Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 29, Number 3, 1961

HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

Utah's Dixie . . . The Cotton Mission

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ABOUT THE COVER

One of five fingers of the Kolob ARTHUR BRUHN

Gregory Arch in Zion Nat'l Park ROBERT BARREL

HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

A. R. Mortensen, Editor

UTAH

STATE

VOLUME

HISTORICAL

XXIX,

NUMBER

SOCIETY

3

July, 1961

Copyright 1960, Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah Entered as second-class matter January 5,1953, at the Post Office at Salt Lake City, Utah, under the Act of August 24,1912.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The year 1961 marks the centennial of the unique experiment of cotton culture in the Rocky Mountain West known as the Cotton Mission in Utah's Dixie.

From cotton and cactus in a dry and forbidding land of one hundred years ago to the air-conditioned tourist accommodations in a land now famed for its scenic beauty is indeed the miracle of man's conquest of his physical environment. The land itself has remained unchanged, but man's ingenuity permits a seeming accommodation.

In addition to the regular staff of this journal, many people have contributed to this salute to the people who settled "The Land That God Forgot."

It is fitting that the greater part of this story was written or compiled by Dixie's own JUANITA BROOKS. In fact, without her and her rich background in the history, lore, and legend of her homeland it would be almost impossible to tell the story adequately. From letters written to her by Dr. Joseph Walker has come much of the material appearing in the "Vignettes."

To her and also to A. KARL LARSON for his piece, "Pioneer Agriculture," and to LORRAINE T. WASHBURN for her contribution, "Culture in Dixie,'' the editors express sincere thanks.

The large edition of diis Dixie Centennial publication was made possible through the co-operation of the City of St. George, William A. Barlocker, mayor; the St. George Chamber of Commerce, H. C. Thomas, secretary; and the St. George Centennial Committee, Ellis J. Pickett, chairman, Arthur K. Hafen, A. Karl Larson, Vernon Worthen, Neida Hutchings, H. L. Reid, Mary Phoenix, Charles M. Pickett, and James Lundberg.

COHTEHTS The Face of the Land The Cotton Mission Song, "St. George and the Dragon" Color Country Song, "Pounding Rock ^nt0 tne Temple Foundation" Early Buildings Culture in Dixie Pioneer Agriculture Silver Reef Vignettes

193 201 » 222 223-238 239 241 255 269 281 289

ILLUSTRATIONS Air View of St. George Desert Joshua Utah's Dixie, Map Erastus Snow Jacob Peart Inscription Washington Cotton Factory; Factory and Employees Dugout Home; Adobe Home in Santa Clara Pine Valley Mountain Snow's Canyon Pine Valley Church; St. George Courthouse St. George Temple St. George Tabernacle Arch of Drugstore at Silver Reef Three Patriarchs Looking Down the Valley from the Temple of Sinawava Angels Landing Falls of Sinawava Switchbacks Checkerboard Mountain Cedar Breaks Red Canyon Bryce Canyon St. George Temple Under Construction First Social Hall in St. George; Same Street 1910 Brigham Young Home; Israel lvins Home; Lorenzo Clark Home Margaret Laub Home; Thomas Cottam Home; William Carter Home George Brooks Home; The "Big House" Modern St. George Social Hall; First Dixie Martial Band Woodward School Dixie College; New Fine Arts Building Charles L. Walker Charles Ellis Johnson, Ellis and Jay; Jay Johnson DIXIE On Vermilion Cliff Melancthon Wheeler Burgess Home Joseph E. Johnson; Thomas Judd Grape Vineyard and Orchard Grapes and Fruit Alfalfa Field in Dixie Ruins of Silver Reef • Wells Fargo Building; Western Gold and Uranium Company Operations Residential Street in Silver Reef The Reef Early July 24 Celebration in St. George Post Office in St. George Torroweap

| g2 197 198-199 200 205 213 215 221 223, 224 225 226 227 228 229 230—231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 240 243 246 247 250 252 254 257 258 259 262 267 268 271 274 275 278 282 284 285 286 288 290, 291 301

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tir view of St. George looking northeast. \arms along Santa Clara Creek flanked by he volcanic black ridge, the airport on top. ".enter: St. George itself, vermilion cliffs, lack lava flow over white clay formation, 'ine Valley Mountain in background.

THE

FACE

OF T H E L A N D

The area with which we are concerned in the story of Utah's Dixie is that covered by the lower Virgin River drainage system. From time immemorial this land has remained essentially unchanged in spite of man's puny attempts to conquer it.

One should fly over the terrain to see more clearly its natural boundaries and to get perspective. To the south the Colorado River slices through the earth, marking a division which denies all manmade lines. Near it from the top of the ground-swell which culminates in Trumbull Mountain the land on one side is combed down to the stream by millions of gullies, dry except following a rain. On the other side similar dry washes and gulches writhe and twist toward the Virgin River, the pathways of the flood waters of infrequent cloudbursts. The eastern boundary follows the rim of the basin, along the abrupt drop of the Black Ridge, across the Pine Valley Mountains to a seeming endless desert to the north. To the west it terminates at the confluence of the Virgin River and the Colorado.

The air-borne visitor senses how infinitesimal are the areas of man's conquest here: the clusters of houses tied together by the black cord of the highway, the green spots around them widened, some cultivated squares hugging the foothills or opening among the juttings on the top of plateau areas, where farmers have tried dry farming — all are small and insignificant when compared to the expanse of the desert.

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Only the man on the ground, especially the earlier traveler who must measure the distances step by step and foot by foot, could fully know the character of this country. He learned early that he must travel during the fall and winter. If the trip were to be of any length, he usually started in late October or November. During the summer months, travel must be from late afternoon to mid-forenoon, with some shelter from the sun during the mid-day. Water a man could carry, but shelter from the sun he must also have, both for himself and his animals.

In this land of little rainfall, all life, plant and animal, was forced to make adaptation. Plants developed extensive and deep root systems, even a storage system as in the barrel cactus. The evaporation area was restricted to fewer and smaller leaves, and these had water-saving devices. For example, the cactus spines are encased in a cellophane cover, yucca and Joshua blades are similarly fitted with a transparent, waxy sheath. Chaparral leaves are covered with a gummy, sticky substance, as though they had been dipped in glue, while some other desert plants hold their moisture by a fuzz or velvet. Annual plants spring up as if by magic following the brief winter rains, and for a few weeks fill the air with color and perfume, and then are as quickly gone, scorched to a crisp by the burning sun.

Animals as well have made adaptations to conserve their water or to get along on a minimum. The small mammals build underground burrows. All day they remain in these deep, dark holes where the soil temperature and humidity demands no evaporation, coming out to feed only at night. The little kangaroo rat has perhaps made die most perfect adaptation, for it excretes uric acid crystals and reroutes its water supply for use over and over again. In captivity these little animals have lived for six months on only dry seeds without a drop of liquid.

Over the ages the Indians also had to adapt to the rigors of the desert. The size of the tribes was kept small through the laws of natural selection: the old were left to die on the trail or were sometimes led far from the camp and abandoned without food or water. The natives practiced a primitive agriculture, planting small patches of corn and squash along the river bottoms, moving to the mountains during hot weather, and returning to spend the winter in the warm, low areas.

They had not developed an adequate storage program, but feasted to excess during the fall months on venison, fruits, and pine nuts until they were all sleek and fat, then built their tepees as snug as they could, avoided strenuous activity, and rationed out their food. Even so, spring always found them emaciated and weak.

THE

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195

For white men, this terrain was a place to get over as soon as possible, certainly not a place in which to live. Before the arrival of the Mormons in the mid-1850's, only a few white men had even been through it. The first was the party of the two Spanish padres, Father Escalante and Father Dominguez, who were trying to find a land route between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Monterey, California. They set out in July, 1776, about the time the colonists on the eastern coast were accepting their new Declaration of Independence. By October of that year they were on the Virgin River opposite the present ghost town of Harrisburg, ready to head back to the south and east. They told of the sulphur springs above the site of Hurricane, and described the broken, colorful terrain. Of the Indian farms along Ash Creek they wrote that they had seen "a well made mat with a large supply of ears and husks of green corn which had been placed upon it. Near it, in the small plain and on the banks of the river were small corn patches with their very well made irrigation ditches. The stalks of maize which they had already harvested this year were still untouched."

Fifty years passed before another white man found his way into this section. In 1826 and again in 1827 Jedediah Strong Smith passed over it, on his way down, over the approximate route of the present U.S. 89 to Clear Creek, crossing to where Cove Fort now stands, and confining to the mouth of the Virgin over the general route of U.S. 91. On his return he followed his trail back to Clear Creek Canyon, but instead of going through, he kept to the west of the range and outlined roughly the present U.S. 91 to the Great Salt Lake. During the next years occasional traders and trappers followed these trails, but it remained for John C. Fremont in 1844 to make careful notes, draw some rough maps, and write a report of the routes of his explorations. These, published, gave impetus throughout the east to people whose faces were already turned westward.

In mid-November, 1847, the leaders in Utah, eager to get seeds, cuttings, and roots from the California settlements and to open up a route for trade, called a group of sixteen men to make the journey.

Among them were such frontiersmen as Captain Jefferson Hunt of the Mormon Battalion, O. P. Rockwell, and others. This mounted company with their pack animals followed the dim trails left by Indian traders over the ages, moving with security for miles at a time and then becoming confused by a maze of trails that led in different directions and seemed to end nowhere. They lost their way so many times diat they

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had exhausted their rations before they reached the springs at Las Vegas, and were forced to kill and eat three of their horses.

They arrived at the Williams Ranch on Christmas Eve, and for six weeks traveled and traded in California, returning to Salt Lake Valley on May 15,1848. Their tracks left the trail so well marked that twentyfive of the Mormon Battalion men followed them less than a month later, bringing a band of 135 mules and one wagon — the first to be brought over this route.

O n October 2, 1849, a company of Forty-Niners hired Jefferson H u n t to pilot them to California. E n route someone produced a map showing a cutoff by which the distance to die gold fields would be lessened by hundreds of miles. In spite of Hunt's remonstrances, one hundred and twenty wagons took the cutoff and only seven remained with him. Some of the wagons turned back after a day or two, others broke a new road back to the Spanish Trail and followed behind the Hunt group, while the fate of those who persisted in staying on the cutoff gave Death Valley its name.

N o w that the southern trail was more clearly marked, Brigham Young and the Council sent Parley P . Pratt with fifty young men south this same fall for the purpose of looking out sites for future towns. They kept a careful record of each day's travel, of the distance and the nature of the terrain. Near the Little Salt Lake they left their wagons and a part of their company while twenty men rode horseback to the rim of the basin. Standing on a promontory where the earth fell away and stretched to dim horizons, Pratt studied the landscape. For the record he wrote: The great Wasatch range . . . here terminates in several abrupt promontories, the country southward opening to the view for at least 80 .miles, and showing no signs of water or fertility . . . but a wide expanse of chaotic matter presented itself consisting of huge hills, sandy deserts, cheerless, grassless plains, perpendicular rocks, loose barren clay, dissolving beds of sandstone . . . lying in inconceivable confusion, in short a country in ruins dissolved by the peltings of the storms of the ages and turned inside out, upside down, by terrible convulsions in some former age.

Today's traveler, viewing the scene from the slopes of the Pine Valley Mountain or from the Finger Bluffs of the Kolob Plateau, or the edge of the cliff at Project Smart or any other point of vantage may read this description aloud and marvel at its accuracy. H e may mark some pipings of green along the seams, some bits like the tip of a green hand-

THE

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kerchief tucked into a gigantic fold, but the over-all impression is of irregular formations, of violent color, space, and silence.

Flat and shimmering under the full sun, the whole land is transformed by a miracle at sunset. Daily different, a paean of color opens in the west, of red and saffron, orange and gold, the exhultant chords echoing from eastern ridges and peaks. Under its magic barren sands and sterile gullies know a moment of glory so poignant that the traveler is left breathless, almost hurt. Soon the notes re-combine and come to rest in quiet tones of mauve and green and blue, as the evening star, luminous and low, brings the benediction of the night.

The desert joshua silhouetted against a sunset sky. This land is one to which one should return again and again, for no one can ever wholly see it, so responsive and sensitive is it to the hours and the seasons.

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Nat'l Park Indian Reservation

ERASTUS SNOW, 1818-1888

: England born Erastus Snow, missioned colonizer for his church, was called uthern Utah in 1861 as a leader of the on Mission. His clear vision and sound ment were responsible in great measure he ultimate success of the undertaking.

THE

COTTON

MISSION

The story of the Dixie Cotton Mission is one of the most fascinating in all the history of Utah, especially when it is told in its background and setting. It represents the efforts of a people to establish an ideal, to wrest a living from an inhospitable, sterile land, and to achieve a success from failure. When the Mormons were driven west, they expected to establish a society in which they could live in peace and to create a type of Kingdom of God upon the earth. One condition of this was that they should become self-sustaining, that they should produce their own necessities of food, clothing, and shelter.

With this in mind, Brigham Young planted colonies wherever there was water and land; he fostered production of iron and other minerals; he brought in machinery for all the basic trades. That he was conscious of the need for holdings in the south is shown by the fact that as early as 1851 it was proposed at the general conference in Salt Lake City that "John D. Lee form a settlement at the junction of the Rio Virgin and the Santa Clara Creek, where grapes, cotton, figs, raisins, etc., can be raised."

Although Lee was eager for this mission, he settled instead at Harmony, and it was Jacob Hamblin who planted the first cotton in southern Utah. The first missionaries had been called to the Indians of this area in April of 1854, and during the winter following Jacob Hamblin, Ira Hatch, Amos Thornton, A. P. Hardy, Thales Haskell, and Samuel Knight had been detailed to remain on the Santa Clara, to live among

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the natives, learn their language, and teach them the ways of civilization and Christianity.

During the winter Jacob Hamblin became very ill, so A. P. Hardy was sent on horseback to Parowan for medicine and food. O n his return he carried, in addition to these items, about a quart of cottonseed tied in a cloth, a gift of Sister Nancy Anderson, a convert from Tennessee, with the suggestion that the missionaries experiment wtih raising cotton.

This they did, clearing a small piece of virgin land and planting the seed carefully one in a hill. T h e cotton grew and produced beyond belief, and when the first pods exploded into a handful of snowy fluff, they were sent to Brother Brigham in Salt Lake City. T h e Deseret News for October 5, 1855, reported them to be on display at the president's office.

T h e next year the missionaries brought their families to live on the Santa Clara, where a fort had been built. N o w the cotton crop was so large that Zadoc K. Judd rigged up a gin to remove the seed. He describes it thus: It was built on the same plan as a clothes wringer only the rollers must not be over % inch in diameter. A crank was attached to each roller that would turn them in opposite directions, and draw the cotton through and the seed dropped on the other side. It took two hands to run it, one to feed the cotton and turn one roller, the other to turn the other roller & pull the cotton away.

By diligent labor 2 hands could get about 2 lbs of cotton lint per day and about 4 pounds of seed. This method was used 3 seasons, but when St. George was settled a regular circular saw gin was introduced and run by horse p o w e r . . . .

F r o m this first cleaned cotton the wives, most of them girls in their teens, supervised by "Mother" Sarah Sturdevant Leavitt, an experienced weaver, spun and wove thirty yards of cloth, samples of which were sent again to Salt Lake City and thence to Europe. N o w there was serious talk of establishing a cotton industry.

In April, 1857, twenty-eight families and a number of young men under Robert D . Covington were called to settle on the Washington flat, east of the present St. George, to experiment with cotton culture.

Since most of these people were from the Southern States, they came with high hopes, but the nature of the land itself was such as to crush their spirits. Barren flats stretched to black lava formations or red sandstone, and on the lower levels alkali encrusted the surface in white ridges. T h e first season they did not get a third of the crop â&#x20AC;&#x201D; much seed did not germinate, and alkali killed most of the plants that did come up.1 ' T h e full story of this settlement is graphically told in A. Karl Larson, The Red Hills of November (Salt Lake City, 1957).

THE C O T T O N

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203

In the meantime, with the gin to take out the seeds, and with the cotton crop of 1857 larger than they could work up, the people of the other southern villages continued to experiment. W h e n James H . Martineau visited the southern settlements in August of that year, he reported that "Sister E. H . Groves showed us a piece of cloth, the warp being cotton grown at Santa Clara and the filling being a spieces [sic] of milkweed, the fibre being long and almost as strong as silk."

Minerva Dart Judd, teen-age wife of Zadoc K., wrote the following account of her own experiences with cotton: That season [1858] I manufactured and colored the yarn for a piece of check for shirts and for two coverlais. I employed Sister Meeks of Parowan to do my weaving. The completion of a piece of cloth in those times was an event of considerable importance in the family. This year 1858 we raised cane and made molasses, which was a great addition to our food supply. In the autumn my sister Phebe and her three children came from the Northern part of the Territory to stay with us. We labored to manufacture, and made quite a long piece of jeans and some linsey. The jeans we colored green. Our coloring material and our methods of using it were primitive. We were often compelled to gather our coloring material from the wild vegetation. . . .

She might have been more specific and stated that they used the cedar berries for yellow, mountain mahogany for dark brown, madder root for deep red to purple shades, dogberry for bright red and pink, and indigo, locally raised, for blue. Setting the color to make it fast against the sun and repeated washing was a major problem. Since they must experiment, they tried vinegar, salt, saleratus, even the urine from the family chamber-pot.

So much of the land on the Washington flat had proved unfavorable for cotton culture that Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Daniel H . Wells, and others decided to call a group of fifteen young men to establish an experiment farm on the Tonaquint flat, at the confluence of the Virgin and the Santa Clara Creek. Joseph H o m e was in charge of the expedition; the sponsors would supply food and equipment. Under date of April 10, 1858, H o m e wrote a long letter from Heberville, Washington County, to Wilford Woodruff in Salt Lake City. After giving a general account of their trip and a description of their location, he said: We have built a large dam of buck [rock? ] brush and gravel; it is about 70 feet long and from 10 to 15 high, also a levee near the bank of the river about 40 rods long and from 4 to 5 feet high. We have had the water running on our farm lands some three weeks. We have planted some peas and other garden seeds. Some are up and look well. We have also planted some potatoes and set out some four hundred peach trees. We have about 25 acres of

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land grubbed and cleared and ten acres planted. We have built a log house, 16 by 27 feet â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I suppose there is about 1000 acres of land that can be brought into cultivation in this valley.

