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
