41 minute read
Senator Orval Hafen and the Transformation of Utah's Dixie
Senator Orval Hafen and the Transformation of Utah's Dixie
By DOUGLAS D. ALDER
By the year 2002 Utah's Dixie has become prosperous. Eleven golf courses, four national parks, and several national monuments nearby draw visitors from the whole world to enjoy the redrock scenery, the sunshine, and the clear skies. Numerous restaurants and hotels accommodate them, as do community parks, trails, and a major state park. The area is home to thousands of retirees who reside in commodious homes and/or condominium complexes. National and international visitors come regularly, some to special events like the St. George Marathon, the Huntsman World Senior Games, or the Dixie Arts Festival. Others come to celebrations, cultural attractions, and conventions, or they simply come to enjoy the magnificent surroundings. 1
Few who visit in this decade or who move their residence to this popular retirement area know that a century ago life in their chosen place was bleak. Then, the residents struggled to support their families and could not provide employment opportunities for their grown children, who were often obliged to move away. Second generation out-migration was the norm.
How did this amazing transition to in-migration and abundance occur? How did the blazing heat that in the past persecuted the residents become the attractive sunshine that draws people today? How did water projects develop to support the expansion? How did the isolation that limited the early settlers give way to an interstate highway system and a major commuter airline headquartered in St. George? How did Dixie become the home of a substantial college? Many rural Utah towns aspired to such development. Why did it happen in Utah's Washington County?
One way to understand this amazing transformation story is to examine the lives of the key players in the twentieth century, when the austerity gradually gave way to opportunity. These included people like Edward H. Snow, Anthony W Ivins, Joseph A. Nicholes, William Barlocker, and Orval Hafen. The latter was born in 1903 and lived until 1964, bridging the timespan between austerity and the new Dixie, which took root in the 1960s and blossomed in the 1970s and beyond. Fortunately, he kept a journal of the 1934-64 years, giving us a firsthand chronicle.
When Orval Hafen graduated from law school in 1929, he had achieved a respectable escape from his childhood home country, the parched desert of Utah's Dixie. He had taken the high road: college at Brigham Young University, then work in Washington, D.C., while taking night courses at George Washington Law School, and thereafter a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. The road to success was open to him. In the journal that captured his entire adult life, he commented, "When I went away to law school the only thing I had decided definitely was that I would not come back here to practice, and here I came." 2
Like many of his compatriots, Hafen left Dixie because economic opportunities were so limited. Employment in Los Angeles and even in Las Vegas, where the Boulder Dam was under construction, drew scores of young people from Dixie. They abandoned subsistence farming and the limited cattle and sheep industry in an arid land in favor of industrial and business opportunities in those alluring places.
Joseph A. Nicholes, president of Dixie College, had his eye on young Orval Hafen, wanting to forestall such a loss. He solicited the law student's help while he was still in Washington, D. C, and then pled with him to come home as an attorney and provide temporary leadership of a fledgling farmers' cooperative formed to market agricultural produce effectively. He appealed to Orval's loyalty, arguing that the area needed his help. Orval was persuaded to come. Estimating the potential of such marketing and other ventures, Hafen wrote, "Our people will be happier and more contented; they will have enough of an income to at least provide the necessities, and perhaps a few of the luxuries of life. They can start to live instead of just exist. They will develop and build industries which will provide opportunities for their children, who now have to go away to find a livelihood." 3
Such a statement could describe aspirations in much of rural Utah in the 1930s, but Hafen knew that conditions in Washington County had been grim for decades; the desert climate did not make agricultural improvements seem very promising. Having lived in Provo and then on both U. S. coasts, Hafen realized that life elsewhere, even during the depression, was not as austere as it was in Dixie. He commented in his journal that there was but $3 million assessed valuation in the whole county of 7,000 people, about $430 per person. 4
The temporary assignment with the cooperative experiment brought Hafen back to his homeland, not because he wanted to be there but because there were so many needs to be met. Within the first three years he became city attorney, county attorney, president of the chamber of commerce, secretary of the Pioneer Protection and Investment Company, member of the county library board, member of the county seed and feed loan committee, member of the LDS stake presidency, 5 member of the Dixie College Board of Trustees, Republican county chairman, and vice president of the St. George Building Society, all while maintaining a law practice. He obviously had urgently needed skills. His return also may have been influenced by the great crash of 1929, which limited opportunities elsewhere, and certainly his bachelorhood was a significant factor that received his attention, as he continued to pursue a relationship he had begun before leaving for law school. He finally convinced Ruth Clark of Provo to become his bride in 1934. She did so on the understanding that they would not stay in Dixie.