Strangely enough, this letter makes no mention of cotton, nor does the report made on July 31 following when George A. Smith visited the farm. H e told of the "bachelor dinner" served by Brother Home's boys, and of the Virgin water which was so unpalatable that they had dug a spring in the bed of the Santa Clara Creek, which this season was dry.

Of the crops, he made mention only of the fact that "they have planted thirty-three acres of corn."

T h e historian, James G. Bleak, reported that "the missionaries returned in the fall to Salt Lake City taking with them as the fruits of their summer's labor 575 pounds of cotton lint with the seed and 160 gallons of molasses. They estimated that the cotton had cost three dollars and forty cents a pound to produce, figuring their labor at two dollars a day from sun to sun."

A more eloquent report than any other is the one left carved high on the black cliff to the north of their farm. H e r e where the face is sheer and smooth and as shining as diough it had been polished, Young Jacob Peart carved a gigantic profile, presumably of himself, a picture of a plant with leaves and flowers, and the words, in crooked, drunken letters, "I was set her[e] to rais cotten March 1858 J A C O B P E A R T . " More than a hundred years of erosion have washed down the talus slope so that the carving stands today at least twenty feet above die reach of any man. It is too far below the top of the cliff to have been carved from that position unless the worker were suspended on a platform of some kind.

T h e carvings evidently were not done in one sitting or in two, but must have been the occupation of a lonely nineteen-year-old boy through several Sunday afternoons.

By 1860 there were in Washington County eight small settlements: Harmony, Santa Clara, Gunlock, Washington, Heberville, Pine Valley, Toquerville, and Pocketville (across the river below the present site of Springdale). T h e crops in all the area had been better than usual this year, so that it was reported that: September 7, 1860. The Washington County Agricultural and Manufacturing Society held its first exhibition at Washington, the county seat. A splendid collection of fruits and other products were brought in, among other things being a cotton stalk containing 307 bolls & forms and a sunflower which measured 3 ft. in circumference. The ladies department also presented a very creditable appearance.

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John D. Lee wrote of this celebration in some detail, noting that his family from Harmony arrived bringing with them the stock and other items to be entered in the fair and that "they were Escortd by music consisting of 4 violins, Bass Drum, etc. drawn by 4 horses with the American Colours floating in the breeze." At sunrise the next morning this group serenaded the village ending at the Fair Grounds, where they planted their flags. Characteristically, Lee mentioned only the items in which his family took first place. These included the best mare and colt, heifer, l/2 acre of cotton, men's straw hat, home-made shawl, article of patchwork, and a diploma for crochet work.

In May, 1861, Brigham Young and a company visited the southern area, with special concern for the farm at Heberville and the cotton ventures at Washington and Toquerville. On an earlier visit President

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Part of the carving left high on the cliff by Jacob Peart, Jr., one of the boys who made up the company of the experimental cotton farm at Heberville located at the confluence of the Santa Clara Creek an^ l^e Virgin River.

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Young had predicted a settlement at the present site of St. George.

James G. Bleak, evidently quoting Samuel Knight, recorded that after leaving the Tonaquint and coming onto die flat: He caused his carriage to be stopped and a number of the brethren gathered around, he looked North up the little valley between the two volcanic ridges where St. George has now been built . . . and said with a sweep of his arm, "There will yet be built, between these volcanic ridges, a city with spires, towers, and steeples, with homes containing many inhabitants...."

T h e outbreak of the Civil W a r gave impetus to the plan, for now with the supply of cotton cloth from the South cut off, it was imperative that Zion produce its own. They had proved that the climate here was right; in most places the soil was suitable. T h e uncertainty of the water supply would pose a greater problem than they could appreciate at that time, but they had the feeling that enough people with enough determination could certainly manage this detail.

Preceding the October conference of 1861 articles appeared in the Deseret News telling of the possibilities of Utah's Dixie and encouraging all Saints who could do so to move in that direction. Then in the semiannual conference on October 6 a list of three hundred names, all heads of families, was read from the stand with the announcement that each had been selected to go south on a "Cotton Mission." This call differed from a regular mission assignment of two years, for this time the man was to take his family and make his home in the south and become a member of a community dedicated to the raising of cotton and other semitropical plants.

Almost without exception this demand meant so great a sacrifice that diaries rarely fail to mention the test it was to their faith. Elijah Averett told how his father came home weary from a hard day in the fields. W h e n he was told that he had been called to Dixie, he dropped into a chair saying, "I'll be damned if I'll go." After sitting a few minutes with his head in his hands, he stood up, stretched, and said, "Well, if we are going to Dixie, we had better start to get ready."

W h e n word came that he was selected and expected to go right away, Robert Gardner wrote: "I looked and spat, took off my hat, scratched my head, thought, and said, 'AH right!' " After writing in detail of his preparations to go, Charles L. Walker concluded: "This is the hardest trial I ever had, and had it not been for the Gospel and those placed over us, I should never have moved a foot to go on such a trip."

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Typical, perhaps, is that of young John Pulsipher: October, 1861. At an evening meeting in the City, I was informed by Bro. George A. Smith that I was selected for a missionary to the south, on what was known as the cotton mission.

This news was very unexpected to me. Volunteers were called for at conference to go on this mission, but I did not think it meant me, for I had a good home, was well satisfied and had plenty to do.

But when Apostle Geo. A. Smith told me I was selected to go I saw the importance of the mission to sustain Israel in the mountains â&#x20AC;&#x201D; we had need of a possession in a warmer climate, and I thot I might as well go as anybody. Then the Spirit came upon me so that I felt to thank the Lord that 1 was worthy to go....

This young man's statement that he felt to thank the Lord that he was worthy to go typified the spirit of most of the company. Like him, many were leaving behind new homes, orchards just beginning to bear, and prospects for comfortable living, but their love for "The Truth," their devotion to die cause, was such that to them the general welfare was more important than private ambition. John Pulsipher's wife would bear her first son in the wagon box three weeks after they reached their destination. Of this event he wrote that the baby was "a stout, healthy child and the modier got along as well as when we were in a house."

What the father did not know was that his assignment would take him to one frontier and then anotiier until not for many years would they be as comfortable as they had been in the heart of Zion. Even so, it was wonderful to be a part of this great undertaking which was so vital to the welfare of the Kingdom.

It was cheering, too, to look over the list of names of those who- were to be their neighbors, for here were people of ability, many of them skilled craftsmen, others cultured and well educated. As they met to talk over plans and to consider necessary loading and equipment, their optimism increased until they felt that great things lay ahead. Their new home to-be was like the Jerusalem of Nehemiah: "Now the City was large and great, but the people were few therein, and the houses were not builded." Before the first wagon left Salt Lake City the new town had been named St. George, a postmaster appointed, a choir leader selected, and plans for lighting the streets given some consideration.

The historian, James G. Bleak, listed the names of every man, giving also his age, rank in the priesthood, previous home, and, for those who reported it, their occupation. Grouped by their work, they included:

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31 farmers, besides 1 horticulturist, 2 gardners, 2 vine dressers, and 1 vinter 2 with molasses mills 2 dam-builders (an occupation in which all were to have experience) 14 blacksmiths 2 wheelwrights and 1 machinist 1 mill-builder and 2 millwrights and 3 millers 10 coopers to make barrel containers for either liquids or solids 1 adobe-maker with 5 masons to lay the walls 1 plasterer and 1 painter 3 carpenters, 1 turner, 1 joiner, 1 shinglemaker 3 cabinetmakers and 1 chair-maker 1 mineralogist and 2 miners.

T h e clothing industry was represented by: 2 wool-carders, 1 weaver, 1 tailor, 1 hatter, 1 brush-maker, and 1 manufacturer, who did not designate his product, 1 tanner and 5 shoemakers.

T h e professional people consisted of: 4 3 2 2 1 1 1

musicians and 1 fiddler schoolteachers, 4 clerks, 1 lawyer, and 1 printer surveyors to divide the land daguerreans to preserve their portraits for posterity butcher, 1 baker, 1 castor oil-maker tobacco-maker drum major and 1 sailor.

One might question the value of some of these skills in a desert community, but perhaps those who did not contribute to making die living could help to make the life worth living by boosting morale. The musicians, the fiddler, the daguerrean, the drum major were among these, while the sailor used his skills to splice the scaffolding at both die tabernacle and the temple.

Mesquite, soap-root, prickley pears and briars, St. George e'er long will be a town that everyone admires, Charles L. Walker wrote as the refrain lines to one of the many songs by which the people laughed at their troubles or sang them away. All were willing to co-operate in order that their town might have a systematic, orderly pattern. T o this end, before they moved on to the designated site, all wagons stopped in the far east end of the valley, where the

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new Dixie College campus is now taking shape. Here a ditch was plowed out by William Carter â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he used the same plow which had marked the first furrow in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake â&#x20AC;&#x201D; into which the waters of the East Spring were directed. O n either side of this ditch the wagons were ranged facing each odier, and toilet facilities were set u p according to patterns adopted as they crossed the Plains, "gents to the right and ladies to die left." T h e large Sibley tent owned

by Asa Calkins was put up back from the water and near the center of the line, a central meeting place where community activities could be carried on until the people should move on to the townsite.

While the surveyors under the direction of Dr. Israel Ivins laid out the valley into neat squares, marking the corners with stakes, other men scouted the mountains for timber, or located deposits of lime, or laid out and worked roads. And then the rain came! T h e account of Robert Gardner is very vivid: The weather was very fine. It seemed that the summer lasted until Christmas. On Christmas day we had a meeting and dance on the wire grass bottom at our camp. About the time the meeting was dismissed it began to rain and [we] began to dance, and we did dance, and it did rain. We danced until dark, and then we fixed up a long tent, and we danced. The rain continued for three weeks, but we did not dance that long. We were united in everything we did in those days, we had no rich and no poor. Our teams and wagons and what was in them was all we had. We had all things in common, and very common too. Especially in the eating line, for we didn't even have sorgum in those days. We got a pumpkin from an old settler, and thought him an awfully good friend.

Part of the old Mission was at Washington, five miles east, and part at Santa Clara, four miles west. There were a few settlers at the mouth of the stream. This was known as Sedom Sop, Lick Skillet, Never Sweat [also Tonaquint and Heberville]. It was a small place, but had all those names. It was good land and raised good crops. The settlers were James Ritchey, the Adairs, and Mangums, and Pierces. When the rain storm came, lasting three weeks, a little before it quit it got in a big hurry and let down all at once. It raised the streams of the Virgin and Clara Creek to mighty rivers.

They ran away beyond their bounds, and carried away some of the best bottom land. The little settlement on the Clara Creek was all under water, and the people fled to the hills. The water was several feet deep in their little log houses. We went to their relief and took them our dancing tent for shelter.

At the junction of the two streams Great Cottonwood trees came floating down, roots and limbs. It was said that a large anvil came down ahead of the blacksmith shop. A great many pieces of Hamlin's grist mill were carried down stream for four miles. I helped to pick them up. The Virgin instead of being a narrow stream was in many places a quarter of a mile wide. We had gone to considerable work to level a ditch five miles along the banks of

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the Virgin, and had spent much time in making a tunnel thru a rocky point.

Nearly all hands had worked at this canal most of the winter. In the Spring we had to abandon this ditch for the river washed it away as fast as we made it.

This flood changed conditions for everyone in the south. The cotton farm at Tonaquint with its small orchard of fruit trees, its garden and corn land, was scooped out clean and replaced with miles of mud and debris. T h e fort at H a r m o n y was reduced to a pile of mud; the farms at Pocketville were carved away in great slices. T h e Swiss colony at Santa Clara clung to the barren hillside, losing only their month's work on the ditch, but Jacob Hamblin and the others of the settlement lost everything: the fort, the orchards, the molasses mill, and the small burr flour mill.

T h e rain was finally over, the flood damage estimated, and the city survey completed. At a general meeting the men decided that they would draw numbers from a hat to designate their lots, after which they might trade with each other if they cared to, or might later secure additional land. But no one was to move before the day assigned.

O n March 2 the camp was astir long before light. Many families had packed and were ready to move the night before; a few had hoped to be able to boast that they were first in the valley to reach their location. Brigham Jarvis told how he raced his team through the sage, up hill and down dale, tipping over the spring-seats and scattering some of his goods. At last he pulled up beside a large mesquite tree and said, "Get out, Mother; we're home!" They were the first settlers on the site of St. George.

William Carter's young wife, eager for an early garden, had come earlier with a grubbing hoe and shovel and cleared a space, only to learn when diey moved in with their wagon that she had grubbed on die wrong side of the stake. She could go down in history as having done the first road work in the new city.

There was so much work for all. In addition to clearing their lots and putting up temporary shelters of tents, willow sheds, dugouts, or small houses, there was the business of getting the water to the land, always the first necessity and always a co-operative task. Dr. Elwood Mead compiled information regarding this and in his Bulletin 124 (page 210), reported: "Notwithstanding this discouraging beginning, a ditch six feet wide and three feet deep was carrying water six miles by the end of 1862, through a timbered tunnel 900 feet long." N o r did this mean an end to their troubles. Dr. Mead continues: "In the first four years after

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St. George was founded, $26,611.59 was spent in repairing and replacing dams and sections of the ditch which thus far watered 420 acres, making a tax of over $63. per acre, for water alone."

While some men worked at the ditch and dam, others got out lumber, built roads, made adobes, quarried stone, or planted crops. Nor were the women and children idle, for they must assume the garden work, planting, hoeing, and irrigating, and must help according to their strength with every undertaking.

Hard as it was, it was not all drudgery. There were quiltings and carpet-rag sewing bees for the women, dances, choir practices, parties, and socials. In Zion life should be happy as well as fruitful.

By 1859 the settlers at Santa Clara, Toquerville, and Washington had produced less cotton and more molasses, for it filled their need for sugar and was more marketable. Besides, they still had more cotton in their bins than they could make up. Because of the flood there had been little cotton raised during the first season after the settlement of St. George, but the harvest of 1863 produced such a surplus that they hauled 74,000 pounds back to the Mississippi River.

The shipment went in a long wagon train which was being sent to Kanesville, Iowa, the shipping point for all the church goods, machinery, and supplies. The agent at this time, Feramorz E. Little, noted in a letter to Brigham Young that "the cotton train from Dixie arrived today. I shall make arrangements for sacks." Evidently sacks were not available here, either, for a week later he reported that he had the Dixie cotton baled. This shows clearly how the cotton had been transported â&#x20AC;&#x201D; packed loose into the wagon bed, pushed tightly into the corners, heaped up and pressed down in order to force a ton or more into a three-bed wagon, to be drawn by a four- or six- or eight-ox team. This cotton brought from $1.40 to $1.90 a pound in trade, the church agent making the exchanges.

The 1864 cotton crop was not so large. This year they sent 11,000 pounds over the Old Spanish Trail to California and kept in stock 16,000 pounds. The price at home was set at $1.25 per pound. Cotton thus became legal tender to be used for paying bills or making exchanges.

By now it was evident that if they were to raise cotton with any profit they must manufacture it at home. They decided upon a mill site near the town of Washington where there was water power, and Brigham Young appointed Appleton M. Harmon to supervise the project all through the building and installation of machinery. During the two

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years from 1865 to 1867 while they waited for the completion of the mill, the people turned more and more to the production of other crops.

When the factory was ready for production of cotton cloth in 1867, the people increased their cotton acreage. By 1870, Mr. Harmon had raised the walls of the building a second story and added machinery which would handle wool, or cotton and wool combinations. The factory was now the largest west of the Mississippi with good prospects for its success. In 1871 the future looked so bright that the Rio Virgen Manufacturing Company was organized with a capital stock of one hundred thousand dollars.

With the close of the Civil War and the coming of the railroad in 1869, the general picture began to change. Dixie could not compete with the large fields and the mills of the South. The people secured improved seed to be planted on the lower valleys on the Virgin River, but they could not get their crops harvested â&#x20AC;&#x201D; white men would not pick cotton, nor would their wives. Indian labor was out of die question.

Letters from the company show the inability of the business to meet its obligations. In one written on May 12, 1873, to A. F. McDonald, Brigham Young's secretary in St. George, A. R. Whitehead said: . . . To tell you the truth Bro McDonald we are losing money every day we run not being able to get hands to run more than 5 or 6 looms and we receive no money . . . . as far as we are able we are willing and would with pleasure pay up the President and all other debts we owe and will honor your orders on us as far as possible, but it is impossible to squeeze blood out of a turnip especially a bad one, and if orders for Cash come and we have not got it, the parties holding the orders will have to wait until we do have it....

So the business limped along until 1910, when the factory was closed, and the whole venture became history. Today a cotton plant in Dixie is rare indeed, except as some rows have been planted as curiosities, to show school children who must study local history and to celebrate the centennial.

T H E SWISS COLONY AT SANTA CLARA A part of the over-all plan for the colonization of southern Utah was the wine mission, in which some twenty-six families of Swiss converts, newly arrived from their native land, were called to settle at Santa Clara, just five miles west of St. George. The names of this group were not called individually from the stand, but they were designated as the Swiss company and given some special instructions by Brigham Young. They arrived at their destination on November 28,1861, about four days ahead

The Washington Cotton Factory in 1928. In the middle background a view of the mountain sacred to the Indians, Shinob-Kiab, or God's Mountain. On the top of Shinob-Kiab is a crude altar which was used by the medicine man, where in solitude he would hold communion with the Great Spirit.

The factory and its employees at the height of its production, about 1870.

Appleton M. Harmon superintended the building and the installation of the machinery. The local women and girls were trained in weaving the fabric by converts from Wales, James Davisdon and his wife and daughter.

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of the St. George group. A significant comment about them was written

by George A. Smith: . . . We met a company of fourteen wagons, led by Daniel Bonelli, at Kanarra Creek. They excited much curiosity through the country by their singing and good cheer. They expected to settle at Santa Clara village where there is a reservation of land selected for them that is considered highly adaptable to grape culture. Six of the wagons were furnished by the church.

T h e company made a temporary camp around the small adobe meeting-house built by die Indian missionaries. Those who had been hauled down by church teams might sleep in this building until shelters could be made, but even these must wait upon die digging of the ditch.

Spring comes early in this land, and if they were to produce their food next season, they must have some seed in the ground in February. By Christmas Eve they had finished a ditch which had cost $1,030.00 in labor.

Then came the rain, and on February 2 the flood which drove them all from the valley to the higher land, many of them totally without protection until the large tent was brought from St. George. As soon as the water subsided, they returned to their ditch-making. Work began on February 17, and by March 16 they had the ditch completed at a cost of $4,000.00 in labor.

