Iron City, Mormon Mining Town

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 50, 1982, No. 1

Iron City, Mormon Mining Town

BY KERRY WILLIAM BATE

MINING TOWNS DOTTED THE WEST, INCLUDING UTAH, in the nineteenth century, but Mormon-sponsored mining towns were exceptional. One exception, Iron City, was built around the iron industry, an acceptable form of mining to Brigham Young and perfectly in keeping with his admonition to stay away from mining precious metals.

Like so many other mining towns, Iron City is now a ghost town. It has left a broken legacy: ruins of old buildings, foundation stones scattered across the Iron County desert, a well-preserved coke oven, listing in the National Register of Historic Places, and the dream of a more just industrial-economic order. Iron City began and ended as a cooperative Mormon enterprise, and though ultimately a failure, it represented an expenditure in labor and capital of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Utah's mineral resources were recognized by many. "The iron deposits of Utah are measured by mountains and the coal measured by counties," reported mining expert Col. A. W. Hamilton. A Deseret News correspondent euphorically said of Iron County, "here we find valleys of iron, hills of iron, mountains of iron." John S. Newberry of the School of Mines of New York said that the area had "the most remarkable deposit of iron ore yet discovered on this Continent." Besides iron, the area had coal and juniper for coke and charcoal, zinc and copper, and silver. Magnetic ore was also found on the site.

The abundance of iron was noticed early by the sharp-eyed Brigham Young, always on the watch for more resources to build the literal kingdom of God. Within four years of Mormon arrival in the Great Basin a group of hardy colonists was dutifully marching south to presentday Iron County to raise the flag of the kingdom and build a new Pittsburgh in the desert. The failure of this company to manufacture iron only made the Saints more determined to try, and the survival of the southernmost Mormon settlements guaranteed a population that would dabble in and dream of iron wealth when the heat and the sand threatened their extinction.

The site of Iron City was discovered in 1868 by Peter Shirts about twenty miles southwest of Cedar City. The area was described as a "beautiful, healthy location sufficient for a city of 5,000 and large iron works, plenty of good, pure spring and well water, coal and charcoal. We have also plenty of building rock and clay for brick on the ground."

In June 1868 the Union Iron Company was organized with Ebenezer Hanks, a wealthy merchant, as president. Peter Shirts, a somewhat quiet, amiable, and restless man, was made a director, perhaps in return for his discovery; and Robert Richey, a local rancher, was another director. In addition, Seth M. Blair and Chapman Duncan were also named directors. The biggest immediate obstacle faced by the new company was making decent firebrick. An optimistic report in the Deseret News had the firebrick problem solved in July 1868, but, in fact, it took more than two years before really adequate material was found.

Exempt from territorial taxes, the town found itself growing rapidly. By the time the 1870 census taker visited the town there were nineteen households with a total population of ninety-seven people. The town layout was typically Mormon: blocks 240 rods square with lots 12 rods by 6 and streets 4 rods wide. The new community boasted a post office, and by 1871 a furnace with a 2,500-pound capacity was operational. In the fall of 1871 Chapman Duncan opened a boarding house. A major reorganization in 1873 led to the building of a blast furnace, air furnace, pattern shop, and a company office. The following year plans were drawn for rolling mills to manufacture railroad iron. Even after the town had been closed for five years it still had a foundry, machine shop, pattern shop, blacksmith shop, dwellings, brick schoolhouse, engine house with a 20-horsepower steam engine, butcher shop, store, offices with dwellings, charcoal house, two charcoal kilns, tons of pig iron, thirtyfoot-high air furnace, and rock, adobe, and lumber buildings.

