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Utah Writ Small: Challenge and Change in Kane County's Past
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 53, 1985, No. 2
Utah Writ Small: Challenge and Change in Kane County's Past
BY DEAN L. MAY
FEW VISITORS TO UTAH'S REMOTE KANE COUNTY have come away unmoved. Among many memorable descriptions of that landscape was one offered by Wallace Stegner in 1942:
Stegner reminds us that the history of Kane County is in large measure the history of a people's interaction with a landscape. And just as this is not any landscape, this is not just any people. There is something elemental about the raw exposed pillars and arches of the geological setting and, perhaps in consequence, about the human society that resides there, as well. The point of Stegner's observation, after all, was that southern Utah is a region where the landscape is firmly in charge, and the human "interlopers" (one per square mile) maintain a toehold "only on sufferance." The present study explores the broad outlines of man's recent experience in Kane County — particularly the question of how Anglo-Americans have sustained themselves in so harsh a region. The perspective thus gained reveals something about broader Utah as well.
The first white settlement in Kane County was by three fairly distinct groups who began their occupation in the mid-1860s. The first was a hardy band of frontiersmen and missionaries to the Indians led by the legendary Jacob Hamblin. They began building an old fort close to present-day Kanab in the late 1860s. Next was a company from small farming settlements near Salt Lake City, especially the Cottonwood area. They came in 1870 by call from Brigham Young under the leadership of Levi Stewart. The last was from the Muddy Mission in Nevada's Moapa Valley, driven from the state by excessive taxation and advised to resettle in Kane County. They arrived in 1871, hard on the heels of the Levi Stewart following. All but the frontiersmen were farmers by experience and inclination, having followed the general Mormon practice at the time of concentrating their productive energies on field agriculture — grain, hay, row crops, and orchards. As the eloquent Kanab diarist Rebecca Howell Mace put it, "These southern settlements was a sort of an experiment station, planted by Pres. B. Young with people from the southern states to demonstrate whether cotton, tobacco and other products of the south could be produced in southern Utah."
The people were quickly to find, however, that Kane County's landscape, while awesome to look at, is not an easy place for a farmer to scratch out a living. Water was scarce, and except for two narrow valleys — that of Kanab Creek and the Paria River — the spectacular rock surfaces were covered with only a thin integument of dry, reddish topsoil. Almost immediately land that could be put under the plow was taken up. The 1870 census listed but 1,244 acres of improved land in the whole county (2,798,730 acres) and estimated that there were only 20 acres yet to be improved! The improved acres were divided into 115 farms that averaged just under 11 acres (10.8) in size. Only one farm was more than 50 acres. Yet there were 341 boys and young men in the town at the time between ages five and eighteen, who, as they matured and formed households, would put impossible burdens on the available land and water. It was thus no surprise to learn from a study of four southern Utah towns, including Kanab and Glendale, as well as Toquerville and Rockville, that between 1870 and 1910 about 88 percent of the children born in those towns died elsewhere. In the entire southern Utah region, which included Kane, Washington, and Iron counties, about 71 percent of those born during the same time period moved elsewhere before they died. The southern Utah population was the least stable of four other regions considered in the study, especially during the first two decades after settlement.
These data make it clear that one frequently used strategem for dealing with the niggardly landscape was to leave it. The outmigration at times reached proportions sufficient to provoke local crises. Around 1876, as settlements along the Little Colorado River in Arizona were being opened, enthusiasm in Kanab for moving on was sufficient to require a visit from Erastus Snow, the Mormon leader of southern Utah. As Rebecca Mace put it, "He found there was quite a number of families preparing to leave, move away, for like all settlements in southern Utah, it was a hard struggle to make a living, and build homes. He said he did not want this place decimated, but rather built up."
In the spirit of building up Kane County, the people were attracted to another option that was greatly to change the character of the region and ultimately of all Utah. That was to move from farming to ranching; and the people of Kane County did so with alacrity. By 1874, just four years after settlement, 52 percent of all Kanab's farm production was comprised of animals and animal products, while but 14 percent was from field crops such as grains. Seventy-one percent of all the assessed wealth of Kanab was in livestock and moveable goods. 7 Six years later, in 1880, there were 15,371 head of livestock in the county and the region was established as a center for ranching rather than farming, remaining so until tourist and other service industries began to predominate during the last half of the twentieth century.