T h e first months for these people would have meant near starvation had it not been for the assistance they received from the earlier setders, who divided their own meager stores with diem. Dudley Leavitt and others several times brought beef from the herd that ran wild in Bull Valley, and distributed it among the families according to the number of children in each.

T h e early settlers had lost so much of their cultivated land that all except Jacob Hamblin were now counseled to move to other locations.

In 1870 Hamblin was called to Kanab, thus leaving the land entirely to the Swiss. So industrious and thrifty were these people that in 1873, just twelve years later, the Deseret News reported: The Santa Clara settlement consisting of 20 families, 12 of whom are Swiss and were sent there by the Perpetual Emigration Fund without a dollar have got houses, land, vineyards, horses, wagons, and cattle and are sending 100 children to school, besides having a number too small to go.

The donations they handed in to Bp Hunter he sent to the poor in St. George, they having no poor in Santa Clara.

These people raised no cotton, but specialized in fruits and grapes.

They dried their fruits for market, peddling them in the fall to the

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The dugout provided the first temporary shelter for many of the immigrants.

Built back int0 tne hill, the projecting area walled and tightly roofed, the temperature was fairly constant, warm in winter and cool in summer. The door opening was covered by a tarpaulin, wagon cover, or a blanket. A fireplace built at the back provided warmth, light, and cooking facilities.

Typical of the first permanent homes are the one-room adobe with a large fireplace. The lean-to at the back was built of adobe, of willows, or of poles.

Lumber for roofing and other essentials was scarce and expensive.

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northern settlements in exchange for potatoes and flour. They always raised a variety of vegetables, always had something to sell or trade, always used their basic skills to advantage. T h e adage "Waste not, want not" was evident in every home. They made their contributions to the general cause in their "Tithing Labor" on the tabernacle and later on the temple, often walking the five miles over and back.

During the years before the cotton factory was finished, all the settlements turned more to the production of molasses and wine. But very early some of the brethren saw the dangers inherent in producing wine.

According to the minutes of the H i g h Priest's Q u o r u m for February 28, 1869: Henry W. Miller said he did not know that the saints would be better off if they made 1,000 gallons of wine if they drank it all. It will be dear bread if we have to haul our wine up north to buy it with. We can talk of making wine, but where will we get our cooperage? California can get their wine to Salt Lake Market in 48 hours. Wine will be a drug, but by getting the raisin grapes and putting them up we can procure our bread cheaper than by raising it.

At this time Miller was voted down, and the wine-making project continued. Since tithing was paid "in kind," the clerk at the tithing office received wine, but because the quality was not uniform, it was difficult to market. In an effort to standardize the product, on September 20,1879, the clerk issued instructions for the people to pay their tithe in grapes, which an experienced m a n would work up. T h u s the church became the largest maker and dispenser of wine; the wine cellar smelled to high heaven, and children often gathered to watch Brother Jarvis at his work and to count off die rows of fifty-gallon barrels or to taste the "pummies."

W i n e was served for the sacrament in all the wards. Though die people were counseled to take only a little sip, some brethren grew overenthusiastic until a boy carrying the pitcher had to follow along to refill the goblets. At one county fair a fifty-gallon barrel of wine was set on the north side of the tabernacle and a dipper tied to it with a long string, the theory being that people should bring their own drinking cups. A few men loitered in the heavy shade until the barrel was empty.

Many problems grew out of the business of tithing wine, both in storing and disposing of it. O n November 21, 1885, F r a n k Snow wrote to Bishop William B. Preston in Salt Lake City:

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Dear Brother: . . . In one of your recent letters you ask if we cannot send you a few barrels of wine occasionally by teams going to Milford after freight, and thus dispose of some of the large stock we have on hand.

This we can do willingly, but still that will be a slow process of disposing of the immense quantity we have. There seems to have been no effort made to dispose of the tithing wine, and it has accumulated until we have near 6,000 gallons, good, bad, and indifferent, and a good deal of it is decreasing instead of increasing in value, and should be disposed of, besides we have no room to store any more, and the people have considerable in their possession as they have paid none during the past season. . . .

O n August 25 of the next year he wrote to Bishop J. C. Cannon to say that: " T h e Tithing Office will need 40 or 50 barrels for its wine this season, and wishes to know if they can be procured through the General T.O." In November, 1889, Edward H . Snow wrote: . . . Our sales during the year do not amount to half what we are obliged to make up from the grapes that are brought in. I mean the Isabella grape which does not seem to be good for anything else only on a small scale. We have made at this office alone over 600 gal. this year. We cannot refuse the grapes or the wine and I see no way to get rid of it except to ship it to the Genl. Office.

Finally, on August 20, 1891, he wrote again to Bishop William B. Preston asking pointedy as to whether or not they should continue to receive either grapes or wine as tithing. O n July 9,1892, die Stake H i g h Council issued a ruling that no more wine be served for sacrament in any of the wards. By 1900 the people were counseled to make no more wine, and to dig up their vineyards except for such grapes as diey could eat fresh or as could be dried for raisins, and the Thompson Seedless was introduced on the Virgin and Muddy Valley setdements to establish a raisin industry.

H e r e again the river came into the picture. T h e vines were planted, grew rapidly, and for about three seasons produced abundantly. A cleaning plant was installed, and raisins of high quality, packed in twenty-pound boxes, were freighted out. T h e n diere was a cloudburst far up the headwaters, a violent flood, and in a matter of a day or two the stream ran where the grape farm had been.

By 1874 the people of Dixie were considering other new crops.

Joseph W . Young encouraged die brethren to plant castor-oil beans, certain that they would bring a good return: . . . the land would produce from twenty-five to forty bushels per acre. One gallon and a half of good castor oil and a half gallon of inferior quality could be obtained from each bushel.

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As early as 1864 "Ego," one of the authors of the hand-written paper, " T h e Vepricula," had spoken facetiously of die price of tobacco, saying that a Dixie Convention had succeeded in reducing the price from three to two dollars a pound, when if the growers had held to the higher price, they could have easily secured it â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "the scarcity of the article and the great demand justify this conclusion." At any rate, he argued, the cotton price had been set at $1.25 a pound, and it was twice as hard to raise tobacco.

Although it was never raised on a commercial scale, there is evidence that some people did grow their own tobacco. Instructions to the members of the United Order issued October 1,1874, said: Inasmuch as some continue the use of tobacco, and as it is good for sick cattle, and when planted in orchards is said to be a preventive against the coddling moth, it is recommended that enough be raised to at least supply our own wants.

With regard to the production of grapes their advice was more definite: As rapidly as possible the finest varieties of grapes for raisins should be added to those already in our southern settlements and all our markets supplied with the best of raisins. So far as wine and brandy are produced, pains should be taken that they be of the purest and best qualities, and vessels and storage cellars should be prepared for keeping the wines in the best condition.

Few projects were started with more enthusiasm or pursued with more diligence than that of silk-making. T h e tablespoonful of tiny white eggs, so small they were almost microscopic, looked innocent and easy to handle when they were spread out on a single sheet of paper.

But by the time they had shed their growing skin the fourth time and had become as large as a woman's forefinger, requiring armloads of mulberry branches daily, they filled a newspaper-covered attic or a special room in the house and occupied the time of the youngsters of the family, who had to climb mulberry trees and break off the small branches loaded with leaves.

T h e worms were delicate, sensitive little creatures in spite of their voracious appetites, for wet leaves gave them such violent stomach-aches that diey died. They did not like electric storms, either, for lightning and thunder terrified them. Watchers noticed that they held their heads high and waved their antennae wildly, and afterward many were found dead. Since there was no other visible cause of their demise, die keepers'

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autopsy pronounced them dead of fear. In spite of all these casualties, diere were enough that survived to keep die feeders busy, and the sound of their eating was like rain on the roof.

T h e final care of the cocoon was entrusted to experts who unreeled the filament, spun them together to make a fine thread, and wove the cloth. A t least two beautiful dresses are still worn on special occasions by descendants of some of diese women. Their shimmering crispness attests to the fact that they are genuine silk, but as an industry either for making clothes for themselves or for earning money, the silkworm business died a quiet death.

F r o m the first, the people of the Cotton Mission expected great tilings; they were always on the edge of something wonderful about to happen. H a d not Brother Brigham prophesied that they would build a thriving city ? A n d was not Brother Amasa L y m a n repeating a promise made earlier when he said on March 25, 1860, that this part of the state would yet be the head instead of the tail? It was the business of die local people to help to bring about these predictions. As early as 1862 they had dreamed of having clear, cold water, free from sediment and mineral. After the proper business of locating the underground stream by means of a forked peach stick in the hands of a waterwitch, they sank a well on the public square. It was 172 feet deep when John Laub arrived in May, 1863, and he worked on it until the end of July. Charles L. Walker on June 21,1863, reported: ". . . the artesian well has been bored to the depth of some 200 feet, but no water issues forth as yet.. ."

Another lovely dream was born when the authorities decided to make a wharf and warehouse at Call's Landing on the Colorado River, and thus establish a point to which passengers and freight could be brought by water. All the contemporary records make much of the promise of this undertaking. In 1864 George Laub wrote that they were about to: . . . open a pass for forin emigration and our merchandise to come through this portion of the country from the California gulf and thence up the Colerado which is now in operation by companys going down to open trade and building ware houses to receave shipping which will come within 100 miles of St. George.

But as the well remained a dry hole in the ground, so the rock walls of a huge two-story house stood beside a wharf on which no boat ever unloaded any cargo. T h e people filled up the hole, and the waters of Lake Mead later covered the warehouse; the castor-oil presses and tan-

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ning vats were discarded and die mulberry trees grew luxuriant for lack of silkworms to feed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all before the looms of the cotton factory stopped running.

Perhaps the best evidence of the uncertainty of life here is shown by a list of the towns that were, and are no more. In the Zion Park area where Virgin, Rockville, and Springdale combined support in 1961 a population of some five hundred people, eight other settlements were begun and had an existence of from three to twenty years. They were reported in conference minutes and by visiting brethren in letters to the presiding authorities, and in the census of 1863 or 1870 or both. They include Pocketville, Adventure, Northup, Shunesburg (Shunsberg), Prattsville, Mountain Dell, Duncan's Retreat, and Grafton, names strange to most people of the area today. Harrisburg, established in 1859, was for about fifty years the center of a thrifty village of some thirty families whose homes were surrounded by vineyards and orchards.

Silver Reef, at its peak a city of fifteen hundred, passed quickly with the depletion of the mineral veins and the drop in the price of silver, and is today two or three houses amid the desert growth that is hiding the remaining foundations of what were substantial buildings. Only an enclosed graveyard atop a hill remains of what was the town of Hamblin, which from 1870 to 1890 was a way place between Pioche and Cedar City, over the hill from Pinto â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a village large enough to need two schoolteachers. Bellevue moved over and changed its name to Pintura; Hebron transferred many of its buildings and all of its people to the present town of Enterprise, leaving behind little except its dead.

The first location to be called Enterprise was one mile south of the town of Washington, a small group on a cotton farm, with all signs of it now erased. Camp Lorenzo, up the river some eight miles east of Washington, was the center of the cotton production for the United Order of Brigham City, the only sign today being the walls of a very large, two-story rock house, stripped of roof, floor, and other woodwork, yet dignified in its nakedness by the quality of its stone and design.

Near the confluence of the Santa Clara Creek and die Virgin River at least four settlements were established within a few miles of each other: Tonaquint, Heberville, Atkinville, and Bloomington, the first two of which were sometimes referred to by facetious residents as "Seldom Sop," because, they said, they had nothing but Virgin Bloat in which to sop their bread, and "Never Sweat" because the men, sent by others and with no heart in their assignment, refused to hurry.

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Pine Valley Mountain, source of Dixie's life-giving water. From its base come many small streams which combine to form Ash Creek, Santa Clara Creek, Leeds Creek, Pinto Creek, and others, each supporting its own communities.

Innumerable springs and seeps supply ranches and farms. From the very beginning the life of St. George has depended upon the east and west springs.

W i t h the exception of Silver Reef, the story was always the same â&#x20AC;&#x201D; water. At Harrisburg, the springs dried up or the water was diverted to be used at Leeds or elsewhere. But with all die villages on the river, Shunesburg excepted, the problem was the river. People settled upon the sandy bottom land where the business of getting the water out was relatively simple and the returns in crops were quick and good â&#x20AC;&#x201D; until a flood came. T h e n the river changed its course and ran where the town had stood, but left another good location farther down and on the opposite side. Other people took that up, changed the name, established themselves and stayed several years in comparative prosperity until another flood scooped out their holdings.

Thus, looking back, it would seem that the early settlers explored and experimented, and lived on dreams; that, beaten again and again, they remained to try something else. True, the population will always be limited by the amount of available land and by the problem of the river, until the wonder is not that so many left, but that so many remained. A n d the fact is that they have succeeded. Count all their failures, label them, number them, and tabulate them, and essential success still emerges.

O n the plus side of the ledger list the people raised and trained in Dixie who have gone out to become leaders in other areas. Look again at the beauty and permanence of its public buildings, consider its homes, visit its modern motels and places of business, and see how a people have come to adapt, to make assets of their liabilities.

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[The following song was composed by Charles L. Walker, the poet laureate of Dixie, sometime during the late 1860's. It was sung at a concert in the St. George Hall during one of President Brigham Young's and President George A. Smith's periodic visits to the Cotton Mission.

It became a favorite and was sung on numerous occasions by Walker and others, especially Samuel L. Adams. It has taken its place today in well-known folk m u s i c ] ST. G E O R G E A N D T H E D R A G O N Oh, what a desert place was this When first the Mormons found it; They said no white men here could live And Indians prowled around it.

They said the land it was no good, And the water was no gooder, And the bare idea of living here, Was enough to make men shudder.

CHORUS

Mesquite, soap root, prickly-pears and briars, St. George ere long will be a place That every one admires.

Now green lucerne in verdant spots Bedecks our thriving city, Whilst vines and fruit trees grace our lots, With flowers sweet and pretty.

Where once the grass in single blades Grew a mile apart in distance, And it kept the crickets on the go, To pick up their subsistence.

CHORUS

The sun it is so scorching hot, It makes the water siz, Sir. The reason why it is so hot, Is just because it is, Sir. The wind like fury here does blow, That when we plant or sow, Sir, We place one foot upon the seed, And hold it till it grows, Sir.

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Especially delightful in morning or late afternoon is Snow's Canyon, a ten-minute ride on U. 18 from St. George. Here are vivid color and unusual formations combined in a spectacular panorama. The view from the rim is breath-taking, but a ride into die valley brings a new surprise at every turn. Motion picture sets point up the natural beauty and add interest.

Just beyond Snow's Canyon are two perfect volcanic cones, the source of the black lava so much in evidence. Twenty minutes farther brings you to the village of Pine Valley, a summer retreat, where the

white clapboard church, oldest in continuous use in Utah, adds an air of New England to the landscape.

St. George is distinguished, even as it is ennobled, by three remarkable buildings: the Courthouse, the Tabernacle, and the Temple. The Courthouse guarantees the basic American rights to every citizen; the Tabernacle declares freedom of worship to the world; the Temple symbolizes the mysteries of eternity and man's yearnings for the intangibles that give purpose to his life.

Going north on U.S. 91, through the villages of Washington and

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KI//NS OF DRUGSTORE AT SILVER REEF Leeds, a three-mile side trip will take you to the ghost town of Silver Reef. Here fabulous mines produced $10,500,000 worth of silver from 1876 to 1908. Now the arch of the drugstore stands skeletal among the ruins. One home and the Wells Fargo Bank remain intact in what was a city of fifteen hundred people.

Or take U. 17 at the junction through Hurricane, whose orchards and fields depend upon the ditch clinging high on the hillside. U. 15 takes you on; from the top of the mesa, the towers of Zion, jagged against the sky, grow more deeply colored as you approach. The Three Patriarchs on one side and the Sentinel on die odier suggest the grandeur which lies ahead, culminating at die Temple of Sinawava.

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Looking down the valley from the Temple of Sinawava. The Great White Throne in middle distance, the Narrows up the valley.

"he FALLS OF SIN A WA VA fter a summer shower, iote the work °f erosion t the top where a narrow \ulley is being cut.

An historic picture of GEL'S LANDING. The top of this monolith may be reached by an easy trail from the back, ^us many have enjoyed the view.

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Make haste slowly in Zion. Take time to stop, to get out, to sense the atmosphere of the place. Join a guided tour and let one who is familiar with the area interpret it for you, or follow one of the wellmarked trails by yourself so that you may explore a little. Sit down, relax, enjoy the view, and feel your tensions melt away.

Against the magnitude of these cliffs, rising to infinity, man's fife is but a breath. How many aeons did it take to deposit this eighthundred-foot ledge of red standstone? How many more to cut diese sheer, polished walls, by a river slicing inches in a century? In the presence of these, petty worries dissolve, immediate, urgent problems shrink. Here is a place to gain poise, to linger and invite your soul.

You leave Zion by way of the switchbacks that wind up and up to a mile-long tunnel through those solid peaks. Stop at one of die

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windows and look back at what lies behind. At this elevation the snake's-eye view you had from the bottom of the canyon becomes, if not exactly an eagle's-eye view, at least a chance to look bodi up and down at this incomparable land.

Emerging into the daylight, you see many different formations.

CEDAR BREAKS Here are up-thrusts cut by long, vertical parallel seams, chalk-white, marked off into ordered designs, as in the famous Checkerboard Mountain. The high mountain road now winds over broken country cut by canyon and valley, dotted by clearings and ranch houses.

Mount Carmel Junction offers so many possibilities for adventure that, unless your trip is scheduled, you may be at a loss to choose between them: to the right via Kanab to the Grand Canyon or to the Glen Canyon Dam; or to the left to Salt Lake City and eastern points; or if your time is limited, to a brief circle and return.

If this last is your choice, you travel up Long Valley to the summit where the headwaters of the Virgin and the Sevier interlock their fingers, through picturesque villages and pastoral scenery. If you enjoy high mountains, tall timber, and deep undergrowth, with lakes well

RED CANYON

stocked with fish, take the left road at the junction. Stop at Navajo Lake as long as you can, but be sure to keep climbing until you reach Brian Head Point, literally the top of the world.