However, what began as a one-year temporary assignment turned into a lifetime in Dixie—one in which he and Ruth often wondered if they would have been wiser to follow the diaspora of Dixieites to opportunities in Arizona, Nevada, or California. Yet from 1929 to 1964 Orval wound his life into the fabric of a community that was trying desperately to change, to enter a metamorphosis. The lives of Orval and Ruth Hafen marked the end of the Dixie austerity period, the change from frugality to a consumer society, the move from isolation and labor-intensive agriculture to recreation and tourism, the amazing change from a Spartan community to one offering comforts that hardly anyone foresaw. Orval was not the lone leader, but he was a visionary man who captured the transition in a powerful journal. In its pages one can feel the discouragement of trying to attract capital and the excitement of a new vision for the county, a vision that actually came into being just after Orval died, still in his prime at age sixty.
The challenges ahead of Dixieites in the 1930s were huge. There was not one hard-surfaced road in the county seat of St. George, home to 2,500 people. Only a few cars came through the town each day, and there was no railroad. The nearby national parks attracted some hardy travelers, but the dirt roads were almost impassable. The brief economic upswing caused by World War I soon passed, and the effect of the Great Depression was settling in upon Washington County, already among the poorest sections of the nation.
The farmers' cooperative Hafen came to manage lasted only one year and was unable to pay the salary it had planned for him. In its stead Hafen and several community leaders organized the Pioneer Protection and Investment Company. They had limited success by attracting a small amount of capital, about $5,000, from within their own ranks and, using it to import fertilizer to sell to farmers, posting a modest profit. This effort underlined the basic difficulty of not being able to attract outside capital and the limits of agriculture in an arid land.
Then a near-catastrophe occurred. In 1933 the LDS church withdrew its sponsorship of Dixie College, a move that was part of a plan to close the many LDS academies in the Intermountain West and defer to state-owned higher education. The whole community knew that Dixie College was central to the town's purpose. Orval Hafen became president of the chamber of commerce that year, and he and his colleagues scraped together money to send a delegation of key people, including William O. Bentley, Joseph S. Snow, David Hirschi, and Dixie College president Joseph K. Nicholes to lobby the legislature. That team brokered a unique agreement making Dixie a state institution that would initially receive no appropriation.
Hafen reported: "We [Dixie College] got by on the financial end last year [1933-34] through the help of the church and by combining the high school and college under one program, as had been done previously. We hope to do so again this year [1934-35], and are already girding ourselves for another fight in the legislature, not only to keep our school but for the whole idea of junior colleges, and also to see that we get an appropriation from the state, as Snow and Weber Junior Colleges have done." 6 The college's success in obtaining a $35,000 appropriation in 1935 meant that it would survive and its 200 students could continue their education.
Once that crisis had passed, Orval and five other community leaders, W O. Bentley, Matthew Bentley, Glenn E. Snow,Wilford W. McArthur, and B. Glen Smith, organized the Dixie Education Association. It was a behindthe-scenes effort to forestall any similar crises. The group slowly accumulated sufficient funds to provide a year's reserve, should it be needed. Two decades later, that money was available to purchase the site for a new campus next to the cemetery on the eastern edge of town.