This says something rather important about Kane County's population in the 1870s. Despite a predisposition to farming, they were quick to see that economic survival required them to find a way of making the thousands of acres of untillable lands around them productive. They perceived that ranching could accomplish that aim and turned to livestock production. Not only did they seize the better opportunity in livestock production, they also anticipated a trend that would shortly be taken up across the territory. By 1890 stock raising was the number one industry in the territory, and in 1900 it was second only to precious metal mining. As late as 1956 two-thirds of agricultural income in the state came from the livestock industries — principally cattle and sheep raising. Certainly in this instance Kane County was Utah writ small. Its citizens' response to this challenge led to a change in their use of the environment and, as an offshoot of that, to a reorientation of several aspects of their society.
Not all of these changes were universally welcomed. Rebecca Mace was obviously not happy with the turn of events when she wrote in March 1895 that
Another sign of the changing times was indicated when, according to the town council minutes, in December 1912 officials seized twelve gallons of intoxicating liquor and the marshal emptied out six of them. It may never be known what happened to the other six.
Kane County's people entered the twentieth century with a reasonably strong economy and stable population, based in large measure on their quickness to adapt production methods to the physical environment of the region. The twentieth century began optimistically, with substantial demand for cattle and sheep products until the end of World War I. Then the stagnation of the 1920s and the depression of the 1930s caused distress throughout rural Utah. Many young people, unable to make a living at home, moved away. Population growth slowed and in some areas even reversed. Between 1920 and 1930 the number of native Utahns living in other states increased by some 50,000 persons. Kane County held its own, and even experienced modest increases of 11 percent in the 1930s and 15 percent in the 1940s. Part of the reason must surely have been the resourcefulness its people had already demonstrated in finding ways to make the difficult landscape pay off. But livestock values dropped drastically after the war and remained low until the 1940s, presenting a new challenge to those committed to wresting a livelihood from the plateaus, reefs, and canyons.
The initiative in reshaping Kane County's economy in the twentieth century was taken by a handful of people who can be clearly identified — Edwin D. Woolley and the three Parry brothers, Whitney, Gronway, and Chauncy. Woolley was among the first to understand that the scenery of southern Utah was an invaluable resource as an attraction to tourists. According to his daughter Elizabeth Jensen, he was stunned by his first view from the Grand Canyon's North Rim. "This is one of the Wonders of the World!," he exulted, "People will come from all quarters of the Globe and pay great sums of money to gaze upon what we now behold!" In the 1880s he and Daniel Seegmiller tried to interest a group of English aristocrats in the area as a private recreation ground, but after a visit, long to live in local legend, the potential clients decided Kane County was too inaccessible.
They were right, as Edwin Woolley well knew. There were at the time no rail lines or major roads through Kane country. Those roads that existed were virtually impassable much of the year. Two particularly difficult obstacles existed in the stretch of sand between Kanab and Long Valley to the north and the formidable cliffs preventing travel west to Zion Canyon. Moreover, the potential of the private automobile as a means of mass transportation was only beginning to be realized.
Foreseeing that the new-fangled horseless carriage would open travel opportunities to great masses of common people, Woolley decided to prove that this technology could at the same time open a whole new era for Kane County. He talked a group of Salt Lake City friends and relations into a daring automobile tour to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Since there was no access to gasoline after the railhead at Marysvale, some 132 miles to the north, Woolley arranged to cache five-gallon cans of gasoline at nine points along the route from Marysvale to Bright Angel Point south of Kanab. Two cars made the perilous journey, crossing sand stretches by laying out canvas tarps in front of the cars, placing straw in washes, and having crews move boulders and rocks in front of them. According to Mary Woolley Chamberlain's account:
After three days of recuperation and repair in Kanab the party proceeded on to the Grand Canyon and back. As usually happens, they had underestimated their fuel consumption but were fortunate to buy some gasoline en route from the owner of a threshing machine. The trip dramatized both the natural wonders of the region and their new accessibility, though it would be another ten years before a passable north-south road was built into the county.
