battle streamers. 27 National Guardsmen were not the only Iron County soldiers involved in Korea. Draft boards were busy, although inductees were far fewer than in World War II, and a number of Iron County veterans from World War II who remained with army and navy reserve units were called into active duty. As in previous wars, Iron County men were killed in action, a loss that was somewhat harder for families to understand because of the nature and indecisive conclusion of this "police action."

The tradition of brothers serving together continued. Several sets of brothers served in the 213th Field Artillery Battalion, including company commander Lt. Col. Frank J. Dalley and his brother, Major Max S. Dalley. Three sons of Mr. and Mrs. Bert Bonzo-Kenneth, Max, and David-were members of the 213th Battalion. Two older sons, Jack and Robert, stayed in the army after World War II and served during the Korean War, and a sixth son, Douglas, volunteered for military service in January 1951. 28 Once again, as Iron County sent young and able men off to war, it left behind a smaller and older workforce. Enrollment at the BAC decreased from 1950 to 1953, and male students who remained in school were enrolled in the Army ROTC. Over-age or disabled veterans served in a military police company formed in Cedar City in August 1950 as part of a horne guard. 29

Nuclear Testing War in Asia caused the United States to reconsider testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean and to look for a continental test site.

Conflict in Korea justified a less-expensive continental testing site in order to maintain U.S. nuclear weapons superiority.30 A Nevada site north of Las Vegas was chosen because of its safety features, which included low population density, favorable meteorological conditions

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(a prevailing easterly wind blowing away from the populous west coast), and good geographical features-that is, hundreds of miles of flat, government-controlled land. 31 On 27 January 1951, a onekiloton bomb dropped from an airplane and detonated over Frenchman Flat marked the beginning of atmospheric nuclear testing in Nevada.

Relatively few Iron County residents were aware of or concerned about nuclear testing when the first mushroom-shaped cloud rose into the western skies and drifted to the northeast in 1951, but the cloud figuratively remains over southern Utah and Nevada to this day.32 Residents live with every day what the cloud left behind that the eye could not see. There are no southwestern Utah neighborhoods or communities that have not been touched by the tragedy of cancer or birth defects or lingering bitterness over human and financial losses.

Atomic Energy Commission press releases promised that atomic tests would be conducted "with adequate assurances of safety." 33 Residents of southern Nevada and southern Utah who lived downwind of the tests initially believed what they were told; as one historian wrote, "Their faith and trust in their government would not allow them to even consider the possibility that the government would ever endanger their health."34 However, their experiences during and since the 1950s have convinced them of just the oppositethere was no safety for either people or livestock from atmospheric nuclear testing and the AEC knew it.35 Declassified transcripts released from 1978 to 1980 show that scientists knew as early as 1947 that fission products released by atomic bomb tests could be deadly to humans and animals exposed during and after the tests. The AEC chose to ignore warnings from its own scientists and outside medical researchers and continued with a "nothing-must-stop-the-tests" rationale.

Atomic testing during its first two years actually received very little attention in Iron County, if the pages of the Iron County Record are an accurate measure. Residents could read about detonations in statewide daily newspapers, but the local paper was more likely to describe civil defense preparedness. 36 Residents were more concerned about the threat of nuclear attack from Russia. 37 As elsewhere, children practiced bomb drills at school and residents began building

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bomb shelters and storing food so it would not become contaminated.

Scott M. Matheson, governor of Utah from 1977 to 1984 and a former Parowan and Cedar City resident, recalled life in Iron County during the early 1950s: People in southern Utah were mainly concerned with making a living, and I don't recall anyone being too upset about the brilliant flashes and thunder-like blasts that were part of the 1953 atomic testing. The Upshot-Knothole series, conducted from March to June 1953, included the "Dirty Harry" exposure that carried an enormous amount of debris downwind, over southern Utah. People were concerned about the sheep deaths that occurred in May 1953, but when the AEC said there was nothing to worry about, we all just shrugged our shoulders. Noone really accepted the malnutrition rationale, but we were used to accepting whatever the government said, especially during that very nationalistic period. 38

As part of a test site public-relations program in March 1953, some 600 observers were invited to view a test shot and its effect on manikins, typical homes, and automobiles in an effort to get Americans more interested in civil defense. Klien Rollo represented the Iron County Record at the media event. Observers watched the detonation seven miles from ground zero and later were taken into the test area, after debris and dust had settled. Rollo at first thought it was "his good fortune" to be invited to the test site, but not many weeks later the newspaper began questioning the safety of nuclear fall-out. It printed a long article by University of Utah student Ralph J. Hafen of St. George in which he wrote that he felt ÂŤmorally obligated to warn people of the irreparable damage that may have occurred or may in the future occur" from exposure to radiation. He also called upon the AEC to explain why cars entering St. George were washed after the shot. Predicting later problems, he cautioned that "damage done to an individual by radiation often does not make itself known for five to ten years or a generation or more."39 Nevada testing was not front-page news in Iron County-not Hafen's article, a follow-up editorial, other press releases, a letter sent from the Health Department of the Utah State Civil Defense Council

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reporting that suspected radiation sickness was not much more than German measles and skin infections, or the preliminary report that thousands of sheep which had been grazing near the atomic test grounds had died from «malnutrition" rather than radiation sickness. 40 The sheep and their owners were Iron County's fir st v ictims of radioactivity. While being trailed across Nevada from winter range to the lambing yards at Cedar City, some 18,000-20,000 sheep were exposed to large quantities of radioactive fallout from tests in March and April 1953. Kern and McRae Bulloch first noticed burns on their animals' faces and lips where they had been eating radioactive grass.

Then ewes began miscarrying in large numbers and at the lambing yards wool sloughed off in clumps revealing blisters on adult sheep.

New lambs were stillborn with grotesque deformities or born so weak they were unable to nurse. Ranchers lost as much as a third of their herds. 41 Ranchers and preliminary veterinary investigators suspected radiation poisoning. The AEC had given Iron County agricultural agent Steven Brower a geiger counter, a small radiation meter, to carry with him. At the sheep pens, he reported the «needle on my meter went clear off scale. We picked up high counts on the thyroid and on the top of the head, and there were lesions and scabs on the mouths and noses of the sheep."42 In early June the AEC sent teams of radiation experts to Cedar City to examine ailing animals. The dead carcasses had already been destroyed. The AEC reportedly forced its scientists to rewrite their field reports and eliminate any references to speculation about radiation damage or effects.43 The number of dead sheep represented a loss of a quarter of a million dollars to the ranchers, but Brower was told «that AEC could under no circumstance allow the precedent to be set in court or otherwise that AEC was liable or responsible for payment for radiation damage to either animals or humans."44 In 1955-56, five lawsuits were brought by Iron County ranchers against the government alleging that atmospheric testing of nuclear devices in the spring of 1953 had damaged their herds. The ranchers and their young lawyer, Dan Bushnell, firmly believed that truth would win out and fair play would prevail. The first case, Bulloch v.

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United States, was processed and tried as representative of the others.

It came before the court of Judge Sherman Christensen in September 1956. To the plaintiffs' dismay, technical data from government studies and testimony from government veterinarians regarding radiation damage gathered by the AEC was not presented. Instead, government expert witnesses testified that radiation damage could not have been a cause or a contributing cause to the sheep deaths. Attorney Bushnell tried without success to convince the judge that the government was covering up unfavorable material to protect itself and its program; however, although Judge Christensen ruled the government was negligent in monitoring the tests, he ruled for the government on the crucial issue of whether damage occurred as a result of atomic testing.

In 1979, congressional oversight hearings uncovered weighty evidence of AEC deception in 1956 and Judge Christensen reopened the suit. His fifty-six-page decision concluded that new information demonstrated that "a species of fraud" had been committed upon the court by government lawyers and federal employees acting "intentionally false or deceptive." He also noted improper attempts to pressure witnesses not to testify, a vital report intentionally withheld, and "deliberate concealment of significant facts with references to the possible effects of radiation upon the plaintiffs' sheep."45 He set aside his prior judgment and granted the sheepmen's motion for a new trial.

Dan Bushnell, who had waited more than twenty years hoping that the AEC files would become public record, assumed justice would finally be done. However, the u.S. Tenth Court of Appeals, in what has been called a "grotesque episode of American jurisprudence,"46 rejected Judge Christensen's findings, maintaining that the material from the congressional hearings was not admissible under the rules of federal procedure. In the opinion of the appeals court, "nothing new" had been presented and it could see no reason to overturn the judgment of the court twenty-five years before. 47 In 1986 the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the circuit court decision. By that time, the older-generation ranchers were dead or dying.

Only two of the original families were still sheep ranching; all had

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suffered financial losses. Hope of ever recovering damages ended with the disappointing Supreme Court decision in 1986.

Within three to five years after atmospheric testing, leukemia and other radiation-caused cancers appeared in residents of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada living in areas where nuclear fallout had occurred. Communities in which childhood leukemia was rare or unknown had clusters of cases in the late 1950s and early 1960s. 48 In the 1990s, people in Iron County believed that those who lived there in the 1950s were guinea pigs and victims, like the sheep. They have adopted the appellation "downwinders," signifying they lived "downwind" of atomic tests. Tests were usually conducted when the wind was blowing east or northeast in order to avoid fallout over more densely populated areas to the south and west, including Las Vegas and southern California. Iron County is centered in the fallout arc.

Even though it is impossible to prove that any particular person died or was afflicted by cancer caused by radioactive fallout, the perception of people living in Iron County is that atmospheric nuclear testing brought an epidemic of cancer to the area. The link between radioactive exposure and tumors can, however, be drawn statistically.

There is also a local perception that infertility, miscarriages, and birth defects are part of the legacy of living downwind of nuclear tests.49 Long-time residents of southwestern Utah are quite comfortable blaming a multitude of medical problems on nuclear testing and wonder how many future generations will be affected.

Even though House subcommittee hearings in 1979 found that the government was negligent, that fallout was a likely cause of both adverse health effects to downwind residents and the 1953 sheep losses, its report Health Effects of Low-level Radiation stated that a cause-and-effect link cannot be forged between low-level radiation exposure and cancer or other health effects. Since these might not appear for years or decades, the Federal Tort Claims Act is impossible to apply and compensation had to come through legislation.

Suits were nonetheless brought against the government by Navajo uranium miners, test-site workers, military servicemen forced to watch the tests, and downwind victims of radiation -caused cancers; all were unsuccessfu1. 50 Twenty-four plaintiffs in one test case, Irene Allen v. United States, represented 1,200 individuals who were

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deceased or living victims of leukemia, cancer, or other radiationcaused illnesses. Eleven of the twenty-four lived in Iron County during the period of atmospheric testing. Two were children who died of leukemia; eight others died of various other cancers; only one of the eleven was alive in 1984. 51 Judge Bruce Jenkins issued a landmark decision that awarded damages to some victims. The government appealed, and, in 1986, the Tenth Circuit Court reversed Jenkins's judgment. In January 1988 the Supreme Court again refused to hear an appeal. In 1990, however, Congress passed and President George Bush signed into law the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which created a $100 million trust fund to compensate citizens who lived downwind from aboveground atomic tests and later were stricken with radiation-related illnesses before warnings of potential danger were issued. The act was later amended to remove the $100-million ceiling and to allow uranium miners and test-site workers to participate in the compensation. The legislation states in part: The United States should recognize and assume responsibility for the harm done to these individuals.

And Congress recognizes that the lives and health of uranium miners and of innocent individuals who lived downwind from the Nevada tests were involuntarily subjected to increased risk of injury and disease to serve the national security interests of the United States ....

The Congress apologizes on behalf of the Nation to the individuals ... and their families for the hardship they have endured.

Some residents of Iron County, or their surviving family members, have been compensated by the fund. As of September 1994, 1,003 claims had been approved, 829 claims had been denied, and 125 were pending. Many who believe their cancer is fallout-related are prohibited from applying because of restrictions written into the legislation.

The end result is a more cynical attitude toward government. In recent years, many people in southern Utah have been skeptical of government promises and government studies. This was evident when the government was considering building the huge MX missile

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track in the Escalante Valley in 1980 and 1981; it carries over to wilderness issues and endangered -species battles of the 1990s.

During his term as Utah governor, Scott Matheson brought to the forefront of public awareness the problems faced by Utahns as a result of the nuclear testing. At the 1979 hearings he presented some 1,100 pages of testimony concerning the AEC coverup and other research. All this was done before Matheson himself developed terminal cancer. His personal conclusion in 1986 was: I am still angry about the way this issue was handled by the federal government. It points to a continuing need for governors to be vigilant concerning both short-term and long-term impacts of federal decisions on their residents. If citizens in a state are to be sacrificed for the "national interest," then, at the very least, those citizens need to be fully informed and protected as much as possible. 52

Iron County After One Hundred Years During the 1950s, Iron County, Parowan, and Cedar City had centennial anniversaries, with pageants and the presentation of historical material. Rhoda M. Wood of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers (DUP) chronicled the first one hundred years of Cedar City history in "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," while Luella Adams Dalton was preparing her History of Iron County Mission, Parowan, Utah from materials collected during the WPA writers project of the 1930s.

With a booming mining economy throughout the 1950s, Iron County's growth exceeded 10,000; by 1960, the census total was 10,795. There were nearly 4,000 in the labor force, a figure that would remain almost constant for the next decade even though mining began to slow down and agricultural employment declined. Raising cattle and sheep and growing feed for livestock dominated agriculture. Mechanization continued to allow fewer people to accomplish more on a farm, yet many residents who had roots on a family farm continued to keep a few acres to run horses, cows, chickens, and other animals. By economic measure, the trends for Iron County were positive throughout the 1950s, with government, manufacturing, trade, and finance showing growth. Cedar City's growth outstripped other

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deceased or living victims of leukemia, cancer, or other radiationcaused illnesses. Eleven of the twenty-four lived in Iron County during the period of atmospheric testing. Two were children who died of leukemia; eight others died of various other cancers; only one of the eleven was alive in 1984. 51 Judge Bruce Jenkins issued a landmark decision that awarded damages to some victims. The government appealed, and, in 1986, the Tenth Circuit Court reversed Jenkins's judgment. In January 1988 the Supreme Court again refused to hear an appeal. In 1990, however, Congress passed and President George Bush signed into law the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which created a $100 million trust fund to compensate citizens who lived downwind from aboveground atomic tests and later were stricken with radiation-related illnesses before warnings of potential danger were issued. The act was later amended to remove the $100-million ceiling and to allow uranium miners and test-site workers to participate in the compensation. The legislation states in part: The United States should recognize and assume responsibility for the harm done to these individuals.

And Congress recognizes that the lives and health of uranium miners and of innocent individuals who lived downwind from the Nevada tests were involuntarily subjected to increased risk of injury and disease to serve the national security interests of the United States ....

The Congress apologizes on behalf of the Nation to the individuals ... and their families for the hardship they have endured.

Some residents of Iron County, or their surviving family members, have been compensated by the fund. As of September 1994, 1,003 claims had been approved, 829 claims had been denied, and 125 were pending. Many who believe their cancer is fallout-related are prohibited from applying because of restrictions written into the legislation.

The end result is a more cynical attitude toward government. In recent years, many people in southern Utah have been skeptical of government promises and government studies. This was evident when the government was considering building the huge MX missile

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

track in the Escalante Valley in 1980 and 1981; it carries over to wilderness issues and endangered -species battles of the 1990s.

During his term as Utah governor, Scott Matheson brought to the forefront of public awareness the problems faced by Utahns as a result of the nuclear testing. At the 1979 hearings he presented some 1,100 pages of testimony concerning the AEC coverup and other research. All this was done before Matheson himself developed terminal cancer. His personal conclusion in 1986 was: I am still angry about the way this issue was handled by the federal government. It points to a continuing need for governors to be vigilant concerning both short-term and long-term impacts of federal decisions on their residents. If citizens in a state are to be sacrificed for the "national interest," then, at the very least, those citizens need to be fully informed and protected as much as possible. 52

Iron County After One Hundred Years During the 1950s, Iron County, Parowan, and Cedar City had centennial anniversaries, with pageants and the presentation of historical material. Rhoda M. Wood of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers (DUP) chronicled the first one hundred years of Cedar City history in "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," while Luella Adams Dalton was preparing her History of Iron County Mission, Parowan, Utah from materials collected during the WPA writers project of the 1930s.

With a booming mining economy throughout the 1950s, Iron County's growth exceeded 10,000; by 1960, the census total was 10,795. There were nearly 4,000 in the labor force, a figure that would remain almost constant for the next decade even though mining began to slow down and agricultural employment declined. Raising cattle and sheep and growing feed for livestock dominated agriculture. Mechanization continued to allow fewer people to accomplish more on a farm, yet many residents who had roots on a family farm continued to keep a few acres to run horses, cows, chickens, and other animals. By economic measure, the trends for Iron County were positive throughout the 1950s, with government, manufacturing, trade, and finance showing growth. Cedar City's growth outstripped other

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areas; it had 69.9 percent of the county population. Growing fears of nuclear fallout, decreasing demand for iron ore, and concern that Interstate 15 might bypass Iron County cities remained to cast a shadow.

ENDNOTES

1. Thomas G. Alexander, Utah: The Right Place (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1996),45.

2. Iron County Record, 6 August 1942, 23 December 1943; Brent Palmer, comments at Cedar City Town Meeting, 11 November 1995.

3. Richard Campbell Roberts, "History of the Utah National Guard: 1894-1954," (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1973), 298; Iron County Record, 24 October 1940.

4. Iron County Record, 26 March 1941, 1.

5. See Sandra C. Taylor, Jewel of the Desert: Japanese Internment at Topaz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

6. Donna M. Brown, "Universal Knowledge: Gerald R. Sherratt 'Keeper of the gates,'" Cedar City Magazine (Fall 1996): 18, 20; Donna M. Brown, Daily Spectrum, Neighbors Section, 28 May 1994, B3.

7. Iron County Record, 10 December 1942.

8. Iron County Record, 6 August 1942, 1.

9. Waldo Smith Topham, "Personal History of Dewey Anthon Topham," typescript, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, 1996,4-5.

10. Ibid., 5-7.

11. Wayne Gordon Jackson, "The Early Life of Wayne Gordon Jackson," typescript, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, 1991,6-12.

12. Ibid., 12-26.

13. See Norman D. Laub, "October 20, 1944, D-Day in the Pacific, The Beginning of the End," and Norman D. Laub, "And the Destroying Angel Shall Pass Them By," typescripts, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

14. Laub, "And the Destroying Angel Shall Pass Them By," 4. In the 1970s, Laub began shipping hay from his farm in Beryl to Japan, which led to a February 1985 visit. During this visit, he returned a Japanese flag which he had taken from the pocket of a dead Japanese soldier in Manila, explaning that returning the flag relieved him of a burden he had carried for forty years. Laub also returned to Manila to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of

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the rescue of the POWs on 3 February 1995. See Daily Spectrum, 6 March 1995.

15. Iron County Record, 10 June 1943.

16. Iron County Record, 8 June 1944.

17. Iron County Record, 16 August 1945.

18. Iron County Record, 11 October 1945.

19. Iron County Record, 4 October 1945.

20. Iron County Record, 13 May 1943.

21. James V. D'Arc, curator of the Arts and Communications Archives, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, has provided information on the history of filmmaking in southern Utah. Other sources of information are columns of the Iron County Record for 1938- 1944; Deseret News, 14 December 1946, 6; James V. D'Arc, "They Came This'A Way," Mountainwest Magazine (March 1978): 22-23, 26-28; and Kalli Scott, "Southern Utah's Movie Legacy," Southwest Utah Magazine (Winter 1993): 20-22.

22. Some of the carriages, wagons, and stagecoaches collected by Gronway Parry and used as props and scenery for the movies became the foundation of the Gronway Parry Collection of horse-drawn vehicles which can be viewed at the Iron Mission State Park in Cedar City. Parry restored many of the vehicles to pristine condition prior to his death in 1969. See "Building the Iron Mission Park in Cedar City," a proposal from the Iron Mission Park Commission, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, 8- 11.

23. See Iron County, Utah: An Economic Profile (Salt Lake City: Center for Economic Development, University of Utah, 1967).

24. Stuart Udall, The Myths of August (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994),131- 32.

25. Klien Rollo, Iron County Record, 7 June 1951. This report is dated "Somewhere in Korea, May 29."

26. See "History of the (213th) 222nd Field Artillery," in Forty Year Reunion special section of The Richfield Reaper, 15 August 1990.

27. Roberts, "History of the Utah National Guard," 492-93; Richfield Reaper, 15 August 1990, 14. The 213th Field Artillery Battalion was consolidated with the 222nd Field Artillery Battalion to form the 222nd Field Artillery on 1 July 1959; it is still headquartered in Cedar City.

28 . Iron County Record, 1 February 1951.

29. Iron County Record, 3 August 1950.

30. The AEC was created by Congress in the late 1940s at President Truman's request in order to protect U.S. nuclear secrets and combat com-

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munism. There was no peacetime precedent for the powers conferred on the Central Intelligence Agency and the AEC. The commission was given the power to classify as «secret" material generated by their work and the authority to decide who in the government «needed to know" about the action taken. See Udall, The Myths of August, 6.

31. AEC Minutes, Meeting No. 504,12 December 1950.

32. McRae Bulloch, lifelong resident and rancher of Iron County said, «We'd be out there on the [Nevada] range and the sky would light up. At first we didn't even know what they were doing, then we heard that it was an atomic bomb test." Quoted in Carole Gallagher, American Ground Zero: the Secret Nuclear War (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993),267.

33. Iron County Record, 5 March 1953.

34. Howard Ball, Justice Downwind: America's Atomic Testing Program in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 56.

35. Nuclear testing and the saga of the downwinders has been covered in: Ball, Justice Downwind; John G. Fuller, The Day We Bombed Utah: American's Most Lethal Secret (New York: New American Library, 1984); Philip L. Fradkin, Fallout: an American Nuclear Tragedy (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989); Gallagher, American Ground Zero; Barton C. Hacker, Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1947-1974 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994); and Udall, Myths of August.

36. Statewide newspapers generally supported testing but expressed concern when dangerously high levels of radioactivity were measured over Salt Lake City after a test in May 1952. AEC officials in Las Vegas assured the Deseret News that there was no danger, but a day later, the newspaper published an editorial warning: «Intermountain residents will now be more keenly aware of potential deadliness in the air each time a nuclear device is exploded on the nearby Nevada Proving Grounds. They want to be sure that the AEC is completely aware of its tremendous responsibility in assuring the safety of the entire area before an atomic explosion is set off." Deseret News, 8 May 1952.

37. When asked about concerns over nuclear testing during his childhood, Keith Seegmiller recalled only curiosity about the bright lights, rumbling, and strange pink clouds passing overhead. He did, however, recall vivid fears about going to bed because the communists might bomb Cedar City while he slept. Keith Seegmiller to Janet Seegmiller, 3 August 1996.

38. Scott M. Matheson and James Edwin Kee, Out of Balance (Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, 1986),89. Scott Milne Matheson, Jr., was born 8 January 1929, in Chicago, Illinois, a son of Scott Milne Matheson and Adele Adams Matheson, both natives of Iron County. The senior Matheson was

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an attorney and served as Iron County Attorney in 1934-35. After graduating from Stanford University with a degree in law, Scott Matheson Jr. was admitted to the Utah State Bar in 1953 and entered private law practice in Cedar City. From 1958 to 1976 he represented Union Pacific and Anaconda Copper. In 1976 he was elected governor of Utah on the Democratic ticket.

He was a very popular and respected governor for two terms from 1977 to 1984. He died of cancer on 7 October 1990.

39. Klien Rollo, Iron County Record, 19 March 1953, 1; Ralph J. Hafen, Iron County Record, 7 May 1953, 9.

40. Iron County Record, 4 June 1953.

41. Bulloch v. United States, 145 F. Supp. 824 (1956).

42. Stephen Brower, quoted in Gallagher, American Ground Zero, 264.

43. Bulloch v. United States, 145 F. Supp. 824 (1956).

44. From Stephen Brower prepared statement to U.S. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Health Effects of Low Level Radiation, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), 1:234. See also Fradkin, Fallout, 152, and Udall, Myths of August, 208- 9.

45. Bulloch et al. v. United States, and 95 Federal Rules Decisions, 123; Health Effects of Low Level Radiation.

46. Udall, Myths of August, 214-16.

47. Fuller, The Day We Bombed Utah, 257-58.

48. Ball, Justice Downwind, 84-93. See also Joseph L. Lyon et al., "Childhood Leukemias Associated with Fallout from Nuclear Testing," New England Journal of Medicine 300 (22 February 1979): 397-402.

49. Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation, vol. 2, 509-10.

50. The government's defense in some of these cases was "sovereign immunity." The cases have been discussed in Udall, Myths of August; Bell, Justice Downwind; Fradkin, Fallout; Fuller, The Day we Bombed Utah, Gallagher, American Ground Zero; and Hacker, Elements of Controversy.

51. See Fradkin, Fallout, 167-81 for a list of the victims and plaintiffs.

52. Matheson and Kee, Out of Balance, 103

CHAPTER 9

NATIVE AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN RECENT TIMES When Spanish traders and American and British fur trappers came to the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin in the nineteenth century, the people now known as the Southern Paiutes occupied a vast area west of the Colorado River, extending from Fish Lake and the Sevier River on the north to the Mohave Desert on the south. Within this broad area were many small family bands of Paiutes. After whites took over their lands, they were forced to congregate in larger groups, until there came to be approximately nineteen bands, or "sutsing."

Among the bands were the "Paruguns;' who lived along Clear Creek, and the "Kumoits," who lived in Cedar Valley. 1 The Iron Mission settlers called them "Piedes," and they are known today as the Cedar Paiutes. There was another band to the west living at the foot of Indian Peak in Beaver County, but through the years most of the Indian Peak Paiutes moved to Cedar City.

After Dominguez and Escalante's contact with the Cedar band in 1776, the Spanish Trail passed through the core of the Paiute homeland bringing Spanish travelers and slave traders. By the early 1800s, Indian slave trade was well established, with the submissive Paiutes a 155

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Meesebats, daughter of old Chief Canarrah/Kanarra, was the last survivor of the Tave-at-sooks band. As a "half-grown girl," she saw the white settlers arrive in 1851. (William R. Palmer Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUD)

major source of slaves for both Ute Indians and the Spanish. Young girls were a primary object of the slavers. Slaving and the introduction of European diseases disrupted the Paiute lifestyle. Garland

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Hurt, federal Indian Agent for Utah, reported in the 1850s that slave trade had reduced the Paiute population to the point where less than half the children were raised in their own band. In addition, thousands of horses and cattle traversing the Spanish Trail ate plants used by the Paiutes for food, further contributing to the decline of Paiute resources. 2 Mormon settlers at Parowan and Cedar City in 1851 were the first whites to settle on Southern Paiute land. Mormons distinguished themselves from other Americans by their intention to settle peacefully and their special interest in the Indians as the ÂŤLamanites" of their Book of Mormon. Brigham Young's Indian policy included teaching them white man's ways and converting them to Mormonism.

The Parowan and Cedar bands welcomed the first settlers, expecting them to be a protective buffer against their enemies. The settlers also offered access to the technology that had been used against the Paiutes. Before long a Mormon-Paiute relationship was established. The Southern Paiutes' lifestyle was based on kinship and reciprocity, and their adaptation to the Anglo-Mormon invaders mirrored their understanding of such a system. Faced with overwhelming power, they adapted by giving up their land in exchange for an arrangement whereby the settlers would look after them. In the Paiute view, gifts from the whites would flow from this ÂŤtreaty."3 The settlers took the choice land along the creeks. Within twenty years, farmers occupied the best agricultural sites and controlled the water sources throughout southwestern Utah. Livestock devoured vegetation that produced the nutritious seeds Indians were accustomed to eating. When Paiutes found they were unable to provide for themselves, frustration led to raids on cattle herds, especially in newly settled areas away from larger settlements. Eventually the Paiutes had to choose between moving to marginal desert or plateau regions or settling permanently at the fringes of Mormon settlements to beg and perform occasional labor. Bands that once occupied the valleys clustered near Parowan and Cedar City to trade labor for food, clothing, or manufactured articles. After the harvest of 1852, early Parowan settler William Adams credited the hard-working Indians with saving hundreds of bushels of produce. 4 For decades Mormon settlers

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took care of "their Indians," treating them in an indulgent manner and rarely acknowledging that by killing their game and taking their lands they were responsible for the pathetic condition of the natives. 5 A series of treaties in 1865 proposed to end Indian claims to land in Utah. As early as 1850, Brigham Young had asked the territorial delegate in Washington, D.C., to persuade the government to "extinguish" Indian title to the Great Basin, which hopefully would legalize Mormon land claims. The government did not extinguish Indian title, but the Indians almost did. Six Paiute chiefs met with Utah Superintendent of Indian Affairs O.H. Irish at Pinto in 1865 and agreed that "Pi -ede and Pah -Ute bands of Indians" would relinquish "right of occupancy in and to all of the lands heretofore claimed and occupied by them ... within the defined boundaries of the Territory of Utah." Under this treaty, they would have had to move to the Uintah Reservation within a year, which would have merged several bands of Utah Indians. 6 Utah Paiutes were to receive the same compensation that had been promised the Utes, with special compensation for the "head chief." None of the Indian leaders who signed the treaty represented the aggressive bands who were trying to stop white settlement in Clover Valley and Panaca, and none had authority to speak for the Indians occupying the majority of the land that was to be given up. The U.S. Senate rejected the treaty, which thus had no effect on the lives of the Paiutes except to indicate government intentions. Later Paiutes, in fact, found themselves at a disadvantage because they had no treaty to protect their rights, although the rejected treaty could have been disastrous to them.?

In 1873 John Wesley Powell and G.W. Engalls, acting as a special commission to examine Great Basin tribes, reported 528 Paiutes left in Utah and encouraged them to move to the Moapa Reservation in Nevada. But the Utah Paiutes, who actually numbered closer to 2,000, refused to leave the land they had traditionally occupied. 8 The Indian Appropriation Act of 1871 ended treaty-making between the United States and Indian tribes; thereafter Congress virtually took over control of Indian affairs.

The years from 1874 to 1927 are poorly documented for Paiute history. The Bureau of Indian Affairs CBIA) had insufficient funds or manpower to do much of anything for the tiny groups scattered

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159

throughout southern Utah) but their Mormon neighbors did feed them from time to time. Four tiny reservations for the Shivwits) Indian Peaks) Koosharem) and Kanosh bands were established by executive orders between 1891 and 1929. The Indian Peaks Reservation was established on 2 August 1915) and it was enlarged in 1921) 1923) and 1924. The band was a composite group and probably included the remnants of the Paraguns (Parowan) the Pahquits (Panguitch) and the Tavatsock/Taveatsooks (Corn Creek) bands.

They were more isolated and self-sufficient than other bands and the last to become dependent on the whites. 9 From 1916 to 1919) a BIA agency located on the Goshute Reservation two hundred miles to the north had responsibility for the Goshutes and for the Southern Paiutes at Cedar City and Indian Peaks. In 1917 the agent noted that "at Indian Peaks there were no infants-all dying in infancy) the same at Kanosh and Cedar City and other small places."lQ The 1920 census showed forty-eight members of the Cedar City band. Seventeen families lived in thirteen dwellings on a small tract of land near the mouth of Cedar Canyon. All men were listed as "common laborers)" none of the children were in school) ÂŤhomes" were crude and unsanitary-"mere hovels and old and wornout tents." In one case) fourteen people ate and slept in a dwelling fourteen by eighteen feet in dimension. In another) two older women lived under some old ragged canvas spread over a clump of sagebrush. 11 Because they were ignored by the government since they had been classified a "scattered band;) the Mormon church assumed responsibility for these Indians.

When President Warren G. Harding came to Cedar City on 27 June 1923) thirty-six Paiute men) women) and children assembled at the railroad depot to greet him. Harding noticed the waiting Indians and approached them) shaking hands) carrying on an animated conversation) and patting children on their heads. 12 Confusion reigned among parties responsible for the Cedar Paiutes. On 2 March 1925 Congress authorized an appropriation of $1)275 for the purchase of nine lots in Cedar City for the Paiutes; but the money would not actually be available until 1926. In the meantime) local Mormon church leaders William R. Palmer) Parowan Stake president) and William H. Manning assumed responsibility for

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the Paiutes. In the 15 May 1925 Iron County Record, Palmer reported that the government had refused to do anything for Cedar's Paiutes because they were a roving band and could be helped only by moving to a reservation, which they opposed. He announced that the Mormon church had purchased a farm and workshop for them, "with the view of making the Indians self sustaining." Homes would be built to house families. Upon learning of the Mormon offer, the government took no further action. The Cedar Indians then were without land of their own, however, because the Mormon church kept title to it. This may have been because earlier land given to Paiutes had been traded away for a horse and wagon. 13 Employment remained intermittent throughout the 1920s and 1930s, as Indian labor was mostly needed locally only during harvest time. Paiutes survived for the rest of the year by doing odd jobs, hunting and gathering, and collecting welfare from the LDS church.

Palmer and Manning sometimes acted as mediators between the Paiutes and the local white population. Manning, a music professor at the Branch Agricultural College, had a compassionate heart and a special interest in Indians. As early as 1926 he arranged for an "Indian Show" benefit that raised $500 to buy blankets and clothing for the Indians. When the Paiutes were in need of food or other essentials, or when they had problems with the police, courts, or other individuals, they sometimes turned to Palmer or Manning for counselor help. However, Mormon aid was limited to wages, food, or other consumables; little attention was given to educating or training Paiutes in skills that would allow them to compete in the white environment. 14 On 1 January 1927 the BIA created a Paiute agency and located it in Cedar City. Six small reservations and four settlements were under the jurisdiction of agency superintendent Dr. E.A. Farrow, who was in charge of 393 "reservation" Indians and 109 Indians classified as members of "scattered bands." Having the office in Cedar City did little for the local Paiutes, however. In fact, Farrow had to treat them as "non-wards" since the BIA controller general ruled that unallied Indians having no trust property could not receive benefits from appropriations made for the support and civilization of Indians. The consequence for the Cedar Paiutes living on Mormon-owned land

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These handsome cowboys-Jimmy Pete, Toby John, Stewart Snow, and Roy Tom-represent Paiutes who found employment on the ranches of southern Utah at the turn of the century. (Southern Paiute Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

was they were ineligible for federal assistance and the government disclaimed any responsibility for them. A 1931 BIA report concluded that the scattered bands would eventually die out; until that time, they should be looked after by local authorities rather than Indian agents. IS Several Utah Paiute groups benefited from federal work projects during the Depression years, but the Cedar Paiutes were left outside these programs. Their only assistance carne from a church -sponsored project in which Mormon church president Heber J. Grant gave William R. Palmer $500 to develop an arts and crafts business.

Baskets, gloves, moccasins, beaded bookends, and bows and arrows were produced for sale. By reinvesting the original $500, Palmer provided $1,107 worth of employment in a year's time. 16 The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (Wheeler-Howard Act) of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration might have brought significant reform and much-needed federal help, but the Cedar City Paiutes voted against participation, indicating they did not wish to

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be under the law, as they had been getting along for many years without much help from the government. 17 They little understood the impact and consequences of their refusal.

During the 1930s the Indian Peaks Paiutes became closely identified with the Cedar City band, as they spent more time in Cedar City and less on their isolated reservation. They also were plagued by the drought and dust storms of the mid-1930s. Palmer observed in 1935 that eight Indian Peaks residents were trying to cultivate about ten acres and were being paid by the government to fence livestock off their reservation. After 1940 most members of the Indian Peaks band lived at the Indian Village in Cedar City. 18 During the years Palmer and Manning were advising the Cedar Paiutes, some Paiute children began attending school. Manning personally rounded up those of school age, enrolled them, and checked up on them during the year. Younger children were more eager to attend than were older students, and it was many years before any graduated from high school. 19 During the 1950s, the four recognized Paiute bands were among the 3 percent of Indians terminated by Congress, thus revoking the trust relationship between the tribes and the federal government and making them subject to the same laws, privileges, and responsibilities as other citizens. Termination was designed for economically viable tribes that were without need of special services from the government. It was fostered by politicians who believed paternalism and tribalism kept Indians from assimilating into mainstream America.

Utah Senator Arthur V. Watkins was a key legislator in carrying out the policy. It is unclear why the policy was applied to the Utah Paiutes, who were among the most neglected and impoverished Indians in the United States.

Utah Paiutes soon realized that termination was devastating.

Given their poverty and lack of political savvy, they were unprepared to fight termination and poorly advised about how to do so. They did not understand the consequences of termination until it was too late.

They lost 15,000 acres of land, gardens, and farms and the right to receive federal services available to nonterminated tribes. Yet it was the greater loss of dignity and self-esteem that perhaps hurt the most. 20 Termination for the Paiutes was signed by President

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Eisenhower on 1 September 1954; it allowed one and a half years of BIA preparation.

Cedar City Paiutes, overlooked during the termination process, assumed they had been terminated with their Indian Peak neighbors, as did everyone else. There was even a BIA withdrawal office established in Cedar City. Sometime after 1957, BIA staff members in Washington, D.C., were checking the names of terminated Paiutes and noted that the names of the Cedar City Paiutes were not on the roll. Services from the BIA were supposedly restored to these Indians, although, as a practical matter, individual tribal members found it difficult to obtain aid in employment, scholarships, BIA boarding schools, or public health services, which were simply nonexistent in southern Utah.21 By 1958 the policy of terminating Indian tribes lost favor in Congress. No other tribes were terminated, and, beginning in the J 1960s, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations pumped significant federal aid into reservations through the Office of Economic Opportunity and other anti-poverty programs. However, between 1957 and 1975 the terminated Paiutes were almost forgotten. They were left to the care of state and local authorities, but the state provided little for them. Assistance from local church resources kept them from starvation but dependent on white society. One historian noted, "Increased alcohol use and early death seem to predominate in the memories of Paiute informants as they recall the posttermination days."22 Promise of government payment for taking tribal lands was nearly a twenty-year struggle; it ended in 1964 with a compromise that paid the Paiutes about twenty-seven cents per acre for the land.

The Southern Utah Paiutes received $2.9 million, with approximately $700,000 for the Cedar City band and $200,000 for the Indian Peak band. This must have seemed like a fortune for these impoverished people, who numbered only about 120 at the time. It helped provide housing for the Indian Peaks band and new or remodeled housing for others. Some of the younger people gained educational opportunities. In fact, however, the Paiutes had given up rights to more than 29 million acres and had gained only a relatively small monetary compensation. 23

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

In the mid-1960s the BIA realized that the Indian Peaks and Cedar bands were two different entities, and in August 1970 the Cedar band was informed it had never been terminated and therefore its members were eligible for federal services. By this time, both groups were living in similar circumstances, often in the same "Indian Village" in Cedar City, and it appeared grossly unfair that some received services that their neighbors could not receive. This prompted Indian Peaks leader Clifford Jake to investigate how to reverse the terminated status. An effort under the Utah Paiute Tribal Corporation and later the Paiute Tribal Council led to restoration as a single tribal unit rather than as five separate semisovereign bands.

Since legislation was necessary to restore the federal trust relationship, Utah's congressional delegation got involved. The Restoration Act (Public Law 96-227) was signed by President Jimmy Carter on 3 April 1980.

A tribal council elected under a new tribal constitution believed that a "land base for the four virtually landless bands" would help generate income and provide jobs as well as tribal gathering places.

The final solution to the effort to obtain the 15,000 acres called for in restoration legislation was a compromise. Paiutes were given 4,770 acres of marginal BLM land and a trust fund of $2.5 million, with interest from the fund to be used for tribal government and economic development. The Cedar and Indian Peaks bands received 2,050 acres, plus 425 adjacent acres near the Kanarraville/Hamilton Fort interchange on 1-15. As with other BLM lands given as reservations, the economic potential of the acreage is limited to provide Paiutes financial security. However, given the conservative budgetbalancing atmosphere during the Reagan years, there was consensus that the Paiutes were fortunate to get the settlement they did. 24 Utah's Paiutes celebrate the return of their trust status at a Restoration Gathering and Pow-wow each June. The celebration is a rallying occasion for the Paiutes, a chance to celebrate their culture and that of other Native Americans, and an opportunity to give their neighbors a sense of who they are. Elaborate costumes, traditional dance competitions, a softball tournament, and a parade are all part of the four-day ceremony which focuses on a culture that almost died out during the termination days.

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Chairmen of the Paiute Tribal Council since restoration include: Travis Parashonts (1981-84), Geneal Anderson (1984-93, reelected again in 1997), and Alex H. Sheppard (1993-97). Sheppard supervised construction of a new tribal community building to help the Paiute community become more self-sufficient and less dependent upon the government. The educational attainment of young tribe members has dramatically increased in recent years. In the 1960s one or two graduated in each high school class. Twenty years later, half the Paiute students completed high school, and current rates are over ninety percent. The example and constant support offered the students by tribal education chairman Gary Tom has paid off.

The number of Native Americans living in Iron County has grown steadily in the last three decades. Undoubtedly, programs at Southern Utah University which attract Navajos, Hopis, and other Indians from the Four Corners area account for part of this increase.

There were 142 Native American households in 1990, and a total of 633 Indians in the county. The Cedar City band has grown from 92 members in 1971 to 220 in 1997. The sesquicentennial in 2001 celebrating 150 years of white settlement in Iron County may not mean much to Native Americans, but surely there will be reason for Paiutes to celebrate their continuing cultural influence in the area where they have lived for hundreds of years.

ENDNOTES

1. Two books on the history of the Southern Paiutes have been used extensively in this chapter: Nuwuvi: A Southern Paiute History (Salt Lake City: Intertribal Council of Nevada, 1976), and Ronald L. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs: An Ethnohistory of the Utah Paiutes (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992). A history of Utah Indians is planned as part of the Utah Centennial commemoration. There are a variety of aboriginal names for the various sutsings, with some of them listed in Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 8-10.

2. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 19-21.

3. Ibid., 25.

4. Deseret News, 11 December 1852.

5. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 29-31.

6. Treaty quoted in Nuwuvi, 85-86.

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7. Nuwuvi, 86-87.

8. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 34-35.

9. Ibid., 41-43.

10. Annual Report, Superintendent of the Paiute Goshute Agency to the Commission of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1917, National Archives, Federal Records Group 75.

11. 1920 U.S. Census for Iron County, Utah; Annual Report of the Paiute Goshute Agency to the Commission of Indian Affairs, U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1918-1919, Denver Federal Records Center, Group 72, and quoted in Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 45.

12. Iron County Record, 29 June 1923.

13. Nuwuvi, 129-31; Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 45-47.

14. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 50-52.

15. Ibid., 52-53.

16. William R. Palmer, Journal, 1936, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

17. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 56.

18. Palmer, Journal, 1936; Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 57.

19. Dee El Stapley, Iron County School Superintendent, interview, 1 September 1994, notes in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

20. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 61-87.

21. Nuwuvi, 132.

22. Holt, Beneath These Red Cliffs, 103.

23. Ibid., 120-24.

24. Ibid., 134-47; Iron County Record, 9 February 1984, 5.

CHAPTER

10

PLACE NAMES AND COMMUNITY HISTORY

T

he communities of Iron County have diverse origins, elevations, histories, and status ranging from ghost towns to thriving cities. For the reader's convenience, the places are listed alphabetically.

Aberdeen Aberdeen townsite was laid out one mile east of Iron Springs in 1919 along the "new" railroad line. It was never developed.

Antelope Spring This spring at the north end of the Antelope Range and the south end of the Escalante Desert was a stopping place on the Old Spanish Trail. Antelope still roam the nearby desert.

Avon Avon is a railroad siding between Lund and Iron Springs on the spur into Cedar City.

Beryl Beryl was one of the three largest railroad siding towns along the 167

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

tracks that crossed the northwest corner of Iron County at the turn of the century. A hotel and warehouse served homesteaders and freighters, and a section house accommodated the railroad crew.

Enough homesteaders and railroaders lived in and near Beryl to locate a school there in the 1920s, with Maria Platt (Munford) as the first teacher and twelve or thirteen students in 1922. The school grew to thirty students of diverse races and nationalities, including Japanese, Italian, and Native American pupils. l The siding may have been named for the semiprecious stone beryl, said to have been found in the vicinity. 2

Beryl Junction Beryl Junction, located at the junction of highways U -56, U -18, and U -98, is thirteen miles south of Beryl. Once called Beryl Crossroads, this area was pa~t of the New Castle Reclamation Company property ffom 1909 to 1915. The company built a hotel midway between the crossroads and Enterprise. Prospective homesteaders were picked up at the Beryl railroad station, brought to see the agricultural development, and housed at the hotel. Mormon apostle David O. McKay, an officer in the company, invested in land at the crossroads. Although the reclamation project was unsuccessful, modern irrigation and deep-well pumping have turned the area into a rich agricultural valley. A community has grown to accommodate agricultural workers of Escalante Valley, with several retail businesses and the Beryl Baptist Church established in the 1960s.

Brian Head Brian Head Town is named for Brian Head Peak (11,307'), dominant headland of the Markagunt Plateau in eastern Iron County. The peak, one mile southeast of the town, provides a commanding view of the Colorado Plateau in all directions. There are several stories about how it was named. 3 During the late 1800s, the area was known as "Little Ireland," for the Adams family of Irish heritage who used the area for dairying and livestock grazing. "Minnie's Mansion," a local hotel built by Charles Adams in 1921 and run by his daughter Minnie, served as the social

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169

center for Parowan folks who spent their summers in the mountains tending livestock.

A ski resort was established in 1964 by Burton Nichols, with help from Georg Hartlmaier, Milt Jolley, D. W. Corry, Pat Fenton, and others. The town of Brian Head was incorporated in 1975. Population in 1990 was 109. The resort has grown to six double-lifts and a snowboard park, complete with snowmaking equipment added in 1993.

The area offers year-round recreation: skiing, snowboarding, and snowmobiling in the winter and spring, backpacking, day-hiking, and mountain biking in the summer and fall.

Buckhorn Springs Buckhorn Springs was a well-known watering place along the old California wagon road and was also a favorite waterhole for desert bighorn sheep, antelope, mule deer, and other wildlife. John Eyre in 1887 became the first settler to live near the springs. Between 1907 and 1922 some twenty families moved to the Buckhorn Flat and engaged in dry-land farming. One family was Lewis Farnsworth's; his son Philo is known as the inventor of television. The Buckhorn Branch of the Paragonah LDS Ward was organized in 1910. The first school was taught in 1907 and the last in 1922-23. Years of drought drove most of the farmers out in the 1930s. 4 However, deep-well pumping and improved irrigation have proven successful in recent years and families have returned to live and farm on Buckhorn Flat.

Cedar City Named for the abundant juniper trees in the area, which the settlers called cedars, Cedar City was settled 11 November 1851 and is discussed throughout this book. George A. Smith had the name Cedar City in mind for the settlement even before he sent the iron missionaries in November 1851. 5 Aided by the establishment of the Branch Normal School (now Southern Utah University), Cedar City grew to 1,530 residents in 1900. The development of tourism, the coming of the railroad in 1923, and the development of the iron mines made Cedar City one of the fastest-growing towns in Utah through the 1950s. As mining slowed in the 1970s and 1980s, community leaders set out to attract

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

new businesses and manufacturing plants to bring new jobs and diversify the economy. In tandem with record -setting enrollments at Southern Utah University, the city population grew from 6,106 in 1950 to 17,811 in 1996.

Chloride In 1890 silver chloride was discovered in Chloride Canyon on the western slope of the Antelope Range, twenty-three miles west of Cedar City, and the resulting mining camp was named Chloride.

Mining operations continued off and on from 1890 to 1910. Near the mouth of the canyon to the south is Sand Spring, used by travelers on the Spanish Trail.

Desert Spring A stagecoach inn and freighter's camp was built at Desert Spring at the junction of roads from Beaver, Iron Springs, Mountain Meadows, and the Nevada mining camps. Ben Tasker, cattle rustler and outlaw, used Desert Spring as his headquarters. The Desert Spring cemetery is three miles north of Modena on the west side of the road going to Hamlin Valley. Ruins of the stagecoach stop are opposite the cemetery on the east side of the road. Tasker sheltered rustlers and other outlaws at his hideout, which was complete with a trap door leading to a stable under the house where horses were kept ready for a quick getaway.

Enoch Enoch was first called Elk Horn Springs by travelers along the Spanish Trail. After 1851 it was known as Johnson's Ranch or Springs for Joel H. Johnson, who established a herd ground and stockade there to protect the cattle of Parowan and Cedar City. Abandoned during the Indian troubles of 1853, as its seven families moved to Parowan or Cedar City, the community was reestablished in May 1854. A fort was built one-quarter mile west of the springs by Johnson. Thereafter, the community was known as Johnsons Fort.

John Pidding Jones and his sons moved to Johnsons Fort about 1869. Jones built and operated an iron foundry for twenty years while his sons engaged in farming and dairying. Joseph Armstrong bought half of the fort in 1880. When a post office was requested in 1884,

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another community was already named after Johnson, so the Jones family, organized in a Mormon United Order, or Order of Enoch, suggested the name of Enoch. 6 When Enoch was incorporated in 1956, the old settlements (Enoch, Grimshawville, Stevensville, and Williamsville) came together in name, but the town remained a spread-out rural community of farms and scattered homes. The population remained under 250 until the 1970s when several subdivisions were developed.

Pastures and fields still dominate the landscape, as townspeople actively work to maintain a rural atmosphere. Population in 1996 was 2,576 and growing.

Fiddlers Canyon Fiddlers Canyon originates on the Markagunt Plateau at Jones Hill, five miles northeast of Cedar City, and drains northwest into Cedar Valley. The story is told that among men building the coop road up the canyon were four who played fiddle in camp-Joseph Hunter, John L. Jones, Edward Parry, and Elliot Wilden-and so it became "Fiddlers Canyon."7 CCC workers in the 1930s built a dam and irrigation reservoir in the canyon that were later washed out by a flood. The mouth of the canyon was annexed to Cedar City in 1979 and developed as Fiddlers Canyon subdivision by Frank Nichols.

Ford Ford was a railroad siding and sheep-shearing station five miles southwest of Lund.

Gold Springs A mining camp on the Utah-Nevada border seventeen miles northwest of Modena opened about 1897. The spring on the Utah side is named Gold Springs, and gold and silver are found in the mining district. Population in 1910 was forty-five. Telephone service and electric power from Dixie Power Company were established in 1917-18. The buildings and deserted homes at present-day Gold Springs were built or renovated and lived in when the mine was open during the 1930s. 8

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Grimshawville According to local history, William H. Grimshaw wandered through Cedar Valley in 1902 looking for the tallest sagebrush. He found it north and west of Enoch, and there he homesteaded. He and his wife brought honeybees and planted corn and alfalfa. Soon they discovered bees and alfalfa-seed-raising thrived together, and so they went into the seed business with what was described as phenomenal success during the good water years. 9 Many families moved to the area to plant alfalfa, but later years of water shortage caused many of the fields to die out. Grimshawville became part of Enoch Town when it was incorporated in 1956.

Hamlin Valley In the early 1920s, homesteading dry farmers from the Midwest built a schoolhouse/community center in the south end of the Hamlin Valley about seventeen miles north of Modena. It was open from about 1920 to 1926. There were twenty-eight students attending in 1922-23 when Oscar Hulet began his teaching career there.

The valley proved more suited for livestock range than farming. The source of the name is unknown, unless it is a misspelling of Hamblin after early Washington County settler Jacob Hamblin.

Hamilton Fort Hamilton Fort, six miles south of Cedar City, was founded in 1852 by Peter Shirts, who settled with his family on a stream he named Sidon Creek but which later became known as Shirts Creek. 10 He sold half his water claim to John Hamilton and Peter Fife in order to build up the community, which was then called Walker, and obtain some measure of protection from the Indians. The families took refuge in Cedar City during the Indian troubles in 1853. When the Hamilton and Fife families returned to the area, they built an adobe fort and called it Fort Sidon. II By the 1860 census, the settlement was known as Hamilton's Fort, population thirteen. About the turn of the century, a number of large brick homes were built. By the 1940s Hamiltons Fort was almost abandoned. However, in the 1990s new homes dot the fields and foothills overlooking the old townsite.

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173

Heist A railroad siding town five miles northeast of Modena called Escalante on the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad timetable in 1914 is today the ghost town of Heist.

Iron City In 1868, when the Union/Pinto Iron Works was established on Little Pinto Creek south of Iron Mountain, a town known as Iron City grew up around the iron works. Ebenezer Hanks, president of the company, owned the town site. By 1870 the city had eighty-nine residents in nineteen households. The town grew until by 1875 there were dose to 200 residents. Most families moved away after the works dosed in 1876; by 1880 there were only fifteen residents. The charcoal kilns, foundry, and blast furnace lie in ruins among many other foundations. Only one of the three beehive-shaped kilns is still complete. The site is on the National Historic Register and is owned by the Sons of Utah Pioneers.12

Iron Springs One of many springs along the Spanish Trail, Iron Springs rises at the head of a gap in the mountains that connects Cedar Valley on the east with the Escalante Desert on the west. Old roads to Parowan and Cedar City passed the springs, and livestock watered there while being moved from winter range on the desert. Thus, it was a natural place for sheep shearing in the spring. The Cedar Cooperative Sheep Company built a long narrow building for shearing known as the «old rock house." Shearing at Iron Springs was a «big event" which attracted many of the county's men and boys, who camped in tents or wagon boxes. It was a time of long, hard days but plenty of «devilment" at night. According to William R. Palmer, «That old place figured in enough outlandish pranks to fill a book."13 When the railroad spur was built into Cedar City in 1923, the rails came first to Iron Springs, where a depot was built. From Iron Springs, a spur went south to the iron mines. The townsite was at its height when the Pioche and Desert Mound mines were producing between the years of 1924 and 1936. There was a post office in the branch store of the Cedar Mercantile Company, and the Iron Springs

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

school operated from 1924 to 1930. 14 The mine employed about forty men at that time, and Iron Springs had its own baseball team, which competed against teams from CCC camps and other towns.

Kanarraville Kanarra (later Kanarraville) was settled in 1861 and 1862 by families from Fort Harmony. Fort Harmony, settled in 1852 on Ash Creek, was abandoned after most of its adobe walls were washed away during twenty-eight days of heavy rain in January and February 1862. Two new areas were settled, one to the west called New Harmony, where John D. Lee built a rock fort, and one to the east on Kanarra Creek. Popular belief is that it was named for Chief Canarrah or Quanarrah, leader of a Paiute tribe, but settlers spelled it Kanarrah or Kanarra and later called it Kanarraville. Original settlers included William R. Davis, Richard Palmer, Samuel Pollock, James Davis, Elisha H. Groves, John H. Willis, William S. Riggs, Sidney Littlefield, Edward Littlefield, Josiah Reeves, and Rufus Allen.

In 1866, after a violent three-day windstorm, the community was strengthened by the addition of families moving away from Indian troubles in Long Valley who helped move the townsite one mile southwest. The new families were those of John W. Berry, William Shank Berry, Rebecca R. Beck, John D. Parker, and Lorenzo Roundy.

Log cabins, the meetinghouse, and the cemetery, where the storm had uncovered caskets, were moved to the new site. Cabins were placed surrounding a town square, which settlers called Fort Kanarra. 15 In the early years, Kanarra was bounced from county to county in boundary adjustments. It has been in Washington, Kane, and Iron counties, but remained in Iron County after the Public Land Office survey of the 1870s. Most Kanarraville residents have been farmers and ranchers or mined coal from deposits on Kanarra Mountain. P. Arnold Graff, prosperous farmer, livestock man, and coal mine owner, had the first automobile in Kanarraville. The Model T Ford came to Lund on the railroad in three large crates, and Graff and his friends went to Lund by wagon to put the car together and drive it home. 16 Dry farming in Kanarraville started in the nineteenth century several years before it was popularized by John Widtsoe and other

PLACE NAMES AND COMMUNITY HISTORY

175

agriculturalists from Utah State Agricultural College. Kanarraville was incorporated in 1934. The population has vacillated between 225 and 325 from the 1880s to the 1990s, with only 228 in 1990; but there has been a growth spurt of more than thirteen percent since 1990, as many new homes have been built in town and in new subdivisions in the foothills.

Kerr One of the sidings along the railroad, Kerr was north of Lund and ten miles south of Nada. It was named for William J. Kerr, the fourth president of Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University). The townsite was purchased by Dr. Ludwig A. Culmsee about 1913 but never developed into a thriving town. l ?

Latimer Another railroad siding north of Lund is Latimer, located between Kerr and Nada. District records show that school was taught there in 1917-18 and 1923-24.

Lund Lund was the most important railroad town and station for people living in eastern Iron County. It was named for Robert C. Lund, prominent lawyer and state legislator from St. George, who was an associate with other Utah businessmen in the Utah & Pacific Railroad. When its first census was taken in 1900, the only residents were seventeen-year-old telegraph operator Robert Youngblood and two ranchers, Peter and Harrison Gurr, from Parowan. The first depot was two box cars, one a waiting room and the other an office.

About 1903 construction began on a large Spanish-style depot. When the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad was finished in 1905, this depot was called the most beautiful building along the route. 18 By the 1910 census, Lund's permanent population was twenty-four.

In January 1911 Henry J. "Harry" Doolittle, who had been president of the Commercial Club in St. George, moved to Lund. He had a large forwarding warehouse built to "supply the wants of the people of southern Utah in the line of flour, grain & provisions."19 J. David Leigh also built a new store in the fall of 1911. Hundreds of new

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

The Lund flood of February 1922. (Photo from album of Russell E. Anderson, railroad telegrapher)

landowners were expected to move to the area, which had been opened in February 1911 for entry under the Smoot Enlarged Homestead Act. Platting and establishment of a permanent townsite was done in 1913 by Mayhew H. Dalley, Iron County surveyor, so that residents could acquire title to the land. In 1913 there were seven homes, three hotels, a garage, a blacksmith shop, two general stores, a post office, three warehouses, four barns and corrals, and various camp houses, bunkhouses, outbuildings, and tents.

Homesteading and freighting brought many new residents and daily visitors. Calvin E. Wright as a boy sold the Salt Lake Tribune in town and recalled that Lund was a busy little place in our time .... Lots of "freighters" with their teams and wagons came from Cedar, Parowan, St. George, etc. I remember the Indians who used to come and camp in the sand dunes east of our house, we bought pinenuts from them. And the troop trains coming through in World War I. And the university extension "Demonstration Train," a sort of State Fair on wheels, containing all kinds of exhibits of Utah's resources, when Lund was crowded with visitors. 20

So much has been written about the Lund flood that it is difficult to separate folklore from fact. It is hard to imagine the flat desert

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under one to four feet of water) but it did happen. Many stories say it was in 1915 and that the Enterprise Dam broke; however) the 17 February 1922 Iron County Record tells it this way: A flood struck Lund Wednesday morning coming from the higher country of Newcastle) Enterprise and Modena. The water having accumulated for days since the big thaw) moved upon the town banked against the railroad track) rising gradually until all the houses) hotels) and places of business were abandoned) with water several feet deep in them .... Lund is a desert no more.

The flood resulted from warm weather quickly melting an unusually heavy snowpack in the Bull Valley Mountains and the waters flowing to their natural low point at Sulphur Springs) two miles northwest of Lund. Water backed up along the railroad grade because no one thought it necessary to build culverts in a desert.

The community of Lund flourished) at least in the memory of the children who lived there. Ruth Leigh Cox loved town picnics on the sand hills east of Lund and ice skating in the winter on frozen puddles on Main Street.21 Calvin Wright remembered ÂŤmiragesÂť on summer mornings that made it look as though Lund were up in the air) and whirlwinds like little tornados. 22 Socials) dances) and Sunday school were held in the Lund schoolhouse for residents of nearby towns. Lund residents were of many nationalities and religious backgrounds. The Mormons usually used the schoolhouse on Sunday mornings and the others met on Sunday in the afternoon.

As a railroad town) Lund declined between 1923 and 1940.

During World War II it prospered) as florspar was mined in nearby mountains and traffic became heavy on the route to Los Angeles.

When passenger t r ains stopped going into Cedar City) Utah Parks buses picked up tourists at the Lund depot to begin weeklong circle tours of the parks . The last passenger bus from the depot left for Cedar City in 1969) and Union Pacific had the depot dismantled in 1970 to avoid paying property taxes on it. The desert so quickly reclaims its land that little is left of Lund but many colorful tales of adventure and struggle.23 In 1997 the area was being considered for a large development by Circle-Four Farms of Beaver County.

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Marchant During the 1930s a few Japanese farmers moved to an area eight miles north of the Beryl crossroads and two miles east of U -98, where they had good farms for a few years. They built the Marchant school, which was used from 1934 until 1940. 24

Midvalley Midvalley was a farming center in the middle of Cedar Valley west of Enoch where a number of second- and third-generation Cedar City families started farms after 1910. School was held there between 1914 and 1920.

Modena Fifty miles west of Cedar City on U-56, Modena is Iron County's second-most important railroad town. The rails of the Oregon Shortline reached the site on 30 April 1899. No one knows for sure the source of its name. 25 Just three miles south of Desert Spring, Modena was strategically in the right spot to grow. Railroad crewmen made up most of the town's permanent population from 1900 to 1940, but farmers, miners, railroad and forwarding agents, and merchants were drawn to the city. It was the closest station to St. George and other western Washington County communities, to Stateline and Gold Springs mining towns, and, until 1905, to the mines and towns of Lincoln County, Nevada. Forwarding warehouses and stores, boarding houses, and hotels were built in addition to the railroad section houses. By 1910 a weather observer from the Department of Agriculture was stationed in Modena and remained for many decades.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s a change in railroad policy allowing railroad workers to commute, the invention of the diesel train engine, and the onset of World War II all contributed to Modena's decline in population. The unique school built as a WPA project in 1936 closed its doors in 1953 but still enhances the community. Not surprisingly, the town has endured. It now serves a new population of desert dwellers moving to western Iron County to escape urban life.

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Nada Nada is a railroad siding on the Iron-Beaver county line. The name is Spanish for "nothing:' but that is not how Ludwig Culmsee saw the area in 1913. In 1912 a hostel or temporary hotel provided accommodations for those seeking "free" 160-acre ranches on newly surveyed land in Iron County opened to homesteading. Land locators met the trains and guided hopeful landowners, like Culmsee, to see the potential of the area. Culmsee chose a claim near the Nada sidetrack, where he moved his family in 1913, visualizing not a homestead but a community. Culmsee obtained a post office for Nada and for twenty-three years kept the community on the map, even though its population peaked just before World War I. However, constant wind, jackrabbits, and drought doomed the colony. Since the population was split between the two counties, Nada did not always qualify for a school; but Mrs. Culmsee, and later her son Carlton, taught local children anyway. It took years of hard labor and the drilling of a well to make a partial success of Culmsee's farm. Behind a windbreak of hand-watered tamarisk trees, he grew berries, lettuce, carrots, melons, and squash. After Culmsee's death in 1936, the wind and the desert reclaimed the hard-won farm and with it the community of Nada. 26

Newcastle The "castle" in Newcastle came from the rock formations above the reservoir that look like an old castle. Although the first farmers and homesteaders came from Pinto in 1893 and 1894, it was 1903 before the first home was built. The town was established and officially named New Castle on 12 April 1909. The New Castle Reclamation Company was already working on the G r ass Valley Reservoir and development of farms five miles west of the townsite, where the New Castle Reclamation Hotel welcomed prospective land buyers. A telephone line was established 1 May 1909. School began in 1913.

The Grass Valley Reservoir failed to supply water for irrigation, and a small ir rigation reservoir was built in 1915 and the present Newcastle Reservo ir in 1955-56.27 Newcastle's farmers and green-

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house industries use reservoir, deep-well irrigation, and geothermal water resources.

Pages Ranch Pages Ranch lies on Richie Flat at the western edge of the Harmony Mountains where the road from New Harmony intersects the road to Pinto. Robert Richie began ranching this area in the 1850s. His grandsons Daniel and Robert Page were raised on the ranch and in 1890 took it over. In 1900 Daniel Page constructed a large brick ranch house which is still in good condition and on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1900 there were thirty-two people living in this corner of the county, most of them involved in ranching and mining. The ranch was at the crossroads of two major freight routes: one between New Harmony and Iron City, the other from Cedar City to Pinto to St. George. Page Ranch House was home for Sophia Page and her children, who operated the ranch for thirty years, using the house as an informal hotel for travelers and boarding house for men working in nearby iron mines. 28

Paragonah Paragonah is a Paiute Indian name meaning "red water" or "warm water;' or perhaps "many watering holes." The settlement was first called Red Creek, after the name of the stream which arises in the canyon to the east. There are an unusually large number of mounds and petroglyphs near Paragonah, indicating large prehistoric populations of Fremont peoples. The name was once written and pronounced "Paragoonah." One 0 was dropped from the spelling during the late nineteenth century but not in the pronunciation. 29 An adobe meeting house was built in 1861, which, after being whitewashed, was known as "the Old White Church." It served many years longer than planned because financial problems associated with the anti-polygamy crusade of the 1880s forced work to stop with the walls half up on a new building begun in 1885. All major town meetings and socials as well as school were held in the Old White Church.

It was remodeled in 1890.

Finally, in 1900 a fine brick tabernacle was finished. It had high arched windows, one made of stained glass purchased by the girls of

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the Mutual Improvement Association. With a cultural hall addition built in the 1960s) this historic building was used until the 1970s.

Many townspeople sadly watched the demolition in 1974 after they had tried to save the building. Benches and other artifacts were used later in the town hall.

The legacy of Paragonah settlers is one of hard work and craftsmanship. Their motto in the nineteenth century was "Paragonah) The Abode of Thrifty Pioneers." The town was incorporated in 1916. It had an elementary school until the 1950s) but students now attend school in Parowan. The number of residents has been somewhat stable) ranging between 300 and 500 for many years. In 1993 long-time resident Nina Robb described the irony of living in Paragonah) "There)s no industry here so it leaves it nice and quiet; but because there)s no industry the children all have to move away."30

Parowan Southern Utah)s first settlement and county seat of Iron County) Parowan blends a rich historical past with present-day small-town hospitality. Its history is discussed throughout this book. Parowan is known as "mother town of the southwest" because so many pioneers moved from there to start new communities in southern Utah) Nevada) Arizona) Colorado) and even Oregon and Wyoming.