Transportation problems affected the Iron City operation. In 1874 it cost forty dollars a ton to freight iron from Iron City to Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, railroad competition was lowering freight rates from the East, thereby making eastern iron cheaper. If a railroad spur could be built to Iron City, local freighting costs could be cut. By 1873 plans were being made to build a railroad from Salt Lake City through the Stockton, Ophir, Tintic, and Star mining districts to Iron City. The demand for iron in the Utah capital seemed to justify it, and the board of directors was confident of the venture's success. Besides a railroad to the northern markets, Ebenezer Hanks dreamed of building a railroad to the Colorado River to tap potential southern markets. In 1875 plans were drawn for a narrow-gauge railroad from the Iron City area to the Colorado River some 125 miles away with work to begin within a year. These ambitious plans failed to materialize.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Iron City life was the religious element. Although it was a Mormon-sponsored town, it was nevertheless a mining town. This led to contradictions in what it could or should be.

Ebenezer Hanks owned the town site, but most of the policies relating to the town were set by the board of directors of the mining company. The directors favored a policy of drawing in capital; but, at first, this seems to have been limited to the resources of fellow Saints. Self-sufficiency was a religious as well as an economic goal. The company soon learned that local capital was insufficient. As one writer noted of the early days, "money, as a circulating medium, was unknown." Desperate to remedy this situation, the company made several unsuccessful efforts to draw in outside capital from any source. As early as 1872 one of the members of the company was attempting to "get moneyed men to join with us" in developing Iron County iron resources. John W. Young, on a business trip to New York in 1873, wrote his father, Brigham, asking for "authentic information regarding the amt & character of the Sanpete Coal also the same regarding the Iron County Coal & Iron ore and any information that will throw light upon the prospective development of Southern Utah." By the following year negotiations were underway with "an Eastern company" to sell half of the capital stock for $263,500 in order to purchase machinery to build a rolling mill. In 1875 the stockholders elected John W. Young president in hope that his connections with eastern capital could benefit the company.

Besides seeking financial resources outside of the Mormon kingdom, the directors were eventually forced to seek outside labor, too. The skilled workers needed to develop fully the iron resources were not available in Utah. As a result, some non-Mormon consultants and laborers were brought in.

The Iron City venture was born at about the same time as the Godbeite schism was beginning its protest of Mormon church economic control. While the Godbeites were intent on breaking theocratic economic power, the Iron City directors were firmly committed to ensuring that their venture conformed to Mormon economic ideals. Seth M. Blair reported in June 1870 that the Godbeites had "only one advocate on the Pinto," but others were attracted to some of the Godbeite principles — spiritualism, for example.

Jane Cooper Hanks, wife of Ebenezer Hanks and a brilliant and creative businesswoman in her own right, practiced spiritualism with fervor. James Russell, who served as the company clerk, had been a devout Mormon, but along with his nephew and his wife he became an active spiritualist. A tall, straight man with a full brown beard, Russell was quick of speech; he spent much of his spare time attempting to proselytize his boarders for the spiritualist cause. "Spiritualism was pretty well accepted, as was witchcraft," one man who grew up in the community remembered. "Almost every gathering would try a seance," he added. This continued until some young men became too playful with it and convinced a young woman that she was possessed. When she commenced howling at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night, seances ceased as a social activity.

"Religion was not much in evidence," recollected Rev. E. J. Hanks, who grew up there. Iron City w r as "mostly Mormon [but] tho a considerable part of the town were not Mormon they were nothing else." The Mormons felt this irreligion keenly.

"It has been a greeff to me Ever Since to Stop here and . . . have . . . no meeting," complained the town diarist, David Barclay Adams. Adams, a former bishop in Beaver, was then president of the Iron City Branch of the LDS church. Ebenezer Hanks pledged to furnish all the lumber and paint needed to build a church and others pledged over $200 in cash, but because of a lack of interest a church was not erected for several years.

Adams protested that "with the present state of things I will not live here." Still later, he noted, "No meeting no school" and added, "All dead to Mormonism." Three years later he was still complaining: "Sunday turned out a great day for drinking & Swearing I never heard the like Since I Came into the Church nor for many years before." Perhaps Adams's fears were confirmed when in September 1874 the rabidly anti-Mormon Salt Lake Tribune added Iron City to its list of towns with an authorized agent. The agent, George A. Hicks, a kindly gentleman who worked hard every week to get the townspeople to sign the teetotaler pledges they had broken the week before, had been excommunicated from the Mormon church because of his loud complaints about the Mountain Meadow Massacre and John D. Lee.