Those searching for a new economic base faced serious challenges. One was the continued need for support for Dixie College. Another was the need for expanded water development. Roads needed to be improved, capital attracted, and destination amenities created to interest travelers. Orval was often discouraged about the prospects. On October 8, 1935, he wrote, "Some days things seem so petty here; I spend my time and energy with details, with things that somehow don't matter much. St. George doesn't figure much in the world's progress. It is insignificant, and in so many ways so is all that we do here." Two decades later he could still get discouraged: "The town seems so sleepy, there seem to be so few opportunities for people to make the money they need to keep up with the times. There is a temptation to feel like one should chuck it all and move to Salt Lake or some section where there are more opportunities.... Then I recall that Juanita Brooks said once that someone had written that a man could make a better contribution through his own group or town than he could anywhere else." 7
Many of the residents of Dixie did not share his vision. They did not look to outsiders for help and certainly did not see tourism as a viable future. Suggestions about building a golf course to attract visitors brought chuckles from those locals who did not expect that tourists would come and knew that no home-towners had the time, money, or inclination for golf. They had labored at farming, ranching, and peddling their products for three generations and had become accustomed to the rigors of austerity. Frugality was an ethical principle with them, and they intended to continue with it.
John Hafen was Orval Hafen's father, a rather successful Santa Clara farmer/rancher of Swiss descent; he represented that view. He embodied an established generation of farmers who clung to the old values and prospered. Late in life he owned a good-sized cattle herd but still lived as if he did not. Orval reported in his journal that his father's Santa Clara neighbors asked him to convince his father to install a telephone so they would not have to send for him continually to take calls at their homes. "Dad doesn't have a radio or a car. I had to try persuasion on him several times last summer to buy a refrigerator. He represents the old age, I the new, in a way. There are virtues in his attitude, and perhaps some in mine." 8
One tale in the Hafen family captures that frugality mode. "One Sunday Ruth and I drove over to Santa Clara to visit father. He told us he had bought a new suit but in looking him over Ruth noticed that the coat and pants did not match. She called it to father's attention and asked 'Why is it you have on the coat from the new suit but the pants from another suit?' Dad said, 'Well, I just didn't want to come out in the new suit all at once.'" 9
In contrast to this self-denial of their father's generation, Orval and others of his time were restive for a new Dixie. Even amid the discouragement of the Great Depression they worked at optimism. The future state senator wrote in 1935:
Though he missed on a point or two (the thirty-hour week), Hafen was a pretty good prophet, foreseeing more parks and monuments, pleasure boats, and millions of visitors. The next year he noted a few signs of the new ethic:
Orval Hafen gradually developed a new vision for Dixie rooted in his knowledge of his homeland and his experience beyond it. He was convinced that a new consumer society, ending the austerity of Washington County, was possible if Dixieites would move beyond subsistence agriculture. His vision featured the creation of destination tourism, something more than providing gas, food, and lodging for those passing through on Highway 91. He foresaw people coming to St. George for an extended stay, to play golf, to visit national parks, to enjoy recreation facilities yet to be built, perhaps to spend the winter or even to retire. Much of that vision was linked to sunshine. He came to believe that sunshine was a saleable product and that people could be attracted to Dixie to enjoy it and even to build a comfortable lifestyle around it.
Perhaps such hopefulness among the new generation was influenced by the mercurial rise of Las Vegas, so near the Dixie desert. St. George was on the northern edge of the Mohave Desert, snuggled next to the Hurricane Fault and the elegance of the Colorado Plateau. Las Vegas, once an abandoned Mormon outpost, lay one hundred miles southwest in the flatland of that desert, right in the extreme heat, but it was thriving. Hafen's journal in 1952 included an astute comment about the amazing anomaly:
On the one hand Hafen saw Dixie as "sleepy," yet on the other hand he was a dreamer:
The old pioneers did their part in establishing a foothold in this forbidding, awesome land. That was their mission, and they accomplished it in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. A new day and new problems are now moving on the stage. Someone must start out where they left off. There is SO MUCH to do to catch up with other sections of the state and with other states. 14
These words could well be the motto of the Dixie transition leaders, men like Arthur Bruhn, who dreamed of a thriving Dixie College; Truman Bowler and Wayne Wilson, who planned for water projects; and Neal Lundberg, a forward-looking civic leader. Most of them were entrepreneurs who determined to use local resources to stimulate the realization of their visions. They had few ties to outside funds; big capital investments would have to wait for the 1970-2000 period. Then the high-risk projects, based largely on outside money, would get going with such developments as Bloomington, Green Valley, the first convention center, major housing projects, shopping malls, and industrial parks. Those developments characterize St. George today but were beyond the capacity of local investors in the 1940-70 epoch.