Parowan was to be the agricultural center of Iron County) and Cedar City the manufacturing center. However) many experienced craftsmen) including cabinetmakers) joiners) and millers) were sent with the original company to Parowan in order that the colony in Iron County might become self-sufficient. The craftsmen set up small shops at the south of the original fort: burr flour mill (1853) cabinet shop (Elijah Elmer built the first) tannery (1850s)) blacksmith shop (1850s) gun and machine shop (Dr. Calvin Pendleton)s) 1850s) wheelwright shop (Lorenzo Barton)s) carpenter shops (Samuel Warden)s replaced the wheelwright shop and Herman D. Bayles had another one next door)) tub and bucket factory (1858) built by Samuel Woolley) cotton factory (took over tub and bucket factory in 1860 and run by Ebenezer Hanks) wool scouring and carding plant (same site) 1866)) saddle and harness shop) pottery factory

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(1850s, built by Thomas Davenport), and a lime kiln (built by Morgan Richards, Sr.).3J Thomas Durham arrived in 1856 after crossing the plains with the Martin handcart company. In England, Durham was a woodturning expert and he is known for making fine furniture. Durham and James Connel had their cabinet shop in the basement of the cotton factory. They were stalwarts in the Parowan United Mercantile and Manufacturing Institution (PUMI) organized in 1869. The cabinet shop acquired a reputation for quality and craftsmanship and supplied southern Utahns with furniture for many years. Items produced include double lounges, known as Mormon couches, and a pioneer ÂŤhide-a-bed."32 Parowan serves as year-round gateway to Brian Head Resort and Cedar Breaks National Monument. The city has seen significant growth in the 1990s. City officials have maintained financial stability while encouraging community projects that preserve the pioneer heritage and increase tourism. Parowan is a Main Street Heritage community and site of the annual Iron County Fair on Labor Day weekend. In honor of Utah's centennial, the Parowan Heritage Park was dedicated on the 145th birthday anniversary of the community, 13 January 1996. Parowan is an economically strong and growing community with a population in 1996 of 2,068. 33

Sahara (later Zane) Sahara was a railroad siding town and homesteader community ten miles southwest of Lund and five miles northeast of Beryl settled during the second decade of the twentieth century. The area attracted dozens of prospective dry farmers after 1910; most were southern Californians with very little farming experience, and none coaxing crops from desert lands. It is not surprising that between 1916 and 1918 most of Sahara's dry farmers experienced partial or complete crop failure. At the end of each farming season, the exodus of a few more homesteaders occurred. What is surprising is that a number of people stayed in the area despite the adverse conditions. Social geographer Marshall E. Bowen concluded that those who remained ÂŤhad come to appreciate the non-agricultural aspects of life in the Escalante." Residents enjoyed frequent dances, card parties, dinners,

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and other socials held at the schoolhouse, with guests from almost every other area siding town. Summertime outings to the mountains, hunting expeditions in the fall, and opportunities for children to gallop across the flats on their very own horses were pleasures that could not be easily discar.ded. 34 Homesteaders who remained adapted by moving, sometimes two or three times, until they acquired better farm land, or they became ranchers in the foothills of the Wah Wah Mountains or railroad section hands or supervisors. Arlie and Ottie Fourman first homesteaded in 1916 but moved back to California during World War I. In 1919 Arlie returned to Sahara and traded his homestead for eighty acres in the shallow-water district where farm land was better. He drilled a well before convincing his wife to return. They moved their homestead house and barn to the new place by sliding them on the snow. About this time, Sahara was renamed Zane. The Fourmans' daughter Alice said Union Pacific officials felt the name "sounded too much like the Sahara Desert. Zane was for Zane Grey."35 For thirty years, Arlie Fourman worked on the railroad and added to his farm south of the sand dunes by buying up land as neighbors moved away or in tax sales. He gave farming up about 1925 but ran cattle on his 2,888 fenced acres. His wife took Alice to Cedar City to attend high school. After Alice married, Ottie learned to endure the loneliness on the ranch as all her neighbors moved away. There were twelve residents in Zane in 1940. In 1950 the Fourmans returned to California; Zane's last residents were gone. 36

Stateline (or State Line) Stateline Canyon crosses the Utah-Nevada border and drains into the south end of Hamlin Valley in northwestern Iron County. After silver and gold were discovered in 1894, a mining district was formed.

Stateline flourished for several years as a mining town, complete with stores, hotels, school, a newspaper named the Stateline Oracle, and a medical doctor. The population was 118 in 1900 and peaked about 1903 with between 200 and 300 residents. An estimated 13,000 ounces of gold and 173,000 ounces of silver were taken from these mines. 37 The single surviving issue of the Stateline Oracle dated 28 November 1903 describes a busy mining community where every trip to or from

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town was newsworthy. A masquerade ball was the community's way of celebrating Thanksgiving in 1903 since, as the editor lamented, they had no place of worship where they could give thanks in a more appropriate way. Even in this far corner of the county, live music was played. The ball was not limited to local residents, as a great many attended from Fay, Nevada, a "sister" mining camp.

The town was a mile-long stretch of stone and false-front buildings' some of which are still standing, as are the mills on the sides on the canyon. Ore values dropped in 1905 and most miners moved on.

The names of many Stateline families filled the delinquent tax lists over the next few years. Stateline is now a ghost town and the area the domain of stockmen.

Stevensville The Stevens brothers and their families settled about 1910 in northern Cedar Valley four miles northwest of Enoch, and the resulting community was called Stevensville. The farms were noted for flourishing alfalfa in good water years.

Sulphur Springs A stagecoach and freighter stop was built at Sulphur Springs on the road from Beaver to Pioche in the 1870s. By 1880 this stop was busy with freight wagons and stagecoaches hauling between Nevada mining camps and the railroad terminus at Milford.

Summit Situated at the crest or divide midway between Parowan and Cedar valleys, Summit was first laid out as a herding ground in 1853.

In the spring of 1858, Samuel T. Orton and others moved near Summit Creek and began farming. Other families joined them, each farming small plots and herding a few sheep. They had cows for milk, cheese, and butter, and beehives for honey.

In July 1877 Summit LDS Ward was organized with Sylvanus C. Hulet as bishop. A log schoolhouse was replaced with a one- room concrete building and then by a two-room brick school in 1920 to house students through the seventh grade. For more than a hundred years, Summit has been able to point with pride to the well-qualified and outstanding professional teachers who have come from the town.

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Summit's canals and ditches were lined with rocks in a Works Progress Administration project about 1934. (William R. Palmer Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

The tradition began with Mayhew Dalley, who graduated from the Brigham Young Academy in 1881, and Parley Dalley, who graduated from the University of Utah in 1909 and taught many years at the BAC. Oscar Hulet began teaching in 1924 and retired as principal of North Elementary forty-four years later. Dr. Dee El Stapley was superintendent of Iron County schools until 1997.

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HI STORY OF IRON COUNTY

Summit's population has not fluctuated much since the early 1900s. Locals who have stayed and retirees who have moved in want to keep it a small town. Without stores or amusement centers, the people of Summit create their own fun. "There's just no other choice when you live in a town this size," said Sylvia Stapley, who has lived and played in Summit for sixty-five years. 38 Sleighing in horse-drawn sleighs has evolved into four-wheelers pulling inner tubes, and summer fun might be mountain biking instead of horseback riding, although there are still plenty of horses. Population in 1993 was 238.

Tomas The railroad siding west of Modena was named Tomas, but it is not known whether anyone lived there besides the section crew.

Uvada The last railroad siding in Utah, and terminus of the railroad from 1899 until 1905 when the tracks were extended across Nevada to California, is Uvada. It is in Pleasant Valley. A post office was authorized for Uvada on 3 August 1900 but never established. 39

Yale Yale, a railroad siding town five miles southwest of Beryl, had seventy-five families sometime between 1915 and 1927. Prout was established as a post office on 11 November 1916. The name was changed to Utana on 12 July 1920, and then to Yale on 22 October 1923. It was finally discontinued on 30 March 1927. A school was held from 1921-24 at Yale. Ron Hatch of Modena was born there but said that he "outlived the town."40

Zane (formerly Sahara) Zane was the second name for the town ten miles southwest of Lund and five miles from Beryl. The post office name was officially changed to Zane on 1 January 1925; it was discontinued on 14 June 1930. 41 ENDNOTES

1. Maria Platt, "My Story," in Pratt Bethers, A History of Schools in Iron

County, 358.

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2. Utah Writers Project, Origins of Utah Place Names (Washington, D.C.: Work Projects Administration, 1941), 10.

3. See Rufus Wood Leigh, Five Hundred Utah Place Names (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1961), 8; John Van Cott, Utah Place Names (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), 49; and J.J. Johnson & Associates, "Brian Head, Utah, Master Plan" (Cedar City: Southern Utah State College, School of Continuing Education and Public Service, 1978), B-1, copy in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

4. Luella Adams Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 211-12.

5. William R. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 1, no. 4, 4 November 1951,2.

6. John Lee Jones, Biography of John Lee Jones, 1841-1935, compiled

by Clynn L. Davenport (Santa Monica, CA: n.p., 1965), 1-3. See also "Historical Sites and Landmarks, Fort Johnson," WPA papers, Iron County, Utah State Historical Society; and Spectrum, 14 August 1993,6.

7. Van Cott, Utah Place Names, 136.

8. Blair Maxfield, interview with author at Gold Springs, 8 September 1995. See also Gold Guidebook for Nevada and Utah (Dana Point, CA: Minobras Mining Services, 1981), 57.

9. Spectrum, 14 August 1993,6; Rhoda M. Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," 47-48.

10. Sidon was an ancient Phoenician city and one of a few Phoenician names in The Book of Mormon. USGS maps show Shirts Creek and Shirts Mountain with the alternate spelling of Shurtz. Locals prefer the spelling of Shirts, used by Iron Mission pioneer Peter Shirts.

11. John D. Lee's diary for 11 April 1852 records him accompanying a party of Mormon church officials from Harmony to Cedar City, "I accompanied them to Fort Sidon where we corrald our Stock & staid over night."

See John D. Lee, A Mormon Chronicle: The Diaries of John D. Lee, 1848-1876, edited and annotated by Robert Glass Cleland and Juanita Brooks, vol. 1 (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1955), 158.

12. Kerry William Bate, "Iron City, Mormon Mining Town," Utah Historical Quarterly 50 (Winter 1982): 47-58.

13. Palmer, "Livestock Stories," Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 5, no.

240, 14 August 1955; York Jones and Evelyn Jones, Lehi Willard Jones, 1854-1947,210.

14. Bethers, A History of Schools, 277.

15. Opal Pollock Williams, "Kanarra is a pretty little town," 1984, 3, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

16. Paul Arnold Graff, "Paul Arnold Graff," typescript, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

17. Carlton Culmsee, "Last Free Land Rush," Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (Winter 1981): 30-31.

18. Iron County Record, 22 January 1970, 1.

19. Iron County News, 14 July 1911; Washington County News, 8 June 1911; Ann Brest van Kempen, Harry Doolittle: "An Honest-to-Goodness Splendid Citizen" (n.p., 1995),47-58, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

20. Calvin E. Wright to Mrs. Alma Frahske, 22 October 1976, copy in author's possession.

21. Iron County Record, 26 November 1976, 1.

22. Calvin E. Wright to Alma and Fay Frahske, 27 February 1977, copy in author's possession.

23. Fay Frahske Burns has collected many written memoirs from former residents of Lund. Her collection is in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

24. Bethers, A History of Schools, 250.

25. Van Cott indicates that the best suggestion is that an Italian laborer named the railroad camp after a city in northern Italy, Utah Place Names, 254. Another story is that a Chinese cook at the railroad camp after serving one group would call out to the next, "Mo'dinna, mo'dinna."

26. Carlton Culmsee, "Last Free Land Rush/' 26-41.

27. Shirley E. Hart, "A History of New Castle, 1893-1975," 1975,4-8, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

28. Nomination form for NPS National Register of Historic Places, in author's possession.

29. See A Memory Bank for Paragonah (Provo: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1990),95-122,214.

30. Steve Law, "Paragonah, Utah" Spectrum, 4 September 1993, 5. See also A Memory Bank for Paragonah.

31. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 356-62.

32. See Connie Morningstar, Early Utah Furniture (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1976); and Marilyn Conover Barker, The Legacy of Mormon Furniture (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1996),95-97.

33. There are a number of histories on Parowan, including Dalton, History of Iron County Mission; Parowan, Utah, Stake History, 1851-1980 (privately published, 1980); History of Parowan Third Ward, 1851-1981 (Parowan: n.p., 1981); Cindy Rice, "Museum Feasibility Study: Parowan Rock Church" (Cedar City: Southern Utah State College, 1973); Harry P.

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Bluhm, Lucius Nelson Marsden, Prominent Southern Utah Banker, Merchant, Livestockman and Church Leader, 1862-1931 (Salt Lake City: n.p., 1993).

34. Marshall E. Bowen, "Household Relocation in a Great Basin Homesteader Community," P.A.S. T. Journal 18 (Fall 1995): 47-54.

Sahara/Zane is the subject of an intensive study by Dr. Bowen, distinguished professor of geography at Mary Washington College.

35. Alice Fourman Couch, "UTAH 1915-1993," 1995, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

36. Ottie Fourman died in 1978; Arlie Fourman died in 1989. Shortly before his death, his grandson made a tape of him talking about Utah. See Couch, "UTAH 1915- 1993," 7-8.

37. Gold Guidebook for Nevada and Utah, 104.

38. Steve Law, "Summit, Utah," Spectrum, 18 December 1993, 8.

39. John S. Gallagher, The Post Offices of Utah (Burtonsville, MD: The Depot, 1977), 35.

40. Bethers, A History of Schools, 277; Gallagher, Post Offices of Utah, 35.

41. Gallagher, Post Offices of Utah, 36.

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CHAPTER 11

EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS Barely five weeks passed in newly settled Parowan before a school was started. On 20 February 1851 George A. Smith began building a wickiup for a school. The next day, he wrote that he had commenced a grammar school, and a week later he wrote that his "scholars assembled round the campfire, freezing on one side and roasting on the other, listened earnestly to my lecture on English grammar."l Support for education has not diminished in the many decades since its humble beginnings around Smith's campfire.

Pioneer Schools School moved inside as soon as homes were built, and then into the new log council house, where Martin Slack, Esiah Coombs, William Hammond, and a Mr. Hoyt were teachers. On 23 December 1851 an eighteen-by-twenty-four-foot adobe schoolhouse was dedicated. Children and adults attended early schools, studying with a few slates and reading the only two books available, a copy of Robinson Crusoe and The Book of Mormon.

In 1852 the territorial legislature gave county courts responsibil190

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191

ity for establishing school districts, with trustees to be elected by vote of the people. Under this statute, each community in Iron County had a separate school district until 1915, at which time state law mandated single county districts. Teaching credentials were unheard of for the first fifty years. Those with some education who were willing became the teachers. In Parowan, Joseph Fish attended school for three months each winter and was surprised to be asked to be the teacher with William Davenport for the winter of 1857-58. He accepted only because it was a call from the local LDS stake president, but he proved to be a good teacher. In the 1860s Fish taught school in his home, hop ing to earn a living. He had sixty students in November 1865, but his labors brought him more experience than income because he taught very cheaply and took his pay in wood or other goods. He concluded, "But I got some experience and probably studied more than I would have had I not tried to teach."2 The students varied in number, ages, and learning levels. Spelling contests provided some entertainment, as did the first newspaper in the county, a manuscript of local news read at school gatherings.

Called ÂŤThe Intelligencer," it was started by William Davenport, Hyrum Coombs, Josiah Rogerson, and Joseph Fish, all of whom took turns editing it. It became a source of amusement, but it also got the editors in trouble when they were honestly critical of the local choir leader or church leaders. Fish wrote, "We learned that an editor must not say just what he thinks at all times if he wants to keep out of hot water." 3 Cedar City's first school was held in Joseph Chatterley's double cabin, which served in the first fort for church and school. Matthew Carruthers, an alumnus of Edinburgh University in Scotland, Joseph Chatterley, and George Bowering were early teachers.4 Twenty-yearold John M. Macfarlane, educated in Scotland, arrived in Cedar City in November 1853 and soon started teaching in the new fort (Plat A).

When Cedar City moved to a new site (Plat B) in the late 1850s, school was held in a one-room adobe building, in the social hall next door, and in a number ofhomes. 5 When the Paragonah fort was built in 1856-57, a large room in the northeast corner served as meeting place and school room. Later, an adobe structure was built that served as the schoolhouse for forty-

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One of Parowan's log schools and its students, about 1890. (Utah State Historical Society) five years. In 1906 a brick two-story building with a bell tower was built. Bricks were made locally of mud from Little Creek, sun dried in the fields, then fired in a kiln.

In the 1860s Parowan's school trustees built east and west schoolhouses of the logs from the Council House, which came down when the Rock Church was built. One of the better teachers was George Washington Crouch, who taught mathematics and served as principal. He hired his best student, Morgan Richards, as a teacher. The basement of the Parowan Rock Church was also divided into three classrooms where Richards and two assistants taught students of all ages. Richards taught for twelve years, then served on the board of trustees and later as county school superintendent. 6 The office of county superintendent was created in 1860 by an act of the legislature. In 1866 John M. MacFarlane became the first Iron County superintendent of schools, and he reported 631 pupils between the ages of four and sixteen. Teachers were paid from two to five dollars per quarter, sometimes in cash but mostly in produce.

Morgan Richards succeeded MacFarlane in 1868. The third superintendent, William C. McGregor, claimed in 1874 that there were 965 potential pupils aged four to sixteen but an actual enrollment of 710.

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Seven male teachers were collectively paid $1,058, while sixteen female teachers received a total of $434. The superintendent's remuneration was just fifteen dollars/ In 1891 the territorial apportionment of school money to Iron County was $3,809.80, based on an enrollment of 860 students at $4.43 per student. 8

New Buildings Parowan built a large one-room concrete schoolhouse in the 1870s that had whitewashed walls and a belfry. It inspired Cedar City residents to plan for a new building. In 1881 trustees chose the northwest corner lot on First East and Center Street (where Cedar's Rock Church now stands) as a school site. When asked to exchange his lot for two city lots in the north part of town, George Wood gave clear title to the property, "provided it should never be used for other than school or church purposes throughout Cedar's existence."9 A twostory rectangular building was constructed, with two first-floor rooms ready for use on 15 January 1883. Mayhew Dalley and Sarah Ann Higbee, who had attended Brigham Young Academy in Provo, taught in the new schoolhouse. Dalley's first contract was for sixty dollars per month, one-third wheat, one-third merchandise, and onethird cash. 10 As enrollment grew, the top floor of the school building was finished, then four more rooms were added. By 1916 six rooms in the Ward Hall also were being used for classes, but classrooms remained overcrowded. Heating was provided by pot-bellied stoves, restrooms were outhouses, and water came from a hydrant on the grounds.

When the school board decided to build another new school, George Wood again donated land-this time an entire block between 300 and 400 West and Center Street and 100 North, where a large building was built. On 14 February 1916, students marched from the old building to the new, which is now part of Cedar Middle School campus.

Mission Schools In 1880, Reverend William C. Cort established a Presbyterian mission school in Parowan. A two-story building later was built with kitchen, living room, and bedrooms for the teachers on the ground

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Cedar City elementary and junior high buildings on 300 West, with BAC campus in the background, 1923. (Courtesy Homer Jones)

floor. A large upstairs room doubled as school room on weekdays and chapel on Sundays. Classes were usually taught by female missionaries. The school was popular with Protestants and Mormons alike because of its high-quality instruction. Students there were the first to receive secondary education in Parowan. The school was closed in 1908. 11 Reverend Cort sent Miss Eliza Hartford to teach in Cedar City in 1880. Her arrival created a stir and many Sunday sermons warned against sectarian teachers and preachers, so no one in Cedar City would rent a room for a Presbyterian school. Hartford wrote a discouraging letter to a Rev. D.J. McMillan describing the intolerance shown her.l2 The mission to teach in Cedar City ended in 1885.

Parowan Stake Academy The success of Presbyterian mission schools in providing advanced educational opportunities moved Mormon leaders to establish a church -sponsored high school system. Eventually there were nineteen church academies from Canada to northern Mexico; they were mostly staffed by graduates of Brigham Young Academy.

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The church paid salaries and stake boards of education provided classrooms and equipment. Tuition was ten dollars per quarter. The LDS Parowan Stake Academy was established in the fall of 1890 and offered high school secular and religious education. Sixty-seven students enrolled the first term in courses such as algebra, arithmetic, grammar, composition, geography, penmanship, gents and ladies hygiene, theology, music theory, and vocal and instrumental music.

Located in Cedar City, the school occupied the second floor of the Knell Building for two years and the second floor of the city halll courthouse for six years. Mayhew Dalley was principal. After public high school education became available at the Branch Normal School (BNS) in 1897, the academy closed. 13 A high school department remained part of BNSIBAC until 1940. Parowan High School began in 1916 with forty-five students in seventh to ninth grades.

Iron County School District Consolidation of local districts into the Iron County School District and creation of a county school board came in 1915. The first board appointed Herbert P. Haight as interim superintendent.

Previously, some superintendents were elected and others appointed. 14 Great progress in public education came after passage of Utah's public school law in 1890. Order and uniformity came with central leadership and funding following consolidation in 1915. By 1920, students in grades one to eight were meeting in imposing two-story brick buildings in Parowan and Cedar City. New two-story brick schools were built in Paragonah and Kanarraville in 1920. Their forty-two-year histories both ended with the close of the 1962 school year.

One-Room Schools In western Iron County, small schools remained the norm.

According to the 1900 census, the mining town of Stateline, the first community of any size in the western valleys, had 118 residents and eighteen children attending school for a five-month term. When mining slowed, a few families kept the school open. A 1914 picture shows seven students, of the Ograin and Drake families, and their teacher,

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Rhoda Bryant. A wooden schoolhouse complete with belfry was the first school in Modena; nine children attended classes in 1910. 15 Beginning in 1910, a national "back to the land" movement encouraged by federal reclamation and homesteading legislation brought new families to settle marginal lands at Escalante and Hamlin valleys and Buckhorn Flats. Small schools for grades one to eight sprang up in isolated communities. Some of Iron County's finest teachers devoted themselves to these rural schools. The first school in Newcastle was held in John Tullis's new granary in 1912, where Maria Platt was the teacher. Oscar Hulet, who taught for fortyfour years in Iron County, began his career in Hamlin Valley in 1922-23. He had twenty-eight scholars in seven grades, all in an unfinished one-room schoolhouse with a potbelly stove for heat.

Hulet's contract was for sixty dollars a month for a seven-month school year. He supplemented his earnings with nine dollars a month as school janitor and seven dollars a month as postmaster. 16 Classes were held intermittently, as people moved in and out of these fragile communities. The schoolhouse at Sahara/Zane was moved into Beryl for the year 1927-28, then moved again four miles south to Wells. There were also small schools at Buckhorn Springs from about 1907 to about 1922, at Hamilton Fort until 1924, and a Midvalley school from 1918 to the mid-1920s. School was opened in 1924 at Iron Springs in a building moved from Yale and used until 1930. 17 Lund's young children were taught at home until 1914 when the frame schoolhouse was built and Kathy Webster became the teacher. This school continued until the 1950s. 18

Consolidation When N.J. Barlow became county superintendent of schools in 1924, he found a district with low assessed valuation and too many one-room schools. Barlow came at an opportune time, for the iron mines were opening and in the next thirty years county valuations rose until the school district was the second richest in the state. After developing good training programs and workshops for rural teachers' Barlow recognized that the greatest need was to consolidate schools and develop transportation. As money became available, the district began buying school buses for a transportation system.

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By 1930 the one-room schools were closed and students were being bussed to larger communities. Consolidated schools for western Iron County were in Modena, Newcastle, and Lund. Newcastle Elementary received a new building in 1928. In Modena, a dismal square building with an outdoor lavatory was replaced by an attractive rock school built as a WPA project in 1936. The building had a unique fan -shaped archway over the front door and large classroom windows. Classes for students in eastern communities from grades one to eight were held at Paragonah, Parowan, Cedar City, and Kanarraville.

Between 1934 and 1940 a unique one-room school operated at Marchant, eight miles north and two miles east of Beryl Junction. A few Japanese families took up farms in the area and built a school for their children. A picture of the students shows nineteen children, seven Japanese and eleven Anglo-American, with a female teacher.19 Superintendent Barlow established the first salary schedule for teachers and the first health program for Iron County schools.

Emphasis continued on teacher training, with one teacher sent away each year for advanced training. Barlow's service from 1924 to 1946 included two difficult periods, the Depression and World War II. His accomplishments, in addition to consolidation, included construction of new high schools in Parowan in 1930 and in Cedar City in 1939.

Cedar City High School Many presumed that students in the high school department at the BAC obtained superior training because its teachers were better trained. While this may have been true, the joint campus also limited both schools. In 1938 Superintendent Barlow recommended and received approval to separate the high school from the college. This opened the way for the college to grow toward full four-year status and for the high school students to have their own separate identity.

The new Cedar High School campus constructed on Center Street included an auditorium, stadium, gymnasium, and classroom building. Community organizations, including Elks, Lions, and Rotary clubs, contributed a flagpole and band uniforms and started one of the first driver-training programs in Utah, with donated cars from

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clubs and local dealers. Stadium bleachers were purchased by the school board and students and were assembled by the Lions Club and school custodians.

In September 1939 a sophomore class occupied the new build~ ing; in 1940-41, considered Cedar High's first year, sophomores and juniors attended. Ianthus Wright was principal. In 1941-42, seniors were represented, and the first graduation was 14 May 1942. 20

Building Boom When Ianthus Wright became superintendent in 1946, he confronted two major problems: uncertified teachers and over-crowded classrooms. According to Wright, "It was only a short time until we had practically every teacher in Iron County certified."21 During World War II, a growing population bulged many classrooms to fifty or more children, but no schools could be built. Cedar City elementary, junior, and senior high schools were all overcrowded. After the war, schoolchildren became the major beneficiary of iron mining, which provided a large tax base for replacing older and smaller facilities. Four new elementary school buildings were built between 1950 and 1961. Three were neighborhood schools in Cedar City, one in each area of town. East Elementary was completed in 1950, followed by North in 1954, and South in 1959. In 1961 a new building was built in Parowan for children from Summit, Parowan, and Paragonah.

In 1964 the twenty-year-old, severely crowded Cedar High School was replaced by an innovative building. Its development coincided with a major effort to restructure the curriculum. Set on a twenty-one-acre campus, there was room for a stadium, tennis courts, baseball and other sports areas, and eventually a vocational building. In 1966 Cedar City High School was selected by the Kettering Foundation as one of thirty-six schools to demonstrate innovations in education. Pratt Bethers's A History of Schools in Iron County, 1851-1970, described the school's integrated building and curriculum.

Student enrollment in the district stabilized, with students remaining near 3,000 from 1960 to 1975, as birth rates decreased and the economy stagnated. School population started increasing again

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199

in the mid-1970s as families moved into the county. Development of the college to four-year Southern Utah State College led reasons for enrollment increases in the 1970s. There were 3)565 students in 1979.

New federal and state programs mandating educational opportunities for disabled or lower-income students required additional staff) which reduced staff/pupil ratios throughout the district and significantly reduced class sizes in lower elementary grades. Students with special needs are also often mainstreamed into regular classrOOins in ÂŤinclusionÂť programs.

Escalante Valley Elementary serves students from western Iron County) including migrant children who are in the area seasonally.

Some of them have limited English skills) so special programs are offered to meet their needs. Although farming and agricultural businesses are more successful than ever in the Newcastle) Beryl, and Enterprise areas) the number of students attending Escalante Valley Elementary remains near one hundred. 22 High school students from these areas can attend Enterprise High School in Washington County or one of the Iron County high schools.

A dramatic increase in Iron County population after 1988 led to an unprecedented enrollment explosion. The 6)600 student enrollment in the fall of 1996 was a 1,600-student increase in eight years.

Unusually) families moving to the area had more teenagers than young children. Enrollment of 1 AOO students at Cedar High School in facilities built for 700 created the need for a building program. A $28 million bond was passed in February 1994 to pay for construction of Cross Hollows Intermediate School and Canyon View High School. Cross Hollows opened in the fall of 1995; Canyon View High School opened in the fall of 1997.

At Parowan High School, enrollment increased 25 percent from 1989 to 1994. The school's reputation for quality) progressive education was enhanced by recent technology funding) new classrooms) and a gymnasium completed in 1994.23 With an enrollment in grades seven through twelve of fewer than 450 students) the school competes in athletics with Class 2-A high schools but participates with Cedar High School and Washington County high schools in music) drama) and Sterling Scholar programs. Parowan High School faculty use an innovative curriculum designed to integrate humanities and the arts

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with Utah core requirements of English and history. The student body size is a positive factor which has also drawn students from other communities to enroll at the school. 24 Iron County schools are poised to take advantage of educational changes made possible through computer and media technology.

After a bond election in 1992, the district spent $1 million to place computer labs in all elementary schools, upgrade media services, purchase educational software, and provide computer links to university and other major libraries to facilitate student and faculty research.

State and district funds also have provided opportunities for high school students to enroll in university classes offered through ED NET facilities in their own buildings or by concurrent enrollment at Southern Utah University.

The long-term commitment of residents to quality education continues. Just as pioneer leader George A. Smith volunteered to teach reading around the campfire, hundreds of volunteers, including many grandparents and senior citizens, serve as classroom helpers. While administrators expect future challenges from continuing in-migration and accompanying sociological changes, a strategic plan is in place to meet these challenges. 25 Set on a broad foundation of strong educational programs and community forces working together, Iron County schools look forward to using the latest technology to prepare an ever-increasing number of students for the challenges of the twenty-first century.26 ENDNOTES

1. George A. Smith, Journal, 20-27 February 1851, Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

2. Joseph Fish, The Life and Times of Joseph Fish, edited by John H. Krenkel (Danville, IL: Interstate Printers & Publishers, 1970), 61, 86-88.

3. Ibid., 88-89.

4. John Chatterley, "History of Cedar City," typescript, Special Collections, Cedar City Public Library.

5. L.W. Macfarlane, Yours Sincerely, John M. Macfarlane (Salt Lake City: n.p., c. 1980), 55; Pratt Bethers, A History of Schools in Iron County, 1851-1970, 39. This is the source for most information on Iron County schools from 1880 to 1970.

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6. Bethers, A History of Schools, 153-65.

7. Ibid., 160.

8. Iron County News, 17 January 1891, 8.

9. Rhoda Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," 32.

10. Bethers, A History of Schools, 294.

11. Ibid., 165-66,284-86. Parowan's mission school lasted longer than most; many other Presbyterian mission schools in Utah were closed between 1889 and 1893. See Mark T. Banker, Presbyterian Missions and Cultural Interaction in the Far Southwest, 1850-1950 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press), 149.

12. Eliza Hartford to Rev. D.J. McMillan, 23 November 1881, in Bethers, A History of Schools, 283-84.

13. B.H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1965), 6:516-19; Bethers, A History of Schools, 165, 185,295,301-2; Parowan, Utah, Stake History, 1851-1980, 71; Iron County News, 3 January 1891, 8.

14. Bethers, A History of Schools, 160, 291-319. Superintendents prior to 1915 and approximate years of service include: John M. Macfarlane (1866-68); Morgan Richards, Jr. (1868-70); William C. McGregor (1870-74); John E. Dalley (1883); Mayhew H. Dalley; Henry Leigh (1889-95); George W. Decker (1899-1901); Julius S. Dalley (1902-04); John S. Woodbury (1904-06); Erastus B. Dalley (1906-08); Richard Bryant (about 1912); and Parley Dalley (1912-15). Superintendents after consolidation were: J. Wesley Barton (1915-16); L. John Nuttall, Jr. (1916-19); H. Claude Lewis (1919-24); N.J. Barlow (1924-45); Ianthus Wright (1945-65); Joe Reidhead (1965-69); J. Clair Morris (1969-86); DeeEl Stapley ( 1986-1997); and Michael Bennett, (1997-).

15. Bethers, A History of Schools, 279-80; 1910 U.S. Census.

16. Oscar Jones Hulet, "Autobiography of Oscar Jones Hulet," 16, typescript, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University; Bethers, A History of Schools, 282.

17. Bethers, A History of Schools, 244-82.

18. Dixie Doolittle Anderson to Calvin Wright, 15 February 1977, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

At least twenty-eight teachers taught in Lund between 1914 and the 1950s.

19. Bethers, A History of Schools, 250.

20. Ibid., 314-16.

21. Ibid., 317.

22. There were 108 students enrolled in 1996-97. News and Views (Iron County School District) 4 (January 1997): 3.

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HI STO RY OF IRO N CO UNTY

23. "Iron County School District 1993 Community Report," January 1994, 7.

24. Steve Law, "Home of the Rams: PHS reaches for lofty peaks," Spectrum, 15 January 1994, 3.

25. Projected enrollment in the fall of 1999 is 7,628 students, an increase of2,500 students in ten year s. News and Views (January 1996): 7-8.

26. Iron County schools from 1905 to 1997: Beryl (1924-1928?); Buckhorn Springs (1907-1922?); Cedar City School (1881-1916); West Elementary (1916-1959); East Elementary (1950-present); North Elementary (1954-present); South Elementary (1959-present); EnochOld Log School House (1891-1911); Enoch Church Basement (1911-1917); Enoch Brick School (1917-1930); Enoch New Elementary (1979-present); Escalante Valley (1950-present); Fiddlers Canyon (1983-present); . Kanarraville (1920-1962); Hamilton Fort (1910s-1923); Hamlin Valley (1920-1926); Iron Springs (1924-1930); Latimer(1917-1918, 1923-1924); Lund (1914-1950s); Marchant (1934-1940); Midvalley (1910s-1920s); Modena log and concrete schools (1910-1936); Modena Rock School (1936-1953); Nada (1919-1929); New Castle Tullis' Granary (1914-1916); New Castle schoollchurchhouse (1916-1928); New Castle two-room school (1928-1952); New Castle Reclamation (1917-1918); Paragonah (1920-1962); Parowan concrete school (1870s-190?); Parowan brick school (before 1907-1917); Parowan Elementary/High School (1917-1960); Parowan new elementary (1961-present); Parowan High School (1930-present); Sahara/Zane (1917-1924?); Stateline (1900-1918); Summit concrete school (?-1920); Summit brick school (1920-1936); Wells (1928?-1933?); Yale (1921-1924); Cedar City Junior High (1918-present); Cedar City High School (1939-1963); Cedar High School (1964-present); Cedar Middle School (1980-present); Red Rock Intermediate (1991-1995); Cross Hollows Intermediate (1995-present); Canyon View High School (1997-present)

CHAPTER

12

FROM NORMAL SCHOOL TO UNIVERSITY Southern Utah University celebrated its centennial in 1997, one year after Utah's statehood centennial. The story of the school's founding is one of valor and sacrifice. The university stands as a monument to the nineteenth-century men and women of Cedar City whose vision of the importance of education extended beyond their own lives and those of their children. 1

Branch Normal School Plans for a branch of the state normal school in one of the southern counties were discussed in March 1897 during the first full legislative session following statehood. Intended primarily to train elementary teachers, the school was to offer a course of study equal to three years of high school, which at the time filled requirements for normal certificates. Recognizing the great advantage afforded the community where a normal school was established, Representative John Parry of Iron County persuaded Senator Edward H. Snow, whose district included Iron, Washington, Beaver, and Kane counties, to require a commission to investigate possible sites and locate the 203

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school in a southern community. A bill approved on 11 March 1897 authorized the superintendent of public instruction, the president of the University of Utah, and an appointee by the governor to select the school's site. These were Dr. Karl G. Maeser, Dr. John R. Park, and Dr. James E. Talmage. Paragonah, Parowan, Cedar City, and Beaver were considered. 2 Cedar City's citizens sought the selection with great fervor and organization. At a mass meeting, Lehi W. Jones, John S. Woodbury, and Edward J. Palmer were appointed to the local committee. The commission arrived in Cedar City on 8 May to look over a proposed school site and consider a petition outlining the advantages and countering the disadvantages of Cedar City as the best location. The initial offer of six acres was deemed inadequate, and the citizens committee spent Saturday, 9 May, securing an additional nine acres for the campus. The unfinished Ward Hall was offered for use so the school could open in the fall of 1897, with the building to be deeded to the state until a permanent building was built. 3 The city's fine educational record was in its favor, as was its centrallocation in southern Utah. In addition, there was no saloon in town, a claim no other competing town could make. Cedar City was notified on 19 May of its selection. Had citizens known of the hardships they would encounter for many years to retain the school, they might not have rejoiced so much in the selection.

Obstacles arose almost immediately. On 22 June 1897 the committee was told the $15,000 appropriation for 1897-98 could not be released until title was transferred to the state for the exact land described in the commission's report, complete with the building on that piece of land. This could delay the opening of school for more than a year or change the location. In order to open school with the four teachers already hired, the regents proposed that the Cedar City committee advance the money for school apparatus and furniture and pay teachers' salaries until the permanent site and buildings were accepted by the state. Eight men agreed to mortgage their homes to obtain the needed funds; Zions Saving Bank took mortgages on just three homes, those of Lehi Jones, John Chatterley, and Robert Bulloch. 4 Citizens committed themselves to finishing Ward Hall with building materials that were at hand, and laborers worked at a fever-

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ish pace throughout the summer. In September, when 118 students arrived for class, all was ready except for the cornice under the roof, which had been forgotten until an early November blizzard coated desks with snow. University of Utah president Joseph T. Kingsbury chose Milton Bennion as BNS principal and Howard R. Driggs, Annie Spencer, and George W. Decker as teachers.

Next, the largely agrarian community of 1,500 men, women, and mostly children had to construct a $35,000 building. With the city's total business volume for an entire year less than $100,000, the task was considered stupendous. Many wondered, "How could an almost cashless community build a $35,000 building?"

The community was fully committed to build on Academy Hill.

Even while Ward Hall was being finished, materials for the BNS building were being gathered. The Rollo family began making the brick and some red sandstone was quarried. The Jensens began sawing lumber and hauled a small amount to town, but an early fall snowstorm shut down the operation. By mid-December 1897 the building committee realized that prospects were poor for completing the building by September 1898. Principal Milton Bennion went to Salt Lake City during the Christmas holidays and met with President Kingsbury and the Utah Board of Regents. He described the shortage of materials and the severity of the winter and on behalf of the Cedar City committee asked for an extension of time to complete the building. The board answered that the city had to comply with the law or the school would be closed at the end of the first year. 5 Cedar City's citizens met on New Year's Day 1898. Although some denounced the state for imposing unreasonable conditions, others were willing to try if men could get lumber from the sawmill at Mammoth Creek before the snow started to melt. Of all events of the school's history, perhaps the most courageous was this effort to bring out the lumber. Nothing so hazardous had ever been purposefully undertaken in Iron County. Led by Heber Jensen, the men of the first party reached his sawmill in a heavy storm. They loaded the lumber and immediately started back over a snow-covered trail; but they had to leave the lumber on their wagons, which were buried in snow after the first night's camp.

Howling winds had shaped the loose snow into drifts ten to fif-

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teen feet deep and seventy-five to a hundred yards long. While some h orses worked at the drifts only as long as they could keep their noses above the snow, one huge horse named Old Sorrel pushed and strained against the drifts until they gave way. He worked at the drifts until the wagons were out of danger. 6 The entire undertaking was almost called off after this first expedition, but some "mighty impassioned oratory" convinced some men to go back and haul out the lumber. All the townspeople supported the mountain crew. Men made bobsleds or sleighs, and women made sheepskin -lined coats, long underwear, and caps with ear protectors.

Neighborhoods provided meals on a rotating basis. Snowstorms every two to three days kept the danger level high, but the thirty-mile t rip from town to mill was divided into four drives and each load of lumber was brought to a safe camp at night. Food and supplies traveled up the line, keeping the men as comfortable as possible. Even when a bitter cold spell dropped mountain temperatures to forty degrees below zero, there were no serious injuries to the thirty-three men involved and only three horses died. 7 Brickmaking resumed as soon as winter storms subsided. This t ask was not so heroic, but it was grueling in its way. Spoilage was h eavy due to spring showers and frosts, but finally, after intense effort, there were 250,000 bricks available.

The entire population of youths and adults worked on the building or helped in other ways. As men cut stones for the foundation, others kept their tools sharp; three men repaired the sawmill tools, wagons, and sleighs while another maintained the harnesses. Farmers and stockmen provided food for lumberers or brickmakers and sent t eams or hauled supplies. It is said that women ran the town businesses and other operations while the men were engaged at the school.

With the building all but completed in early September, 161 students began classes in its spacious rooms. This building is known today as Old Main but was first known as the BNS and later as the Library Building. It was remodeled once after the original construction and again after a fire during the winter of 1948 destroyed the top floors. Old Main today symbolizes faith, courage, fortitude, and unparalleled sacrifice for education.

From 1897 to 1913 the school was a branch of the University of

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First Branch Normal School building, now Old Main, photographed with building committee members and their wives; Francis Webster, Ann Elizabeth Webster, T. Jedediah Jones, Eva L. Jones, John Parry, Mary Ann Parry (left to right). (Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

Utah, offering high school instruction. Some graduates received normal certificates and taught in the common or elementary schools of southern Utah; other graduates went on to universities. Milton Bennion imposed a rigid standard of social conduct upon the students, and the school developed a strong reputation which aided its cause when competition for survival evolved in the early 1900s between the normal school and Mormon academies at St. George and Beaver.

Music and art classes were in the curriculum from the school's first year. By 1902-1903 O.C. Anderson had added a small band, private instruction in instrumental music, and a course of piano study.s With this foundation, the music department progressed into performances of oratorio, opera, and, later, musical theater. Citizens began to recognize the refining influence of the school on the community.

Branch Agricultural College As the only state-supported high school in Utah, the BNS fought yearly for its continued existence. Legislators from other counties felt

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that the state should not maintain a high school in Cedar City while they supported their own high schools through local taxes or donations. Fearing that state funds would not support three colleges, the University of Utah set a policy that the BNS could not offer classes beyond the high school level. Cedar City citizens opposed this position, arguing that the state's purpose for establishing an institution in southern Utah was to develop a school of higher education. In 1913 Representative Wilford Day of Iron County steered a bill through the legislature which transferred the school from the University of Utah to the Utah State Agricultural College (USAC) at Logan. Although some feared this would diminish teacher programs in favor of agriculture programs, it remains one of the most provident steps in the school's history. Under the USAC, the four-year normal course was retained and four-year domestic science, domestic arts, and agricultural courses, a three-year business course, and three years of music were added. Fears of decreasing enrollment were unfounded; the graduating class of 1916 was the largest on record.

The next big step occurred in the summer of 1916 when USAC trustees voted to make the branch campus a junior college, provided that the first year of high school work (ninth grade) was eliminated and that eventually the tenth grade would be also. 9 The BAC had a campus of forty-five acres and an eighty-acre farm in Cedar Valley. Four buildings sat on Academy Hill. The once barren hill was covered by groves of trees and shrubs transplanted by students under the direction of William Flanigan. Thirty acres adjoining the campus was purchased and paid for by donations from the people of the county at a cost of $60,000. Included was some of the most valuable land in the area. Its acquisition allowed campus expansion to the west. The farm was donated by Cedar City citizens in 1913 to manifest their commitment to the new agricultural program.

After becoming a college in 1916, the fledgling institution faced challenges that might have closed its doors had it not been for the well-established high school department. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, military enlistment cut heavily into an enrollment that was largely male. During the severest part of the flu epidemic of 1918, school closed for a short period and the domestic

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science and domestic art rooms became a hospital because the BAC science building had steam heat.

In the 1920s and 1930s, enrollment rose, surpassing 300 in 1926 and 400 in 1931, with increases reflected in both the college and the high school departments. With the opening of area iron mines, the county's population grew rapidly despite the beginning of the darkest economic days in United States history. By 1931-32 there were 219 high school students, 188 college students, and another forty-nine students classified as "special" and ÂŤextension." Until 1930 very few college students were married. However, during the Depression when jobs were scarce, more married men enrolled at BAC. One was Paul M. Adams of Parowan. When he received his associate degree in 1934, he carried his three-year-old son Fred across the stage as he received his diploma, one of the first graduates with a family to graduate from the BAC. 10

Surviving World War II By 1938-39, there were 298 high school, 290 college, and fiftyfour special! extension students. Confident of future growth and of eventually becoming a four-year institution, the trustees and Director Henry Oberhansley approved the school district's plan to separate the high school department from the college. All high school classes moved to the new Cedar High School by the fall of 1941. Four months later, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor embroiling the United States in World War II, the BAC had no high school department to fall back on for basic enrollment as college students enlisted or were drafted into the military.

As enrollment declined, the death of the college was predicted.

Fortunately, Cedar City's former mayor Walter K. Granger was the U.S. Congressman from Utah in 1941 and was in a position to influence the establishment of an air corps training program in Cedar City, where the college was already successfully training civilian pilots. 11 The 316th Army Air Corps Training Detachment was established at the BAC, and on 5 March 1943 the first 300 pre-flight aviation students arrived in Cedar City. Enrolled in a stiff five-month military indoctrination and academic course on campus, they were also given ten hours of flying instruction at the Cedar City airport.

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The men then transferred to California for further training. Between March 1943 and 30 June 1944, when the program closed, 2,276 cadets were trained. 12 Through this unique but important contribution to the war effort, the BAC survived World War II. Some of the young men later returned to finish their education at the college and several settled permanently in Iron County.

The BAC opened in the fall of 1944 with only five male students on campus. The cadets were gone and new female students on campus were definitely disappointed. As the war ended, veterans returned to school and college enrollment hit new highs. From a low point of sixty-seven students in 1943, a record 388 were in classes in 1946.

Over the next ten years, there were usually between 400 and 500 students, except for diminished enrollment during the Korean War. Nine principals and directors guided the BNS/ BAC during its first fifty years: Milton Bennion (1897-1900), J. Reuben Clark, Jr. (1900-01), Nathan T. Porter (1901-04), George W. Decker (1904-13), Roy F. Homer (1913-21), P. V. Cardon (1921-22), J. Howard Maughan (1922-29), Henry Oberhansley (1929-45), and H. Wayne Driggs (1945-51).

The College and the Community The college permanently changed the nature of Cedar City. Into a community already steeped in traditions of quality choral and instrumental concerts and lively dramatic productions came professors willing to combine college and community to produce more complicated offerings, even oratorios, operas, and Shakespearean plays. The USAC sent expert agricultural teachers and provided a county extension agent to work with local farmers to improve crops and livestock. Students, faculty, and staff have paid back the community for its sacrifices by enriching the community culturally, economically, intellectually, and through public service. Extension agricultural and home-economics courses expanded over the years to include continuing-education offerings ranging from Russian language and horsemanship to ballet and swimming classes for children.

Providing housing and jobs for students has been a frequent challenge to school and community. Living quarters were not readily available in the early years. Fortunate out-of-town students lived

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211

with relatives or rented rooms for two dollars a week. Some families moved to Cedar City to allow their children to attend the BNS; they included Emma C. Seegmiller, a widow from Orderville with four boys and a girl, and the Nathaniel and Robert Gardner families from Pine Valley.

Ironically, housing needs were fully satisfied only during years of lesser enrollments, such as during the world wars. Almost every fall for years, articles in the Iron County Record begged members of the community to open their homes to incoming students. In 1937 a men's dormitory was built on West Center Street as a federal National Youth Administration resident-training project. A thirteen-unit women's dormitory was built in 1939, using a Public Works Administration grant for 45 percent of the $30,000 cost.

During the rapid growth of the college after World War II, warsurplus buildings-trailers and barracks from military bases-provided quick solutions to the need for housing. At least four buildings were brought from Topaz, the Japanese Relocation Center near Delta, Utah. One became War Memorial Fieldhouse, another housed the cafeteria and bookstore, and two others became faculty/staff apartments. Fifty trailers were placed on Center Street at about 600 West and called "Trailer Town." Restroom, shower, and washing facilities were located in two central buildings, requiring residents to brave snow and cold during the winter.

Buildings acquired from the federal government were moved to the campus by faculty and staff members, who later painted and renovated them into apartments so they could rent them from the college for from $28 to $35 per month. "Vets Village" consisted of barracks placed between the trailers and the men's dorm on Center Street to provide additional men's housing in the late 1940s. A large, modern men's dormitory called Oak Hall was funded by federal loan money appropriated for critical housing following the war.

Although still a branch of USAC, the college added a department of elementary education in 1949, with classes leading to a four-year bachelor's degree. Although the school did not-and has not-done away with its agricultural offerings, this change steered the college again toward its original mission to train teachers. H. Wayne Driggs was selected as school director in 1945 and served during the transi-

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tional years from 1945 to 1951. The name of the athletic team was changed to the "Broncos," leaving the ''Aggies'' for the parent school.

In 1960 students changed the school symbol to the Thunderbird.

Under Driggs's leadership, the institution developed its education department, built War Memorial Fieldhouse, established the college ranch on 2,000 acres of mountain land, started an Air Force ROTC program, and awarded the first bachelor's degrees in June 1950. The son of Howard R. Driggs, one of the first four BNS teachers, Driggs was a popular director and considered one of the outstanding educators in Utah. He was diagnosed with acute leukemia and died on 19 July 1951.

College of Southern Utah Under the leadership of Dr. Darryl Chase, successor to Dr. Driggs, the institution was named the College of Southern Utah (CSU) in May 1953. Technically, the school had not had an official title since 1913; it was simply a branch of Utah State Agricultural College. The new title was particularly appropriate, since 72 percent of the students in 1955 came from outside Cedar City but 90 percent were from southern Utah. Faculty and staff numbered less than fifty.

All worked closely together regardless of title or job description. They pitched in to bring war-surplus buildings to town, to renovate them, and to improve the surrounding campus with sidewalks and landscaping. Male and female faculty and staff served on committees and supervised all student activities.

In 1952 faculty and staff decided to build a large cabin on the college's mountain ranch for educational and social purposes. Eleven miles up Cedar Canyon, the mountain property was used as an experimental station by both the college and USU to study livestock management. It was also used by other departments as an outdoor laboratory. When the project started, some logs were salvaged from an older cabin and others were cut and peeled nearby to construct a new and larger facility. Although the state appropriated $2,700 for building materials, faculty and staff members, their spouses, and children provided labor and donated furnishings and upkeep. A wellbuilt structure was finished in the summer of 1955. 13 First known as the College Ranch Home, the more simple title of

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College Cabin endured. The cabin was managed, maintained, and scheduled by the faculty, but it was also used extensively by students, educational organizations, and community groups of many kinds.

Use fees were so low that problems of upkeep and renovation were created. After nearly thirty years of workshops, socials, and family reunions, major renovation was necessary. Dean of Continuing Education Phillip Carter rallied support and funding for assistance from building-construction classes and community groups. The 2,400-square-foot cabin was remodeled and 3,500 square feet added in the form of a large conference room and new kitchen and diningroom facilities. Site improvements included a covered patio with grills and dutch oven pits, individual campsites, landscaping, trails, and an amphitheater. The SUU Mountain Center is now used year round for conferences, classes, and reunions. 14 In May 1953 groundbreaking for a new auditorium/library building took place. Director Driggs had planned this new building after the fire of 1948. The west wing housed the library and included 8,000 books donated by the educators of the state as a memorial to Driggs. The main lobby and auditorium on the east included stateof-the-art stage facilities allowing for first-class theatrical productions and providing an appropriate setting for guest-artist performances.

The innovative concept of multiple-use buildings has served the campus well, including the original shop/gymnasium, the library/auditorium, and the Centrum, built in 1986 to house a special-events arena, social science, art, and communication classrooms, offices, art studios, and a television lab.

In 1954 Darryl Chase became president ofUSAC, soon renamed Utah State University (USU), and Dr. Royden C. Braithwaite became CSU's director in 1955. Enrollment was 427, but it doubled in Braithwaite's first seven years of leadership. When the first of the baby boomers became college age in 1963, enrollment topped 1,000 students.

Struggle for Independence For fifty years, people in Cedar City retained the vision of the BNS founders that the college would become a full-fledged four-year institution of higher education. In the late 1950s the Cedar City

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Chamber of Commerce established a committee to work on the issue. Dixie Leavitt was chairman of the committee, which included many of the town's notable citizens. IS Despite a well-planned campaign, the request for a four-year secondary-education program was denied. USU claimed to have neither the financial resources nor the faculty to expand programs, but it did appoint a committee to study the proposal. Almost three years later, in February 1962, the study committee recommended expansion to a four-year liberal-arts college with teacher-education programs rather than the more restrictive status of a teachers' college. Finally, in 1965, the USU Board of Trustees indicated that President Darryl Chase could prepare legislation which would approve and fund a four-year, degree-granting liberal-arts program. 16 In the meantime, Dixie Leavitt had been elected to the Utah Legislature. He and his fellow committee members had experienced great frustration with the "cumbersome and clumsy process" by which changes came in higher education, and Leavitt took the matter into his own hands. His personal history documents the "audacious" action: I was so annoyed at the lack of cooperation and the constant flow of obstacles, that I decided that we should not only fight for our original quest for four-year status, but that we should go for independence from USU, and establish ourselves as an independent four-year liberal arts institution.

To the surprise of everyone and the annoyance of many, we drafted two bills. The first, Senate Bill 97 granted College of Southern Utah four -year liberal arts status and the right to confer baccalaureate degrees. The second, Senate Bill 209, was an audacious and undiscussed move. It made CSU independent from USU, and gave her an independent Board of Trustees. 17

Leavitt carefully guided Senate Bill 97 through the legislature. 18 Under its provisions, four-year degrees would be completed at CSU, but the degree would be granted by authority of the USU Board of Trustees. As the session neared its last days, it appeared that SB 209 would not come up for debate. However, Leavitt enlisted the help of powerful rural senator Thorpe Waddingham of Delta, the Senate

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majority leader. Waddingham put the bill at the top of the calendar.

After debate, it passed the senate, 25 to 0, and, led by Representative Harold Mitchell, it passed the house by unanimous voice vote.

Section 1 created a state college known as the College of Southern Utah, and Section 2 transferred all property previous held by the school as a branch of USU to the College of Southern Utah. Known locally as the "csu Independence bill," it was signed by Governor Calvin Rampton on 11 March 1965. 19 This marked another turning point for Iron County. Just as establishment of the normal school in 1897 changed the community, the move to independent status opened the way for growth for the community and the institution that share a unique relationship.

Under the direction of President Braithwaite, the institution developed bachelor's degree programs in more than thirty areas in addition to refining vocational programs and offering pre-professional training in dentistry, law, medicine, pharmacology, and veterinary science. An outstanding faculty known for teaching skills and personal interest in the students was assembled. The campus provided an educational environment surpassed by few others in the western United States. Eleven buildings were constructed and the two oldest buildings were renovated between 1965 and 1978. Landscaping including fountains, waterfalls, and native trees set in groves amid the structures and along pathways provides both seclusion and inspiration for students, faculty, and campus guests.

In 1962, under the auspices of the college's theater department, the Utah Shakespearean Festival was born. Like most other campus and community ventures, it began as a volunteer production. From the first year, when a thousand-dollar budget produced three plays spanning three weeks, it has grown into a $20 million, summer-long enterprise which attracts over 100,000 visitors from the United States and abroad. In 1988, 60 percent of the college's entering freshman indicated that they first heard about the school through the Utah Shakespearean Festival.

Ashcroft Observatory is another example of the college and community working together on a worthwhile project. Astronomy was an important part of the science curriculum from the first days of the BNS/BAC, and, by the 1960s, the college had three fine telescopes.

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When Arthur Armbust offered five acres of land west of Leigh Hill for a worthy college project, professors Merrell R. Jones and Harl E. Judd suggested it as the site for an observatory. Plans were donated by local architect Raymond Gardner, and Lyman Munford's building construction students provided the labor. Construction began in October 1977, with $4,000 in donations. Munford kept his students working by obtaining donated materials from nearly every building construction supplier in the county. Science faculty and maintenance staff volunteered to finish the interior, while Cedar City Corporation and the Utah Road Commission worked on the road. The dedication program in 1980 stated: "The Ashcroft Observatory is a splendid example of what a state, community, school and interested individuals can accomplish. It is a monument to a noble cause, a great man [science professor Theron Ashcroft] , and an unselfish people; part of a continuing heritage."2o A fine academic reputation resulted from such enterprises, and school enrollment grew steadily. From 1,256 students in 1964, there were 1,800 when President Braithwaite retired in 1978-a 30 percent increase in fourteen years and a 77 percent increase during his twenty-three-year administration. Braithwaite inspired thousands of individuals as he shaped the institution.

Southern Utah State College The ever-widening role of the college was as significant as the growth of the student body, and it was again reflected in the name change to Southern Utah State College (SUSC) in 1969. Dr. Orville Carnahan, who succeeded President Braithwaite as president from 1978-81, said that SUSC was obligated to meet training and educational needs within the areas of southwestern and central Utah. In the 1970s, southern Utah became the fastest-growing area of the state outside the Wasatch Front. Carnahan saw the need to develop programs to allow southern Utah students to remain in the area after graduation. He encouraged development of cooperative programs with Dixie College in St. George and implemented outreach classes in education, psychology, and business in 1980 under the Division of Continuing Education, with classes conducted in St. George, Kanab, Richfield, and Delta.

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There were slightly more than 2,000 students when Gerald R. Sherratt became college president in 1981. The institution had experienced no growth from 1971 to 1981, as the economy in Iron County stagnated with the decline of the county's iron mines.

Economic recovery in the mid-1980s coincided with decisions of community and college leaders to increase tourism and industrial growth through programs sponsored by SUSC. First came construction of the Centrum, a classroom/arena facility built with both state funds and voluntary private contributions.

The special-events area seats 5,300 and is the site of commencement exercises, university basketball games, gymnastics meets, Utah Summer Games events, regional and state high school tournaments, public school history and vocational fairs, and a variety of entertainment and cultural events throughout the year. The local economy benefits from events which bring visitors into the community, and high school students leave with a positive impression of the campus.

The Utah Summer Games (USG) has been a joint university/ community project from its founding in 1986. President Sherratt conceived the idea to have a grass-roots Olympic-type sports festival based at the campus and involving amateur athletes from all over Utah. Only the director and his administrative assistants are salaried; volunteers direct the events, judge, keep time and scores, prepare the venues, provide water, and pick up the garbage. While the campus is USG headquarters during the games, events are held throughout Iron County, and regional events take place throughout the state.

Participation has grown from 700 athletes in 1986 to 7,000 in its eleventh year. 21 Enrollment growth at SUSC since 1982 has been rapid and consistent, beginning with a 14 percent increase in 1982-83. The count surpassed 5,600 students in the fall of 1996 and is projected to reach 7,500 by 2005. 22

Southern Utah University In 1990 the Utah Board of Regents and the legislature approved a name change to Southern Utah University, reflecting the school's mission as a four-year, comprehensive teaching institution, effective 1 January 1991. Regents' policy says that SUU should provide educa-

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The new library at Southern Utah University will be a center for learning into the twenty-first century. It was named for Gerald R. Sherratt, president of the institution from 1982 to 1997. (Courtesy Diana Graff)

tional opportunities for students whose needs are best served in a university with residential life and sense of community. Most students live in university housing or nearby apartments. While SUU still attracts 80 percent of its students from the fifteen counties of southern Utah, about 10 percent of the student body comes from the northern metropolitan areas and 10 percent from outside Utah. 23 The university is committed to maintaining small classes with low student-to -faculty ratios. Students widely participate in NCAA and intermural athletics, social and fraternal organizations, student government, service opportunities, cultural organizations, job-related experience on campus, and other residential-related activities.

While some faculty are involved in basic research, the institution expects most scholarly efforts to focus on scholarly service extending to the regional community and on improving and implementing the teachingllearning experience. Technology can help overcome the school's geographic isolation by connecting with educational

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resources outside the state, accessing worldwide information through the Internet, and offering distance learning to high school and college students around the region through live interactive television.

An 80,OOO-square-foot library was completed in March 1996, designed with technology and a much larger student body in mind.

The Sharwan Smith Center for Student Developmene4 connects the Centrum and Student Center to create a single large complex for use by both the university and community. Once again, concepts of multiple-use and multiple-funding guided planning of this facility to benefit the growing student body as well as the county as a convention center. During the fifteen-year administration of Gerald R. Sherratt, the physical facilities of the university were a priority even though state funding was sparse. While centennial events of 1997 permitted the university community to look back over the struggles and accomplishments of one hundred years, the inauguration of new university president Dr. Steven D. Bennion and dedication of new facilities commences a second century of educational service destined for a fast -growing and widely diversified southern Utah population.

ENDNOTES

1. Historical material relating to the institution is in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University. Its detailed history is told in Anne Okerlund Leavitt, Southern Utah University: The First Hundred Years, A Heritage History (Cedar City: Southern Utah University Press, 1997) and in Gerald R. Sherratt, "A History of the College of Southern Utah, 1897 to 1947" (Master's thesis, Utah State Agricultural College, 1954).

2. Leavitt, Southern Utah University, 15-17.

3. Sherratt, "A History of the College," 15-16; "B.N.S.-B.A.C Alumni Historical Booklet, 1940," Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

4. Leavitt, Southern Utah University, 23-26.

5. Ibid., 27.

6. Rob Will Bulloch, as told to Gladys McConnell, "For Sweet Learning's Sake," 11-12, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

7. Bulloch, "For Sweet Learning's Sake," credits C.C. "Neil" Bladen, Heber Jensen, Randle Lunt, Lorenzo "Renz" Adams, Jim Hunter, Oriah Leigh, D.D. Sherratt, Richard Bryant, Sam'l Heyborne, and Julius Rosenberg

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as those "who worked harder than most." See also Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 136-42, and Steven H. Heath, "The Historic Old Sorrel Log Road of 1898," Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

8. Cynthia Williams Dunaway, "A Historical Study of Musical Development in Cedar City, Utah from 1851 to 1931" (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1969),69-71.

9. In 1938 Director Henry Oberhansley clarified the BAC status as different from other state-sponsored junior colleges: " ... we are not a junior college except that we have been doing two years of college work. Weare permitted to give degrees if there is any justification for it." Quoted in "B.N.S.-B.A.C Alumni Historical Booklet, 1940."

10. Fred C. Adams, interview by Damon Bolli, 4 March 1992, typescript, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

11. Walter K. Granger was born 11 October 1888 in St. George, Utah.

He was raised from age five to sixteen in Cedar City by his father and his half-sister, Catherine Granger Bell. He attended the BNS, where he was an athlete, an amateur actor, and a scholar, he married Hazel Dalley on 6 June 1912. He was postmaster in Cedar City from 1914 until 1921, except for eighteen months when he served with the Marines during World War 1. A Democrat, he lost his postmaster position when Republican Warren G. Harding was elected in 1920. Granger was Cedar City mayor from 1924 to 1926 and again from 1930 to 1934. Elected to the Utah Legislature in 1933, he served for three terms and was Speaker of the House in 1935-36. In 1940, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah's First District and reelected for five terms even though his home community was strongly Republican. Granger was appointed to the Federal Appeals Board of the U.S. Forest Service in 1966. See Hazel Dalley Granger, The Grangers: Walter K. and Hazel D., Their Life and Times (n.p., n.d.), Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

12. Catalog of the Branch Agricultural College, 1944-45, 16- 17, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

13. McRay Cloward, And We Built a Cabin (Cedar City: Division of Continuing Education, Southern Utah University, 1994),21-25.

14. Ibid., 71-77.

15. Leavitt, Southern Utah University, 135. Committee members were Warren Bulloch, Dr. John Beal, Rep. Kumen Gardner, Senator Charles R. Hunter, Jim Urie, Loren Whetten, Lehi M. Jones, Elwood Corry, Dr. L.V. Broadbent, Dr. J.S. Prestwich, Kumen Jones, Jim Heywood, Wilson Lunt, Ianthus Wright, Mayor Arnold Anderson, and D.W. Corry.

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16. Ibid.) 144-45; Iron County Record, 21 May 1964) 1.

17. Leavitt) Southern Utah University, 146.

18. Iron County Record, 25 February 1965) 1.

19. Iron County Record, 11 March 1965) 1) 10. In later legislative sessions) Sen. Dixie Leavitt became the architect of a system of higher education for Utah with clear lines of authority emanating from the State Board of Regents to the nine institutions with their own individual boards of trustees.

20. Ashcroft Observatory Dedicatory Program) 26 September 1980) Special Collections) Gerald R. Sherratt Library) Southern Utah University.

21. "The Utah Summer Games: Grassroots sports at their bestÂť) Cedar City Magazine (Fall 1996): 10.

22. "Enrollment hits another highÂť) University Journal, 23 October 1996) 1; Northwest Accreditation 1993) 7) Gerald R. Sherratt Library) Southern Utah University.

23. Northwest Accreditation 1993) 10.

24. The center is named for SUU alumnus and former student body vice-president Sharwan Smith) who was killed in an accident near Cedar City in June 1995.

CHAPTER

13

HEALTH CARE: HERBAL MEDICINE TO MODERN HOSPITALS Among early settlers of Parowan were two men with experience healing the sick who were therefore called doctors-Priddy Meeks and Calvin Crane Pendleton. Meeks was a self-educated practitioner of the Thompsonian school, promulgated by Dr. Samuel Thompson of New Hampshire, for healing the sick with herbs, roots, and other home remedies. Meeks was fifty-six years old when he arrived in Parowan in May 1851 to begin farming, exploring, working with the Indians, treating the sick, and teaching women nursing and midwifery.l Calvin Pendleton studied at the Electis Medical College at Worthington, Ohio, in 1838. This school advocated proper diet and temperance in eating and drinking and thus harmonized with teachings of Mormon leaders. After his baptism into the Mormon church in Ohio in 1838, Pendleton moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, where he was set apart to care for the sick. He received little money for his services as a doctor and made his living as a mechanic. George A. Smith convinced Pendleton to move to Parowan in 1854, where he established a gun and machine shop. He was also regarded as an accomplished gar222

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dener, teacher, missionary, city recorder, county commissioner, member of the territorial legislature, and counselor in the Parowan LDS Stake. He and Meeks sometimes disagreed about proper treatment; even though Pendleton used root and herb remedies, he also used some drugs, performed minor surgery, and was skilled at setting bones. 2 Meeks moved from Parowan to Harrisburg about 1860, and later moved to Long Valley. He joined the United Order at Orderville in 1876 and died there in 1886. During these years, he trained his wives and other southern Utah women as midwives. Pendleton lived out his life in Parowan and died on 24 April 1873.

Most health care was provided by nurses and midwives, and Parowan was fortunate to have women trained in this service. In the first company of Iron Mission members was Susan Meeks Adams, wife of Orson B. Adams, who was blessed and set apart by George A. Smith as midwife for the pioneer colony. Other midwives who arrived in the first decade were Anna Easter (Hanson) Bayles, Ellen Eyre Banks, and Paulina Phelps Lyman.

Midwives usually received a three-dollar fee in produce if they were paid at all, so Paulina Phelps Lyman, known as ''Aunt Paulina" or ''Aunt Pliny:' supported her family by weaving cloth and tailoring suits for the men of the community. Paulina Lyman kept a record of the several hundred babies she delivered. In the twentieth century when it became important to establish birth dates, her record book was taken to the county courthouse to prove birth dates for the individuals she had delivered. Many in Parowan considered her a doctor.

She took care of burns and broken bones and carried surgical tools in her black doctor's satchel. 3 In Cedar City, the list of women "blessed and set apart" in the Mormon Relief Society to attend and administer to the sick included Lydia Hopkins, Francess Willis, Elisabeth Parry, Eliza Ann Haight, Mary Bladen, Alice Bennett, Mary Ann Unthank, Sarah Urie, Margaret Mackelpr ang, and Hannah Christopherson.4 Women chosen for this calling often had large families of their own, but delivered babies whenever needed, day or night. Sometimes they remained for days performing the tasks of the home while their patients were in

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bed. No wonder these women endeared themselves in their communities, for there was hardly a home where they had not served. 5 As the years passed, there was a shift in emphasis toward more medical education. About 1880 Paulina Lyman was sent to study under Dr. Ellis R. Shipp, who had obtained a medical degree from the Women's Medical College at Philadelphia. Shipp specialized in obstetrics, diseases of women, and minor surgery, and served as a role model for many women.