Below is Cedar Breaks, an amphitheater in tones of red, where the wind and weather are at work at their carving. Beyond, the vista opens so far that you are caught up with a sense of being on top of the world, away from the smog and clangor, the race with time and the need of tranquilizers. This will be a moment to treasure.

One of the musts of your trip should be Bryce, a mere fourteenmile trip from U.S. 89. A vivid arch at Red Canyon tells you to look for color ahead, but nothing can prepare you for the impact. Suddenly

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there it is at your feet, a fifty-five-mile amphitheater full of myriads of forms, grouped and scattered in enchanted chaos, their colors ranging through all the combinations of red, orange, yellow, and brown, many of them tipped with a frosty white.

In the evening they glow translucent as with an inner light, die tips still flaming after the base is wrapped in shadow. At dawn they drop their blue veil and wait for the sun to limn dieir tops with a pencil line of gold. You cannot describe it; pictures never quite capture it. You can only experience the wonder and magic of it, and the memory will be as a fresh breeze across your face, or a cool draught to a parched throat.

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SONG COMPOSED BY REQUEST FOR THE BOYS W H O WERE

POUNDING ROCK I N T O T H E TEMPLE FOUNDATION ( T u n e : "Cork Leg") Now, I pray you be still and all hush your noise, While I sing about Carter and the Pounder and boys.

How the old hammer climbed and went toward the skies, And made such a thump that you'd shut both your eyes.

"Go ahead now, hold hard, now snatch it again," Down comes the old gun, the rocks fly like rain; Now start up that team, we work not in vain, With a rattle and clatter, and do it again.

Slack up on the south, die north guy make tight, Take a turn round the post, now be sure you are right; Now stick in your bars and drive your dogs tight, Slap dope in the grooves, go ahead, all is right.

Now, right on the frame sat the giant Jimmy Ide, Like a brave engineer, with the rope by his side, "Go ahead, and just raise it," he lustily cried, "I run this machine and Carter beside!"

I must not forget to mention our Rob, Who stuck to it faithful and finished the job; The time it fell down and nearly played hob, He ne'er made a whimper, not even a sob.

Here's good will to Carter, the Pounder and tools, Here's good will to Gardner, the driver and mules, Here's good will to the boys, for they've had a hard tug, Here's good will to us all and the "little brown jug."

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Some might wonder how a temple could be built here. "We do not need capital," said President Young. "We have the raw materials, we have the labor, we have the skill. We are far better able to build a temple here than the Saints were in Nauvoo."

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T H E TABERNACLE " . . . a large city would yet be built on that ground & Domes, steeples & spires would reach 250 feet in the air." Fourteen years after this prediction was made and hundreds of miles away, John D . Lee wrote his version of the prophecy made by Brigham Young before the Cotton Mission was established. T h e fact that the story was already folklore might have helped to determine the architecture of the important public buildings; there were those that said it set the m i n i m u m height of steeples and towers.

T h e first public building, the Social Hall, was well under way when President Young wrote to Erastus Snow on October 1, 1862, a letter of general counsel in which he said: . . . As I have already informed you, I wish you and the brethren to build, as speedily as possible a good, substantial, commodious, well-finished meeting house, one large enough to comfortably seat at least 2000 persons, and that will not only be useful, but also an ornament to your city and a credit to your energy and enterprise.

I hereby place at your disposal, expressly to aid in the building of aforesaid meeting-house, the labor, molasses, vegetable and grain tithing of Cedar City and all places and persons below that city.

I hope you will begin the building at the earliest practicable date; and be able, with the aid hereby given, to speedily prosecute the work to completion.

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Letters were also sent to the presiding officers at Cedar City and those in all points between, advising them of their responsibility in helping to erect this building, the Tabernacle, as it was called. T h e cornerstone was laid on the next birthday of President Young, June 1, 1863, and the final stone to complete the tower on December 29, 1871. Each was the occasion of an impressive ceremony, with songs by die choir, a dedicatory prayer, and the Hosanna shout by the congregation.

Completed, the St. George Tabernacle amply fulfilled the suggestion diat it be an "ornament to your city and a credit to your energy and enterprise," for in its general lines it is perfecdy proportioned with an upsweep of tower that satisfies the aesthetic sense. Simple in design, it is built of the red sandstone from the hills to die north, each block handcut for its special place, as were the patterned caps over the doors and windows. T h e wood-turned embellishment on the cornices complements the structure, so that the total effect is a building which some architects declare to be the most beautiful in the state.

T h e interior is equally impressive. A self-supporting circular staircase with a hand-carved, fitted balustrade leads from each entrance to the gallery above. T h e frieze around the walls and the designs in the ceiling were locally made of native materials. T h e pioneers discovered a deposit of gypsum six miles away, and by experimenting with it, produced plaster of paris which set up hard and white. With moulds of dieir own making, they worked out the design, so that it remains today as perfect as when it was put there, truly a monument to the skill of its builders. These men were not apprentices; they were master mechanics, trained in the east and in foreign lands.

THE COURTHOUSE

By November, 1866, the county officials decided to erect a courthouse, and set forth an appropriation of five hundred dollars to begin work on the basement, "to be expended under the superintendence of Judge McCullough." They next presented a proposition to the people that they increase the tax one-fourth of one per cent in order to finance the building. T h e response of the people was: in favor of the increase, 304 votes; against it, 80 votes.

Erastus Snow writing to Brigham Young in June, 1868, reported: . . . Our tabernacle begins to make a respectable show. The basement story is finished, and the main floor timbers will soon be in their places. Work is also progressing on the Court House. My new house is enclosed, the family occupying the wing and the carpenters in the main building.

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The above picture taken soon after the turn of the century was evidently occasioned by a rare snowfall. In the foreground, the first Social Hall, begun before there was a house in the valley and finished by November, 1863, was the center of community life until the completion of the Tabernacle. Dances were held in the basement, plays, fairs, and meetings on the main floor.

Same street about 1910. Telephone poles are up, pavement being put in.

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On May 10, 1870, George Laub wrote that visiting brethren complimented die people upon what they had accomplished in so short a time, upon the beauty of their habitations and the way they had sustained diemselves, and "how they got their building materials they could not see." There are accounts of at least sixty homes finished or under construction by that date, many of them large, two- or three-story buildings. And at least twenty-three houses built at this time in the northwest part of St. George are still standing and occupied. Others are scattered in all parts of the town.

There was no money available at this time, or in fact for some years.

Taxes were paid in produce; people lived by barter. That the county officials planned to make their wages from the profit of the exchange is shown by their price lists: At a special session of the Washington County Court held at St. George, October 30, 1869, the Assessor and Collector was authorized to accept produce on taxes as follows: Molasses, $1.25 per gal; corn, $1.50 wheat $2.50 per bu; cotton yarn, $3.50 per bunch; lumber, $6.00 per hundred; cotton lint 30^ per lb;flour$8.00 per cwt; shingles, $2.50 per bunch.

Not all these items were reissued to the workmen, but those that were had greatly increased in value. Consider the disbursement prices: Molasses, $2.00 per gal; corn, $2.00 per bu; flour, $10.00 per cwt; cotton yarn, $5.00 per bunch; beef, 10 & 12Y2 cents.

As with other public buildings, the basement and ground floor of the Courthouse were in use before the top was finished. The diary of George Laub beginning on January 2,1874, gives an excellent idea of the experiences of the workmen. He worked six days a week on the Courthouse through January, February, and March, without saying exactly what his work was until Monday, January 27, when he said he was putting the bannisters around the dome; later he said he was "at joiner work" (evidently the stair balustrade); still later he was foreman and supervisor for which he was to receive four dollars a day.

His problem came when he collected his pay. On January 17, he paid his territorial taxes in full, but was much annoyed because the new collector "added on Ten percent on the dollar . . . just because I was not prepaired to pay it the day before and he had the power in his own hands to do so. This Ellis M. Sanders never presumd to do in ten years." From this dealing he went five miles to the Cotton Factory to exchange his orders into goods, but could not get die articles he wanted.

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Later he accepted County pay, Tithing Office orders, "also receaved an order on R Bentleys Store by Wm Snow our County Judge," and also a meat order, $3.00, from M. P. Romney. Once only he "Receaved one hundred dollars gold coin on note Due by John Pymn," but that was evidently a private transaction rather than a public debt.

In design the Courthouse resembles the old Council House of Salt Lake City, now destroyed, or the Statehouse at Fillmore. Indeed, the square-built building with the dome on top seems standard for courthouses of the day from east to west — the one at Vandalia, Illinois, is strikingly similar. In this building as in the Tabernacle, there was embellishment of the ceiling in the courtroom, woodwork beautifully finished, and quality construction throughout. The portico on the front, the dome on top — fully equipped with scaffold and trap door for a hanging, should one be decreed, the cells in the dark cellar — all marked the dignity of the law and functional execution of it.

That a people living as these did with survival always the immediate problem facing them should build this house is doubly significant.

It marks them as Americans with respect for constitutional rights of all, even the non-Mormons and "Jack" Mormons among them.

T H E TEMPLE The Cotton Factory was in operation, the Tabernacle complete with roof and waiting only the tower and the final embellishments, the Courthouse almost done when on the last day in 1871 Brigham Young called together the leaders of the Cotton Mission. They met in Erastus Snow's home, "The Big House," twenty-seven of them, and included besides himself and George A. Smith, the local, stake and ward officers.

Immediately after the opening prayer, and without preliminary, President Young asked what they thought of building a temple here.

"Glory! Hallelujah!!" Erastus Snow shouted, leaping to his feet, "and all present seemed to share his joy." So wrote James G. Bleak in his account.

It is easy to understand the enthusiasm of Erastus Snow, for as leader of the Cotton Mission, he felt a special responsibility for its success. When in a public speech on March 19,1867, John Taylor said that, "St. George is the best and most pleasant looking city in die Territory, outside of Great Salt Lake City," and when President Young wrote in a letter that "it is probably the finest city in the Territory," he had felt a glow of pride, though he knew the financial status of the people better than either of them. But now to suggest this town as the site of a temple,

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Brigham Young's home in St. George where he spent his winters from 1874 to 1877.

The home of Israel Ivins, surveyor of the city, first physician in St. George.

The Lorenzo Clark adobe home, built in 1865. Clark was a pioneer leather tanner in Dixie.

The Margaret Laub home, representative of the homes of people of moderate means.

The Thomas Cottam house, built before 1870, has been home to four generations of Cottam's.

The William Carter home, now nearly hidden by one hundred-year-old trees, was built before 1870.

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die first to be finished in the west, would be a distinction which would forever set it apart from the ordinary settlement. More than that, it would insure the permanence of the whole colonizing venture.

Surely some of the group, remembering the hardships of die past ten years, the difficulties with the river, die times when food had been so scarce that they had been forced to ration flour until teams could go north for it, might wonder how a temple could be built here. If it were to depend upon the twelve hundred people in St. George or even the 2,631 in the whole county, it could not be built, for none of the people were wealthy and many were desperately poor.

"We do not need capital," President Young told them. "We have die raw materials, we have the labor, we have the skill. We are far better able to build a temple here than the Saints were in Nauvoo."

During the spring and summer Erastus Snow and his fellows explored die area for the necessary materials and planned to make roads to the rock quarries, both the black, volcanic stone and die red sandstone.

They located deposits of lime, gypsum, clay, and sand; they scouted Mount Trumbull for the tall pines. On November 6, 1861, the fall harvest over, the ground-breaking ceremony was held for the Temple, widi music, song, prayer, and speech, and immediately work on the excavation began. Men with shovels and spades marked the outline; a horse-drawn scraper could be used for the first few feet, but for the most part they must use shovel and wheelbarrow or shovel, windlass, and bucket. The actual building was to be one hundred and forty-two feet by ninety-six feet on the outside, but the excavation must be larger in order that drains'could be put in.

For the first four or five feet the ground was dry and hard, but farther down it was wet and soft. What should they do? They proceeded to dig the excavation to its required eleven-foot depth, and then to dig drains all the way around it to carry off the water "into a main drain 327 feet in length that runs east from the center tower." This business occupied a whole year and to February of 1873, when President Young came down and advised them to rock in the drains and fill in the foundation with small volcanic rock and drive it into the ground with a pile driver.

In reporting the progress of the work on March 21, 1874, Edward L. Parry, chief mason, made a full description and in summary of the accomplishment up to the completion of the foundation said: In the actual foundation of large volcanic rocks there are 64,000 cubic feet, in other words, 500 cords. In the drains above specified, there are 150

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cords of volcanic rock; which, together with the 80 cords of smaller volcanic rock driven down by the pile driver, gives a total of 93,440 cubic feet or 730 cords of black volcanic rock.

T h e pile driver mentioned was actually their cast iron cannon barrel, loaded with lead, wrapped around with rawhide, and fitted into a hoist. It was raised by horsepower some thirty feet and tripped, in this way tamping the stone into the damp earth and compacting the mass until the whole section would be perfectly solid.

Almost a year later the chief mason made another report, which gives a vivid picture of the activities and the number of men involved: About one hundred and forty-eight men are working on the walls and preparing the rocks. An average of eighteen teams are hauling rocks, delivering about ten cords per day. Two teams are hauling lime; also two teams are hauling sand.

The building is growing at the rate of about two and a half feet per week.

Average number of hands in the Quarry: One hundred men.

T o this total must be added some thirty-five men who were making roads to get out the timbers from T r u m b u l l Mountain, eighty miles away. T h e difficulties of this part of the project were more complicated than those attending the stone work, for the quarry was less than three miles away, and the blasting, loading, hauling, and cutting became routine after a while.

T h e timber, on the other hand, was eighty miles away over a dry road, which meant that the hauling of only one large beam might cost a m a n eight days' work. They learned to haul out barrels of water and cache them on the shady side of "hay rock," a large, square-topped stone where they could leave hay out of reach of range catde. Robert Gardner had charge of felling the trees, cutting the three-foot-square beams and the smaller timbers according to specification, and loading them.

This was really a labor of love for most of the local people, but it was also a work project by which many could secure food. Everyone contributed as he could. W o m e n did the workers' laundry free or they gathered to sew carpet rags for the factory to make up into strips for the hallways when the Temple should be finished. People too poor to give anything else might donate a part of their bagasse to help feed the oxen that hauled the stone. T h e teen-age guard who watched all night donated half his pittance; the Santa Clara Swiss walked five miles to the quarry, worked all day, walked back home, and donated half his wage.

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TAi? George Brooks home on Mount Hope, north of the city, was constructed in about 1878 of stone chips left from the building of the Temple.

The "Big House" built by Erastus Snow in 1868. The labor supplied from the northern settlements, some four hundred men, were boarded here while they fulfilled their mission calls to help build the St. George Temple.

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Very early in the project it became clear that the people who worked must have food, and there was not enough in Dixie. Orson W . Huntsman, a young married m a n from Hebron, Utah, wrote in detail of his trip dirough the northern towns collecting donations. Because it is so typical of many others, we quote from it here in some detail: Thursday 11 [April, 1872] . . . I commenced fixing up to start in company with James W. Hunt, T. N .

Terry, and Charley, son of Uncle Charles Pulsipher, to San Pete for flour and other provisions for the hands that are at work on the Temple in St. George, as the work is about to stop for want of means. So the Apostle E. Snow called on Father Terry and Uncle Charles Pulsipher to go through the settlements as far north as San Pete and preach donations to the people and try and raise something to assist on that building. . . .

Thursday 18th April We started with four horse outfits. The Brethren going on ahead preaching and we followed up holding the sacks and taking in everything the good people would give us. We went by way of Antelope Springs, Parowan, Beaver, and Fillmore, through Round Valley to Severe River. Here we left the Salt Lake Road and followed up the river for some miles. . . .

April 30 . . . we go on to Mount Pleasant where we commence to get our loads, flour, eggs, pork and store goods.

May 2 We start home. Father Terry and Pulsipher join us at Fort Ephraim, they each having teams and also loads. This makes quite a train of wagons, three 4-horse teams and diree 2-horse t e a m s . . . .

Wednesday 15 May 1872 Arrived home this afternoon finding all well but wanting bread, as the whole town was out of flour, and we had plenty of the good things to eat such as flour, pork and eggs. We donated part of our time and paid out of our loads for the rest of the time, therefore we had something to keep body and soul together and was able to do a little on the great work of building the temple at St. George.

This trip was only one of many, the accounts of which are carefully kept in the temple records, that every person w h o gave a cheese or sack of potatoes or any other item might receive full credit.

T h e official report at the close of 1876 gives a summary of the labor help that was supplied by die northern settlements: "some four hundred men â&#x20AC;&#x201D; carpenters, lumbermen, masons, laborers, teamsters &c, with generous supplies of provisions to partly sustain them while working."

These were regular mission calls, usually for forty days or longer, the men boarding at the Big House, their bread prepared at a public bakery, butter and cheese brought in from the ranch at Pipe Springs, their meat from the church-owned cattle herd there, and other items from the Tithing Office.

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Local people who put in full time on the Temple (every man was expected to donate one day out of ten as tithing labor) drew half their pay in cash and the other half in Tithing Office checks, Factory checks, and meat tickets. From the Tithing Office they could get an assortment of items such as would be donated or brought in for exchange; from the factory they might secure cloth, yarn, thread, or such items as the Factory Store had accepted from others; for the meat ticket they could get a weekly allowance of beef. Once a week two or three beeves were brought in from the church herd, butchered late in the evening after the flies had gone to roost, and distributed early in the morning. Long before daylight people would be standing in line.

Truly the building of their temple was a community project and a labor of love, with expert craftsmen giving it their best, proud that out of dieir own materials and skills they could have a part in creating a monument to stand as a symbol of their faidi.

Modern St. George, view taken from the black ridge looking east along Highway 91. Temple at extreme right, Tabernacle spire visible in the center, Courthouse dome discernible back center on left of the highway.

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"We intend to decorate it with the productions of our own hands," Brigham Young wrote in 1876. "Provo Factory is making upwards of a thousand yards of beautiful light-colored carpet for die building. Washington Factory is busily engaged in making some, and the sisters of die southern settlements are busy making rag carpets for the hallways.

Fringe is being made out of our Utah-produced silk for the altars and pulpits."

Because they thought of the Temple as something more than just another building, they had it plastered and painted a pure white, so that it stands "like an iceberg in a desert." "The most impressive sight west of the Mississippi River," one easterner exclaimed as he looked at it.

Symbolic of purity and light, of die things not made by hands, die Temple dominates the landscape, speaking to all who visit it of the inexpresssible yearnings of its pioneer builders, who in the midst of dust and sweat and weariness labored to put into tangible form their dreams.