Religion for young people consisted of Sunday School (when it was held) and the individual efforts of various strong personalities in the town, such as George A. Hicks and William Applegate, who gave out Bibles to the young people to read.

Drinking created problems, too. Adams complained loudly that "we have a great curse of a whiskey Shop here men drunk all day," but that apparently led to a policy by Ebenezer Hanks that he would "allow no saloon in its [the town's] limits." Yet, Rev. E. J. Hanks observed that "all in all for a mining town it was pretty decent."

Many of the laborers were local residents, including people who had been active in the first attempt to develop iron in Cedar City ten or fifteen years before. One such was David B. Adams, described as a competent smelter and a "practical furnace man of considerable experience in the old world" but nevertheless considered incompetent by some. As noted earlier, Adams was dissatisfied with town life. He withdrew from the corporation in 1873 and did not rejoin until 1876. Other local workers included Chapman Duncan, his brother Homer, and Ebenezer Hanks, besides a host of laborers.

Nevertheless, local labor did not fill every need, and the company was forced to bring in Dr. T. S. Scheuner, a Swiss metallurgist, and later, Edwin D. Wassell of Pittsburgh, a man with experience as "a practical iron smelter and iron rolling mill builder," and W r . Roper of Saint Louis, an "experienced iron puddler." In a statement that was not entirely accurate, the Deseret News reported, "The Superintendent finds no difficulty in obtaining experienced labor in all departments of iron making, at reasonable prices."

The company was incorporated four times, in part to keep it abreast of current Mormon united economic efforts: first in 1868 as the Union Iron Company, then in August 1870 as the Utah Iron Mining Company, again in 1873 as the Great Western Iron Mining and Manufacturing Company, and finally in 1874 as the Great Western Iron Company.

Mormon sensitivity to sharing wealth and attempting to distribute equitably economic power minimized management/labor clashes in Iron City. Stockholders represented the communities of St. George, Washington, Provo, Salt Lake City, Beaver, Parowan, Cedar City, Grass Valley, Paragonah, and Iron City. With economic power distributed and with no emphasis on the current capitalistic mode of exploitation of labor, it was perhaps natural that when David Barclay Adams was elected chairman of the Miners Meeting, he was promptly named to the company board of directors. Such integration of the work force was seen by the Saints as necessary and desirable. "The employees are shareholders and much interested in the success of the enterprise," noted the Deseret News with some pride.

The town grew rapidly just before its demise; between 1874 and 1875 the monthly payroll rose from $500 to $4,000. Still, there were some worker complaints. These generally centered around creature comforts and not working conditions, as Adams vividly pointed out when he wrote that "I quit filing for want of coal wood & Provisions of Every kind the men Stood it Bravely no Complaint from them only on the Tobacco queston being scarse."

Even with the consistent efforts to get eastern capital to invest in the iron works, it remained company policy to attempt to keep control in the hands of local people. When a potential development of outside interests was discussed that would compete with Iron City, Homer Duncan wrote Brigham Young that "we cannot afford to have him [Robert Richey] sell to outsiders especially to Iron makers if out siders should carry on A heavy business they will hold quite a political influence in this county."

The company did experience some successes. The iron manufactured was "pronounced by competent machinists as first-class metal, not excelled by the product of any part of the world, and capable of making the finest machinery." 37 At its peak the company manufactured five to seven tons of pig iron daily and proposed to fill the territorial needs of one thousand tons annually as well as supplying much of the Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, and Colorado market. In 1874 the company anticipated sending a hundred tons of iron to Salt Lake City; at least five tons were sent. In its brief heyday the company sent thirty tons a month to Pioche, Nevada, to be used in mining enterprises there. The company also contracted with the Salt Lake City Iron Company to supply all of the pig iron necessary to build ten flat cars for the Utah Western Railroad. In addition, they shipped coal to Nevada at one time, but the costs proved too high and that was discontinued. Items manufactured by the company included andirons, an arrastra, hand irons for ironing clothes, bootjacks made in the shape of pine beetles with the two horns used to pull the boots off, and a flat iron stand. Iron City provided the iron used in the twelve oxen that support the St. George Temple baptismal font.