There were no pioneer doctors in Cedar City, but men learned to treat injuries, toothaches, and other ailments. When Andrew Corry suffered a broken leg and displaced ankle joint in a coach accident in January 1891, storekeeper George Wood successfully set the broken limb. 6 From the early history of Parowan there are stories told of four men who functioned as dentists, Elijah Smith, Richard Benson, Eli Alger Whitney, and Peter Wimmer.? Whitney, a blacksmith by trade, was remembered for his kindness and sympathy and for trying to comfort his patients and reduce suffering. His "practice" lasted several years. The Parowan City record states: Parowan City, April 7, 1903 the following ordinance was passed by the City Council-Traveling Dentists must pay a license of $20.00.

With the stipulation that there would be no liscence [sic] to pay for pulling teeth by the City Blacksmith, Eli Whitney-his charge for pulling teeth was 25 cents for people he deemed able to pay either in money or kind. 8

Professional Medicine, Hospitals, and Dentistry Modern medicine came to Iron County in 1894 when Dr. George W. Middleton took a suite of three rooms for his office in Cedar City.

Middleton was well aware that early physicians had to fight against prejudices of people who understood nothing of modern surgery.

Most relied on herbal or botanical medicines, with stitches and dressings allowed by those brave enough. Of his first year as both physician and newly married man, Middleton wrote: We did not know hunger, but we knew almost every other deprivation that first winter. All the older people predicted dire failure for the young doctor. They had seen a whole generation

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come and go without the aid of a physician, and they could not imagine that conditions would sustain a lucrative practice. Yet in less than a year these same people were advising me to engage a partner for fear I would be run to death. 9

George W. Middleton was born and reared on his father's farm in the small settlement of Hamilton's Fort and educated in the oneroom schoolhouse built in 1870. At age nineteen he began study at the Brigham Young Academy and came under the influence of Dr. Karl Maeser. Like many pioneer academies, Brigham Young Academy was a normal school. After graduation, Middleton taught two winters at Coalville but was dissatisfied. As he considered another profession, two events persuaded him to choose medicine. The first was watching a young friend die of pneumonia while under the care of the "old ladies of the village," who, he believed, did the opposite of what they should have done. That same summer, six or seven young women died in childbirth. Middleton recognized that medicine and surgery offered an opportunity to apply intelligence and humane effort in a cause for which there was imperative need. He matriculated in the fall of 1892 at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore, and a year later transferred to the medical school at University of Louisville, Kentucky, from which he graduated in 1894.

After passing the state board examination, he then returned to the people and scenery he loved to begin his practice.

In his first year, Middleton discovered that his services were often requested after other treatments had failed. His reputation grew quickly even though he could not save every patient. Soon he was traveling over valley roads and mountain trails throughout southern Utah on horseback with instruments and drugs necessary to meet emergencies. He was too poor to purchase a carriage until 1896; but he then found that the carriage went to pieces and horses could not stand up long under the high-pressure service demanded of them.

The solution was to telegraph ahead to arrange relays of fresh horses at intervals of ten to twelve miles.

Middleton limited his surgery to operations that came within his abilities and trained his own help and taught fundamentals of preventing infection to several young women who became his nurses.

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Dr. George W. Middleton and his nurses, Belle Macfarlane Perry and Belle McDonald (front); Priscilla Urie and Katherine Palmer (back). (William R. Palmer Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU) They included Belle Macfarlane Perry, Belle Macdonald, Priscilla Urie Leigh, and Kate Palmer, his young sister-in-law and later wife to Dr. Menzies Macfarlane. He taught his distant cousin Will Middleton to give ether and chloroform. These assistants learned quickly and he often praised them. His first operations were done in private homes, not infrequently on the dining table of the family. He also used several rooms in the large Cedar City home of Tina Sherratt for performing surgical procedures. Study in London and Baltimore during 1897 and 1901 convinced him he needed a true hospital.

In May 1903 the Iron County Record appealed for a hospital in order to keep Dr. Middleton from moving to one of the many communities which "constantly importuned" his services. 10 A year later, Dr. Middleton rented a large residence and turned it into his hospital.

He "put skylight windows over the room in which I proposed to operate, and fitted up the rest of the house to take care of fourteen or fifteen patients. This was the first hospital-if it can be given so dig-

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nified a name-in the southern part of the state."l! Belle M. Perry and Middleton's young sister-in-law, Kate Palmer, assisted during operations in this "little improvised hospital." He concluded, "with very rare exceptions we had marvelous luck."!2 Middleton may have called it "luck;' but he was a gifted surgeon, with patients from as far away as Salt Lake City in his care.

The hospital could not keep him in southern Utah after a sour experience during his term as Cedar City mayor from 1904 to 1906.

He entered politics in 1903 with the highest aspirations for doing good and was disturbed when citizens maligned his character because of his crusades in support of prohibition and improving the Cedar City water system. He recalled, In 1903, I was asked to head the ticket as candidate for mayor, and a sturdy group of fine citizens was nominated for the city council.

We were elected by an overwhelming majority, an indication of the strength of the sentiment for prohibition. We initiated the first real fight for this reform in the state .... But the whiskey ring was, as it still is [1938], an unscrupulous enemy. It put rumors in the air in all directions and denounced us as the vilest of men. Not only was it responsible for my carriage being cut to pieces, but for the posting of big placards on the telephone poles up and down Main Street which asserted that I was the friend and associate of thugs and ex-convicts, that I was guilty of all kinds of crime, and that I sold more whiskey than anybody else. 13

He also met resistance from those who did not want a city water system. Despite opposition, the water system was completed, and Middleton watched as the incidence of typhoid decreased, especially after the city followed his counsel to take the water out at the springs above the settling ponds. One by one, opponents gave in and drank the clear water. He felt the water system initiated a "spirit of progress which has continued ever since." However, these battles led to his decision to move his medical practice to the capital city.

After establishing himself in Salt Lake City, he began telling leading citizens about the beautiful scenery at Kolob and Little Zion Canyon. He worked hand in hand with leaders of the Cedar City Commercial Club to open up southern Utah to touring, camping, and recreation. Middleton may have moved his medical practice, but

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his heart remained in the beautiful canyons and mountains of his youth.

In 1902 Donald A. McGregor graduated from Barnes Medical College in St. Louis and began a practice in his hometown of Parowan. 14 McGregor moved to Beaver in 1905 and then in 1913 to St. George, where he and his brother-in-law Dr. Frank Woodbury built the McGregor Hospital. During the 1918 influenza epidemic, McGregor returned to Parowan, Panguitch, and Cedar City, where he stayed for weeks at a time caring for flu victims. McGregor's younger brother Joseph followed him to Barnes Medical School. After receiving his M.D. degree, Joseph practiced for six years in Parowan, eleven years in Beaver, and finished his career as a dermatologist in Salt Lake City.

Olive Mortenson Ward, known throughout the community as ''Aunt Olive;' often accompanied these early doctors on house calls.

She first learned nursing skills assisting older nurses and midwives in Parowan, and in 1902 Dr. Donald McGregor gave her additional training so she could help in his practice. She worked as a practical nurse for thirty years with Doctors Clarence Clark, Donald and Joseph McGregor, Frank Burton, George W. Middleton, and A.N. Leonard. Adalinda Orton Thornton nursed for seventeen years during the 1920s and 1930s in Parowan.

Dr. Frank Burton grew up in Parowan and married Miriam (Minnie) Adams in 1899. Unhappy working in the mines, he applied to Baltimore Medical School, where his friend Donald McGregor was studying. He was surprised to be accepted, because he had finished only the sixth grade in the Parowan school. After graduation, he practiced briefly in Vernal, then in Milford for ten years, and returned to Parowan to take over Dr. Joseph McGregor's practice in 1917. He practiced for thirty years. Dr. James Green was a contemporary of McGregor and Burton. He had a drug store managed by his daughter, Alice, while his wife assisted him as nurse. IS Diseases which swept the communities during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century were frequently handled by quarantining patients and sometimes entire families. During a 1901 smallpox epidemic in Iron County, the Cedar City council hired guards for quarantined places. The large homes of Tina Sherratt and

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Uriah T. Jones were used as makeshift hospitals to care for smallpox victims. The city had to feed and meet other needs of those quarantined. To reduce the spread of the disease, people were required to carry certificates of good health to enter the county or a specific community, and the county provided a quarantine physician at the Lund railroad station. In 1911 there were outbreaks of measles and scarlet fever in at least twenty-five local households. Families were quarantined and the public schools closed for a week. Similar procedures were adopted during the Spanish influenza epidemic which began in August 1918.

When smallpox vaccine became available, the Cedar City Board of Health and school trustees purchased vaccine and provided vaccinations for people free of charge. In this and other ways, local and county governments began assuming responsibility for preventative health care and for keeping health records early in the century. 16 During the early years of the twentieth century, Menzies J. Macfarlane of St. George was first a student and then a very popular science teacher at the Branch Normal School. He then enrolled at Jefferson College of Medicine in Philadelphia, graduating in 1913.

After a brief internship at St. Marks Hospital in Salt Lake City, he established his medical practice in Cedar City in November 1913. 17 At the time, the doctors in Cedar City included Ernest F. Green, "an old-style doctor" (that is, one without a medical degree), and Dr. A.N. Leonard, who had been a partner with Dr. Clarence M. Clark before the latter's departure for Provo. I8 Leonard had offices in the Cedar Mercantile Building, but also used space in his home on Main Street as a hospital. He invited Dr. Middleton to return to Cedar City at monthly intervals to assist with elective operations, a practice which Dr. Macfarlane also followed during his early years in Cedar City.

In July 1916 Dr. Leonard purchased the large Uriah T. Jones residence which had been the Middleton Hospital and opened it as Southern Utah Hospital, with himself as resident surgeon and Drs. Samuel Allen and George W. Middleton as consulting surgeons and Dr. W.M. Stookey as associate specialist in eye, ear, nose, and throat treatment. Dr. Macfarlane opened what became the Macfarlane Hospital in June 1917 in the Cedar Sheep Association Building, with

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rooms for surgical and maternity patients, plus offices and examination rooms for Macfarlane and two dentists, Frank H. Petty and Robert A. Thorley.

A year later, Dr. Leonard closed his hospital, sold his x-ray machine to Dr. Macfarlane, and moved to Salt Lake City to specialize with Dr. Stookey. Macfarlane took Leonard's place as city physician even though he was also a recently elected city councilman. 19 Jacob Wood Bergstrom became his partner in January 1919.

Bergstrom, a Cedar City native and son of Hyrum and Phoebe Wood Bergstrom, taught at the district school before completing his medical education at the University of Utah and Washington University in St. Louis. In 1926 Bergstrom and Macfarlane, along with dentist Frank H. Petty, moved into "magnificent and well-equipped" offices on the second floor of the new Bank of Southern Utah building. 20

Iron County Hospital During 1919 the citizens of Iron County were at odds over a proposed bond election to build an Iron County Hospital in Cedar City.

The idea originated when it appeared that Dr. Macfarlane might move his practice to Salt Lake City if there was no hospital built. The Cedar City Commercial Club and the Iron County Record jumped on the bandwagon and Cedar City residents began donating to the new building. 2 1 However, the residents of Parowan and Paragonah thought the hospital should be built at the county seat, in hopes its presence would help sway the Union Pacific to place the terminus of the branch railroad at Parowan. The bond to build in Cedar City narr owly passed, with a favorable vote from Cedar City, Lund, Modena, Newcastle, Kanarra, Enoch, and Summit overcoming the negative votes of Parowan and Paragonah. 22 Besides the bond of $25,000, donations of land, material, and labor were required. Lehi W. Jones donated the land, and much of the excavation was done by volunteer labor. Residents of Cedar City celebrated laying the cornerstone on 12 May 1922. At the formal dedication on 22 October 1922, it was mentioned that since the county taxpayers had done their share, it was now time for generous donations from friends of the 40spital in order to properly equip it.

Contributions came . The final building cost was $35,000, plus

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Iron County Hospital, built by bond and donations of land, material, and labor in 1922, and nurses home to the south. (R.D. Adams Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

$15,000 for the equipment. 23 The medical staff included doctors Macfarlane, Bergstrom, Burton, Green of Parowan and Green of Cedar City. Registered nurse Ina Leigh was hired as superintendent, with Hilda Hunter, Pearl Bauer, and a Mrs. Campbell as the nursing staff. Using a $1,000 donation from Mrs. Katherine G. Bell, a donation of land south of the hospital by John S. Woodbury and Uriah T. Jones, and other contributions, a nurses' home was constructed through the winter of 1924-25. 24 The county grew rapidly during the late 1920s, and several new physicians came to Iron County. Some stayed a year or two, others established long practices. Dr. A. Lamar Graff and Dr. James S. Prestwich began their practice in the fall of 1928. Dr. Graff, a native of Kanarraville, served as city health officer or physician from 1934 to 1945. Dr. Spencer Snow and Dr. William Rigby Young each stayed a year or two. Dr. Reed W. Farnsworth of Beaver joined the practice of Macfarlane and Bergstrom in the summer of 1938 and practiced until his death in 1976. Other early physicians who are remembered in Iron County include Paul K. Edmunds, L. Verl Broadbent, and A. LaMar Graff, Jr., in Cedar City and Max Schlocktor, Dr. Peterson, Dr.

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Sorenson, Wesley Bayles, Reed Alder, Roy Wilkerson, and his son David Wilkerson in Parowan.

During the 1930s Dr. Max P. Schrank came to Cedar City as the CCC doctor. He filled in making rounds at the Iron County Hospital and attended meetings of the local and state medical societies. The Southern Utah Medical Society was formed 7 May 1933 among the physicians of Paiute, Beaver, Iron, Kane, and Washington counties.

Another Iron County native, Rymal Graff Williams, a nephew of Drs. Graff and Prestwich, completed his medical studies at Washington University in St. Louis in 1943. Dr. Williams pioneered in medicine during his internship at Denver General Hospital during World War II. He was assigned to care for a twelve-year-old girl who was suffering from the then-fatal bone infection osteomyelitis. He believed that penicillin might save the girl's life, but all supplies were reserved for the military. As an Army Reserve Officer at Fitzimmons Army Hospital, he successfully requested and obtained two bottles of penicillin to use experimentally. The treatment was successful and the girl lived. Dr. Williams was the first physician in the western United States permitted to administer penicillin. The story was front-page news in The Denver Poston 17 October 1943. 25 Dr. Williams established his practice in Cedar City in 1947 and was on staff at the Iron County Hospital as well as at the new Valley View Medical Center, occupied in 1963, until June 1991. During the 1940s and 1950s, he and other Iron County physicians took turns providing public health clinics where vaccinations were given to schoolchildren and routine physical examinations were conducted.

Williams witnessed the virtual eradication of smallpox and poliomyelitis, as well as the control of many other childhood diseases.

He estimated that he delivered 4,000 to 5,000 babies, as he attended three and sometimes four generations in many families. 26

Valley View Medical Center The Valley View Medical Center (VVMC) was built as a county facility in the early 1960s. It was located in the southeast area of Cedar City, utilizing federal funding from the Hill-Burton Act and a $750,000 county bond. The $1.7-million building provided full medical care for residents of southern Utah, including a public health

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area, offices for the county physician, and clinic rooms for visiting specialists. It opened on 17 November 1963, and staff moved eighteen patients including two newborn babies from the Iron County Hospital to the VVMC. In 1976 Intermountain Health Care (IHC) began managing hospital operations for the county, and in 1981 Valley View Medical Center officially became part of the IHC system. Numerous expansions and remodeling projects have been completed over the years.

Southern Utah Regional Medical Plaza was added in 1987, with additional doctors' offices and a home health-care service. In 1992 a $2.8million remodeling project revamped hospital units. As medical care has changed, other services have been added and the number of patient rooms has been reduced. The medical center focuses on prevention of illness and promoting community wellness through health-education classes. The medical staff at VVMC in 1997 includes twenty-eight physicians, twelve of them new to the hospital in the past six years.

Growth and changing medical care have compelled IHC to plan for a new and larger facility. Eighteen acres of land has been purchased north of Cedar City along U.S. Highway 91 for a much larger medical center and primary care clinic providing quicker access to the interstate. The new facility will be designed to meet the future needs of Iron County's growing population. 27

Dentists Dr. Robert A. Thorley and Dr. Frank H. Petty were the first trained dentists in Cedar City. Dr. Petty was originally from Springdale. He and his brother Charles attended the BAC in the winter and ran the sawmill on Cable Mountain above Little Zion Canyon in the summer to help pay for their education. Frank also attended BYU, graduated from the USAC in Logan, and received his Doctor of Dentistry degree from the University of Southern California in 1915, the same year that he established his practice in Cedar City. In addition to his dental office, he had a collapsible dental chair which he put in his car to drive to the communities of western Iron County and Washington County to do dentistry. For his services, he most often received pay in produce. His wife was his assistant. Dr. Frank

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H. Petty practiced for almost forty years; on 1 June 1954 he turned his dental practice over to Dr. Rodney Brown. 28 Other long-term dentists were doctors John Beal, Orval "Dr. 0 ." Anderson, and Forrest Anderson in Cedar City, and Dr. DeLos Hyatt in Parowan.

Medical Care on the Desert Aram Boghossian, born in Armenia, studied at medical school at the University of Constantinople in 1907. He fled his embattled homeland and reached New York City about 1913. He did not understand enough English to pass the New York State Medical Board examination but found employment as a hospital medical aide, where he helped care for many Americans wounded in World War 1.

Long work hours under poor working conditions resulted in his contracting tuberculosis. His doctor friends advised him to go West and helped him apply for a homestead in Utah's Escalante Valley. He arrived at the Lund Station about 1920 with a few dollars, a carpetbag of clothes, and a tapestry from his parent's home. Neighbors Will and Rhoda Wood helped him haul discarded rail ties and lumber to the barren half-section and he built a small home with sparse furnishings and several bookcases filled with medical texts and geology books.

He came to the desert expecting to die, but he made his own medicine from desert plants and was cured. Soon he became "Doc" to the homesteaders on the desert, as he treated their animals and in emergencies the people themselves. Instead of cash, he accepted orphaned calves or sheep, and at one time he had a herd of forty cattle. He outlasted most contemporaries and died at age ninety. After nearly fifty years on the desert, "Doc" was adored by his neighbors "for his beauty of soul, his goodness, and contributions to their lives."29 ENDNOTES

1. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 40; History of Parowan Third Ward, 1851-1981 (Parowan: n.p., 1981), 237-4l.

2. History of Parowan Third Ward, 233-34, 237-42; Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 357-58, 404-5.

3. History of Parowan Third Ward, 234-36; Claire NoaH, Guardians of the Hearth (Bountiful, UT: Horizon Publishers, 1974), 62.

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4. Sarah Urie's obituary indicates that she was "ordained" to be a midwife and general nurse for the Cedar Ward. Hannah Christopherson was apparently new to Cedar City in February 1869, as she gave her name on 25 February as a new member of the Female Relief Society, and was that day ÂŤblessed and set apart ... to be a midwife to the Sisters." See Cedar City Ward Relief Society Minute Book A, 16 July 1868 and 25 February 1869, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City.

5. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 456-74. Other nurses and midwives included in Dalton's history are Juliette C. Bayles Adams, Ellen Miller Davenport, Adalinda Orton Thornton, Olive Melissa Mortenson Ward, Sarah R. Matheson, Cora Wimmer Mortenson, and Laura Clark.

6. Iron County News, 31 January 1891.

7. Richard Rowley, ÂŤEarly Day Dentists and Tooth Pullers in Parowan," in Dalton, History of the Iron County Mission, 453-56; Kate B. Carter., ed., Treasures of Pioneer History, vol. 5 (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1956), 110-12.

8. Dalton, History of the Iron County Mission, 455.

9. George W. Middleton, Memoirs of a Pioneer Surgeon (Salt Lake City: Richard P. Middleton, 1976), 131.

10. Iron County Record, 15 May 1903.

11. Middleton, Memoirs of a Pioneer Surgeon, 151; Iron County Record, 11 June 1904. The home was built by Uriah Jones.

12. Middleton, Memoirs of a Pioneer Surgeon, 151.

13. Ibid., 152-53.

14. History of Parowan Third Ward, 244-46.

15. Ibid., 247-49.

16. J. H. Mcdonald and John Parry served on one of the first Cedar City boards of health, appointed 5 February 1904. Jones and Jones, Mayors of Cedar City, 147; Iron County Record, 23 December 1910.

17. L.W. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac: The Man, His Land, and His People (Cedar City: Southern Utah State College Press, 1985), 82-88.

18. Dr. Clark was a brother-in-law to Dr. Macfarlane, having married Macfarlane's sister Jennie in 1903.

19. Macfarlane was acting as Iron County Central Democratic Committee chairman in 1917 when he put his name on the city ballot believing he would not be elected in the heavily Republican county. To his surprise, the Democrats carried almost the entire slate, riding on the popularity of President Wilson. He served from 1918 to 1922. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 150-56.

20. Iron County Record, 25 March 1926.

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21. See editorial, "County Hospital Next Need," Iron County Record, 18 July 1919.

22. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 173-75.

23. Ibid., 174-78.

24. Ibid., 179-80.

25. Laurie Williams, "Rymal Graff Williams, MD: A Biography," paper, Cedar Middle School, 10 May 1996, copy in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

26. Ibid.

27. "Valley View Medical Center Brief History," provided by Sandra Gilles, copy in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

28. Charles B. Petty, My Memoirs (Salt Lake City: American Press, 1971), 13,40-41; Iron County Record, 27 May 1954.

29. Esther W. Hankins, "Beloved Escalante doctor was exile," Nevadan, 22 April 1984, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University. Much of the information on Boghossian came from Hankins's mother, Rhoda Matheson Wood.

CHAPTER

14

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T

he frontier days of poverty and sacrifice were made bearable by traditions of music, dance, and drama brought by early Mormon pioneers from Kirtland, Ohio; Nauvoo, Illinois; Salt Lake City; and London, Manchester, Killkenny, Merthyr Tydfil, and Edinborough in Great Britain. Iron County had a choir to lift the spirits of the iron missionaries as they journeyed south to settle near the Little Salt Lake. Dancing kept them warm and climaxed all early celebrations in Parowan and Cedar City, while farces and tragedies were played out on primitive stages to amuse, civilize, and edify. Literary and artistic expression came later.

Music History Just as Iron County was politically organized before settlers reached its valleys, it had a choir before there was a settlement. Music was an essential social and religious force both in LDS church services and in recreational activities. Music and dance lightened the burden of the pioneers as they traveled to settle the county. Mormon 237

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leader George A. Smith described one evening at Cedar Springs (Holden) on 29 December 1850: Our camp in this snowy desert presents quite a lively appearance.

A number of camp fires made of dry cedar are surround[ed] by companies, variously engaged. Some are listening to violins, accordions, hymns, relating anecdotes, calling of guard, etc., all serves to create a pleasant variety. The perfect good humor which prevails and good health in the company, notwithstanding the severe cold and deep snows which we have to encounter ... is really remarkable. 1

Smith initially encouraged singing practice around campfires, and he then called a small choir to sing for worship services, beginning 5 January 1851 at the camp on Cove Creek. Robert Wiley was appointed conductor and choir president, with English Latter-day Saints Richard Harrison, Henry Lunt, William C. Mitchell, William C. Mitchell, Jr., Thomas Cartwright, Richard Benson, John Sanderson, George Wood, and Mary Wood as singers. When Wiley was kept as conductor of the choir at Parowan, Smith discovered a division in his colony. Americans would not come to choir practice because they could not sing the English songs and they did not want to hurt Wiley's feelings by telling him why they stayed away. The camp decided to add an American choir and appointed A.L. Fulmer and Thomas S. Smith as leaders. Even though they were admonished to ÂŤsuffer no opposition to get up between the choirs," it appears that competition continued. 2 Most of the company called to settle Cedar City in early November 1851 were from Great Britain, and there were no complaints about its choir's English songs. Henry Lunt described a Sunday morning service in May, six months after he and thirty-four men started the settlement: ÂŤThe choir sang most beautifully[;] for the first time they played their music which consisted of a Ophaclyde, Clarinet and Flute."3 By 1854 John Weston from London was leading the choir, which was bolstered by new arrivals from England, Wales, and Scotland. 4 Music was not just for church services. Holidays and special occasions included a variety of musical presentations. Henry Lunt

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described a festive Christmas Eve celebration in Cedar City in 1852 that began with dinner at three o'clock. After an intermission to clean up, guests returned at five-thirty, and, following singing and prayer, ÂŤdancing commenced and together with songs, glees and pieces which were performed, the amusements were continued until after 12 P.M." The choir then went about the fort ÂŤsinging Christmas songs which serenaded the town most beautifully." The choir then returned to the school for refreshments and danced until daylight. 5 Choir director was a position of great importance in Mormon communities. Men moved their families if necessary when called to fill this position. Noted pioneer Iron County choir leaders included Thomas Durham in Parowan, John M . Macfarlane and Joseph Cosslett in Cedar City, William Edwards in Paragonah, and John J. Davies in Kanarraville.

A cabinet maker by trade, Thomas Durham was a gifted musician and composer. He became choir director the Sunday after he arrived in 1856 and kept the position until his death in 1909. He composed music for many early LDS hymns. 6 Parowan's choir sang in communities throughout southern Utah, even though travel was arduous by wagons or buggies over primitive, dusty roads. When Brigham Young invited the choir to sing for a general conference in October 1870, seventeen wagons traveled sixteen days up and back on roads little better than the wagon trail made by the first settlers.

The choir sang for conference sessions, and one evening members serenaded General William Tecumseh Sherman of Civil War fame, who was visiting in Salt Lake City.7 John and Ann Macfarlane returned from opening a new farm in Toquerville after John Weston moved to Beaver in the late 1850s and Macfarlane was asked to return and lead the Cedar City choir.

Macfarlane made a meager living teaching, surveying, and practicing law, and he became the first superintendent of schools for Iron County and served as justice of the peace; however, it was as choir leader that he left a lasting mark on the community.

Macfarlane took his choir to St. George soon after its settlement in 1861 to cheer up the Latter-day Saints sent to live there. This concern for other settlers at isolated spots of southern Utah developed bonds of friendship, and soon choir exchanges were made between

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the communities. At a church conference in May 1868, choirs from Cedar City, Washington, St. George, and Santa Clara performed at meetings. During this conference, Mormon leader Erastus Snow called John Macfarlane to move to St. George and lead its choir and band. Amazingly, he did exactly as asked. He sold his property, resigned from public office, transferred the leadership of the Cedar City choir to his brother-in-law John Chatterley, and moved his families to St. George in late summer 1868. He served nearly twenty years as St. George LDS choir director. 8 Cedar City's choir was not long under Chatterley's direction. In the spring of 1870, two brothers from Wales, Joseph and Gomer Cosslett, were sent from Salt Lake to make adobes and bricks. The brothers were not in Cedar City long before their musical talents were discovered. Joseph Cosslett was called to lead the Cedar City choir and Gomer became known for his beautiful bass voice. Joseph also taught music, including the organ, and he formed an orchestra and band which played for dances and serenaded in the streets on holidays. At Cedar City, Cosslett became acquainted with Richard Alldridge, formerly of England and known for writing hymns. He collaborated with Cosslett to write "We'll Sing All Hail to Jesus' Name." Two other early settlers of Iron County authored LDS hymns, Joel Hills Johnson and Thomas Davenport. Johnson's best-known hymn is "High on the Mountain Top," written in 1853. He wrote almost one thousand sacred songs during his lifetime.

Joseph Cosslett opened the first music store in Cedar City in 1892 and sold sheet music and instruments. He sang solo or duet with his brother at funerals, church services, and concerts, often closing his store when called to sing. He was choir director until his death in 1910, at which time it was written, "His voice once heard was never forgotten."9 Kanarraville LDS Ward also had a much-loved choir director from Wales, John J. Davies. Paragonah's choir in the "old white church" and later in the tabernacle was led by William Edwards and his son David. James Davenport was an assistant choir director. In the tradition of life-long directors, Amasa Stones led the Paragonah choir from 1918 until the 1970s. 1o Musical activities of the pioneers required bands and orchestras.

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In the beginning, instruments were rare. James Martineau described a dance in Parowan in the fall of 1851 where "two fiddlers" played, since "this party was to be a rather 'swell' affair." Martineau also mentions the community actively raised funds to procure instruments for a brass band in 1854. 11 Cedar City had a band which greeted Brigham Young on his first visit in May 1852. The brass band was led by James Haslam and included four clarinets, a trombone, bass drum, tin whistle, and sometimes a cornet or flute. 12 Smaller instruments were more common because larger ones were difficult to bring across the plains; but, as the band tradition continued, horns, baritones, and cornets were added. In the 1880s John Chatterley organized a fine brass band in Cedar City with fourteen to eighteen members.13 Bands also provided friendships and socials for band members and their families. Under Joseph M. Perry, Cedar City's band sponsored an annual town party including a banquet, band concert, and dance to which the entire community was invited. 14 After 1897, teachers and musicians from the faculty of the Branch Normal School (BNS) and Branch Agricultural College (BAC) enhanced the legacy of fine music. BNS music director O.C. Anderson organized a new Cedar City band known as the "Old Man's Band" with his students and members of bands from the 1890s. 15 Even though Anderson left in 1904, the band stayed together under the direction of John Perry. On New Year's Day, band members decorated a wagon and drove through the city, serenading as they went.

When interest diminished after 1913, the BAC offered a small band program which led in 1919 to the rejuvenation of the Cedar City band, complete with uniforms and a new bandstand in the city park.

Sunday evening concerts in the park or in the tabernacle during the winter months brought the town together, as recalled by Arvilla H. Day: "All summer long the town looked forward to the concerts which started soon after sundown .... The married folks sat on the lawn, or in the cars if they were lucky enough to have one, and honked their horns at the end of each piece to show their appreciation."16 Enoch had a community band during the years 1913 to 1919, and the Parowan High band leader, a Mr. Eccles, organized a brass band in Paragonah in 1916. This band passed from the leadership of

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Eccles to George H. Durham, and later to Amasa Stones. A dance orchestra led by Stones was formed from its members and played together for over fifty years. 17 Albert N. Tollestrup came to the BNS in 1904 as music department head. Within a few years, oratorio, operetta, and opera resounded from the auditorium. Beginning with the dramatic oratorio Queen Esther in 1909, he combined students and townspeople in his productions. A second performance was held in Cedar City and the production was taken to Parowan, where it "met with great success."18 Opera arrived in Cedar City with the staging of The Mascot by Edmund Audran in April 1912, complete with orchestra and a cast of sixty. This comic opera was followed by operas in 1913 and 1914.

Students made up the entire 1914 cast, even though the BAC was still a high school and the production required months of preparation.

Tollestrup retired from the BNS in 1917 but continued teaching privately; he influenced music in Iron County until his death in 1943.

At the turn of the century, a national lyceum movement began which provided lecturers and entertainment in order to inform people about free public education. Coincidentally, the railroad came to Iron County in 1899 and connected to Los Angeles in 1905, providing a link to the world. The BNS brought the first out-of-town lyceum performer from Salt Lake City in 1910. Later, the Cedar City Commercial Club and the BNS cooperated to bring to town a lyceum series of lecturers and musicians. During the 1912-13 winter concert series, noted actress and professor Maud May Babcock from the University of Utah gave a reading recital. Soloists, trios, quartets, ministers, and even a Hungarian orchestra appeared in the crowded BNS auditorium. 19 Highlights in musical history of the 1920s include establishing the Cedar City Band as an official military unit of the United States Army, and the arrival of professors William H. Manning and Roy L. Halverson at the BAC. Military affiliation for the band brought with it a new title, 324th Cavalry Band, a military band leader, Sgt. George W. Winter, and $5,000 for instruments and $1,500 for uniforms. Its twenty-three men were in the Army Reserve and had to obtain discharge papers to resign from the band.

One of the most memorable "cultural" events of the 1920s was a

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fund raiser by the band in April 1928. Announcements promised that in "Zion Follies" Cedar City's "otherwise dignified, stiff professional men will throw caution to the wind and cavort as women and worse.

To imagine this-Only remember paint and powder make even men look like what they aint." Cast as chorus girls, ballet dancers, flappers, bathing beauties, vamps, and a bridal party, the men made "plenty of fun for old and young." Every prominent surname of the city was listed in the cast of characters. The Iron County Record banner headline said it all: "INCREDIBLE! 70 Citizens Turn Chorus Girls Wednesday."20 The tradition of having a community musical organization has continued through the twentieth century. The current Orchestra of Southern Utah draws membership from throughout the county. It has played concerts in the park, sponsors smaller recitals, and accompanies the annual Messiah production in addition to spring, fall, and Christmas concerts. For several years it was co-sponsored by the university, but in the fall of 1996 it became an independent community organization with its own facility, "Orchestra Hall."

A holiday performance of Handel's Messiah has been an important tradition for over seventy years. It was instituted by William H. Manning shortly after his appointment as head of the BAC music department and conductor of the Cedar City Tabernacle Choir in 1924. Manning chose to perform the first Messiah on New Year's morning 1925, with the choir accompanied by an orchestra drawn from the community and the BAC. 2l Manning also extended the arts to surrounding communities through a BAC Public Service Bureau chautauqua company.

Manning believed that the people of southern Utah needed cultural programs to enrich their lives and that the BAC had the responsibility to provide them. He promoted the music department by offering competitions and scholarships for students in outlying communities.

Manning endeared himself to the community and was affectionately known as "Pa" Manning during his twenty-six-year career.22 Grand opera returned under Manning's direction, supported after 1928 by a symphony orchestra under the baton of Roy L. Halverson, violinist and professor of music. Productions again united community and college musicians in grand shows that provided

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musical opportunities to vocalists and instrumentalists long after college graduation. Halverson is remembered by students as the professor who challenged them to higher achievements, including solo performances and concertos performed with the community/college orchestra. Halverson's and Manning's lasting legacies are music students who became schoolteachers, choir directors, piano and instrument teachers, drama coaches, and supporters of the arts in communities throughout southern Utah.

Lyceum or chautauqua programs continued through 1925.

However, some dissatisfaction developed, as local people felt they were paying money for mediocre entertainment which could be surpassed by local talent. Iron County audiences demanded higher-quality programs than those provided by out-of-state companies.23 Consequently, the BAC united with the Cedar City Tabernacle Choir to form the Music Arts Society, combining school and community efforts to sponsor cultural events. The Music Arts series featured three artists of national or international reputation each season and BAC or Dixie College programs for other performances. Local programs featured vaudeville, musical comedy, and drama from Beaver, Parowan, Cedar City, and St. George. Will L. Adams directed Parowan's productions, while BAC professors used townspeople and students for plays and vaudeville reviews.

The Zion Easter Pageant represents the height of cooperative spirit among musicians in southern Utah in the late 1930s. Staged in the spectacular natural setting of Zion National Park, the pageant portrayed in music, dance, and drama the events of the Passion Week. Grant H. Redford of the BAC authored the pageant; participants came from the surrounding communities and included musicians from the BAC and Dixie College orchestras. Over 4,000 visitors registered at the park on Easter Sunday 1937 to attend the first production. In 1938 Fox Movietone news bureau publicized the upcoming pageant for a week, and almost 10,000 people from twenty-six states gathered for the performance. 24 It was hoped that this would become the premier Easter service in the West, but, as planning was underway for the fourth pageant in 1941, objections arose from LDS church leaders concerning participation by local LDS stakes in a pageant which took thousands of

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members away from their ward Easter services and turned the day into a holiday in the park. Since it had resulted in nationwide publicity for southern Utah, civic organizations of Iron County wanted to continue the pageant without active LDS cooperation; however, before another production could be mounted, World War II intervened. After the war, tourism soared and automobile visitors inundated park facilities, but the Easter Pageant was not revived. 25 Music is represented in many forms in modern Iron County.

School programs involve students in vocal and instrumental activities. High school music groups-vocal, orchestra, and band-consistently garner state awards for superior performance. The choral music program at Cedar High School with its tradition of excellence was forged during the 1970s and 1980s under teachers Shirley Roper and James Dunaway. Since 1988 Steve Shirts has developed a band program to match its choral counterpart. At the university, Dr. Blaine Johnson and Dr. Hal Campbell bridged the years from the Manning/Halverson era to the present, and SUU music programs are growing, as the number of music majors has doubled during the 1990s. 26 Other music programs honored for excellence include the Suzuki Strings program under the direction of Sarah Penny, who helped to establish the Southern Utah Division of the Utah Federation of Music Clubs in 1983, and a strong orchestra program at the middle-school and high-school levels and the associated Cedar High Country Fiddlers developed by June Decker Thorley.27 The Cedar High Jazz Ensemble won the 3-A state championship trophy in the spring of 1991, before such competitions were replaced with performance judging, and the Cedar High School Band took top honors at the 1996 Copper Bowl in Tucson, Arizona.

The Music Arts Society celebrated its Diamond Season in 1995.

In addition to annual performances of the Utah Symphony Orchestra and Ballet West, the society brings internationally recognized organizations and artists to audiences who have come to expect musical excellence from the series. Local businesses, the Iron County School District, Southern Utah University, and the Utah Arts Council support this program. Southern Utah University also sponsors concerts by popular singers and musicians in its Centrum arena.

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Cobblecrest Dance Pavilion in Kanarraville; built 1934. It is said that people told Lex Shields the band shell couldn't be built out of bricks, but he did it and it is still in use. (Iron County Centennial Circle photo)

Dance History Iron Mission pioneers danced at night along the trail and to celebrate their arrival. Although performance dancing came much later, it was nearly impossible to keep early settlers from enjoying themselves with dancing. On New Year's Day 1851, when Mormon leader George A. Smith wanted the wagon train to press on through the cold and snow, the company chose to circle the wagons and dance around large bonfires. When Cedar City's settlers were slow to finish the adobe fort during the Indian troubles of 1853, the bishop decreed there would be no dancing until the walls were up. On New Year's Day they finished the walls and celebrated with a dance, of course.

Community dances began in Parowan and Cedar City in 1851, with or without musical instruments. Dance orchestras began with a fiddler or two and grew to include a banjo or guitar, trumpet or flute, and eventually drums and piano. Dances were held outdoors, in council houses, social halls, schools, churches, and eventually gymnasiums and church cultural halls. Outdoor dance halls became popular in the 1920s, and dance pavilions were built in towns or midway

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Kollegiate Swing Kats, 1940s band. (Courtesy Win Seegmiller)

between communities. One of the most popular was at Anderson's Junction, where U.S. Highway 91 and Utah Highway 9 meet in Washington County. This was a gathering place for young people from Iron, Kane, and Washington counties. Kanarraville residents built the Cobble crest Dance Pavilion in the 1930s to replace an older dance hall which had fallen into disrepair. Hartly Woodbury laid the smooth cement dance floor and Lex Shields built a band dome of bricks that still stands in 1997. In Cedar City, summer dances were held outdoors at the American Legion grounds on the corner of First West and Center Street.

Every community had a band or orchestra to play for dances, weddings, and community celebrations. BAC students formed "big bands:' which became popular in the swing era of the mid -1930s and played throughout southern Utah. These high school and college students studied with Roy Halverson and A.B. Larsen but formed bands with their own young leaders.28 Among the better-known bands was the "Kollegiate Swing Kats," which played at the BAC in 1939-40 and entertained guests at the Zion Lodge through the summer of 1940.

Live music was essential at school and community dances until the 1970s, so many musicians continued playing in a variety of bands. In 1981Win Seegmiller formed a big band to provide music for birthday balls in Cedar City and in Parowan. The group stayed together to

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play for dances, weddings, and community events in Beaver, Washington, Garfield, and Iron counties. Its members include some of the Kollegiate Swing Kats from 1940.

Although aspiring dancers have learned ballet and popular dance styles from private teachers over the last sixty years, dance companies are a relatively new addition to the cultural heritage of Iron County and are associated with Southern Utah University. LaVeve Whetten began teaching dancing at the BAC in 1939 as a teacher of physical education. Whetten believed young people could develop poise, grace, and creative self-expression through dance, and taught folk and modern dance, adagio, and tap. Known for her enthusiasm and love for students, Whetten inspired many dancers to continue studying beyond the college level and taught social dance coeducational classes until her retirement in 1980.

In 1982 Burch Mann was lured from southern California by her friend President Gerald R. Sherratt to create a dance department at Southern Utah State College. Her dancing career stretched from her school days in Texas and Oklahoma during the Depression, to New York City and the leading nightclubs of the 1930s era, and on to Los Angeles and television. Mann's daughter, San Christopher, moved to Utah as her assistant. Burch Mann established herself as a revolutionary in the 1960s dance world when her company, the Burch Mann Dancers, introduced American folk ballet, a dance form she described as "a type of ballet that Americans could identify withone that even Texas cowboys could like." In 1965 her company became the American Folk Ballet and began touring throughout the United States. The company took up summer residence on the campus of Southern Utah State College in 1982. American Folk Ballet programs celebrate the living history of America through dance and music. The American Folk Ballet Festival is an event that adds to Cedar City's Festival City reputation and that will carry the memory of Burch Mann and her daughter. 29 Southern Utah University offers a bachelor's degree in dance, with opportunities for performance in folk ballet, modern dance, musical theater, and ballroom dance.

Any Iron County history of dance would be incomplete without recognizing the contributions of Cedar City native Joan Jones Woodbury to modern dance and dance education. Woodbury attrib-

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utes her strong love of dance to LaVeve Whetten, her teacher at Cedar High School and the BAC. 30Whetten encouraged her to continue her studies at the University of Wisconsin and to make dance her life's work. In 1964 Woodbury and Shirley Ririe, colleagues at the University of Utah, founded the now world-renowned RirieWoodbury Dance Company. Woodbury has choreographed over eighty works for her company, her choreography has been commissioned by international dance companies, and she has received numerous personal awards. In their fourth decade as teachers and dance enthusiasts, Ririe and Woodbury travel widely with their company to inspire audiences with their conviction that "dance is for everyone."3l

Drama History Among the men and women called to settle Iron County were some who had enjoyed the first plays presented in the Salt Lake Valley in 1849 and 1850 and others who came from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, bringing with them strong traditions of drama. As soon as the log council house was finished in 1851, Parowan's settlers began putting on plays. The Parowan Dramatic Association (PDA) was formed with Edward Dalton as president and Jesse N. Smith, Joseph Fish, Jane Fish (West), Annie Fish (Burton), James H. Martineau, David William, and Benjamin Cluff as members. The PDA painted side scenes to the council house stage and used quilts and wagon covers for curtains. Early plays included William Tell and The Merchant of Venice. In 1854 they did the farce Slasher and Crasher, which played in London only a short while before its presentation in Parowan. 32 At almost the same time, settlers at Cedar City were trying their hand at drama. John Chatterley recalled that the first "dramatic representation was made in the fall of 1852, when the play 'Priestcraft in Danger' was performed by the Whittaker family." 33 In 1853 an adobe meetinghouse was built in Cedar City in which plays were produced between 1853 and 1859. Using books Chatterley himself brought from England, Cedar thespians performed The Vicar of Wakefield, Oliver Twist, and other plays. In 1854)ohn M. Higbee was president of the Cedar Dramatic Association, which had thirty-three players. 34

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Many families left Cedar City during the late 1850s, and the impoverished families who remained were busy relocating to the present city site. Their leaders encouraged drama and comedy as a way to help the people forget their woes. Plays were performed on a platform built in the tithing office or other makeshift facilities until the social hall was erected in 1861. John P. Jones was stage manager during those years.

The attention paid to drama seems out of proportion to the critical tasks of farming, manufacturing, and raising families in a pioneer setting. However, thespians received enthusiastic encouragement from the people in Parowan and Cedar City and nearby settlements where they performed traveling shows.

In Parowan in the 1860s, the stage in the Rock Church basement was completed before the main floor. Edward Dalton remained head of the Parowan Dramatic Association, which presented twenty-eight plays. Favorites were repeated again and again; The Rose of Etterick Vale enjoyed many revivals. Shakespeare was also done, although less frequently than melodramas. Church leaders intended drama to encourage high ideals in the people. If a script had an "improper" ending, Dalton rewrote it so that justice won out, even if he had to bring a villain back and hang him. Dalton himself acted, with Jane Fish West, Alexander Orton, George Taylor, James J. Adams, and David Matheson, among others, having lead roles. A sense of democracy existed, giving every person a chance at various types of roles. 35 In the 1870s a competing company called the Parowan Comedy Company was organized by Alexander Orton and George Taylor. This company used a frame building as its theater. It was officially named the Comedy Hall, but everyone called it the "Shack." It opened about 1875 and survived for twenty years as the home for several Parowan dramatic associations. It was also used for dances and socials until the floor was modified for raised theater seating. Will L. Adams, veteran actor, recalled it fondly: "It was always dark inside, for the lights were few and faint. The big roaring stove, the smell of coal oil lamps, and the red lions on the wall paper ... were all a part of the atmosphere which denoted a country town theater, where the people went for satisfying amusement."36 The best years for Parowan theater were probably from 1886 to

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1900. The company performed for large audiences at home and on

the road in Cedar City, St. George, Silver Reef, and smaller communities. During these years, plans were undertaken for a "real" theater, first planned as the Parowan Social Hall in 1884 but finally built and known as the Parowan Opera House. Little money was available, so credit was exchanged and labor donated or traded. It was finished in 1897, a fine brick building with a forty-by-fifty-foot stage. Scotsman David Matheson, caretaker and janitor, employed his daughter, Barbara Matheson Adams to do the "accoonts." Her views reflect the love of Parowan people for their theater: The stage of the Opera House was built by actors, not architects, yet it was quite perfect, as any of the travelling troupes would tell you .... And the plays put on that stage were really costumed.

The people who had charge of costuming, among them Aunt Phoebe Benson, would not stand for makeshift garbs, but insisted on the best that could be made.

They loved their work. There was no money in it, and all of them neglected their business for this artistic hobby of theirs.3?

Stories of Iron County theaters were preserved by Albert O. Mitchell, who collected oral histories from the old thespians and retold them in his 1935 master's thesis on dramatics in Southern Utah. David Matheson, a popular actor at the opera house, developed a remarkable memory which was invaluable to Albert Mitchell in researching Parowan's theatrical history. Matheson told of a PDA cast performing in Paragonah. When the heroine died on stage, something struck the audience as funny and they laughed where they should have wept. The curtain came down and the "dying" actress said "she'd be damned if she'd die for the 'Red Creek' folks any more."38 Another story was told of Mrs. Sidney Orton, known as ''Aunt Salina," who came to watch her son Orson but became so engrossed in a dramatic scene that she forgot about time and place. Orson, the hero, was pursuing the villain through a forest. The villain hid himself behind a tree. As Orson entered, he kept looking around and muttering, "Now, where is that villain?" After a time, Aunt Salina could take it no longer and shouted out, "Ee's right behind that tree!"

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Orson was considered a natural comedian and often played the farces with such skill that the other players could scarcely keep a straight face.

Local drama was influenced by traveling troupes and drama schools. In the winter of 1887-88, the Johnson brothers, Moses, Don, and Aaron, brought a school of elocution to Parowan and Cedar City.

Classes were taught for a month or so in the basement of the Rock Church as members of the PDA studied with Brigham Young Academy-trained professionals. The Johnsons also found a strong nucleus of actors and actresses in Cedar City. Old playbills list eighty Cedar City residents as stage players between 1852 and 1885. After 1885, older mainstays of the Cedar Dramatic Company were replaced by younger members. Indignant that they were considered too old, they refused to allow the "upstarts" to use their scenery and equipment. For a while the new company was called the Young People's Dramatic Company and was headed by Isaac Macfarlane, Charles Ahlstrom, and Lafayette McConnell. New scenery was built and the plays went on. 39 The Ahlstrom family helped finance and build a new theater on their property at First East and First South and called it the Cedar City Opera House. Magnus Ahlstrom created set designs, such as an elaborate water scene for which the stage was covered with canvas hidden by crystal salt, giving the appearance of water. A ship was built on rollers with a track to move it across the stage.

About the time that the Cedar City Opera House was finished, Ada Wood (Webster) began taking most of the feminine leads. She also filled in with traveling companies and studied with BNS faculty.

Although encouraged to go to New York for a stage career, she remained in Cedar City, where she often played the leading lady and served as drama coach in church and community productions.

Residents in the smaller communities did not go without drama.

Although the traveling troupes came to towns as small as Enoch, John Lee Jones, his brother Hyrum, and nephew Charles decided they could produce theater in Enoch and formed the Jones Players with other members of their large families. Between 1880 and 191 they staged a number of productions which they took on the road. 40 From the turn of the century to 1920, many changes took place

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in drama circles at Parowan and Cedar City. In spite of the new theaters, interest in local acting companies was waning. Competition from an ever-increasing number of traveling troupes and touring artists with the lyceum and chautauqua movements drove community dramatic associations into inactivity, although some companies of college-age thespians survived. The last PDA production was during the county fair in 1900; after that, the Opera House was used for traveling stocks, church-sponsored dramatic productions, plays of other dramatic companies, dancing, and other entertainments until it was torn down in 1927.

Will Adams, George Taylor, and other younger players who studied at the Murdock Academy in Beaver and the Branch Normal School founded the L'Allegro Dramatic Company in 1899, then the Young People's Dramatic Association of Parowan in 1905, the Taylor Company in 1910, and the Adams Stock Company in 1912. The Taylor Company toured the state, and George Taylor later distinguished himself on stages in California, New York City, and Europe.

The Adams Stock Company toured Utah and southern Idaho, traveling where few other companies went, including Kanab, Escalante, Tropic, Orderville, and Panguitch, and collected rave reviews from papers for its many dramas and farces. 4 1 Will Adams recalled directing over a hundred plays and playing with 250 players from Parowan and surrounding communities.

The coming of motion pictures in the early 1910s hurt drama; however, revivals of past productions, Mormon-church sponsored dramas, and plays and operas produced in cooperation with the college sustained the theater tradition. A number of different community theater companies have come and gone in Parowan; in the 1990s the Parowan Community Theater represents this heritage. It is a true community project, relying on the talents of local actors, directors, musicians, carpenters, plumbers, and electricians. Each year, one or two shows are staged. Home for the Parowan company is a 220-seat theater on Main Street which was once the local showhouse. After being donated to the community in 1989, it was completely refurbished. Land to expand has been acquired behind the building. 42 After the BNS opened in 1897, students and teachers were involved with local productions, like Hamlet in 1901 and Way Down

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Eastin 1905. 43 The first documented school play was a two-act comedy presented in March 1911. The school newspaper, B.A. C. Notes, reported on 15 January 1915: ''A great many students are interested in dramatics this year. The College intends to put on two plays and with such a large number to choose from for the characters, it will undoubtedly produce plays of worth."44 In 1924-25, King Hendricks developed a dramatics club, introduced the study of drama into his English courses, and took two plays on the road to nine cities from St. George to Beaver. Arriving in 1927, Ira N. Hayward was the first permanent stage director at the BAC. All plays to this time had been comedies, and his Shakespearean choices were no different, Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night. Extant playbills list hundreds of students who enjoyed a moment of glory on stage. 45 In the summer of 1930, twenty Cedar City women formed a summer literary club. Club members soon decided to study dramatic literature exclusively, and the Cedar City Drama Club was born. In 1997 the club celebrated sixty-seven years of summer drama study.

Thirty women meet each Thursday from June to August and present plays in reader's theater format; presentations span the genre from Shakespeare to Dr. Seuss. 46 Ira Hayward and Grant Redford, who arrived at the BAC in 1936, produced a drama and a mystery each year. Both were trained directors and brought to the college a wide selection of challenging plays.

World War II took away almost all male students and even some faculty members. J.H. Plummer and Preston Gledhill supplemented casts in 1944 with local actors, and Gledhill used an all-female cast for the comedy Nine Girls. Twain Tippetts replaced Gledhill in 1945 and continued giving mature roles to faculty and community actors.

In 1953, drama and music productions moved into a new and spacious 1,000-seat auditorium on the campus. Professor Richard Rowley, a Parowan native, directed plays from 1954 to 1959. He encouraged student involvement on stage as well as backstage.

Student opportunities increased in set construction, painting, lighting, box office work, and publicity. Two or three plays a year were the norm, and Rowley wrote some of these, including an original musi-

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cal, Sing Away, based on the Zion Lodge tradition of employees singing to departing guests. 47 Fred C. Adams arrived to teach and direct in the fall of 1959.

Adams, like Rowley, emphasized student involvement, but he had only a handful of drama students and used faculty and community members when necessary. Productions were called the Campus Community Theater. Beginning in 1961, an Associate of Arts degree in theater helped the drama department grow steadily through the 1960s. In 1969 a second faculty member, Terral Lewis, originally from Kanab, was added. He was the first student of Adams to return as a director. Cedar City native Gary Mac Lain McIntyre, chairman of the Department of Theater and Dance in 1997, also earned his associate degree in the program. R. Scott Phillips earned his B.A. degree at SUSC and came back to teach and direct. Many other graduates now contribute to successful professional and academic theater throughout the United States.

Greek classics to Shakespeare, modern drama to musicals, and even an occasional light opera have been produced, designed to give students hands-on experience in theater and please campus and community audiences. Adams' training focus was in musical comedy, and he secured the first amateur rights to Fiddler on the Roofin 1970 and has been both actor and director in The Pirates of Penzance (1963), Visit to a Small Planet (1965), Man of La Mancha (1971), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1988). It is as founding director of the Utah Shakespearean Festival, however, that Adams has made his mark in community and theater history.

Fred Adams's parents drew upon the dramatic heritage of Parowan and the Adams Stock Company. His mother taught drama and English at Parowan High School and his father acted, directed by his uncle Will L. Adams.48 In 1959 Fred Adams earned his Masters of Arts degree in theater from Brigham Young University. As a new drama/speech/English teacher at the College of Southern Utah, Adams discovered that Shakespearean productions drew more enthusiastic community patrons than did other plays he directed. In February 1961 The Taming of the Shrew ran two extra nights to meet the demand for tickets. The next year, Romeo and Juliet was the hit o f the season. Adams wrote:

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I began to really study this community ... [and it] didn't take me long to discover that this community was extraordinarily unique.

It was a community with over 47 years tradition of the Messiah, with a civic symphony orchestra older than the Utah symphony[,] a community that had more original art hanging on its walls of the homes, the schools, and the public buildings than in any city of similar size in the world. A unique people. It was then that I really decided that if I was going to be a valuable member of this community's society I would have to give them something of a more lasting and certainly more sterling quality than broadway musicals. 49

Early in the 1960s, there were dark clouds over the Iron County economy and, in a new twist on the old solution, this time drama not only eased but helped end the economic woes. Tourism was a major player in the economy, as tourists traveled through Parowan and Cedar City going to Cedar Breaks and the three nearby national parks, stopping at local motels and buying food and gas. When the Utah Department of Transportation announced that the Interstate 15 route might bypass Cedar City, the business community was in a panic. Business owners and chamber of commerce boards discussed ways to get people off the interstate and into town.

Fred Adams thought about the success of his Shakespearean productions, his experience working the summer of 1958 at Ashland Oregon's Shakespearean Festival, and the similarities between the two cities. 50 Adams went to Royden Braithwaite, director of the college, and asked if the theater department could do a summer Shakespearean festival to bring people into Cedar City. Braithwaite was very supportive and offered the facilities of the college for the summer. Adams thought he and his drama students could do the first season for a thousand dollars, and members of the Cedar City Lions Club agreed to underwrite up to $1,000 any expenses not covered by ticket sales. With that assurance, Adams, his fiance Barbara Gaddie, his mother, and a few students spent the summer of 1961 traveling to Shakespearean festivals asking questions and studying methods.

They planned a two-week festival to be held in July 1962 on the patio outside the auditorium. There were twenty-one people in the company, all of them volunteers; most were students and a few were col-

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First permanent stage of the Adams Memorial Theater, Utah Shakespearean Festival, 1973. (Boyd Redington Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

lege staff. They did not immediately realize how much help would come from the community; but, looking back, Adams gives credit to the community members for the solid foundation upon which the festival was built. Attendance in 1962 was 3,276 and earnings were $2,000, which paid that season's expenses and established a bank account for the next year. 51 Growth was steady. Community support has been constant, although its role has changed considerably over thirty-five years.

During the early years, one group of neighbors served an outdoor barbecue every Saturday night of the festival. Other locals performed and played in the orchestra in 1970s productions. Hosts and hostesses are still volunteers, as are the officers of the USF Guild, which raises funds for the growing festival program. A large volunteer crew gets out the mailings several times each year.

The first productions were done on a temporary stage. A tent was used for dressing rooms; the audience sat on folding chairs or blankets on the grass. In the mid-1970s, the Adams Memorial Theater was

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begun. Designed by Douglas N. Cook, USF producing artistic director, and Max Anderson of the Utah State Building Board, it is one of a few theaters that comes close to the design of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. The Adams was built a section at a time, and it was dedicated in 1977.

By the mid -1980s the community realized the tremendous economic impact of the festival. City and university leaders began to think in terms of "Cedar City: The Festival City." The city also hosted the Utah Summer Games, American Folk Ballet, and the Renaissance Faire. In 1989 the Randall L. Jones Theater was built with a grant from the Utah Community and Economic Development Board and donations from many community and festival patrons.

This second theater adds three more productions to the plays performed in repertory, so patrons may see six plays in three days. After the year 2000, the Adams Theater will be relocated and become part of the USF Center for the Performing Arts, and the season will be lengthened into the spring and fall months.

Growth of the festival impacts and parallels the growth of Cedar City and the university. In the early 1960s there were 7,500 residents in Cedar City and almost a thousand college students; the festival played to a few more than 3,000 patrons. By 1985 the city had grown to about 12,000, the campus enrolled 2,600 students, and the USF company of 150 drew an audience of 52,000. By 1997 the community was pushing 18,000, student population was at 5,600, and a USF company of 300 produced six plays for which 130,000 tickets were sold. Its $20 million economic impact in the community makes the festival one of the largest "industries" in southern Utah.

In spite of festival growth, the local and extended Utah community remains part of the Utah Shakespearean Festival. The USF Guild is active in fund raising; local businesses continue to donate food, props, and transportation; volunteers donate time as hosts and hostesses in the two theaters. Educational experiences include the greenshows on the grounds, a backstage tour, seminars in the wooded grove south of the Adams Theater, and Shakespeare-oriented shows in the Braithwaite Museum.

Like the history of drama, the Utah Shakespearean Festival history can be told through the stories of festival volunteers, company,

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and patrons. Twice while the first group was eating meals prepared

by Zoella Benson and other volunteers, they watched the wind blow their set across the street. They would eat between rehearsals on the lawn and then go back to work. Ruth Hunter called Fred Adams to her home to give him a check for a hundred dollars along with the admonition, "You see that those kids eat right." There was a check from her every year until her death. 52 After hearing about the festival during the early 1960s, Dr. John Seymour, a Renaissance scholar from southern California, came every summer to Cedar City, where he fell in love with the festival, campus, and community. He relocated to Cedar City, taught classes at SUSC, and influenced students and professors. Upon his death, he left a large collection of books to the library and endowed the Seymour Collection. Former deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations Ken Adelman began attending performances in 1988 and often lectures on Shakespearean themes and their relationship to current politics or social interests. Cedar City businessman and falconer Martin Tyner is a perennial favorite with his falcons and eagles.

Now a professional company with a prestigious international reputation, the festival is still closest to those who can say such things as: "I played the trumpet fanfare the first year," "Mom and dad met when mom danced in the festival," "Grandfather presented 'Punch and Judy' for almost twenty seasons," "My mom teaches juggling," or "My mom tells stories at the Greenshow."

Visual Arts and Literature Although there was interest in the visual and literary arts among the early pioneers, preoccupation with building homes and communities and providing sustenance for families may have limited artistic expression in the nineteenth century, particularly in the rural counties. 53 Artistic expression in Iron County could be said to begin with scenery painted for the Parowan Dramatic Association by James Martineau and the "Cluff boys" in the 1850s. 54 Drawings were also produced by Solomon Nunes Carvalho during his recuperation in Parowan following the disastrous Fremont expedition of 1854.

Unfortunately, no examples of nineteenth -century art in the county have survived.

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In the early twentieth century, painting and photography grew, as artists publicized the unique beauty of the area to the nation.

Artists important to Iron County include some who are native born and others who came as teachers of art for public schools and at the college, art students from the college, and a few who have simply chosen to live in the area and paint or photograph the unique beauty of southern Utah.

Caroline Parry (Wooley) was one of several Utah women artists with local reputations during the period from 1910 to 1940. Parry was born in Cedar City in 1885 and studied at the University of Utah, the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, and with noted Utah sculptor Mahonri Young. She produced both paintings and sculpture throughout a long career, which included teaching at the BAC, Weber College, the University of Utah, and the Salt Lake Art Center. She was one of ten artists selected for the Depression-era Public Works of Art Project in December 1933, and she lived in the Cedar City Paiute Indian village for nearly a year while she did sculptural studies for her project. Some of her Indian sculptures are in the Cedar City Public Library and the Sherratt Library at Southern Utah University.55 Mary L. Bastow's influence was great as an artist and teacher at the BAC from 1929 to 1953 and as a nurturer of art appreciation in the community. She was a popular teacher due to her generosity and her ability to give people confidence in their own artistic talents. The Old Main fire in 1948 destroyed much of her life's work. Bastow was a founding member of the Cedar City Fine Arts Guild in 1940.

Prior to the founding of the Fine Arts Guild, Cedar Junior High School had two small spring art exhibits in 1938 and 1939. The first was of student art. The next spring, a number of prints of wellknown artists were added to the exhibit of student art. A third exhibit in the new Cedar High School building in 1940 included 112 paintings sent by Utah artists. To pay expenses to return the paintings, women of the Fine Arts Guild helped hang the exhibit, served as guides, and encouraged public support. The school district purchased a painting from that exhibit to hang in the new high school, the first of many purchased over fifty-six years.

From these simple beginnings, a major Spring Art Exhibit devel-

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oped which attracted entries from artists of national reputation.

Financial support came from the school district, college, city, county, and chamber of commerce. With continued support from Mary Bastow and members of the Fine Arts Guild and the addition of an annual tea, programs of music, and public lectures in the 1950s, the exhibit grew to become a major annual event. Over the years, many public buildings became temporary art galleries for the two weeks of the exhibit. It found a permanent home when the Braithwaite Gallery was opened in 1976. The annual Cedar City Art Exhibit is nationally juried and continues under the sponsorship of the Cedar City Art Committee.

BAC faculty members Twain Tippetts and Gaell Lindstrom both promoted and participated in the art exhibit even after transferring to the USAC faculty in Logan. Tippets was a photographer and art educator; Lindstrom was one of the foremost watercolor artists of southern Utah. Other notable area artists and art instructors include Glen Dale Anderson, Max Weaver, Tom Leek, Antone (Tony) Rasmussen, Richard R. Adams, Arlene Braithwaite, Perry Stewart, Mark Talbert, and Brian Hoover. Leek's mystical watercolors of southern Utah landscapes earned him a national reputation. He was the founding curator and director of the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery. The Braithwaite Gallery is both a traveling and student/ faculty exhibition space, and it displays a small portion of SUU's permanent collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European, American, and Utah artists. Other works from the university collection hang in campus buildings and offices.

A large number of artists have connections to Iron County, and their works represent every genre of the visual arts. They include Amos C. Hatch and Mary Macfarlane MacDonald (pottery/ ceramics); Jim Jones, Curt Paulsen, and Brad Holt (oil landscape artists); Valarie Cohen (watercolor landscape artist) and Kelvin E. Yazzie, a Native American sculptor. Lane Nielsen (fashion designer), Wayne Kimball (printmaker and art professor), and Phil Hermanson (graphic artist and designer for the Utah Shakespearean Festival) are also important artists who studied at the university.

Photographs taken by R. D. Adams, Randall Jones and Chauncy Parry during the 1920s and 1930s helped attract tourists and the

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motion picture studios to southern Utah. Art photography came into its own in Utah during the 1970s and has been exhibited in Iron County and galleries of southern Utah by Boyd Reddington and Robert Warren, among others.

The life experiences and breathtaking beauty of southern Utah have brought many to turn to poetry and other literary efforts. The attention of the modern literary scene has been captured by the narrative poetry of David Lee, chair of the SUU Department of Language and Literature and the first poet laureate of Utah. A Texan and former theological student, Lee completed doctoral studies at the University of Utah and began teaching at SUSC in 1971, expecting to stay a year or two. The move to Iron County transplanted him to an environment that encouraged his poetic gift. He fell in love with the geography of the area and discovered the unique voice which has earned him the title "Pig Poet of Paragonah."56 His first book, The Porcine Legacy (1978), established him as a first-class poet who could find meaning and beauty in common people and places. He completed The Porcine Canticles on the life and times of the farmer's "friends of the sty," wherein he explored simple rural folk and their earthy tales of struggle and redemption. Other published volumes are Drinking and Driving, Shadow Weaver, Day's Work, and My Town, which won the Western States Book Award in 1996. As poet laureate, he says he expects to "be an ambassador for poetry.... I'll get to proselyte a little bit, become a missionary for poetry. I like that."57 Lee will preach his gospel of poetry as poet laureate for five years, traveling the length and breadth of Utah.

A renowned author with roots in Iron County is Helen Foster Snow, who was born 21 September 1907 in Cedar City. Snow was a foreign correspondent during the Chinese revolution, and she interviewed more than thirty communist leaders, including Mao TseTung, Chou En-Iai, and Chu Teh. She lived and wrote in China from 1931 to 1940. Using the pseudonym Nym Wales, she wrote eleven books about China, its industrial cooperatives, communism, and the Chinese people. Her memoirs were entitled My China Years and published in 1984. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1981.

In June 1996 she was awarded China's most prestigious award given

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to foreigners, the Friendship Ambassador Award. She died on 11 January 1997 in Connecticut. 58 Iron County contributions in music, drama, dance, ceramics, poetry, architecture, and art, plus the Native American arts, education of young artists and musicians, and decades-long involvement of arts organizations are out of proportion to the county's 1 percent of the state's population. The state of the arts in Iron County is healthy. Artistic expression is both an inheritance and an expression of the inspiration of the unique environment.

ENDNOTES

1. George A. Smith, Journal, 29 December 1850, Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

2. John D. Lee, "Journal of the Iron County Mission," 36.

3. Evelyn K. Jones, Henry Lunt Biography (Cedar City, 1996), 86. Lunt misspelled "ophicleide," an obsolete brass wind instrument. Either James Whittaker or James Haslam played the ophicleide, since they were early musicians with Christopher Arthur, who played flute.

4. Names included in L.W. Macfarlane, Yours sincerely, John M. Macfarlane, 55; Cynthia Williams Dunaway, "A Historical Study of Musical Development in Cedar City, Utah, from 1851 to 1931" (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1969), 18-19; and Charlotte Chatterley Perkins Jones, "History of the Cedar City Choir and John Macfarlane," 1, Special Collections, Cedar City Public Library.

5. Jones, Henry Lunt Biography, 112-13.

6 . D alton, History of Iron County Mission, 294. None of Durham's hymns are in the 1985 LDS hymn book, but there are four by his son, Alfred M. Durham, born in Parowan, and five by other Durham descendants.