The Social Hall, later \nown as the Opera House, was completed in 1880 and was the scene of theatricals and operas. Dressing rooms were in the right "L," the wine cellar underneath. At present the building is used by the UtahIdaho Sugar Company as a beet seed cleaning and testing plant.

First Dixie martial band. Left to right: William A. Terry, fames G. Bleak, fr., Wilford Terry, Elisha Cragun, Captain Oswald Barlow, Thomas Bleak, foseph Worthen, Orson Starr.

yhile the setttlers were still camped in heir wagons, they organized a choir, a and, and lyceum course. Joseph Orton scords that "in the large tent furnished by fro. Asa Calkin I was first to give a lecture v English Grammer."

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A pioneer is a coonskin cap and buckskin fringe, a long rifle, a bowie knife and a Colt forty-five. A pioneer is a log cabin in a wilderness of trees, a prairie schooner, a miner's pick, forty-acres and a mule. This is the story of America. This is her legend, her myth and her glory.

But there were other pioneers, reluctant trail-builders. They loved stone houses, paved streets, neat lawns and flower gardens, neighbors and stores and the law. They were social beings. When the time came to strike out alone, their gentle hearts wept.

All along the Mormon Corridor they sifted out into the sandy valleys of the mountains, Brigham Young men in Brigham Young towns, building die great Mormon dream.

Forsaking all others they cleaved unto this violent land. As Jacob wrestled his angel they wrestled the red-rocky desert, not to prosper but to survive. They knew they had courage; they had tested it. They knew they were strong, and they loved the land that taught them strength. And at last diey knew diey would win.

Still they were not true pioneers. They did not love to pioneer for pioneering's sake. They conquered the land to keep it. When diey knew it would be theirs, their minds turned backwards to those other towns. They yearned for schools, for libraries, for concerts, drama, debating societies, clubs, lyceums, and lectures. More than for food, which was scarce, they grieved for the gentle world of the intellect.

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SCHOOLS Before there were houses in St. George there were schools. The first of these was held in a wagon box while they were still camped on the 'dobe yard, then came the tent, then the willow huts, and finally the adobe ward schoolhouses. Sometimes, as Mardia Cox recorded, while the men still worked on the buildings the classes met on the ditch banks under die cottonwood trees. Martha taught the "little miserables of St. George," and saved "many a spindling form and dirty knuckle from the hard knocks of Brother Macfarlane's mahogany ruler." Her pay was twenty dollars in produce monthly. She had to collect for herself.

Josephine Jarvis Miles, another teacher, wrote " . . . the parents paid, or were supposed to pay, the tuition. Many couldn't pay anything.

Those who could, paid the teacher in produce which they could spare; whether or not it was useful for the teacher mattered little."

When an appropriation was made to the territorial government of fifty cents per pupil per twelve-week term, there were many who felt that the teachers were over-paid. But most of the tuition was paid in kind and that subject to the humiliating chore of collecting it from house to house.

One enterprising young lady set her weekly tuition rate at one quart of milk per student. Each week after the children brought the pails of tuition milk, she set it in a cheese tub, added her rennet and coloring, pressed the curd, then wrapped the round cheese in cloth and carefully buttered it over. At term's end she loaded her cheeses into a wagon and made the long trip to Salt Lake City. The trousseau that had seemed impossible in the fall became a reality on a cheese a week.

Students of all ages jammed into the little one-room buildings; sometimes eighty-five pupils of all grades were crowded into one room and taught by one teacher. In one year two hundred school-age children succumbed to an epidemic of diptheria.

In spite of these crowded conditions, the Presbyterian schools that flourished throughout the territory until 1887 (one thousand Mormon pupils in their schools in that year), were not made very welcome. In the Priesthood minutes of 1885 for the St. George Stake we find a proposal moved and sustained that all Church members who persist in sending their children to Presbyterian schools be disfellowshipped. The Presbyterian schools were tuition free, so their condemnation was bitterly opposed by many families. Finally, President J. D. T. McAllister, of the St. George L.D.S. Stake, asked that special provision be made for die

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children of people unable to pay for their own. There was a marked drop in attendance at Presbyterian schools following the announcement of this policy.

Scarcely a conference was free from a lengthy oration on the moral, educational, and social advantages of schools. President Edward H. Snow insisted in one sermon that the state owed an education to its citizens, to every child born into the world, and diat federal funds should be utilized for diis purpose before paying the salaries of federal officials "lashed upon our backs to oppress us in many instances."

The long-recognized need for advanced schooling in die valley was finally met with the organization of an academy modeled after the Brigham Young Academy at Provo. The first classes met in the tabernacle in 1888. Under the direction of Henry Eyring, James G. Bleak, and John M. Macfarlane, Brother Nephi Savage of Payson became the first professor of the new school. He was assisted by C. Workman ($20.00 a month and tuition) and John T. Woodbury ($60.00 a month), and at the suggestion of Karl G. Maeser, president of B. Y. Academy, an un-

The Woodward School built of cut red sandstone in 1901, named for George Woodward, chairman of the School Board and generous contributor of funds, scene of school-day memories for several generations of Dixieites.

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Dixie Junior College opened in 1911. Classes were held on the main floor while the carpenters finished the assembly hall upstairs. For fifty years the educational and cultural center of Dixie, this building will be retained as a part of the high school plant when the college is moved to the site of the new campus as is anticipated by 1962.

Fine Arts Building on the new campus of Dixie College.

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known matron was appointed to "visit the schools as often as possible... meet with the female students alone and instruct them on such subjects as it would not be proper for male teachers to dwell upon." Tuition per term was fifteen dollars, and students from out of town were boarded for three dollars and fifty cents. When students complained at die "high cost" of board, the stake president in a quarterly conference appealed to the people to support the school and lower their price to three dollars a term!

NEWSPAPERS As early as 1864, three years after the arrival of die first company, when bare survival sapped the strength of men, women, and children, the craving of these people to remain a part of the cultural world they had known brought to southern Utah its first manuscript newspaper, the "Vepricula" or "Little Bramble." Its editors, Charles L. Walker, Orson Pratt, Jr., George Burgoyne, and Joseph Orton, said in their Prospectus, "These papers are designed to be the emanations of four young men who desire to improve diemselves in the art of composition . . . by writing upon Literature and Arts and Sciences . . . also by traversing the airy realm of Romance and Fiction; for instruction and recreation." An ambitious objective for men whose working days lasted from five in the morning until dark at night.

CHARLES L. WALKER (1832-1904), poet laureate of Dixie, wrote many songs by which the people laughed at their troubles or sang them away.

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After a year and a month "Little Bramble" exhausted its writers, but Guglielmo G. R. Sangiovanni started anodier in 1868 which was introduced by Walker's poem, " T h e St. George Cactus."

When first the Mormons saw this land And pitched their tents upon the sand, With thorns and rocks sublimely grand, And here and there a lizzard, No daily mail or morning post Or telegrams to cheer the host No—diey to the world and news were lost, As yet we had no paper.

Years elapse—a change takes place, A Paper comes before our face Replete with humor, wit and grace, I mean the little Cactus.

And may its matters, prose and rimes Never be behind the "Times" And all subscribers pay their dimes To sustain the little Cactus.

Following these preliminary experiments, newspapers came and went as regularly, almost, as the seasons. T h e Star, the Union, the Pomologist, Dixie Times, Rio Virgin Times, Washington County News — all furnish us a rich history of the social life of the Cotton Mission.

In one issue of die Washington County News, the editor took exception to an article printed in Kanab's Lone Cedar which cited St, George as an example of what evil would result from the popular amusement of "street walking." Said the editor, the two cases of immorality that had resulted from this amusement had led to strict measures curbing "street walking." T h e Lone Cedar apologized and said that diey knew St. George girls were all that could be desired in purity, sense and charm.

A n earlier newsleaf, published only once in six months, came out on July 10 with a little item of news expressing thanks for the lovely mantle of snow that had fallen that morning! Obviously the dailies had their advantages.

Y O U N G MEN'S HISTORICAL CLUB N o branch of the cultural arts escaped the peoples' rigorous devotion. In 1873 a Young Men's Historical Club was organized. Under

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the solemn labels "United We Stand. Divided, We Fall!" and "We study die past, to judge of die future," the young men met, organized, drew up a constitution and bylaws, wrote two poetical mottos and assigned topics for discussion. Although the minutes of the meetings are brief, they show besides the expected religious topics for discussion such subjects as "The Heroes and Patriots of the South," "Matrimony, Marriage and Murder," "Navy Architecture," "History of Shorthand," "Catacombs of Paris," "Chivalry, Where It Originated." The secretary noted that one lecture by Robert McQuarrie on William the Conquerer's Courtship was "very comical," although he "spoke one hour." The club continued until July of 1875.

YOUNG LADIES' MAGAZINES The young ladies, no less anxious to improve themselves than their gentleman friends, painstakingly copied or wrote little essays which they assembled into elegant papers titled "The Little Girls' Magazine," "Young Ladies' Magazine" and "The Beehive." The most ambitious of these undertakings, "The Beehive," was beautifully illustrated and copied in a meticulous script that noted, among other things, that "a girl with bangs is like a cow with a board over half of its face... . And be she ever so meek and lovely with her hair combed back off her face . . . , when she hacks it off and peeks out of bangs the very devil is in her eyes and actions." The moral of the story, as no proper young miss would fail to observe, was that no man would take to wife a "banghaired" girl.

Again the girls were exhorted not to let themselves become "mere ornaments of society"; for, they were warned, there is nothing so despicable as the young lady who flirts and fidgets and fusses with notiiing in her head from morning until night but fancy clothes and dancing and games of cards. This warning of the evils of a life sedentary must have seemed just a bit superfluous to girls who rose at daylight to milk cows, tend to household chores, and work in the fields until darkness and fatigue forced them into early beds.

Whatever the tenor of the articles, the magazines must have proved popular because they continued over a period of five years.

ART CLASSES Although none of the drawings is now extant, drawings were laboriously contrived under the direction of a highly-accomplished French

CHARLES ELLIS JOHNSON, son-in-law of Brigham Young, prominent in St. George dramatics, a teacher of elocution, with his two sons, Ellis, left, fay, right.

Young Jay Johnson as he appeared as "Puck" *n a l°cdl production.

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artist, Philip Luba. Luba and his students, Seth Pymm, George Brooks, and Charles Walker, met in Brooks's bedroom and lavished many a twilight hour on their artistic creations.

THEATER By all odds the favorite expression of culture and the only serious rival of the dances and balls was the theater. In its first successful season, the St. George Drama Association, opening with the production "The Eaton Boy," "greatly shocked" theater-goers of 1862 by presenting in the title role a young lady wearing trousers! In the fall of 1863 the St. George Hall, a gray stone building with a red standstone foundation, was completed and the St. George Dramatic Association was founded.

Their very sizeable repertory included "The British Slave," "The Golden Farmer," "The Charcoal Burner," "Pittycody," and "Toodles."

President Brigham Young, attending the performance of "The Golden Farmer," stood up after the final curtain, and calling for Joseph Orton, publicly congratulated his excellent portrayal.

Miles P. Romney, Joseph Orton, C. L. Walker, A. W. Ivins, Caddie Ivins, Josephine and Hannah N. and Artemisia Snow, Isabel and Mary Romney performed in literally dozens of plays through these early seasons.

By 1878 President J. D. T. McAllister was asking the high council "if the Council thought that one night per week should be allotted for theatrical performances for the amusement of the people." Councilman Smith (no initials) "deemed it right that these things be countenanced but should be well guarded from evil . . . under the restrictions of the Priesthood." Councilman Angus thought "less evil was likely to exist in theatricals than dancing." Weekly theatricals under the supervision of Bishop Miles P. Romney were sustained by the council.

However popular, the drama occasioned the grave concern of die leading brethren. Because of its propensity to produce light-minded attitudes and vanity in the players and to encourage a life of amusementseeking in its viewers, the drama was the repeated subject of council meeting and sermon. In an opening address to the first dramatic club, Apostle Erastus Snow justified the entertainment by explaining that drama had been introduced into the Church by Joseph Smith, then he exhorted the Priesthood to "Control these amusements . . . watch over the flock to keep out the wolves." He further admonished the players to be "a pattern of conduct to the saints."

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The first St. George drama critic on record is Joseph E. Johnson in his newspaper, the Dixie Times. From him we learn that "Frank Wooley fulfilled the expectations of his friends, though he failed to keep up die nasal articulation and assumed the vernacular of the overdrawn Yankee."

Again Johnson complained, "There was a crowded house, and as we were able to procure only low-priced tickets, we were poorly provided to enjoy the playing. . . . If the Manager's style of courtesy and liberality towards the fraternity editorial had been equal in comparison to the playing, we would have said good, for non-professionals."

Of the Dixie Minstrels Johnson advised "those who have not seen the bill, we will say it is a good one, and not too long, so that the people will not be kept out of bed 'til too late an hour."

Following an advertisement of "All That Glitters Is Not Gold" is the revealing hint, BABES IN ARMS NOT ADMITTED. Customarily, of course, babies were bundled up and carried along not only to plays but to dances as well. At the earlier dances benches were set up along the walls and the babies lay there to sleep or squall while their mothers took a turn around the floor.

Admittance to these early plays was seventy-five cents â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a seemingly high price for desert country where hard money was as scarce as rain. But an eloquent reminder of the precious quality of that commodity comes to us from the record of receipts of the St. George Dramatic Association. The total receipts of one play were listed as $51.45. Only one dollar and seventy cents of that amount was cash. Again out of a total of $41.75, only seventy-five cents was cash. A third receipt shows $41.00 received with fifty cents cash. The remainder of these receipts was paid in molasses, vegetables, fruit, grain flour, Tithing Office (T.O.) script, or labor. Patrons who brought a commodity in excess, such as a very large squash, would receive some other commodity in exchange, perhaps a smaller squash or a bunch of carrots.

The drama continued to rival dancing as the most popular entertainment, but it was supplemented with lectures, lyceums, and an array of adult educational clubs.

LECTURES AND LYCEUMS An entry from an early diary of John Pulsipher reveals the really urgent desire of these people to gain a cultural education.

The young men and boys of our ward have a lyceum which not only learns us to speak in public but have subjects for discussion that are instructive.

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Very seldom I miss a meeting. Even when I lived out of town I attended pretty regular and went home seven miles at midnight. . . . I was bashful and awkward and used to dread for my turn to come. It seemed almost impossible for me to say anything at all. . . . I thought if I could do nothing more I could be present and help make up numbers and sustain those that could speak.

A seven-mile walk to and from an amateur lecture would demand something like fanatical determination to learn.

But of one of these lecturers C. L. Walker wrote in his journal, "Didn't like the way Brother [Dodge] gassed about himself. Did not feel edified." Apparently lecturers have not changed a great deal through the years.

Traveling companies that visited St. George each spring or fall received tremendous support in spite of pleas from bishops, stake presidents and high council to "patronize the home productions and not throw away hard-earned dollars on transient persons" who had no thought of building up the country but "were interested only in their own pocket books."

CLUBS Building up the country was a problem of ever-increasing dimension as the young people of prominent families grew up, were educated in the schools of the north, then could find no employment in St. George to utilize their new talents. The Commercial Club had as its goal "the energetic development of resources in St. George to keep the trained, educated youth at home." This was probably one of the first chamber of commerce organizations in the state.

Clubs were organized also for the training of nurses. One high councilman noted in urging the establishment of such a club that "sick people are often injured by ignorant nursing" and diat young ladies should learn the proper care of the sick as well as the laying out of the dead.

These early clubs are ample testimony of the spirit of participation existing among the colonizers. While many of the same names appeared again and again, there were always new names appearing, and hardly any name failed to appear somewhere on the roll or in the minutes of a club, improvement society, church leadership group, or entertainment committee. None was willing to be always an onlooker. Every man seemed anxious to develop his own talent. The mottos and credos of the organizations include along with the purpose of entertainment the desire for self-improvement, instruction, and development of talent.

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LIBRARY The town as a unit was actively engaged in die business of education. The first free public library in the state was established in St. George by community effort. Under the auspices of die Stake Sunday School, programs were presented diat charged for admittance one quart of molasses. Each program night, out in front of the Social Hall, an open barrel was set up to receive the tickets. When a barrel was filled with molasses, it was capped and rolled aside. Several fifty gallon barrels were collected, freighted to Salt Lake City and exchanged for books, which were placed at public demand in Joseph E. Johnson's news shop.

DANCING Culture does not always involve book learning. And the people of the Dixie Mission, like Mormons everywhere, loved to dance. They danced on die wire grass at the first camp east of St. George, they built a bowery and danced on hard, sprinkled eardi, then they danced in the first homes and finally in the Old Social Hall, the New Social Hall, The Courthouse, and in die basement of the Tabernacle. Accompanied by one of the eight violinists available or an accordianist and guided by the dancing-master, they whirled through quadrilles, reels, lancers, schottisches, polkas, varsoviennes and in later years the "wicked" waltz.

Dancing was so popular that it became the subject of discussion in many a high council meeting of the era. The waltz was early condemned for allowing the boys to "hug the girls too tight." Although Erastus Snow sagely advised diat "any severe rules and regulations adopted by die Priesthood would probably not have the desired effect . . ." and that "diere would be no harm in a small amount of waltzing in a decorous manner," the brethren tried set after set of rules. All public dances were strictly supervised, and were opened and closed widi prayer.

The minutes of one high council meeting called four young men to account for "not arising when the people were called upon to do so" and making "bleating noises" at the elder when he reprimanded them. The boys were also accused of "making merry" and of dancing out of turn.

Their failure to apologize would have resulted in the boys being "cut off from the Church."

People flocked in such large numbers to the dances that dancers had to be given numbers and called in turn. This probably accounted for the constant complaints of "boisterous talking, stamping and unseemly noises" prevailing at dances. Another bitterly lamented factor in all

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these dances was the free flow of Dixie wine. The managers of the dances were accused of being too "namby pamby, milk and water" to throw a drunk man out and keep him out. Councilman Cannon related diat a young man visiting them objected to one "pretty rough dance. A woman came in and knocked a man down and dragged him out."

In addition to public dances there were private supper dances and balls to which guests were bid by printed invitation. Full orchestras of horns, violins, accordions, and piano were hired for these occasions, and a favorite refreshment was oyster stew, although it was a rare bowl that ever saw an oyster.