In addition to iron and coal, the company attempted to exploit zinc and copper, which, they felt, could be processed for ten to fifteen cents a pound. Little is heard of any success in that area, but the goal remained in the company by-laws until the end.

Despite these dreams the Iron City venture failed and was closed permanently in 1876. Several factors led to its demise. First, in 1874 the company was negotiating with easterners for capital. Yet, when Brigham Young came south preaching the United Order of Enoch, the board of directors, with over a quarter of a million dollars in badly needed cash almost in hand, humbly wrote him to ask "what position you wish the company to occupy in relation to the new organization and when, where, and how you wish us to fall into line." Homer Duncan, a member of the board of directors, expressed to Brigham Young that "It's very fine, this United Order, but where's your brains?" 41 But the board as a whole felt that the purpose of the iron industry was to build up the kingdom, not to build up an iron industry at the cost of the kingdom. The proposed financing fell through, apparently because Brigham Young advised against it.

A second factor, and probably the deciding one, was the money panic of 1874. This destroyed the Nevada markets, and "Retrenchment became the order of the day." A special assessment levied against the stockholders was allegedly embezzled by company secretary James Henry Hart, and the company ultimately was purchased for a few thousand dollars by Taylor-Cutler Company.

In addition, the federal government demanded a half-cent in tax for every bushel of charcoal used in the furnace, and fifteen cents for every load of wood. The demand was impossible to meet.

Besides these financial problems, the company faced competition from several other iron companies, including the Ogden Iron Works, the Utah Central Iron Company, and the City Creek Iron Mine. It is possible that if the Mormons had put all of their iron efforts into Iron City, they might have been successful. But the division of interest, with three mining districts in Iron County alone, could not have been helpful to any single venture.

Finally, the company could not continue without capital, and it could not acquire enough capital selling andirons and bootjacks to the poverty stricken Saints of southern Utah. The area also lacked an adequate population, in terms of skilled labor, workers, and consumers. Exorbitant shipping costs to Salt Lake City ($40 a ton) and roads passable only part of the year no doubt contributed to the problems. Had the Utah Southern been finished earlier it might have saved Iron City.

When Zion's Central Board of Trade was organized in the 1880s, attempts were made to revive Iron City, but those attempts failed. Thomas Taylor spent the rest of his life trying to generate interest in the venture but to no avail. Finally, in the 1920s, the entire town site was sold at tax sales for a few dollars a lot.

Had the Mormons pursued their venture with the ruthlessness of most business in that era, it is likely that any source of money would have been used, no matter how suspect. Competition would have been violently crushed, and they would certainly have attempted to provide special protection for the industry through the territorial legislature. Labor representatives would not have been stockholders nor members of the board of the company. Under different conditions, then, the Iron City dream would have had more of a chance to become a reality.

In one sense, the dreams of the pioneer industrialists were realized when the mineral wealth was successfully exploited in the 1930s after expenditures of millions of dollars by eastern corporations. While Iron City itself is a peaceful ghost town, napping forever alongside the Little Pinto Creek, giant machines rip ore from the nearby mines.

In another sense, the dreams of these men of a hundred years ago have never been fulfilled. Plans for establishing an economic equality have not been realized. Hopes for local control of the enterprise are forever dead. Dreams of a corporation where workers and stockholders are the same are only dreams. The Iron City venture leaves a mixed heritage. The physical conquering of the earth and ore was finally consummated but at the cost of the spiritual hopes of a long-gone past.

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