7. Ibid., 294-95; J. Spencer Cornwall, Stories of our Mormon Hymns (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1973), 181-83.

8. Macfarlane, Yours sincerely, John Macfarlane, 96-102. In St. George Macfarlane composed his two best-known LDS hymns, "Par, Par Away on Judea's Plains" and "Dearest Children, God is Near You." 9. Jennie Cosslett Schell, Life of Joseph Cosslett, Chorister of The L.D.S. Church of Cedar City Utah (Cedar City, n.p., 1959), 3-12.

10. A Memory Bankfor Paragonah, 1851-1990,373-75,420.

11. Deseret News, 13 March 1896.

12. Rhoda Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," 29.

13. Ibid.

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14. Dunaway, "A Historical Study," 46-47.

15. Ibid., 59-60.

16. Quoted in Dunaway, "A Historical Study," 126.

17. A Memory Bank for Paragonah, 377.

18. Iron County Record, 2 April 1909, 1.

19. Dunaway, "A Historical Study," 102-9.

20. Iron County Record, 6 April 1928.

21. Dunaway, "A Historical Study," 116-19.

22. Ibid., 175-80.

23. Iron County Record, 3 October 1925.

24. Iron County Record, 14 April 1938, 21 April 1938.

25. Iron County Record, 27 February 1941.

26. University Journal, 14 October 1994.

27. Spectrum, 28 March 1993.

28. Winston H. Seegmiller, conversation with author, 29 December 1995. Some members of these bands were Vic Oberhansley, Price Haight, Keith Higbee, Grant Mendenhall, and Marvin "Short" Bryan.

29. "Burch Mann, A Delicate Revolutionary," The Sanctuary, the Magazine of Southern Utah University (1995): 34-39. Burch Mann died at her home in Cedar City in July 1996, two years after her daughter's death from cancer. Mann endowed the Christopher Mann Reading Room in the Special Collections area of the Gerald R. Sherratt Library.

30. Leavitt, Southern Utah University, 357.

31. Spectrum, 26 September 1996. Joan Woodbury is a daughter of Lehi M. and Bernella Gardner Jones.

32. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 240.

33. John Chatterley, "Reminiscences," Special Collections, Cedar City Public Library. See also Albert o. Mitchell, "Dramatics in Southern UtahParowan, Cedar City, Beaver, St. George-From 1850 to the Coming of the Moving Picture" (Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1935), 97.

34. See Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," 27, for members list of the Cedar Dramatic Association.

35. Mitchell, "Dramatics in Southern Utah," 17,41.

36. Will L. Adams to Albert O. Mitchell, 7 March 1935, in Mitchell, "Dramatics in Southern Utah," 61.

37. Mitchell, "Dramatics in Southern Utah," 65.

38. Ibid., 25.

39. Ibid., 107-9.

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265

40. Ibid., 116-17.

41. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 249-53; Mitchell, "Dramatics in Southern Utah," 88-94.

42. Spectrum,S January 1997, C-I. 43 . Mitchell, "Dramatics in Southern Utah," 117-19.

44. Michael D. Eaton, "A Production History of Faculty-Directed Mainstage Theatrical Productions of Southern Utah State College, Cedar City, Utah from 1897 to 1986" (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1986), 6-8; Williams, "A Historical Study," 84- 98.

45. Eaton, "Production History," names all directors and casts where records or playbills have been kept.

46. Janet H. Weaver, "Brief History of the Cedar City Drama Club," 1995, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University. Founders were Ruth H. Seegmiller, Sylvan M. Jones, Eugene Christensen, Kate P. Macfarlane, Zina H. Bryant, Annette W. Betensen, Pauline Mace, Afton Parry, Amy Gardner, Florence Mitchell, Phyllis Cooley, Hazel Granger, Lillian W. Lunt, Elda Manning, Bernella G. Jones, Defonda Collier, Scottie (Jane) Thomas, Eugene Christensen, San Wood, and Kate I. Palmer.

47. Eaton, "Production History," 46-52.

48. Damon Bolli, "Interview Transcription for Fred Adams," 4 March 1992, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

49. Fred C. Adams, "History of the Utah Shakespearean Festival," lecture presented to the Iron County Historical Society, 13 January 1987, typescript, 4-6, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

50. Bolli, "Interview Transcription for Fred Adams."

51. Adams, "History of the Utah Shakespearean Festival."

52. Ibid.

53. William C. Seifrit, "From Pioneer Painters to Impressionism," in Vern G. Swanson, Robert S. Olpin, and William C. Seifrit, Utah Art (Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 1991), 13-14.

54. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 240.

55. Swanson, Olpin, and Seifrit, Utah Art, 12-21, 127-28.

56. Phil Chidester, "A Litany of Honors, David Lee: Bright Voice in the American Southwest," The Sanctuary (Summer 1996): 15-16.

57. Jerry Johnston, "Western Wordsmiths," Deseret News, 26 January 1997.

58. Spectrum, 27 January 1997, AI.

CHAPTER

15

RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION

T

here is no record of the how men and women first worshipped in the valleys or on the mountaintops of southwestern Utah.

We wonder about the meaning of the figures in pictographs and petroglyphs which may represent some form of deity for prehistoric artists. The Paiutes revered the awe-inspiring land which surrounded them, and their lifestyle required living in harmony with the earth. If they did not, nature became hostile and they suffered. Stories helped explain their world. Storytellers told of To-bats and Shinau-av, who had created the earth and introduced essentials such as corn to their ancestors. Songs, oral poetry, and dance showed respect or reverence for all living things. Their world held sacred places, such as "Uncamp-i-cun-ump," the circle of red cliffs, and special times of gathering for dances or celebrations which brought the normally independent bands together. 1 Dominguez and Escalante were the first of many friars and missionaries to wear the robes of Catholicism across Iron County. Later Catholic influence was fleeting among the caravans along the Spanish Trail. The Christian cross has been found inscribed at springs and 266

RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION

267

campsites and was carved into sandstone along the trail through the mountains.

Mormon settlers, who came to the deser,t valleys seeking a haven to establish a ÂŤkingdom of God," built the first Christian churches in Iron County. George A. Smith presided over the first church organization, which he called the "Louisa Branch;' in early February 1851.

The branch included four wards formed along the sides of the fort, each with a bishop overseeing the needs of the families therein. The bishops were Anson Call, Tarlton Lewis, Daniel Miller, and Joseph L. Robinson. The log council house served as church, school, and recreation center for these organizations.

Iron County Stake On 12 May 1852 Mormon church president Brigham Young dissolved the branch and organized Parowan and Cedar City into the Iron County Stake, the fourth LDS stake organized in the Great Basin. John Calvin L. Smith was the first stake president; John Steele and Henry Lunt were his counselors. Smith and Steele lived in Parowan and Lunt in Cedar City, where Philip K. Smith (or Klingensmith) was called as bishop at this time. Between 1855 and 1858, two separate stakes existed in southern Utah. The Cedar Stake, presided over by Isaac C. Haight, Jonathan Pugmire, and John M. Higbee, comprised the area from Johnson's Springs on the north to Santa Clara on the south and included all the small Virgin River settlements. John Calvin L. Smith remained president of the first stake, which was now called Parowan Stake, with James H. Martineau and Jessie N. Smith as counselors. John Smith died on 30 December 1855, and William H. Dame, who was living at Red Creek (Paragonah), was called to preside over the Parowan Stake.

Among the reports of conferences and sermons in the records of these early religious organizations, none shows so clearly the importance of the church in the lives of the people as the minutes of the Female Benevolent Society at Cedar City, which were kept for over thirty-five years by Ellen Whittaker Lunt. Recalling the women's relief society at Nauvoo, stake president Isaac C. Haight organized the women into a society for benevolent purposes during the spiritual reformation movement in November 1856. Ninety-five women

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accepted Lydia Hopkins, Anabella Haight, and Rachel Whittaker as a presidency. The minute book itself is a valuable artifact. In December 1856 the women were asked to donate paper, which was a most scarce item; most brought a single sheet, a few two sheets, and one sister gave six sheets. Ellen Lunt took the odd-sized sheets and bound them together between pasteboard covers which she covered with wallpaper brought from England. Buckskin bound the spine and corners.2 Several purposes were served by the society, not the least of which was the opportunity for the women to be together to support each other during a time of poverty and seemingly endless work. The call to the iron mission was not accepted eagerly by all of the women, as some had left better houses and more advanced settlements in the north and others were lonely and homesick for England, Scotland, or Wales. Meeting together, women cultivated good feelings and sisterly love.

The presidency tried to visit all the members and reported that among the families of the settlement they found many who were p oor "as regards worldly matters, but not poor in spirit." While women often were reticent to tell how they helped the poor, Anabella Haight mentioned that one older man was sleeping on the floor because his bed had been burnt up; Hannah Fife immediately offered a bed tick for him and Mary McConnell promised a feather pillow.

By April 1857 a system for visiting was worked out. Each month, these early-day visiting teachers reported on conditions found at the fort, as most families still lived in Cedar Fort (Plat A). Eliza Ann Haight visited the east line in April and said she was "happily disappointed" because she found the Latter-day Saints there much better than expected, even though some were very destitute of clothing.

Some teachers taught principles of cleanliness and economy during their visits, while others called for obedience to the commandments, to husbands, and to other leaders. By June and July 1857 it was necessary to assign teachers to the "new city" (Plat B), and at almost every meeting women newly arrived were admitted as members.

None of the grave problems of 1857 and 1858 (bitter cold winters, crop failure, aftermath of the Mountain Meadows tragedy, or the closing of the Deseret Iron Company) are mentioned by the women, but repercussions included greater poverty and a grave need for such

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269

basics as clothing and blankets. Alice Randle advised the women to shorten their dresses or eliminate the tucks or flounces to save enough material for a sunbonnet or apron. Women were asked to manufacture more goods at home and to teach efficient ways of cutting out dresses and other apparel. The organization's treasury rarely contained cash but usually had butter, eggs, yarn for darning, and patches of cloth for mending or making quilts. Women put their patches together and made quilts for the poor and also wove straw from the treasury into hats.

The women of Parowan also had an early women's organization in 1863, with Phoebe Benson as president. In the spring of 1868, wards were instructed to organize the women as members of the Female Relief Society under the direction of Eliza R. Snow of Salt Lake City. Parowan's Relief Society was formally organized 29 May 1868 and Cedar City's on 4 June 1868, with the first stake women's organization formed in June 1879 under the direction of Ellen W. Lunt. 3 Church, community, and military leadership were interconnected in early settlements, and church leaders were also military leaders at the time of the Mountain Meadows massacre. William H. Dame and Isaac C. Haight were targeted by those whom they called ÂŤenemies" for their military leadership in 1857. On 31 July 1859 Haight asked George A. Smith to release him from the stake presidency. Smith then ordained Henry Lunt to be both stake president and bishop in Cedar City. Thereafter, Henry Lunt was usually referred to as ÂŤbishop;' but he was also Cedar LDS Stake president until 1869.4 A ward bishop supervised the tithing office, the center of activity in each city. The Cedar City tithing office was built in 1856 and was a two-story building with walls of cut stone and a full concrete basement. Parowan's tithing office still stands on Center and 100 West streets. In an almost cashless society, the tithing office received and distributed contributions almost entirely ÂŤin kind." Thus the tithing office was the center of economic activity, serving as community warehouse, general store, bank, weigh station, relief and employment agency, and communication center. Cedar City's tithing office also served as a council house, city jail, wool and grain warehouse, courthouse, telegraph office, assessor's office, and even butcher shop.s The

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Cedar City Ward met in an adobe social hall from 1862 until the local tabernacle was finished in 1888, one of several large brick structures built by the individual sacrifice of church members during these less than prosperous times.

Parowan Stake On 14 March 1869, Mormon church leaders reorganized the Parowan Stake, which included the wards in Parowan, Paragonah, Summit, and Cedar City. William H. Dame was president; Calvin C. Pendleton and Jesse N. Smith were counselors.

Several factors contributed to less than harmonious relationships in Parowan during the 1870s. Reportedly, the anti-Mormon spirit of nearby Beaver's apostate Mormons and large gentile population of soldiers at Fort Cameron and district court marshals spilled over into Parowan. Judge Jacob S. Boreman dedicated himself to prosecuting polygamists and participants in the tragedy at Mountain Meadows.

In September 1874, grand-jury indictments charged William H .

Dame, Isaac C. Haight, John D. Lee, William C. Steward, John M. Higbee, George Adair, Eliot Wilder, Samuel Jewkes, and Philip K. Smith with participation in the massacre. Lee was captured in Panguitch in November and Dame was arrested in December. For two years Dame was imprisoned while the prosecution sought evidence against him. Relationships between the Parowan LDS memb ers and the gentiles and apostates grew bitter, as neighbors tried either to help or hinder the marshals to serve warrants from the district court.

In Dame's absence, Jesse N. Smith was presiding over the Parowan Stake when the Mormon United Order was introduced in Parowan. Although almost all practicing members of the LDS church eventually agreed to baptism into the order, participation of many was described as a "halfway measure" that soon crumbled and went to pieces. Joseph Fish observed that the communal United Order had the tendency to make people indifferent in caring for property, "for the rule held good in this case what is everybody's business is nobody's business. Some shirked when there was an opportunity, while the willing ones were left to carry the burden." As for the order uniting the people in a common interest in each other's welfare, Fish

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claimed that, "Most of the people it appeared were too selfish for this."6 Several efforts were made to revitalize the Parowan United Order, and a somewhat successful "little Order" was organized by a few families from 1876 to 1878. 7 However, local Mormon church members, in general, became more divided than united. In April 1877, when Brigham Young attempted to reorganize the Parowan Stake, William H. Dame and Jesse N. Smith were suggested for the presidency. Since Dame was acting as bishop, Young decided to make Jesse N. Smith stake president. A large number of Latter-day Saints objected, with William C. McGregor speaking out, saying that they had ((some of Jesse's rule while Bro. Dame was in prison and it was tyrannical."

When a vote was taken, it was equally divided for and against Smith.

Young said, ((The people have exercised, today, a sacred right and your expressed wishes are to be respected." He left Dame and his counselors to ((carryon until we come back at some future time."8 Joseph Fish felt that this division ((was a great drawback to the place and was the root and foundation of many bitter and lasting feelings among many of the Saints."9 Three months later, Wilford Woodruff, Erastus Snow, and David H. Cannon returned to reorganize the stake, but the division remained. Dame and Smith were left as joint presiding authorities until President Young should come and decide otherwise; however, he died before doing so. Woodruff did divide Parowan into two wards, with William C. McGregor as bishop of the first ward and Samuel H. Rogers as bishop of the second. lo At a conference in March 1878, William H. Dame was sustained as Parowan Stake president, with Jesse N. Smith and Henry Lunt as counselors. They were counseled to stop the contention, but the division continued even after Jesse N. Smith was called to colonize Arizona in November 1878. In 1881 church leaders called Thomas Jefferson Jones of Washington, Utah, to move to Iron County to preside over the Parowan Stake. He moved one of his families to Parowan and one to Cedar City and proceeded to ignore the old split among the people as he gathered strong and influential men around him.

Jones worked with settlers to correct and secure titles to land and water, and, as they worked in this common cause, old sores healed and

272

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Parowan Third Ward, designed by Miles F. Miller after the Frank Lloyd Wright "Prairie School" of architecture and built 1915-1917 of native materials, including bricks from Parowan Canyon clay and lumber cut and hauled from mountains to the east. (Courtesy Parowan Main Street Program)

were forgotten. It was timely, for the 1880s brought the judicial crusade against polygamy, forcing many priesthood leaders into hiding or into incarceration in the state penitentiary. President Jones himself served six months in prison in 1890-91 for "unlawful cohabitation."

Parowan Stake was responsible for LDS members at Panguitch, Cannonville, Mammoth, and Escalante until Garfield County was created during the 1880s. The stake included all but the western communities of Iron County until 1948. Stake headquarters were moved to Cedar City in 1919. The Parowan Stake was divided on 1 May 1948, once again creating a Cedar LDS Stake. A third stake, Cedar West, was created in 1960; a fourth, the SUSC College Stake, in 1966; the Cedar North Stake in 1978; the Enoch Stake in 1985; and the University Second Stake and the Canyon View Stake were created in 1996. Members of the LDS church in Newcastle, Beryl, and Modena were organized into the Uvada Stake on 15 December 1940, which also included Enterprise and the Nevada communities in Lincoln County. The name of the stake was changed to Enterprise Stake on 1 February 1974, and it was divided in 1993 into the Enterprise and Panaca stakes.

RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION

273

Presbyterian Church built in Parowan, 1917. The bell had been saved from the day school and placed in the new church tower to call members to services. (Courtesy Parowan Main Street Program)

Presbyterian Churches Presbyterian missionaries came to Utah on the railroad after 1869 to open mission schools in the belief that Christian education would save the Mormons from their perceived misguided and degenerate ways. To win eastern support for their cause, the missionaries used sensational stories of polygamy and its "most innocent and unfortunate victims," Mormon children. 11 Two ministers and several female teachers came to southern Utah in 1880. They were best received in Parowan, where apostate Mormons and gentiles were more numerous. Reverend William C. Cort arrived in Parowan on 9 June 1880 and soon began a Protestant Sunday school and a day school. 12 Since the teachers were better trained than those teaching in the community's school, a higher quality of education resulted and the school became popular with many families. However, after Mormon church leaders in Cedar City warned their congregations to be wary of "sectarian teachers and preachers," Eliza Hartford, a Presbyterian teacher, could not find a room for a school in 1881 in that city. Even her landlady would not let her "teach or preach" in the place she rented. 13 On 10 June 1890 a Presbyterian church in Parowan was formally

274

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

established with seventeen members. Reverend Cort used a two-story building for both church and school. The teachers lived on the ground floor, and the large room upstairs was used as a chapel on Sunday and a classroom during the week. Between 1914 and 1918, Clayton Rice, a Presbyterian seminary graduate, ministered from Milford on the north to St. George on the south. A new church building in Parowan was built during his service. Dr. James Green, other Protestants, and some Mormon friends worked together in the construction of the wooden church. 14 The railroad spur to Cedar City and the opening of the area iron mines stimulated a population boom and a more tolerant attitude by the mid-1920s. Cedar City became the center of regional Presbyterian and Protestant activities. Among the new residents was Harry Doolittle, a prominent Iron County businessman and Republican leader, who moved to Cedar City and opened a large oil distributorship and forwarding warehouse similar to his operation at Lund.

Harry and Madge Doolittle almost immediately became involved in every good cause in the city. They hosted the welcoming reception for new Presbyterian minister Reverend Elmer P. Gieser and his wife in October 1924, and Doolittle became the president of the board of trustees for the local Presbyterian church. Reverend Gieser conducted services in the basement of the Carnegie Library until a brick church building was built on the corner of First East and Second North.

Formal organization of the Community Presbyterian Church was held 9 May 1926 with thirty-five members. It was said that the members included "Community" in the name because the church served all the Protestants of the community.ls The new building was dedicated 26 May 1926 and since that time has been an important religious home for area Protestants.

The gold cross which hangs in the chancel was dedicated on Easter Sunday, 12 April 1936, in commemoration of the first ten-year struggle to maintain an active congregation. Many times, Presbyterian executives from Salt Lake and Ogden came to lead services and aid church members. Lay members and visiting ministers also served. Four pastors are remembered for their extended service: the Reverend W.M. Forsythe, from 1930 to 1940; the Reverend Raymond Wilson, 1955 to 1963; the Reverend H. Grayson Gowan,

RELIGIOUS E XPRESSION

275

from 1963 to 1973; and the Reverend John O. McCandless, from 1983 to 1991. The Reverend Edward H. Kicklighter served as interim pastor until May 1993, and in September 1993 the Reverend Jeffrey Garrison was called by the congregation to the pastorate. 16 The women's organizations of the Community Presbyterian Church have been active since its inception. With a variety of names, including the Ladies' Aid and Missibnary Society, the Women's Society, and Community Presbyterian Women, they have served the church and the community. In the 1960s they began an annual rummage sale which has been so successful that it is now a semiannual event. Young women and young mothers formed a group called the Sunday School Sponsors in the early 1950s; they took responsibility for the Sunday school program and the Bible school for several years.

Community Presbyterian Women now gather monthly for fellowship, study, to plan service to church and community, and work to build an inclusive, caring community. I ?

By the 1990s the membership had outgrown the picturesque 1920s building and needed a larger building suitable for the elderly and handicapped. A new building was constructed in Fiddlers Canyon subdivision in 1997. The historic church was sold, with restrictions that the structure be preserved since it is the oldest Protestant house of worship in southern Utah.

Roman Catholic Church The first Catholic presence after the days of the Spanish Trail was with miners, railroad crews, and homesteaders on the Escalante Desert after the turn of the century. At least three Italian Catholic families settled in the desert communities before 1920, and fathers Joseph G. Delaire and Cornelius E. Reardon occasionally visited to celebrate mass for them. Five natives of Italy were listed in the 1920 census. Nunzio Fucarino and Lucie (later Louis) Burrascano were living in Modena; Joseph and Mary Del Vecchio and their son Vedo with his family lived near Beryl. They immigrated from Italy in 1903.

When Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps were established in southern Utah during the 1930s, Bishop James E. Kearney of Salt Lake City provided traveling chaplains to minister to the men in the camps. The Cedar City camp in 1935 was run by a company from

276

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

New York and had a 98 percent Catholic population. Reverend (later Monsignor) Joseph P. Moreton, diocesan chaplain of CCC camps in 1935, visited this camp and also celebrated mass in homes of Catholics in Cedar City.

Reverend Alphonse A. LeMay accompanied Father Moreton on his first trip to the area and recognized the need of a parish in Cedar City to serve Catholics scattered throughout southwestern Utah as well as tourists. A regular monthly mass was held in the ballroom of the El Escalante Hotel beginning in January 1936. In June 1936 a parish was established with Father LeMay as first pastor. A home was remodeled into a church and named Christ the King Catholic Church. On the Feast of Christ the King in 1936, the chapel was blessed by Bishop Kearney. Father LeMay traveled to Parowan, Beryl, and Modena and offered mass on a regular schedule. In Parowan, mass was first offered in the home of Nellie Clark in November 1936.

Father LeMay was pastor from 1935 until 1943, and again from 1946 to 1950. 18 During 1981 two Holy Cross Sisters were assigned to assist the priests in the area parishes. In 1986 plans were approved by Bishop William K. Weigand for the building of a church, rectory, and social hall on the church's property in Cedar City. The old church house was torn down in 1987 and construction of a beautiful church followed.

Worship in the Escalante Valley There were many religious denominations represented among the families in the mining, railroad, and farming communities in the Escalante Valley and west to Stateline. The editor of the Stateline Oracle lamented the lack of a church for Thanksgiving and Christmas services in 1903, and early residents recalled nondenominational services held in the schoolhouses at Modena, Lund, or Beryl whenever a traveling minister came through town. Families began holding regular Sunday school meetings at the old schoolhouse in Wells in the late 1940s. The Sunday school moved to the new Escalante Valley School when it was built in 1950; it later moved to the new community building. John Miller and Gene Talbot were ministers who took up residence in the area for short periods of time.

R ELIGIOUS E XPRESSION

277

In January 1964, flying preachers called ÂŤGospel Wings" agreed to fly in weekly, weather permitting, to hold services at the community building, and some of those attending the Sunday school formed the First Baptist Church of Beryl early in 1964, under Reverend Sam Paglia of the Kanab Conservative Baptist Church. A year and a half later, Gospel Wings flew in Dr. Claude Moffit of the Arizona Baptist Convention, and he conducted a Sunday service for the Beryl Baptists. They adopted the name of Beryl Baptist Church in August 1965. Carl Parrish was the first pastor. Members of small churches sacrifice time and money to keep a congregation going, and this was certainly true for the Beryl Baptists. Floyd Bekin gave a quonset building on Highway 56 for use as a pastor's house. Miriam McGarry gave the church a tract of land with water. Robert Bayles, Sr., provided an affordable plan for a small building, which was completed in March 1978. Improvements were made to both the parsonage and church several times, including an addition in 1994 which was twice as large as the first building. All buildings have been built with donated labor. ÂŤTrue Foundations;' an organization which helps construct church buildings where there is a need, assisted w ith the 1994 addition. Burt LeBot has been pastor since September 1992.19

Other Congregations Zion Baptist Church (also called the Cedar Christian Fellowship) in Cedar City began in a home in 1974 with a small group meeting for worship, prayer, and Bible study, led by Pastor Weldon Bittick.

The congregation grew, and in 1977 they constructed an A-frame church. Pastor Bittick, members, and friends helped construct the church, with about thirty attending the groundbreaking ceremony.

At one of the first Sunday services at the new church site, when the roof was up but the building remained open, Pastor Bittick could see cars going up and down the freeway as he preached. Pastor Jerry Dutton moved his family to Cedar City in June 1987 and became the new minister. The church has seen steady growth and an expansion of its ministries in the community, with present attendance at services averaging seventy-five. 20 John Cowen came to Parowan in 1966 as a beekeeper and soon gathered a congregation called the Assembly of Jesus Christ, an inde-

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

pendent Pentecostal church. He began holding services in his home.

When the congregation outgrew Cowen's living room, it moved into a warehouse, and then in 1977 built a church building. As the only pentecostal, or charismatic, church in the area, the congregation is drawn from several communities, with some members traveling from Cedar City and Panguitch. Music is an active part of the worship, with hymns and songs of praise filling the service, accompanied by the clapping and shouts of praise traditional to pentecostal worship.

Reverend Cowen also began a small Christian school more than twenty years ago, sponsored by the Assembly of Jesus Christ. His son, Dan Cowen, took over the ministry in 1988 and leads services for congregations of up to 125 members each week.. 21 The Lutherans in southwestern Utah were first served by vicars and pastors who traveled the circuit from Kanab to St. George to Cedar City. Vicar Victor Meyer placed a newspaper advertisement in 1974 which started the process of gathering Lutherans together.

In early 1975, three families newly arrived in Iron County, the Goads, the Scepis, and the Griebels, arranged to have regular Lutheran services in their homes. Their group was recognized in January 1976 as a mission church and sserved until summer 1979 by several young vicars, Robert McDonald, Roger Rhode, John Schinkel, and Dennis W. Stueve. Services later moved to various buildings as the congregation awaited construction of a place of worship. In 1979 the Colorado District of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod appointed Reverend Dale Schultz to serve Lutherans in St. George and Cedar City. In 1983 St. George began its own congregation, and Reverend Greg Williamson became the first called pastor of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Cedar City. In April 1987 the congregation broke ground for a church building, erected with assistance from the "Laborers of Christ," a group of retired Lutheran construction workers. The second Trinity Lutheran pastor, Reverend Tom Johnson, began outreach programs to Beaver and Brian Head and started a Christian school. Reverend John Manweiler has been pastor since 1992, as the congregation has continued to grow. 22 Other Christian churches, including St. Jude's Episcopal Church, the First Baptist Church, the Red Hills Southern Baptist Church, Valley Bible Church in Enoch, the Church of Christ, and Jehovah's

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Witnesses, serve a variety of religious needs of residents in Iron County as well as nonresident university students, members of the Utah Shakespearean Festival company, and tourists. Their growing numbers and stature are evident in the new buildings under construction and their sponsorship of community events which are becoming traditions, especially during the Easter and Christmas seasons.

A common thread runs through the histories of churches and church members: it has always required struggle and individual sacrifice to establish communities of worship. Pioneer visiting sisters, missionary schoolteachers, volunteers who build houses of worship, traveling preachers, and faithful bishops and pastors past and present have performed a significant role in caring for the poor or lonely, of welcoming the traveler or new resident, and in other ways enhancing the quality of life and lives within the county's borders.

ENDNOTES

1. Nuwuvi: A Southern Paiute History (Salt Lake City: Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, 1976),3-5, 18-19.

2. Cedar City Ward Relief Society Minute Book «A," 1856 to 1875, copy in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

3. History of Parowan Third Ward, 144-50; Cedar City Ward Relief Society Minute Book «A," 4 June 1868.

4. Although Andrew Jenson's «History of Cedar City Ward" indicates that after Henry Lunt was installed as bishop the Cedar City Stake was discontinued, LDS archive records show continuing minutes of meetings and conferences for the Cedar Stake, which included wards in Cedar City, Harmony, Johnson's Fort, Hamilton Fort, and Kanarra. See Jones, Henry Lunt Biography, 232-39; 250-64.

5. Jones, Henry Lunt Biography, 236-37.

6. Fish, Life and Times of Joseph Fish, 145, 149.

7. See Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 333; Fish, Life and Times, 160-62; 167-68, and Ruth Rogers, «Diary of Ruth Page Rogers," 39-46, in author's possession. These describe the little United Order formed in Parowan on 23 March 1876 by five or six families, including those of Jesse N. Smith, Samuel H. Rogers, John A. West, and Joseph Fish, who worked at this for two to three years.

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8. Thomas J. Jones, Journal, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

9. Fish, Life and Times, 168-69. It is important to note that Fish was a son-in-law to Jesse N . Smith.

10. Ibid., 170-71.

11. Mark T. Banker, Presbyterian Missions and Cultural Interaction in the Far Southwest, 1850-1950 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 35-40.

12. The second minister went to St. George. Since his name was Reverend A.B. Cort, it appears that the two may have been brothers or a father and son. See Alder and Brooks, A History of Washington County, 295.

13. Eliza Hartford to Rev. D.J. McMillan, 23 November 1881, quoted in Bethers, A History of Schools in Iron County, 288-89.

14. Bethers, A History of Schools, 284-86; Ethel Stark, «A Report of the History of Community Presbyterian Church," Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

15. «Our History, A Challenge," typescript historical record provided

by Al Klein, Community Presbyterian Church, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University. In several Iron County Record articles in 1929 the name of the church is Union Presbyterian Church; see, for example, the 6 March and 20 March 1929 issues.

16. Ibid.

17. Ethel Stark, «Church Women History," typescript provided by Al Klein, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

18. Priests who have been pastors for Christ the King Parish include Alphonse A. LeMay, James C. Coyne, Everett R. Harmon, George F. Davich, Colin F. Bircumshaw, James E. Blaine, and Jan Bednarz.

19. Juanita F. Butler, «History of Beryl Baptist Church," typescript, 1994, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

20. Jerry Dutton to Janet B. Seegmiller, 28 September 1994, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

21. Salt Lake Tribune, 3 August 1996, C-1.

22. Reverend John Manweiler to Janet Seegmiller, January 1995, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University; Billie Jean Acheson, «The Lutheran Church in Southern Utah," typescript, 1990, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

CHAPTER

16

WATER RESOURCES

Iron County's pioneer settlements were established wherever water was available from mountain streams or free-flowing springs.

The streams which cut the canyons and carry water off the Markagunt Plateau are Little Creek, Red Creek, Center Creek, Summit Creek, Johnson Creek, Fiddlers Creek, Coal Creek, Shirts Creek, Kanarra Creek, and Spring Creek, from north to south. The first communities were located on Center and Coal creeks because they drain the largest watersheds and carry the most water. Water resources for culinary and irrigation uses have dramatically changed in recent decades but are still crucial to the quality of life of Iron County residents. 1

Parowan and Center Creek: Parowan's pioneer company wasted little time in the early spring of 1851 in dividing up land north and east of the townsite for farming and in digging canals to divert Center Creek for irrigation. Since many Parowan pioneers did not like the looks of the red soil close to the mountains, William H. Dame surveyed two fields, one tract close 281

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to town and a second west of town toward the Little Salt Lake where light-colored clay was covered with only a little wiregrass and scrub brush. Water for irrigation was diverted under the policy established

by Brigham Young that said all water belonged to the people in general, with each farmer or household granted a water right for the amount that could be used beneficially. Since land was divided equally into five- or ten-acre lots, each farmer had essentially the same water needs.

This pattern of dividing land and water was repeated as each community in the county was settled. Water was used for culinary and irrigation purposes and to power mills. Rights to use the water for gristmills and sawmills were granted initially by city councils and later by county courts.

As years passed and cycles of wet and dry years occurred, with dry years coming more frequently than wet years, land owners worked to establish fair water claims. There was a great deal of experimentation for many decades as farmers struggled to produce crops and water livestock in the dry climate. Settlers with little experience in irrigation farming made many mistakes. Parowan's settlers discovered that Center Creek could not irrigate the acreage set aside in 1851 as the Big Field, and they changed the field's location three times in the next twenty years, each time reestablishing it closer to the city. A smaller field was farmed from 1853 to 1860, and a field of 1,600 acres was farmed from 1861 to 1871. However, only 1,200 acres were given water rights, since it was thought that was all that could be irrigated from Center Creek. Individual landowners had the option to decide which portions of their land to apply the water on, with the remainder receiving no water except in very wet years. In the meantime, the city acquired by use and mutual agreement with the landowners onefifth of the waters of Center Creek for irrigation purposes only and one-tenth of the remaining four- fifths for culinary use.

In February 1871, after the Government Land Office survey of the area, owners of the Parowan Big Field decided again to change its location, and the North, West, and South fields were established, each with its own irrigation company. The North Field originally had 800 acres, the West Field had 658, and the South Field had 408. As part of the new arrangement, canals and ditches were made leading to and

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through the fields and water was apportioned so that each field would be adequately watered. More than 120 years later, the three irrigation companies are essentially the same as first organized except for a few boundary changes. 2 To make up for insufficient water in Center Creek to irrigate all the acreage in the fields, taxes were levied after 1880 to be used in Parowan Canyon to increase the supply of water. This was accomplished with the building of a reservoir at Yankee Meadows in 1925 with a capacity of 600-700 acre-feet of water. The Parowan Reservoir Company was organized to control all water in Parowan Canyon from the top of the watershed to the valley below, except for the portion owned by Parowan City. The rights of the company to the waters of Center Creek were challenged early in the twentieth century in court. The decision, known as the Greenwood Decree, granted all the water of Center Creek, including the tributaries of Chokecherry Creek and Bull Flat Springs Creek, to the Parowan Reservoir Company and Parowan City. 3 The reservoir company built the smaller Robinson Reservoir in Parowan Canyon in 1947, with some 35 acre-feet of water which can be released into Center Creek as needed, and in 1950 it enlarged and improved Yankee Meadows Reservoir, increasing the capacity to 900 acre- feet. In 1985 a new but higher dam was built on the same spot, increasing the capacity to 1,200 acre-feet. The outlet was raised high enough to protect the reservoir's fish population. All water controlled by the Parowan Reservoir Company is divided equally with no shares.

Water is released according to the needs in the valley below. It flows by gravity to the city power plant and is divided into three streams after passing through the plant, one for each field. In the 1990s the water system has been pressurized and is delivered in pipes so that it can be used in sprinkling systems. 4 In the wintertime, after the water goes through the power plant, it flows into a winter water channel which passes the city and fields and flows to Little Salt Lake or sinks into the ground to recharge underground aquifers.

The first well was drilled in Parowan Valley in 1892 on the John Bentley farm. Up to seven wells were eventually drilled there and 1,200 gallons per minute flowed into reservoirs that were used to irrigate eighty acres and to water cattle and horses. Seventeen men from

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Parowan financially backed the purchase of the first drill brought to Parowan. George S. Halterman traveled to Chicago, where he purchased the new machine and pipe, which was shipped by rail to Milford and by wagon to Parowan. Many area wells were drilled thereafter by the Halterman family.s Most early wells were free-flowing artesian; as more wells were drilled, pumps were employed to bring the water to the surface. Early wells formed the basis for waterrights claims. 6 After Glen Halterman bought the Albert R. Barnes farm in 1967, he brought the first four-wheel lines and introduced sprinkling irrigation to Parowan Valley. All farms with wells in Parowan Valley were under sprinkling systems by 1995. Improvements in irrigation methods and machinery were accompanied by a search for more water. In 1986 the Gurr Farms obtained permission to drill a deep well on their land on the western side of Parowan Valley. The well was drilled to a depth of 913 feet and struck a new strata of the water table. Water rose in the well to the 150-foot level and holds there even while being pumped. Average withdrawal from wells in the Parowan Valley was 26,000 acre-feet from 1984-94, but the trend in the 1990s has been for higher withdrawal figures, with the average annual withdrawal for 1991-95 at 29,000 acre-feet/ Water from Center Creek was the lifeblood of early Parowan. The city charter gives the city council ÂŤcontrol of the water and water courses leading to the city." The first waterworks system was built in 1912. A wood pipe brought water from Six-mile Spring into a small concrete reservoir. In 1934 a 250,000-gallon concrete water tank replaced the old reservoir, and other improvements and repairs were made to the waterworks system with revenue bonds issued under the National Recovery Act for Public Works Administration projects. As Parowan grew, it became necessary to add a 1-million-gallon concrete underground tank. A citywide pressurized irrigation system was completed in 1987.

Parowan also uses Center Creek for its city power plant. The first plant was built in 1906 in the mouth of Parowan Canyon with a wooden pipe inlet. A story holds that as this plant was being built an old Parowan farmer studied all that was being done, and when the foreman approached and asked what he thought of the project, the

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Flood on Cedar City Main Street, 21 August 1907, from cloud burst over mountains draining through Squaw Cave. (William R. Palmer Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU) farmer was silent for a moment, then said, "This water won't be worth a damn after all this electricity is taken out of it." Such were some of the concerns about modern "progress." In 1952 the power plant was moved into town and rebuilt.

Cedar City and Coal Creek Coal Creek has its source in the mountains east of Cedar City and was Cedar City's main source of irrigation and culinary water for the first fifty years. Before stone coal was discovered floating in the creek in the spring of 1851, it was known as Muddy Creek or the Little Muddy. A cloudburst or even a light rain makes its water distinctly muddy, and the location of the storm determines the water's color. Red water comes from the brightly colored cliffs of Cedar Breaks; reddish-brown or chocolate-colored water comes from the mountainsides, especially from Maple Canyon; water with a milky appearance comes from the gypsum beds and the soils of the grey

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and tannish hills. 8 Floods can carry as much as 86 percent suspended material-clay, sand, and gravel-after a storm.

The waters of Coal Creek have been appropriated for beneficial use by Cedar City Corporation and the farms in Cedar Valley. The water was divided for irrigation by the early settlers into the Old Fort, Old West, Union, South, West, and North fields and the Meadow, as well as a portion diverted to Cedar City for irrigation and culinary use. As the population increased and more land was taken up for farms farther away from the main fields, applications for water rights increased and conflicts arose which could not be settled by arbitration. The adjudication of the waters of Coal Creek was a long, drawnout process, and one not resolved amicably among the landowners but in the courts. Due to conflicting claims, the Fifth District Court issued a decree in 1901 which established four classes of water based on dates of claims.

The Utah State Engineers Office was established in 1903 and immediately began a determination of water rights for all streams in the state. Between 1917 and 1924 this was accomplished for Coal Creek under the direction of Bert Gardner and Arthur Fife. A new decree was issued on 6 December 1924 which adjusted the 1901 decree. As time passed, adjustments and changes at the headgates, improvements in measuring methods, and reliable watermasters somewhat overcame the "hatred and bitterness that once existed."9 On 20 February 1936 the district court made minor adjustments in the 1924 decree, which remains in effect in the 1990s. The system is complicated but is maintained according to the decree by careful administrators. Water runs through irrigation ditches throughout the community; it is used less often for home gardening than in the past but is enjoyed by the children as it has been for generations.

Maintaining the quality of water for home and business use was of concern even to the early residents of Cedar City. One of the first city ordinances in January 1854 was "to preserve the purity of the water and define what shall be a nuisance." It set fines for fouling water in the ditches by throwing in dead carcasses, hides, dirty clothes, or the contents of wash tubs, chamber pots, or slop buckets.

City minute books show water taxes being levied as early as the 1880s. The first taxes were paid in grain; however, by 1894, taxes were

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set at fifty cents per lot for irrigation and one dollar per family for culinary purposes. For almost fifty years, culinary water ran down small ditches. Everyone had a barrel next to the ditch. Each morning the barrels were filled before the animals were turned out and taken to pasture. Families strained the water through canvas bags to filter out some mud and small animal life so "that it could be drunk without chewing."lo On one occasion, Samuel Bauer called on his girlfriend, Catherine, quite early in the morning. While they were visiting, Catherine saw her father, Joseph Hunter, coming around the corner of the house. Not wishing him to see Samuel so early in the morning, she suggested he hide. Bauer jumped into the empty water barrel and Catherine sauntered back toward the house. Hunter went to the ditch, filled a bucket with water, and emptied it into the barrel. The young man came sputtering up out of the barrel much to Hunter)s surprise) and the story was the source of much amusement around town. 11 Typhoid fever was common in the 1800s, and town leaders came to realize the danger of drinking ditch water. Although the city council began discussing piping spring water into the city as early as 1891) it was not until the fall of 1902 that cautious citizens were convinced to bond for a water system. Over the next few years) a water system was established that took the creek water out above the field dams and ran it into a series of settling ponds and then into a deep open tank or reservoir which was up Cedar Canyon about a mile from Cedar City. Eventually a new reservoir was built two hundred feet southeast of the original) which had developed leakage problems.

City council meetings contained lively debates about water pollution and prohibition) both subjects of great interest to Mayor (and doctor) George Middleton. Herbert Adams) Justice of the Peace for Cedar Precinct) heard a case in 1905 which Dr. Middleton brought against sheep men who ranged their herds in the Coal Creek drainage area. The case rested upon the germ theory of sanitation. According to the report) Suddenly Judge Adams broke in with the question) "Doc) what is a germ?Âť Answer: "Germs are minute living organisms of animal or

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HIST ORY OF IRON COUNTY

insect life of microscopic size." Judge: "Doctor, have you ever seen a germ with your own eyes?" Answer: "Yes, through a microscope, I have." Judge: "Why haven't you put some of those animals here before the Court as an exhibit in this case?" Doctor: "Your Honor, Judge, they are too small to be seen with the naked eye and the Court has no microscope .... " Judge: "You mean, Doc, that they can't be seen by the naked eyes or with common reading glasses?"

Doctor: "Yes, your honor, they are too small for that." Judge: "Anything that is too small to be seen by the naked eye is too small for this Court to waste its time on. Doc, you show me a germ and I will eat it. Case dismissed."12

When Middleton's term ended, he and the city council recommended that the bond be extended to cover the cost of piping spring water from higher up in the mountains directly into the city tank. In 1908 Mayor John Woodbury led a party of men to investigate the Coal Creek drainage. They found seventy-five dead sheep carcasses where natural drainage went directly into the creek. This was publicized and a second bond was passed; over the next few years, many springs were piped into the reservoir. Dr. Middleton felt somewhat vindicated. He wrote: Piping of the water was a dramatic demonstration of the relationship of typhoid fever to an impure water supply. Every year when the floods used to begin coming down the canyon there would be an epidemic of typhoid fever, with several fatalities. As if by magic these epidemics stopped completely as soon as our new system was supplied by pure water from the mountain springs.13

These two bonds began a water system that has been continually upgraded, improved, and enlarged by addition of new sources of water. A 900,OOO-gallon reservoir built in 1925 failed because it was built on gypsum soil. 14 In 1935 WPA funds were used to construct a smaller reservoir of 467,000 gallons, and in 1938 an additional bond provided funds to purchase the water from four major springs at the head of Shirts Canyon, which is piped to tanks on the hill.

After a severe water shortage in 1950, a 2-million-gallon tank was built south of town. Shares in the waters of the Kolob Reservoir were purchased in 1955, as the city council sought to develop water reserves

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for future growth. 15 City officials determined that water on the west side of Quichapa Lake represented the only undeveloped groundwater in the area. Cedar City Corporation was granted water rights and the first Quichapa well was added to the system on 23 July 1960. There were at that time four storage reservoirs with a capacity of 4.9 million gallons with two I-million-gallon steel tanks under construction.

During the 1960s, the city drilled a second well in the Quichapa area and a well near the cemetery which waters the cemetery, golf course, and ball parks. It also put Middleton Springs into the system, settled disputes with the original owners of Shirts Canyon water, proved up on all city water rights, and made major repairs and extensive improvements and extensions to the distribution system throughout the city.

In almost one hundred years, the water system for Cedar City has gone from the diversion of Coal Creek to a widespread and multiplesource system. Since 1956 the annual water use has gone from 660 million gallons to over 1,605 million gallons, as the city has grown from barely four square miles to 15.38 square miles and 98.27 miles of water mains. Watching over water needs, preparing against flooding, and planning for future growth have kept the city council, engineers, and administrators busy beyond expectation for a community of fewer than 15,000 residents.

Coal Creek is the only major stream in the Cedar/Beaver Basin that does not have a large water-storage reservoir to regulate flow fluctuations. Its unique watershed characteristics include a short, steep drainage that lacks adequate vegetative growth to inhibit high sediment runoff. Of ten potential reservoir sites listed in the Utah State Water Plan for the Cedar/Beaver Basin, one is on a tributary of Coal Creek. A reservoir would store 5,000 acre-feet of water as carryover storage during wet years and help level out year-to-year supplies, but it could negatively reduce the flow of water into Coal Creek and decrease the recharge of the Cedar Valley groundwater aquifer. It remains to be seen if this will be developed.

Newcastle and the Escalante Valley Pinto Creek flows from the northwestern slopes of the Pine Valley Mountain s, emptying into the Escalante Desert near

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Newcastle. The Federal Reclamation Act of 1902, designed to increase farm production through large-scale water projects, brought about the New Castle Reclamation Project, which proposed to reclaim land on the Escalante Desert with water diverted from the Colorado River drainage in the Pine Valley Mountains to Pinto Creek in the Great Basin. 16 The New Castle Reclamation Company was formed in 1908 with seven stockholders. I ? Key structures of the project were an irrigation dam on Grass Valley Creek, a 6,500-foot canal to reverse the natural drainage of the Grass Valley Basin, and a tunnel through the mountain to Pinto Creek. Construction began in 1911 on the 3,200foot-long, 95-foot-high dam with a storage capacity of 26,650 acrefeet. A feeder canal built in 1914 by Japanese laborers transferred water from a tributary of the Santa Clara River to the reservoir for storage. A 135-foot tunnel joined the reservoir to Pinto Creek. The plan included generating power using hydroelectric turbines on Pinto Creek, after which water would flow to a spot east of Newcastle where another reservoir would control spring run-off and irrigation. ls The Grass Valley Reservoir was completed and filled, but it stored water for only short periods during excessively wet years, such as 1919 and 1920 when water overflowed the spillway. The reservoir was built on volcanic soil and leaked through the bottom. Other problems included funding and water rights. Investors dropped out until six men were left with a huge debt and a great deal of property of no immediate value. They drilled a well in 1915, but at that spot there was insufficient water for irrigation. Later successful wells did not help the reclamation company and its customers. 19 In 1915 another water project was begun-a small reservoir to hold 2,000 acre-feet of water in Pinto Canyon six miles above the town of Newcastle. The present Newcastle Reservoir was constructed in 1955 with a loan from the Utah Board of Water Resources. The dam filled by July 1958; in 1974 it was raised by ten feet, increasing storage capacity from 3,200 acre-feet to 5,200 acre-feet. The reservoir is used for irrigation, recreational boating, and fishing. 20 Water for city and field irrigation use is piped underground and supplied under pressure to users. For many years, water for culinary use in Newcastle came from a spring under the reservoir which had been capped and

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piped into town. About 1978 the city purchased a water right 2.5 miles from Newcastle, where a well presently supplies water to a tank above town.

Storms and Floods For city administrators, supervising water use is only half the equation. The other portion is planning for or digging out of floods brought on by heavy thunderstorms that can be neither predicted nor eliminated. Communities on the western edge of the mountains that use creeks for irrigation face the threat of floods from snow melt in heavy snowpack years and from cloudbursts during the summer.

Brigham Young recognized the floodplain in Cedar Valley where Fort Cedar had been built between 1853 and 1856, and he recommended moving the city. In general, the communities of Iron County have not suffered great damage from snowmelt during high-water years. The opposite is true of damage from summer thunderstorms and cloudbursts, however.

In the Parowan Valley, it is usually fields that are damaged.

During a storm on 28 July 1952 hail measuring over an inch in diameter thrashed a field of grain northwest of Parowan, In nearby areas that received rain instead of hail, rainfall measured an inch in just a few minutes, causing flooding in ditches and fields. In July and August 1963, two storms about two weeks apart struck in mountains, both bringing floods down Parowan Canyon into the valley. On 2 August, floodwaters filled Five-mile Campground, took out several bridges, washed out part of a culinary water pipeline in the canyon, and then covered several hundred acres of alfalfa in the valley with thick red silt. Red Creek above Paragonah flooded four times during cloudbursts in August 1972, July 1974, and August 1997, with damages ranging up to $100,000 from each storm.

The mountains east of Cedar City drain into Cedar Canyon, Fiddler's Canyon, Dry Canyon, Green's Lake, and Squaw Cave. It is not surprising that storms over these areas have caused great damage and are the biggest local natural disasters. One of the most devastating floods to hit directly in Cedar City came on Thursday, 26 July 1956, following a cloudburst on the face of the Cedar Mountain at Green's Lake. Floodwaters crossed u.S. 91 and followed an old swale

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

through the west side of the city, damaging homes from 450 West to 1400 West. The city engineering crew rushed ahead of the three-footdeep flood warning people to get their children inside, as the flood rushed through the streets and yards and into the basements of homes.

Friday morning brought another flood from the same area with similar results. The iron mine companies and the state and county road departments sent bulldozers to help, and by Saturday dikes were built south of the city to divert the water to the west into the fields.

Early Sunday morning another flood came. Mayor Arnold E. Anderson declared a state of emergency and hundreds of volunteers responded once again. Under anxious watch, the dikes held. Monday morning brought another flood, and Monday afternoon a fifth flood roared out of the hills. The dikes held again; however, estimates of damage to homes and streets exceeded $100,000.

In 1958 the Green's Lake Watershed Project was built. A series of three basins were built along the foothills to catch floods and carry the water around the city. On Saturday and Monday afternoons, 17 and 19 August 1958, nearly three inches of rain fell, making virtual rivers of Cedar City streets. Sixty acre-feet of water was diverted on Saturday and a hundred acre-feet of water on Monday by the project, which functioned perfectly in its first real test. Although ballparks, North Elementary playground, and some basements were flooded, damage was minimal. In September 1967 a four-day storm emptied the skies, with 4.95 inches of rain measured at the airport. The catch basins filled and one discharge tower plugged with debris. The water could not escape and remained in the basin for several months, causing a small area to sink. Repairs were made in 1969.

Floods in Coal Creek itself often result in deposits of fine sediments in low areas, natural channels, borrow pits, canals, ditches, culverts, and irrigation structures. The fine red sediment washed off the sandstone in Cedar Breaks and Ashdown Gorge usually makes fields unfit for further cultivation. In 1961 there were eighteen floods reported in the Cedar Canyon drainage. Most were small, but considerable effort was required to keep bridges, irrigation systems, and roads cleared and repaired. On 3 August, a large red flood occurred. It originated in Cedar Breaks and the water carried so much sand and

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Sediment and debris completely fill Salt Creek where it is crossed by U-14 up Cedar Canyon in this August 1965 flood photo. (Courtesy USDA Soil Conservation Service, Cedar City Office)

clay that it would hardly run, yet pressure carried it almost to Quichapa Lake. Huge rocks weighing 500 pounds or more were sliding along in the channel and hundreds of large logs came hurtling out of the canyon and promptly jammed bridges at the airport, Utah Highway 56, and along the Union Pacific railroad tracks. Even the airport was covered with a thick layer of mud over parts of the runways and taxi strips. Thousands of tons of silt were moved from the roads by state crews.

In 1968 the worst of several floods that summer originated in Maple Canyon on 8 August. It was a ÂŤblack flood;' indicating that the sediment included coal. The flood washed out Utah Highway 14 at the Maple Canyon bridge. All channels in the valley were filled with gravel and considerable damage was done to farmlands. The next year, two of ten large floods were the largest and dirtiest in recorded history. The peak discharge on 23 July 1969 was 4,660 cfs. Just five days later, another flood carried large amounts of timber which jammed bridges.

Peak discharges are not always the sole determining factor in

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

damage, and the worst damage is not always on Coal Creek. Fiddler's Canyon is a steep canyon about 1.5 miles northeast of Cedar City proper, with a watershed area of approximately 7.5 square miles.

CCC crews built flood-control projects in the area in the 1930s, but most washed away. Floods from the canyon in August 1965 caused considerable damage. Despite this history, in August 1979 Fiddler's Canyon subdivision was approved for the area below the canyon.

Homes, apartments, churches, an elementary school, a major theater complex, and other businesses were built in this area and in the adjacent Sunbow subdivision west of u.s. 91. On 31 July 1989 a large storm formed; homes and businesses were attacked by raging waters, rocks, debris, and thick mud. Fiddler's Canyon Theater was flooded, as was the lower level of the office complex, while the adjacent pond filled with mud. The flow extended across the highway, where it overturned cars and filled basements of Sunbow homes, finally stopping in the fields near Interstate 15. 21 Damages from this storm were estimated at over $4 million.

One of the least likely places in Utah to flood would appear to be the high desert of central Iron County, where there generally is very little rainfall. However unlikely, there have been significant floods in the Escalante Valley, usually resulting from rainfall on rapidly melting snow in the mountain watersheds south of the desert.

Floodwaters fill Shoal Creek and spread out over farmland as they reach the valley. Perhaps the most extensive was in February 1922, when an early thaw of an unusually heavy snowpack spread floodwaters across the desert and flooded Lund to a depth of four feet.

After culverts were placed under the tracks, water subsequently flowed to its natural low point north of the tracks and the town.

In more recent years, flood stage has been reached on the desert in February and April 1978, March 1979, February 1980, March 1983, and March 1995. On 11 March 1995, flow at Shoal Creek was estimated at 6,600 cfs. Although the Newcastle Reservoir controls Pinto Creek and the Enterprise Reservoir controls the drainage of Shoal Creek, the combination of a melting snowpack and rainfall can overflow these reservoirs and bring floods to the desert.

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Groundwater and Wells When snowpack is high) the spring snowmelt recharges underground water reservoirs) or aquifers. There are three large areas in Iron County where groundwater can be pumped for irrigation. The first wells were dug late in the nineteenth century by a new generation of farmers who were moving away from their parents) irrigated farms to establish themselves. They selected areas beyond the range of irrigation water. Consequently) they sought water from wells or tried to produce crops by dry farming. Settlers found flowing wells in the lower parts of the valleys when they first drilled in the 1890s and early 1900s. People dreamed of having enough water to farm with) but they generally only obtained enough for culinary use and watering stock. When electricity became available) wells for irrigation became possible due to electric motors to drive the pumps.

The biggest push to drill wells came during the drought of 1933 and 1934. State drought-relief committees drilled and equipped six large irrigation wells in Cedar Valley. Each well could produce 600 gallons of water per minute) or approximately 100 acre- feet of water every day. The county extension agent became concerned that the water table would be lowered by the pumping) so he made monthly measurements of twenty-one wells in 1934. His observation was that the water table was significantly lower. The area had experienced six years of subnormal precipitation followed by unprecedented drought during the winter of 1933-34. He was unable to determine what proportion of the lowering was attributable to pumping and what proportion to the decrease in annual precipitation) but he concluded that the groundwater supply was greatly dependent upon annual precipitation. At present) the u.S. Geological Survey regularly measures the groundwater resources. Observation wells are measured regularly and analyzed at intervals. The information is published on maps of the areas. 22 Wells have been extremely successful in getting water for agriculture in the Escalante Valley beyond the areas irrigated from the Enterprise and Newcastle reservoirs. The first wells were drilled in 1906 by the San Pedro) Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railway at Lund) Zane) Beryl) and Modena to provide water for steam locomotives and

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

culinary use. One well was dug on the Parley Moyle farm by scraping a big hole to the eighteen-foot water table level with a team of horses and a scraper. Moyle then drilled five feet farther with a posthole auger. Railroad ties formed a wall so the trench and hole would not cave in and water was pumped by a small gas engine into an irrigation pond.

The arrival of the Rural Electric Association into the valley in 1945 and 1946 gave great impetus to well drilling. Electric motors allowed for greater pumping capacity and the desert began to blossom. In the 1930s and 1940s, storage ponds were built on the land near each well and all farms used flood irrigation. Modern water developments since the 1940s have allowed farming to increase, especially in the areas of low rainfall in the county. Farmers began using concrete ditches and even dikes. Aluminum pipes were introduced in the 1950s and sprinkler irrigation began. By the 1960s sprinkler pipes were put on wheels; the first pivot sprinkling systems was installed on the Moyle farm in the spring of 1966. There were 244 wells being pumped in 1994 in the Beryl-Enterprise area, and withdrawal of water was about 86,000 acre-feet. 23 Groundwater levels declined from 1990 to 1995 in most areas of Cedar Valley, the declines probably resulting from less precipitation and stream flow during the extended dry years of 1990-94.

Precipitation was up during 1994 and early 1995, but drought returned in 1996. Water levels also declined in Parowan Valley due to greater-than-average withdrawals for irrigation during the dry period. 24 Water levels declined in most of the Beryl-Enterprise area.

Pumping groundwater for irrigation is vital for Iron County's main agricultural areas, yet judicious use of this resource is essential to preserve the quality and quantity of water for future generations.

Water and Power Water was the source of power for early mills in Parowan, Cedar City, and the mountains above. Gristmills, timber mills, and shingle mills were built in Parowan Canyon, but only gristmills were built in Cedar Canyon. A sawmill was brought by the first group of settlers who came with George A. Smith. It was installed on Center Creek at the mouth of Parowan Canyon in 1851. Richard Benson built this

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sawmill for Smith and later bought it from him and ran it for many years. 25 Steam-powered sawmills became popular in the 1880s. They could be moved wherever the timber was plentiful and run on less water than earlier mills. One of the larger steam sawmills was brought from Nevada by Daniel Pendleton for Frank Fish and George Warren. They installed it at the north end of the Co-op Valley and had a large crew of men cutting timber and working the mill; however, a boiler explosion killed two men and injured several others.26 Alexander Matheson ran a shingle mill in Parowan and a lath mill up the canyon before moving to Cedar City in 1900 to operate the flour mill in the mouth of Cedar Canyon.

Hydroelectric plants were built on both Center Creek and Coal Creek early in the twentieth century. Electricity was generated at both plants in 1906, and both were later replaced by coal-fired steam power plants. Parowan's power plant still produces electricity for the city and surrounding area.

From the time of settlement until electric ice-making equipment became available, the keeping of winter ice into and through the summer months was a major challenge. A number of men received Cedar City Council permission to open ice businesses on Coal Creek.

Harry Hunter was one early "ice-man," with a pond opposite the point of the Red Hill. He would flood the pond from the creek, cut the ice, and store it in a barn behind his house. The ice was covered with sawdust and kept very well. Hunter delivered the ice to homes using a closed wagon. Tom Stapley also had an ice pond just west of the old reservoir where he caught the overflow of the reservoir to fill it. Ice ponds were cut with a sharp plow pulled by a team of horses.

The plow made a sharp groove across the ice, and a sharp bar was driven into the groove to make the ice split so it could be removed in rectangular blocks. 27 After World War II, the Pacific Fruit Express Company froze ice on a pond above the second CCC dam, about 3.5 miles east of Cedar City. Ice was cut and stored in sawdust during the winter on the north side of the dam. In late summer, it was taken to town, crushed, and layered in boxes of carrots to be shipped to eastern markets. Thus the history of ice businesses extended almost forty years. 28

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Use of geothermal water resources occurs southwest of Newcastle in the nursery industry. A well, drilled to a depth of 500 feet, supplies water at a temperature of 250 F. Large greenhouses, built in the 1980s, use this geothermal resource for heat and raise potted plants and flowers. Another well provides water to heat the local LDS church building.

In the early 1990s, the Utah Division of Water Resources studied in depth the water resources of the Cedar/Beaver Basin, one of the state's eleven water resource areas. Recommendations were given to county and city governments to work toward conserving and protecting from contamination all water resources, but especially those groundwater basins which are primary aquifers. Groundwater resources in Parowan Valley, Cedar Valley, and the Beryl-Enterprise area are being used (discharged) in greater quantities than they are being replaced (recharged). The Beryl-Enterprise area is one of the few areas in Utah where long-term groundwater mining is occurring, due to very large and easily tapped groundwater reserves and the absence of conflicting surface water rights. The long-term decline in the water table is increasing the energy requirements for lifting the water. The danger exists that if mining of groundwater continues, the cost of pumping for irrigation could become prohibitive in this area.

Although water quality is generally good, deterioration in area groundwater quality has occurred. The state recommends that local government entities and water users make protection of recharge areas a part of zoning and management plans. 29 Community leaders, looking to the future, have expressed great concern about protecting water quality and having sufficient water for future growth in Iron County communities. During the 1990s a citizen's movement has created a water conservancy district in Cedar City/Cedar Valley to develop and protect water resources. People who live, work, or play in this semiarid county have a responsibility to conserve and protect its vital and limited water resources.

0

ENDNOTES

1. Clemont B. Adams, former Cedar City water engineer, provided extensive research and historical materials for this chapter. His reports,

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notes, and tables will be kept in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University for further study and publication.

2. Wm. Davenport, ÂŤA Statement of Facts in Relation To The Use of the Water of Center Creek, Iron County, Utah for Irrigation," recorded in the Parowan West Field Minute Book in 1880 and copied 7 March 1977 by Harold S. Mitchell, copy in author's possession.

3. The Greenwood Decree is named for Judge Joshua Greenwood, who signed it 24 January 1914.

4. Robinson Reservoir was strengthened and improved in 1985.

5. George S. Halterman, Excerpt from Diary, 26 November 1899 to 5 January 1900, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

6. For example, in 1964 Henry Bentley, who was eighty years old, provided a statement to Harold Mitchell, who owned property homesteaded in 1891 by Henry's father, John Bentley. He testified that wells were drilled in 1892 and that seven wells provided 1,200 gallons per minute in 1916. He believed that his father's wells were the first driven and used in Parowan Valley. Copy of affidavit provided by Clemont Adams.

7. D.V. Allen, J.I. Steiger, S.T. Gerner, et aI., Ground Water Conditions in Utah, Spring of 1995, Cooperative Investigations Report, no. 35 (Salt Lake City: Utah Department of Natural Resources, 1995), 58.

8. Rhoda Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," 64.

9. Ibid., 49.

10. Alva Matheson, Cedar City Reflections (Cedar City: Southern Utah State College Press, 1988), 2l.

11. Story retold by Clemont Bauer Adams, grandson of Samuel E. and Catherine (Hunter) Bauer. Samuel and Catherine were married on 3 January 1893.

12. Minutes of the County Court oflron County, Parowan, Utah, Book No.2,33l.

13. George W. Middleton, Memoirs of a Pioneer Surgeon, 155.

14. Details of the city council's efforts to keep a good water supply are included in Jones and Jones, Mayors of Cedar City.

15. There was an option in the agreement with the Washington County Water Conservancy District for Kolob water which allowed Cedar City to discontinue payment and be reimbursed for previous payment. In 1994 the city council voted to exercise this option because of the high costs to purchase and develop the water plus possible litigation costs. See Cedar City Council minutes for 20 November 1994.

16. Announcement of the project created a scare among the Enterprise

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Reservoir stockholders, who scrambled to make sure their water claims were protected. Joseph Fish reported that Enterprise people were incensed over the efforts of Iron County and Salt Lake City businessmen to take Washington County water which «belonged" to others. Fish, «History of Enterprise," 234.

17. See Jones, Lehi Willard Jones, 150-51, and «Land of the Giant Sage," a prospectus from the New Castle Land Company, copy in author's possesSIon. 18. Jones, Lehi Willard Jones, 155.

19. Ibid., 158, 159.

20. Between 3,200 and 3,600 acre-feet of water were distributed from the dam for irrigation in the 1990s, according to Clemont Adams. See also Iron County Record, 9 April 1915, and Shirley Hart, «A History of New Castle, 1893-1975," 1975,5-7, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

21. Clemont B. Adams, journal entry, 1 August 1989.

22. J.H. Howells, Ground Water Conditions in Utah, Spring of 1996, Cooperative Investigations Report, no. 36 (Salt Lake City: Utah Department of Natural Resources, 1996), 55-56; 59-60; 67-68.

23. Allen et aI., Ground-water Conditions in Utah, Spring of 1995, 6-7, 66.

24. Ibid., 54-61.

25. Dalton, History of Iron County Mission, 411-15.

26. Ibid., 417- 18.

27. Ray Stapley, interviewed by Clemont B. Adams, 10 November 1996.

28. Personal memories of Clemont Adams, who worked for the Pacific Fruit Express Company.

29. «State Water Plan, Cedar/Beaver Basin," Utah Division of Water Resources, Utah Department of Natural Resources, April 1995, 9-1-9-12, 19-14-19-16.

CHAPTER

17

PUBLIC LANDS AND FORESTS O f 2.1 million acres in Iron County, only 750,000 acres (36 percent) are privately owned. The federal government is by far the largest area land owner, with 1.2 million acres (57 percent) divided among U.S. Forest Service (USFS), National Park Service (NPS), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administration. The Utah State Land Board and Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) administers a little less than 135,000 acres (7 percent). Since the early 1900s, the federal agencies have maintained programs of discovery, promotion, development, and control of western lands. Many local land users believe the emphasis has been heavy on the control aspect in the latter half of the twentieth century. The history of the public lands and forests provides understanding of conflicting viewpoints about use, administration, and ownership of public land among sportsmen and other outdoor recreationists, lumber and mining interests, conservationists, ranchers, and farmers.

By the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo with Mexico in 1848, all the land within what is now the State of Utah was ceded to the United States. Despite the fact that Mormon settlers were living on part of 301

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the land and had surveyed and distributed it, this land technically was public domain until provisions were made in 1869 to extend the federal system of land laws to Utah.

In Iron County settlements settlers drew for city lots, gardens, and farm acreage. Records were kept of land ownership, and land transactions were recorded and considered legal even though they were not recognized by the federal government. Mountain land to the east and rangeland to the west were considered public land and were used for obtaining timber or as community herd grounds.

The mountain highlands were important to both Indians and white settlers for food, water, fuel, and timber; but neither group wanted to live in the mountains. Despite some efforts to be good stewards in the use of resources, most did not understand the fragile nature of the forest environment. I The most valuable natural resources of the mountains were water and timber. Water rights were granted according to theories of beneficial use. Timber resources came from unregulated government lands, but they were considered so vital to the general welfare that at first local citizens regulated the timber and lumber industries through the Mormon concept of stewardship. In February 1852 the territorial legislature placed control of all public lands, timber, and water in the hands of county courts. In February 1856 the Washington County Court granted the timber of Kanarrah Creek Canyon to E.H. Groves and Henry Barney for the benefit of the inhabitants of Fort Harmony. Control of timber in Spring Creek Canyon was similarly granted to William Young for "the benefit of the people." Regulation continued until the late 1860s, at which time timber supplies were thrown open to the public. Deregulation resulted in fierce and destructive competition, as timber was harvested in large quantities and freighted from Iron County to build the mines and mining communities at Pioche, Nevada, after 1869 and at Silver Reef after 1875. 2 For eighteen years after 1851, the mountains were generally used for hunting and lumbering. Settlers feared that if their animals ranged in the mountains they would be stolen by Indians. However, by the late 1860s the valleys were overgrazed and herds outgrew the available land. The opening of mountain land for grazing came at the

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end of Indian troubles in the late 1860s and was associated with using mountain pastures for dairying. Powell Expedition geographer A.H. Thompson described the mountain forage as "the best grass I have ever seen," and "a perfect paradise for the rancher."3 In 1869 Eliza McConnell of Cedar City took the family's dairy cows into the mountains for the summer. Other families from Paragonah, Parowan, and Kanarra soon followed. They found pleasant temperatures and cool, clear springs of water which were ideal for the processing of cheese and butter. People established claims by squatters' rights on mountain ranches until the late 1870s and 1880s when many secured land under the homestead laws.