As for every other social function, tickets were paid in kind. The returns from a private Charity Leap Year Ball consisted of fifteen yards of calico and bleached muslin, fifty-six pounds of flour, and five gallons plus one quart of molasses.

The musicians usually took their pay from whatever produce was taken in at die door. One fiddler recorded having received "a few discarded peaches" for two days work at the Washington County Fair.

So the life marked for privation became rich and full; the primitive and crude were overlooked and forgotten; today diis era is recalled as the Golden Age, the Great Day of Culture when St. George had an "opera" house, a thriving theater season, and countless improvement societies, clubs, lectures and lyceums. It was a time of hard work. It was a time of achievement.

Visible throughout the valley, the white DIXIE placed on the vermilion cliff by the first graduating class of Dixie College has become symbolic of the entire area.

The Melancthon Wheeler Burgess home, built in 1862, was the first house completed in St. George. Lumber was cut by hand with a cross-cut saw and hauled twenty-two miles from Pine Valley by ox team. Note adobe lean-to.

No longer standing; for years the house appeared much as it does in the picture surrounded by its luxuriant and charming gardens.

I was their duty to beautify Zion. The eople were advised to plant flowers and ines around their homes to add grace and eauty to even the most humble dwelling.

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The pioneers who came to the Virgin River Basin had to test the possibilities of their new home to determine for what it was best adapted.

They demonstrated that cotton would mature in the basin all die way from Zion Canyon to the Muddy Valley on the southern end of the Virgin's drainage basin. Indian corn, other common grains, sorghum cane, grapes, peaches, apricots, plums, and in the higher altitudes apples, pears, and berries seemed to do well enough after the problem of alkali was solved. The country seemed particularly adapted to fruit growing; the sandy, well-drained loam of certain localities and the many days of warm sunshine produced well-colored fruit of excellent flavor.

The farmers soon began to form associations for the improvement of crops. The earliest was the Gardeners' Club which was organized at St. George sometime in 1865. A letter from William H . Crawford of Washington to the Deseret News under date of August 25, 1865, gives evidence that the club was active at diat time. The letter told of the club's first exhibit, held at the St. George Hall, and praised particularly B. F. Pendleton's grapes and Walter E. Dodge's pears. The invited public "pronounced it the best show of fruits they had seen in Utah."

Crawford's letter gave the names of some of die members â&#x20AC;&#x201D; William Branch, Richard Bentley, B. F. Pendleton, Walter E. Dodge, Erastus Snow, Joseph E. Johnson (president), and Crawford himself.

Joseph E. Johnson, the genius of the club's organization, was a powerful force in the development of horticulture and floriculture in Dixie. In his newspapers, which he began publishing early in 1868, he passed on to the public his extensive knowledge in these fields; most of

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all he gave practical demonstrations of his skill on his own property in St. George. In 1876 his garden — both fruits and flowers — was pronounced by a group of visiting brethren from Salt Lake City as the finest south of Salt Lake City.1 His holdings stretched all the way through the block upon which Brigham Young built his home — still standing — in St. George. Here Johnson cultivated his trees, vines, and flowers, and carried on his nursery business. He wrote in the May, 1870, issue of the Utah Pomologist that he had over one hundred varieties of grapes. Grapes, Johnson argued, made a never-failing crop, and from his own experience he advised — both vocally and widi his pen — his many friends as to die best grapes for table use (early and late), for raisins, for show, and for wine. "Grape growing," he said, "must be a sort of specialty here; we have taken time by the forelock and . . . have imported the creme le creme of the worlds vineyards and hodiouses."

He advised his readers {Pomologist, February, 1871) as to the proper time to put out cuttings and how to care for the vines. They might put them on "poor, sandy, rocky gravelly ground, but give them plenty of cow manure and you will be rewarded with choice fruit," he said.

Johnson was an enthusiast about figs and pomegranates and noted with satisfaction diat both had survived die hard winter of 1869-70 without appreciable damage.

He probed every possibility of which he could think for adding agricultural strength to Dixie. He urged, after heartening experimentation, that die Gardener's Club members raise peanuts. "If they are a valuable and profitable crop for food and oil in the States, where oil and fat are cheap and plenty," he argued, "how much more so here, when diey are scarce and high . . . and add so greatly to our comfort and luxury." Walter E. Dodge had made a trip to California in 1862 and brought back five stands of bees.

Johnson acquired a start and began preaching bee culture, remarking in his Pomologist that "our apiary has been a busy and increasing scene." Just one year later, in the Pomologist of July, 1871, he remarked that Dixie should be one of the best honey-producing regions "for . . . this is a lucerne growing country. This plant is always plentifully in bloom and bees forage on it for honey strongly and constantly all season...."

1 James G. Bleak, MS History of St. George Stake, typescript in Utah State Historical Society library.

JOSEPH E. JOHNSON (1817-1882) was a pioneer in experimental agriculture, introducing exotic and decorative plants and fruits as well as different varieties of fruits.

H e propagandized for the production of the bena plant as a source for oil and for oil cake that might be fed to catde. Its oil could be used for salads and die seeds eaten as nuts. H e gave a Brother Foremaster a salute in his paper for his success in producing a sweet oil from the bena and prodded his readers to "pay greater respect to this valuable and worthy plant."

H e cited Luther Hemenway, Dr. Silas Higgins, and Henry Eyring for their success in grape grafting. But he must really have startled the community when he announced in die November Pomologist of 1870 that he had harvested a peck of Chinese upland rice from some widi which he had been experimenting. "Rice does well here and makes a good crop, if placed upon rich d a m p soil, and yields as much as wheat," he declared.

His ambition seemed limitless. H e imported a tiiousand sugar maples as an experiment in the development of a sugar industry in

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THOMAS JUDD (1846-1922) pioneered the standardization and commercial production of fruits and nuts in the LaVerkin, Hurricane area.

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Utah. "We have them planted in various localities that their adaptability and usefulness in these mountain regions may be tested," he announced in the Pomologist of April, 1870. During this year he was experimenting also with silkworms and expressed satisfaction widi his success. The mulberry tree, he opined, would not only furnish food for the silkworms; it would make the most beautiful shade for the city sidewalks.

Johnson loved flowers. The beauty of his garden with its terraced banks and borders of flowers, shrubs, and vines is a legend today in St. George. He lavished his love of the beautiful in nature on the grounds of his home and created there a little Garden of Eden that influenced many of the citizens of St. George and vicinity to seek by their own labor and ingenuity to do for themselves what he had, in one sense, done for them. In the Pomologist for April, 1871, we find a statement typical of his feeling for flowers.

Flowers lend an embellishing grace even to a rude house, and an air of taste, beauty and refinement to all the surroundings. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." None are so poor and humble but they may possess and cultivate flowers, which like the rain, the dew, air and water are the free bounteous gifts of our Father, and who should be so ungrateful for these exquisite blessings as to neglect to enjoy them fully.

In 1867 the Gardeners' Club built the Gardeners' Club Hall, which still stands as a part of the office of the Rugged West Motel on Highway 91. Here the club held its business meetings, exhibited die products of the members, and held their socials. The hall was frequently rented to other groups for similar purposes, and the litde building became a hive of community activity. The club issued a scrip which circulated with other similar currencies as money.

In 1868, under the aegis of Johnson and his associates in the Gardeners' Club, the Rocky Mountain Pomological Society was born. This organization had branches in a number of the communities of the Cotton Mission, their purpose being "to improve our fruit to the highest point of excellence and value." By 1870 still another fruit growers' club had been organized, this one by Luther S. Hemenway, a skilled horticulturist and nurseryman who had been called to St. George from Salt Lake City in 1865. He brought what nursery stock he could transport on his trip south and immediately commenced activities. Walter E. Dodge had gone to California in 1862 and returned in February with many varieties of fruit trees (including citrus which failed to survive the relatively mild Dixie winters) and sweet potatoes. He developed a

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beautiful resort at Dodge Spring near St. George which was famous for its flowers, shrubs, and trees. Joseph E. Johnson called Dodge "The Father of the Vine" in Dixie.

Over at Bellevue (now Pintura) a branch of the Rocky Mountain Pomological Society flourished under the leadership of Joel Hills Johnson, uncle of Joseph E. Johnson. He had a beautiful array of fruits, vines, berries, and flowers growing there, and he is reputed to have grown melons weighing as much as ninety pounds.

The Rocky Mountain Pomological Society combined widi die Gardeners' Club in the use of the latter's hall. Anyone interested in horticulture was welcome to sit in on the discussions. These two groups collaborated for several years in promoting a fair. Reporting the fair of 1870, the Utah Pomologist claimed the display of fruits to be "one of the finest . . . ever seen in the Territory." There were fifty-five premiums awarded for a wide assortment of fruits, grains, vegetables, wines, household goods, flowers, barrels, ores, and other items. Joseph E. Johnson again proved his versatility by exhibiting die "best assortment of family medicines" which he had compounded himself!

Johnson had vigorously promoted this fair, exhorting his readers "to make this fair what it should be, die best we have ever had and a true exponent of the resources of this very strange country where the naked desert so closely blends with the bright and verdant Eden."

The several horticultural and pomological clubs of St. George held their festivals in addition to the fairs. The Pomologist of November, 1870, described one held the previous October, where, in "the H a l l . . . tastefully and beautifully, and brilliantly adorned widi evergreens, flowers, mirrors and pictures," the members and invited guests "feasted sumptuously" from the tables "liberally heaped with rare fruits and choice viands." After stuffing themselves to dieir hearts' content they engaged in "a great variety of amusements with hilarious pleasure until all were satisfied."

The Gardeners' Club and The Pomological Society seem to have lost their vitality by the 1880's. The attention of the farmers was diverted from fruits to other branches of agriculture, and organizations such as The Farmers' Mutual Improvement Association (1881) seemed to be dominated by alfalfa and grain farmers. There was a revival of interest in fruits and other agricultural products when die St. George Farmers' and Gardeners' Club was organized in 1888. The most active in the new group was Thomas Judd, die new club's president. He owned the complete block between Second and Third South and Second

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and Third East; his home faced Temple Street (Second East), but it was set well back into the center of the block, an imposing two-story structure. One entered the grounds through a graceful double gate and approached the house with its dormer windows and railed balcony up a wide patii flanked on either side by luxuriant lilac bushes. The whole block â&#x20AC;&#x201D; there was no other house on it â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he planted with fruit trees, almonds, figs, and grapevines. There was an arbor, or "summer house" overgrown with Isabella grapes; the huge mulberry trees, still standing in their massive dignity, shaded the commodious mansion. Thomas Judd was to St. George during the period of the late eighties and die nineties what Joseph E. Johnson had been in the preceding generation.

The emphasis on fruit production in the Cotton Mission grew out of its possibilities as a source of food and income for the hard-pressed settlers. Sun-dried fruit could be kept for winter use, and it could be freighted north as far as Salt Lake City to be exchanged for muchneeded goods. A lot of value was tied up in a load of dried peaches, apricots, apples, and raisins, and it was not at all damaged in transportation over some of the roughest roads in the West. Peaches, grapes,

The climate and soil are well suited to the culture of grapes and fruits.

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and apricots early came into bearing, and consequently these were emphasized. When autumn came the settler loaded his big seamless sacks (made at the Washington Factory) full of dried fruit into his wagon box and headed north. The round trip to Salt Lake City consumed about a month, more or less, depending on die condition of his team and outfit. He could usually find relatives or friends with whom he could stay overnight in the settlements that dotted the Wasatch Front on the road to Salt Lake City. Arrived at his destination, he exchanged his load for needed merchandise at the stores, and dien began the long journey home. When Z.C.M.I. came into being, this Mormon firm took much of the Dixie peddler's fruit, and the co-operative stores in the Cotton Mission became clearing houses for the dried fruit, molasses, and wine produced. For example the Co-operative store at Rockville in 1885 collected 36,000 pounds of dried fruit, freighted it to Salt Lake City and sold it there.

Typically the pioneers turned necessity into recreation. Cutting up the ripe fruit and getting it on the scaffolds to dry was a big chore,

Superior fruits were produced. Raisins became an important export.

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sometimes bigger than a single family could manage; so they invited die neighbors to help and turned the burden into a social gathering.

Much of the dried fruit went to the settiements of Iron, Beaver, and Juab counties, while a considerable amount found its way to Sanpete Valley. The mines at Pioche, Nevada, furnished a market for both fresh and dried fruit. From these places they obtained potaoes, flour, and some cash in exchange for their fruit, molasses, and wine.

The grape thrived in most areas of die Virgin River Basin. Among the early settlers were vine dressers, notably in the Swiss Company which came to Santa Clara in 1861. Soon it became evident diat Dixie was producing more grapes than its people could consume or barter up north. The natural answer was to make the surplus into wine. This the settlers proceeded to do with die approval of President Young himself.

He did not want the Saints to consume the wine diemselves, aldiough there seems to have been no objection from him â&#x20AC;&#x201D; nothing forceful at least â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to its moderate use, for wine was served at many a social function where local church officials and visiting authorities were in attendance. It was Brigham Young's intention that die wine produced in Dixie was to be used for the sacrament in the various settlements of the church and the surplus was to be sold to die Gentiles. He condemned drunkenness widi characteristic vigor, and at die conference held in St. George on May 2,1869, he said the drunkard and die man who sold him die wine should both be excommunicated. President Young and Counselor George A. Smith issued a circular to the United Order of St. George Stake in 1874 in which they advised having the wine made in but three or four places where men with proper skill could supervise its manufacture. They also gave instruction as to the kind of barrels to be used and added the advice that it be sold to the Gentiles. John C. Naegle, an immigrant from southern Germany skilled at wine-making, was called to go to Toquerville to teach the people the correct method of making wine. He and Ulrich Bryner were granted a license by the county court in 1867 to operate a distillery there. Naegle built his big rock house in Toquerville with its wine cellar underneath, and at St. George the enterprising citizens built the big storage room which was known as the Wine Cellar, where wine-making was centered.

Many of the towns of the Cotton Mission produced wine, the soil between Virgin City and Santa Clara being particularly well adapted to viticulture. Wine became one of the most common articles of trade, for it could readily be exchanged for other things. It was paid in large quantities as tithing, and not a few gallons went to the irrigation com-

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panies in payment of water assessments. Large amounts went to Pioche, to Silver Reef, and to die northern settlements; but not an insignificant amount found its way into the innards of die people of the Cotton Mission, demoralizing the will of many otherwise good men and laying temptation in die way of the young. One confirmed winebibber was said to exclaim jovially as he tipped the dewey jug to his mouth, "Watch out, guts, here comes a flood!"

Such men as Joseph E. Johnson had high hopes for Dixie's wine industry upon which he editorialized in die pages of die Utah Pomologist. He pointed out the natural advantages of Dixie for the production of good wine and painted a glowing picture of such possibilities. But he laid his finger squarely on the principal reason for the subsequent failure of the wine industry in Utah when he warned (Utah Pomologist, June, 1870) that "if we are judged by the quality of wines we have heretofore sent to market, our climate, and capacity for producing the choicest of fruit would be harshly dealt with, for with our total ignorance in manufacturing wine the most delicious fruit may have been changed to an unsavory beverage."

But the wine industry came to a sorry end. There were simply too many cooks making wine, and it found a place with silk and cotton in the graveyard of unrealized hopes. The absence of a standard quality was perhaps the biggest drawback. Almost everyone with a few vines made wine for his own use and a little to sell. They paid their tithing with wine also and were not always careful to see that the "Lord's tenth" was dieir best; in truth it was too often the poorest. There were about as many flavors and qualities of wine as there were tithepayers. The sale of poor tithing wine damaged the reputation of this product; moreover, the personal degradation and disorganization convinced the church authorities that the promotion of the wine industry had been a grave mistake. The Tithing Office at St. George quit taking it as tithing and abandoned its own winepresses in an effort to discourage its manufacture. The use of wine in the sacramental service was abandoned in favor of water after die evil fruits of wine had so long been evident. Its manufacture persisted a long time, but gradually died under the inexorable pressure of the laws of economics. Wine-making as it was carried on was not as lucrative as other products, and this, coupled with die moral pressures resultant from wine's misuse, ended die industry in Dixie. It had promised much, but like so many of Dixie's dreams, came to little.

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But if the Cotton Mission was disappointed with its hopes of gain from wine, there was one agricultural item introduced whose results must have exceeded die expectations of the most sanguine. Alfalfa, or lucern, as the people of Dixie called it, proved to be a boon of greatest importance.

The scarcity of forage for domestic animals was one of Dixie's greatest drawbacks. Dried corn fodder, bagasse (sorghum cane with the juice crushed out), and the straw of wheat and barley were at best poor provender for cattle and horses doing heavy farm work. Grain for animals was out of the question, for the pioneers were hard pushed to raise corn and wheat enough for their own bread. Little milk was available because of inadequate feed for cows in winter. During the summer the cattle were grazed on the hills near the towns and on unfarmed land; but unless there had been abundant moisture during the winter and spring, this method of feeding stock was at best inadequate. But wet winters in Dixie are rare. The milk obtained from animals feeding on the herbage of the plants and shrubs native to Dixie was often bitter and unpalatable.

The introduction of alfalfa as a stable crop revolutionized Dixie's agriculture.

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Grazing on the public domain was carried on by means of a town herd. The herdsman carried a horn (made from a cow's horn) which he blew as a signal for people to turn out their cows. The animals were taken to the hills and herded to prevent their getting into the unfenced fields to damage the growing crops. At night the herder brought the cows back, perhaps to a large community corral such as the people of Washington had on the hill bordering the northeast side of town; there the people could get their cows for the evening milking. John T. Woodbury, a Dixie pioneer, said that for quite a few years after St. George was founded, the horses were taken into the hills after a day's work and hobbled to prevent their straying while they nibbled the sparse and almost nonexistent grass and the desert shrubbery.

And then like Persephone's arrival in the spring after a harsh winter came alfalfa to relieve the Saints of one of their most persistent problems. Just when it came is uncertain, but it probably came to Dixie by way of the Mormon refugees who left San Bernardino in 1857 when the Utah War necessitated the calling in of the settlers from the outposts which sat astride the approaches to the Great Basin. It is generally held that Charles Stapley brought the first seed to Dixie; he is said also to be one of the Mormon missionaries who brought the seed from Australia to California. Whatever the source of the famous plant, its coming was a godsend to Dixie. James G. Bleak first mentioned alfalfa in his crop report of 1864. Toquerville, where Charles Stapley settled, had twentyfour acres that year, more than any other town of the Cotton Mission.

