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Winsor Castle: Mormon Frontier Fort at Pipe Spring
Winsor Castle: Mormon Frontier Fort at Pipe Spring
by Robert W. Olsen, Jr.
There was always pressure on the leaders of the L.D.S. Church to move people from the more populous parts of Utah, such as Salt Lake City, to more distant virgin areas of the Great Basin and adjacent regions. As the stream of immigrant-converts came down Emigration Canyon, they had to be taken care of. Farming and grazing land were limited, and new land had to be taken up and exploited. Salt Lake was like a hub in a wheel of colonization in which the Mormon people, compelled by free land and by religious motives moved from the center to the rim.
Pipe Spring was on the periphery of the wheel in the 1860's. It is located 50 miles east and south of Hurricane, Utah, and 20 miles south and west of Kanab, Utah— 10 miles across the Arizona border. This spring was found by a group of missionaries led by Jacob Hamblin in 1858 as they journeyed toward the Hopi Indians, whom they hoped to convert to the Mormon faith.
James M. Whitmore, who was called on the Cotton Mission to St. George, followed the trail explored by the Indian missionaries and built a dugout by Pipe Spring where he established a ranch. By the spring of 1865, he had built a corral, fenced 11 acres, planted fruit trees and grape vines, and was milking 50 cows.
But Whitmore's efforts were short-lived. In the fall of 1865, the Navajo Indians began crossing the Colorado River at the Crossing of the Fathers in small raiding parties to drive off stock from the ranches of the Long Valley-Pipe Spring area. When Whitmore and his herder, Robert Mclntyre, came to Pipe Spring from St. George to get Whitmore's stock, they were killed by the Navajos and the stock stolen.
In April of 1866 Robert, Joseph, and Isabella Berry were killed near Short Creek (present-day Colorado City), Arizona — 25 miles west of Pipe Spring. These killings led the military-ecclesiastical authorities at St. George to order evacuation of the area to prevent more killings. During the summer of 1866 the present sites of Kanab, Alton, Glendale, and Mt. Carmel were abandoned.
Navajos continued to raid southern Utah and the Arizona Strip for four years, running off about 2,500 head of stock. The Utah Territorial Militia pursued, but seldom caught, the raiders. In the spring of 1870, Brigham Young and a group of his associates visited this evacuated area. They decided that it could be resettled, and shortly thereafter settlement was begun.
Anson Perry Winsor, formerly of Provo and Grafton, arrived at Pipe Spring early in 1870. His part in the reoccupation was to raise cattle and make cheese. He moved into the Whitmore dugout, built in 1863, and a rock house constructed by the Utah Territorial Militia.
The water of Pipe Spring and the high grass nearby were ideal for ranching. E. G. Woolley, an adjutant of a Utah Territorial Militia unit chasing Navajos, wrote on February 27, 1869, while resting at Pipe Spring,
The last raid of the Navajos had been in November of 1869, so when Brigham Young and his party were at Pipe Spring on September 11, 1870, they laid out a fort for the protection of the Anson P. Winsor family. The fort was to be
These dimensions were not the final ones, but the fort was constructed in general on these specifications over the spring.
At the close of the Pipe Spring-Kanab tour, Brigham Young and his party journeyed to St. George. Here arrangements were made with Elizabeth Whitmore, widow of James Whitmore, for the purchase of Pipe Spring and improvements. Mrs. Whitmore accepted Winsor Castle Stock Growing Company stock to the extent of $1,000 for her property. Machinery was set in motion to obtain the crews necessary to construct the fort. The small evidence available indicates construction of the fort was financed in different ways — by tithing supplies (individuals donating materials or labor at the building site) and by L.D.S. Church funds being paid directly to the workmen as wages.
Materials were gathered from various places. The Pipe Spring country abounds with good building stone. Lumber was cut by a steampowered saw about 30 miles north of Kanab. Shakes were rived at the site of the mill. Nails were imported by railroad from the East to Salt Lake City and brought to Pipe Spring by wagon. The hardware for the fort was made by a blacksmith at the fort site from scrap iron and iron from the East.
The rock of which the fort is constructed came from the talus of the ridge north and west of the fort. The Averett brothers, who lived at Washington, Utah, in the late 1860's and early 1870's, were the rock masons who worked on the fort. Both had worked on the construction of the cotton factory at Washington and many other stone buildings in Utah Territory. At the time they were called to work on the fort, Elisha Averett was at Washington and Elijah was in Salt Lake City working on the L.D.S. Temple.
Both Elisha and Elijah were at Pipe Spring January 20, 1871, when John D. Lee passed through. Elisha returned to Washington some time during the winter, but Elijah remained at Pipe Spring until the fort was completed in the spring of 1872. Perhaps the chisel cuts that show on the face of some of the building stone in the fort are due to Elijah's knowledge of stone cutting methods used on the granite to construct the Salt Lake Temple.
Pipe Spring gushed out near the end of the east side of a ridge running north into the main body of the Vermilion Cliffs. The builders had to cut back into the ridge to bring the spring inside the fort. Several hundred yards northwest of the spring were a great many large, natural slabs of red sandstone. The workmen constructed a road over the backbone of the ridge to the stone. They cut the stone into manageable sizes and moved it on a stone-boat pulled by an old mule to the building site. As the walls of the fort went up, the construction crew had to build the road farther along the talus to usable stone. Reject rock and spall were the foundation for the road.