Federal Land Laws Under federal land laws, General Land Office (GLO) surveys had to be made before filing for land claims could begin. Surveys were generally completed in Iron County in 1870. From 1870 until 1934 the federal government distributed public lands in the county under a variety of laws, including the 1862 Homestead Act, the Mining Law of 1866, the General Mining Law of 1872, state land grants for specific purposes, the Desert Land Law of 1877, the Carey Land Act of 1894, the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909, the Three-year Homestead Law of 1912, and the Stockraising Homestead Law of 1916. By 1930, Parowan and Cedar valleys, Buckhorn Flats, the fields of Kanarraville and Hamilton Fort, the mining districts, mountain grazing areas on Cedar Mountain and the Paiute Highlands, and even a good part of the Escalante Valley were privately owned. In 1905, forested lands on the Markagunt Plateau not previously homesteaded were withdrawn as part of the Sevier Forest Reserve; they were later included in the Dixie National Forest.

From the grazing of dairy cows, it was a short step to grazing beef cattle in the mountains. Grazing occurred both on private homesteads and on the forest reserves. 4 The terrain appeared to be very fine cattle country; grass was reportedly tall and lush. In those early days it seemed as if the natural grasses and shrubs could support an unlimited number of livestock and, as a result, the herds grew in size.

There were few sheep herds in the mountains in the early days because managers preferred to range the cooperative sheep herds in

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the west hills near Iron Springs and Mud Springs. 5 After 1880, however, sheep were taken into the mountains for summer range. Sheep browse closer to the ground and leave little grass for cattle. By 1900 sheep had replaced cattle as the dominant livestock industry in Iron County. No one regulated the grazing, and, since agriculture and livestock produced 95 percent of the income in southern Utah at that time, no one was going to cut back voluntarily.6

Forest Reserves Southern Utah's mountain ranges began to show the effects of drought and overgrazing in the 1890s. As the interests of the federal government turned to conservation, especially after 1901 under policies encouraged by President Theodore Roosevelt and developed by Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the U.S. Forest Service, support for government regulation of grazing came principally from cattlemen, who saw sheep taking over much of the range, eating and trampling much of the feed. They petitioned for the creation of federally regulated reserves, which Roosevelt and Pinchot said would protect forests from disaster, mismanagement, and also from more radical forms of preservationism that would prevent multiple uses of the resource. "Common sense," wrote Pinchot, "holds that the people have not only the right, but the duty to control the use of the natural resources which are the great sources of prosperity."? For many Utahns, this seemed an acceptable return to the management practices used during early settlement. The establishment of forest reserves initiated an era of regulation and adjustment in southern Utah's livestock and timber industries. 8 After over 700,000 acres of forest on the Aquarius Plateau in Garfield County was withdrawn from public entry in 1902, the first forest survey in southern Utah was begun by Albert F. Potter, chief grazing officer of the Forestry Bureau in the Department of Agriculture. Potter surveyed during a drought year and, as a result, observed and noted a particularly deteriorated range which was heavily stocked and overgrazed, especially by sheep. Potter reported that the grass had been eaten off very close and that the country was badly trampled by the sheep. Sheepmen, however, claimed that sheep uti1ized the range to better advantage than other livestock and that

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hence no regulation was necessary. Sheepmen generally opposed any type of regulation, but Potter believed that a majority of the citizens he spoke with in Parowan and Panguitch favored the establishment of a forest reserve. 9 In addition to grazing abuses, Potter found timber conditions that indicated serious problems of mismanagement. In many locations, lumbering had been heavy over the years. The local lumber interests cut yellow pine almost exclusively, often concentrating on only the choicest timber, leaving much other timber wasted.

The Potter survey served to confirm the forest reserve policy, and during the next several years the federal government placed many of the mountains of southern Utah in national forest reserves. On 12 May 1905 the Sevier Forest was created on the Markagunt Plateau; it included forests in eastern Iron County, western Garfield County, and northeastern Kane County. The Dixie Forest was created on 25 September 1905 and included some forests stretching into southern Iron County at Old Irontown, Richey Flat, and Stoddard Mountain, and below the Escalante Desert along Shoal Creek. On 17 January 1906 the Paunsaugunt Plateau was added to the Sevier Forest. Forest management during the infancy of these reserves included administration of timber sales and regulation of grazing, with grazing as the predominant concern of local forest administrators.

There were significant obstacles to effective management of grazing. Due to inadequate funding in the early period, there were few forest agents and they were rarely trained foresters or range experts.

Most agents were local residents who were familiar with the area but also loyal to local biases. Potter's report had suggested liberal regulation of grazing, and his recommendation was followed in the belief that numbers could be adjusted as the need arose. Even so, livestock men resisted Forest Service campaigns to bring livestock use into balance with the realities of forest resources. At the time of withdrawal, the forest range was estimated to be 25 to 100 percent depleted and the permitted livestock far in excess of the carrying capacity of the range. However, recognizing the importance of livestock as the principal source of income in southern Utah, the Forest Service attempted through better range management practices to allow as much stock on the range as possible. 10

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Changes occurred over time. By 1909, grazing policy was becoming fairly well established and regulation was beginning to check some of the most obvious abuses resulting from the competitive grazing on the ranges. Grazers had been taking stock to summer range too early in the spring, when the ground was soft and vulnerable. The Forest Service controlled this by shortening the grazing season. Rangers reduced the number of animals by equitably distributing permits among the actual settlers of the region, and they gradually increased the number of small permittees at the expense of the big operators. The introduction of purebred Hereford cattle and French Rambouillet sheep enhanced both the quality and the profits of the livestock industry. The overall result was a larger number of owners grazing smaller herds made up of better stock, better cared for.ll People began to see that regulation had checked some abuses of competitive grazing and had helped improve timber and watershed management.

Forest Recreation A change in national forest leadership after 1910 led to new policies regarding the forests as places of recreation. People already had a natural affinity for nature and enjoyed venturing into the forests and mountains. Now, the Forest Service hoped to promote and encourage recreational interests and activities by planning and managing for recreation. In order to fit in with other forest uses, recreation needed control to allow for other uses of forest areas. 12 The interest in recreational management of the forests coincided with a growing awareness of southern Utah's scenic attractions and a national interest in setting aside national parks and monuments.

Grand Canyon National Monument was created in 1908, and Mukuntuweap National Monument in Zion Canyon was established in 1909. Whereas development of the parks required building acceptable roads, tourist facilities, and camping sites, forests were readily available recreation grounds for local citizens and could be quickly accessed on horseback or by wagon for picnicking, camping, summer homesites, hunting, and boating and fishing. Forest supervisors were told to initiate programs in recreational development. They were also instructed to care for all the beautiful, rugged scenery and natural

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wonders, hopefully without conflict with coordinated management of grazing, fire protection, and sanitation considerations. 13 Unrestricted harvesting of wild game prior to 1911 had led to severe shortages, especially in deer herds. Working with the state fish and game agency, t he new national forests in southern Utah were closed for five years and afterwards controlled by requiring fishing and hunting licenses and other restrictions. Deer herds quickly increased, and stockmen then complained that deer herds were responsible for range damage. The issue of game management caught the Forest Service between grazers and sportsmen.

Dixie National Forest In a 1919 consolidation of forests, the Sevier Forest was eliminated' with the West Sevier Division (Markagunt Plateau) being added to Dixie National Forest (DNF), and the East Division (Paunsaugunt Plateau) added to the Powell National Forest. Later, all areas were combined as the Dixie National Forest.

The years from 1919 to 1928 were extremely important in the realization of recreational potential for forests and natural scenic attractions in southern Utah. Rapid recreational development came with the Union Pacific (UP) railroad spur into Cedar City and construction of comfortable lodges and other accommodations by the UP's Utah Parks Company at Zion Park, Cedar Breaks, Bryce Canyon, and Bright Angel Point on Grand Canyon's North Rim. Much of this development came as a result of local promotion from the Cedar City Commercial Club, acting like a modern -day chamber of commerce in coordinating and encouraging the developments; but the Forest Service also was a party to the progress in significant ways.

Dixie National Forest Supervisor William L. Mace was president of the Commercial Club in 1921-22. The Forest Service administered Bryce Canyon until 1928 and Cedar Breaks until 1933, and it cooperated with local, state, and other federal agencies to construct the circle o r system of roads and highways that connected the four recreation areas. 14 Cedar Breaks on the Markagunt Plateau was at this time part of Dixie National Forest. The Forest Service began receiving inquiries about campgrounds and homesites near Cedar Breaks in the 1920s.

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The area east of Cedar Breaks along Mammoth Creek had been a summer recreational center for years. The Forest Service developed roads and trails, a campground, and parking turnouts at points of interest along the road east of Cedar Breaks; but eventually the National Park Service took over the area as a national monument after three years of interagency conflict over whether it should be attached to either Bryce Canyon or Zion National Park. I S Visitors to the national forests increased dramatically during the 1920s. Even after Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks were transferred to the National Park System, recreational usage of the Dixie National Forest in eastern Iron County continued to expand.

Between 1911 and 1930 much was learned about timber management on southern Utah forests. Forest surveys were completed and enlightened forestry practices begun. Still, the principal activity was grazing and the main source of revenue for the Forest Service was grazing fees. Overgrazing continued to deplete the range even though there were some areas which showed improvement. Then, as now, the district ranger was critical in the Forest Service field organization. He was charged with management of timber sales, grazing, fire protection, recreational areas, and special-use permits. 16 Times were bad for Utah agriculture, stock raising, mining, and timber interests through much of the 1920s, but the Great Depression brought the most adverse conditions ever experienced in these industries. Extreme drought was added to low prices and poor demand for farm and livestock products. When stockmen could not sell their stock, their taxes became delinquent. Banks that financed the livestock industry were in trouble because notes and mortgages on livestock were unpaid and foreclosures increased. When their own obligations could not be met, financial institutions closed their doors.

Land values decreased and land no longer furnished the security to borrow money for farm and ranch operations. Once flourishing ranches failed. Under these circumstances, resource use on the forest tended to decline. Coal production was significantly reduced, the small timber harvest shrank, and numbers of sheep and cattle tended to decline as well. 17

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Grazing Districts Although 240,000 acres of land in eastern Iron County and a section in the far southwestern corner had been set aside as national forest, the much larger valley, desert, and northwest hills areas of the county which were not claimed for mining or homesteading remained in the public domain. This land was principally arid and broken mountains or hills. Ranges were generally overgrazed, and they suffered even more during the great drought of 1934 and 1935.

In 1934 Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act to allow regulated licensing of stockraisers on the public domain outside national forests. After signing the law, President Franklin D. Roosevelt withdrew from nonmineral entry all vacant, unreserved, and unappropriated public lands in the West so that grazing districts could be set aside and the remaining public lands classified as to their best use.

Thus ended the most common method of moving public lands into private ownership.

Grazing districts were organized beginning in 1935, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes created a Division of Grazing to administer these districts. The Division of Grazing was renamed the u.S. Grazing Service and its headquarters transferred to Salt Lake City in 1941. The Taylor Grazing Act gave the General Land Office (GLO) the responsibility to manage the leasing of rangelands outside grazing districts, all land exchanges, land sales, settlement entries, and mineral leasing. It also had responsibility for classification of public lands to encourage conservation and development of land resources outside grazing districts. 18 The setting aside of public lands for grazing was only one of many government programs in response to the drought and economic depression of the 1930s. The New Deal began with the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA), the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), and the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA); but the program most beneficial to the public lands was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which put thousands of unemployed young men to work.

The National Forest Service and the Division of Grazing were both willing and able to put large numbers of CCC enrollees to work

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Brian Head Peak overlook, built by the CCC. (Courtesy Dixie National Forest)

on long-range projects for forest and rangeland improvement.

Beginning in 1933, CCC crews constructed high-quality roads and miles of trails that opened up the forests for timber harvesting and fire fighting and consequently increased recreational use by hunters and hikers. In Iron County, a road was built up Second Left Hand Canyon in Parowan Canyon along Center Creek which went over the summit to Castle Creek to connect with another CCC-built road from Cedar Breaks and Brian Head to Panguitch Lake. Existing roads to Mammoth and into Little Valley were improved.

Some of the crews were put to work building new campgrounds.

One camp worked summers at Bryce Canyon and winters at Zion Park, although it spent the summer of 1937 building the Cedar Breaks museum and cabins for park employees. A crew also constructed the rock pavilion on Brian Head Peak and the outdoor amphitheater at Duck Creek. Although there were some who felt strongly that all federal recreation areas should be managed by the National Park Service, the Forest Service position was that recreation played an important role in national forest management and it was the duty of forest officers to make the national forests contribute to

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recreation to the fullest degree. The work of the CCC camps gave the Forest Service the opportunity to telescope into a few years many years' worth of recreational improvements on the Dixie National Forest. After 1935, visitors found up-to-date campgrounds including toilets, shelters, wading pools, swings, teeter-totters, horseshoe pits, tennis courts, and volleyball courts at Navajo Lake, Pine Valley, Aspen Mirror Lake, Panguitch Lake, Mammoth and Duck Creeks, Brian Head, Blowhard Point, and Vermillion Castle. 19 Crews also assisted the Division of Grazing in range restoration, construction of dams, water troughs, and stock trails for livestock, and control of rodents, insects, and other pests. Increased federal activity of the 1930s from the CCC and other New Deal programs had real advantages for public lands, their users, and the men who worked in these programs. Thousands of idle men were gainfully employed in programs which provided wages, education, and a sense of accomplishment. Within just a few years, their work on forests and rangelands helped to restore much that had been lost by years of inadequate budgets, manpower shortages, and neglect.

World War II brought a booming economy and high demand for the natural resources of the West. With laborers in short supply, certain aspects of pre-war forest management, such as recreation and conservation, were de-emphasized. Forest Service activities declined as employees were called into the service and funds became scarce.

Recreational facilities fell into disrepair. Grazing and timber resource management increased with the wartime shift in national priorities.

This use of the forests expanded, although the tendency to overstock rangeland and forests with livestock for meat production was not as dramatic or shortsighted as it had been during World War I. Timber production more than doubled on the Dixie National Forest.

In 1944, when the Powell and Dixie forests were consolidated into the Dixie National Forest, the DNF supervisor's office was placed in Cedar City despite protests from livestock grazers in other counties. Studies had shown the forest could be most economically administered from Cedar City, a centrally located site to service the six-countyarea. 2o

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Bureau of Land Management Under a reorganization plan of President Harry S. Truman in 1946, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was created through a merger of the Grazing Service and the General Land Office. Western senators who opposed a raise in grazing fees that the Grazing Service supported agreed to support the creation of the new entity. The BLM was henceforth responsible for managing all resources on the nation's public lands, under more than 2,000 unrelated and often conflicting laws pertaining to the public domain. The BLM had a large district office which also was located in Cedar City. 2 1 During the 1940s and 1950s, public land managers attempted to balance the varied demands of a public seeking recreational areas with the needs of people living on or adjacent to the public lands and forests who often derived their living from these lands. This balancing act has continued through the succeeding decades of the twentieth century. Recreation has expanded beyond hunting, fishing, hiking, and picnicking to include winter sports of downhill and cross-country skiing and snowmobiling, as well as year-round use of off-road vehicles (ORVs), including motorized two-, three-, and four-wheeled vehicles and nonmotorized mountain bikes. Hotels, condominiums, and private mountain homes provide accommodations in mountain resort areas for thousands of visitors who do not live in Iron County yet use its national forest and BLM lands each year.

In Iron County, the BLM manages about 966,000 acres, or almost one- half of the land area. For many decades, BLM personnel were primarily concerned with mining and grazing, including conservation of natural resources and protection of watershed areas. Lifestyle changes between the 1940s and 1990s have increased regulation and supervision in order to protect wildlife, the land, and its users.

Recreation and tourism playa dominant role on the public lands of Iron County, even though other users still have a prominent role in the county.

Numerous natural, cultural, and historic sites on public lands are maintained or protected by the BLM and the Forest Service. The Dominguez-Escalante National Historic Trail, Parowan Gap cultural site, Spring Creek Canyon Wilderness Study Area, and three historic

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mInIng sites (State Line, Gold Springs, and Iron Springs/Iron Mountain) are located within the Iron County portion of the federal government's Beaver River Resource Area. In addition, there are four BLM herd management areas where wild horses run free, plus other sensitive protected wildlife areas. These include small but valuable riparian and wet-meadow areas vital to certain wildlife species. 22 The diversity of habitat supports a wide variety of wildlife and plant species. Large numbers of mule deer reside throughout the area and are a frequent traffic hazard. Bald eagles are seen in both Cedar and Parowan valleys during the winter and there are a number of protected nest and perch sites for the endangered golden eagle on the Escalante Desert to the west. Other sensitive species found in the area include the peregrine falcon, ferruginous hawk, and Mexican spotted owl. Pronghorn antelope are seen on the Escalante Desert; Rocky Mountain elk thrill vigilant visitors in the far northwest Needles Mountain Range. During unusually wet years, wildflowers bloom through the spring and summer on the desert and in the west hills.

The higher mountain pastures boast continuous meadows of lupine, yucca, bluebells, dandelions, and Indian paintbrush. 23 Forest users and forest service managers have come to accept and expect more intensive management of timber and grazing resources.

Chaining and controlled burning on BLM, Forest Service, and state lands in western Iron County have removed pinyons and junipers to allow regrowth of grasses and forbs where livestock and wildlife graze, although this practice is vocally opposed by many conservationists. 24 Efforts are required to control various forest pests. On Cedar Mountain in the 1950s foresters battled porcupines. Other programs combat bark beetle, blister rust, and spruce budworm, which damage much timber.

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, there have been dramatic shifts in uses of public lands, bringing new perceptions of how they should be managed. Increased environmental awareness occurred at a time when the public h ad more leisure time and money to en joy recreation. Conservationists became alarmed over environmental degradation on public lands in the West and over decreasing pristine areas.

This concern led to federal studies, legislation, and increased control by federal agencies. Legislation since 1960 that affects national forests

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and public lands includes the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960, the 1973 Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act, Outdoor Recreation Act of 1963, Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1964, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA), Utah Forest Wilderness Act of 1984/5 and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).26

Wilderness Issues The environmental movement is perhaps best known in the western United States for efforts to preserve large areas of publicly owned lands as roadless, natural, undeveloped wilderness areas, which can be enjoyed by backpackers and others seeking solitude and "opportunities for primitive and unconfined recreation." Motorized vehicles, permanent buildings, lumbering, and crop farming are prohibited on lands so designated, but hunting, fishing, and grazing are allowed. The wilderness movement is thus at odds with the prevailing historical commodity orientation of both federal bureaus.

In the 1970s some western public-land users felt the BLM in particular was tramping on traditional relationships and rushing to embrace the new public-land users or non-users, as the case may be, and so they affiliated with the so-called ÂŤSagebrush Rebellion," attempting to wrest control of public lands from the federal government or at least to minimize regulation of such land. Critics of the sagebrush rebels maintain, however, that traditional users have enjoyed special advantages at the expense of taxpayers in general and that these advantages must be curtailed or limited. In 1979 and 1980 the Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, and New Mexico legislatures voted to attempt to reclaim public BLM lands from the federal government and place them under state control. Although the movement dissipated during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who claimed to be a sagebrush rebel, it revived in the 1990s. The Utah legislature in 1986 voted to oppose any additional designation of wilderness in the state, but changed that position in 1990 to support designation of 1.4 million acres of BLM land in Utah as wilderness under certain restrictive conditions. Opponents support moves to designate 5.7 million acres of BLM land as wilderness. In 1995 Utah Representative James Hansen again introduced legislation which

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would transfer some BLM lands to state control. These issues are far from settled either at the federal level or among various factions in the western states and southern Utah.

Even though Iron County has very little land that qualifies for wilderness designation, many of its ranchers and public leaders strongly oppose plans to designate from 2 million to 5 million acres as wilderness in other areas of southern Utah. Iron County has a wilderness area in the 7,000-acre Ashdown Gorge, which forms the rugged lower slopes of Cedar Breaks National Monument. It was designated by the Utah Wilderness Bill of 1984, which dealt specifically with national forest areas. Spring Creek Canyon, which borders Zion National Park in the southeastern corner of Iron County, was a Wilderness Study Area (WSA) in the Utah BLM Statewide Wilderness Environmental Impact Statement completed in 1990. It is less than the 5,000 acres required to qualify as wilderness, but it was included because it is contiguous to lands under wilderness consideration by the National Park Service. The total WSA is 4,433 acres, but two state land sections cut the parcel in half, and only 1,607 acres bordering the park were recommended for wilderness designation by the BLM.27 Other organizations would include the entire acreage and would also trade for the state sections so that an even larger area could be set aside. Iron County commissioners spoke against the land's inclusion at public hearings, and consequently Spring Creek Canyon was not included in the 1995 Utah Wilderness Bill, which languished in Washington throughout 1995 and 1996. The bill is strongly opposed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an organization which opened an office in Cedar City in January 1995 to represent the proponents of increased wilderness.

Issues of multiple-use versus wilderness continue to divide Utahns and create debate related to the public lands, and they symbolize the larger struggle to control what many Utahns believe is their own land. Others counter that the land is a national trust for all citizens and that those who claim it have in fact benefited from its use at the expense of others without taking responsibility for its care and management.

Severe drought conditions have impacted local forests and the western United States in general since 1988. Drought affects all

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phases of forest management, from restrictions on recreational activities to range and timber management. Damage from dry years has left a mark on the forests and rangelands and exacerbated the debate between environmentalists who want natural processes to proceed unhindered and USFS and state foresters who are committed to managing forest resources. In the old spruce forest stands surrounding Brian Head and Cedar Breaks, trees stressed by drought are heavily infested with spruce beetles of epidemic proportions. The USFS determined in 1992 that it would be irresponsible not to control the infestation, include baiting and trapping beetles and harvesting infected trees. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) attempted to block beetle control by a lawsuit which contended that the action violated the National Forest Management Act and the Clean Water Act and that it was an attempt to allow timber harvesting in restricted areas. Although U.s. District Judge J. Thomas Greene ruled in August 1995 against the environmental groups and agreed with forest service personnel that continuation of the status quo would mean continued loss of the old growth spruce forest, there is still no peace between the opposing factions. 28 Cutting and hauling infected trees began in the fall of 1995. The infestation was much worse than thought and could continue to move into new areas in the future. SUWA spokesmen claimed that removing timber would exacerbate the infestation, making existing conditions worse; however, the USFS moved ahead with treatment and logging. Affected forests at Brian Head resort and around Cedar Breaks will be sprayed. However, no active treatment can be used in Cedar Breaks National Monument or the Ashdown Gorge Wilderness, so these areas will serve as benchmarks of natural processes. 29 Significantly reduced logging in recent years brought the closing of all large area sawmills. 30 Helicopter logging was introduced near Panguitch Lake in 1994, with logs trucked through Iron County to the railhead at Milford and sent to the Northwest for processing. 31 Grazing allotment analysis in 1991 under provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) called for a reduction in the number of animals grazed on public lands. In 1996 most term grazing permits on national forests were due to be renewed. Since

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national policy directs new environmental analysis before reissuing permits, interdisciplinary teams have analyzed the impact of grazing on resources of the national forest. Range rides are conducted each spring to allow the Division of Wildlife Resources, the livestock permittees, and the Forest Service to examine range conditions for both wildlife and livestock.

Environmental pressures of the 1990s also have changed the management of wildlife on the forest with requirements to protect sensitive species. After concern that the Arizona Willow was a threatened species, scientists discovered that this plant grows in abundance on the Cedar City Range District. Working in cooperation with several agencies, the Forest Service is trying to enlarge the range of this plant to its former areas in both Utah and Arizona. In partnership with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, habitat for deer, elk, upland game birds, and wild turkeys has been increased. 3 2 Mountain biking has become a popular recreational activity on public lands in the 1990s. New bike trails have been constructed near Brian Head Resort, on the "C" mountain, and in Cedar and Summit canyons. These trails help control and encourage biking. Mountain biking has increased the resort community's economy during summer months. Brian Head has been one of the fastest-developing ski areas in Utah since the 1980s. All access to the resort is across the national forest, and some lifts and trails are on land managed by the Forest Service. Trail grooming is done by the resort.

The passage of time has wrought changes to Iron County forests and rangelands. Beginning in the 1850s, it seemed that no one wanted either the western desert lands or the mountain land, except for their water, timber, wildlife, and coal resources. This usage by the early 1900s contributed to almost total depletion of the rangelands.

Today, public lands are regions of multiple-use for which the people act as custodians rather than owners in an effort to pass them on to succeeding generations in as good or better shape than when received. Although national forest areas are only a small percentage of Iron County's public lands, their condition and resources remain critical to the quality of life enjoyed by county residents and visitors.

Whether other public lands remain under control of the federal government or are transferred to state administration in future years,

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their condition and accessibility for multiple uses will be of vital concern to the residents of Iron County.

ENDNOTES

1. Wayne K. Hinton, "The Birth and Infancy of the National Forests in Southern Utah: Settlement to 1910." Faculty Honor Lecture, 16 May 1985, Southern Utah State College, Cedar City, 2. Hinton's book, The Dixie National Forest: Managing an Alpine Forest in an Arid Setting (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Forest Service, 1987) was also a primary source for this section.

2. Hinton, "Birth and Infancy of the National Forests," 3.

3. Herbert E. Gregory, ed., "Diary of Almon Harris Thompson, Geographer, Explorations of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries," Utah Historical Quarterly 7 (1939): 83; Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, A Canyon Voyage, The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedition Down the Green-Colorado Rivers from Wyoming, and the Exploration of Lands in the Years 1871-1872, (New Haven: Yale University, 1926), 109.

4. Hinton, "Birth and Infancy of the National Forests," 4.

5. William R. Palmer, "The Early Sheep Industry in Southern Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 42 (Spring 1974): 181.

6. Hinton, Dixie National Forest, 38.

7. Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), 42; Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959),265-66.

8. Hinton, "Birth and Infancy of the National Forests," 7-8.

9. Albert F. Potter, Report, October 18-November 21, 1902, quoted in Hinton, Dixie National Forest, 48.

10. Hinton, "Birth and Infancy of the National Forests," 10.

11. Ibid., 10- 11.

12. William B. Greeley, "Recreation in the National Forests," memo to forest supervisors, 2 October 1924, quoted in Hinton, Dixie National Forest, 69.

13. Hinton, Dixie National Forest, 72.

14. Ibid., 76-77.

15. Ibid., 77-81; Al Klein, "Cedar Breaks National Monument: A Report of Its Human History," National Park Service unpublished report, 1991, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University; Hal Rothman, "Shaping the Nature of a Controversy: The Park

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Service, the Forest Service, and the Cedar Breaks Proposal," Utah Historical Quarterly 55 (Summer 1987): 213-35.

16. Hinton, Dixie National Forest, 89.

17. Ibid., 99.

18. James Muhn and R. Stewart Hanson, Opportunity and Challenge: The Story of the BLM (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Interior, 1988),35-41.

19. Hinton, Dixie National Forest, 107.

20. Ibid., 123-24.

21. Managing the Nation's Public Lands, Fiscal Year 1987 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, 1987), 1.

22. "Recreation and Vehicle Guide to Beaver River Resource AreaUtah," U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, n.d., copy in author's possession.

23. Ibid.

24. Spectrum, 9 October 1995, 1.

25. This bill designated three areas of the Dixie National Forest as wilderness: Ashdown Gorge in Iron County, Box-Death Hollow in Garfield County, and the Pine Valley Mountain area of Washington County. See Hinton, Dixie National Forest, 145-46.

26. Managing the Nation's Public Lands, 1.

27. Utah Statewide Wilderness Study Report, Volume i-Statewide Overview, (Salt Lake City: Bureau of Land Management, 1991),5.

28. Amy K. Stewart, "Forest Service bark isn't bigger than beetles' bite," Spectrum, 30 June 1996, AI, AS. 29. "Spruce Mortality Increasing In the Mountains East of Cedar City, Utah," Spectrum, 30 June 1996, A8; Amy K. Stewart, "Brian Head Resort battles with beetle," Spectrum, 30 June 1996, AS. 30. The last large mill to close was the Panguitch mill in August 1996.

See Spectrum, 28 July 1996, 1.

31. "Historic Happenings on the Iron County Portion of the Dixie National Forest, 1988-1995," unpublished report provided by Marion Jacklin of the Dixie National Forest, Cedar City Office; I ron County Advocate, 3 August 1995,3.

32. "Historic Happenings on the Iron County Portion of the Dixie National Forest."

CHAPTER

18

MINING

Mining has come full circle in Iron County. Explorers in the early 1850s found vast reserves of iron and coal, helping lead to the settlement of the area. Deposits of silver, gold, lead, fluorspar, and gypsum were discovered later. These finds produced headlines in local newspapers, but only iron and coal mining prospered, and that occurred almost one hundred years after settlement. In the 1990s, little mining remains. Despite the mineral resources, it currently is easier and cheaper to mine elsewhere. 1

Iron Mining and Manufacture Without question, Iron County is accurately named. Within its borders lie the richest and most accessible iron ore bodies in the western United States. 2 The mining district is three miles wide and twenty-three miles long, occupying only sixty-nine of the county's 3,300 square miles. However, economically and historically, its impact has eclipsed that of any other facet of the natural landscape.

The iron ore bodies were created in Tertiary times when igneous intrusions of molten rock, or magma, pushed up toward the earth's 320

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surface, forming bulges between layers of a blue-gray Jurassic limestone called the Homestake Formation. The magma hardened into quartz monzonite. Iron rich emanations, as liquid or gas, followed the perimeter of the igneous rock upward, creating deposits of magnetite and hematite, ores of iron. The iron deposit probably took place after the intrusive igneous rock had cooled to a solid state because mining has uncovered iron ore in cracks and fissures in the quartz.

Geologists believe the intrusions were formed under a surface cover from 2,000 to 8,000 feet thick. Subsequent erosion has partially stripped this cover from three prominent laccoliths, or domes, namely Iron Mountain, Granite Mountain, and Three Peaks, exposing the monzonite cores. The iron ore exists on the tops and around the flanks of these laccolith humps, extending down to the floors of the surrounding valleys. Some of the ore bodies have been exposed, totally or partially eroded, and then reburied with sediment during the intervening thousands of years.

In 1849, discovery of gold in California was less important to Brigham Young than the reports of "immense quantities of rich iron ore" near the Little Salt Lake. Self-sufficiency was Young's goal for the pioneers in the Great Basin. Gold and silver mines he could live without, because they would attract non-Mormons to the area, but iron was essential for homes, farms, factories, and transportation.

Therefore, a colony in what was to be Iron County was a priority.

Subsequent discovery of coal and limestone, plus abundant juniper, pinyon, and pine trees, raised expectations of success in this venture.

In November 1851 Henry Lunt and two companies of men moved to Coal Creek to begin iron manufacturing ten miles from iron ore deposits and eight miles from coa1. 3 In May 1852 Burr Frost successfully smelted iron ore in his blacksmith's forge and produced a small amount of iron that was forged into nails. Brigham Young then organized an iron manufacturing company with Richard Harrison as superintendent, Henry Lunt, clerk, Thomas Bladen, engineer, and David B. Adams, furnace operator.

One month later, Henry Lunt reported "a considerable amount of work has been done," toward making iron. However, differences divided the men and leadership roles were not clear. When heavy

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storms on 20 July washed out the dams that brought water to fields and the fort, Bishop P.K. Smith had to call the men together to settle differences which occurred when the iron men would not work on the dam, so the farmers also refused to work on the structure. Later, there was discussion about trying a different kind of furnace and a dispute over how to test the iron ore. 4 Erastus Snow and Franklin D. Richards would write later, "We found a Scotch party, a Welch party, an English party, and an American party, and we turned Iron Masters and undertook to put all these parties through the furnace, and run out a party of Saints for building up the Kingdom of God."s The first test of the blast furnace was on 29-30 September 1852.

One hundred loads of coal were hauled and coked, loads of dry pitch pine were brought to mix with the coke, limestone was hauled for the furnace charge, and tons of iron ore were crushed with sledgehammers and brought to the furnace. Men worked all day and night charging the furnace and tending it. At six o'clock in the morning, they crowded in front of the furnace. Robert Adams tapped the furnace and a molten stream ran out. Instantly, pent-up anxiety broke loose in a spontaneous cry of joy. On the spot, five men were chosen to carry samples of the pig iron to Brigham Young in Salt Lake City to display at the October church conference. Although the metal had a peculiar appearance, they had made the first iron west of the Mississippi.6 During the conference, Brigham Young called for one hundred families to strengthen the Cedar City colony. George A. Smith preached an "iron" sermon, promising that all sorts of implements would be made from Cedar City iron. 7 Iron workers, coal miners, blacksmiths, and farmers were recruited, and by November and December they began arriving at the iron works, bolstering the spirits of the earlier settlers.

The enterprise desperately needed capital. At Brigham Young's request, apostles Erastus Snow and Franklin D. Richards organized the Deseret Iron Company in England on 28 April 1852. Snow and Richards obtained subscriptions totaling 4,000 British pounds ($19,360) from wealthy church members of the British empire and visited iron works in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland to obtain more information on making iron. Upon their arrival in Cedar City

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in November 1852, they bought out the pioneer iron company for $2,866, absorbing many of the original workers into the new company. This was probably the first foreign-owned mining operation in the Intermountain West. 8 With the establishment of the Deseret Iron Company, some people felt the missionary aspect of the venture was finished and they had no further obligation to stay, even though leaders counseled otherwise. A number of iron missionaries returned to the northern settlements, others went to California.

Between September 1852 and September 1853, through experimenting and great effort, the furnace produced about twenty tons of pig iron from approximately fifty tons of ore, even though iron masters were still not satisfied with the quality of the iron. Richard Harrison in March 1853 successfully cast in sand moldings a variety of skillets, flat or hand irons, a kettle, two wheels, and other goods.

Henry Lunt took the hand irons to Salt Lake City, where President Young displayed them at the April 1853 general church conference as the first cast iron made by the Latter-day Saints.

The infant industry suffered several setbacks. On 3 September 1853 a mountain cloudburst sent a flood down Cedar Canyon which swept away dams, bridges, and the road to the coal mines. Three feet of water inundated the iron works, leaving ten inches of mud inside the furnace and buildings. Hundreds of bushels of charcoal, lumber, and wood were carried away. The flood, coupled with the Walker Indian War, forced Brigham Young to temporarily shut down the iron works and put iron workers to work on the adobe fort at Cedar City.

After rebuilding and repairing the dam, the Deseret Iron Company started its first trial on 9 January 1854, but the weather turned bitterly cold, freezing the creek and stopping the waterwheel and the air blast, thus shutting down the furnace. Company leaders decided to build a new furnace west of Coal Creek with a larger waterwheel and air cylinder, and they set it on a rock foundation. The new furnace was completed in September 1854 and had a sandstone lining. Although the furnace seemed to work well, the output was disappointing. By April, output was improved and a total of ten tons of ({good iron" were produced, including 1,700 pounds during one twenty-four-hour period. From this run, the company made a bell,

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which is the only known casting of the Deseret Iron Company still in existence. 9 Bringing and keeping together the factors of production to produce iron was difficult. The company still lacked the capital to accomplish its assignment and workers suffered greatly without suitable clothing, bedding, and other common comforts for themselves and families. Following his spring visit in May 1855, Brigham Young concluded that "the brethren have done as well as men could possibly do, considering their impoverished circumstances."lo Many problems threatened to close the Deseret Iron Company during 1855 and 1856, including a food shortage which left humans and animals near starvation. Severe weather cut off the supply of coal and froze the creek and waterwheel. Summer drought stopped the waterwheel again and there were more mechanical breakdowns.

Some became discouraged and moved to Beaver. In May 1856 an announcement in the Deseret News asked for 150 more workers and fifty more wagon teams to supply the furnace with fuel and ore.

In the spring of 1857 Brigham Young's steam engine from his sugar mill in Salt Lake City arrived, and by July it was in place and working. Despite this, the work force continued to drop and the iron company struggled, primarily repairing broken machinery and making improvements to the furnace. They had barely restarted the iron works in late summer when orders came to suspend all production and turn attention to harvesting grain, due to the approach of federal troops under Col. Albert Sidney Johnston. Amid the turmoil created by the army's approach, men from the area were involved in the tragic attack on a wagon train of Arkansas emigrants at Mountain Meadows in September 1857. The aftermath of this event discouraged and disquieted many in the county. The exodus from Cedar City continued.

Iron making resumed the next spring, despite the remaining specter of war. Members of the Iron District Militia were sent to scour the mountains for a refuge site if Johnston's Army forced the Mormons to flee their homes. In April sixteen men and teams went to the mines near Las Vegas to bring back lead ore to make into bullets.ll During the summer, Johnston's Army entered the territory and established Camp Floyd southwest of the Salt Lake Valley, bringing

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with it a large inventory of iron in the form of wagons and weapons.

In October 1858 Brigham Young ordered Isaac Haight to close down the iron works. 12 Within five months, the population of Cedar City dropped by two-thirds. Those with means left. Those who had given their wagon wheels to the iron works remained behind. Iron workers had little to show for their labor. What little pay they received had been in goods from the company store. Two who remained, Joseph Walker and John Pidding Jones, made the last run of the iron works in 1860 by melting down seven wagonloads of federal iron cannonballs and then casting flat irons, dog irons, molasses rolls, saw- and gristmill irons, grates, and other implements. In 1861 Erastus Snow took all the removable assets, including machinery, to the new colony at St. George. 13 The iron works failed to live up to expectations for reasons the settlers could neither understand nor control. Location of the works required time-consuming transportation of both coal and iron.

Inadequate and erratic flow of Coal Creek did not permit consistent furnace operation. Local clay and sandstone proved to be poor fire clay for lining the furnace. Coal mined from Cedar and Right Hand canyons slacked too quickly and contained too much sulfur. Lack of adequate financial backing kept the company from adequately paying its workers; they and their families often went barefoot and were hungry. Furthermore, the unknown chemical makeup of raw materials caused metallurgical problems in smelting the ore. Experience could not overcome lack of scientific knowledge. Disagreements on technical aspects of iron making had a lasting effect on the morale and efficiency of the iron mission workers. 14 The reward for most of the iron workers was knowing they had done what was asked of them by their leaders. They had not come to get rich but to establish an industry to help every community in the Great Basin. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Iron Mission was the perseverance of the people in continually trying to make iron and build their community while living in abject poverty.

In the years after 1860, John P. Jones supplied some badly needed iron implements by building a small cupola furnace along Coal Creek and utilizing a large waterwheel which was shared with a cabinet shop and flour mill. Later, at Johnson's Fort, he built a blacksmith

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shop where he made tools, and eventually another cupola furnace, a foundry, and a coke and charcoal oven. Utilizing scrap iron, Jones painstakingly molded stove and fireplace grates, skillets and irons, horseshoes, and horseshoe nails. The largest single casting made was a five -hundred-pound hammer to drive piles for the dam being constructed on the Virgin River by the St. George and Washington Irrigation Company. Cog wheels, shafts, tracks, wheels, pulleys, and rollers were made for sawmills, the molasses mill in Washington County, and mines at Silver Reef and Lincoln County, Nevada. Mine operators were the best cash customers of the John Pidding Jones and Sons Iron Company. The furnace operated on and off for nearly twenty years. 15 With high hopes, a second phase of iron mining and manufacturing began in Iron County in July 1868. A company was formed by several of southern Utah's more successful businessmen, Ebenezer Hanks, Peter Shirts, Chapman Duncan, Seth M. Blair, and Homer Duncan. They called it the Union Iron Works as well as the Pinto Iron Works. Their location was at Little Pinto Creek some twentythree miles southwest of Cedar City, close to ore fields at the south end of Iron Mountain. Dr. T.L. Scheuner, a Swiss metallurgist, was superintendent. A smelting furnace, at least three beehive charcoal ovens, and a number of buildings to support the iron works were built along the creek at a place now known as Old Irontown but officially named Iron City.16 By 1870 a fair-sized settlement complete with shops, homes, a post office, and farms was in place. The 1870 census showed eighty-nine persons in Iron City.

The furnace soon was producing 800 pounds of good quality iron every eight hours around the clock. The challenge, however, was not iron production, but selling the product. Seth Blair wrote to the Deseret News to plead for the building of a foundry somewhere in Utah that would buy the company's cast iron and turn it into steel or wrought iron. Between 1868 and 1871, large supplies of iron ore and needed materials were gathered for continuous furnace use. However, lacking capital and laborers, when the materials ran out, production ceased and the furnace was shut down. This was not before many machinery parts and household implements were made, however.

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The largest project sent pig iron to Salt Lake City, where it was cast into twelve oxen for the St. George LDS Temple baptismal font.

Union Iron Works was taken over by the Great Western Iron Mining and Manufacturing Company, with Thomas Taylor, a Salt Lake businessman, and his son-in-law, John C. Cutler, as major stockholders. Cutler later became governor of Utah. Litigation prevented Taylor from developing his properties for some time. Despite continuallegal problems over mining claims, Taylor added the land holdings of Ebenezer Hanks to his own on 8 January 1881. 17 Another company, the Utah Iron Manufacturing Company, was organized in August 1881 by a committee of Zion's Board of Trade from Salt Lake City. It obtained properties at Iron Springs from Thomas Taylor, Henry Lunt, and the LDS church, which had secured patents on coal and iron reserves in 1880. Its mining claims were challenged, and the next three years were spent in litigation trying to document its best claims. is Meanwhile, t he LDS church's First Presidency and Board of Trade attempted to develop uncontested claims at Pinto and Iron Springs by forming the Iron Manufacturing Company of Utah (IMCU). Many shares went to Thomas Taylor in return for his properties. IMCU obtained coal claims located in Cedar Canyon and purchased the plant of the Great Western Iron Company at Iron City, including the blast furnace, machine shop, engine house, pattern shop, foundry, store, schoolhouse, and residences. Increased capital was essential, and church leaders were determined that it should come from within Utah rather than losing control by selling stock to eastern or gentile (non-Mormon) interests. Church members were encouraged to subscribe to IMCU stock, but most of the subscriptions were promises of labor and material rather than cash.

President John Taylor received permission from LDS church members at the April 1884 general conference to put church funds into the iron works, which enabled IMCU to buy the Pioche and Bullionville Railroad, a narrow-gauge mining road with twenty miles of rails, two locomotives, twenty-five cars, a roundhouse, and other equipment. Tracks were to be laid between the coal mines in Cedar Canyon, iron deposits at Iron Mountain, and the furnaces at Old Irontown. The road was to transport itself by repeatedly extending

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the rails in front of the engine, moving the engine and cars onto the rails, and removing the rails from behind and again placing them in front. However, the method proved too time consuming, and the railroad equipment was finally transported by ox-cart and wagon from Jack Rabbit, Nevada, to Cedar City, a distance of eighty miles.

Though some grading was done, no tracks were ever laid.

Mormon church leaders, forced into hiding to avoid prosecution for polygamy, were unable to pursue development of the iron company. Thomas Taylor claimed to have opportunities to sell the company's properties, but felt that he was prohibited by the stalling actions of George Cannon, who held the mortgage papers after John Taylor's death. 19 In 1886 a Cedar City "Observer" wrote the Salt Lake Herald:" ... today, as far as the iron industry is concerned, we are quiet as a church yard, and nothing left to remind us of our past hopes and great anticipations, but the roadbed ... a few pair of railroad car wheels, a portion of a locomotive and tender, and a few hundred feet of rails."20 After 1872, when federal mining law stipulated rules for claim location, annual assessment work, and patenting procedures, hundreds of prospectors covered the Iron County mineral belt. From twenty-three recorded claims in 1880 in the Pinto and Iron Spring Mining districts, the number grew to more than a hundred in 1900 and to over one thousand patented and unpatented mining claims in 1922, most of them worthless. Patenting was done by those hoping to interest investment capital to develop the area and by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), which purchased and patented many claims for its steel plant near Pueblo, Colorado, the first in the western United States.

Between 1899 and 1923, people who earnestly believed that Iron County would yet become a great iron-producing area waited for the right combination of demand and capital. Events that augured well for the eventual development of an iron industry included completion of the Los Angeles to Salt Lake City branch of the Union Pacific Railroad, increased demand for iron and steel products on the West Coast as population increased, and the opening of several small-scale steel plants in California. 21 Columbia Steel Company, a leader in California's steel industry,

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became interested in the county)s iron ore deposits because of the close proximity of large coal deposits in Carbon County. L.P. Rains) president of Carbon Fuel Company) had already purchased or located iron-ore claims on the north side of Granite Mountain which were ultimately sold to the new Columbia Steel Corporation) merging the California facilities with the Utah iron and coal properties. Columbia Steel began building a blast furnace south of Provo near Springville) equidistant from coal and iron ore sources. Limestone was available nearby) as was an abundance of water at Utah Lake. The site became known as Ironton.

While the furnace was under construction) the coal mines readied and iron mines opened in Iron County) Union Pacific built a branch railroad from the main line at Lund) through Iron Springs Gap) to Cedar City. The tracks were brought to Cedar City in less than three months) April to June 1923. The Milner spur was also constructed to the Pioche Mining claim) about a mile south of Iron Springs Gap. By April 1924) coal and iron ore were being shipping to the Ironton plant. On 30 April 1924 the Columbia Steel Works furnace was charged; three days later) 150 tons of pig iron was on its way to the Pacific Coast. The commencement of Columbia Steel Works was celebrated at Utah Steel Day) 13 June 1924) and the old iron bell cast in 1855 in Cedar City was exhibited at the celebration.

Within a year) Columbia determined that the chemistry of the Pioche and Vermillion mine ore was not correct for the blast furnace.

Investigations showed that the ore at Desert Mound was better) and in May 1925 Columbia Steel contracted with Archibald Milner and Brothers) principals in the Utah Iron Ore Corporation) for 1.5 million tons of ore to be furnished at the Ironton plant at a minimum rate of 500 tons per day. Utah Iron built a 3.5-mile branch railroad line to Desert Mound. Milner)s reserves were estimated at 15 million tons within a depth of one hundred feet.

Utah Iron Company mined by open-pit blasting methods. The ore was loaded by a single small steam shovel onto cars on a narrowgauge rail system and transported to a processing plant where the ore was crushed) screened) and shipped to Ironton. Eventually the grade out of the open pit became too steep for the railroad and dump trucks were used. The steam shovel was able to handle 300 tons per

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eight-hour shift, and so a second (and sometimes a third) shift was added to meet the contract of 500 tons per day. By comparison, in the 1960s, anyone of the five crushing plants in the district could produce 500 tons per hour.

From 1924 to 1936, Utah Iron mined 2.4 million net tons of iron ore, with 1.5 million tons supplied to Columbia Steel, 778,350 tons sent to the CF&I furnace at Pueblo, and 134,000 tons sold for flux to various foundries and smelters. Desert Mound Mine went out of production in 1936.

Iron Springs was at its height between 1924 and 1936. A post office was located in the branch store of the Cedar Mercantile Company and the school board moved a schoolhouse from Yale. Iron Springs School operated from 1924 to 1930. About forty men were employed at the Pioche mine. Community baseball was a favorite pastime, and the team from Iron Springs played teams from other communities and the CCC camps during the 1930s.

The purchase of Columbia Steel by United States Steel Corporation (USS, later USX) in 1929 significantly impacted iron mining in southern Utah. USS set up its own mining operations under a subsidiary, Columbia Iron Mining Company, which operated in Iron County from 1935 to 1985. Due to the depletion of suitable grades of ore at Desert Mound, Columbia moved its mining operations to Iron Mountain. Twelve miles of track was laid to extend the railroad from Desert Mound to the south side of Iron Mountain.

Open-pit mining began at the Black Hawk outcrop. Black Hawk ore, higher in iron content than other available ores, improved furnace performance and demand increased. Ore shipments to Ironton rose from 175,000 tons per year in 1936 to nearly 300,000 tons in 1941.

Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, United States defense plans included locating an inland steel mill somewhere in the West. A site at Orem, Utah, was selected because it was away from possible air attack, was an equal distance from major naval bases, had good transportation facilities, and was near plentiful sources of coal, iron ore, and water. The Geneva mill required four times the quantity of iron ore as the Ironton plan. Between 1940 and Geneva's opening in 1944, the number of mine workers in Iron County increased from twenty-one to more than 300. Shifts and work hours multiplied

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to provide iron ore for Geneva, Ironton, and other plants supplying steel for the all-out war effort.

In addition to Columbia Steel, CF&I contracted in 1943 with Utah Construction Company (UCC) to build a loading plant and to open CF&I's mine on the Duncan Claim. Beginning with just a sixmonth contract, UCC began a forty-year operation in Iron County.

Iron ore mined by UCC on land it leased was sold on the open market, primarily to Kaiser Steel Company at Fontana, California.

No labor union represented iron miners of the county until 1943 when United Steelworkers of America representatives met with Columbia Steel miners to organize a local in the mining district. This union was a member of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) labor group. When Utah Construction began its mining activities in the county, its workers were members of the Construction Trade Unions, a member of the rival labor organization, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and received higher wages than did Columbia Steel workers. As a result, there was contention over wages and contracts at the Columbia Steel mines for a number of years.

Geneva Mill operated for twenty-one months as a defense plant, stopping production on 3 September 1945, just weeks after the surrender of Japan. When the Geneva plant and its war-time facilities were first offered for sale in 1946, companies were not interested.

Political pressure by President Truman and Utah's congressional delegation finally elicited six bids, US Steel's being the most favorable.

The plant, which cost about $200 million to build? was purchased by USS for $47.5 million. USS spent $17 million converting the plant to a peace-time operation. The purchase of Geneva was of tremendous importance to Iron County. The local newspaper editor commented: I

Completion of the sale assures the peace-time operation of this great war developed plant and brings to the west its greatest chance of industrial development .... And since the Geneva plant is dependent upon the ore from Iron County mines to feed its blast furnaces, Cedar City immediately takes its place as an important cog in the industrial development of the West, and will benefit tremendously. " 22

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Lindsay Hill pit near Iron Springs. (Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU; photo by York Jones)

Ore requirements for Geneva's blast furnaces needed an increase in mining production as well as a more even chemically blended furnace feed. Geneva Steel and Columbia Mining Company decided to blend low-grade ores of 40 percent iron content with higher-grade ores. A blending facility was built at Geneva to allow use of the lowergrade ores, a step in conserving available resources and fully using the iron as it was mined.23 In 1949 Columbia Mining reopened the Desert Mound ore body and the Short Line deposit next to it. Columbia built its own power plant with three diesel generators at Iron Mountain. Companyowned power transmission lines were strung from the power plant to Desert Mound.

During the 1940s, over 17.4 million net tons of ore was mined in Iron County, five times more than had been mined in the previous eighty-seven years. The 1950s proved to be the largest production decade in history. Combined shipments of the Utah Construction

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and Columbia Mining companies exceeded 41.85 million tons. Over 600 people were employed in mining, and the county benefited from high wages and a mine-oriented tax base.

During the 1950s, the unions were strong and strikes every three or four years by the United Steelworkers of America hurt the local economy. In 1949, as part of a national strike, 165 local workers struck for six weeks. In 1952,220 local workers were on strike for ten weeks, extending their strike past the national settlement to resolve a local pay issue. In 1956,241 members of the local union struck from July to November. By a domino effect, some Utah Construction workers and railroad workers also were laid off during these times.

On occasion, separate railroad union strikes resulted in curtailed production and lay offs of mine employees. Local businesses felt the consequences, which sometimes persisted for months after the strike settlement as families recovered from the loss of income. Some businessmen resented the high wages paid miners because it caused employee discontent among their own workers. Hourly wages in the steel industry were the highest in the country in the 1950s and 1960s.

However, by the 1960s, Japan, operating the most modern steel plants in the world, could ship iron ore from Utah to Japan, fabricate steel products, ship them back to San Francisco, and still undersell US Steel. 24 Two other issues affected US Steel's long-range plans in Iron County. Development of the 100-million-ton Rex ore body was held up by contested mining claims requiring years of litigation and extensive royalty payments. The other issue was additional local taxation' deemed unfair by USS. Some county residents were concerned that ore reserves were being exhausted without sufficient return to the county. In 1949 Iron County Attorney Durham Morris drafted legislation introduced by State Senator L.N. Marsden and Representative E. Ray Lyman in the state legislature designed to bring additional tax revenues from mining. The state in 1950 passed the ÂŤnet proceeds tax," levied on all iron ore shipments. Mining companies' protests resulted in some modification, but the companies still faced a large tax increase after 1951. The value of the iron mines of the state, all located in Iron County, was set at $24,177,127 for 1951 tax purposes, which accounted for 67 percent of the total county tax

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value. By comparison, the tax value of the same properties in 1950 was $3,737,415, just 23 percent of the total assessed property value in the county.25 A lengthy lawsuit ensued, with USS arguing that Iron County and the state were wrongly collecting taxes. Fifth District Judge Will L. Hoyt upheld the Utah Tax Commission's right to set a value on ore for tax purposes where the ore was sold under contract between two subsidiaries of the same parent company, in this case Columbia Mining and Geneva Steel. The court's decision was important to the county and impacted taxes collected in 1949 and subsequently.

Thereafter, mining companies paid a net-proceeds tax on ore mining, a mine-occupation tax to the state, taxes on patented mining claims, taxes on equipment and fixed assets, state and federal corporate income tax, as well as large royalty payments to patented claims owners.

In response, in 1962 US Steel drastically curtailed mining operations in Iron County and opened the Atlantic City Mine in Wyoming.

Tonnage shipped from Iron County was cut in half, to two million tons each year. 26 During the 1960s and 1970s, Utah Construction mined and improved ore using a $1.3 million ore beneficiation mill built in 1961 which concentrated low-grade ores. 27 Utah Construction also developed a 500-ton mobile, dry magnetic separation unit to upgrade ore found in the alluvial fans surrounding major ore bodies. It shipped concentrates to Geneva Steel and to cement plants in Utah, Idaho, and the Pacific Northwest, where ore was used to give special properties to cement. Low-grade ores of other companies in the area were also concentrated.

Utah Construction mined its own properties as well as Blowout Mine (from 1947-1968), Comstock Mine (1954-1981), Queen of the West Mine (1956-1967), and Mountain Lion Mine (1970-1981), owned by CF&I. 28 Purchases of new and heavier equipment in 1975 indicated company commitment to improved production, automation, and safety. Four seventy-five ton trucks, a new rotary drill rig, and an electric ten-cubic-yard shovel were major purchases. In the 1970s Utah International was the largest mining operator in Iron

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County, with a work force numbering 180 in the winter and 230 in the summer.

However, increased operating costs eventually took a toll on the iron industry. Even as it was becoming evident in 1971 that the industry could not compete with foreign steel, steelworkers negotiated a settlement promising wage increases of 31 percent over three years. Plant modernization was needed, but instead USX began dosing older facilities. Geneva was nearly dosed in 1979 and 1980 by the Environmental Protection Agency, then temporarily dosed in 1986 during labor contract negotiations, and permanently dosed a year later when no labor agreement was reached. USX stopped mining and shipping from Iron County in 1980. Beginning in 1984, many mine facilities in Utah and Wyoming were dosed and dismantled.

The CF&I mill at Pueblo and the Fontana mill in California were also dosed and dismantled. Some blamed inept management, others censured the unions for steel industry troubles.

In January 1981 BHP-Utah International dosed down its mining operations in Iron County but continued shipping from its 1.5-million-ton stockpiles at Iron Spring for four more years. According to operations manager York F. Jones, ÂŤWe had just priced ourselves out of the market."29 The beneficiation mill, alluvium concentrator, and the crushing and loading facility stood idle for five years and were then dismantled. Utah International's employees were terminated or transferred to other corporation facilities.

In the 1950s and 1960s, iron mining industries and associated operations and services (railroad, electric power, and other utilities) paid approximately $923,000 in county taxes, or 60-70 percent of the tax bill for Iron County. By 1975 their share had decreased to about 37 percent ($894,000). Still, iron mining was the major industry, the major employer, and the major taxpayer in the county. 3D The industry's demise in the 1980s adversely affected Union Pacific Railroad and all other county businesses. The blow of losing this major tax base plus its related high-paying jobs and increased property values seemed insurmountable in 1980. In 1984 the county's iron empire appeared dead.

A partial resuscitation began in August 1987 when Basic Manufacturing and Technology of Utah purchased the idle Geneva

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plant from USX along with its ore reserves in Iron County. The next year, it purchased the iron ore crushing and loading plant at the Comstock mine from BHP-Utah International, and in 1989 it purchased CF&I's property. Iron ore from stockpiles and ore reserves at the Comstock mine and other mines has supplied the reopened Geneva steel mill. Since 1984 Gilbert Development has shipped ore from the Comstock, Mountain Lion, Excelsior, Chesapeake, and Burke pits. The blast furnace at Geneva used about sixty percent iron pellets from Minnesota and forty percent raw iron ore from Iron County. Over 800,000 tons were shipped annually in 1989 and 1990, but less than 175,000 tons were shipped in 1994. Taxes paid to the county between 1987 and 1994 ranged from $5,000 to $40,000. 3 1 Remaining iron ore in the Pinto and Iron Springs districts is estimated at over 200 million tons. The undeveloped Rex ore body has over 150 million tons and is considered the single richest accessible iron ore body in the western United States. However, mining these reserves would require the investment of millions of dollars to strip overburden and to build facilities to produce a marketable product.

Meanwhile, Iron County has recovered tax losses by building an economy based on other manufacturing industries and on Southern Utah University. Vast ore reserves wait for a time when the price will be right to mine iron once again.

Coal and Coal Mining Immense coal beds are prominent features of the Cretaceous period formations of southwestern Utah. East of the Hurricane Cliffs, four major coal fields exist on the Markagunt and Paunsaugunt plateaus. They are the Kolob (which covers southeastern Iron, northeastern Washington, and northwestern Kane counties), Kanab, Kaiparowits, and Henry Mountains fields. There is also one minor coal-bearing area, the Harmony Field, on the border between Iron and Washington counties. Mines were opened near New Harmony early in the twentieth century but have been abandoned for many years.

Coal in Iron County occurs in practically inexhaustible quantities, but it has not been commercially mined to the extent of reserves in other Utah counties. Analyses show that the coal of the Kolob Field

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burns as hot as coal mined in Carbon County, and its moisture and ash content are also about the same; however, the sulphur content is higher, at 6-7 percent. Iron County coal is suitable for heating and cooking and was used for almost twenty years to generate electric power; however, its sulphur content makes it unsuitable for blacksmithing, iron making, and other metallurgical processes. 32 The fortuitous discovery of stone coal in the stream called "Little Muddy" or "Cottonwood Creek" in the spring of 1851 and Peter Shirts's location of two veins of coal up Cedar Canyon in April 1851 led to Iron Mission plans to locate iron manufacture on the banks of the stream, now called Coal Creek, ten miles from the iron ore deposits and about eight miles from the coal deposits. The chemical composition of the coal, however, hindered rather than helped iron manufacture.

Coal was brought by pack and wagon to fire the blast furnace in September 1852. Coal was mined five miles up the canyon, at the Walker Mine near the mouth of Maple Canyon, and at other canyon sites, as miners continually sought better coal for the iron works. 33 The Jones-Bulloch (later Macfarlane, and then Koal Kreek) Mine, eight miles up the canyon on the south side of Coal Creek, was the first mine of any size. 34 The Leyson Mine in Right Hand Canyon was opened in 1854. Nearby, the first coke ovens in the region were built.

When charcoal from cedar trees replaced the coke in the blast furnaces, coal mining languished. Typically, coal-mining operations lasted a few years, yielded a few hundred hard-won tons of coal, and were then abandoned.

Mining activity spread in the 1880s. A mine on Lone Tree Mountain was opened in 1885 by Andrew Corry. Although this mine reportedly had the "best coal" in southern Utah, it required a long haul in good weather and was totally inaccessible during the winter. A mine above Kanarraville supplied coke to the stamping mills at Silver Reef during the 1880s. A number of small mines south of Graff Point operated by P. Arnold Graff, Jesse Williams, and others supplied domestic coal for Kanarraville.

From 1890 to 1915, coal production was sporadic. Methods were slow and inefficient. No production was recorded for some years, and only 524 and 575 tons were reported in 1898 and 1899. 35 Small mines,

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worked by hand, tried to meet the needs of local residents, schools, and businesses that burned coal for heat.

William C. Adams, who spent the better part of thirty years working in local mines alongside his father, described mining "done the hard way" with picks and shovels and handmade cars and wheelbarrows. To open a vein, miners hand-drilled a hole three to four feet deep in a vein of coal and then used lime and black powder, or a "squid;' to create a small explosion to break out a small part. Miners started in the middle of the vein, widening out to each corner to make a square room. At first, candlesticks poked into wooden props provided the only light. Carbide lamps replaced candles and provided better illumination, but lighting remained dangerous until the state industrial commission required air courses to be built in the mines to vent off explosive gases. The clay streaks through a coal vein were separated by hand, and then the coal was scooped by shovel into a waiting car. The best miners would average eighty-five cars a week, each about one thousand pounds, but one-third of the load was waste and the small pieces were screened off before loading. Much more tonnage was mined than the wagons ever brought down the canyon. 36 Two early but unsuccessful efforts were made at bringing coal to Cedar City by tramway. In 1913 Dr. Earnest F. Green and the Iron County Coal Company reopened the Corry mine on Lone Tree Mountain above Green's Lake. Construction of a tram began in February 1918 but was never finished, as the company collapsed in the post-World War I financial depression. 37 Ten years later, a tramway a little more than a mile long was built from a mine on the north side of Lone Peak to the mouth of the canyon. It operated for a year or two, but the small amount of good coal obtained did not justify continuing the operation. 38 County coal production ranged between 1,000 and 3,000 tons per year in the 1920s. During the 1930s, production increased; in the 1940s, 6,000 to 8,000 tons was mined annually. Iron County coal was used in Iron, Washington, and Beaver counties as fuel for households and businesses. The early pattern of small-scale pick-and-shovel mining operations was improved somewhat by better equipment, especiallyafter 1945.

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In 1937 Dr. Arnold L. Graff, son of P. Arnold Graff, was trying to locate a section corner on Kanarra Mountain and went to the Land Surveyor General's office to look at the field notes of the original survey. In the notes were mentioned old coke ovens located near an old coal mine. Since Graff owned the property on which the ovens were located, he sent two miners to search for the coal deposit. The miners found a huge face of high-quality coal. Nearby lay old hardened coke apparently in as good a condition as when it was made fifty years before for the mills at Silver Reef. Dr. Graff had discovered a forgotten mine. 39 Graff hired William C. Adams to open the mine and called it the Kleen Koal Mine. Twenty to twenty-five men worked from August to October 1937 to open the mine before winter. The mine was at 8,500 feet elevation, and a three-quarter-mile cable tramway was built to deliver coal quickly and cheaply during all seasons. The tram, anchored to a ledge near the top of the mountain, ran to a tipple, or loading/storage site, above the Red Hill. The tipple was on a newly constructed road, still known as the Graff Tipple Road. From mining to loading, coal moved by force of gravity. Twenty buckets, each carrying 450 pounds of coal, moved on 15,000 feet of cable, with the plummet of loaded buckets returning the empty buckets to the mine.

Storage bins at the bottom of the tram had a 200-ton capacity.40 Guy C. Tucker later leased the mine from Graff. During his years of operation, the tramway was extended 2.5 miles to flat land and new buckets were made which carried 1,000 pounds of coal each. The loaded buckets traveled so fast that the brakes wore out, and so a generator was worked into the traveling cable to slow the tram to about 250 feet per minute. The tramlines were used all winter. Men drove to the Red Hill tipple, then walked to the mine along the tramline, which carried groceries and supplies to the mine. Dr. Graff had cabins and a mess house built near the mine. Tucker and his sons operated the Kleen Koal Mine until 1941 when Tucker closed the mine because the military draft took all his good men. Other area mines were also operated on a small scale during the 1930s and 1940s. A road went to these mines, but in the winter bobsleds were used to haul the coal out.41 In 1944 Southern Utah Power began constructing a modern

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coal-powered, steam-generating electrical plant with 2,500 kilowatts capacity one mile up Cedar Canyon. Reed Gardner, manager of the power company, contracted with the Tuckers to supply the coal.

Water for the plant came from nearby Coal Creek. Tucker supplied 3,000 tons per month, increasing to 5,700 tons per month in 1947 when an additionall0,000-kilowatt plant came on line to meet escalating demands for electricity.

By 1952 coal was supplied by the three largest mines in the area: Koal Kreek and Webster in Cedar Canyon and Tucker in Right Hand Canyon. Mine operators were Grant and Floyd Tucker and Lewis Webster. The mines became highly mechanized as demand increased in the late 1940s. Coal which went through a water cleaning plant built by the Tuckers in 1948 was too wet for use at the power plant but was useable for heating homes, schools, and the college. The Tuckers later built an air cleaning plant in Cedar Canyon to process coal from all three mines. Their investment was just under $100,000, and air cleaning lowered ash content to 8 percent. Four hundred tons of coal per day could be cleaned, with 200 tons coming from the Koal Kreek mine and the other 200 from the Tucker and Webster mines. 42 With mechanization between 1942 and 1958, average output per man per day went from 13.57 to 18.97 tons. Thirty-five men worked at mining, hauling, and in the cleaning plant in the 1960s. However, the three mines were closed in 1965 when the power plant closed because California Pacific Utilities, owner of Southern Utah Power, could buy cheaper power from Glen Canyon Dam. Estimated coal reserves in the Cedar Mountain quadrangle total nearly 260 million tons. Although 90 percent is in thick beds and reasonably accessible to existing transportation, the coal reserves remain just that in the late twentieth century-reserves. Coal mining is historically important but is not currently economically significant. 43

Silver and Other Minerals Silver, gold, lead, fluorspar, and other useful minerals were also produced by igneous intrusions through limestone formations in the western mountain ranges of the Great Basin and have been mined in Iron County. 44 In the early 1870s an old prospector found gold in the low mountains on the Utah-Nevada border, some twenty miles east

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of Pioche, Nevada. His deposit was called "Pike's Diggings." The Stateline and Gold Springs mining districts were formed on either side of the "diggings" in the Buck/Paradise Mountains, and mines developed where mother-lode veins of silver and gold were found associated with quartz, pyrite, adularia, and sometimes lead and fluorspar. These mines were worked off and on between the 1890s and the 1940s as ore values rose and fell.