Hafen was one of the handful to make a modest start. While maintaining a law practice, he devoted much of his personal effort to business ventures, hoping to generate capital for his bigger dreams. He established a Ford car dealership and service garage, which sometimes consumed his whole work day. The dealership was a taxing undertaking and pressed him constantly to meet the payroll. He commented, "It is a worry; it ties up considerable capital; it doesn't make much money." 15
Next he ventured into real estate, developing a housing subdivision on the southern edge of the town at Main Street and 6th South. This was his effort at attracting outsiders, but few potential buyers could make down payments. He often had to take a second mortgage to make deals possible, again tying up his capital potential. It was slow going but the subdivision was eventually completed. Despite this harsh experience, it was part of an ambitious dream:
Neither the Pine Valley nor Snow Canyon efforts were completed in his lifetime, but both have since materialized into major endeavors. Pine Valley has become one of the state's most desirable locations for summer cabins. The Snow Canyon project was Hafen's wild fantasy. In the 1960s he described his dream for the site:
The fairways would be of sand, and the greens of asphalt or sponge rubber. This entire project in Padre Canyon near Ivins depended upon finding water. The area is a scenic desert with all the beauty that Zion National Park or the Grand Canyon offers, but amenities for visitors would require water, which seemed almost impossible to get. Hafen, rational, conservative man that he was, took a gamble. Explaining his decision to use water dousers, he explained:
The Padre Canyon development actually came to fruition, but not by his effort. He got the water there (though he did not build the swimming pool), proving the plan's viability, but he was diverted to political projects. Then when he returned to it, it was too late; he had a heart attack while digging a trench at the project and died prematurely. Three decades later, developers utilized the land and water he once owned to create the Tuacahn Performing Arts Center, where thousands come to the same canyon to attend outdoor musical productions each summer. Appropriately, the indoor theater there is named after Orval and Ruth Hafen.
These several personal ventures did not occupy all his time. He joined with others in attempts to promote the desert paradise idea. Golf was central to their plan, and they were convinced that the little white ball was to be a key factor in Dixie's future. In 1965, one year after Orval Hafen s death, a group including Neal Lundberg, Sid Atkin, Bruce Stucki, and others negotiated the creation of Red Hills Golf Course, the city's first. This was the culmination of a campaign for St. George golf that had begun in the 1930s. In fact, during a visit in 1931, LDS president Heber J. Grant urged community leaders to build a golf course. 19
Nearly a decade before their success, Hafen was talking the same way: "I want to do something about getting a golf course established so that we can begin to attract people in the wintertime." 20 Such a course would be a nice fit for his dude ranch. He knew there were obstacles, even beyond capital:
Efforts like the Ivins ranch, proposed golf courses, and new housing developments depended upon finding more water sources. The city's modest growth until then had been supplied by the nearby springs along the Red Hills and by water from Cottonwood Spring. The latter was brought to St. George from a large spring on Pine Valley Mountain's southern face via an eighteen-mile canal. Anthony W Ivins, the mayor of St. George in the early 1890s, had promoted an ambitious plan to dig a canal that distance; earlier, Brigham Jarvis had advocated the route that was finally adopted. The canal was completed in 1897. This water sufficed for the city of St. George until the 1930s, when federal funds became available to pipe the water the whole distance, thus doubling the amount delivered to the town. 22 Orval Hafen captured the community's hope as the effort began:
Within two decades, community leaders could see the necessity of seeking further sources of water. They began an ambitious plan to construct a major reservoir on the Virgin River below the town of Virgin and another one near Gunlock on the Santa Clara River.These projects were on a scale many times the size of the Cottonwood effort and depended on the device that enabled reclamation projects throughout America's West—federal funding. Congress had paid for Boulder Dam, and the transformation it brought to Las Vegas was not unnoticed in adjacent Washington County. A broad coalition of community leaders from Hurricane as well as St. George, including Hafen, worked with Senator Frank E. Moss and Congressman Laurence J. Burton to get a $42 million appropriation from the U. S. Congress. Its passage in 1964 prompted an ebullient entry in Hafen s journal:
The joy was soon eclipsed as the combined projects were abandoned. The Virgin site presented geological problems; a fatal fault line and porous soil near the dam site would have prevented the lake from keeping the water stored. A second site closer to Hurricane proved to be too expensive. The Gunlock Reservoir on the Santa Clara River was eventually completed, but not with federal funds. It would take twenty more years to build the Quail Creek Reservoir, an alternative to the Dixie Project that was based on a different strategy. Instead of damming the Virgin, Quail Creek diverted Virgin waters into a nearby storage reservoir. 25
Another domain of interest for the Hafens was culture. This was one reason for their continuing support of Dixie College; part of that support included Ruth's teaching the French language on the campus. Orval and Ruth wanted their three surviving children, Bruce, Ruth Ann, and Margaret, to participate in music, theater, and art. All three did, gratifying their parents and setting a tone for their lives. The Hafens also promoted quality reading. Ruth founded St. George's Alice Louise Reynolds Club, a women's book club that encouraged reading of quality literature. Named for an esteemed Brigham Young University professor, it was part of a network of similar women's groups in Utah. Ruth nurtured the effort for years and found great delight in the group and the reading. For his part, Orval built and read a personal collection of books. Excerpts from them often appeared in his many speeches at church and community meetings as well as in his journal.
In 1952 Orval Hafen was elected to the Utah State Senate. After three decades of efforts to jumpstart Dixie's economy, he became the official spokesman for the region, including Iron County, in the state capitol. The remainder of his life was devoted to this arena. His legal and business talents moved him into prominence quickly. At the end of his first session (1953), he was selected as the outstanding senator by the representatives of the press. In his second session (1955) he became party whip, then in 1957 he was elected senate president. In 1959 he was majority leader and thereafter chair of key committees. This close tie with the legislative leadership allowed him to be very productive. During those twelve years he became the point man on several issues: junior colleges, state parks, reapportionment, savings and loan institutions, and higher education.
Governor J. Bracken Lee was the focal figure in Utah's politics in the 1950s. He cut a conservative swath across Utah and the Republican party, and his main goals were to cut taxes and reduce the size of government. To that end, he called a special session of the legislature in December 1953 to deal with education. There, he submitted requests to close the junior colleges and vocational schools in Utah, arguing that the state did not need them and could not afford them.
Naturally, this put Senator Hafen in a tight squeeze. As an up-and-coming Republican, it was difficult for him to oppose the leader of his party, yet his number one priority was to protect Dixie College. He was not alone in this predicament. Weber, Snow, and Carbon colleges as well as the two vocational schools, Salt Lake and Central Utah, also had advocates in the legislature. It could have been a huge battle, but behind-the-scenes negotiations softened the potential conflict.
Legislative leaders, including Senator Hafen, met with the LDS First Presidency and Ernest Wilkinson, BYU's president. The latter was advocating the creation of a network of junior colleges to be "feeder" schools for BYU. An agreement was reached that the church would take back Snow, Dixie, and Weber colleges, which had been church academies previously, and continue their operation. Senator Hafen agreed to carry that bill on the understanding that Carbon and the two vocational schools would not be included because they had not been LDS academies and the church did not intend to take them on. They would be handled in separate bills that would close them.