That alfalfa was grown in Dixie earlier than 1864 is substantiated by Robert F. Goold's letter to the Deseret News, August 16, 1873, in which he said, "In the year 1861 . . . myself, with other families, located at Washington. At that time there were but a few small patches of alfalfa . . . at Washington." Goold went on to tell of how this legume thrived on the sandy soil that would grow little else at first and how the alkaline soil, once leached of a part of the mineral salts in its composition, produced abundant crops of alfalfa.

It seems not to have been introduced into St. George until about 1870. It is said that William Lang pioneered its use there and after a successful beginning planted five acres of alfalfa in the Tonaquint Field below St. George. On the rich virgin soil it produced enormously, and people wondered how Lang would ever be able to get so much feed cut.

The introduction of the mowing machine and the horse rake solved that problem, and there came to Dixie a new source of security.

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Indeed, it would be difficult to overestimate the difference for the better in the material lives of the Dixie settlers wrought by the introduction of this wonder plant. Alfalfa is about as well-balanced in necessary food value for horses, cattle, and sheep as any single plant can be.

It furnishes bulk and at the same time the nutrients to sustain strength and healdiy growth. Its coming meant diat palatable, nutritious feed was available for livestock both summer and winter, and diat die precarious dependence upon grazing in the hills or die inadequate meal of dry corn fodder or bagasse was a thing of the past. Stock could come dirough the winter in good condition for the heavy work of spring, and after a day's hard work could be fed in die corral instead of being taken to the nearby hills and hobbled out to pick an unsatisfying meal. Alfalfa meant, too, that cows could be fed regularly and well, and that milk, butter, clabber, and cheese became a common sight upon the pioneer's table. Alfalfa did still more: it enriched die soil because of the nitrogenfixing bacteria to which its roots became host, and better crops of grain were possible after the land had supported this useful legume.

All it needed was plenty of water, and it grew as if by magic. The first crop grew rank and tall, yet it was tender and brittle when made into hay. The second crop was lush and heavy and full of blooms upon which the bees feasted. A third and fourth cutting were always possible, the latter especially choice for milk cows; even a fifth was frequently harvested, and there was always a good pasturage after the last crop was garnered. Truly alfalfa was a marvelous plant which did much to smooth die rough edges of hard pioneer life.

And so by the 1870's the settlers in Dixie had pretty well determined what their land would produce. Grains, sorghum cane, alfalfa, vegetables of all sorts, many varieties of fruit, including choice grapes and the exotic fig and pomegranate â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all these helped to balance the pioneer diet and supply items for trade. Cotton would mature reasonably well, and die Cotton Factory had been established. The Cotton Mission had begun to assume an air of permanence.

SILVER

REEF

Today there is little left of the town which was once the largest in Washington County. The Wells Fargo Express Company Building of cut stone and the adobe house of John H. Rice remain unchanged, but everywhere else the desert has taken over. The land looks now much as it did before the Buckeye Reef, Bonanza Flat, Tecumseh Hill, and the thirty other mining claims were being operated. The reef, a white upthrust, runs in an undulating line dirough the valley like the backbone of a gigantic fish lying a little on its side; die desert vegetation covers the ruins and scars, and except for a few skeletal walls, all traces of the busy life of Silver Reef have been wiped out.

Stories and legends of this fabulous mining camp still persist, for everything about its history seems fantastic. For one tiling, the discovery of silver in sandstone gave the lie to all the geological theories of the time, so diat its being there justified the story of one Tom McNalley, a spiritualist, who said he had learned of it through Divine guidance.

Some Mormons thought that God had kept the wealth hidden to test their ability to survive in a forbidding land, and then brought it forth in answer to their great need.

One story of the discovery of silver centers on an assayer at Pioche, Nevada, who gave out such uniformly favorable reports of all the ore he tested diat some of the prospectors named him "Metalliferous Murphy" and wagered that he would pronounce even a piece of grindstone valuable. They accordingly purchased a stone from a Leeds peddler, broke off some pieces and took them to be assayed. Sure enough, Murphy declared that they had a high silver content. That did it! The prospectors took him to the edge of town, showed him the road, and told him to get going, punctuating their talk with bullets aimed in die general direction of his feet to make him step lively. Murphy, however, had learned of the origin of the grindstone and proceeded to go prospecting in the Leeds area.

A second legend is to the effect that a stranger seeking shelter in a Mormon home in Leeds watched the oozing of drops of silver from the

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he disastrousfire,the drop in the price of >er, and the fact that the ore veins had out caused a complete close-down at ver Reef before 1908. Today the crumbg ruins themselves blend into the landpe along with the white ridge of the reef.

back of the fireplace; a third says he found silver on the road where a frieghter had locked his wagon wheels and melted the metal from the slick sandstone hillside.

One thing is sure: William Tecumseh Barbee came into the district in 1875, staked out some claims, and by October of the next year had netted over $40,000. By this time the boom was on, and during the next quarter of a century a total of some $10,500,000 worth of silver was shipped out of this valley, and more than fifteen hundred people came into it.

Almost over night a town sprang up. Five mills were running and thirty-three claims being worked; to support diem were nine grocery stores; two drug stores; five restaurants besides the Harris House, which provided board and room for fifty men; six saloons; one bilfiard hall; two dance halls; a Citizen's Hall for public meetings; and a Catholic church with a hospital in the basement. The weekly paper, the Silver Reef Miner, carried advertisements for forty businesses, including a blacksmidi, a shoemaker, an undertaker, lawyers, and a doctor.

The Mormons in the nearby villages had been counseled against mining, but wages at $1.50 a day in St. George compared to $450 a day at Silver Reef, made them disregard the counsel. Many of the men cut and hauled wood, for the mills must run, and this was their first fuel.

Others hauled loads of clear rock salt from the salt mountain near St. Thomas, Nevada. Better still, the Mormons now had a market for their crops â&#x20AC;&#x201D; butter, cheese, eggs, poultry, fruit, and vegetables, but most of all for their wine. This beverage became widely known as a most pleasant drink in spite of its violent aftermath, and was much in demand at high prices. Now for the first time the people of the Dixie area knew the feel of hard money between their fingers, and could buy more of the necessities and even a few luxuries.

By September, 1882, the mines of Silver Reef were producing fabulous sums and the future looked rosy. The question now arose: Should not Silver Reef be the county seat of Washington County rather than the

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Old Wells Fargo building at Silver Reef now used by a modern company.

The Western Gold and Uranium Company operations where uranium and silver are extracted from the old mines of Silver Reef.

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sleepy little Mormon village of St. George? True the courthouse was there and had been in use for some fifteen years, but so much of the business, especially the big business, came from Silver Reef. Clearly the Silver Reef, predominantly Gentile inhabited, could outvote die Mormons in the county. But Erastus Snow on September 30 changed die county line to include the up-the-river settlements of Toquerville, Grafton, Virgin, and Rockville, so that the center of county government remained were it was.

With the beginning of the polygamy raids in the mid-1880's, Silver Reef offered another advantage to the Mormons. The marshals traveling south in their buggys always stopped at Silver Reef to rest and feed their teams, often to stay over night. Immediately die telegraph operator there would send a code message to the operator at St. George, "Send up two chairs," the number of chairs corresponding to the number of officers en route. Immediately every man who had more than one wife would be notified so that he had at least diree or four hours in which to escape, and the marshals would arrive in a town where not one polygamist could be found.

Until 1900 the Reef remained a busy, bustling place with trains of burros hauling down wood, freight wagons and peddlers' wagons filling the streets, the daily stage hurrying through. Guarded wagons pulled out loaded with silver bars, each of which weighed approximately twenty-five pounds and were worth between $450.00 and $500.00. Each

A residential street in Silver Reef as it appeared in the spring of 1885.

The reef, a white upthrust like the backbone of a gigantic fish lying a little on its side, runs in an undulating line through the valley.

bar was encased in a leather bag strapped at the top and widi handles for lifting and carrying. Horse racing and wrestling, dancing, and drinking filled in the extra time of the miners.

Silver Reef represented a cosmopolitan citizenry. Among them were "Nigger" Johnson, a big man who was so gentle with the sick and so helpful that everyone loved him; H a n k Parrish, who had so many notches on his gun diat people feared him; and Bart Nolan, an Irishman who had been educated to be a priest but had instead become a miner.

During the work days Nolan kept his beard rolled on a heavy string and tied around his neck, but on Sunday he shampooed it and displayed it, covering his chest in a waving cascade, the ends resting in his lap as he sat. T h e doctor was a familiar figure as he made his rounds in a light buggy, his hitching post a heavy piece of iron at his feet, fastened by a piece of rope to the horse's bit. As he stopped at a house, the doctor had only to throw this piece of iron out and the horse was securely fastened.

Then there was Sam W i n g , die Chinese Mandarin w h o was die acknowledged leader of his countrymen in Chinatown. H e operated his own laundry, but had time to sit outside his door and read his strange up-and-down newspaper. W h e n one of his people died, he led the procession to die cemetery, a group of men behind him scattering torn bits of paper to confuse the evil spirits and disguise the path to the grave.

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He placed on the mound the offering of food and wine for the attendant good spirits, seemingly unconscious of the fact that the watchful Indians would get it all as soon as the procession started home.

There was romance here, and sudden fortune, but often there were also tragedy and heartbreak. There was a duel in which both men lay dead on the steps of the improvised courthouse, all because one had sharply ordered the other to remove his hat when he entered die court.

Best known of all the murders was that of Mike Carbis, foreman of one of the mines. Silver prices had dropped, the vein was almost worked out, and he had laid off several of his men. Young Tom Forrest, desperate because he was out of work and angry that he should have been one to be dismissed, waited beside the trail, and as Carbis came along stepped out and knifed him, slitting his abdomen from hip to hip. Forrest was arrested at once and taken to the jail at St. George to await trial, but in the night a group of miners forced the door, took him out, and hanged him from the branch of a mock orange tree, where the people found him dangling the next morning.

One disastrous fire at the Reef, the drop in the price of silver, and the fact that the ore veins had run out, caused a complete close-down before 1908. Now the local settlers began to buy the buildings in order to get the lumber. In the foundation of one of these Albert Anderson found a cache of money, which was guessed to be anywhere from two to twenty thousand dollars. Now the work of razing the buildings proceeded at a greatly accelerated pace â&#x20AC;&#x201D; until soon there were none left.

Today the very names â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Bonanza Flat, Tecumseh Hill, Buckeye Reef, and the others â&#x20AC;&#x201D; carry a strange and foreign sound as from a fife and a world long past. They melt into the breeze along with the aroma of sage and fade into the distance along with die white ridge of the Reef.

Holiday celebrations in Dixie started at sunrise with the raising of the flag and the firing of the cannon, followed immediately by a serenade of the band, and the Parade which would begin at 9:00 a.m.

VIGNETTES

Some Memories of Dixie As you leave Santa Clara there's the Devil's Saddle, diat out-jutting butte of black lava guarding the cosy little valley beyond. And dien you round die point and at once die spire of the Tabernacle greets you, while beyond it comes to view the glistening whiteness of die Temple, that symbol of a people's faith â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a people who worked, sweated, and ate poor food, but how they danced, made sermons, wetted their gullets with the juice of die vine, and floated out onto die balmy air their oldtime songs: "Come, Come, Ye Saints," "Hard Times Come Again No More," and "After the Ball Is Over."

And how diey did mix and make sermons! Can you remember those grease spots along die south wall of die tabernacle where the weary, unwashed heads rested while their leaders sermonized?

You know, Lizzie, I never think of St. George as it is today. . . .

Let's take a walk from your old home about the business district. Walking west from your home was the Taylor Riding Shoe and Barber Shop, and next was the old Sam Adams Blacksmith Shop. Turning south was Woolley, Lund and Judd, and dien die old Co-op Store, the Lyceum, and the T. O., widi Hon Snow in charge, counting eggs, weighing hay, and putting grain and bran in bins Next was the old Telegraph office and as die pathway cata-cornered across the street thru die deep sand to where the new Rassie B. Snow store is, it further cata-cornered across the street to A. R. Whitehead & Sons' store. Further along that street was Scotty Gray's barber shop,

and then the old P y m m House and the Post Office. T h a t was about all there was to the busines section. A rather simple m a t t e r . . . .

T h e social life was unique in those days. T h e young people got together after the night meetings and roamed the streets, drinking in the lilac-scented air, while water babbled along the ditches and friendly cottonwoods listened to their love-makings. U p at the top of Main Street and out among the mesquites was the Boodi or Clark Dance Hall, where betimes the youngsters twisted a wicked hip or leaned heavily on each other as Old Joe Worthen sawed out a waltz, during which old Charlie Worthen took a quiet sneak outside and wet his whistle. Blessed nights were those. A n d ah, baby, what dancers they were! . . .

Can you remember how those Beau Brummels dressed? Recall Dord Ashby with his big black bow-tie, his white shirt, or if the shirt

The arrival of the mail twice a week was an exciting event and the Post Office a gathering place for old and young. The Post Office (right) was located on U.S. 91 adjoining the Washington County News Building which still stands.

Located on East Tabernacle Street was the first Post Office in the building believed to be the first built as such in the state. \fohn Pymm served as postmaster for many years.

were black, a red bow-tie, and his very low patent leather slippers, a colored handkerchief hanging out of one breast pocket, a sack of Bull D u r h a m out of the other ? A match behind his ear, a flashy belt around his waist, and there you have what die best dressed men of those days strutted dieir stuff in. It was always a sartorial contest between the cowboys and the boys who went away to the mines to see who could outsmart the other in dress. I think the Mining Camp boys had the edge on the cow-punchers. . . . They wore nifty hats, seldom cocking them sidewise as did die cowboys, and they wore flashy ties and better shoes, and their shirts like Camel cigarettes, were made of "more costlier" materials.

Remember the Sun Dial Club â&#x20AC;&#x201D; those happy loafers who moved around a tree or a hitching post with the sun just fast enough to keep in its warmth? In summer they called it T h e Shade Squatter's club,

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because they moved around the same trees with dieir shade. It was St. George's All-the-Year Club, and like the lilies of die field, diey toiled not, neidier did they spin, and yet die Lord took care of them. A few of diem may be freezing in heaven, but most of them are now toasting their heels in hell, and happy, I'll bet.

DR. JOSEPH WALKER

Growing Up in St. George Loneliness hounded every youth throughout the long winter evenings. If a boy stayed home, he might read or be read to until nine o'clock, seldom later, for wood to keep the house warm was scarce and expensive, and oil for the lamps was scarce and expensive. We could afford just one gallon of oil a month. An active youngster just doesn't like bed at 9 o'clock.

There was one outlet for his energies. The mail came in at 9 o'clock.

The mail was an exciting event, especially when it was raining. The buckboard splashed through the mud as the driver whipped up his team as he neared the post office. Then the wet canvas was removed and die mail bags taken into Pymm's store and post office. Everyone lined up for mail. The affluent had boxes, the odiers fined up. As many as took the Deseret News Semi-weekly were sure of somediing twice a week.

Many took the Montreal Star, as we did, and its coming was an event.

Then there was the Montgomery Ward & Company catalogue. That was really an event, especially the colored pages of saddles and boots Crowds formed an important part of life in St. George. (The modern term is "gangs.") The First, Second, Third, and Fourths each had a crowd which guarded its assets with jealousy and defended them widi green apples, ripe tomatoes, mock oranges, and rocks.

To reach Dodge's Spring, the town swimming pool, meant a battle widi die awful Third Warders. On summer nights die lovers of the whole town came to walk around the Temple. It was guarded by First Warders whose green apples, clods, and rocks played no favorites. The Second Ward had a solitary asset, the dugway up the Black Ridge. If a couple wished to Black-ridge an evening dirough, they had to risk the regular weapons. To say of a girl that she "could be Black-ridged" was to infer questionable habits.

The Fourth Ward had most of the town's assets â&#x20AC;&#x201D; die stores, the T. O., the blacksmith shops, die Tabernacle, the scales on which die loads of hay were weighed, die shoe shops and harness shops, the drug-

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store. Its conceit was unbounded, but justified, although a bit dimmed by the Temple in the First Ward. The Temple more than equaled the Courdiouse, the Tabernacle and the T. O. combined.

Another night amusement was the roasting of potatoes and green corn on the public square. Of course the potatoes and corn were stolen â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "swiped" is the better word. The psychology of roasting food over campfires would take us back in man's history to the cave-man stage of it. But around the roastings on the public square there lingered, hidden, but not extinguished, the beginnings of man's use of fire in preparing his food. Our swiping the potatoes and corn aroused a distant echo of dangers of the Cave Man as with bone knife and wooden spear he attacked his prey.

Roasting-ear parties were a common social event in St. George in my boyhood days. My mouth waters now as I recall them.

DR. JOSEPH WALKER

Portrait of a Country Doctor (Dr. J. T. Affleck)

. . . One would know at a glance that he was born elsewhere. His manners were always precise but never too formal, while his consideration for others was always evident and never neglected. As a boy, I often wondered if he were not a lonely man, hungry for the culture and refinement he had known. And yet, when I came to know him professionally, speaking with him as one professional man speaks to another, I found diat he was not at all a lonely man, but rather a man who genuinely loved the common people, the people who make up the backbone of diis world....

I have bounced about the world a lot, have met many distinguished men and doctors, some titled and others wealthy and famous, but tonight if I could wave a magic wand, and out of the past have my choice of who would come to spend an evening's gossip with me, it would be Dr. Affleck....

One afternoon comes to me. I had dropped in to have Dr. Affleck lance an abscessed tooth for me. He did it cleverly. Then we sat and talked in his office-study. We warmed up widi a glass of Tom Sterling's best wine. Then the doctor began to tell me about his work in Dixie.

He reached from a shelf a great bottle that contained a huge cystic kidney which he had removed from a woman in Washington, his only

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assistants Gus Hardy and a woman, and his operating room a kitchen, his operating table a kitchen table. It was a most dramatic story, and yet he told it as if he were telling of just another day's work. It was years after when I had specialized in kidney surgery before I fully realized what a daring and magnificent surgical feat he had performed there in the wind-swept wilderness of sandstone and stretching lava beds. I reported his achievement one evening before the Urological Section of the Royal Victorian Hospital in Montreal. The fact that the woman lived for years after astounded the members. He removed the kidney not knowing whether the other kidney could carry on or not, for there was then no possible way of finding out what the other kidney could do.