The Stateline Mining District was organized in 1896 in Stateline Canyon immediately west of Hamlin Valley and about eighteen miles northwest of Modena. A mining camp, complete with stores, hotels, a school, a doctor, and a newspaper, The Stateline Oracle, flourished for several years. The largest mines were the Johnny, Ofer, Big Fourteen, Gold Dome, and Creole. A mill was built in 1902 to handle ore from the mining claims of the Ofer Mining and Milling Company. In 1904 the Ofer was sold to satisfy a judgment won by the mill contractors. 45 Ore mined at Stateline was taken to the railroad station at Modena for shipping. An estimated 13,000 ounces of gold and 173,000 ounces of silver were taken from these mines. 46 Stateline may have had over 200 residents in 1902-03. Deposits were never mined out, but ore values dropped in 1903-04- and most miners moved to better prospects. There were only thirty-five people in the Stateline Precinct in 1910. 47 Women in Stateline usually worked as merchants or ran boarding houses or hotels, except for Martha Tilley who was part-owner of the Mammouth lode claim. In 1905 she filed a notice of forfeiture against her partner, Henry Bowen, certifying her expenditures of over $200 in 1903 and 1904 in labor and improvements; he had to pay his portion within ninety days or the claim became hers.48 Other mine operators were from out of state, including J.H. McDonald from New Jersey, George Buel from New York, Joseph Carter from Minnesota, and Zeth Drake from Wisconsin, or from outside Iron County, including William Leamaster, George Rice, and Isaac C. Wolf. However, some Iron County men became involved after 1909, possibly picking up mining properties for delinquent taxes. In the spring of 1909, Samuel A. Higbee, John S. Woodbury, and A.R. Corry of Cedar City were "large owners" in the Big Fourteen Mine, which was reporting assays of 2,650 ounces of silver and $108

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per ton of gold. R.J. Bryant, Jr., of the Snow and Bryant company reported progress in building a steam stamp mill during 1911 which would make Stateline a "producer" again; but there is little evidence of success at Stateline. 49 In the 1980s an operation in Stateline to recover precious minerals by leeching was shut down for improper environmental procedures.

Gold Springs Mining District, organized in 1897 or 1898, straddles the Utah-Nevada border, about seventeen miles northwest of Modena. Prospectors C.A. Short and H.R. Elliott found rich gold outcroppings. Their mine, the Jennie, was the largest gold producer from 1907 to the 1940s, with reports of 4,000 ounces of gold and 21,000 ounces of silver produced. 50 The area mines received power from Dixie Power Company and had telephone lines strung from the mine to Modena. In January 1918, thieves cut down and removed more than 4,000 pounds of heavy copper wire strung between Modena and Gold Springs. Two men trying to sell the wire in Beaver and Salt Lake City were later apprehended by Iron County Sheriff Alfred Froyd. 51 John Jordan operated the Jennie Mine during the 1930s and 1940s when the shaft was extended 300 feet into the vein. Ore was lifted to the surface for crushing and then moved by gravity into a large mill where it was further broken down and the precious metals somewhat separated in an oil-flotation process. As a teenager in 1935 and 1936, Blair Maxfield, later professor of geology at SUU, worked at the Jennie Mine, where his father was superviser. Total gold production in the district is estimated at 13,000 ounces as a co-product with silver, with about 9,000 ounces coming from the mines in Iron County (Jennie, Jumbo, and Independence).52 In 1893 Henry D. Holt discovered silver ore on the Escalante Desert west of Shoal Creek. Holt and three others held three mining claims in common, but when Holt's partners would not help with assessment work, he bought them out for eight cows. Known early as the Holt and later as the Escalante Mine, the site is about four miles southwest of Beryl Junction and seven miles directly north of Enterprise. The ore seemed fairly good, but the shaft filled with water and was subsequently closed. It is said that George A. Holt offered the water to anyone who would pump it out, but nearby dry farmers

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Frame scaffolding at the Jennie Mine, Gold Springs District. (Janet Seegmiller)

were not interested. 53 Decades passed with occasional attempts at mining. Title to the claims somehow passed to Heber J. Grant, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then to his widow after his death in 1945. She gave the claims to the Enterprise LDS Ward, which sold them to help pay for a new meetinghouse.

Ranchers Exploration and Development Corporation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, bought the claims, developed the mine in 1980, and operated it until Hecla Mining Company of Wallace, Idaho, bought it in 1986. 54 An economical system of mining was developed in the 1970s and helped make the Escalante Mine profitable. Dewatering the mine was a major concern for farmers of the valley who used underground water for irrigation and feared that mining would affect their water resources. Ranchers Exploration agreed to compensate farmers if dewatering the mine caused an excessive drop in the water table.

With an investment of approximately $30 million, Ranchers Exploration developed the mine and built a mill which removed approximately 1,999 pounds of waste from every ton of ore mined in

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order to recover about eight ounces of silver. The mill handled up to 750 tons of ore per day. 55 General Manager Ed Hahne of Cedar City headed the operation that employed 115 workers from surrounding communities during the mid-1980s.

The mine was dewatered by pumping at an average rate of 19,500 gallons per minute. Ranchers Exploration successfully discharged three-fourths of the mine water onto a farm which it purchased for recharging the aquifer; one-fourth of the water recharged Shoal Creek. 56 Approximately 300,000 tons of ore were milled and 2.3 million ounces of silver produced each year from 1982 to 1990, when the ore body was mined out. The last smelting was done in 1991.

Recovery of approximately 25 million ounces of silver makes the Escalante Silver Mine unquestionably the second most successful mine in Iron County. 57 Almost all other precious metals mining occurred sporadically between 1890 and 1940-a period when mining excitement ran high but results proved disappointing. There are a number of other min ing areas in Iron County, notably in the Indian Peak Range (Arrowhead Mine, Skougard Mine, and Cougar Spar Mine), and on the west side of the Antelope Range (Bullion Canyon and Chloride Canyon mines). Discovery of ore at the Arrowhead occurred sometime in the 1890s and the mine was worked off and on. The ore was chiefly lead and zinc, with a little silver and gold. As with most mining ventures, developers claimed it would be ÂŤone of the very best mines in Utah."58 Bullion and Chloride canyons lie on the west side of Antelope Range, between Silver Peak and Antelope Springs. In 1903 and 1904 Bullion Canyon was thoroughly prospected and ore containing lead, copper, and some silver was assayed. Most of the claims were filed by local men who had formed mining companies that picked away at the claims without finances to properly develop the mines. 59 In 1910 interest turned to Chloride Canyon, where local businessmen joined with George Ray of Chicago and Ronald B. Rankin of St. Louis to form the Standard Consolidated Mining Company, capitalized at $250,000. With ample working capital, ten men with equipment and supplies began mining in 1910 expecting to find the rich mother lode of lead and silver at the 200-foot level, but they were

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disappointed. 60 In October 1918 the Copper Zone company reported a "phenomenal" strike in the face of a 600-foot tunnel tapping the ore 300 feet below the surface at Bullion Canyon. Expectation for rich silver, lead, copper, and gold production remained unrealized, however.61 Fluorspar, a fluoride of calcium, came into commercial production in Utah during World War II to meet demand created by Geneva's open-hearth steel furnace, where it was used as a fluxing agent. It was mined in the Wah Wah Mountains at the Cougar Spar Mine and near Mountain Springs, where Otto and Lou Fife mined for five or six years, obtaining fluorspar, lead, and zinc.

The Cedar Mountain quadrangle contains enormous quantities of gypsum. This useful industrial mineral is well exposed along Utah Highway 14 in Cedar Canyon. In early days, gypsum was used locally to make small amounts of plaster for homes. It was quarried commercially in Cedar Canyon in 1923 by the Mammoth Plaster & Cement Company. At first raw gypsum was quarried, crushed, and trucked to railroad cars and shipped to Los Angeles to fill a contract with the Blue Diamond Material Company for 400 tons a day.

However, the high-grade material called for in the contract was buried under a top layer heavily contaminated with impurities which could only be removed at great expense. Company officers still wanted to build a mill, but investors were unwilling to put more money into the venture. Many people of Cedar City had invested heavily in the company, some putting in thousands of dollars, and many dreams of financial wealth ended when the quarrying stopped and the crusher and bins were abandoned. In 1937 Cedar Plaster Company installed a plaster mill at the mouth of Cedar Canyon. The mill shipped a "fairly large amount of high quality plaster" until production ceased at the beginning of World War II.62 Gypsum is used in the manufacture of cement, plaster, and wallboard; as a filler in paint and paper; as a conditioner for alkaline soil; and as a stabilizer for the ammonia present in manure. It is a valuable and versatile raw material, present in quantity in the Cedar City area, but it has never been of great economic benefit to the community.63 During the 1950s, several Utah residents began searching for ura-

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nium in Iron County. Geiger counters produced readings of varying levels in many areas of the county, but there was no uranium; prospectors actually picked up readings of nuclear fallout which covered parts of the county following the Nevada atomic tests. In the 1970s a Colorado firm proposed mining aluminum-producing alunite in the Wah Wah Mountains of Iron and Beaver counties, but the proposal came to nothing. In the 1980s geologists searched for oil beneath the Escalante Desert, sparking headlines but no results.

Mining and mineral news always made for bold headlines in the local newspapers, and occasionally actual discoveries brought excitement and employment; however, there were few, if any, fortunes made in Iron County's silver, gold, lead, or fluorspar mines.

ENDNOTES

1. York Jones was the major contributor to the section on iron mining.

Jones is a mining engineer who worked over forty years in the ore bodies of Iron County. He and his wife, Evelyn Kunz Jones, have coauthored three books about the pioneers and government of Cedar City. York Jones provided information for Graham D. MacDonald's book The Magnet: Iron Ore in Iron County Utah (Cedar City: privately published, 1990).

2. Kenneth L. Cook, Magnetic Surveys in the Iron Springs District, Iron County, Utah, Bureau of Mines R.I. No. 4586 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Interior, 1950),2; and W.E. Young, Iron Deposits in Iron County Utah, Bureau of Mines R.I. No. 4076 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Interior, 1947), 1. Resource books which explain the geology of southern Utah include William Lee Stokes, Geology of Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah Museum of Natural History/Utah Geological and Mineral Survey, 1986); Herbert E. Gregory, Geology of Eastern Iron County, Utah, USGS Bulletin no. 37 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1950); and Halka Chronic, Roadside Geology of Utah (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1990).

3. See Morris A. Shirts, Trial Furnace: The Story of the Iron Mission, 1850-1861, forthcoming, for details of iron manufacturing by the Deseret Iron Company.

4. Details of the difficulties and different companies are discussed in Shirts, Trial Furnace.

5. Erastus Snow, letter to editor, Deseret News, 25 December 1852.

6. In steelmaking, iron ore is smelted, yielding pig iron, with reduced elements, and slag, containing the oxidized and unreduced substances. In

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the 1850s an iron furnacemaster was like a chef with a mental file of iron recipes, and he improvised as he worked, adding a dash of one ingredient or another. The resulting pig iron conformed to a moderately wide range of standards. Coke was coal reduced in covered piles or burned in closed kilns.

Iron workers also used charcoal, made by partially burning wood in kilns, as was done in the beehive kiln at Irontown. The Deseret Iron Company used a simple blast furnace, charged, or filled, with ore, fuel, and lime.

Compressed air injected into the furnace formed the blast and made the furnace burn hotter. Air was compressed by water or stearn power. Molten iron sank through the charge to the bottom of the furnace and collected in a pool. Slag drained off the top continually, but at intervals the furnace operators broke out a clay plug at the base of the hearth and drained molten iron into sand molds, forming iron "pigs" or bars, hence the term pig iron.

Processes such as melting the pig iron in a cupola or puddling furnace further refined it, allowing for shaping by hammering for "wrought iron" or "bar iron." Castings produced useful articles such as hand irons, cooking pots, tools, machinery parts, or wagon wheels.

7. Deseret News, 16 October 1852.

8. Millennial Star, 6 January 1855, 2.

9. The bell called the people of Cedar City together for church services, funerals, dangers, and all community celebrations. It is now at the Iron Mission State Park in Cedar City.

10. Journal of Discourses, 27 May 1855, vol. 2, 281-82.

11. When the men from Iron County reached the mines, no miners were there. The settlers brought no picks or shovels but were not willing to return empty-handed. They located a slide of rock which looked like lead ore. Undaunted, they took off their buckskin trousers, tied up the waists, filled them with ore, slung one leg over each shoulder, and carried it down the hill. The lead was made into bullets held in readiness to use against the invading army. William R. Palmer, "History of Iron County," 1922, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

12. Brigham Young to Isaac C. Haight, 8 October 1858, Brigham Young's letterbook for 1858, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City.

13. John Lee Jones, "John Lee Jones as a Missionary," Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University; "Building the Iron Mission Park in Cedar City, a Proposal to the Union Pacific Railroad," Iron Mission Park Commission, Cedar City, Utah, n.d., 42, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

14. Morris Shirts, "The Demise of the Deseret Iron Company," address given at Mormon History Association Annual Meeting, 3 May 1986, 18, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

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15. ElRoy Smith Jones, John Pidding Jones, His Ancestors and Descendants (Salt Lake City: American Press, 1977), 10-11; Ivan Jones, "The Iron Works of the John P. Jones & Sons Company, Founded 1874, Johnson's Spring (Enoch), Utah," 1995, typescript in author's possession.

16. Kerry William Bate, "Iron City, Mormon Mining Town," Utah Historical Quarterly 50 (Winter 1982): 47-58.This national historical site is owned by the Sons of Utah Pioneers and will be preserved by the local chapter of that organization.

17. Brent D. Corcoran, '''My Father's Business': Thomas Taylor and Mormon Frontier Enterprise," Dialogue 28 (Spring 1995): 111-12; Leonard J. Arrington, "Iron Manufacturing in Southern Utah in the Early 1880s: The Iron Manufacturing Company of Utah," Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 25 (September 1951): 3. The complicated business dealings between Thomas Taylor, the Mormon church, and the iron mines are discussed in these articles.

18. Corcoran, "My Father's Business," 113-14.

19. Ibid., 124, 131-32.

20. Salt Lake Herald, 6 October 1886.

21. G.D. MacDonald III, The Magnet, 13-15.

22. Iron County Record, 20 June 1946.

23. MacDonald, The Magnet, 31-32.

24. Iron County Record,S October 1949, 17 November 1949,5 June 1952,26 June 1952,31 July 1952, 7 August 1952, 5 July 1956,10 July 1959, 12 November 1959. See also Encyclopedia International (New York: Grolier Incorporated, 1966), 17:263-64; MacDonald, The Magnet, 42 .

25. Iron County Record, 17 May 1951.

26. York F. Jones, "History of Mining in Iron County," chapter V, unpublished manuscript, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

27. The company operated between 1950 and 1970 under a number of names including Utah Construction and Mining, Utah International Inc., and finally BHP-Utah International.

28. When the Blowout pit was closed in 1968 at a depth of 625 feet, 7,168,047 tons of hard magnetite ore had been mined, with an average iron content of 60 percent iron.

29. York Jones, interview with author, June 1994.

30. LaMar G. Jensen, Iron County Treasurer to York Jones, 23 December 1975, copy in Jones, "History of Mining in Iron County."

31. Roy Benson, "Historical Information for Iron County Mines,"

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report prepared for this history, January 1995; tax information from Merna H. Mitchell, Iron County Treasurer.

32. Grant Tucker, formerly of Cedar City, contributed to this section, with additional information provided by Clemont Adams. Grant Tucker, «Notes on Iron County Coal Mining," 1994, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University; Gregory, Geology of Eastern Utah, 145-50.

33. Henry Lunt, Journal, 13 August-2 September 1852.

34. Tucker, «Notes," 1.

35. Paul Averitt, Geology and Coal Resources of the Cedar Mountain Quadrangle, Iron County Utah, Geological Survey Professional Paper 389 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1962), 54, 60.

36. William C. Adams, «History of coal mining in and around Cedar City," interview by Clemont B. Adams, 7 July 1965, typescript in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

37. L.W. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac: The Man, His Land, and His People, 223-24; Salt Lake Herald Republican, 13 November 1916, 10; Iron County Record, 18 November 1913,8 February 1918, 22 February 1918, 12 April 1918,26 July 1918, 15 November 1918.

38. Adams, «History of coal mining" interview, 7.

39. Height of the face of the coal mine is given at eleven feet in the Iron County Record, 22 July 1937, and fifteen feet in the Iron County Record, 14 October 1937. See Tucker, «Notes," 1; Averitt, Geology and Coal Resources of the Cedar Mountain Quadrangle, 59.

40. Gregory, Geology of Eastern Iron County, Utah, 145-48.

41. Tucker, «Notes," 2.

42. «Air Cleaning, Diesel Haulage Move Koal Kreek Ahead," Coal Age (February 1962): 72-75.

43. Averitt, Geology and Coal Resources, 60-61.

44. Edward H. Hahne, general manager at the Escalante Silver Mine, was a major contributor to the section on silver mining.

45. Iron County Record, 10 September 1904.

46. Kenneth C. Thomson and Lee 1. Perry, «Reconnaissance Study of the Stateline Mining District, Iron County, Utah," Utah Geology 2 (Spring 1975): 27-47; Gold Guidebook for Nevada and Utah (Dana Point, CA: Minobras Mining Services, 1981), 104.

47. Stateline Oracle, 28 November 1903; Iron County Record, 9 January 1903,30 January 1903, 13 February 1904.

48. Iron County Record, 3 March 1905.

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49. See Iron County Record, 30 April 1909, 17 February 1911.

50. Lee 1. Perry, "Gold Springs Mining District, Iron County, Utah, and Lincoln County, Nevada," Utah Geology 3 (Spring 1976): 23-49; Gold Guidebook, 57.

51. Iron County Record, 11 January 1918.

52. Gold Guidebook, 57; also information given the author by Dr. Blair Maxfield, 8 September 1995.

53. Joseph Fish, History of Enterprise, 131.

54. E.H. Hahne, "History of the mine as I remember it," 1996, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

55. Ranchers Exploration and Development Corporation, Annual Report, 1982; Hahne, "History of the mine"; Salt Lake Tribune, 11 January 1982,8B. 56. E.H. Hahne to State of Utah Natural Resources Department, 21 February 1986.

57. Hecla Mining Company, Annual Report, 1987.

58. Iron County Record, 18 December 1929, 25 December 1929, 18 January 1930.

59. Iron County Record, 10 July 1903, 4; 30 January 1904, 1; 2 April 1904, 1. Further mining was done during World War I, Iron County Record, 25 October 1918.

60. Iron County Record, 11 March 1910.

61. Iron County Record, 24 October 1918.

62. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 204-6; Elroy Nelson, Utah's Economic Patterns (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1956), 182.

63. Averitt, Geology and Coal Resources, 64-65.

CHAPTER 19

AGRICULTURE AND LIVESTOCK INDUSTRIES As a state, Utah is neither well landed nor well watered, yet many residents consider it an agricultural state. The same statement holds true for Iron County. Citizens regard agriculture as important to the county; indeed, land for farming and stock raising is seen as a source of security and opportunity even if other industries make a greater contribution to the economy. 1 This perception exists from the Buckhorn on the north to Kanarraville on the south, and especially in the Escalante Valley, which has in recent years become one of the most productive agricultural valleys in the state. Many family roots are firmly planted in the soil. 2

Nineteenth-Century Farming Initially, Parowan settlers were expected to be farmers-producing grain, vegetables, and dairy products to feed themselves and the iron manufacturing colony in Cedar City. The plan did not unfold as envisioned, and some men in both settlements devoted time to farming as others lumbered, milled, mined, and labored in iron manufacturing. Within a few years, settlers realized that much of the land was 351

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Wheat field in 1918. (Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, SUU)

best used for grazing of livestock. Yet there have been varied agricultural enterprises over the past 150 years, with great success realized in some and continual discouragement in others.

Early farmers struggled to discover how, where, and what to plant. William R. Palmer described the challenges of farming in a climate with early and late frosts, high winds and hail storms, on land that was scourged by myriads of jackrabbits, locusts, grasshoppers, and other pests. Many settlers were poorly equipped for the task, some having come from areas where the problem had been to take water off the land so that it could be farmed. Others were from the shops, factories, and coal mines of England, Scotland, Wales, and Scandinavia. Those with farming experience were no more successful than the men who had no preconceived notions about farming to overcome. According to Palmer, most of the problems could have been solved with acclimated seed, planting in the proper time, less watering, and proper cultivation. 3 During the 1850s and 1860s, the average wheat yield was twelve bushels per acre, and even this came with much struggle and the wheat was shriveled if not watered properly. In 1859 Richard Birkbeck of Cedar City, a former English shopkeeper, created a sen-

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sation by raising twenty-five bushels of wheat on one acre) using about half the normal amount of seed. He did it by planting the seed in hills. His success was so important that he was asked to explain his system to others; but most could not be convinced to plant wheat in hills. They did) however) plant less seed deeper in the ground and thereby increased their yield. 4 By 1870 Iron County (including the area that later became Garfield County) had 264 farms) averaging about ten acres per farm) with 2)655 acres irrigated. These farms produced: Wheat Corn Oats/barley Potatoes Meadow grass

28)300 bushels (about 16.5 bu/acre) 3)660 bushels (about 10 bu/acre) 1,721 bushels (about 17 bu/acre) 12)676 bushels (about 77 bu/acre) 248 tons (less than a ton per acre)

Farmers thought at the time that they were short on water for the acres irrigated) but they later learned principles of dry farming which dramatically increased yields with less water.

Fence laws made farmers responsible to protect their own crops; however) in some towns) public opinion held it was the responsibility of herdsmen to keep livestock away from fields) whether they were fenced or not. In more than one election) fence laws became a heated issue. 5

Cooperative Livestock Associations In early years) most people had only a few head of cattle) which they could not afford to herd separately) nor could they keep them near the settlements or let them wander untended on the open ranges. The answer was grazing grants) which were administered by the county courts and given to some men to herd cattle) horses) and sheep for a livelihood. These people were given large acreage for their exclusive use as herd grounds) sometimes for the benefit of a specific community) and usually without a charge. Herdsmen charged a fee of one cent per head per day for herding. The system protected the stock and kept animals away from the settlements.

The county)s first "range warÂť was over the rights of a settler bringing cattle onto the community range. Utah was) in thoses day)

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a good horse market and California wanted cattle, so various traders moved California horses to trade for Utah cattle. In 1868 Homer Duncan of Cedar City purchased about 1,200 head of Texas longhorns at bargain prices; however, when he brought them close to Cedar City's community rangeland, a tempest arose. The settlers considered longhorns an inferior breed and did not want them mixed with their more docile cattle or grazing on already overstocked ranges. The dispute wound up in the local bishop's court, a Mormon church institution that effectively arbitrated disputes in the early days of settlement when virtually all disputants were fellow Mormons.

When the court ordered Duncan to remove his cattle from community ranges or be disfellowshipped, he appealed to the local church high council. The council recognized that cutting Duncan off from the church for unchristian conduct would not solve the real problem, for he had the cattle and there was no law to force their removal. The solution finally accepted was to award Duncan use of the mountains west of Quichapa Lake as range for his cattle; these mountains thereafter were known by the pioneers as the Duncan Mountains. 6 During the 1870s dissatisfaction grew with a herding system in which comparatively few men controlled all the public domain. In the late 1870s the territorial law which gave counties jurisdiction over the use of the public domain was repealed, sweeping away all grazing and other grants, so that all who wished to use public rangeland could do so. Free ranges initiated the next step in the evolution of the livestock industry, cooperation, and the gravest problem, cattle rustling.

Cooperative livestock associations started upon the advice of Brigham Young. The Cedar City Cooperative Sheep Association was formed in the spring of 1869. Sheep were already herded together, and Francis Webster and Christopher J. Arthur counted 2,184 at Iron Springs on 20 May 1869, which established the herd size for the sixtytwo owners. Sheep were valued at five dollars a head and turned in for stock in the association. 7 The association was a well-managed, dividend-paying company, with most of the far-sighted people and organizations of southern Utah among its stockholders.8 By 1879 there were more than 5,000 sheep in the cooperative herd, and shareholders had sufficient mutton for home use and thou-

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sands of pounds of wool for women to card, spin, weave, and knit.

After wool needs of the town were met, the balance was hauled to Provo or Salt Lake City to trade for groceries and hardware, all of which was brought back to Cedar City and sold in the co-op store.

Stockholders could draw dividends in merchandise from the ÂŤsheep store," which lasted for some years after the sheep and land were disposed of in 1917. 9 The sheepmen of Parowan also formed their cooperative herd about 1870. Neils Mortenson was president, assisted by David Ward and Rass Mickelson. Sheep at one time were corralled each night at Mud Springs, after trailing through sagebrush to and from the feed, which kept the sheep poor and picked the wool down to nothing.

Early settlers were afraid to graze sheep in the mountains. At first, they feared Indians and bears or other predators; later, they felt the sheep might get lost or have to trail too far to water.

Early sheepmen knew little about the needs of their animals. One hot summer day, the sheep were determined to get out of the meadow and into the shade of the forest. Herders fought to keep them out of the timber and dogged them until they were exhausted, but still the sheep persisted. At last the herd scattered and ran every which way for the shade, so one of the men rode to town for help. A posse of stockholders hurried to the mountain.

Riding and yelling through the forest like madmen they rounded up the wayward woolies and forced them back to the naked, sunburned hillside. Then with many admonitions to the careless herdsmen they returned to town feeling that they had done a good and heroic day's work. 10

Historian William R. Palmer concluded, ÂŤToday, we know that the sheep had more range sense than the men."

Sheepmen were not much smarter about sheep needs during the winter. During one particularly severe winter when the sheep were quartered at Iron Springs, the herdsmen were told to take the sheep to the creek every night for water. Before a particularly heavy storm, the herder moved the sheep two miles south into the hills and cedars where he would have wood and where there was sagebrush for the sheep to browse upon if the snow fell deep. The storm left two feet of

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snow. The company manager, fearing for the sheep, took a dozen men with teams and wagons to render assistance. Finding the herd contentedly at rest, the manager was angry, thinking the herder should be breaking a trail to the springs. He insisted that the sheep be driven to water, so the wagons and horses broke a trail.

They pushed and dogged and did everything possible to move the sheep, but the stupid things seemed to have no desire to be saved from death by thirst. Foot by foot and rod by rod they were forced down the trail and at last the herd was at the water, but not a single sheep would even smell it. Their only manifest desire was to go back up that trail to the brush and the sheltering hills they had been forced to leave. The manager said it was just cussed, stubborn sheep nature and he would hold them there until they drank if it took a month. l l

Camp was made and everyone settled down, but after two days no one had seen a sheep take a drink. The manager returned to town with the men he brought. When the trail was cleared, the starving sheep struck out for the hills. Many of the old and weak ones never got over the jamming they had endured; losses that spring were frightfully high, but it taught the men that sheep do not need water if they have snow to lick. That costly experience opened a vast expanse of desert country to winter grazing which before had been unused for lack of springs and creeks.

Cooperative cattle companies were also formed. The Co-op Cattle Company included most of the cattle of Parowan and Paragonah. The Cedar City Cooperative Cattle Company (CCCC), formed in 1875, sought to expand the cattle industry and promote the manufacture of butter and cheese. Cooperative herding also helped protect the cattle. Ranchers from Pinto and Hebron organized in 1874 to guard their cattle from rustlers who had been stealing a small herd at a time from the western ranges and selling them for meat in the mining camps of Lincoln County, Nevada, where no one cared if cattle had a Mormon brand. William R. Palmer found that thirty-eight men were convicted of grand larceny in the district court at Beaver between 1878 and 1882, which he thought were ÂŤnot more that a fourth of the rascals who were robbing the ranges."12

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Cooperative companies and livestock protective associations worked to guard the range and lessen the losses. The livestock companies also spread the risks, helping protect small owners from major losses. In 1883 the Cedar City Cattle Company dissolved and the cattle were distributed to the stockholders. No disposition was made of the ranch land, and over the years most stockholders forgot there was property left in the company. When additional money was needed to pay for a furnace for the BNS building in 1898, someone remembered the co-op cattle ranch at Enoch and convinced the stockholders to assign their stock to the building committee. The ranch was sold for $5,500 and the money finished the building and helped secure the college for Cedar City. 13 In the 1880s, thirty Spanish Merino rams were brought to Iron County by Neils Mortenson of Parowan, Francis Webster of Cedar City, and Doc Brown of Kanarra to build up the sheep herds from animals that sheared two pounds per head to much finer stock which sheared at six or seven pounds per head. Although the wool improved greatly, shearers hated the new animals' wrinkly bodies and tight greasy wool. Shearers were still paid five cents per head, although it took three times as long to shear a merino. At shearing time at Iron Springs, it was the custom to call them men together for prayer, which usually included a blessing upon "our flocks and herds." One spring, a new shearer recently from England had a particularly difficult day trying to shear the merinos. He was asked to lead evening prayer and made a good and fervent start; but when he came to the blessing of the flocks and herds, he said, "Lord bless all our flocks and 'erds, but this 'ere bloody, greasy 'erd we don't care whether Thee blesses 'urn or not." It was a long time before proper reverence and decorum could be restored and prayer finished. 14

Mountain Dairies A turning point in area agricultural history occurred in the summer of 1869 when Eliza McConnell took her dairy cattle into the mountains. Utilizing high mountain pastures with bounteous summer feed, dairying became an important industry. In the next two years, almost half the townspeople of Parowan, Cedar City, and Kanarraville filed for rights to mountain land.

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Dairying fell to the women and children. Men and older boys helped drive the cows up the mountain and then returned to farming and other responsibilities in the valley, making only occasional trips to the mountains to bring supplies. On the mountain, children herded the dairy cows to pasture and fed and milked them, while women made butter and cheese. Log cabins were built where women and children lived. They stayed as long into the fall months as weather would permit. The mountain cabins typically consisted of three rooms in a row: a family room with a loft for sleeping, a room with a fireplace for cooking, and a dairy room separated by a breezeway which was kept damp and cool. 15 Cool mountain air and clear mountain water were health benefits to the people who got away from the hot, windy days of summer and polluted city water. Typhoid fever decreased when the families moved to the mountains. However, the women endured loneliness, primitive conditions, frightening encounters with bears and other wild animals, and long, hard days of work. The women handled all emergencies in addition to the heavy tasks of making butter and cheese. As with most pioneer enterprises, rewards came through seeing the yield at summer's end, which might be sixty or more cheeses, each weighing between thirty and forty pounds, and a large quantity of butter. For many Iron County families, the only cash they had came from the sale of the cheese and butter in mining camps or to travelers passing through the settlements. 16 From the grazing of dairy cows on mountain land, it was a short step to the grazing of beef cattle and, after 1880, sheep. Sheep herds caused mountain dairying to diminish, but many families still kept dairy cows at home. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a Mr. Stringham came to Parowan with cheese-making machinery and set up a plant, using milk purchased from the home dairies. In the early 1920s, dairymen from Parowan and Paragonah organized the Southern Utah Dairy Co-op and purchased Stringham's equipment.

This coop operated for over five decades and grew to be the largest business in Parowan. It sold feed, then started a grocery store, a large feed mill, and a meat-cutting plant with cold storage and food lockers for rent. Its popular Paradale-brand cheese was shipped to all parts of the United States. 17

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Rambouillet Sheep About 1900, sheep owners turned to breeding French Merino and Rambouillet sheep in order to further increase wool production.

Rambouillets were superior in size and mutton quality and were more prolific, and within a few years the wool of some range herds increased two to three times. Purebred Rambouillets sheared at twenty to thirty pounds per fleece. Area breeders formed the Southern Utah Rambouillet Sheep Breeders Association and built the well-known Rambouillet barn in 1923 as a site for sheep shows and sales. 18 Sheep men had to watch the wool market and make quick decisions at what price to sell wool as the prices fluctuated during the season. Wilford Day bought only eight ewes with which to begin his purebred Rambouillet herd, but he bought the top rams he could find and afford, including one purchased from John K. Madsen of Mt. Pleasant for $1,350. He bought rams from nationally known breeders from as far away as Ohio. His registered sheep commanded some of the best prices in the nation. Winning championships and blue ribbons became a common occurrence. 19 Like many Parowan ranchers, Wilford Day was involved in projects to improve farming and ranching. He was a principal owner in the Parowan Steam Plow Company from 1907 to 1909, in which he and eleven others purchased three ÂŤSix Disc Steam Gang Plows" and a Bates Brush Grubber to facilitate plowing work. Previously, it took four or six horses hitched to a two-bottom plow to break up fields of hard soil in Parowan Valley, and they could plow only up to three acres a day. The steam tractor did the work much faster, and the men hired their machine out. The tractor burned coal, wood, or sometimes the sagebrush just dug up to generate the steam to power the tractor. A similar outfit was used in the Escalante Valley by the New Castle Reclamation Company to break up farmland for investors.

In 1907 another group of Cedar City sheepmen consolidated their herds and rangeland into the Cedar Livestock Company.20 There were about 35,000 sheep in their consolidated herd. When they clipped the wool at Iron Springs, it required every available team from Cedar City and Enoch to haul it to the Lund railroad station.

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Sheep grazing near the edge of Cedar Breaks, 1924. (U.S. Forest Service Photo)

The herds produced a profit for the stockholders, but a later decision to open a mercantile store as a commissary to supply grain, clothing, and other items proved unwise. The mercantile store extended too much credit, and eventually profits from the sheep herds were used to pay store debts. The sale of 6,000 young ewes to cover the indebtedness resulted in the depletion of the best animals in the herd. After 1918 the sheep were divided and each member took back his own herd. Evan Williams had several thousand sheep in the herd but netted only 600 when the cooperative dissolved. The mercantile part of the association later was taken over by its main creditor, Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI), with headquarters in Salt Lake City. Williams rebuilt his herd and later turned it over to his son, Alex, who ran it for sixty years and then turned it over to his sons. Most area herds have been passed from father to son like the Williams' herd. 21 Spring shearing time was always the busiest time of the year.

Prior to the early 1920s, each sheep was clipped by hand. The arrival of electric-powered shearing machines required the construction of large shearing corrals where machinery could be installed and large herds handled and separated. Motor-driven clippers sheared in one-

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third the time but still required great skill by the shear ers. In 1924 Erastus Jones built a large shearing corral four miles west of Cedar City to take advantage of the new railroad spur nearby. Nine men could shear 1,400 sheep in a day. Jones often added a swing shift to accommodate more sheep during April, May, and June. In 1925 rates were fifteen cents a head for shearing at Jones's corrals. This operation lasted for twenty years, although after portable equipment was developed all local herds were not necessarily sheared there. 22 The best years for Iron County sheepmen were between 1910 and 1930, with total herd sizes between 190,000 and 200,000 sheep. Wool production reached over a million pounds in 1930. Unfortunately, the economic benefits were not always positive, for many factors which they cannot always control, such as market demands and loss to weather, help determine the fortunes of livestock producers. The large herds also overgrazed the mountain highlands, especially during dry years. Conservation and government regulation of grazing land began about 1905 when national forests were established, and over time grazing abuses were largely repaired.

Depression and Drought A benchmark year between good times and bad for farmers and ranchers in Utah was 1920. Iron County agriculture followed state and national trends. Farmers increased production and herd sizes to meet wartime demand from 1914 to 1918 and were hard hit when post-war surpluses brought prices crashing down. Many had gone into debt for means to increase production, such as tractors, trucks, and new wells and buildings. Wilford Day was known for his modern, productive farm and his use of the latest equipment. His farmhand Woodrow Decker recalled the difference when Day purchased a thresher.

With the old Titan Thresher we used in the 1920's, we had to cut the grain, with the binder shock up the bundles, and haul the grain or wagons to the thresher. It would take three or four wagons in the field, two men in the field pitching it on the wagons, two men at the thresher, and one man taking the grain away, making a crew of 12 to 15 men to do the threshing the old way. When we got the

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combine, we could run through 1000 to 1500 bushels of grain in one day, and all this with one man. 23

Economic depression and extended drought in the 1930s came before ranchers and farmers had recovered. During the mid-1930s, debts brought Wilford Day to the point of liquidation. To meet debts, he and his wife sold their share of a ranch in Texas and other land.

Wilford Day died in October 1941, having spent the last years of his life clearing his indebtedness. Such was the character and the difficult fortune of many who lived off the land during the 1930s.

Government programs helped by building stock-watering reservoirs, stock trails, a fenced stock driveway to keep sheep away from poisonous plants, and by a massive stock-purchasing program which culled the poorest animals to reduce overgrazing during the drought.

Still, the double plague of drought and economic depression devastated agriculture in Iron County and throughout southern Utah.

In July 1916 Alma Esplin was appointed county agricultural extension agent. County agents taught better ways to farm, control pests, and breed livestock developed by state and national agricultural institutions. Esplin's time the first two years was divided between eight months of extension work and four months of teaching at the BAC. In 1918 the county commission agreed to make his assignment year-round. He helped organize the Farm Bureau in the fall of 1916 and kept it running during the difficult war and influenza years.

Extension work included such widely varied programs as weed and rodent control, testing cattle for tuberculosis, better feeding of livestock, town clean-up campaigns, and nutritional advice for homemakers.24 Between 1924 and 1931 there was no county agent in Iron County, but some work was carried out by state extension agents. The Depression brought federal funding to help farmers, and Iron County received a full-time extension agent again at that time.

Lamont E. Tueller was appointed in 1931 and immediately undertook emergency feed and livestock surveys. The poorest animals were culled to better balance livestock numbers and feed supplies. Tueller reported in 1935 that 4,142 head of cattle were purchased from Iron County farmers, and, of these, 3,220 were shipped to slaughterhouses

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and made available to feed the poor, while 922 were condemned and killed. A similar program for sheep and goats culled 20,464 sheep and 500 female angora goats. All the goats and 11,465 sheep were condemned; only 8,999 were shipped. The slaughter programs paid almost $93,000 to farmers and lienholders. Tueller concluded that the poor animals culled from the ranges were "equivalent to twelve average winter range herds" and that the program was "an important factor in reducing overgrazing on winter ranges."25 County agents were government watchdogs for emergency relief.

They also promoted use of record books to improve quality, quantity, and profit from farming, organized 4-H programs to train future farmers and homemakers, and provided seed for experimental crops and poison for rodent control. Experiments with new crops, seeds, and methods went on constantly, encouraged by the agent. With humor, Tueller reported on these programs. For example, beneath a picture of a farmer standing between a beautiful stand of corn and an alfalfa field, he wrote: Mr. and Mrs. Agriculture of Iron County announce the successful and fruitful marriage of Miss Alfalfa to King Corn at the farm of Millard Halterman of Cedar Valley. The union was blessed with four girls (i.e. 4 tons of alfalfa hay per acre) and twenty boys (i.e.

20 tons of corn silage per acre) during the past season. 26

In 1939 turkey growers from Iron and Washington counties organized the cooperative Utah Turkey and Produce Company.

Production of turkeys increased until these growers developed a plant to process the birds locally rather than shipping them hundreds of miles to market. In 1939, 70,000 turkeys were processed at the new Cedar City plant. In 1940 Union Pacific extended its track to the area to facilitate the loading of turkeys onto railroad cars. In September 1944 the Utah Poultry and Farmers Cooperative of Salt Lake City took over management. As many as 150,000 turkeys a year were processed at the plant during the 1940s. Turkey growing ended, but the buildings are still owned and operated by Intermountain Farmers Association (IFA).27 Extension agent Tueller also worked with Wilford Day to obtain certified russet potato seed from Idaho, in a search for more success-

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ful crops for Iron County farms. Day began planting potatoes in 1929 and daringly shipped the surplus to Los Angles without knowing what market might buy them. One of the produce markets liked his crop and contracted for more. In 1935, 180 acres were planted locally, with Day the major producer using the certified seed.

During the late 1930s canning companies contracted for green peas to be planted by the acre. In 1938, 1,000 acres were planted.

They returned only a small cash profit to farmers, but the farmers disbursed about $35,000 that year to families and other workers who hand-picked the peas for the produce companies. 28 In the 1940s Parowan, Cedar, and Escalante Valley farmers planted carrots, which were in demand throughout the country.

Despite the loss of manpower to World War II, carrots were planted in Cedar Valley, and young women harvested them. It was hard labor and the pay was minimal, but they felt that they were helping their country in a small way while men were fighting the war. Iron County carrots were shipped by rail as far away as New York City. In 1949 carrots from the Escalante Valley were highly rated in eastern markets.

Eighty-five freight -car loads were shipped that year from the North Newcastle Vegetable and Produce Company packing shed near Beryl.

Migrant workers were employed that year in the harvest, a practice that continues in this area regardless of the crop.29 Agricultural extension reports included descriptions of weed, pest, and rodent control supervised by the county agent. There are many stories of early settlers fighting rabbits. One favorite method was a competitive daylong community rabbit hunt which pitted hunters from the west side of town against those from the east, or perhaps the north against the south, with the losing side providing dinner and a dance for the winners. Oscar Hulet reported that as a boy he shot rabbits when the county commission offered a bounty of five cents for each rabbit. With his first bounty money, he bought a 100-pound sack of sugar and proudly carried it home on the family horse. The rabbit bounty was stimulated by a demand in Los Angeles for rabbit meat. County agent Esplin in 1919 reported that during the month of January the county clerk paid bounty on 15,000 rabbits, most of which were shipped to Los Angeles for food. 30 Efforts continued to poison other rodents, particularly prairie

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dogs, ground squirrels, gray squirrels, kangaroo rats, and field mice.

The county commission paid for strychnine supplied to farmers along with a recipe to prepare poison oats for rodent control. In later years, poisoned oats were regularly provided to farmers. Rodent-control programs killed many prairie dogs, but the animals still plague farmers, and in recent years they have hindered efforts of land developers to build on land that is "prairie dog habitat" after they were declared a "threatened species" by the u.s. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Many methods have been used to kill grasshoppers, and even they enjoyed a period of demand from the Los Angeles markets. In 1935 the county extension agent induced the Grasshopper Fish Bait Company of Los Angeles to bring its mechanical and horse-drawn "hopper dozers" to Paragonah, where they collected forty fifty-gallon barrels of grasshoppers which were shipped to Los Angeles for the fish bait market. 31 The next year, the fish bait company returned to Paragonah and Parowan along with crews of Metro-Goldwyn -Mayer who wanted grasshoppers for the locust plague scenes of their motion picture The Good Earth. Eighteen thousand pounds of grasshoppers were collected and used for filming scenes in Iron Coun ty, then the insects were destroyed and buried. As crops were withering from drought, MGM added about $8,000 to the Iron County economy while filming its grasshoppers. Some farmers built their own "hopper dozers" and drove through their fields collecting grasshoppers. Four thousand pounds of the insects were collected and destroyed this way in the summer of 1936. 32

The Escalante Valley Escalante Valley is the heart of western Iron County.33 Its wide flat desert is the southern extension of the Great Basin. 34 It was first noted in 1776 by Father Silvestre Velez de Escalante, Spanish priest and explorer, from whom it gets its name. Approaching from the north, the Dominguez and Escalante party gazed upon the valley's wide forbidding expanse but elected not to cross it. Instead, they turned toward the mountains on the east, passing through Cedar Valley between the Cross Hollow Hills and Quichapa Lake as they moved south. The Spanish Trail later skirted the edge of the desert where caravans stopped at Iron Springs and Antelope Springs.

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In the spring of 1862 the Pulsipher brothers-John, Charles, and William-searching for better grazing for Dixie Mission livestock, entered the valley by crossing over the rim of the Great Basin from the south. They located on Shoal Creek, a wash with little water except in the spring or during heavy rainstorms. It was named by Nephi Johnson, who passed through the area in 1857 or 1858 looking for abandoned wagon irons. It is said that, after gazing northward on the barren land, John Pulsipher observed, "It offered very little in promise or desired opportunity."35 It took almost a century to prove Pulsipher wrong. Through the miracle of modern irrigation systems which tap a vast reservoir of underground water, the wilderness viewed by Pulsipher has become a productive agricultural valley. Success did not come easily, however, and took a heavy toll from the first three generations of would-be settlers and developers. 36 In the 1850s and 1860s, herds belonging to Jose, or Hose, Foncelleo (known locally as "Spanish George") and other Hispanic herders grazed in western Iron County. 37 Families following the Pulsipher brothers started Mormon settlements at Shoal Creek in 1863 and Fort Hebron in 1866. Early settlers found it difficult to farm and so turned to raising livestock and freighting for a livelihood. An 1872 state census of the county showed one hundred residents at Hebron, sixty at Antelope Springs, sixteen at Desert Springs, and fifteen at Sulphur Springs.38 The Escalante Desert and the western mountains separated Utah villages from the Nevada mining camps in Meadow Valley. 39 This area harbored outlaws who preyed on freighters and stagecoaches from Beaver, Parowan, and Cedar City and shipments of ore and bullion from the mines to the railroad terminus at Milford. It was said that rustling from Mormons was not considered much of a crime in Nevada, and few questions were asked about blotched brands or forged bills of sale. 40 In 1880 men from Hebron, Pinto, and Pine Valley unsuccessfully attempted to dry farm. The desert was plowed at the mouth of Pinto Creek Canyon before disagreement developed as to whether farming might be better near the mouth of Shoal Creek. Nothing more was done . 4 1 To obtain water for farming on the southern edge of the

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desert, in 1892 Oscar Huntsman proposed constructing a reservoir in the Bull Valley Mountains at a site above Hebron. The Enterprise Reservoir and Canal Company was organized and dam construction begun in 1893. The community of Enterprise was laid out in 1895.

Plots were then filed on under provisions of the Desert Land Entry Act of 1877. Construction of the dam was held up by poverty and dissension among the people, but it was finally finished in 1909. 42 Enterprise is in Washington County, two miles south of the county line, but its farms extend into Iron County.

About the time the Enterprise Reservoir was completed, planning began for the ill-fated New Castle Reclamation Company dam and reservoir in the Pine Valley Mountains. Boosters thought the combination of water from Pine Valley and virgin soil on the Escalante Desert held great promise for farming. Twenty thousand acres of irrigable land was for sale at $55 per acre and up, but two city lots were free to anyone building a thousand dollar home on one before 1 January 1914. The entire project was lauded in various magazine and newspaper articles. 43 Prospective buyers were offered special rates from Salt Lake City or Los Angeles on the Union Pacific to Beryl and then were chauffeured in company Cadillacs to the townsite, midway between Beryl and Enterprise and six miles west of Newcastle. They were entertained at the New Castle Hotel, toured the valley, and examined available acreage. T. Willard Jones and his wife Sophia moved to the town site in late 1907 and remained committed to farming the Escalante Desert. Although the reservoir was completed and water overflowed the spillway during wet years, the project was fraught with problems and finally failed.

Typical New Castle settlers were Parley and Maud Moyle, who purchased sixty acres from the reclamation company along with water rights from Grass Valley Reservoir. Parley moved to the farm in February 1913, bringing horses and machinery with him, and Maud came by train in April with their household goods and other machinery. They soon realized they would get no water from the reclamation company. Many families moved away, but the Moyles chose to relocate north on the desert near Beryl, where they obtained 320 acres by homestead and desert entry. A seventy-five-foot well and a

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windmill provided water for domestic needs and a small garden. The Moyles moved a second time in 1931 and drilled one fifteen-foot well for culinary water and another for irrigation. When dust storms roared through the western valleys in the 1930s, Maud removed a tubful of dust from her two-room basement home after each storm.

During another storm, they crawled on hands and knees to get to her sick brother's home; it was the only way they could trace the road.

Two sons entered homesteads nearby, and a third bought a farm from a Japanese family. By 1948 good wells and improved methods made successful farms, and electric power, better roads, and schools brought modern conveniences. "We had a hard life doing the pioneering, but the outlook now is good;' Maud wrote in 1948. 44 Promoters of the New Castle project were not the only speculators on the Escalante Desert early in the century. The completion of the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad in 1905 created easier access to unoccupied marginal farmland and was followed within a few years by land developments. Federal land entry on the desert was made more attractive through the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 and the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916. The first made available 320 acres of unirrigable land instead of the usual 160 acres; the second doubled the size, so that 640 acres, a square-mile section, could be claimed. Land-hungry settlers claimed millions of acres of public land in a dozen western states, including Utah.4s This back-to-the-Iand movement was coupled with great interest in ÂŤscientific dry land farming" championed by John A. Widstoe of Utah State Agricultural College (USAC). Railroads also encouraged settlement by establishing land location companies to help homesteaders claim their free land. The land rush between 1910 and 1934 brought social diversity to the area in the form of midwesterners, southerners, Europeans, and Californians. Unfortunately, however, many were city people poorly prepared for farming; and homesteading was farming at its hardest. Others were second- and third-generation Utahns seeking land because irrigated valleys were taken up. The Iron County Record reported on vast numbers of acres filed on under the enlarged homesteading act or sold by the state land board. It editorialized against acquiring more land than could be developed. 46

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Between 1911 and 1914, land shows and frequent articles extolled the possibilities for successful farming in southwestern Utah.

Pictures of verdant gardens, vineyards, and meadows were displayed.

In February 1911 the United States land office at Salt Lake City reported that land between Lund and Modena on the main line of the Salt Lake route was being homesteaded at the rate of about 2,000 acres a day.47 Some planned to get a start as a landowner and later sell the property, or, if it was not proved up, sell the claim to another individual. This was called relinquishment. In addition to men, married, divorced, widowed, or single women also filed claims. In some townships in Iron County, 12-13 percent of entries between 1900 and 1934 were filed by women, and less than 20 percent of those women failed to obtain title or money from selling their claim by relinquishment. The percentages of men and women who succeeded in patenting the land they filed for were similar, 42.7 percent for women and 43.8 percent for men. 48 Homesteaders often moved together with family or friends or filed on adjoining land in order to support each other. 49 Among the homesteaders in the vicinity of Sahara/Zane were Bertha Mae Hart, a young widow from Salt Lake City; Anna Phillips, mother of homesteader Jim Baker, whose place was worked as an extension of her son's holdings; Jessie Corn, who followed her brother Gilbert from southern California in June 1918 and took over an abandoned homestead and later married Vic Carlson; and Althea Snell, also from southern California, who had a homestead closer to Beryl and later married Guy Cadwallader.

Many homesteading women lived alone or with just their children for long periods while husbands worked on the railroad, in mining camps, or returned to jobs in California or Salt Lake City. Women left to maintain their places kept chickens, tended gardens, arranged for plowing and planting, killed varmints, and took care of livestock. 50 They included Alma Frahske, who lived alone on her husband's claim in 1920 with an infant son while her husband, Oscar, worked at the mines in Beaver County, and Eleanor Moore, who lived alone near Lund, keeping the homestead while her husband was away.

Emil and Frances Dostalek moved to Sahara in 1915 and spent months digging a well by hand. He dug more than 250 feet but never

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found water. Discouraged, Emil found work on a state road crew and was gone for weeks at a time. Frances would walk a mile to the neighbors for water. Once while Emil was away, their little girl became ill and died. They could stand the desert no longer and left to homestead south of New Harmony.51 The state of Utah promoted land sales in Iron County with descriptions of "an undeveloped agricultural empire of wonderful possibilities." In August 1911 more than 18,000 acres of land were sold by the state land board at an average price of $3.25 per acre.

Land clerk Herbert E. Smythe described the soil as "rich and fertile, and adapted for raising most of the crops grown elsewhere in Utah."

Since most settlers had not yet obtained water even for culinary purposes, the state drilled an experimental eight-inch well to a depth of 600 feet to support its claims. The land clerk predicted, ÂŤIf it is demonstrated that water can be obtained through the driving of wells, it is only a question of a very short time until towns will spring up as though by magic."52 Towns did spring up near the railroad sidings, but the magic seemed to be sleight-of-hand performed by land locators to convince unwary buyers that a "legal-size house, costing $400-plus depending on various factors" could fend off claim-jumpers on land yet to be surveyed. Dr. Ludwig A. Culmsee bought a "legal-size house" which proved to be a rough box plumped down in the brush. It was a 12by-16-foot structure all right, but when the green lumber shrank, warped, and cupped in the sun and wind, there were "cracks you could throw a cat through." Culmsee also paid for a "tilled field," which turned out to be a few slovenly furrows half-burying, not clearing, the sagebrush. Advertisements in Los Angeles papers had excited Culmsee, and he visited Nada on the Iron-Beaver border during a wet-cycle in 1912-13 when grasses flourished on the Escalante, wild horses and deer roamed freely, and pools sparkled in low places.

Dr. Culmsee was convinced to select a claim near the Nada sidetrack, and thought his investment was sound. 53 Culmsee's son, Carlton, was eight when the family moved to Nada. He grew up with a deep loyalty to his parents and their dream.

After finishing high school in Cedar City, he taught in a one-room desert school and filed on a homestead others had twice abandoned.

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Looking back, he wrote: "Father predicted impossible progress, ... but we were, in actuality, flung back a century. Roads, electricity, telephones, theaters? None. No library except our private one."54 In the 1920s Dr. Culmsee triumphed over the desert in a small way by growing a windbreak hedge, drilling a well that used a windmill to fill a cement-lined reservoir, and finally growing raspberries, gooseberries, radishes, lettuce, carrots, cantaloupes, watermelons and squash in the sandy loam. Observers were amazed at what he achieved, but he was soon dead, taken in his seventy-sixth year by a massive stroke. His son remembers, "Our free land cost us more than Iowa farms. Yet, depressed thirties forced us to abandon it all without selling an acre."55 Another who responded to advertising for Iron County land in Southern California papers was Arlie Fourman. In 1915 he and a friend, Pete Corn, filed on homesteads about a mile east of Sahara. In early spring of 1916 they shipped building materials, equipment, supplies, and a team of horses to Sahara and moved onto their homesteads. Alice Fourman was only three years old when she and her mother, Ottie, got off the train in April 1916, but at age ninety-two she still remembered her father pointing to a small brown structure in the distance and saying, "That is home." They had to carry or haul water. There was enough rainfall the first year or two to raise gardens and some crops.

Alice's father worked for the railroad making fifteen cents an hour and working ten-hour days during 1917-19. When the armistice was signed, the railroad began laying off men. Although Arlie Fourman took his wife and daughter back to Los Angeles and got a milk route, he longed to return to Sahara. A few months later, he traded part of his land for eighty acres that was better for farming. Fourman drilled a well, moved his homestead house and barn to the new place by sliding them on the snow, bought another house and joined it to the first one, dug a cellar, and purchased a team of horses and a milk cow. He still had to work in Lund or Nevada to support his family. The Fourmans watched many families sell out or let their places go for taxes in the late 1920s, but they hung on. Alice and her mother moved back and forth from Zane to Lund to Cedar City so Alice could attend school. She graduated from the BAC in

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1930. Arlie bought more land, until in the mid-1930s he had 2,888 acres fenced and owned a large herd of cattle. Alice's mother lived on the ranch and sometimes was the only woman in Zane; all other residents were section workers. The Fourmans held their land until 1947, when both land and cattle were sold to the Mormon church. 56 The rigors of settling on the Escalante combined with persistent crop failure, jackrabbits and other pests, drought, and dust storms defeated even enthusiastic settlers. Hundreds of homesteaders disappeared from the Escalante Valley within a few years, but some, including the Fourmans, Hedricks, Moyles, Del Vecchios, Burns, Joneses, Woods, Thompsons, Forces, Haiges, Sevys, Frahskes, and Mackelprangs, lasted into the 1940s, joining descendants of earlier pioneer families-Tullis, Forsyth, Knell, Harrison, Platt, Flinschpah, Hunt, and Thorley-as survivors on the Escalante. As settlers gave up dry farming and shifted to livestock raising or irrigation from pump wells, the face of the desert changed again. The scars of turning over soil that was "rights ide up in the first place," according to Carlton Culmsee,57 gradually healed and vegetation returned, but inferior plants such as halogeton took over from the original vegetation. 58 Those who adopted new approaches to the challenge of desert life proved it was possible to make a living on the Escalante. The Clark Ranch north of Newcastle drilled deep wells to grow alfalfa in the mid-1930s. Even successful irrigation with gas or fuel-oil pumps was limited, however. Citizens of the Escalante still lit homes with gas and oil lanterns until the early 1940s. In 1942 the Escalante Valley Electric Association was organized. Through the national Rural Electrification Association, power lines invaded the desert, and, in 1945, electric power came to homes and farms.

After World War II another generation of veterans and hopeful settlers attempted to tame and farm the desert, but this time with electric power, deep wells, and turbine pumps. Even so, the challenges, costs, and hardships of developing the desert took their toll.

A variety of crops were tried-carrots, beans, sugar beets, and others. Carrots grew well, but marketing was difficult. A new eating fad, the potato chip, proved a boon to potato farmers. By the 1980s, 4,300 local acres were growing potatoes. Sprinkler irrigation, improved machinery, and a booming world market have made alfalfa a major

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crop, using about 25,000 acres. Alfalfa cubes are shipped to Japan and other distant markets.

In the 1980s greenhouse companies at Newcastle began using abundant geothermal water to grow vegetables and household plants, adding another dimension to county agribusinesses. Some 5,000 head of cattle and up to 10,000 head of sheep graze in areas unsuited to crops, some of them still using water basins built by CCC crews in the 1930s. Agriculture, ranching, and related businesses in the Escalante Valley gross over $30 million and contribute about 15 percent of the tax base of Iron County.

Three-quarters of a century after the misfortunes of the homesteaders, Escalante residents are enjoying growth and success far beyond what was dreamed of by first settler John Pulsipher. Efficient modern agriculture does not require new workers, but new residents are drawn to the valley by its distance from big-city life. Finally it fits the 1911 description as an "agricultural empire of wonderful possibilities."

Twentieth-Century Farming Twentieth -century agricultural trends saw the number of county farms decrease until 1960 as acreage per farm increased; then farm size stabilized at 1,200 acres by 1992. 59 There were 278,671 acres in farms in 1920, and 434,183 acres in 1992. The number of farms peaked at 646 in 1920, including new homesteads in the Escalante Valley. Between 1930 and 1964 the number of farms dropped from 598 to 368; but it has been stable since then, with 365 farms in 1992.

After the emergency purchase programs in 1934 and 1935 culled the poorer animals, cattle herds increased again and then stabilized.

There were about 21,000 head in 1964, and 20,808 in 1992.60 Sheep herds were seriously affected by nuclear fallout while on winter range in Nevada in the 1950s and have continued to decrease. There were 200,000 in 1935, and 80,000 in 1964, but only 57,088 in 1992.

The development of groundwater resources has rejuvenated irrigated farming in the Parowan Valley and north to the Buckhorn Flats, where grain and alfalfa are successfully grown. In addition to nurseries and greenhouses, there also are sod or turf farms. Where the leading products in 1964 were sheep and wool (28 percent of farm

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income), cattle (25 percent), potatoes (19 percent), and alfalfa/hay (11 percent), the pendulum has swung back to profitable crops as livestock income decreases. In 1992, alfalfa/hay led the list of farm income producers at 34 percent, followed by cattle (21.5 percent), potatoes (17.5 percent), and sheep and wool (14 percent). These products accounted for 87 percent of county agricultural income, which was more than $25 million in 1992.61 ENDNOTES

1. Charles S. Peterson, '''Touch of the Mountain Sod': How Land United and Divided Utahns, 1847-1985," 1988 Delio G. Dayton Memorial Lecture (Ogden: Weber State College, 1989), 1-3, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

2. Statistics for 1992 indicate that there were 365 farm operators; 181 considered farming their principal occupation. See 1992 U.S. Census of Agriculture, 163.

3. William R. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 2, no. 58, 10 February 1952, 1-2.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., vol. 1, no. 23, 10 June 1951,2 6. Ibid., vol. 3, no. 120, 19 April 1953, 1-3.

7. See William R. Palmer, "The Early Sheep Industry in Southern Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 42 (Spring 1974): 178-188. The first ten sheep arrived with the Charles Willden family in October 1862. In the 1860s Cedar City's herd reached 2,000 head and the animals were herded together near Iron Springs.

8. Rhoda M. Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," 54.

9. Palmer, "The Early Sheep Industry," 179.

10. Ibid., 181-82.

11. Ibid., 183.

12. Joseph Fish, "History of Enterprise," 83; Wood, "An Abbreviated Sketch of Cedar History," 53-54; Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol.

1, no. 27, 8 July 1951 and vol. 1, no. 28,15 July 1951.

13. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of His tory, 15 July 1951, 2.

14. Palmer, "The Early Sheep Industry, 185-86.

15. Gladys McConnell, "Pioneer Dairying," Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University; York F. Jones and Evelyn K. Jones, Lehi Willard Jones, 1854-1947, 85-87.

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16. McConnell, "Pioneer Dairying."

17. History of Parowan Third Ward, 1851-1981, 73-74.

18. Harry P. Bluhm, Lucius Nelson Marsden: Prominent Southern Utah Banker, Merchant, Livestockman and Church Leader, 1862-1931 (n.p., 1993), 21-22.

19. Arvilla H. Day, "Wilford Day and Elizabeth Scott Day, Their Story," typescript, 1972, Special Collections, Cedar City Public Library.

20. The Cedar Livestock Company was incorporated with Peter B. Fife, Lehi W. Jones, Uriah T. Jones, T. Jedediah Jones, John J.G. Webster, Herbert Webster, Thomas Webster, George Esplin, J.W. Imlay, Henry Lunt, William V. Walker, William B. Adams, J.A. Adams, and Evan Williams as main stockholders.

21. Jones, Lehi Willard Jones, 183-85; Donna M. Brown, "Still in the Saddle," Cedar City Magazine (Fall 1996): 16; William R. Palmer, "Early Merchandising in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 4 (Winter 1963): 41-50.

22. Jones, Lehi Willard Jones, 210.

23. Day, "Wilford Day and Elizabeth Scott Day," 25-26.

24. "Iron County, County Agent Annual Report, 1924," Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

25. "Annual Report of Extension Work, Agricultural Agent-Iron County, 1935," Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, 1, 10, 12, 14-15.

26. Ibid., first picture, no page number. Iron County's Annual Reports of Extension Work from 1916 to 1948 are in Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

27. Newell Wasden, "The Utah Turkey and Produce Co.," typescript, Special Collections, Cedar City Public Library.

28. "Annual Report of Extension Work, 1935," 26; "Annual Report of Extension Work, 1936," 35; Iron County Record, 20 October 1938.

29. Iron County Record, 6 October 1949.

30. "Annual Report of Agricultural Activities, 1919."

31. "Annual Report of Extension Work, 1935," 57.

32. "Annual Report of Extension Work, 1936," 63.

33. The area is called both Escalante Valley and Escalante Desert on published maps. Describing the 1913 promotion of the Escalante for homesteading, Carlton Culmsee wrote, "Brisk salesmen for the land-locators avoided using the word Desert with Escalante; it was Valley." Carlton Culmsee, "Last Free Land Rush," Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (Winter 1981): 28. Norman Laub of Beryl and Fay Frahske Burns of Lund and Kanarraville were major contributors to this section.

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34. Long thought to be the southern extension of Lake Bonneville, Donald R. Currey, in Lake Bonneville: Selected Features of Relevance to Neotectonic Analysis, U.S. Geological Survey Open File Report 82-1070, indicates that the shoreline of Lake Bonneville ended two miles south of Lund at an elevation of approximately 5,100 feet. See Paul R. Larson, "The Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) from Escalante Valley, Iron County, Utah," in Vertebrate Fossils of Utah, David B. Gillette: ed., in press, 1998.

35. Norman Laub, "The Escalante Valley," 1994, 1, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

36. Laub, "The Escalante Valley," 1.

37. A spring west of Hamlin Valley bears the name "Spanish George Spring." See also Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, vol. 3, no. 120, 19 April 1953.

38. Jesse N. Smith, Iron County Clerk, to Robert L. Campbell, 26 March 1872, in Jones, Henry Lunt Biography, 287.

39. Meadow Valley and the mining areas of eastern Nevada were originally in Iron County. When Congress created Nevada Territory in 1861, its eastern border was 116° west longitude. In 1866 Congress moved the boundary to 114°, which placed newly discovered mines at Pioche firmly in Nevada. See Allen, "Evolution of County Boundaries in Utah," 268-70.

40. Esther W. Hankins, "Holdup men ruled roads from Pioche in 1870s," Nevadan, 26 June 1983, 6L-7L; George A. Thompson, Some Dreams Die: Utah's Ghost Towns and Lost Treasures (Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press, 1982), 138.

41. Fish, "History of Enterprise," 104-5.

42. See ibid., 133-57.

43. See "New Castle Utah-A Vision Verified" and "New Castle and its 20,000 Smiling Acres," Arrowhead Magazine, March 1914 and July 1914, Special Collections, Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Iron County Record, 14 March 1913.

44. Maud Austin Moyle, "Colonization of the Desert," 1948, 1-3, William R. Palmer Collection, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

45. Stanford J. Layton, To No Privileged Class (Provo: Brigham Young University/Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1988) 1-19; Culmsee, "Last Free Land Rush," 27; Marshall E. Bowen, Utah People in the Nevada Desert (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1994) 1-2.

46. Iron County Record, 3 March 1911.

47. Iron County Record, 24 February 1911.

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48. Jill Thorley Warnick, «Women Homesteaders in Utah) 1869-1934») (Master's thesis) Brigham Young University) 1985) 50-52) 57.

49. Ibid.) 58.

50. Marshall E. Bowen to Janet B. Seegmiller) 11 February 1995) in author)s possession.

51. Sheldon Grant) «Harmony) Fort Harmony) New Harmony) and Surrounding Area») 154-55) typescript in author's possession.

52. Iron County Record, 18 August 1911.

53. Culmsee) «Last Free Land Rush») 30-31.

54. Ibid.) 32-35.

55. Ibid.) 35.

56. Alice Fourman Couch) «Utah 1915-1993») 3-7) typescript) in author)s possession.

57. Culmsee) «Last Free Land Rush») 41.

58. See Brian Q. Cannon) «Struggle Against Great Odds: Challenges in Utah)s Marginal Agricultural Areas) 1925-39») Utah Historical Quarterly 54 (Fall 1986): 309-10.

59. Statistics from «Annual Report of the County Agricultural Agent) 1923» and 1992 U.S. Census of Agriculture) Part 44) Utah (Washington) D.C.: Bureau of the Census) 1993).

60. Does not include 9)261 beef cows and 1)019 milk cows which are listed separately in the 1992 U.S. Census of Agriculture.

61. 1992 U.S. Census of Agriculture) 167.

CHAPTER

20

ROADS, RAILROADS, AND AIRPORTS Wagon Roads Building roads and bridges was an immediate demand settlers faced in establishing themselves in territorial Utah. The country was mountainous and rough, and even valleys were scarred by washes and gullies that needed bridging or their banks cut to permit crossing. Thickets of oak brush or juniper trees impeded trail builders, and sagebrush and greasewood had to be broken down or axed to allow passage. Road builders worked with picks, axes, and shovels.

The main territorial roads roughly formed a cross intersecting at Salt Lake City, with the base of the cross tapering off toward the southwest as it passed through Iron County. The first wagon had come up the southern route in 1848 with returning Mormon Battalion members, following the Spanish Trail to Little Creek and then north to the Salt Lake Valley. The road needed much work when the Iron Mission settlers came from Salt Lake City to the Little Salt Lake Valley in 1850 and 1851. This vital southern route, with a few minor exceptions, was maintained entirely free of toll franchises.

The first territorial legislature recognized the importance of 378

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roads and made state and county road commissioners responsible for constructing roads. Counties were given the right to appoint road commissioners and to contract for road improvements. Most roads were built and maintained by poll taxes. An 1851 ordinance decreed that every able-bodied male over eighteen with three months' residence in the territory should furnish one day's labor yearly on the roads and that all taxable property within the state should be liable for taxation for road purposes.