There was some grumbling about Weber College because many people in Weber County did not want the church to own their college. However, faced with the possibility of no future for the college at all, their legislators reluctantly went along with Senator Hafen's bill. For his part, Governor Lee realized that a proposal to end state ownership of the colleges would not pass unless the survival of these three colleges was guaranteed. So that was the compromise: transfer Dixie, Snow, and Weber to the LDS church and close Carbon and the two vocational schools.
Senator Hafen's corresponding bill, SB39, put him in a tough spot, but he reasoned that the bill would ensure continuation of the college, which would otherwise die. He had no guarantee that the church would never close the college; it had already done that once before in 1933, but the immediate onslaught needed to be contained, so he led out in the negotiations and sponsored the bill in the senate. The bill passed on December 18. 26
The ending to all these tactics was surprising. A citizens' movement in Ogden, Ephraim, and Price raised a protest against the legislation, and citizens sponsored an initiative to keep all six schools open and under state ownership. To the amazement of many, the initiative passed statewide. Governor Lee's attempt had been rejected. Those six institutions are still part of Utah's higher education system. Today they enroll some 72,000 students and are considered a key factor in training a marketable workforce, which in turn attracts industries to the state and stimulates the thriving economy.
This contest was one factor prompting Senator Hafen to introduce legislation creating a Utah Higher Education Coordinating Council. He hoped the non-partisan agency would protect higher education from unproductive and unregulated competition among individual institutions. He presented appropriate senate bills in 1957 and 1959. 27 The resulting council served as a forerunner for the Utah State Board of Regents, which was instituted a decade later. He also furthered Dixie College by promoting bills to construct buildings on the new campus. Taken together, the new campus, the new buildings there, the continued existence, and the new governance system became basic elements of Dixie College. Senator Hafen was central in all of these developments that played a major part in the new Dixie.
Another matter that influenced rural southern Utah was the issue of legislative apportionment. Senator Hafen quickly became the leader in this matter, which was under scrutiny because of U S. Supreme Court rulings about equal representation. He authored two bills, one in 1961 and another in 1963, that attempted to balance the urban centers and the rural parts of the state. 28 The bills passed. In his journal he summarized the issue:
The 1962 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Baker v. Carr had undone many states' efforts to modify the strict representation by population. In Utah, this required that counties sometimes have split representation in order to create equal legislative districts, an outcome that Hafen unsuccessfully tried to prevent.
There were other matters bearing on Washington County that Senator Hafen undertook in the legislature. One of the far-reaching matters was the creation of a state park system, of which he is considered the founder. He could see that state parks needed support, so he introduced legislation to create the State Parks Commission to be that advocate. Obviously, Hafen was anxious to have state sponsorship for Snow Canyon State Park near Ivins in Washington County, but he had interests well beyond that. In 1963 he introduced legislation to create Wasatch State Park near Heber City. Both of these parks are state treasures—though the system today still has few legislative advocates. 30
Hafen's role in the senate included more than just Washington/Iron County promotion. He carried twenty to thirty bills per session, becoming an expert on such topics as savings and loan associations, marriage regulations, courts, school finance, and state government offices. He was a very busy man.
One of the ways to gain a perspective on Senator Hafen is to compare him with his contemporary, William (Bill) Barlocker. From 1958 to 1966 Bill Barlocker was the mayor of St. George. A Democrat, he and Senator Hafen were contrasts. Hafen was a Republican, closely allied with governors Lee and Clyde as well as state Republican chair Vernon Romney and future U.S. congressman Sherman Lloyd. On the opposite side, Bill Barlocker became the Democratic party's standard-bearer as gubernatorial candidate in 1960, but he lost to George Dewey Clyde, the incumbent.
The tactics of the two Dixieites differed fundamentally, and personally their styles were at least as far apart. Hafen admitted that the mayor was much more adept at seeking votes and "backslapping." Barlocker was affable and gifted in winning friends, whereas Hafen was perceived as rather formal. A conservative and a lawyer, he was widely read, of high culture, and an active Latter-day Saint but was not an easy socializer. 31 Barlocker was an enterprising turkey farmer of considerable means, at least for awhile. He used his fortune to take over the Bank of St. George and become its president. The two men could hardly have been more different.