He nursed her through without benefit of any post-operative aids such as intravenous salines, transfusions, sulfa drugs, or penicillin, and with no other nursing than the clumsy, no matter how willing, hands of her neighbors. There was no resident physician to watch her dirough the critical post-operative days . . . There was just he alone, Dr. Affleck, his good work, his daring, his willingness to risk his reputation for whatever chance that woman had. He put his skill and judgment against the out-stretched, clutching fingers of Death. He won.

The sad part of that masterpiece of surgery was that there was not a person, not a doctor in the country about who could appreciate what he had done. He got neidier money nor fame nor glory for his daring and successful work. Perhaps all he ever got was a heartfelt "thank you, Doctor," from the woman whenever he saw her. . . . I am sure his real reward was that, driving in the night through that lonely and ghost-like desolation called Washington, he could say to himself, "A woman lives in diat house yonder who would have been dead but for me."

Had Dr. Affleck lived among other surgeons he would have been great in the same sense as are the Mayos great, for he had the same daring and genius that characterized them, the creative genius to conceive and execute great things independently DR. JOSEPH WALKER

Cops and Co-Habs Much of the best Dixie folklore centers in the attempts of the men with plural families to evade the marshals. Thomas S. Terry, for example, had a ranch on the Utah-Arizona line and built two houses, one on each side, so that if the Utah officers came for him, he could just walk across the line to his house in Arizona. He named his little daughter who was born there "Exile," which became "Exie" for short.

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John S. Stucki, of Santa Clara, recorded that when the familiar single-seat, black-topped buggy drew up in front of his house, he was out in his arbor. He could easily have hidden among the heavy growth of the vineyard, but instead he walked up to the vehicle widi his hands full of luscious grapes. He greeted the officers cordially, offering them each a bunch of grapes and inviting them to get out and help themselves from the vines and the peach orchard.

Warm with the hour-long drive from St. George in the late August heat, the visitors accepted his invitation. After diey had looked over his orchard, vineyard, and well-kept garden and listened to his talk, in broken German, of the first years here, after they had accepted his invitation to a cool drink and lunch in his home and had been introduced to both of his wives, they drove away, an extra box of fruit under the spring-seat. They never came to molest him again.

The Charles L. Walker diaries are full of examples of his hiding from the officers. In spite of the fact that the Silver Reef telegraph operator sent a timely code warning, McGeary and Armstrong might do some night driving and arrive in St. George before schedule. Walker, who worked at the Temple, was safe so long as he was in that building, but one morning early word came to him at home that the officers were on their way there. Some quick thinking on the part of his family helped him to escape.

His wife answered the knock at the front door, opening it just a little, stepping out, and pulling it shut behind her. She was sorry, but they could not come in; her family were getting ready for Sunday School. After a brief argument the officers forced their way past her and into the family kitchen, where, sure enough, the teen-age daughter, Zaidee, was naked in a wooden bath tub before the stove. Her screams forced them to pause again until she could get some towels wrapped around her. By that time it was futile to search the house, for the father had made his exit through the bedroom window and the back yard to the shelter of a neighbor's granary. Before they had finished their search of his home, he was safe at the temple Dudley Leavitt had brought a load of cotton to the factory to exchange for batts and cloth when the familiar black buggy pulled into the yard and parked beside his wagon.

"Run, Brother Leavitt," the girl at the desk said excitedly. "Quick!

Hide! Here are McGeary and Armstrong!"

Dudley Leavitt, widely known as the husband of five wives and father of many children, knew that to run or hide would be futile.

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Snatching a cap from the head of a machinist who stood near, he put it on, picked up an oil can, and proceeded with great diligence to oil the machinery. H e went about his work, climbing a ladder to get at one place, and crawling along on the upper scaffold to reach another.

In the meantime the officers poked into die mass of loose cotton in the bin, kicked aside boxes, opened barrels, searched for trap doors and secret closets. At last they gave up, certain that no Cohab was near.

[A stanza from a song sung by children in derision of the U.S. Officers] McGeary searched McArthur's house Good-bye, my lover good-bye And all he could find was the tail of a mouse Good-bye, my lover, good-bye.

Charles L. Walker on May 17, 1885, attended a Sunday School Jubilee at die tabernacle. H e says: "I composed die following lines which were received with much enthusiasm." T h e last four stanzas are: . . . There's an underground railroad Evading the bail road Which ne'er was a jail road in Utah.

The girls still keep singing While washing and wringing There's none of them cringing in Utah.

The cows are yet eating, The sheep are still bleating While the lawyers are cheating in Utah.

While the marshals are slumming There's no thought of succumbing, For the babies keep coming in Utah.

The Old Town Clock T h e census of St. George taken in 1862 showed that there were in the whole new city only five timepieces â&#x20AC;&#x201D; watches and clocks. There was a sundial on the public square which gave high-noon and a general idea of the hours, but meetings were scheduled at "early candle light" between sunset and dark, or at mid-afternoon, or at two hours before

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sundown â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all very inadequate, inaccurate times. Most of the trouble in taking water turns arose from the fact that diere was no way to measure die exact time for the change.

Troubles multiplied until by the time die Tabernacle was up to the square the authorities decided that they must install in it a clock and a bell. The clock was ordered from Sheffield, England, in the same order that brought hinges, locks, and other hardware to finish the building.

The bell was cast in Troy, New York, in 1872 by Meneely and Remberly. The clock struck for die first time at 10 A.M., November 15,1873.

From that hour, die life of die citizens was regulated by the clock.

The bell was rung a half hour before a meeting was scheduled to begin, so that those living far out in the valley would have time to get to church before the stroke of the hour, when die meeting began. Men widi shovels in hand waited at die headgate for the clock to begin to srike before they touched the dam.

The Cannon The cannon diat for more than fifty years has set upon a pedestal beside die door of the Information Building on die Temple grounds played an important role in die history of Dixie. Folklore says that Jesse W. Crosby brought it in from southern California in 1866 or 1867; records show that it was the heart of an artillery unit in the local militia organized March 13, 1868, and commissioned in June following. David Milne was appointed captain with a total force under him of two officers and eleven privates, each of whom possessed a horse, a revolver, and either a rifle or a shotgun. As befitted dieir rank, the two officers each wore a long sword.

As a part of their training, die artillery men set die cannon up on a knoll south of town, cleaned, loaded, and shot it out toward die barren hills across the river, its bark as effective as the coyote chorus that assailed die moon. Too cumbersome to be used in expeditions against die Indians, it remained for a time on the post of guard, and then was placed in front of the unfinished courthouse.

On All Fool's Day, April 1, 1869, the cannon was missing from its post. The village was accustomed to pranks on this day â&#x20AC;&#x201D; oudiouses tipped over, gates removed and hidden, wheels taken from wagons, the bell rendered speechless through loss of its clapper â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but to have the cannon disappear was another matter. In vain the artillery rode die streets up and down, scouted the river bank for trace of it, questioned

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teen-agers. Some sleuth finally located it inside the high rock wall of the stray pen, where by means of planks up and down and much co-operative engineering and pushing, it had been hidden.

John M. McFarlane, an aspiring young lawyer, made out a formal complaint against the culprits, but since some were members of prominent families, it was decided to settle out of court. If the offenders would return the cannon to its place in front of the courthouse and would provide the artillery unit and the peace officers with ten gallons of Lang's best wine, the incident would be closed. So momentous was the return of the cannon that the event was photographed, following which all concerned drank and sang and embraced each other in good fellowship.

The cannon had its first practical use during the building of the Temple. The work on the excavation was well under way in 1872 when the ground became damp and almost boggy along the east end. The men in charge were instructed to fill in the area with stone. After a full year of work Edward Parry, chief mason, reported that "about 80 cords of small volcanic rock have been well driven down with a heavy piledriver to make the bottom hard and of equal sustaining quality for the superstructure to be erected diereon."

The pile-driver was the cannon barrel, filled with shot, and wrapped with wet buckskin strips. It was rigged up widi scaffold and pulleys, the power lift a horse, the weight released by a mechanical trip. This whole procedure was so laborious that Charles L. Walker wrote a song "by request for the boys who were Pounding Rock into the Temple Foundation," which they could sing to enliven their task or to tell the public about it.

After this task was finished, die cannon barrel was cleaned, remounted, and returned to its place at the courthouse where it remained, except for a brief time each July, when it was moved on up to Mount Hope and used as a part of the Independence Day celebration. Firing the cannon was under the direction of the town marshal, George Brooks.

As part of the preparations his wife would make thirteen identical bags of red flannel, into which powder, carefully measured, was poured, and the bags then sewed up securely. Before daylight on die holiday, Sheriff Brooks and two official helpers prepared to shoot the piece by swabbing out the barrel, and cramming it with damp gunny sacks, green lucern, and rags. When these were tamped in, one little red bag of powder was pressed into the breeching, and die space around filled

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with a spoonful of black powder in kernels like caraway seed. In the meantime the end of a ramrod had been heating in a nearby fire.

All eyes were on the Liberty Pole down town in the square. As soon as the first rays of the sun hit the Black Ridge, Lieutenant Brigham Jarvis raised the flag, and at first sight of the Stars and Stripes going slowly up the pole, the ramrod was brought from the fire. Slow- carefulreach- touch- and the red end of the iron came in contact with the red of the sack. A flash, a roar, and the cannon coughed out its load of gunny sacks and lucern. The eager children swarmed down the hill, gathered up what they could, and brought it back for another shot, until the flag had been saluted once for each of die thirteen original colonies.

The first shot was signal for the band to begin its serenade. Mounted on a bunting-draped wagon, the horses sporting crepe paper plumes, they struck up "Three Cheers for the Red, White, and Blue," at the flag pole. They followed with other patriotic numbers as they drove away, stopping at the homes where they could be sure of a treat of cake, pie, or a pitcher of good wine. All Dixieites whose memories extend back forty or fifty years will remember this pattern for the summer holidays.

Sometime after 1910 the cannon barrel was set upon a pedestal beside the door of the Bureau of Information on the Temple grounds, where it now dozes in the sun, a reminder of the pioneer experiences in which it played so prominent a part.

A Hint to Young Men in Search of Wives The Cotton Factory at Washington was the scene of romances and heartbreaks and thrills. At the peak of its production it employed a personnel of twenty-seven people, sixteen of whom were women and young girls. Since their hours were long and their week a full six days, diey had little opportunity for recreation that would bring them into contact with eligible men, and any courtship was a matter of group knowledge and interest.

One of the most colorful courtships was that of C. L. Christensen, who was coming to Dixie for the first time. Though he had other business, he also had been charged by his first wife to bring back a second, in order that he might be eligible for a higher church position.

He arrived at the factory just at noon, as the girls were coming out of doors to eat their lunch, buxom, healthy girls eager to get out into die spring air. Quickly he formulated a plan. Mounting a large rock near the place where the girls had spread out their food, he took off his hat â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

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conscious, perhaps, that his six-foot-two height, curly blond hair, and fine set of teeth made him not hard to look at â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and called out in die manner of a Mormon missionary at a street meeting: "Give me your attention, please! I am Chris Christensen of San Pete County, commonly called Chris Lingo. I have come to Dixie on business and will be here only a short time. One of my hopes is that I may be able to find for myself a second wife, that I may please my first and fulfill the celestial law. Look me over, girls, and if any of you would like to get better acquainted, I'd be very glad to visit with you after dinner."

The girls giggled and whispered and dared each other, until finally a group of a half-dozen or more went to talk with him. He found his wife Serenie [ ? ] there, married her and took her back with him. They later moved to San Juan County, where the story of the courtship is legend.

Old Toab From the time in 1854 when Thomas D. Brown and Jacob Hamblin had written so eloquently of the savage conditions of the Indians until 1891 when the government secured land for a reservation and moved them upon it, the Mormons had tried earnestly to help fulfill the prediction diat diey would yet become a white and delightsome people. True, there were some Indian uprisings during 1864 and 1865, or some threats of war, but there was never an outright battle. On the otiier hand, die Mormons had tried to teach die Indians to farm, had plowed and furnished seed and helped them to plant and irrigate, but always with the arrival of hot weather the Indians went to the mountains. Each winter the local people and the central Tithing Office co-operated to give them from four to six hundred dollars worth of food and clothing.

Although most of the natives seemed to appreciate what was done for them, there was one who did not. He was Toab. Born to be a chief, and with qualities of daring and leadership worthy of a chief, he resented the white man and all he represented. The Mormon herds had eaten the grass and chased off the deer, he said, he would kill some of their cattle that his own people should not go hungry. If he stole all the time from the white men, he could not get back even a small part of what they had taken from him.

More and more Toab moved in a cloud of hate, until die white settlers feared him. The first murder with which his name was connected was that of the three members of the Powell expedition, who as

Toroweap, land of Toab and other Indian chiefs, lies on the edge of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado eighty miles due south of St. George. It was at this point, marked by the talus slope center left, that three members of Powell's expedition hoping to return to civilization found egress from the river. They were murdered by Indians before they reached the settlements, and it was believed that Toab was directly responsible.

they approached the Black Canyon of the Colorado, decided that they did not want to go farther. They found a point of escape up the cliffs near Toroweap and climbed out. A n Indian runner brought word into the settlements that three white men had been killed, and a telegram to that effect was sent to Salt Lake City on September 7,1869.

W h o was responsible for the murder? N o definite proof was ever found, but T o a b carried a watch that had belonged to one of the victims, and he wore on his forehead as a sign of triumph a greenback, ignorant of the fact that it was money.

W h e n in the fall of 1891 the Indian bands along the river were gathered up and moved to die reservation, he resented it all â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the fact that it was done at all and the way in which it was done. H e wanted to be free to wander on his own homelands around the springs far out on the Arizona Strip.

T h e n came the time when he had trouble with one of his own people, Chief Queetuse. Whatever the cause of the argument, it became so

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bitter that Toab caught up a heavy grubbing hoe, and striking Queetuse over the head with it, killed him instantly. This was a criminal case to be tried in a Mormon court.

In the trial Toab's lawyer pleaded justifiable homicide, making an eloquent plea of self-defense. Here was Toab, a small, wiry man confronted by a very large Indian who threatened to kill him. Toab, much afraid, had snatched at the first weapon at hand to save his life. Toab had listened to all die talk in silence until the lawyer began to talk about his fear.

"No! No!" he cried, leaping to his feet. "Toab no afraid! Toab no rabbit! Me just whack 'em. Me no scare no body â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no time." And he sat down mumbling.

So the case was lost, and Toab had to be taken in to the state penitentiary at Salt Lake City. To one who found many acres too close confinement, the prison was slow death. He began to droop and pine until the warden wrote to Anthony W. Ivins, who was in charge of the reservation, suggesting that he take Toab home.

They arrived a few days before Christmas. The Indians had a great feast, and days of celebration. Their young men hunted rabbits during the day and had songs and dances in the evening. Better still, they listened to Toab tell the legends of their people, and how dieir life had been before the white man. For a few days, Toab knew diat he was their chief, that he had their respect. Then he died.

Today no Indian is found on all the vast country over which Toab led his band. Pahrashaunt and Mociac and Ibanpah and Big Spring are only names on a white man's map, and not the gadiering places of Indian tribes. But on the reservation Foster Charles, Toab's son, is respected by whites and Indians alike, and on die far battlefronts of the world two of his grandsons have fought to defend die very government which Toab hated.

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES (Terms Expiring April 1, 1965) LELAND H. CREER, Salt Lake City

(Terms Expiring April 1, 1963) j.

STERLING ANDERSON, Grantsville

DELLO G. DAYTON, O g d e n

RICHARD E. GILLIES, Cedar City

JACK GOODMAN, Salt Lake City

j . GRANT IVERSON, Salt Lake City

NICHOLAS G. MORGAN, SR., Salt Lake City

MRS. A. c. JENSEN, Sandy

JOEL E. RICKS, Logan

L. GLEN SNARR, Salt Lake City

(Ex-Officio

Member)

OFFICERS 1961-63

LAMONT F. TORONTO, Salt Lake City (Honorary

Life

Member)

j . GRANT IVERSON, President DELLO G. DAYTON, Vice-President

A. R. MORTENSEN, Secretary

LEVI EDGAR YOUNG, Salt Lake City

ADMINISTRATION A. R. MORTENSEN, Director

JOHN JAMES, J R . , Librarian

F. T. JOHNSON, Records Manager, Archives

DOROTHY SUMMERHAYS, Associate Editor

ROBERT w . INSCORE, Registrar, Military Records Section EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTIONS: The Society was or-

ganized essentially to collect, disseminate and preserve important material pertaining to the history of the state. To effect this end, contributions of manuscripts are solicited, such as old diaries, journals, letters, and other writings of the pioneers; also original manuscripts by present-day writers on any phase of early Utah history. Treasured papers or manuscripts may be printed in faithful detail in the Quarterly without harm to them, and without permanendy removing them from their possessors.

Contributions for the consideration of the Publications Committee, and correspondence relating diereto, should be addressed to the Editor, Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City 2, Utah.

The Editor assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts unaccompanied by return postage.

The Utah State Historical Society assumes no responsibility for statements made by contributors to mis publication.

MEMBERSHIP: Membership in the Society is $4.00 per year. The Utah Historical Quarterly is sent free to all members. Non-members and institutions may receive the Quarterly at $4.00 a year or $1.00 for current numbers. Life membership, $100.00.

Checks should be made payable to the Utah State Historical Society and mailed to the Editor, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City 2, Utah.

PICTURE CREDITS

Will Brooks: lower 213,240, 243, 254,284,286,290,291 Arthur Bruhn: 197, 205, 221, 223, 224, upper 225, 228, 229, 233, 235, lower 247, 257, 258, 267 Walter Cottam: 247 Charles Kelly: 301 A. Karl Larson: 259, lower 271 St. George Chamber of Commerce: 192, lower 225, 232, 252, 257, 282 Snow Family Papers: 250 Utah State Historical Society Files: 200, upper 213, 215, 225, 246, upper 247, upper 250,262,268, upper 271,274,275,278,285,288 Lorin Wheelwright: 226,227,228,230-31,234,237,238 Wes Williamson: 236 Cover: Front, Arthur Bruhn; Back, Robert Barrel courtesy Carl Jepson, Zion National Park Artwork: Roy Olsen

University of Utah Press Typesetting and Composition Deseret News Press Printing and Binding Wheelwright Lithographing Company Cover, Colored Section Ridges Engraving Company Black and White Engravings

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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY VOLUMES 1-29 (some numbers out of print). Table of contents and price list will be sent on request.

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