Near the building site the rock was cut into the sizes and shapes needed and faced. The finished blocks of red sandstone were put into the building by using scaffolds and a block and tackle. Lime for the mortar was brought from Pocketville or Virgin, Utah. The lime was burned in a kiln, the remains of which are 200 yards west of the fort.
Joseph L. Hopkins, blacksmith, probably spent as much time during the building of the fort keeping the bits of the masons sharp as he did making hardware. He was a highly skilled, inventive man who worked at Pipe Spring as both carpenter and blacksmith. Before working on the fort, he lived at Virgin, Utah, and when the fort was finished he moved to Glendale, where he lived the remainder of his life.
Anson P. Winsor was also a skilled carpenter and cabinetmaker. He and Joseph Hopkins probably did the woodwork in the fort. Joseph W. Young was the architect and John R. Young the timekeeper. There were many other members skilled in building trades who worked on the fort at various times — Alonzo Winsor says as many as 20 or 30.
The rock houses, one to the east and one to the west of the fort, were constructed before the fort and used as living quarters for the builders. Other workmen lived in the Whitmore dugout, in tents, or in wagon boxes.
The Winsors were anxious to move from the rock house into the fort, so as soon as the bottom story of the lower (south) house was completed, they moved into one part and used the other as a cellar. From the first, water ran through the cellar from the spring, which was 40 feet to the north up the ridge from the fort. The upper building faced the lower and was built so that the spring was inside it. The Winsors later moved into the upper building, turning their former home and cellar into a cheese factory. Anson Winsor was in Salt Lake City on August 30, 1871, to bring a cheese vat to Pipe Spring. This establishes the completion date of the upper building and the cheese factory.
From the amount of plastering that was done in the fort during the years 1874-76, it is a good guess that until then the fair ladies who lived there existed within barren rock walls with bare beams over their heads. They walked on random-width, tongue-and-groove wooden floors — a pleasure after the dirt floors of the outbuildings.
The fort was well on its way to completion by December of 1871. In April 1872, when men of the Powell Survey were at Pipe Spring, the fort was finished except for the big doors in the outer wall. The fort was not completed to the full 152 by 66 feet suggested by Joseph W. Young and A. M. Musser. At present it measures 60 by 40 feet. Sometime during the construction, the builders or Brigham Young and his advisors decided to cut back over two-thirds of the original dimensions. Possibly this decision was made because the Navajos did not raid during the early period of the construction. It was completed as a fort because the Mormons thought that there was the possibility of an Indian uprising again.
As finished, the fort is typical of Mormon forts in that the houses face one another across the courtyard. It is not typical in that the houses are two stories high. The building on the higher elevation was constructed so that it would be as far away from the ridge as possible and yet have the spring inside. But the building went so far into the ridge that there was no back wall, necessitating a second story in order to have a portion of wall from which to fight in case of attack. The houses that face one another are of a type that can be found in older sections of most towns in Utah.
The fort at Pipe Spring was called Winsor Castle almost from the start because the Winsor family can trace their lineage to some of the builders of Windsor Castle in England. The name Winsor Castle Stock Growing Company was given to the company formed in January 1873 on the basis of the L.D.S. Church cattle herd at Pipe Spring. From the time A. P. Winsor arrived at Pipe Spring in early 1870 until the formation of the company, he had been superintendent of the L.D.S. Church herd for southern Utah. In this position he received $1,200 a year. From the time of the formation of the company until he left, he received $3,500 a year. From this amount he paid himself, the members of his family working for him, four hired men, and a hired woman.
Brigham Young was president of the Board of Directors of the Winsor Castle Company. He subscribed $10,000 as Trustee in Trust for the L.D.S. Church and $2,350 for himself as an individual. Winsor subscribed $3,000, which probably represented his labor from 1870 to 1873. There were other men who subscribed in terms of hundreds of dollars. Thus the herd was turned into a company primarily owned by the Mormon Church. Some people claim that the company was formed specifically to provide food for workers on the St. George Temple, and there is some evidence to support this idea. But the dividends paid by the company were very high, which is hardly compatible with providing food for the temple workers. In 1873 the company owned 450 head of cattle and 10 horses. By 1880 it owned 2,400 head of cattle and 160 horses.
Edwin Dilworth Woolley, then Utah territorial legislator and president of Kanab Stake of the L.D.S. Church, was manager of the ranch during the 1880's. One of his wives, Flora Snow Woolley, lived at Pipe Spring. According to Woolley family tradition, Mrs. Woolley felt trapped inside the fort and had her husband tear down the big doors and arches. While the Woolleys were at the ranch, the first trees that now give Pipe Spring National Monument an oasis-like atmosphere, were planted. Woolley had ponds made south of the fort as catchments for the spring water. The rock that went into the walls of the ponds possibly came from the arches above the gates and the wall that ran up the ridge in back (north) of the fort. Later the arches and doors were restored to their former condition by the National Park Service.
In 1888 the ranch at Pipe Spring was sold by the L.D.S. Church to B. F. Saunders. It passed through the hands of a series of private owners until 1923, when through the efforts of Stephen Mather, first director of the National Park Service, and Charles Heaton, part-owner of the ranch, Pipe Spring was proclaimed part of the national park system by President Warren G. Harding.
Today the restored fort stands as a monument to the individuals who first settled this area. Visitors can see for themselves living conditions of pioneers who made their home in this lonely, desolate country and marvel at the ingenuity and tenacity of the men and women who gave up the comforts of civilization to settle a wilderness.
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