Early Buildings

EARLY BUILDINGS THE 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. The 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 minimum height of steeples and towers.

The 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.

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. The 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 the choir, a dedicatory prayer, and the Hosanna shout by the congregation.

Completed, the St. George Tabernacle amply fulfilled the suggestion that 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 the north, each block handcut for its special place, as were the patterned caps over the doors and windows. The 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.

The interior is equally impressive. A self-supporting circular staircase with a hand-carved, fitted balustrade leads from each entrance to the gallery above. The frieze around the walls and the designs in the ceiling were locally made of native materials. The 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 their 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. The 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.

Top: 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.

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

On May 10, 1870, George Laub wrote that visiting brethren complimented the people upon what they had accomplished in so short a time, upon the beauty of their habitations and the way they had sustained themselves, 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 & 12Y 2 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 the articles he wanted.

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.

THE 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 the 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, the 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.

Top: Brigham Young's home in St. George where he spent his winters from 1874 to 1877. Middle: The home of israel Ivins, surveyor of the city first physician in St. George. Bottom: The Lorenzo Clark adobe home built in 1865. Clark was a pioneer leather tanner in Dixie.

Top: The Margaret Laub home, representative of the homes of people of moderate means. Middle: The Thomas Cottam house, built before 1870, has been home to four generations of Cottam's. Bottom: The William Carter home, now nearly hidden by one hundred-year-old trees, was built before 1870.

Surely some of the group, remembering the hardships of the past ten years, the difficulties with the river, the 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 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."

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

The 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.

To this total must be added some thirty-five men who were making roads to get out the timbers from Trumbull Mountain, eighty miles away. The 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.

The 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 man 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. Women 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. The 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.

Top: The 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. Bottom: 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.

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 man from Hebron, Utah, wrote in detail of his trip through 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 three 2-horse teams....

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 who gave a cheese or sack of potatoes or any other item might receive full credit.

The official report at the close of 1876 gives a summary of the labor help that was supplied by the northern settlements: "some four hundred men — 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.

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 their own materials and skills they could have a part in creating a monument to stand as a symbol of their faith.

"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 the building. Washington Factory is busily engaged in making some, and the sisters of the 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 the things not made by hands, the 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.

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