Taming San Juan
O n 14 February 1880, acting Utah Territorial Governor Arthur L. Thomas signed a bill that officially created San Juan County from parts of Sevier, Kane, Iron, and Piute counties. In spite of a land mass that encompassed roughly its present-day boundaries in addition to those of Grand County, San Juan was still among the poorest of the counties in Utah, a fact that still holds to this day.' When Grand County, sliced from the lands of northern San Juan and eastern Emery, became a reality on 13 March 1890, the grounds for a local boundary dispute began, elements of which continued for almost a hundred years. So it is with many San Juan political issues that are deeply embedded in the history of government relations on various levels-local, state, and federal. In 1894 nascent Grand County fired the first salvo in its effort to obtain more land from San Juan. However, the state legislature's committee on counties believed that because there was such a small revenue already coming out of San Juan, to remove any part of the land base would create an " [inlsufficient amount of taxable property in