As Zion and Bryce were added to the nation's list of national parks in 1919 and 1920 the tourist potential of Kane County became recognized. State roads were gradually built southwards, opening the region's scenic wonders to the rest of the nation. The stretch of sand between Kanab and Long Valley had been traversed by a paved road in 1922, an accomplishment requiring a considerable display of local ingenuity. Finally, in 1930, the Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel was built, a major engineering feat connecting the Kane County settlements for the first time to Washington County towns by a direct westward route and making the long loop southwest to Pipe Springs and northwest to the St. George area unnecessary.
These developments connected Kane County's towns to northern Utah and Bryce Canyon through a direct north-south highway, now Highway 89, and to the rest of southern Utah on the west, including Zion Canyon, by way of the tunnel and Highway 15. Such developments had their own ricochet effect, thanks in part to the efforts of the Parry brothers. The Parrys had developed a business transporting tourists by bus to Zion and Bryce canyons by the time Hollywood companies began to show interest in filming in southern Utah. The first film made in Kanab was in 1922, a silent film — Deadwood Gulch — starring Tom Mix. But the Parrys did not begin fully to exploit the opportunity until 1930. In that year the three brothers (known locally as Whit, Chaunce, and Gron) prepared a portfolio of scenic photographs that they used to sell major Hollywood studios on Kane County as a location for filming westerns. They then began preparing lodging and supply facilities in Kanab. Their efforts paid off. Over the years more than 200 films were made in the area, bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kane County's economy.
This deliberate development of the scenic potential of Kane County has yielded handsome rewards. Recently amplified by the popularity of Lake Powell, the region has experienced growth and expansion higher than that of the state, much of it sustained by the dollars brought into the county from the outside. In 1982 the population moved to well above the 4,000 mark, and recent statistics show a 15 percent increase in the average non-agricultural wage, compared to a state average of just 6 percent. Just as in the nineteenth century Kane County people profited from a timely change to livestock production, in the twentieth century they did so by providing goods and services to those attracted by the natural wonders of the region — to tourists, movie companies, and, in recent years, to retired people. In both cases the feat was initiated by citizens who had the vision to recognize the potential and promote it. And in both cases they anticipated an economic trend that became of great importance to the state.
One suspects that this vision and resourcefulness did not happen just by chance. Historians know that societies do not always adapt in a rational way to change — are not always quick to perceive their altered situation and take action to improve it. The change from farming to stockraising and from stockraising to service was encouraged and promoted by a few individuals, but effective action ultimately had to be the result of a community decision — supported by a wide base of Kane County's population. It would seem that the local response to the challenges of change demands an explanation.
Three accounts by people with early experience in Kanab suggest an answer. The first is from Frederick Dellenbaugh, a member of the federal survey party working under John Wesley Powell in the early 1870s. Dellenbaugh wrote:
Allen Frost, who was probably a resident of Kanab at the time of Dellenbaugh's visit, noted the stream of settlers heading through the county on their way to new Arizona settlements in 1876, concluding that it "looks as though we have ceased to be the frontier settlement." Rebecca Howell Mace confided to her diary her thoughts on church meetings she attended in 1895. "We had a good conference," she wrote. "The speakers were mostly young men, . . . They were Elder Meeks and Elders E. 8c A. Cutler. I was very much surprised and edified. These young men were raised in the Kanab Stake. I had not thought that we had such talent in our Stake but I now believe there are many who if opportunity offered would be bright and valiant for the cause of truth."
The fact is that Kane County has always been nearer the edge than the center of things. And the passages above suggest some human consequences of that fact. Dellenbaugh was impressed with Kanab, but that was in large measure because he was surprised to find so "thrifty" a town, as he put it, in so remote a region. Frost observed that already by 1876 the town had lost the distinction of being the outermost Mormon settlement — was now near the frontier rather than at the frontier — thus suffering a corresponding loss of sense of importance. The attentions of the central church leadership had once been focused on Kane County. Now they were directed beyond it to the Little Colorado. By 1895 a clear provincial self-disdain was evident as Rebecca Mace expressed surprise that local boys could do so well.
