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The Cotton Mission
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 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. On 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 with raising cotton. This they did, clearing a small piece of virgin land and planting the seed carefully one in a hill. The 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. The Deseret News for October 5, 1855, reported them to be on display at the president's office.
The next year the missionaries brought their families to live on the Santa Clara, where a fort had been built. Now 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 power....
From 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. Now 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. The first season they did not get a third of the crop — much seed did not germinate, and alkali killed most of the plants that did come up.
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. When 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 Home was in charge of the expedition; the sponsors would supply food and equipment. Under date of April 10, 1858, Home 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 land grubbed and cleared and ten acres planted. We have built a log house, 16 by 27 feet — 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. He 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."
The 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. Here where the face is sheer and smooth and as shining as though 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 JACOB PEART." More than a hundred years of erosion have washed down the talus slope so that the carving stands today at least twenty feet above the 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. The 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). The 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.
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, 1/2 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 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 the 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...."
The outbreak of the Civil War 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. The 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. When 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."
When 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."
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 — 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 the 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 mother 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:
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.
The 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.
The professional people consisted of:
4 musicians and 1 fiddler 3 schoolteachers, 4 clerks, 1 lawyer, and 1 printer 2 surveyors to divide the land 2 daguerreans to preserve their portraits for posterity 1 butcher, 1 baker, 1 castor oil-maker 1 tobacco-maker 1 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 the 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 the tabernacle and the temple.
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. To this end, before they moved on to the designated site, all wagons stopped in the far east end of the valley, where the
new Dixie College campus is now taking shape. Here a ditch was plowed out by William Carter — he used the same plow which had marked the first furrow in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake — into which the waters of the East Spring were directed. On either side of this ditch the wagons were ranged facing each thier, and toilet facilities were set up according to patterns adopted as they crossed the Plains, "gents to the right and ladies to the left." The 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! The 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 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. The fort at Harmony was reduced to a pile of mud; the farms at Pocketville were carved away in great slices. The 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.
The 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.
On 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 they moved in with their wagon that she had grubbed on the 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." Nor did this mean an end to their troubles. Dr. Mead continues: "In the first four years after 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 — 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 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 — white men would not pick cotton, nor would their wives. Indian labor was out of the 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.
THE 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 of the St. George group. A significant comment about them was written by George A. Smith:
Top: 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 sued by the medicine man, where in solitude he would hold communion with the Great Spirit.
Bottom: The factor and its employees at the height of its production, about 1870. Appleton M. Harmon superinteded 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.
. . . 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.
The company made a temporary camp around the small adobe meeting-house built by the 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 the 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.
The 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 them. 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.
The 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 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. The 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.
Top: The dugout provided the first temporary shelter for many of the immigrants. Built back into the 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.
Bottom: 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.
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 High Priest's Quorum 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 man would work up. Thus 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 the rows of fifty-gallon barrels or to taste the "pummies."
Wine was served for the sacrament in all the wards. Though the 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. On November 21, 1885, Frank Snow wrote to Bishop William B. Preston in Salt Lake City:
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. . . .
On August 25 of the next year he wrote to Bishop J. C. Cannon to say that: "The 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. On July 9,1892, the Stake High 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 they could eat fresh or as could be dried for raisins, and the Thompson Seedless was introduced on the Virgin and Muddy Valley settlements to establish a raisin industry.
Here again the river came into the picture. The 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. Then there 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 the 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.
As early as 1864 "Ego," one of the authors of the hand-written paper, "The Vepricula," had spoken facetiously of the 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 — "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. The 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.
The worms were delicate, sensitive little creatures in spite of their voracious appetites, for wet leaves gave them such violent stomach-aches that they 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, the keepers' autopsy pronounced them dead of fear. In spite of all these casualties, there were enough that survived to keep the feeders busy, and the sound of their eating was like rain on the roof.
The 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. At least two beautiful dresses are still worn on special occasions by descendants of some of these 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.
From the first, the people of the Cotton Mission expected great tilings; they were always on the edge of something wonderful about to happen. Had not Brother Brigham prophesied that they would build a thriving city ? And was not Brother Amasa Lyman 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 the 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. The people filled up the hole, and the waters of Lake Mead later covered the warehouse; the castor-oil presses and tanning vats were discarded and die mulberry trees grew luxuriant for lack of silkworms to feed — 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 — 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 the 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.
With the exception of Silver Reef, the story was always the same — water. At Harrisburg, the springs dried up or the water was diverted to be used at Leeds or elsewhere. But with all the 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 — until a flood came. Then 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. And the fact is that they have succeeded. Count all their failures, label them, number them, and tabulate them, and essential success still emerges.
On 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.
[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 music]
ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
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.
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 the 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
Pine Valley Church St. George Courthouse Snow's Canyon
Ruins 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.
Three Patriarchs at Entrance to Zion
Looking down the valley from the Temple of Sinawawa. The Great White Throne in middle distance, the Narrows up the valley.
The Falls of Sinawava after a summer shower. Note the work of erosion on the top where a narrow gulley 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.
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 these 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 the 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 both up and down at this incomparable land.
Emerging into the daylight, you see many different formations.
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 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
*a?3*
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, the tips still flaming after the base is wrapped in shadow. At dawn they drop their blue veil and wait for the sun to limn their 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.
SONG COMPOSED BY REQUEST FOR THE BOYSWHO WERE
POUNDING ROCK INTO THE TEMPLE FOUNDATION(Tune: "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, the 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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