On 22 May 1852 Iron County was divided into two road districts.

Parowan District was north of Summit Creek, and George Braffit was district supervisor of roads. Cedar District was south of Summit Creek, with Philip Klingensmith as supervisor. Although the county was 600 miles from east to west, concern was primarily with roads between or near settlements.

County roads received funding from the only federal funds sent

by Congress to the territory in the nineteenth century. In December 1854 Utah Territory was awarded $25,000 for a "Military Road commencing at Great Salt Lake City and running by way of Provo City, Fillmore City, Parowan, and Cedar City, to the eastern boundary of California in the direction of the Cajun Pass." The money did not accomplish much, as it was spread over such a great distance.

Between 1854 and 1866 the southern route went west from Cedar City to Pinto, past Hamblin and the Holt Ranch to Mountain Meadows, and south to the settlements on the Virgin River. 1 A shorter road was desired from New Harmony to Washington, but the route down Ash Creek Canyon across the Black Ridge was formidable. A road over the ridge was begun in 1856-57 by Peter Shirts of Iron County with a $300 appropriation from the Washington County Court. It followed the base of the hills east of the Pine Valley Mountains. The story is told that in June 1857 Shirts reported he had built a good road with only one bad spot-however, it was 165 feet deep and 1,000 feet across! When asked how he was going to get across, he replied, "leap it." The spot became known as Peter's Leap. Even after a dugway was built, wagons were lowered by ropes because storms washed the fill dirt away. 2 Brigham Young and Erastus Snow urged the communities of Washington and Iron counties to cooperatively build a new road in

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1862 and 1863 on the west side of Ash Creek; but the road was so rocky and difficult that it could not be maintained. Pioneer photographer William H. Jackson kept a journal of a trip from Salt Lake to Los Angeles during the winter of 1866-67. On 8 January 1867, he crossed the Black Ridge: "Road very rough over the ascending part, consisting mostly of a good dug way. Very rock[y], alternating with deep sand." His perception of Iron County was that everything was red, "Red adobes, red fences, red streets & red mountains." 3 In 1868-69 a new route was made down the canyon east of the stream.

This dugway above Bellevue/Pintura was dangerous, but it was easier to maintain. It saved many miles of travel but required constant attention. In 1912 and 1913 convicts worked on the road between Cedar City and Toquerville, with special attention to the Black Ridge.

Upon hearing of their work, early Parowan pioneer Joseph Fish wrote, "The next generation will never know how their parents came to Dixie without roads, just rocks and sand. 4 Road commissioners and county courts regulated the use of public roads. Some "rules of the road" were that no one had a right to force another off the highway and that, when two outfits met, each was to give up half the road in passing. However, any vehicle that bore the sign "U.S. Mail" had the right of way and every other vehicle must give up the whole road to it. Mail drivers who insisted on this right could cause tremendous inconvenience and trouble when they met loaded freight wagons on a narrow road like the one over the Black Ridge. Fences and gates which the traveling public had to open and close were forbidden across public roads. Irrigation ditches across roads had to be approved by the county court. If an ox or horse died or was killed along a highway, the carcass had to be moved. If a wagon mired down, the driver had to fill the hole when he pulled out. A man could not make camp and leave his wagon in the roadway to obstruct others, nor could he pass a wagon which was stuck or broken down-he must stop and help.s The opening of the mines at Pioche in 1866 and Silver Reef in 1875 provided impetus for improving roads crossing Iron County to handle more mail expresses, freight wagons, and stagecoaches. The road through the Escalante, barely a trace today, carried passengers and boxes filled with gold or silver bullion daily for thirty years.

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Desert Springs was the main stop on all three southern Utah stage lines. Hugh White's line connected Silver Reef with Desert Springs; Jot Travis and John Townsend ran a stage line from Silver Reef to Pioche through Desert Springs; and Jack Gilmer's Utah & Nevada Stage Line ran from Beaver to Desert Springs and Pioche. It was opened about 1869 to connect with the Gilmer & Salisbury stage route from Salt Lake City to St. George and carried most of the bullion and attracted most of the desperados. For reasons long forgotten, the route was called the Devil's Gate & Meadow Valley Road.

Road agents in western Iron County made it one of the most dangerous roads in the West. 6 Gangs such as those of Ben Tasker and Nate Hansen who robbed freighters and stagecoaches and rustled cattle hid out in the west desert or in Nevada. Ben Tasker lived at Desert Springs. Stations were built at ranches, crossroads, or other convenient locations. Most were wooden structures; some rock foundations can still be found.

Between 1869 and 1876 Lehi and Kumen Jones carried mail from Cedar City to Pioche for mail contractor Monroe Salisbury of Gilmer & Salisbury Stagecoach Lines. It was a five- or six-day trip, depending on road and weather conditions. 7 Freighters to the mines did not go through towns, but went west from Iron and Antelope springs.

Settlements along the Sevier River east of the Markagunt Plateau were tied to Iron County by a road which followed the Spanish Trail up Little Creek Canyon, across Bear Valley, and down Bear Creek to its junction with the Sevier River at present-day Orton. For many decades, this was the only road to Panguitch.

Railroads The transcontinental railroad was completed across Utah in 1869 and the Utah Central Railroad was built slightly beyond Provo in 1873. Every extension shortened the wagon travel and shipping to southern Utah. In the 1870s travelers could put their horses, buggies, and wagons on the train in Salt Lake City and ride to York (terminus in 1875), Juab (1879), or Milford (1880), remove the vehicle, and finish the trip south. A trip north was the reverse. 8 Failure to bring the railroad all the way to southern Utah was a great disappointment for residents. Mining entrepreneurs in the

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1870s anticipated extension of the railroad into the iron mining district, while Washington County businessmen developing the Virgin oil fields and the Apex Mine and Kane County timber interests expected to see a railroad come through Iron County to St. George and the Kaibab Forest. Many railroad ventures into Iron, Washington, and Kane counties were announced, but they died on the drawing board due to lack of financing. 9 The opening of mines at Stateline and Gold Springs northwest of Modena in the 1890s was a factor in finally getting the railroad built across the Escalante Desert from Milford. A.W. McCune and David Eccles formed the Utah & Pacific Railroad (U&P) and completed the road from Milford to Uvada between October 1898 and July 1899. It was anticipated that it would continue across Nevada, and the Utah & Pacific gave financial bonds to the Oregon Short Line (OSL) in exchange for rails, ties, and permission to use the old Nevada Pacific grade in Lincoln County. The OSL also held an option to buy the U&P within five years, which it exercised in 1901.

In the spring of 1901, the OSL and the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City Railroad (SPLA&SL) fought in the courts and on the Utah-Nevada border for the right to build from Uvada across southeastern Nevada. Io Lawyers fought over rights-of-way, and contractors hired crews and positioned them at the Uvada railhead prepared to grade and lay tracks as soon as legally possible. Both sides hired some ranchers, farmers, and miners from Iron, Washington, and Lincoln counties.

Two "battles" highlighted weeks of tension. Weapons were shovels. Ultimately, the U.S. circuit court ruled for the OSL claim; by the autumn of 1901 both sides were cooperatively surveying Meadow Valley Wash. l l Ironically, the railroad that finally connected Salt Lake City and Los Angeles was the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake, which in 1903 took over OSL properties south of Sandy and west of Salt Lake City. A secret agreement provided that the SPLA&SL would give no better service to southern California than the UP and SP lines could do. This nullified a twenty-four-hour savings in running time and kept the railroad from fulfilling lavish predictions of extensive economic stimulation. Tracks were completed in January 1905, but four months passed before the first passenger train left Salt Lake City

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for Los Angeles on 2 May 1905. Immediate economic results in Iron County were modest at best. Inadequate water supply still limited agricultural development; mineral prices, particularly for silver, were down; large-scale iron and coal mining did not begin as predicted. 12 As the tracks of the Utah and Pacific crossed Iron County, sidings were built about every five miles and named Nada, Latimer, Kerr, Lund, Ford, Sahara (later Zane), Beryl, Utana (later Prout, then Yale), Heist, Modena, Thomas, and Uvada. Train stations instead of stagecoach stops became destinations for new roads, and towns grew up around the stations at Modena, Beryl, and Lund, with forwarding warehouses for freight and hotels for travelers. Lund was named for St. George attorney Robert C. Lund, who persistently pursued development of railroads into southern Utah. It became important as the railroad opened up the area for shipping, tourism, and farming.

Recognizing the large volume of business at the Lund station, Harry Doolittle moved from St. George to build a store and forwarding warehouse next to the tracks in 1911. 13 Livestock and other products were driven or freighted to Lund for shipping to California or Salt Lake City and beyond. The completion of a Lund-Cedar City rail spur was predicted so often between 1899 and 1920 that people were surprised when automobiles and trucks preceded the railroad into Cedar City.

Modena was the gateway to Washington County via the road from Enterprise to St. George. Brigham J. Lund and Parley Canfield built large forwarding warehouses at Modena. By 1903 silver and gold strikes turned the Stateline and Gold Springs districts into boom towns, each connected to Modena and the railroad by seventeen miles of dirt roads. New roads were built across western Iron County to the railroad towns. A graded road went north from the New Castle Reclamation townsite about 1909 to the station at Beryl. Beryl Junction emerged where this road crossed the road to Modena.

Roads At the turn of the century, promoters relied on railroads, so relatively little planning or money went into roads. Even though the legislature created a state road commission in 1909, state appropriations for roads wer e insignificant and county appropriations were inade-

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quate. The push for improved roads came from automobile clubs, highway associations, local commercial clubs, and businessmen in other states. Californians were particularly interested in seeing roads improved in western and southwestern Utah. The Utah-NevadaCalifornia Highway Association was an intermediary with state governments to facilitate road improvements. 14 Local roads, however, received mostly local attention. In February 1918 the Farm Bureau and Commercial Club rallied support in Cedar City for men to work gratis to surface Main Street with gravel.

Thirty to fifty teams and forty to eighty men worked on the project during the first two weeks of February, a time when the street was often muddiest. The newspaper called it "Gravel Week in Cedar City."ls Before 1920, the road to Lund from Cedar City went through Iron Springs, then northwest. It was a very difficult stretch of roadway, especially when wet, and received heavy traffic from wagons and stagecoaches, and later from cars, buses, and trucks. Passengers, freight, and livestock passed to and from Cedar City on this poor road. The road from Lund to Parowan was little better. The commercial clubs of Parowan and Cedar City decided they would wait no longer for a good road to Lund. Committee members discovered that the road qualified for federal funds set aside for rural postal route roads. They applied for and received funding for half the costs; the state and county agreed to split the other half. There was no construction company in the area large enough to put up the bond for such a project, so five local men-Lucius N. Marsden, Wilford Day, Uriah T. Jones, Joseph S. Fife, and Harry Doolittle-formed the Iron County Construction Company, raised money by public subscription for the bond, and sublet contracts to smaller companies to get the road built. 16 Work began 1 July 1921 on the macadamized (oil and gravel) highway over a new route from Cedar City to Lund. The road went north six miles from U -56, then northwest through the Bald Hills until it intersected with the old Parowan/Lund road, and then fifteen miles straight northwest across the desert to Lund. In February ten trucks and a "monster 75 h.p. caterpillar tractor" were on the job. The portion from Lund to the intersection with the Parowan road opened

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in February 1922.17 The complete road was opened 2 June 1922 and has been known ever since as the Lund Highway.

Roads into the mountains were for getting to dairy homesteads, ranches, and mines. These narrow, dirt wagon roads wound up the canyons in unimproved condition for decades. Impetus for improvement came when a few individuals grasped the potential of southern Utah as a scenic tourist mecca as automobiles and busses replaced wagons. It came with the national conservation movement of the Progressive era and President Theodore Roosevelt's plan to set aside scenic, scientific, or historical land as national monuments. Utahns were excited at the potential sites for national monuments in the state's boundaries. It was apparent that Cedar City would be the gateway by road and railroad for thousands to see Grand Canyon, Zion Park, Bryce Canyon, and Cedar Breaks. Governor William Spry toured southern Utah in 1912, 1913, and 1916 to investigate the scenic wonders already attracting national attention and pledged support for roads for the area.

Gradually, work was done by wagon road users to make the roads passable for automobiles. The first "circle" tours to the parks were made on these improved wagon roads, as the Parry brothers (Gronway, Chauncey, and Whitney) offered a ten-day round-trip excursion in a touring car or small bus from Cedar City to Zion Park, the Kaibab Forest, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and Bryce Canyon, returning via Panguitch and Paragonah.

Gronway Parry began pressing local and state officials for a highway through Cedar Canyon to Long Valley. Many said it couldn't be done; however, Parry and Frank Seamon, forest ranger at Duck Creek, began working on it by clearing rocks, trees, and brush. On 14 June 1916 Dr. A.N. Leonard drove the first car through the "gulch" to Woods Ranch, about ten miles up the canyon. After this, the state got involved in the project. When federal aid became available under the National Forest Highway Program (1916), the state road commission included the Cedar City-Long Valley highway in its first program in 1917. Since the state required counties to pay matching funds for federal highway projects, the Iron County Commission appropriated $2,500 to the Cedar City-Long Valley road in 1921, $16,965 in 1922, and $10,000 in 1924. 18

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Union Pacific President Carl Grey at Cedar Breaks, July 1922. (Courtesy Homer Jones)

S.A. Halterman of Parowan was first to drive an automobile up the wagon road in Parowan Canyon to Cedar Breaks, which he did in order to rescue Dr. Menzies J. Macfarlane, who had broken his ankle while on a horseback trip from Cedar Breaks to Zion Park. 19 An auto

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road was finished to Cedar Breaks in 1921, although it was described as excessively steep and dangerous. The road connecting Cedar Breaks with u.s. Highway 89 at Long Valley Junction was finished in 1923.

In the early 1920s, state funding for a concrete highway from Salt Lake to St. George, the route of the Arrowhead Trail, ran out long before the road reached southern Utah. Randall Jones of Cedar City and five other businessmen proposed in 1924 to raise funds through chambers of commerce in the southern counties and Salt Lake City to match available federal funds to build an all-weather road over the Black Ridge in Washington County. A new road was built along the old pioneer route on the west side of Ash Creek Canyon, and it greatly improved access to Zion Park.20

Railroad Spur Over the years, several Union Pacific representatives toured Iron and Washington counties to survey potential in both the scenic areas and in the iron ore reserves. In October 1922 W.S. Bassenger, passenger traffic manager of Union Pacific, told a Cedar City audience that a railroad spur was important in the company's plan to make the area one of the tourist attractions in American and that rails would come to Cedar City within a year. 21 Later negotiations between civic leaders and Union Pacific officials led to the railroad purchasing the unfinished EI Escalante Hotel plus property within the city for tracks and a grand depot on the corner opposite the magnificent hotel.

Businessmen through the Commercial Club agreed to furnish the right-of-way for the tracks from Lund to the city limits. Some property owners donated land, but others needed payment, at an estimated cost of $50,000. Commercial Club leaders explained the requirements of the railroad to citizens in a mass meeting, at which time two committees were formed, a finance committee to raise money and a right-of-way committee to obtain deeds to the land.

The finance committee was so successful that, after the bills of $115,000 were paid, $7,500 was left. This money was put into a trust and later purchased land for a federal building.

The rails reached the city limits in early June 1923. On 27 June, President Warren G. Harding, his wife, and a large party rode the offi-

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cial train to the new depot. The president and dignitaries then proceeded by automobile to the end of the road in Zion Canyon and by horse into the "Narrows."

Highways The state could afford good cement highways only in metropolitan areas. Most other state roads were all-weather gravel roads. In 1927 and 1928, Utah road officials began experimenting with a new oil-process road surface called asphalt, which proved satisfactory. In October 1928 the state road commission told Iron County commissioners that state and federal governments would cooperate in oiling roads in .the counties. The road from Cedar City to the Washington County line was at the top of the state's list for oiling, and county commissioners agreed to pay $12,532 of the $48,200 needed for this project.22 The 1927 legislature adopted the national highway numbering system and changed highway markers and signs. The main northsouth road through Iron County was designated u.s. Highway 91.

The Great Depression years actually proved beneficial to highways and roads throughout the state and county. Even before federal relief projects were begun, the state road commission announced it would match federal funds for road construction. Utah spent over $3 million on roads in three years, and these expenditures kept men employed. The commission funded many road projects for that purpose.23 However, the county and the state did not always agree on which roads needed attention. In October 1929 the state road commission asked Iron County to appropriate $10,000 to match Forest Service funds for work on the Cedar Canyon road. County commissioners balked, feeling improvements on other roads were more urgent, but changed their minds when they learned that if they would not cooperate the state would make no effort to fund further projects in Iron County; $10,000 was quicklyappropriated. 24 The next July, commissioners complained to the state that the contractor employed men to work on the canyon road who did not live in Iron County. This suspicion proved inaccurate; but, as a result of the complaint, the state road commission adopted a policy giving preference on state highway work to Utah men with families. There

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was to be strict adherence to the eight-hour work day. Between 1930 and 1934, $134,244 in county and state funds was spent on area roads. Justification for expenditures centered on the need to relieve unemployment rather than the need for road repairs. 25 Emergency Relief Administration funds totaled $36,420 in Iron County between 1 April 1934 and 31 December 1935 for twenty-nine road projects, all done with matching local contributions and local labor. Fifty-two miles of roads were graded, with others improved and repaired. Also, fifteen bridges were constructed, five culverts built, and 125,082 feet of gravel sidewalks completed. 26 Road construction and repairs from state and federal funds, ERA grants, and CCC projects in the national forests brought significant improvements in the 1930s.

In 1935 Columbia Steel Corporation requested a major road to the south end of Iron Mountain by way of Leach's Canyon to shorten the distance to its mines at Iron Mountain. The road was completed in the early 1940s and was designated Utah Highway 56 (U-56). It carried the bulk of traffic headed west.

Mention of an interstate highway system did not draw much response in Iron County when an interstate plan came from Congress about 1942. Congressional action in 1956 followed years of lobbying for improved national highways from motorists, state road officials, and the nation's governors. The interstate plan created in the historic Federal-aid Highway Act of 1956 had a price tag of $25 billion over thirteen years and was the largest peacetime government program in history. Unfortunately, the state of Utah had not done enough to purchase rights-of-way prior to 1957 when $19.3 million in federal aid became available. In order to prevent funds from lapsing, the state was forced to begin interstate sections in outlying areas years ahead of those in populous areas. This benefited southern Utah but created a situation where motorists drove back and forth between U.S. 91 and completed interstate sections for three decades.

In the late 1950s, people from rural communities discussed proposed interstate routes, with the placement of I-70 and I -15 the issues most affecting south-central and southern Utah. For businessmen and civic leaders in towns along Highway 91, Interstate 15 was both a blessing and a curse. The interstate offered safer and faster travel; Iron County motorists were excited at the prospect of driving to and from

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the Wasatch Front in four to five hours, and, of course, expected that motorists from northern Utah would find it easier to visit scenic attractions in the southern counties. The downside was fear that motorists not having to drive through Parowan and Cedar City would not frequent local restaurants, service stations, and motels.

There was even early discussion of a freeway route west of U.s. 91 bypassing all Iron County cities and allowing traffic to go from Beaver to St. George without even seeing a town. In July 1961, however, the Utah director of highways and the division engineer of the U.s. Bureau of Public Roads assured local officials that the route would pass just west of Paragonah and Parowan and go through Cedar City.

Originally, a single north interchange was approved for Parowan.

City, county, and state officials supported an additional interchange on the south to accommodate travel to and from Cedar City and provide better routes from the south into Parowan and to Brian Head.

The six-mile stretch of 1-15 passing Cedar City and the Cedar City business loop was dedicated on 10 July 1970, with Governor Calvin Rampton in attendance. 27 Before long, businesses recovered from changed patterns of highway use, and within a few years the interstate was completed through the county to almost everyone's satisfaction.

Twenty years later, it is difficult to remember when all the fastfood establishments and motels were downtown. Property near interchanges at Parowan, Summit, and Cedar City was in demand, and new facilities constructed at these locations have moved some services from Main Street to areas near the off-ramps. Communities have been very successful luring travelers off the freeway. Fred Adams's first proposal for a Shakespearean festival was to give tourists a reason to stop in Cedar City a day or two longer during vacations to the national parks. Other celebrations, historical sites and museums, sporting events, and the Utah Summer Games also have been developed and promoted.

Airports and Airlines Airplanes came to southern Utah shortly after automobiles; but, although automobiles needed roads, early airplanes did not need air-

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ports-a flat alfalfa field worked just as well. The first airplane came as a concession ride for a fair at Cedar City on 27 September 1920. 28 The pilot offered flights over the city for a dollar a ride. Young Alva Matheson watched the pilot give rides for two days, not wanting "to chance taking a ride before it had flown long enough to prove it wouldn't break up." He was first in line the third morning, but his flight ended quickly, as the plane reached only fifty feet in altitude before its motor stopped and the plane came back to earth, hitting an irrigation ditch and bouncing into a fence. Both pilot and passenger walked away. 29 An airfield was built in 1920 in Salt Lake City, a natural hub for transcontinental airmail service. Emergency landing strips along the routes were mandated as were airports in cities between Salt Lake City and other metropolitan areas. Several sites in Iron County were designated as emergency landing strips for postal service planes flying the Salt Lake- Las Vegas-Los Angeles route. Some were along Union Pacific tracks near sidings at Nada, Lund, and Avon. There was also an airstrip on the Sevy Ranch in Newcastle. The flat desert was ideal for landing strips. Some attention was given to grading and lighting these landing fields. In 1929 several men spent thirty days installing lights to mark the Nada Landing Field. 30 At the same time, government employees were building airports in Parowan and Cedar City. At a site two miles northwest of Cedar City, airport engineer P.S. McLain supervised the grading, rolling, and preparation of the runway and the installation of lights and beacons.

Its opening on 18 May 1929 was marked by a chamber of commerce celebration, which included a parade depicting transportation from "Indian Days of Long Ago to Present Time."31A Paiute Indian walked at the head of the procession, followed by a prospector with his mule, pioneer wagons, a prairie schooner, and a string of automobiles, including a 1901 model, the oldest car in the county. Speakers hailed this event as another important step in opening up southern Utah to tourism and improved business and agriculture.

In July 1931 the Cedar City Chamber of Commerce recommended the city take over operation of the airport from the government' due to dissatisfaction with the way the airport was being run.

Almost seven years later, in March 1938, the government yielded and

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Cedar City Airport. (Courtesy Cedar City Corporation)

officially turned the airport over to the city. Improvements were long overdue. City council minutes of 16 February 1939 indicate that the "Mayor brought up the matter of putting the Municipal Airport into condition, where planes will be able to take off or land." In November 1941, civic leaders including Dr. Jacob W. Bergstrom and M. James Urie obtained a Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) grant for $287,000 to finance leveling and grading of the airfield, fencing it, placing boundary lights, installing an enormous beacon, and constructing two mile-long concrete runways. 32 The BAC was already training pilots in a CAA-approved pilot-training school which started in 1939. The improved airfield and the training program helped secure the assignment of the 316th Army Air Corps Training Detachment to the BAC after the United States entered World War II.

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Cadets completed pre-flight classes on campus and received ten hours of flying instruction at the airport. During these years, an airport beacon sat on the north end of Leigh Hill, after which it was known as Beacon Hill. A new subdivision of the 1990s called "Beacon Hill" memorializes this signal site.

The only building at the airport was a hanger built in 1940 as a joint project of the city and civic clubs. After World War II, however, flying increased dramatically, and airport manager Royce Knight petitioned the city to allow him to run a lunch counter, dining room, and dance floor to cater to the flying public as well as to community members. He used the remodeled hanger for these amenities until 1951 when the modern municipal airport administration building was constructed as a joint project of the city and the CAA. Designed by local architect L. Robert Gardner, the new building housed offices and counter space for Western Air Lines, which provided air service into Cedar City; it also housed offices and equipment of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, an airport manager's office, freight rooms, and a dining room set behind large glass panels looking out over the runways. It was dedicated in April 1951. Activity at the airport grew steadily between the 1950s and 1970s, requiring repeated improvements and extensions on the runways in 1964 and in 1975.

It became and still is Utah's second largest municipal airport.

Commercial airline service was provided first by Western Airlines, then by Bonanza and Hughes Airwest, which suspended service in August 1977. Skywest Airlines began as a small commuter service in 1972, flying from St. George to Salt Lake City, with a stop in Cedar City. About the time that Airwest ceased serving Cedar City, Skywest took over commercial service to Iron County. It extended its service to other western cities and established an affiliation with Delta Airlines in the late 1980s after Delta purchased Western Airlines and made Salt Lake City one of its hub cities. Skywest has become the eleventh largest regional airline in the country.33 From Cedar City, Skywest and Delta provide flights to more than 300 cities. Business, education, and tourist passengers from throughout the country and around the world fly directly into Cedar City year round. Full certification of the airport in 1997 will permit larger planes to land on a

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regular basis, further opening up the area for tourism and development. 34 Facing the twenty-first century, the airport is on track for major expansion, including additional runway extensions, runway infrastructure improvements, and a new passenger terminal to be constructed before the year 2000. Near the airport are station sites for FAA Automated Flight Service, FAA Long Range Radar, and FAA Navigational Aid. On Cedar Mountain is a Doppler radar site completed in the summer of 1996 which makes flying in southwestern Utah safer than ever before.

Many of Iron County's stagecoach roads have become jeep or ORV trails, and its mountain logging roads are paths for mountain bikes. North-south automobile, bus, and truck traffic either whizzes by on Interstate 15 or stops for fuel and refreshment at one of twenty or more gas and grocery stores. Thirty-passenger aircraft land and leave at least three times a day from the Cedar City Municipal Airport, while slllaller planes and glider clubs flock to the Parowan Airport. The quality of life enjoyed by area people and the vibrant economic outlook for the coming century are undoubtedly due to almost 150 years of community effort to develop the roads, railroads, and airports that bring tourists, university students, and business opportunities to Iron County communities.

ENDNOTES 1. Ezra C. Knowlton, History of Highway Development in Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah State Department of Highways, 1964),38-40.

2. "The Black Ridge Trails Historic Hike," typescript from Boy Scouts of America, in author's possession; see also "Building roads tough task for area pioneers," Spectrum, 17 September 1989, B-6.

3. William Henry Jackson, The Diaries of William Henry Jackson, ed. by LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1959), 110-12.

4. Federal Aid Project 12 in the early 1920s relocated the "old pioneer road" moved in 1868-69 back to the west side of the canyon near its original location. Knowlton, History of Highway Development, 236; Joseph Fish, "History of Enterprise," 248.

5. William R. Palmer, Forgotten Chapters of History, 23 December 1953, 1-2.

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6. George A. Thompson, Throw Down the Box! Treasure Tales from Gilmer & Salisbury, the Western Stagecoach King (Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press, 1989),39-40, 147; Esther W. Hankins, "Holdup men ruled roads from Pioche in 1870s," Nevadan, 26 June 1983, 6-7L. There is an 1878 map of these roads in B.A.M. Froiseth, New Sectional and M ineral Map of Utah (Salt Lake City: A.L. Bancroft and Company, 1878), figure 10.

7 . York Jones and Evelyn Jones, Lehi Willard Jones, 40-49.

8. Donald B. Robertson, Encyclopedia of Western Railroad History: The Desert States, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1986), 306-7.

9. Edward Leo Lyman, "From the City of Angels to the City of Saints: The Struggle to Build a Railroad from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City," California History 70 (Spring 1991): 76-93. Rivalries between railroad giants protecting investments and financial problems created by overbuilding western railroads affected railroad construction in southern Utah. Names of some uncompleted railroads are: Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, to go through to Pacific Coast, April 1891 (and still expected in 1901); Milford and Dixie Electric Railway, July 1903; Utah and Southwestern Railway Company, announced May 1909; Iron Mountain, St. George & Grand Canyon Railroad, July 1910; Utah Midland Railway, November 1910; Utah & Grand Canyon Railroad, March 1911; Salt Lake, Fillmore and Kanosh Railroad Company (also Southern Utah Railroad Company), July 1918. All were announced in the Iron County Record between 1890 and 1920.

10. John R. Signor, The Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad Company: Union Pacific's Historic Salt Lake Route (San Marino, CA: Golden West Books, 1988), 24-29.

11. Lyman, "From the City of Angels," 87-89.

12. Ibid., 90-93.

13. Harry Doolittle was an enterprising individual and contributor to the development of southern Utah between 1905 and 1929. Doolittle later constructed a large warehouse for the Doolittle Forwarding Company north of the Union Pacific freight depot in Cedar City. He also built gas and oil tanks and established one of the first gas and oil distributorships in southern Utah. As a consummate entrepreneur, he applied his attention to civic and business causes such as Iron County Council of Defense during W o rid War I, and he served on the board of directors for the first Iron County hospital (1922), board of directors of the Mammoth Plaster and Cement Company (1923), vice-president of the Cedar City Chamber of Commerce (1924), Republican party precinct chairman and state delegate (1925), charter member of the Cedar City Rotary Club (1925) and its second president (1927-1928), and president of the Board of Trustees of Union Presbyterian

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Church (1929). In July 1929 H.J. Doolittle Company was sold to Utah Oil Refining Company of Salt Lake City. The Iron County Record editor on 27 July 1929 lauded his service. See Ann Brest van Kempen, Harry Doolittle "An Honest-to-Goodness Splendid Citizen" (n.p., ca. 1994),53-182.

14. Knowlton, History of Highway Development, 238.

15. Iron County Record, 8 February 1918.

16. Harry P. Bluhm, Lucius Nelson Marsden Prominent Southern Utah Banker, Merchant, Livestockman, and Church Leader, 1862-1931 (Salt Lake City: n.p., 1993),40.

17. Iron County Record, 17 February 1922.

18. Iron County Commission Minute Book, 9 August 1921,237; 13 March 1922,257; 11 February 1924, 41.

19. L.W. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 166-68.

20. Angus M. Woodbury, A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1950), 205; Knowlton, History of Highway Development, 236 21. Iron County Record, 20 October 1922.

22. Knowlton, History of Highway Development, 260-72; Iron County Record, 26 October 1928.

23. Knowlton, History of Highway Development, 287-88.

24. Iron County Record, 11 December 1929.

25. Knowlton, History of Highway Development, 287-300.

26. See "A Report of the Works Division, Utah Emergency Relief Administration, April 15, 1934-0ctober 31, 1935," compiled by the Engineering Department Works Division, 1936; and "Iron County Summary of all Expenditures-Works Division-By Project Classification, Utah Emergency Relief Administration, April 1, 1934 to December 31, 1935," both located at Utah State Historical Society Library.

27. Iron County Record, 9 July 1970.

28. Until 1919 the Iron County Fair alternated between Parowan, Cedar City, and one of the western communities. In May 1919, members of the fair committee disagreed on a location for the year and county commissioners "took what they no doubt felt was the easiest and safest way out of a tight place and declared the whole show off." Iron County Record, 16 May 1919. Subsequently, for a few years, Parowan and Cedar City each sponsored a fair.

29. Alva Matheson, Cedar City Reflections, 127.

30. Iron County Record, 23 March 1929.

31. Iron County Record, 18 May 1929.

32. Iron County Record, 27 November 1941.

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33. Kathryn B. Creedy, Time Flies, The History of Skywest Airlines (San Antonio: Loflin and Associates, 1992); Douglas J. Alder and Karl F. Brooks, A History of Washington County (Utah State Historical Society/Washington County Commission, 1996), 334-37.

34. Tyson Hiatt, «Cedar airport could compete with big boys as early as May," Spectrum, 28 March 1997, A-I.

CHAPTER

21

TOURISM AND RECREATION Millions of travelers come to and through Iron County every year, impacting the economy and lifestyle of its communities and fulfilling the predictions of early twentieth-century boosters regarding the scenic attractions of the area. Tourism currently ranks third in economic impact among industries in Utah, just behind mining and manufacturing. Iron County is fortunate to be midway between Los Angeles and the metropolitan areas of Salt Lake City and Denver, centrally located among four scenic national parks, and to have become a tourist destination in its own right. Tourists spent $72 million in the county in 1994, ranking Iron County as one of the top ten counties in tourism income in Utah. 1 Iron County is situated in the center of a circle encompassing Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Great Basin national parks, some of which have more than 3 million visitors a year, and Iron County has its own natural scenic wonder in Cedar Breaks National Monument. Some 500,000 tourists visit Cedar Breaks, while the Utah Shakespearean Festival, American Folk Ballet, Utah Summer Games, Dixie National Forest, and Brian Head Resort host 400,000 visitors 398

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each year. Development of these tourist opportunities required the same characteristics of vision, ingenuity, perseverance, and sacrifice that mark other achievements in the county's history.

National Parks While nineteenth-century explorers, photographers, and scientists frequently described the majestic beauty and geologic wonders of southern Utah and northern Arizona as worth seeing, before the turn of the century very few persons toured southern Utah. In the nineteenth century, vacations or tours were limited to very wealthy Americans and Europeans. The touring of western America, and specifically southern Utah, also was limited by the lack of convenient transportation. A few local people recognized the beauty of the land and reveled in the unique landscapes. Most residents, however, had to spend much of their time making a living off the land and probably did not fully appreciate its unique beauty.

Although Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872 and the Yosemite and Sequoia areas were set aside as national forest reserves in the 1890s, their establishment was part of the preservation movement rather than one to provide recreation sites. When Grand Canyon National Monument was created in January 1908 and Mukuntuweap (Zion) National Monument in 1909, they were created under terms of the Lacey Act of 1906 for the preservation of antiquities. Rampant vandalism of archaeological ruins in the Southwest spurred conservationists to write the law, and these two great canyons were set aside to be protected. Funding for development was many years away. A few individuals recognized the potential of the areas as vacation sites, however, and worked toward that end. 2 John Wesley Powell, Clarence E. Dutton, Jack Hillers, and Frederick S. Dellenbaugh were among the nineteenth-century admirers of these areas. Dellenbaugh, who was with Powell on his second trip through the Grand Canyon, returned to Zion Canyon in 1903 and painted the scenery. His paintings were displayed at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 and created a great deal of interest. After Dr. George W. Middleton, former mayor of Cedar City, moved to Salt Lake City in 1906 to establish his surgical practice, he introduced

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

important men of the state and the capital city to the scenic beauty and potential tourist possibilities of the colorful canyons in Iron, Washington, and other southern Utah counties. In Salt Lake City he became friends with Frederick J. Pack, geology professor at the University of Utah. The two men organized expeditions to southern Utah in the days when there were no roads; horses and pack animals were used to get to Zion Canyon or Cedar Breaks. At the same time, Randall Jones of Cedar City was promoting the scenery of southern Utah in the eastern states, where he talked about his visits to Zion Park to anyone who would listen. Jones and Middleton popularized the scenic wonders for men like Utah governor William Spry and Salt Lake City mayor Clarence Neslen as well as J.H. Manderfield, Douglas White, and Daniel S. Spencer of the Arrowhead Trail Association and Union Pacific Railroad.

Additional interest was stimulated by the Reverend Dr. Frederick Vining Fisher and his early lantern-slide lecture, "Utah, the Crown of the Continent." A minister in Ogden before 1912, Fisher had forsaken the pulpit for the lecture circuit, where he first used his own pictures of California to illustrate western scenic attractions. When he brought the lecture to Utah in 1915, he was surprised to learn from a University of Utah student that southern Utah scenery rivaled that of California. Fisher arranged a long visit to southern Utah in the fall of 1916 and reportedly was overcome with "pious awe" as he gazed upon the grandeur of the peaks of Zion Canyon and the multicolored Cedar Breaks. He photographed Grand Canyon's North Rim, Zion, Cedar Breaks, and the newly discovered natural arch up Cedar Canyon. It is said that while riding through Zion Canyon with young Claud Hirschi and a friend, the men began naming the scenic points, including a great white precipice gleaming in the afternoon sun, framed by the pass between Angels Landing and the Great Organ.

The sight so moved Fisher that he called it ''America's masterpiece, the Great White Throne."3 Fisher's pictures were shown first in Cedar City, then three times in St. George, twice in Hurricane, and again in Cedar City. Many returned to see pictures of wonders that were so dose to their homes but which they had never seen. Fisher presented the show at the Salt Lake Theater in February 1917 before a distinguished audience which

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included Governor Simon Bamberger, and Fisher predicted that someday Cedar City would surpass Salt Lake City in size and importance. 4 During a March 1917 return visit to Cedar City, Fisher met with members of the Cedar City Commercial Club to discuss the woeful lack of facilities for the visitors he foresaw flooding into Cedar City after they had heard his lectures in the East. Without considering that there were virtually no roads to the scenic points of interest and only tent camps at the parks to accommodate the visitors, Fisher convinced the businessmen of Cedar City that at least a one-hundredroom hotel was essential. Planning for a large, modern hotel began that very night; however, within a week the United States entered World War I, and the hotel project was shelved until October 1919. 5 Gradually local citizens began awakening to the potential value of the geologic formations and scenery surrounding them. Credit is due Randall Jones, architect and later "special representative" of the Union Pacific, Henry W. Lunt of the state road commission, Menzies J. Macfarlane, physician and president of the Cedar City Commercial Club, and Gronway and Chauncey Parry for persistence in getting the message out that tourism would boost the economy and status of all communities in southern Utah.

The natural arch visited by Fisher was discovered on the northwest side of a canyon wall high above Coal Creek at the base of Ashdown Gorge by William W. Flanigan and two companions in August 1916. The three men were looking for a cable site in Ashdown Gorge where timber could be lowered to the canyon bottom, as had been done at Cable Mountain in Zion Canyon. Flanigan hiked to the arch from the north side of the gorge on 27 August and returned four days later with Parley Dalley of the BAC science department and others' who helped measure the arch. The span was 119 feet, the height 100 feet, and the arch was thirteen feet thick and thirteen feet wide.

As word of the discovery circulated, Flanigan was asked to guide others to see the arch; Frederick Fisher went on Flanigan's sixth trip on 30 September 1916.

Within weeks, officials in the new National Park Service had heard about the majestic formation and sent topographic engineer William O. Tuffs to investigate and make a recommendation on

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whether the arch deserved national-monument status. Tuffs's first report favorably recommended it as a national monument; however, after spending time surveying a road into Little Zion Canyon, then known as Mukuntuweap National Monument, he had second thoughts. A second report stated: At first sight this bridge seemed impressive, and to a certain extent it is; but I find that there are natural wonders of so much more remarkable nature in Mukuntuweap, in the same part of Utah, that it would hardly be advisable to divide up the energies of the Department upon objects of second rate importance. The people of Cedar City may be depended upon to advertise the bridge and bring it to public notice without official action."6

Cedar City residents made a valiant effort to publicize the arch. A large painting of the formation by J.H. Moser was sent to Salt Lake City, where it hung for many years in the Utah State Capitol Building.

Dr. Frederick Pack of the University of Utah investigated the arch and wrote the first scientific description in an article, "Natural Bridging in High Plateaus of Utah." Despite the publicity, the arch took a back seat to developments in Zion, Bryce Canyon, and even nearby Cedar Breaks. In the eighty years since its discovery, no safe and easy trail has been established for tourists, and visitors to the arch have been mostly youth from local scout or church groups.7 While the attention of the nation was on the war in Europe between 1916 and 1918, leaders of the infant National Park Service were becoming acquainted with the scenic attractions of southern Utah. They changed the name Mukuntuweap to Zion National Monument in 1918; one year later, Congress made it Zion National Park. After the war, touring grew in popularity and a trickle of tourists began to find their way to southern Utah. In 1919 there were 1,914 visitors to Zion Park; in 1920 the number nearly doubled, to 3,692. Most of these tourists came on the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad to Lund or Modena and were transported on touring buses to Zion Park's Wylie Camp Ground. Before Gronway and Chauncey Parry left to serve during World War I, they established ten-day "circle tours" over the area's primitive roads so visitors could see all four parks. In 1920 they returned to southern Utah and began automo-

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bile and horseback tours for varying lengths of time to some or all of the local canyons, parks, and forests. 8

Cedar Breaks National Monument Cedar Breaks, a spectacular multicolored fan-shaped basin on the Markagunt Plateau, began receiving attention while it was still part of the Dixie National Forest. To increase tourist travel to Cedar Breaks, Iron County spent $12,000 in 1921 improving the Parowan Canyon road. A dirt road was built in 1920 into Cedar Breaks from the Cedar-Long Valley road to the south, allowing access from Cedar City. 9 The Forest Serv ice began receiving inquiries about facilities, campgrounds, and homesites near Cedar Breaks in the early 1920s.

After a special-use permit to construct a hotel at Cedar Breaks was given to the Utah Parks Company, the Forest Service undertook other development projects at the Breaks, including improving the road to Lookout Point which had been made by people from Parowan. A log railing at Rainbow Point, a foot trail constructed along the ledge, and a campground with toilets, spring water, and picnic tables were all constructed. After the Utah Parks Company's hotel and dining room was finished at Buckskin Knob, the Forest Service made a trail along the rim from Buckskin Knob to Point Supreme and a trail to the Foxtail near Point Supreme where bristlecone pine trees grow, the oldest known living things in the area and, in another location of the West, thought to be the oldest living organism on the earth. 10

El Escalante Hotel In the fall of 1919, the Cedar City Commercial Club became the Cedar City Chamber of Commerce, and its president, S.J. Foster, led discussions on the urgency of getting a large hotel ready for tourists, with construction to be begun by cooperative community effort, as had been done with earlier projects.

Planning and finances came easy at first. Two Salt Lake City businessmen who financed and constructed hotels were so enthusiastic about the prospects that they each subscribed $5,000. The Cedar City Hotel Company was organized and architect Randall Jones commissioned to draw the plans. The site chosen was the corner of Main

404

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

Street and Second North where the empty Cedar LDS Tithing Office building stood. The Mormon church agreed to sell the tithing office.

It was torn down and hotel construction started in the first part of May 1920.

By July the foundation was in and masonry work on the outer walls was progressing. However, the project was in need of money.

The newspaper considered it "civic treason" not to support the hotel builders.11 Despite this, by midsummer the project was seriously in need of funds, as donations were inadequate to meet the payroll. The optimism of city leaders ran up against the realities of the postwar economic depression which struck Utah's farm communities in 1920.

Finally, ten Commercial Club members each pledged twenty-five dollars a month and obtained promises from others for enough funds to guarantee the payroll; work commenced again. 12 Through the summer of 1921 construction continued uninterrupted as the walls were finished and the roof put on. Then the work stopped again. In addition to a lack of funds, citizens were again questioning the reality of the railroad coming to town. Union Pacific president Carl R. Gray visited Iron County twice in 1922. In March he inspected farms, the BAC, and downtown Cedar City. At the site of the mammoth hotel, he expressed astonishment that a community so small could "put over" a project so large. 13 His July visit to Cedar Breaks, Zion Canyon, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon left him keenly aware of the distances between the parks, and hence the need for fine accommodations at each park as well as improved roads throughout the area to entice wealthy American tourists. He envisioned a magnificently furnished Cedar City hotel as part of the excursion package and realized that it could not be done alone by the Cedar City entrepreneurs despite their good intentions.

In January 1923 Union Pacific offered to buy the hotel for $80,000, which returned investors about eighty cents on the dollar.

Knowing the hotel would be finished and furnished in a manner they could not afford, investors were satisfied. Since there had been opposition to the National Park Service allowing monopolies to develop national parks, the Union Pacific was advised to form a subsidiary company to develop and operate concessions in the parks. Thus, the Utah Parks Company (UPC) was incorporated on 26 March 1923,

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Utah Parks busses awaiting the arrival of visitors at Union Pacific Depot in Cedar City. Circle tours of the four national scenic areas began and ended at the depot. The spacious El Escalante Hotel was across the street to the south.

(Courtesy Homer Jones)

and 98 percent of the $25,000 in capital stock was subscribed to by the Railroad Securities Company, another subsidiary of Union Pacific. 14 The newly named EI Escalante Hotel became part of the Cedar City complex of the Utah Parks Company, which also included a handsome depot across the street and four buildings to house support facilities for the company.

George A. "Bert" Wood of Cedar City finished the hotel in December 1923. The Union Pacific had estimated finishing it for $100,000, but the final figure was nearly $200,000. The handsome, massive, brick L-shaped structure had ninety-two rooms in three stories, with the third story set in the pitched roof and its dormer windows supplying light and air. On 29 March 1924 a grand banquet and ball was the hotel's first major social function, attracting prominent guests from business, church, and government throughout the region and state. IS Operation of the hotel was costly to the Union Pacific; it

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HISTORY OF IRON CO U NTY

rarely produced a profit, yet, with its high quality of services and facilities, it was a vital part of the Union Pacific's tourism package. 16 In the meantime, the Union Pacific had hired Randall Jones of Cedar City to take his lantern slideshow of the national park areas and show them to interested audiences throughout the country. His illustrated lectures were presented to congressional committees, civic groups, women's clubs, college gatherings, and foreign diplomats.

Jones was a guest at the White House for presidents Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt, appeared before the queen in England, and was also active promoting the region on the European continent. l7

Utah Parks Company Utah Parks Company headquarters included passenger and freight depots, a commissary, a garage, and a chauffeurs' lodge. The Parry brothers continued operating the transportation concessions, for which new Buick passenger touring cars and forty buses were purchased in 1924 and 1925. 18 Pending construction projects at the national parks attracted men from throughout southern and central Utah seeking employment. Work was at a different park each year. Hyrum Kunz moved his family in the fall of 1923 from Manti to Cedar City, where he helped finish the EI Escalante Hotel and worked on the railroad station and bus garage while the National Park Service and the Union Pacific argued over facilities to be built in the national parks. The Union Pacific wanted large hotels, similar to those in Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, which attracted wealthy tourists and large tour groups who would use trains for transportation. Without these large parties, Union Pacific felt that it could not justify the expense of advertising to build up passenger traffic. National Park Service director Steven Mather did not want large facilities in each park and questioned whether the number of visitors warranted such an investment. He preferred several small camps in Zion, but he finally agreed to have substantial central buildings built in each park, with cottages for sleeping quarters located nearby. Gilbert Stanley Underwood designed the lodges and other structures. Rustic-style architecture

T OURISM AND R ECREATION

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prevailed, using logs, stucco, and rock so the man-made structures would better harmonize with the environment. 19 While Kunz supervised construction at Cedar Breaks during 1926, his wife and children enjoyed a summer in the cool mountain air. The rustic lodge and sleeping cabins were nestled in the pine trees near Point Supreme, facing the sub-alpine meadow thick with wildflowers and from the back overlooking the pink, white, and vermillion cliffs.20 The Cedar Breaks lodge location was convenient for tour buses to stop for lunch breaks and a tour of the rim while headed to or from Bryce Canyon. Countless thousands of visitors enjoyed the lodge's famous fried chicken dinners for almost a half century. In 1971 it became the only Utah Parks lodge to be torn down, an event that angered many county residents. The museum/visitor's center and rangers' cabins were built by CCC crews or as WPA projects during the New Deal days.2l The largest UPC project, a lodge, cabins, and auxiliary buildings on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, was built in 1927. Bert Wood of Cedar City supervised the 125 men from Parowan, Cedar City, and surrounding communities who constructed this $500,000 facility. 22 In 1928 most of the 30,000 visitors to Zion National Park came through Cedar City and the new railroad station. In 1929 many of the 51 ,000 visitors were aided by the completion of the bridge across the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry, the opening of the new Zion-Mt. Carmel road and tunnel, and the completion of an airport two miles west of Cedar City. 23 The 1930 census showed Cedar City had the fastest rate of growth-a 52 percent increase-among the cities of Utah between 1920 and 1930. The increase in tourism to the national parks and national forests contributed as much to the community as did the establishment of Cedar City as a railhead and the opening of the area's iron mines.

Optimistic park concessionaires in 1930 submitted plans for expansion over the next five years, seemingly oblivious to possible effects of the stock market crash in October 1929. During the depths of the financial crisis, the UPC reduced prices and wages. The National Park Service advised concessionaires to alter their services, anticipating more middle-class tourists looking for economy vaca-

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

tions instead of the first-class tours of the 1920s. Utah Parks Company responded by offering housekeeping cabins and even renting tents and military cots to visitors. Campers with their own equipment used the public campground for free. 24 Better roads and more passenger cars brought greater numbers of tourists to the parks; however, fewer tourists came by train and took motor tours. Tourists steadily increased in the 1930s, but revenues to UPC did not.

However, the company adapted and survived the Depression.

The parks themselves benefited from New Deal programs which sent Civilian Conservation Corps crews to carry out National Park Service projects. A number ofWPA structures were also built which harmonized with the park architecture of the 1920s, and many trails and roads were vastly improved.

In 1931 Horace Albright, head of the National Park Service, and Forest Service officials locked horns over a proposal to make the Cedar Breaks area of Dixie National Forest a section of either Zion or Bryce Canyon national parks. Lines were quickly drawn locally, with stockmen supporting the Forest Service and continued timber and grazing use of the area, while business interests, especially in Cedar City, supported the National Park Service managing the area.

Two years of interagency squabbling ended on 22 August 1933 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt made Cedar Breaks a national monument and assigned its administration to the National Park Service.

The addition of Cedar Breaks rounded out a NPS plan to link the development of national parks and monuments to the railroad industry.25 The initial impact of the hostilities in Europe in 1939 increased travel to southern Utah. Instead of going abroad, many Americans vacationed in America. Luxury trains again crisscrossed the country, and Union Pacific sold tours to the parks. After the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, however, appropriations for parks were cut by 50 percent and gasoline rationing severely restricted pleasure trips. The Utah Parks Company struggled through the 1942 season and then closed down until war's end.

After the war, tourism across the country soared to heights previously unimaginable. Facilities built during the 1920s and 1930s were taxed beyond their capacity, and those in southern Utah's parks

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were in need of considerable repair and refurbishing. The Utah Parks Company persuaded Union Pacific to resume its operations after the war in spite of the need to upgrade buildings and purchase new buses. The EI Escalante, used to house air cadets and movie crews during the war, was reopened as a hotel, but it never made a profit. A longer season would have improved profits considerably, but the company was tied to a 100-day season by the school schedules of its young employees, weather conditions at Cedar Breaks, Bryce, and Grand Canyon, and the vacation traditions of traveling Americans.

Utah Parks renewed its twenty-year lease with the National Park Service in 1948, but it did not foresee the trend of increasing automobile traffic to the parks. More than $500,000 was spent on modernizing, yet the volume of railroad passengers remained relatively constant while expenses increased. The need to reduce overhead brought the annual closing of the EI Escalante Hotel yearly between November and April. Finally, in the late 1950s, the hotel was sold to Cedar City for a nominal sum. Thirty-five years after its purchase by the Union Pacific, the hotel was once again owned by the citizens of Cedar City. Built before the motel revolution, the hotel had become old-fashioned and inconvenient, yet memories lingered of "white linen and polished silver, formal banquets, and long lines of 'dude'filled buses."26 Since owners of Cedar City's motels did not want competition from a city-owned hotel, the hotel was operated as such for only a short time. A group of businessmen then leased it and planned to turn it into a dormitory for college students, but the plan never materialized. Other uses were considered. When city fathers put the matter on a ballot, residents voted to sell the building to the highest bidder. Lerin Porter purchased it in 1970. In August 1971 the old hotel was razed and a motellrestaurant complex built on the site.27 In the 1950s and 1960s, rail passenger traffic declined until passenger service from Lund to Cedar City was discontinued in 1960.

Bus operators then picked up the tourists at the Lund station and drove them to Zion National Park for two nights of lodging, two nights at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, a final night at Bryce Canyon, and lunch at Cedar Breaks before the trip back to Lund station to meet their departing train. Utah Parks Company tour operator folklore spanned almost five decades. Other long-lived traditions

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

at the lodges included evening entertainment, singing ÂŤhappy birthday" to guests, and ÂŤsing-aways" performed by the housemaids, waitresses, bell boys, soda jerks, and reservation clerks as buses departed each park.

At Cedar City, new motels and fast-food establishments catered to automobile tourists. The drawback for these businesses was the same short tourist season. For several years, the Union Pacific tried unsuccessfully to sell its Utah Parks Company facilities; in 1971 it donated its holdings to the government for a $2 million tax write-off.

The 1972 season was the last for the Utah Parks Company. 28 From 1973 to 1996 Trans World Services, once a division of Trans World Airlines, leased the facilities at the parks and ran the lodges, cabins, dining rooms, and gift shops in a manner similar to that of the Utah Parks Company from offices in the old UPC building in Cedar City.

New Festivals and Winter Sports Other enterprises developed since the 1960s have helped lure tourists to Iron County. The Utah Shakespearean Festival has been tremendously successful. Other community and university events also have brought an increase in tourism. Parowan sponsors Cowboy Days, Christmas in the Country, and the Iron County Fair. Brian Head has both summer and winter festivals for skiers and mountain bikers. Cedar City hosts the American Folk Ballet Festival, the Renaissance Faire, and the Utah Summer Games, although the actual events take place at a variety of locations throughout the county.

Concerts, exhibitions, and regional and state high school events also bring visitors. Keys to each event's success include the volunteer effort of Iron County residents and the financial sponsorship of its businesses.

The mountains of eastern Iron County attract campers, hunters, fishermen, hikers, and picnickers. The mountain valleys had been early centers for vacation homes in the 1920s and 1930s. Between 1960 and 1980 the numbers of out-of-state owners of mountain land increased dramatically. Recreational development initiated by individuals and corporations resulted in rising land values and increasing demands for services from the county government. Cabin owners

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pay county property taxes and use the services of nearby communities. 29 Just as it took early pioneers decades to discover the advantages of the mountain land for dairying and grazing, it also took several decades (and societal changes) to discover the potential for winter recreation. Skiing became popular as a recreational activity after World War II, and ski resorts blossomed throughout the mountains of the West. During the early 1960s, Nevada resident Burton K. Nichols analyzed ski terrain and snowfall amounts at various mountain locations and decided to develop a ski area below Brian Head Peak. Brian Head Ski Resort was started in 1964 and opened in January 1965 with one chair lift, a t-bar, and two prefab buildings that slept four couples. A 2,800-foot double-chair lift was built the next year, and the resort was officially dedicated on 22 February 1965.

The Small Business Administration participated with Iron County Development Corporation and Nichols in establishing the resort.

Georg Hartlmaier planned the ski runs and selected the equipment.

Parowan businessmen and the Cedar City Chamber of Commerce recognized the benefits of a winter recreation area in Iron County and supported its development as one way to extend the short tourist season for motels and eating establishments. 3o As the ski facilities grew to six double lifts over twenty years, the resort impacted a large acreage of both private and national-forest land. Large hotel and condominium complexes were constructed in the 1980s at Brian Head and in Parowan as the popularity of the resort grew in its major markets of southern Nevada and California.

However, financial success was erratic because snow conditions were unpredictable. In 1993 the problem was solved with a $4.5-million investment in snowmaking equipment to assure the resort a November opening date regardless of the weather. Skiing often runs into late April.

A second Iron County ski resort was proposed in 1979 which would have been created in Cedar Canyon near the college ranch on a combination of BLM, university, and private land. Environmental and economic impact studies were done and discussions continued for several years among the BLM, a SUSC faculty committee, and the Engen Mountain Development Corporation before the project was

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HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

abandoned. Instead, the university expanded the college cabin into a modern educational facility-SUU Mountain Center-which is used year-round for conferences, workshops, class and family reunions, and university and community socials, thus adding to tourism in a distinct but significant manner.3l Besides the downhill ski runs at Brian Head, large areas of the Dixie National Forest are used for cross-country skiing and snowmobiling. Miles of groomed and ungroomed trails exist in the open mountain meadows when snowfall blankets the highlands. Mountain trails are also popular in the summer for both horseback and mountain-biking excursions, with guided and self-guided tours for all ability levels. Off-road all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and motorbikes operate on public lands throughout the county, using mountain areas in the summer and BLM lands almost year round. Recreational use is regulated on all public lands in order to protect the environment and allow for balanced multiple use by residents and tourists.

More than eighty-five years after Dr. George Middleton brought the first tourists to see the "great book of nature" of his home county, visitors from throughout the world camp, hunt, fish, hike, bike, ride, picnic, sightsee, ski, snowmobile, photograph, play or watch a sporting event, enjoy a Shakespearean play, or tour historic sites in Iron County. The possibilities for leisure activities in the county are almost unlimited.

ENDNOTES

1. "Economic and Travel Industry Profiles for Utah Counties," Utah Travel Council, 1994.

2. In the 1890s John R. Young and Daniel Seegmiller publicized the Kaibab Plateau as a recreation area for wealthy American and British tourists. D.D. Rust, Zane Grey, Grant Wallace, C .J. Jones, and Jim Emett also promoted visits to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. See Angus M. Woodbury, A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks, 185-93.

3. Woodbury, A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks, 198-99.

4. L.W. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac: The Man, His Land, and His People, 211-12; Deseret News, 17 February 1917.

5. Iron County Record, 6 April 1917; Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 212-13.

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6. Steven H. Heath, "The Flanigan Arch," Cedar City Magazine 1 (Fall 1996): 26-28. Heath quotes Tuffs 4 January 1917 report.

7. The arch was dedicated in ceremonies sponsored by the Cedar Rock Club and the Sierra Club on 27 August 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of Will Flanigan's discovery of it and five years after his death. A visitor's register established by the Sierra Club on the north end of the arch has been signed by only about 300 people in thirty years.

8. Dena S. Markoff, The Dudes Are Always Right: The Utah Parks Company in Zion National Park, 1923-1972 (Springdale, UT: Zion Natural History Association, 1980), 34-41, 49-53.

9. Wayne Hinton, Dixie National Forest: Managing an Alpine Forest in an Arid Setting (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Forest Service, 1987), 77; Al Klein, ÂŤCedar Breaks National Monument: A Report of Its Human History," National Park Service unpublished report, 1991, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

10. Hinton, Dixie National Forest, 80-81.

11. Iron County Record, 23 July 1920.

12. They were Lehi W. Jones, Menzies J. Macfarlane, Francis Middleton, John H. Fife, Jethro Palmer, Richard A. Thorley, Walter K. Granger, Thomas J. Jones, Samuel W. Leigh, David Bulloch, George A. "Bert" Wood, and Albert Lundell. See Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 219.

13. Iron County Record, 31 March 1922.

14. Markoff, The Dudes Are Always Right, 69.

15. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 232-34.

16. Markoff, The Dudes Are Always Right, 78-83.

17. Barbara Belle Macfarlane Jones, "In Loving Memory, Randall Lunt Jones (March 5, 1881-July 10,1946)," typescript, 1995, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

18. Markoff, The Dudes Are Always Right, 86, 106.

19. Ibid., 86-87.

20. Evelyn K. Jones, Kunz Family History (Cedar City: E.K. Jones, 1995), 16-17.

21. Klein, "Cedar Breaks National Monument."

22. Iron County Record, 1 June 1928.

23. Iron County Record, 29 December 1928.

24. Markoff, The Dudes Are Always Right, 182-83.

25. Hal Rothman, ÂŤShaping the Nature of a Controversy: The Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Cedar Breaks Proposal," Utah Historical Quarterly 55 (Summer 1987): 213-35.

414

HIS TORY OF IRON COUNTY

26. Markoff, The Dudes Are Always Right, 193-96.

27. Macfarlane, Dr. Mac, 234.

28. Markoff, The Dudes Are Always Right, 204.

29. A study in 1973 found that 112 new subdivisions were created between 1960 and 1973 in Iron County. Not all were well planned. County master plans and zoning have helped reduce the problems in recent years, but land schemes still exist. See Joseph Ammirato, Recent Land Use Pattern Changes in Southwestern Utah (Boulder, CO: Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, 1973).

30 . Rich Gilmore, "Brian Head expands throughout its history," Spectrum, 30 January 1990, 1.

31. McRay Cloward, And We Built a Cabin, 111-39.

EPILOGUE

IRON COUNTY: ECONOMICS, POPULATION, AND THE TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY The prospects for Iron County have been favorable through the twentieth century.! In every generation, residents and community leaders were optimistic about employment, business and/or agricultural success, and attaining comfortable standards of living. At the turn of the century, hope was pinned on Rambouillet sheep, the railroad, a branch normal school, and silver and gold strikes in the western hills. During the 1920s, the railroad into Cedar City, tourism and national parks, and the opening of the area iron mines spurred optimism. The demand for steel during and after World War II brought prosperity as the iron mines supplied millions of tons of iron ore to satisfy the hungry steel furnaces of the West. Expanded recreational and cultural opportunities including winter sports at Brian Head, mountain homesites on the Dixie Forest, and the founding of the Utah Shakespearean Festival highlighted the 1960s and 1970s.

Conversely, deterrents to success in the form of wars, weather, the Depression, and recessions have been encountered and dealt with in every home and business and on each farm and ranch. National economic fluctuations affected agriculture and stock raising, tourism, 415

416

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

and the railroad. Two world wars almost closed down the college. The 1930s drought brought many farmers and ranchers to bankruptcy, and Brian Head Resort's investors later suffered through seasons of financial disaster when snow came too late for holiday skiing. Labor strikes at the iron mines and railroads affected local businesses and lives. Even the opening of 1-15 was a two-edged sword-communities along its path were glad to be rid of the truck traffic but afraid to lose the truckers and tourists who purchased gas, food, and lodging.

The mining industries (iron and coal) were dominant economic factors in the county up until the early 1960s, paying 20 percent of the wages and owning 55 percent of the assessed property value. In 1960 county personal income was almost $19 million; $3.7 million of that was mining wages. The assessed valuation of "utilities, machinery, and mines" was $34 million in 1960, down a little from the mid-1950s, and it continued down until it reached only $20 million in 1965.

Facing impending closure of the iron mines, a 1971 report on Iron County business activity indicated that increased employment, wages, and sales would be dependent on future growth at the college and the establishment of new manufacturing industries. The report stated, There is no basis for projecting a favorable change in wholesale trade in Iron County. This is most unfortunate because the County and Cedar City have great potential for small manufacturing to increase the wholesale business. Cedar City, currently the heart of economic activity in Southern Utah, must necessarily provide incentives for entry of new industry if it is to maintain its position of leadership. 2

In other words, the usual prospects for economic improvement were good; however, the right combination of incentives and public relations was lacking. Commotion followed the Carter administration proposal to use part of the Escalante Desert as a site for the landbased mobile MX missile system. Between President Jimmy Carter's September 1979 announcement about the MX and October 1981, when President Ronald Reagan scrapped the mobile system, there was worry about too much growth and the impact of up to 8,000

EPILOGUE

417

government workers who would move to Iron County. New services and businesses would have been inevitable if the site was anywhere close to Iron County. Initially, most community leaders were interested in the economic promises they heard from supporters of the MX; however, by the time of the proposal's demise, virtually all residents and many Utah politicians had come to distrust government promises. In mid-1981 opposition was expressed by farmers, cattlemen, wool growers, most religious congregations, numerous state legislators, and finally Governor Scott Matheson. Most southern Utahns were relieved when Reagan said he favored missile deployment in existing missile silos for the time being. 3 The mid-1980s was a lethargic period for the state and Iron County economies, due in part to dependance on mining industries which were in trouble. US Steel shut down all iron-mining operations in Iron County in 1984. Where 473 county people were employed in mining in 1960, only 77 were employed in 1983, and the number would have been less in 1984 had not the Escalante silver mine opened in Beryl, which employed some 115 workers from 1983 to 1990.

Utah was forced to diversify its economy, and most major employers cut their work forces during the late 1980s. As the nation increasingly recovered from its economic languish, Utah's economy climbed to new heights, led during the greater part of the 1990s by Governor Michael O. Leavitt, a native of Iron County.4 An important step for Iron County was the establishment of an Industrial Development Council in 1986, with Cedar City Chamber of Commerce president Garth Jones as its volunteer head. The council followed a historical pattern of involving civic and business leaders in economic development-from the Mormon School of the Prophets in the 1870s to commercial clubs to later chambers of commerce. Each of these organizations had a counterpart in Parowan and Cedar City; each involved business owners, school, civic, and religious leaders, and sometimes women's organizations in promoting or improving aspects of their city or the area as a whole.

The Industrial Development Council worked with executives of PEPCON (known also as WECCO), a Las Vegas manufacturer that lost its plant in an explosion during the fall of 1986. The relocation

418

HIST ORY O F IRON COUNTY

of the plant, which manufactures ammonium perchlorate for rocket fuel, in Cedar Valley was a significant step for Iron County's manufacturing economy. Other companies have followed and have become integral parts of the community.

In 1988 the Industrial Development Council matured into the Cedar City/Iron County Economic Development Office, which includes a full-time economic development department with an executive director and small staff. The Economic Development Executive Board includes civic and business leaders, and a fifteenmember Economic Development Committee represents other communities and interests in the county and provides review of economic development procedures and assistance as needed.

Since 1988 the department has helped to attract more than thirty-seven new manufacturing enterprises and many retail and other businesses to Iron County. With diversification of industry as a major goal, the department assists both small and large businesses looking to establish themselves in Iron County. New companies vary in size from those with three employees to those with more than 200; they manufacture products as varied as specialty food items, custom molds, high-quality crystals, office furniture, and corrugated box products. These companies have added 2,000 new jobs, 3 million square feet of new buildings, and increased total payrolls in the county by 35 percent. Non-farm employment increased from 6,161 to 11,143 in the ten-year period from 1986 to 1995, with the largest single-year increase being 11.1 percent in 1994. 5 The county's largest employers, however, are the Iron County School District and Southern Utah University, both of which experienced unprecedented enrollment increases during the 1990s, requiring new administrators, teachers, and support staff. Various levels of government constitute the largest employment sector in the county, currently with over 3,100 employees and 28 percent of the county's employment base. Payrolls have been growing consistently, and gov ernment paid $60 million of the $ 188.5-million payroll in the county in 1995. The retail trade and service sectors, which employ many students, are the second-and third -largest industries. They have a high degree of part-time employment and corresponding lower average monthly wages. Manufacturing is the fourth largest sector and in

EPILOGUE

419

1995 was the fastest growing, as jobs in that sector increased by 24 percent. 6 It is no surprise that the population has been growing to fill the new jobs. Others come to build needed new homes and apartments and provide services demanded by the larger community. Since 1990, population has grown at a yearly average rate of 5.2 percent; the rate for 1995 was 6.7 percent. The 1996 population was estimated at 26,900; at this rate, it will reach 35,000 by the year 2000. About threequarters of the increase has been due to in-migration, the balance from new births. This growth puts added demand on the county's infrastructure, and city and county officials are currently worried about financing improvements for larger numbers of residents.

Schools, libraries, parks, streets, sewers lines, fire stations, police services, and water developments will be needed. Since 1993, Cedar City has been charging impact fees for new construction; officials and residents currently are debating increasing those fees in the future to pay for parks and open space, increased fire and police services, and water systems and other infrastructure development.

In addition to new residents, enrollment at Southern Utah University recently has increased by 300 to 500 students a year.

Growth in 1991 and 1992 exceeded the available housing units, but this prompted developers and contractors to add over 2,000 dwelling units between 1992 and 1995. In 1996 several subdivisions were begun which provide affordable housing in the form of tract homes and manufactured housing. New condominiums and other developments are also filling a demand for housing where maintenance, landscaping, and snow removal are provided. While Cedar City has by far the largest number of new residential units in the county, there are also homes and apartments being built in Parowan, Cedar Valley, Kanarraville, and some unincorporated areas. It has been estimated that there are 10,000 homes and cabins in the mountains east of Cedar City and Parowan (including many in Garfield and Kane counties) that are part-time residences used principally for recreation.