Provinciality, as these passages suggest, had by the 1890s become a principal element in the character of this society. Historians and writers of the twenties, fleeing the closeness of small town life in America, attached to the concept connotations of narrowness, complacency, intolerance, and a stifling mutual watchfulness. These associations have since predominated in American use of the word, and it has subsequently not been thought a compliment for either an individual or society to be characterized as provincial. But Americans have not always seen it so. Indeed, one of the key transformations in the self-image of cosmopolitan Americans at the time of the Revolution was to perceive the rustic character of colonial society no longer as a sign of a derivative backwardness but rather as evidence of independence, freshness, and creativity. Encouraged in this image by leading figures of the French Enlightenment, Americans came to prize the hallmarks of their provinciality. The point is delightfully illustrated in the story of the sophisticated Benjamin Franklin deliberately wearing a coonskin cap in October 1776 as he debarked in Paris to negotiate the French alliance. The simplicity of Franklin's American garb soon became fashionable throughout Paris. For perhaps a century thereafter Americans thought of their provinciality as a badge of superiority, suggesting an independent society, proud of its distinctiveness, unhampered in its creativity by the stifling weight of ancient traditions. It was from this perspective that Harvard historians John Clive and Bernard Bailyn saw America and Scotland as the source of many of the most creative and forward-looking ideas of the English Enlightenment. "The complexity of the provincial's image of the world and of himself," they wrote, "made demands upon him unlike those felt by the equivalent Englishman. It tended to shake the mind from the roots of habit and tradition. It led men to the interstices of common thought where were found new views and new approaches to the old."
The consequences of provinciality are complex, with both negative and positive ramifications, but it does seem possible that people in areas remote from the center of things are often forced back upon their own resources and that this encourages participatory and frequently more creative activities. This is evidenced in Kane County in the steady procession of bands, choirs, and theatrical groups that have been perpetuated over the years. Moreover, provincials are not carefully schooled in the conventional wisdom of their times. Their vision is less limited by what society tells them they ought to see or do. Edwin Woolley had a terrible time convincing his Salt Lake brother of the great opportunities the automobile would bring to southern Utah. And finally, the relative paucity of activities and institutions develops a certain daring and resourcefulness that a more complete urban life does not encourage. Imagine two high school boys from Salt Lake City or Denver founding a newspaper as William T. Dobson and Guernsey Spencer did in 1903 with their Kanab Clipper. With the Deseret News or the Denver Post powerful and long established, such a courageous entrepreneurial act would hardly be imaginable. But it was in Kanab. 25 Surely the remarkable literary accomplishment of this people as evidenced in dozens of sensitive diaries and journals they kept or in the loving preservation of local history by Adonis Findlay Robinson and the many who worked with her — surely such accomplishment is in part a product of the provincial mind, constantly weighing its place in the broader world in a way more urban peoples rarely have to do. Rebecca Mace, for example, described eloquently the power with which announcement of Utah's final achievement of statehood resonated in remote Kane County.
It would thus seem that provincial life has something very elemental about it — much like the landscape that adorns the settlements of Kane County. In such places the cacaphony and buzz of everyday world events is sufficiently attenuated to help one discern what is fundamental. Just as one sees in Kane County the arches and girders that support the physical world, one sees the substructure of human society itself — the importance of close association and the power of community.
And this observation says something about greater Utah. For as Kanab is a province of Utah, so Salt Lake City is a province of San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York. It is likely that the creativity of such men and women as Marriner Eccles, Henry Eyring, Juanita Brooks, or Esther Peterson must be attributed in part to the stimulus their provincial origins imposed upon them. So long as there are counties like Kane, towns like Kanab, and states like Utah, Americans need not fear that the well of their creative energies, so desperately needed to cope with present world problems, will ever dry up. And in helping us to understand this most important fact, Kane County again offers service — for surely through the years it has informed meaningfully and importantly Utah's broader society, responding admirably to the challenge of change in the modern world. In this sense as in others it is a Utah writ small.
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