Since 1851, Iron County's location has been one of its best resources. It is located in the heart of a population of more than 60,000 southern Utahns who need services that can best be met by

420

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

the regional development of medical facilities, airport facilities, and retail shopping centers. Recent growth in manufacturing has established Iron County as the regional business capital of southern Utah.

Among new manufacturers are several that provide essential parts, services, or packaging to the others and which will be instrumental in attracting other businesses to the area.

Growth generally has been healthy for the county and its individual communities, and it has provided opportunities for coming generations to find employment and stay in the area. However, residents watch new developments with a wary eye, hoping that accommodations for growth will be planned in advance in order to protect the quality of life for which the county and its communities are known.

History has taught Iron County citizens that many factors affect their lives and livelihoods. It will not be different in the future.

First, water resources will always be limited, and present users are accountable to future generations to protect and develop the water supply. The principle of beneficial use of water established by the pioneers should bind present residents to methods of conservation. The challenge for agricultural enterprises is to use less water to grow crops in order to decrease the mining of underground water from aquifers.

The challenge for communities is to find acceptable and inexpensive ways to store water during the wet-year cycles in order to have sufficient water during periods of drought.

Second, federal and state government still control 64 percent of the county's land, and it is to be expected that increasing government regulations and programs in general will be imposed on that land.

Local residents will perhaps have little say in creating those regulations and yet may be affected in developing land as well as in their recreational and agricultural pursuits.

Third, increasing air services at the Cedar City Regional Airport is a key factor in plans to make Iron County a destination tourist attraction.

Finally, Iron County has historically provided quality educational experiences for its citizenry. State funding has not in the past and may not in the future guarantee the quality demanded by the community. Passage of a $28-million school bond in 1994 to provide new

EPILOGUE

421

Parowan Heritage Park, looking toward the hill where Parley P. Pratt raised the Liberty Pole in January 1850, honors the memory of Southern Utah's first settlers. (Iron County Centennial Circle photo)

facilities and technology signaled the willingness of area taxpayers to support public education. Cooperation between the local university and the business community is a hundred-year-old tradition featuring mutual financial support. The inauguration of a new university president and a new superintendent of schools in 1997 comes at an

422

HI STORY OF IRON COUNTY

important time. Steven Bennion became president of Southern Utah University on 1 July 1997. He is a grandson of Milton Bennion, first principal of the Branch Normal School. Michael Bennett became Iron County Superintendent of Education on 1 July 1997.

As the communities of Parowan and Cedar City look toward the twenty-first century, each is rekindling the spirit of its forebears in downtown developments that illustrate how much can be done by cooperation between individuals, city councils, and local businesses.

Parowan's Main Street project will recall its heritage as the PUMI manufacturing center of the 1880s, while Cedar City's development will emphasize the 1920s era. Tourists may once again arrive by railroad at "The Gateway to the Parks," Cedar City, and enjoy gracious accommodations and fine dining. Shopping at a variety of stores, sipping sodas at the drugstore fountain, and strolling Main Street will be in style again.

The county has designated a "Centennial Circle Driving Tour" which invites tourists and local citizens alike to reflect on the heritage that makes Iron County unique. The invitation reads, Walk where those before us walked and feel their spirits linger in this land we adore. Wills of iron built this place and wills of iron build it still. From our mountain peaks to our desert plains you'll find exciting adventures on the back roads and byways of Iron County. Let history, theater, music, art and nature feed your soul.

Iron County Centennial Committee invites you to take a day or take a week and let the sands of time rush right through your fingers and on into your mind. 7 A colorful brochure leads visitors along county trails made famous

by Dominguez and Escalante, Spanish traders, California 4gers, explorers John Fremont and Parley P. Pratt, and to an early iron-making operation at Old Iron Town or a silver mine at Gold Springs.

Highlights of the tour are Kanarraville's Cobble Crest Pavilion, prominent rock churches in Parowan and Cedar City, and the unique Parowan Gap site of Native American rock art. There are sixteen main sites and a host of side trips to other natural wonders and historic monuments. 8 One hundred years ago, there were little more than 3,000 men,

423

EPILOGUE

women, and children in Iron County, but they were determined to make something of their communities. They looked to the future but had their feet planted in the struggles of the past. Some 30,000 citizens will celebrate the arrival of a new century in much the same way.

Civic leaders proudly attest that Iron County is "doing well" and is "going to do even better"; but, given the mix of resources and challenges, it will always be a struggle. That way, however, the people of Iron County will not forget their legacy of placing the community before their personal needs as they look ahead to a new century and their sesquicentennial celebration in the year 2001.

ENDNOTES

1. Information for this chapter was provided by Brent Drew, director of economic development for the Cedar City/ Iron County Economic Development Office. The office has published an "Economic Profile of Cedar City & Iron County," and "New Industries in Cedar City, Iron County Since 1988." The Iron County Visitors Guide: Cedar City, Parowan, Brian Head and Cedar City Magazine also include important information.

2. "Iron County, Utah Economic, Population Study," SUSC Department of Economics and Office of Community Development and Dale Despain & Associates, 1971, Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

3. Scott M. Matheson and James Edwin Kee, Out of Balance, 65; Matthew Glass, Citizens Against the MX: Public Languages in the Nuclear Age (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 54-80.

4. Michael O. Leavitt was born 11 February 1951 in Cedar City to Dixie and Anne Okerlund Leavitt. He attended local schools and was a 1978 graduate of SUSC. Prior to election as governor in 1992, he was chief executive officer of an insurance corporation started by his father. Governor Leavitt is known for telling stories about his rural roots and attending Cedar High School. Of his hometown and the southwestern part of the state, he said, "It's an exciting thing to see this area blossom. It's exciting to find that people are now recognizing the true uniqueness of it, but it's also a little frightening when you consider that those very things that are so attractive could ultimately cause the area to lose its unique characteristics. My love for the area and the roots that I have cause me both to be pleased by its progress but also greatly concerned that we not lose what makes this region remarkable." His goals for Utah and its southwest corner in particular include allowing "people to have families that grow up here and ... stick with the basic core values that make this a great place to live .... 1'd like it to be an

424

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

area that continues its remarkable traditions in education, both at the higher and public level."

5. Brent Drew, interview with author, 14 February 1997, notes in author's possession; Iron County, Utah: A Demographic and Economic Profile, Utah Department of Employment Security, 1996, l.

6. Iron County, Utah: A Demographic and Economic Profile, 6-9.

7. "Our Land: Iron County Utah's Centennial Circle Driving Tour," Iron County Centennial Committee, 1996.

8. In 1996 the brochure could be obtained at the Iron County Tourism and Convention Bureau in Cedar City, at the Iron Mission State Park, and at the Main Street Visitors Center in Parowan.

ApPENDIX

Iron County Officials since 1896

Commissioners Commissioners were first called ÂŤSelectmen." Commissioners served two-year terms until 1903, at which time the term of service was changed so that a four-year commissioner and a two-year commissioner were elected at every biennial election. In 1990, terms were changed so that all commissioners serve for four years. Two were elected to begin service in 1991; one was elected in 1993, and so forth.

Year 1896 1897 1899 1901 1903 1905 1907 1909 1911

Commissioner Commissioner Commissioner James C. Robinson Reese J. Williams Thomas J. Jones Carl C. Rasmussen Andrew Corry A. H. McBride Carl C. Rasmussen William Ford George Condie Carl C. Rasmussen Myron D. Higbee Joseph S. Berry (died 711902) Lucius W. Marsden (appt. 711902) HenryW. Lunt Wilford Day Reese J. Williams Henry W. Lunt Hiram Hendrickson Riley G. Williams Joshua H. Arthur Hiram Hendrickson Lehi W. Jones Riley G. Williams Lehi W. Jones Joseph J. Jones Joshua H. Arthur James Walker Williams Joseph J. Jones 425

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

426 Year 1913 1915 1917 1919 1921 1923 1925 1927 1929 1931 1933 1935 1937 1939 1941 1943 1945 1947 1949 1951 1953 1955 1957 1959 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1979

1981

Commissioner Commissioner William P. Barton William H. Evans HenryW. Lunt R. C. Knell William P. Barton William Lund H. L. Adams Henry W. Lunt George Berry Williams H. H. Lunt George Berry Williams Hugh L. Adams Lyman E. Sevy Evan E. Williams Hugh L. Adams Lyman E. Sevy Lyman E. Sevy Evan E. Williams Hugh L. Adams Lyman E. Sevy Warren Bullock Lyman E. Sevy Ivan Decker Sam uel F. Leigh Samuel F. Leigh Warren H . Bulloch Warren H. Bulloch Hugh L. Adams Warren L. Bulloch Samuel T. Leigh Hugh L. Adams Charles R. Hunter Charles R. Hunter I. E. Riddle Hugh L. Adams Richard H. Leigh Warren Bulloch Douglas Clark Douglas Clark Jess W. Guymon David L. Sargent Jess W. Guymon Lyman E. Sevy Jess W. Guymon Myron F. Higbee Jess W. Guymon Clarence E. Miller Earl Bunn Gordon Moyle (appointed 311960) Frank Milne Earl Bunn Keith T. Smith Ivan M. Matheson Ivan M. Matheson Norman H. Day Keith T. Smith Norman 1. Heaton Ivan M. Matheson D. Robinson Keith T. Smith D. Robinson Ivan M. Matheson Glen L. Halterman Cleo Wood G. D. MacDonald James L. Clark H. Grant Seaman Dee G. Cowan H. Grant Seaman (died 711980) S. Garth Jones and James L. Clark (served partial terms) James L. Clark Dee G. Cowan Howard Knight Commissioner Joshua H. Arthur William H. Evans Henry W. Lunt William Lund H. L. Adams H. H. Lunt Hugh L. Adams Evan E. Williams Hugh L. Adams Evan E. Williams Hugh L. Adams Warren Bulloch Ivan Decker Samuel F. Leigh Hugh L. Adams Warren L. Bulloch Hugh L. Adams Charles R. Hunter Hugh L. Adams Warren Bulloch Douglas Clark David L. Sargent Lyman E. Sevy Myron F. Higbee (resigned 3/1960) H. Clarence E. Miller Frank Milne Keith T. Smith Ivan M. Matheson Keith G. Smith Ivan M. Matheson Keith T. Smith Ivan M. Matheson Cleo Wood James L. Clark

427

ApPENDIX

Year 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997

Commissioner Dee G. Cowan Louie P. Tong Dee G. Cowan Gene E. Roundy Robert L. Gardner Roy P. Urie James C. Robinson Roy P. Urie

Commissioner Louie P. Tong Dee G. Cowan Gene E. Roundy Robert L. Gardner Roy P. Urie James C. Robinson Roy P. Urie Thomas B. Cardon

Commissioner James C. Robinson James C. Robinson James C. Robinson James C. Robinson James C. Robinson Robert L. Gardner Thomas B. Cardon Dennis Stowell

Other Offices Officials were elected for two-year terms until 1923, when fouryear terms were established.

Clerks (titled clerk/auditor after 1923; office divided 8 March 1978) Silas J. Ward Alfred M. Durham James Stones William T. Morris Charles D. Adams W. Warner Mitchell

1896 1897-1898 1899-1902 1903-1910 1911-1912 1913-1918

John W. Bentley W. Clair Rowley Clair Hulet Carma S. Hulet David 1. Yardley

1919-1926 1927-1964 1964-1986 1986 1987-present

Auditors (office established 8 March 1978) Dennis A. Lowder

1979-present

Recorders John G. Mitchell Tryphena West Emily Watson Mary Ann Gunn Gwen M. Benson Kate Taylor (Seaman)

1896 1897-1900 1901-1906 1907-1914 1915-1916 1917-1934

Will L. Adams 1935-1942 Georgia B. Mitchell 1943-1958 Joan Wheatley Wasden 1959-1981 Cora J. Hulet 1981-1987 Dixie B. Matheson 1987-present

Treasurers Simon A. Matheson Walter C. Mitchell Joshua H. Arthur Morgan Richards

1896, 1901-1902 1897-1898 1899-1900, 1903-1904 1905-1906, 1913-1916, 1919-1920

428 Vernon Heap Silas J. Ward L.J. Adams Wm. Clair Rowley Clair Hulet Eugene F. Robb LaMar G. Jensen Merna H. Mitchell

HISTORY OF IRON COUNTY

1907-1908 1909-1912 1917-1918 1921-1926 1927-1964 1964-1973 1973-1986 1987-present

Assessors S.A. Higbee William Houchen Joseph Stevenson Silas S. Topham Joseph R.(J.R.)Richards James R. Richards William R. Palmer James C. Parry R.J. Williams Maeser Dalley Hillman Dalley Ralph B. Platt H. Dee White Steven J. Grimshaw Dennis W . Ayers

1896 1897- 1900 1901-1902 1903- 1904 1905-1906,1911-1912 1907- 1908 1909-1910 1913-1914 1915-1916 1917-1920 1921-1946, 1951-1962 1947-1950 1963-1978 1979- 1986 1987-present

Attorneys Joseph F. Wilkensen James 0 llertan Joseph F. McGreggor James J. Adams Edward H. Ryan Willard E. Corry John Fife E.J. Palmer Henry L. Jones John M. Foster George H. Lunt Rueben J. Shay Ernest H. Burgess Scott M. Matheson

1903- 1908,

1918, 1921-1924, 1925-1928, 1932,

1896...-" 1897-1898 1899-1900 1901-1902 1919- 1921 1909-1912 1913-1916 1917 1918 1935-1938 1929-1931 1941-1942 1931-1932 1933-1934

ApPENDIX

Durham Morris A.M. Marsden Orville Isom Robert L. Gardner Hans Q. Chamberlain James L. Shumate Scott J. Thorley Scott M. Burns

429 1939-1940) 1943-1954 1955-1956 1956) 1959-1962 1956-1958) 1963-1970 1970-1978 1979-1982 1983-1986 1987-present

Sheriffs Alvin Benson Edward Parry Alford Froyd Henry A. Thorley Nephi J. Orton John H. Corry Joseph S. Fife J. Trehorne Leigh Lewis R. Fife Haldow Christensen Sherman C. Lamb Kent G. Smith Arthur Nelson Otto Fife Ira Schoppmann

1896 1897-1898 1899-1906) 1913-1914) 1918-1920 1907-1908 1909-1910 1911-1912) 1915-1916 1917 1921-1930 1931-1935 1936-1941 1942-1946 1947-1949 1949-1958 1959-1966 1967-present

Surveyors Mayhew H. Dalley Eugene Schoppman William Houchen James Robb Reese James Williams R.J. Bryant) Jr. William Grimshaw Maeser Dalley R.S. Gardner Hillman Dalley

1896) 1913-1914 1897-1900 1901-1902) 1909-1910 1903-1904 1905-1908 1911-1912 1915-1916 1917-1918 1919-1920 1921-1946 (combined with assessor in 1931)

Selected Bibliography

T

he selected bibliography lists the most easily accessible books and periodicals used to write this book. Other sources are referred to in the chapter endnotes. Those interested in further information on families or events in Iron County should visit Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, the public libraries in Parowan and Cedar City, and the Daughters of Utah Pioneers museums at the Parowan Rock Church and in the Iron County Visitors Center in Cedar City.

A Memory Bank for Paragonah. Compiled by Betsy Topham Camp, Daughters of Utah Pioneers. Provo: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1990.

Allen, James B. "The Evolution of County Boundaries in Utah." Utah Historical Quarterly 23 (July 1955): 261-78.

Arrington, Leonard J. Brigham Young: American Moses. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.

- - - . Great Basin Kingdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Averitt, Paul. Geology and Coal Resources of the Cedar Mountain Quadrangle, 431

432

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Iron County Utah. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 389.

Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962.

Balmforth, Janet R. "'Good Roads Roberts' and the Fight for Utah Highways," Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (Winter 1981): 56-65.

Bate, Kerry William. "Iron City, Mormon Mining Town." Utah Historical Quarterly 50 (Winter 1982): 47-58.

- - - . "Kanarraville Fights World War I." Utah Historical Quarterly 63 (Winter 1995): 24-48.

Bethers, Pratt M. A History of Schools in Iron County, 1851-1970. N.p., 1972.

Bluhm, Harry P. Lucius Nelson Marsden: Prominent Southern Utah Banker, Merchant, Livestockman and Church Leader, 1862-1931. N.p., 1993.

Bowen, Marshall E. "Household Relocation in a Great Basin Homesteader Community." P.A.S. T. Journal 18 (Fall 1995): 47-54.

Brest van Kempen, Ann. Harry Doolittle: "An Honest-to-Goodness Splendid Citizen." N.p., 1994.

Brooks, Juanita. The Mountain Meadows Massacre. Stanford, CA: Palo Alto University Press, 1950.

- - - . Uncle Will Tells His Story. Salt Lake City: Taggart & Company, Inc., 1970.

Cancer in Utah, 1966-1990. Salt Lake City: Utah Cancer Registry, 1992.

Carr, Stephen L. The Historical Guide to Utah Ghost Towns. Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1972.

Castleton, Kenneth B. Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Utah. Volume 2: The South, Central, West and Northwest. Salt Lake City: Utah Museum of Natural History, 1979.

Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.

Chronic, Halka. Roadside Geology of Utah. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Co., 1990.

Cleland, Robert Glass, and Juanita Brooks, eds. A Mormon Chronicle: The Diaries of John D. Lee, 1848-1876. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1955.

Cloward, McRay. And We Built a Cabin: A History of the Southern Utah University Mountain Center. Cedar City: Division of Continuing Education, Southern Utah University, 1994.

Cook, Kenneth L. Magnetic Surveys in the Iron Springs District Iron County, Utah. Report of Investigations 4586, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Mines, 1950.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

433

Creer, Leland Hargrave. The Founding of an Empire: The Exploration and Colonization of Utah, 1776-1856. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1947.

Culmsee, Carlton. "Last Free Land Rush." Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (Winter 1981): 26-4l.

Currey, Donald R. Lake Bonneville: Selected Features of Relevance to Neotectonic Analysis. u.S. Geological Survey Open File Report 82-1070.

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1982.

Dalton, Luella Adams, compo History of Iron County Mission and Parowan, the Mother Town. Parowan: n.p., [1962].

Dix, Fae Decker. "Unwilling Martyr: The Death of Young Ed Dalton." Utah Historical Quarterly 40 (Spring 1972): 63-77.

Dodd, Walter A., Jr. Final Year Excavations at the Evans Mound Site.

University of Utah Anthropological Papers, No. 106. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1982.

The Dominguez-Escalante Journal. Fray Angelico Chavez, trans. and Ted J. Warner, ed. Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1976.

Driggs, Nevada W. "When Captain Fremont Slept in Grandma McGregor's Bed." Utah Historical Quarterly 40 (Spring 1972): 178-8l.

Egan, Ferrol. Fremont: Explorer for a Restless Nation. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1985.

Fish, Joseph. "History of Enterprise." Typescript, ca. 1925 (page numbers refer to newly typed version, ca. 1990). Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

- - - . The Life and Times of Joseph Fish, Mormon Pioneer. John H. Krenkel, ed. Danville, IL: Interstate Printers & Publishers, Inc. 1970.

Fradkin, Philip L. Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989.

Fremont, John C. The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains.

Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1988.

Fuller, John G. The Day We Bombed Utah: American's Most Lethal Secret.

New York: New American Library, 1984.

Gallagher, Carole. American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.

Glass, Matthew. Citizens Against the MX: Public Languages in a Nuclear Age. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Granger, Hazel D. The Grangers: Walter K., and Hazel D., Their Life and Times. N.p. [1979].

Gregory, Herbert E. Geology of Eastern Iron County, Utah. Bulletin No. 37,

434

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Utah Geological and Mineral Survey. Salt Lake City: College of Mines and Mineral Industries, University of Utah, 1950.

Hacker, Barton C. Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1947-1974. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Hahne, E.H. "History of the Escalante mine as I remember it." Holograph [1996]. Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

Hart, Shirley E. "A History of New Castle, 1893-1975." Typescript. Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation. Joint Hearing before the Subcommittees on Oversight and Investigations. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979.

Heath, Steven H. "The Flanigan Arch," Cedar City Magazine 1 (Fall 1996): 26- 28.

- - - . "Jefferson Hunt: Bad Judgment, The '4gers and The Mormon Battalion." Pioneer (Summer 1995): 6-7.

Hinton, Wayne K. "The Birth and Infancy of the National Forests in Southern Utah: Settlement to 1910." Faculty Honor Lecture, Southern Utah State College, 1985. Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

- - - . The Dixie National Forest: Managing an Alpine Forest in an Arid Setting. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Forest Service, 1987.

- - - . "Parowan Mormons Rescue The Great Pathfinder." Southwest Utah Magazine 2 (Winter 1994): 8-10.

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Index

Aberdeen, 167 Adair, George, 270 Adams Memorial Theater, 257 -58 Adams Stock Company, 253, 255 Adams, Barbara Matheson, 251 Adams, Charles, 168-69 Adams, Clemo nt, vii Adams, David B., 321 Adams, Francella, 76 Adams, Fred, 209, 255-56, 390 Adams, Herbert, 287-88 Adams, Hugh L., 86 Adams, James J., 250 Adams, Joseph B., 76 Adams, Miriam (Minnie), 168228 Adams, Orson B., 46, 223 Adams, Paul M., 209 Adams, Phyllis, 136 Adams, R.D., 261 Adams, Richard, R., 261 Adams, Robert, 322 Adams, Susan Meeks, 223

Adams, Will L., 76, 244, 250, 253, 255 Adams, William, 157 Adams, William c., 338, 339 Adelman, Ken, 259 Agriculture, 351-374; nineteenthcentury farming, 351-53; cooperative livestock association, 353-57; mountain dairies, 357-58; rambouillet sheep, 359-61; depression and drought, 361-65; the Escalante Valley, 365-73; twentiethcentury farming, 373-74 Ahlstrom, Charles, 252 Ahlstrom, Mangus, 252 Airports and Airlines, 390-94, 420 Albright, Horace, 408 Alder, Douglas, viii Alder, Reed, 232 Alexander, Thomas, 129 Alldridge, Richard, 240 Allen, Irene, 148-49 Allen, Rufus, 174

439

440 Allen, Samuel, 229 American Federation of Labor, 331 American Folk Ballet, 248, 410 Anasazi Indians, 23-26 Anderson, Arnold E., 292 Anderson, Forrest, 234 Anderson, Geneal, 165 Anderson, Glen Dale, 261 Anderson, Max, 258 Anderson, O.C, 241 Anderson, Orval C, 207, 234 Antelope Spring, 167 Archaic culture, 21-22 Archeological sites, 24-25 Armbust, Arthur, 216 Armijo, Antonio, 33 Armstrong, Belle, 6 Armstrong, J.C, 42 Armstrong, Joseph, 170 Armstrong, W.W., 103 Army Air Corps Training Detachment, 133,209,392-93 Arrington, Leonard, 4 Arrowhead Trail Association, 107, 400 Art, 259-62 Arthur, Christopher J., 86-88, 91, 354 Ashcroft Observatory, 215-16 Ashcroft, Theron, 216 Ashdown Gorge, 315, 316 Ashdown, Marian, viii Ashley, William, 34 Assembly ofJesus Christ, 277-78 Atomic Energy Commission, 144-50 Audran, Edmund, 242 Automobiles, 98, 107, 174 Avon, 167 Babcock, Maud May, 242 Baker, Jim, 369 Baker, Simon, 46 Baldridge, Kenneth W., 126 Bamberger, Simon, 102,401 Bank ofIron County, 97, 113 Bank of Southern Utah, 5,112-14 Banks, Ellen Eyre, 223 Baptist Church, 277 Barlow, N.J., 196-97

INDEX

Barnes, Albert R., 284 Barney,rIenry, 302 Barton, Lorenzo, 181 Barton, Peter, 88 Barton, William, 53 Basic Manufacturing and Technology of Utah, 335-36 Bassenger, W.S., 387 Bastow, Mary L., 260-61 Bauer, Pearl, 231 Bauer, Samuel, 287 Bayles, Anna, 83, 223 Bayles, rIerman D., 181 Bayles, Robert, 277 Bayles, Wesley, 232 Beale, E.F., 61 Beale, John, 234 Beaman, Louisa, 50 Beck, Rebecca R., 174 Bekin, Floyd, 277 Bell, Katherine G., 231 Benett, James, 83 Bennett, Alice, 223 Bennett, Michael, 422 Bennion, Milton, 205,207,210,422 Bennion, Steven D., 219, 422 Benson, Ezra T., 45, 46 Benson, Phoebe, 251,269 Benson,Richard,224,238 Benson, Zoella, 259 Bentley, John, 283 Bentley, Leilani, viii Bergstrom, Florence Mitchell, 105 Bergstrom, rIyrum, 230 Bergstrom, Jacob W., 392 Bergstrom, Phoebe, 230 Bernard, John, 46 Berry, John W., 174 Berry, William Shank, 174 Beryl, 101, 167-68 Beryl Baptist Church, 168 Beryl Junction, 168 Betensen, rIoward, 138 Bethers, Pratt, 198 BrIP-Utah International, 335 Birkbeck, Richard, 352-53 Bittick, Weldon, 277

441

INDEX

Black Hawk War, 77-78 Bladen, 11ary, 223 Bladen, Thomas, 321 Blair, Seth, 82, 326 Blue Diamond 11aterial Company, 345 Boghossian, Aram, 234 Bonanza Airlines, 393 Bonzo, Bert, 143 Bonzo, David, 143 Bonzo, Douglas, 143 Bonzo, Jack, 143 Bonzo, Kenneth, 143 Bonzo, 11ax, viii, 143 Bonzo, Robert, 143 Boreman, Jacob 5., 270 Bowen, Henry, 341 Bowen, 11arshall, viii, 182 Bowns, James E. (Jim), vii, 19 Braffit, George, 379 Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery, 261 Braithwaite, Arlene, 261 Braithwaite, Royden c., 213-16, 256 Branch Normal School at Cedar City, (see Southern Utah University) Brian Head, 168-69,411-12 Brian Head Peak, 119,310 Bringhurst, Samuel, 46 Bristlecone pine, 18, 21 Broadbent, L. Verl, 231 Brower, Steven, 146 Brown, Doc, 357 Brown, John, 43,83 Brown, Rodney, 234 Bryant, Logan, 104 Bryant, R. J. Jr., 342 Bryant, Rhoda, 196 Buckhorn Springs, 169 Buel, George, 341 Bulloch v. United States, 146-47 Bulloch, Alice B., 76 Bulloch, Kern, 146 Bulloch, 11cRae, 146, 153 Bulloch, Robert, 204 Bulloch, Thomas, 88 Bulloch, Warren, 115 Bureau of Land 11anagement, 312 Burns, Fay Frahske, vii, viii

Burrascano, Lucie, 275 Burton, Frank, 228 Bush, George, 149 Bushnell, Dan, 146-47 Butler, James, 78 Cadwallader, Guy, 369 Cal-o-e-chipe,58 Call, Anson, 46, 49, 50, 267 Camp Floyd, 324-25 Campbell, Hal, 245 Cancer, from nuclear fallout, 149 Canfield, Parley, 383 Cannon, David H., 271 Cannon, George, 328 Canyon View High School, 199 Carbon Fuel Company, 329 Cardon, Thomas, vii Cardon, P.V., 210 Carlson, Vic, 369 Carnahan, Orville, 216 Carruthers, Matthew, 58, 191 Carter, Jimmy, 164,416 Carter, Joseph, 341 Carter, Phillip, 213 Cartwright, Thomas, 238 Carvalho, Solomon H., 36, 259 Cedar Breaks National 11onument, 119, 307-8,316,403,408 Cedar City, established, 54, 57-60, historical sketch, 169-70; water resources, 285-89 Cedar City/Iron County Economic Development Office, 418 Cedar City Band, 242 Cedar City Board of Health, 229 Cedar City Chamber of Commerce, 213-14,391,403,411,417 Cedar City Commercial Club, 227, 401, 403 Cedar City Co-op Store, 79 Cedar City Cooperative Cattle Company, 356 Cedar City Cooperative 11ercantile Company, 79 Cedar City Cooperative Sheep Company, 173,354

442 Cedar City Drama Club, 254 Cedar City Fine Arts Guild, 260-61 Cedar City High School, 197-98, 199, 209,245 Cedar City LDS Tabernacle, 4, 91-92, 1l0-1l Cedar City Light and Power Co., 99 Cedar City Opera House, 252 Cedar City Post Office and Federal Building, 1l0-1l Cedar City Regional Airport, 420 Cedar City Rock Church, III Cedar Dramatic Association, 249, 252 Cedar Fort, 61 Cedar Livestock Company, 359 Cedar Mercantile Company, 330 Cedar Plaster Company, 345 Cedar Sheep Association Building, 228 Census, 1860, 74; 1880,83-84,92; 1890,92 (see also population) Centennial Circle Driving Tour, 422 Centennial History Project, ix Center Creek, 284-85 Centrum, 217 Chase, Darryl, 212-14 Chatterley, John, 204, 241, 249 Chatterley, Joseph, 191 Cherry, Aaron B., 46 Chidster, Joshua, 83 Chloride, 170 Christensen, Sherman, 147 Christmas in the Country, 410 Christopher, San, 248 Christopherson, Hannah, 223 Church of Christ, 278 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Iron County Stake, 267-70; Parowan Stake, 270-72 City of Little Salt Lake, 43 Civilian Conservation Corps, 116-20, 133,275-76,309-11,408 Clark, Clarence, 228, 229 Clark, J. Reuben, 210 Clark, John H., 104 Clark, Nellie, 276 Clegg, Blanche, viii Cleveland, Grover, 88, 93

INDEX

Climate, 12-13 Cline, Darlene, 136 Clothier, Maurice, 137 Cluff, Benjamin, 249 Coal, 52-53, 58, 106, 138,336-40 Coal Creek, 53 Cobblecrest Dance Pavilion, 246-47 College Ranch Home (College Cabin), 212-13 Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 129, 328 Columbia Mining Company, 332-33 Columbia Steel, 129,328-30,389 Commercial Club, 107, 387 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO),331 Connel, James, 182 Construction Trades Union, 331 Cook, Douglas N., 258 Coolidge, Calvin, 406 Coombs, Esiah, 190 Coombs, Hyrum, 191 Cooperative Organizations, 78-80, 35357 Copper Zone Company, 345 Corlett, Mary c., 76 Corn, Gilbert, 369 Corn, Jessie, 369 Corn, Pete, 371 Corry, A.R., 341 Corry, Andrew, 87, 224, 337 Corry, D.W., 169 Cort, William c., 84, 193-94,273-74 Cosslett, Gomer, 240 Cosslett, Joseph, 239, 240 Cowan, Dan, 278 Cowan, John, 277-78 Cowboy Days, 410 Cox, James M., 99 Cox, Jennie, 136 Cox, Ray E., 142 Cox, Ruth Leigh, 177 Crismon, George, 74-75 Cross Hollows Intermediate School, 199 Crouch, George Washington, 192 Culmsee, Carlton, 179,370-71,372

INDEX

Culmsee, Ludwig A., 175, 179,370-71 Cutler, John c., 327 Dairies, 357-58 Dalley, Frank J., 143 Dalley, John, 83 Dalley, Mahew, 91,176 Dalley, Max S., 143 Dalley, Mayhew, 185, 193, 195 Dalley, Parley, 108, 185,401 Dalton, Edward, 49, 78, 86, 249-50 Dalton, Edward Meeks, 86-87; grave marker, 87 Dalton, Luella Adams, 6, 150 Dalton, Nancy, viii Dame, William H ., 46, 49, 51, 53, 57, 58,61,67,78,80,83.267,269,270, 271,281-82 Dance, 246-49 Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 90, 150 Davenport, James, 240 Davenport, Thomas, 182, 240 Davenport, William, 191 Davies, John J., 239, 240 Davis, James, 174 Davis, Leon, 104 Davis, William R., 174 Day, Arvilla H., 241 Day, Wilford, 102,208,359,361,36364,384 Decker, George W., 205 Decker, Woodrow, 361-62 Decker, Zachariah B., 49, 51 Del Vecchio, Joseph, 275 Del Vecchio, Mary, 275 Del Vecchio, Vedo, 275 Delaire, Joseph G., 275 Dellenbaugh, Frederick S., 399 Delta Airlines, 393 DeMille, Cecil B., 120 Desert Springs, 381 Deseret,41 Deseret Iron Company, 69, 322-24 Deseret Mining Company, 63 Deseret Telegraph, 76-77 Desert Spring, 170

443 Devil's Gate & Meadow Valley Road, 381 Diseases, 228-29 Division of Grazing, 309 Division of State History, ix Dixie National Forest, 307-8, 311 Dixie Power Company, 112, 171,342 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition, 27, 29-32,266,365 Dominguez, Francisco Atanasio, 29-32 Doolittle, Henry J. "Harry," 175,274, 383,384,395 Doolittle, Madge, 274 Dostalek, Emil, 369-70 Dostalek, Frances, 369-70 Douglas, William, 76 Dover, Lionel c., 104 Drake, Zeth, 341 Drew, Brent, viii Driggs, H . Wayne, 210 Driggs, Howard R., 205, 212 Drummond, W.W., 65 Dry farming, 81,101, 174,368 Dunaway, Cynthia Williams, viii Dunaway, James, 245 Duncan, Chapman, 82, 326 Duncan, Homer, 82, 326, 354 Durbin, Deanna, 139 Durham, George H., 242 Durham, Thomas, 182, 239 Dutton, Clarence E., 399 Dutton, Jerry, 277 Easton, Robert, 62 Eccles, David, 382 Ecology, 13-18 Edmunds, Paul K., 231 Education, 190-200; pioneer schools, 190-92; new buildings, 193; mission schools, 193-94; Parowan Stake Academy, 194-95; Iron County School District, 195; One-room schools, 195-96; consolidation, 19697; Cedar City High School, 197-98; building boom, 198-99 Edwards, David, 240 Edwards, Samuel, 89

444 Edwards, William, 239, 240 El Escalante Hotel, 108, 120, 128, l38, 376,387,403-6,409 Electric power, 99, 296-97 Elliot, H.R., 342 Elmer, Elijah, 181 Empey, William, 47 Engalls, G.W., 158 Engen Mountain Development Corporation, 411 Englemann spruce, 17-18 Enoch, 53-54, 170-71 Enterprise Reservoir, 294 Enterprise Reservoir and Canal Company, 367 Episcopal Church, 278 Escalante Valley, 8, 365-73 Escalante Valley Electric Association, 372 Escalante Valley Elementary School, 199 Escalante, Silvestre Velez de, 29-32, 365 Esplin, Alma, 362 Evans Mound, 25 Eyre, John, 90, 169 Fancher, Alexander, 68 Farnsworth, Lewis, 169 Farnsworth, Philo, 169 Farnsworth, Reed W.,231 Farrow, E.A., 160 Federal land laws, 303-4 Female Benevolent Society, 64 Fenton, Pat, 169 Fiddlers Canyon, 171,294 Fife, Arthur, 286 Fife, Hannah, 268 Fife, Joseph S., 384 Fife, Peter, 63-64, 172 Filmmaking, 120-21, l38-39 Fish, Annie, 249 Fish, Frank, 297 Fish, Horace, 89 Fish, Jane, 249 Fish, Joseph, 6, 78, 80, 191,249,270-71, 380 Fisher, Frederick Vining, 400-1

INDEX

Flanigan Arch, 2 Flanigan, William, 2, 208, 401 Floods, 176-77,291-94 Flu Epidemic, 104-6 Foncelleo,Jose,366 Ford, 171 Ford, John, 120 Forest Reserves, 304-8 Forsythe, W.M., 274 Fort Harmony, 57, 64 Fort Louisa, 50 Fort Paragonah, 62-63 Fort Sanford, 77 Fort Sidon, 172 Foshay Electric Company, 112 Foster, S.J., 403 Foster, Urania Jones, 105 Fourman, Alice, 183,371-72 Fourman, Arlie, 183,371-72 Fourman, Ottie, 183,371-72 Frahske,Alma,369 Frahske, Oscar, 369 Francis, Joseph, x Freighting, 74-75 Fremont Indians, 23-26 Fremont, John c., 34, , 35-37, 422 Frost, Burr, 321 Froyd, Alfred, 342 Fucarino, Nunzio, 275 Fuller, Craig, viii, x Fuller, E.K., 38 Fuller, Oliver, 37 Fulmer, A.L., 238 Fullmer, Almon L., 46, 49 Gaddie, Barbara, 256 Gardner, Bert, 286 Gardner, Nathaniel, 211 Gardner, Raymond, 216 Gardner, Reed, 340 Gardner, Robert, 211 Gardner, Robert L., vii, 393 Garfield County, 91 Garfield, Alan (Bud), vii Garfield, LaRee, vii Garrison, Jeffrey, 275 Gasperik, Ernest, 118

INDEX

Geneva Mill, 138,331-32,335-36 Geology, 1-3,8-12,320-21 Geothermal water resources, 298, 373 Gieser, Elmer P., 274 Gilles, Sandy, viii, Gilmer & Salisbury Stagecoach Lines, 381 Gilmer, Jack, 381 Glass, Ron, 118 Gledhill, Preston, 254 Gold Springs, 101, 171 Gold Springs Mining District, 342 Gould, Jacob B., 106 Gould, Phoebe, 106 Gowan, H. Grayson, 274-75 Gower, Mary Stephens, 82 Graff, A. Lamar, 231 Graff, Arnold L., 339 Graff, Diana, vii, viii Graff, P. Arnold, 174,337,339 Grand Circle Tour, 3 Grand Canyon National Park, 399 Granger, Walter, ll5, 209, 220 Grant, Heber J., 110, 161,343 Grass Valley Reservoir, 290 Grasshopper Fish Bait Company, 365 Grasshoppers, 365 Gray, Carl R., 107-8, 404 Great Depression, lll-20, 361-65, 38889 Great Western Iron Mining and Manufacturing Company, 327 Green, Ernest, 106, 107,229,338 Green, James, 228, 274 Green's Lake Watershed Project, 292 Greene, J. Thomas, 316 Grey, Carl, 386 Grey, Zane, 183 Grimshaw, May, 100-1 Grimshaw, William H., 98-99, 100-1, 172 Grimshawville, 172 Groves, Elisha H., 49, 58, 60, 64, 174, 302 Gunnison, John W., 60 Gurr, Harrison, 175 Gurr, Peter, 175

445 Hadden, A.G., 89 Hadlock, Walter H., 114 Hafen, Ralph J., 145 Hahne, Ed, viii, 344 Haight, Anabella, 268 Haight, Eliza Ann, 223, 268 Haight, Herbert P., 195 Haight, Isaac c., 3-4, 43-44, 64, 69, 267, 269,270 Hall, Charles, 49, 50, 51, 53, 88 Hall, Job, 50, 53 Hall, Rex, 98 Halterman, George S., 284 Halterman, Glen, 284 Halterman, J.M., 98 Halterman, Millard, 363 Halterman, S.A., 386 Halverson, Roy L., 242, 243-44, 247 Hamblin, Jacob, 66, 172 Hamilton Fort, 172 Hamilton, John, 63-64, 172 Hamilton, Samuel, Jr., 74-75 Hamlin Valley, 172 Hammond, William, 190 Hanks, Ebenezer, 75, 82, 89,173,181, 326 Hansen, Hate, 381 Hansen, James, 314-15 Harding, Warren G., 99, 108-9, 159, 387 Harrison, Richard, 238, 323 Hart, Bertha Mae, 369 Hartford, Eliza, 194,273 Hartlmaier, Georg, 169,411 Haslam, James, 241 Hatch, Amos c., 261 Hatch, Ron, 186 Hayward, Ira N., 254 Health Care, 222-234 Heath, Steven H., viii Heist, 101, 173 Hendricks, King, 254 Hermanson, Phil, 261 Higbee, John, 67-68 Higbee, John M., 249, 267, 270 Higbee, Samuel A., 341 Higbee, Sarah Ann, 193

446 Higgins, William c., 123 Highways, see roads Hillers, Jack, 399 Hinton, Wayne, viii Hirschi, Claud, 400 Holt, Brad, 261 Holt, George A., 342 Holt, Henry D., 342 Holyoak, Emma, 136 Home manufacture, 75-76 Homer, Roy F., 210 Homesteads, 81-82, 100-1 Hoover, Brian, 261 Hopkins, Lydia, 223, 268 Horne, Joseph, 46, 49 Hoyt, Will L., 334 Hughes Airwest, 393 Hulet, Oscar, 172, 185, 196,364 Hulet, Sylvanus c., 184 Hunt, Jefferson, 37-38, 41, 48-49 Hunt, John, 38 Hunter, Catherine, 287 Hunter, Harry, 297 Hunter, Hilda, 231 Hunter, Joseph, 171,287 Hunter, Norine, 136 Hunter, Ruth, 259 Huntsman, Oscar, 367 Hurt, Garland, 156-57 Hyatt, DeLos, 234 Ickes,Harold,309 Indian Peaks Reservation, 159 Indian Relations, 60-64, 66-68, 155-65 Industrial Development Council, 41718 Interstate Highways, 389-90 Irene Allen v. United States, 148-49 Irish, O.H., 158 Iron City, 82, 173 Iron County, established, 44-45; boundaries, 91-92; county seat controversy, 58-59, 121-22; fair, 182, 410; officials since 1896,425-29 Iron County Centennial Committee, 422 Iron County Coal Company, 338

INDEX

Iron County Construction Company, 384 Iron County Hospital, 230-31 Iron County Militia, 77, 324 Iron County News, 97 Iron County Record, 97 Iron County School District, 195,418 Iron Manufacturing Company, 327 Iron Mission and Iron Mining, 45-55, 57-60,320-36 Iron Mission State Park, 98, 152 Iron Springs, 173-74 Iwata, Akiyoshi, 132 Jacklin, Marian, viii Jackson, Wayne G., 135 Jackson, William H., 380 Jake, Clifford, 165 Japanese evacuees, 130-32 Jehovah's Witness, 278-79 Jenkins, Bruce, 149 Jensen, Heber, 205 Jesperson, Elmer V., 104 Jewkes, Samuel, 270 John, Toby, 161 Johnson, Aaron, 252 Johnson, Blaine, 245 Johnson, Don, 252 Johnson, Harold, 100 Johnson, Joel H., 53-54, 170,240 Johnson, Moses, 252 Johnson, Nephi, 366 Johnson, Tom, 278 Johnson's Fort, 62 Johnson's Spring, 53-54, 170 Johnston, Albert Sidney, 65, 324 Johnston, Dick, 112 Johnston, Sam, 112 Jolly, Milt, 169 Jones, Alan, vii Jones, Charles, 252 Jones, Dwight, 137 Jones, Erastus, 361 Jones, Eva L., 207 Jones, Evelyn, viii, 6, 346 Jones, Garth, 417 Jones, Henry M., 104

INDEX

Jones, Hyrum, 252 Jones, Jim, 261 Jones, John L., 171,252 Jones, John Pidding, 170,250,325-26 Jones, Lehi W., 99, 204, 230, 381 Jones, Kumen, 381 Jones, Merrell, R., 216 Jones, Mildred, 136 Jones, Randall,261,387,400,401,403, 406 Jones, Sophia, 367 Jones, Sylvester F., 88 Jones, T. Jedediah, 207 Jones, T. Willard, 367 Jones, Thomas Jeffeson, 271 Jones, Uriah T., 229, 231, 384 Jones, William L., 126 Jones, York, vii, viii, 6, 335, 346 Jordan, John, 342 Judd, Harl E., 216 Judd, Neil M., 24 KSUB,100 Kaiser Steel, 129, 331 Kanarraville, 174-75 Kearney, James E., 275 Keith, Harry, 104 Kelly, Gene, 139 Kerr, 175 Kerr, William J., 175 Kicklighter, Edward H., 275 Kier, Alexander, 62 Kimball, Wayne, 261 Kingsbury, Joseph T., 205 Kleen Coal Mine, 339 Klein, Al, viii Klingensmith, Philip, 379 Knight, Enid, 136 Knight, Royce, 393 Kollegiate Swing Kats, 247-48 Kolob Reservoir, 288 Kolob Terrace, 8 Korea Police Action, 140-43 Kunz, Hyrum, 117, 126,406-7 L' Allegro Dramatic Company, 253 Lain, Don Joaquin, 30

447 Lamb, Elva, 131 Lang, Johnny, 101 Larsen, A.B., 247 Larson, Paul, viii Lathrop, Horace K., 38 Latimer, 101, 175 Laub, Merril, 135-36 Laub, Norman, vii, 135-36, 151-52 Leamaster, William, 341 Leavitt, Anne, viii, 219, 423 Leavitt, Dixie, 214-15 Leavitt, Michael 0.,417,423-24 LeBot, Burt, 277 Lee, David, 262 Lee, John D., 45, 47,51,57,64,67-68, 270 Leek, Tom, 261 Lefever, William, 78 Leigh, Francell, 136 Leigh, J. David, 175 LeMay, Alphonse A., 276 Leonard, A.N., 229-30, 385 Lewis, James, 49, 54-55 Lewis, Phillip B., 49 Lewis, Tarlton, 46, 49, 50, 267 Lewis, Terral, 255 Lindstrom, Gaell, 261 Little Salt Lake County, 44 Little, James A., 46, 49 Littlefield, Edward, 174 Littlefield, Sidney, 174 Livestock, 3, 351-374; cooperative livestock association, 353-57; mountain dairies, 357-58; rambouillet sheep, 359-61; depression and drought, 361-65 Love, Andrew, 46, 57 Lowder, Jessie, 89 Lowder, John, 78 Lund, 101, 175 Lund, Robert c., 175 Lunt Hotel, 63, 85 Lunt, Brigham J., 383 Lunt, Ellen Whittaker, 268, 269 Lunt, Henry, 45-47,51,57,58,59,69, 78,86-87,238-39,268,269,271, 321,323,327

448 Lunt, HenryW., 401 Lunt, Robert c., 383 Lutheran Church, 278 Lyman, Amasa, 52 Lyman, E. Ray, 333 Lyman, Paulina Phelps, 223-24 McCandless, John 0., 275 McConnell, Eliza, 303, 357 McConnell, Gladys, 6 McConnell, Harold, 104 McConnell, Lafayette, 252 McConnell, Lafe, 123 McConnell, Mary, 268 McCune, A.W., 382 McDonald, Belle, 226 McDonald, J.H., 341 McDonald, Robert, 278 McGarry, Miriam, 277 McGregor Hospital, 228 McGregor, Donald A., 228 McGregor, Ellen, 83 McGregor, Joseph, 228 McGregor, William c., 90, 192,271 McGuffy, James, 50 McIntyre, Gary MacLain, 255 McKay, David 0.,168 McLain, P.S., 391 McMillan, D. J., 194 Macdonald, Mary, viii, 261 Mace, William L., 307 Macfarlane, Ann, 239 Macfarlane, John, 239 MacFarlane, John M., 191, 192,239-40 Macfarlane, Menzies J., 105, 112,226, 229-30,386,401 Mackelprang, Margaret, 223 Madsen, John K., 359 Maeser, Karl G., 204, 225 Maeser, Reinhard, 123 Mammoth, 14- 15 Mammoth Plaster & Cement Company, 345 Manderfield, J.H., 107,400 Mann, Burch, 248 Manning, William H., 159-60, 242, 24344

INDEX

Manweiler, John, 278 Marchant, 178 Markagunt Plateau, 8 Marsden, Lucious N., 97, 333, 384 Marsden, William, 75 Martineau, James, 241, 249, 259, 267 Mather, Steven, 406 Matheson, Alexander, 97, 98, 297 Matheson, Alva, viii, 6, 99, 391 Matheson, Daniel, 100-1, 123 Matheson, David, 250, 251 Matheson, Leon, viii Matheson, Lorenzo, 100-1 Matheson, Owen, 100-1 Matheson, Rhoda, 97 Matheson, Scott, 115, 153-54 Matheson, Scott M., 145, 150,417 Matheson, William, 100- 1 Matheson, ZelIa, viii Maughan, J. Howard, 210 Maxfield, Blair, vii, 19, 342 Median Village, 25 Medical Care, 222-234 Meeks, Priddy, 222-23 Meesebats, 156 Melling, Sally, viii Messiah, 243 Mickelson, Rass, 355 Middleton, George W., 224-29, 287-88, 399-400,412 Middleton, Will, 226 Midvalley, 178 Miera, Don Bernardo, 30 Miller, Daniel, 267 Miller, John, 276 Miller, Miles F., 111,272 Miller, Robert E., 53 Milner, Archibald, 329 Mining, 320-46,416-17; iron mining, 320-36; coal, 336-40; silver and other metals, 340-46 Mitchell, Albert 0., 251 Mitchell, Clayton, 102 Mitchell, Harold, 215 Mitchell, Warner, 123 Mitchell, William c., 46, 83, 238 Mitchell, William C. Jr., 238

449

INDEX

11odena, 101, 116, 178, 197 11offit, Claude, 277 11oore, Eleanor, 369 11oreton, Joseph P., 276 11orris, Durham, 333 11ortenson, Neils, 355,357 11oser, J.H., 402 11otion Pictures, 253 110untain biking, 317 110untain 11eadows 11assacre, 66-69, 73,324 11oyle, 11aud, 367-68 11oyle, Parley, 296, 367-68 11unford, Lyman, 216 11unford, 11aude, 136 11uniz, Andres, 30 11usic,237-245 11usic Arts Society, 244, 245 11X missile program, 149-50,416-17 Nada, 101, 179 National Youth Administration, 116 N eslen, Clarence, 400 New Castle Reclamation Company and Reservoir, 168, 179,290,294, 359, 367 New Castle Reclamation Hotel, 179, 367 New Deal Programs, 115-20 Newcastle, 179-80 "News From Our Boys in Service," 136 Newman, Elijah, 46 Nichols, Burton, 169,411 Nichols, Frank, 171 Nielsen, Lane, 261 North N ewcastle Vegetable and Produce Company, 364 Nuclear Testing, 143-50 N umic Indians, 26 Oak, 16 Oberhansley, Henry, 209, 210 Ofer 11ining and 11illing Company, 341 Old 11ain, 206-7 Old Sorrel, 206 Olson, Corry, 138.

Oregon Short Line, 382

Orton, Orton, Orton, Orton,

Alexander, 250 Orson, 251-52 Samuel T., 184 William, 86

Pacific Fruit Express Company, 297 Pack, Frederick J., 400, 402 Page, Daniel, 86, 89, 180 Page, Deseret, 82 Page, Robert, 180 Page, Sophia, 180 Pages Ranch, 131-32, 180 Paglia, Sam, 277 Paiute Indians, 26-27,31-33,58,66-68, 155-65,266 Paiute Restoration Gathering and Powwow, 164 Paiute Tribal Council, 164 Paleo-Indians, 21 Palmer, Edward J., 204 Palmer, Evelyn, 105 Palmer, Katherine, 226-27 Palmer, 11ary, 105 Palmer, 11ary Ann 11iddleton, 105 Palmer, Richard, 174 Palmer, William R., 6, 24, 58, 70-71, 159-62,173,352,355,356 Panic of 1873, 80 Paragonah, 53, 180-81 Paragonah Co-op Company, 79 Parashonts, Travis, 165 Park, John R., 204 Parker, John D., 174 Parowan, established, 48-53; as county seat controversy, 58-59, 121-22; historical sketch, 181-82; water resources, 281-85 Parowan Bishop's Storehouse and Tithing Office, 90 Parowan Comedy Company, 250 Parowan Community Theater, 253 Parowan Dramatic Society, 89, 249 Parowan Equitable Cooperative Store, 97 Parowan Gap petroglyphs, 23-24 Parowan Heritage Park, 421 Parowan High School, 90, 199-200

450 Parowan Lake, 51 Parowan Main Street Project, 422 Parowan Opera House, 97 Parowan Public Library, 90-91 Parowan Reservoir Company, 283 Parowan Rock Church, 4, 89-90, 93, 192 Parowan Stake Academy, 194-95 Parowan Steam Plow Company, 359 Parowan Third Ward church, 111,272 Parowan Times, 97 Parowan United Mercantile and Manufacturing Instutition, 79, 182 Parowan United Order, 270-71 Parrish, Carl, 277 Parry, Chauncey, 120,261, 385,401, 402-3 Parry, Edward, 171 Parry, Elizabeth, 223 Parry, Gronway, 120, 152,385,401, 402-3 Parry, John, 89, 203, 207 Parry, Mary Ann, 207 Parry, Whitney, 120,385 Paulson, Curt, 261 Peck, Gregory, 139 Pederson's Drug Store, 119 Pendleton, Anna, 105 Pendleton, Brin, 137 Pendleton, Calvin, 181,270 Pendleton, Calvin Crane, 222-23 Pendleton, Daniel, 297 Penicillin, 232 Penny, Sarah, 245 PEP CON, 417-18 Perry, Belle Macfarlane, 226-27 Perry, John, 241 Perry, Joseph M., 241 Perry, Leland, 100 Pete, Jimmy, 161 Peteetneet, 48-49 Peterson, Charles S., viii Petty, Frank H. 230, 233-34 Phillips, Ann, 369 Phillips, R. Scott, 255 Pig Poet of Paragonah, 262 Pinchot, Gifford, 304

INDEX

Pine nuts, 15 Pinto Iron Works, 82, 326 Pinyon-Juniper Zone, 15-16 Platt, Maria, 168, 196 Plummer, J. H., 254 Pollock, Samuel, 174 Polygamy, 84, 85-89 Ponderosa Pine, 17 Population, 74,83-84,92, 109, 123, 129-30, 139, 150-51 Porter, Lerin, 409 Porter, Nathan T., 210 Potter, Albert F., 304-5 Powell, Allan Kent, viii, x Powell, John Wesley, 158,399 Pratt, Addison, 41-42 Pratt, Parley P., 23, 42-43, 48-49, 52, 421,422 Prehistory, 20-27 Presbyterian church, 84, 193-94,273-75 Prestwich, James S., 231 Prohibition, 227 Public Lands, 301-19, 420; Federal land laws, 303-4; Forest Reserves, 304-8; Grazing Districts, 309-11; Bureau of Land Management, 312-14; Wilderness Issues, 314-17 Pugmire, Jonathan, 267 Pulsipher, Charles, 366 Pulsipher, John, 366, 373 Pulsipher, William, 366 Quarm, Robert, 83 Quichapa Lake, 289, 293 Rabbits, 78, 364 Radiation Exposure Compenstion Act, 149 Radio broadcasts, 99-100 Radmall, Paul, viii Railroad Securities Company, 405 Railroads, 100, 104, 107-8,381-83,38788 Rains, L.F., 329 Rambouillet Sheep, 359-61 Rampton, Calvin, 215, 390

451

INDEX

Ranchers Exploration and Development Corporation, 343 Randall L. Jones theater, 258 Randall, Alice, 269 Rankin, Ronald B., 344 Rasmussen, Antone (Tony), 261 Ray, George, 344 Reagan, Ronald, 314, 416-17 Reardon, Cornelius, 275 Red Cross, 103, 132 Reddington, Boyd, 262 Redford, Grant H., 244 Reeves, Josiah, 174 Reformation, 64 Reid, Robert R, 99 Religion, 266-79 Renaissance Faire, 410 Rhode, Roger, 278 Rice, Clayton, 274 Rice, George, 341 Rich, Charles c., 52 Richards, Franklin D., 322-23 Richards, Morgan, 86, 90, 192 Richards, Thomas, 89 Richey, Robert, 82, 180 Riggs, William S., 174 Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, 249 Ririe, Shirley, 249 Roads, 100, 107,378-381,383-87,38891 Robb, Nina, 181 Robinson Reservoir, 283 Robinson, Arthur, 83 Robinson, James, vii Robinson, Joseph L., 50, 267 Rockwell, Orrin Porter, 38 Rogers, Lorana Page, 76 Rogers, Ruth, 76 Rogers, Samuel H., 271 Rogerson, Josiah, 191 Rollo, Alex, 97, 123, 141 Rollo, Ezra, 123 Rollo, Klien, 141 -42, 145 Rollo, Morgan, 123 Roman Catholic Church, 275-76 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 114- 15, 130, 161,406,408

Roosevelt, Theodore, 304, 385 Root, Lewis, 90 Roper, Shirley, 245 Roundy, Lorenzo, 174 Rowley, Richard, 254-55 Rural Electric Association, 296 Sagebrush, 14 Sagebrush Rebellion, 314 Sahara, 101, 182-83 Saint George and Washington Irrigation Company, 326 Saint George tabernacle and temple, 82 Salisbury, Monroe, 381 San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, 101, 172,295,368,382, 402 Sanderson, John, 238 Sandford, Elliot F., 88 Scheuner, T.L.,326 Schinkel, John, 278 Schlocktor,Max,231 Schools, see education Schrank, Max P., 232 Schultz, Dale, 278 Seamon, Frank, 385 Seegmiller, Keith, 153 Seegmiller, Ruby, viii Seegmiller, Winston, viii, 247 Seymour, John, 259 Sharwan Smith Center for Student Development, 219 Sheep, 100, 354-57; and nuclear fallout, 146; Rambouillet sheep, 359-61 Sheets, Elijah F., 46 Sheppard, Alex H., 165 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 239 Sherratt, Gerald R, 131,217,218,219, 248 Sherratt, Lowell H., 131 Sherratt, Tina, 226, 228 Shields, Lex, 246-47 Shipp, Ellis R, 224 Shirts, Kathryn, viii Shirts, Morris, viii, 6 Shirts, Peter, 52, 57, 61, 63-64, 171,326, 337,379

452 Shirts, Steve, 245 Short, C.A., 342 Silver, 340-43 Skywest Airlines, 393 Slack, Martin, 190 Slave trade, among Indians, 156-57 Smith, Elijah, 224 Smith, George A., 45-54,57-58,60,62, 65-66,169,190,200,238,246,267, 269,296-97,322 Smith, Jedediah, 33-35, 222, 233 Smith, Jesse N., 78, 80, 249, 267, 270, 271 Smith, John c.L., 36-37, 54-55, 77, 267 Smith, Philip K., 267, 270, 322 Smith, Pratt, 138 Smith, Silas S., 78 Smith, Thomas S., 238 Smythe, Herbert E., 370 Snell, Althea, 369 Snow, Edward H., 203 Snow, Eliza R., 269 Snow, Erastus, 240, 271,322,325,379 Snow, Helen Foster, 262 Snow, Spencer, 231 Snow, Stewart, 161 Sons of Utah Pioneers, 173 Southern Paiutes, see Paiutes Southern Utah Dairy Co-op, 358 Southern Utah Division of the Utah Federation of Music Clubs, 245 Southern Utah Hospital, 229 Southern Utah Medical Society, 232 Southern Utah Power, 339-40 Southern Utah Rambouillet Sheep Breeders Association, 369 Southern Utah Regional Medical Plaza, 233 Southern Utah University, 4, 105, 116, 128,133,143,165,169-70,203-219, 241,418-19 Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 315-16 Spanish Trail, 33-38, 43, 365 Spencer, Annie, 205 Spencer, Daniel S., 400 Spruce-fir-aspen zone, 17

INDEX

Spry, William, 385, 400 Standard Consolidated Mining Company, 344 Stapley, Dee EI, viii, 185 Stapley, Sylvia, 186 Stapley, Tom, 297 Stateline, 101, 183-84, 195 Stateline Mining District, 341 Steele, John, 267 Stevensville, 184 Steward, William c., 270 Stiles, George P., 65 Stones, Amasa, 240, 242 Stowell, Dennis, vii Stueve, Dennis W., 278 Sulphur Springs, 184 Summer's Gate, 43 Summit, 184-86 Talbert, Mark, 261 Talbot, Gene, 276 Talmage, James E., 204 Tasker, Ben, 170,381 Taylor Company, 253 Taylor, George, 250, 253 Taylor, John, 327-28 Taylor, Sammy, 126 Taylor, Thomas, 327 Telephones, 98-99 Thompson, A.H., 303 Thompson, Richard, 21 -22 Thompson, Samuel, 222 Thompson, William, 86 Thorley, June Decker, 245 Thorley, Robert A., 230, 233 Tilley, Martha, 341 Tippetts, Twain, 254, 261 Tollestrup, Albert N. , 242 Tom, Gary, viii Tom, Roy, 161 Tomas, 186 Topaz Japanese Relocation Center, 211 Topham, Dewey, 134-35, 137 Topham, John, 53 Topham, Simon T., 88 Topham, Waldo, viii, 134 Topography, 7-8

453

INDEX

Tourism, 3, 398-412 Townsend, John, 381 Trans Wodd Service, 410 Travis, Jot, 381 Truman, Harry S., 140,312 Tucker, Grant, viii Tucker, Guy c., 339 Tueller, Lamont E., 362 Tuffs, William 0., 401-2 Tullis, John, 196 Tutsegabit, 66 Tyner, Martin, 259 Typhoid fever, 287, 358 Underwood, Gilbert Stanley, 406 Union Iron Works, 82,173 Union Pacific Railroad, 107-8, 177,328, 335,363,367,386,487-88,401,404, 405,409,410 United Order, 80 United States Geological Survey, 295 United States Grazing Service, 309 United States Steel, 128, 138,330, 334, 417 United Steelworkers of America, 331, 333 U nthank, Mary Ann, 223 Uranium, 345-46 Urie, John, 70 Urie, M . James, 392 U rie, Priscilla, 226 Urie, Roy (Pug), vii Urie, Sarah, 223 Utah-Nevada-California Highway Association, 384 Utah and Pacific Railroad, 382 Utah Centennial County History Council, ix-x Utah Construction Company, 331, 33233,334 Utah Division of Water Resources, 298 Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, 317 Utah International, 334-35 Utah Iron Company, 329-30 Utah Iron Manufacturing Company, 327

Utah Iron Ore Corporation, 329 Utah Minute Women, 132 Utah National Guard, 130, 138, 141-43 Utah Paiute Tribal Corporation, 164 Utah Parks Company, 110, 112, 128, 307,404-5,406-10 Utah Poultry and Farmers Cooperative, 363 Utah Shakespearean Festival, 215, 25659 Utah State Civil Defense Council, 14546 Utah State Engineers Office, 286 Utah State Guard, 132 Utah State Legislature, ix-x Utah Statehood, 93 Utah Steel Day, 329 Utah Summer Games, 217, 390, 410 Utah Turkey and Produce Company, 363 Utah War, 64-68 Uvada,186 Valley View Medical Center, 232-33 Waddingham, Thorpe, 214-15 Wales, Nym, 262-63 Walkara,42, 50-51, 60,62 Walker Fort, 63 -64 Walker War, 60-63, 323 Walker, Joseph, 50, 325 Warby, Florian, viii Ward, David, 355 Ward, Olive Mortenson, 228 Warden, Samuel, 181 Warren, George, 297 Warren, Robert, 262 Warren, William S., 89 Washington County, 73-74, 91-92 Water Resources, 281 -98, 420; Parowan and Center Creek, 281-85; Cedar City and Coal Creek, 285-89; Newcastle and the Escalante Valley, 289-91; Storms and Floods, 291-94; Groundwater and Wells, 295 -96; Water and Power, 296-98 Watson, Lorenzo, 90

454 Watson, Malissa, 90 Watts, Benjamin, 53 Weaver, Max, 261 Webb, Charles Y., 51, 53 Webster, Ada Wood, 252 Webster, Ann Elizabeth, 207 Webster, Antone, 130 Webster, Evelyn, 132 Webster, Francis, 86-88, 207, 354, 357 Webster, Kathy, 196 WECCO,417-18 Weigand, William K., 276 Wells, Daniel H., 60 West, Chauncey, 44 West, Jane Fish, 249, 250 Western Air Lines, 393 Weston, John, 238, 239 Wheeler, G.M., 24 Whetman, Lois, viii Whetten, LaVeve, 248-49 Whipple, Edson, 49 White, Douglas, 400 White, Hugh, 381 Whitney, Eli Alger, 224 Whitney, New Samuel, 52 Whittaker, Ellen, 58 Whittaker, James, 58 Whittaker, Rachel, 268 Widtsoe, John A., 101, 174-75,368 Wilden, Elliot, 171 Wilder, Eliot, 270 Wilderness issues, 314-17 Wiley, Robert, 89, 238 Wilkerson, David, 232 Wilkerson, Roy, 232 Wilkinson, Charles, 97, 123 William, David, 249 Williams, Alex, 360 Williams, Evan, 360 Williams, Jesse, 337 Williams, Rymal Graff, 232 Williamson, Greg, 278 Willis, John H., 174 Wilson, Raymond, 274 Wimmer, Peter, 224 Winter, George W., 242 Wolf, Isaac c., 341

INDEX

Wolfskill, William, 33 Wood, Franklin B., 110-11 Wood,George,50,98,193,224,238 Wood, Mary, 238 Wood, George A. (Bert), 110-11,405, 407 Wood, Rhoda Matheson, 6, 150, 234 Wood, Will, 234 Woodbury, Frank, 228 Woodbury, Joan Jones, 248-49 Woodbury, John S., 98, 204, 241, 288, 341 Woodruff, Wilford, 271 Wooley, Caroline Parry, 260 Woolf, John A., 57 Woolley, Samuel, 181 Working Reserve Organization, 103 World War I, 101-4, 106 World War II, 128-38; the home front, 130-33; draftees and volunteers, 133-36; war bonds and rationing, 136-37; VE and VJ Day, 137-38; impact on natural resources, 311 Wright, Calvin E., 176, 177 Wright, Ianthus, 198 Yale, 101, 186 Yankee Meadows Reservoir, 283 Yardley, David, vii Yazzie, Kelvin E., 261 Young, Brigham, 41, 45,53,61,62,65, 66,69,73,76,80,82,157,158,239, 241,267,271,282,291,321,322, 323,324,354,379 Young, Mahonri, 260 Young, William, 302 Young, William Rigby, 231, Youngblood, Robert, 175 Yount, George c., 33 Zane, 101, 182-83, 186 Zane, Charles, 88 Zion Easter Pageant, 244-45 Zion National Park, 399, 402, 406-8 Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution, 360

Janet Burton Seegmiller was raised in Salt Lake City. She married Cedar City native Keith Seegmiller in 1968 and soon became fascinated by the oral history she heard during each visit to Iron County. Keith and Janet have made their home in Cedar City since 1985. Janet is the author of "Be Kind to the Poor": The Life Story of Robert Taylor Burton and a number of papers on family and community history. She is the Special Collections coordinator at the Gerald R. Sherratt Library at Southern Utah University and serves on the advisory board of editors of the Utah Historical Quarterly. She has a B.A. degree in journalism from the University of Utah (1965) and is currently pursuing a master's degree in information resources and library science at the University of Arizona.

Front dust jacket photograph: Parowan Rock Church; courtesy Iron County Tourism and Convention Bureau.

Back dust jacket photograph: Cedar Breaks National Monument; photograph by R.D. Adams, courtesy Special Collections, Gerald R. Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University.

Jacket design by Richard Firmage

The Utah Centennial County History Series was funded by the Utah State Legislature under the administration of the Utah State Historical Society in cooperation with Utah's twenty-nine county governments.