Senator Hafen was very uncomfortable with the possibility of Bill Barlocker becoming governor. That fact emphasized their political difference. The irony was that both men were trying to do the same thing— develop the economic base of Dixie through government and their own investments. 32 Both adopted the American ideology of progress and of development. Both became moderately well-to-do, something rare in Dixie. And both would likely be stunned to hear critics today wonder if the sought-after development was really desirable, if growth did not have some serious downsides. They saw their intent to develop employment opportunities and to attract visitors and new residents as suitable solutions to the economic doldrums that seemed to persist in Utah's Dixie. Philosophically, Hafen and Barlocker were similar (pro-development), but their personal differences were so strong that their commonalities did not bring them together. They just did not do things together. Four decades later, after the Hafen-Barlocker era, the population has increased sevenfold and the area is regularly cited as one of the nation's premier retirement communities. Environmental advocates are raising questions about the concept of development and growth; they cite resource depletion, habitat infringement, air pollution, and traffic congestion—issues Hafen and Barlocker could hardly have imagined. But in 1960 Hafen and Barlocker were still struggling to jumpstart the region; they did not apologize for doing so. By 1970, after Hafen's death, Dixie was on a new trajectory leading to dynamism. Why did it work? Why in Dixie? Even though entrepreneurial efforts of local Dixie citizens were essential to get a golf course and an airport and to build motels and restaurants, there were external factors that had even more impact. Air conditioning became a national norm, making Dixie adaptable to tourists. The building of the national interstate highway system transformed much of America, particularly St. George, where the railroad had never come, and it brought commerce to the front door of St. George businesses.
Perhaps the biggest factor was the growth of national wealth, which allowed many people to travel to see the grandeur of the national parks. Another was the emergence of retirement as a national norm. Retirement income allowed many people to relocate to sunshine states. 33 Such places as Palm Springs, Phoenix/Sun City, and all of southern California were attractive to senior citizens. Utah's Dixie was just a bit north of these, and some people seeking sunshine were drawn to St. George because it was smaller than Phoenix or Los Angeles and had less glitter than Las Vegas. The Mormon temple was inviting to a particular niche of the retirement cohort. Soon Dixie became the site of Bloomington, then Green Valley, Crystal Springs, Entrada, Kayenta, Sun River, Coral Canyon, and other real estate developments, all enabled by outside financing.
Several local factors supplemented the national forces. The availability of sufficient water was essential, and the city's water development was able to stay just ahead of each project. The airport was expanded several times, first by the chamber of commerce and later by the city, with the help of federal funding. The city government became an avid supporter of golf, owning at this writing four municipal courses, while seven others in the area were privately developed.
Did Orval Hafen cause these things to happen? Hardly. His legacy did include the new Dixie College campus and many other things, but it was his attitude of building a new Dixie that was most significant. Many others came to share it. They were the ones who actually built the golf courses, the retirement complexes, and the recreation facilities after the senator's passing. Hafen, on the other hand, was the highly respected advocate who outlined the idea of destination tourism and retirement. He opened many doors.
All this growth has been exciting to many but alarming to others. To look at it from the perspective of the decades between 1930 and 1960 puts it into a context. Those who are justifiably alarmed today about the growth and its future can gain perspective by looking at a time when scarcity was the norm and a generation came on the scene to ameliorate it. Like so many in small towns, this generation set out to promote change. Their efforts were somewhat like trying to move a mountain, yet eventually the consumer society and the comfortable community that they envisioned actually came about. Orval Hafen was just one of a score who led out, but his pen captured their frustrations and their dreams. Were he alive today, his journal would likely talk of amazement—and perhaps of concern that Dixie not mirror Las Vegas.
For full citations and images please view this article on a desktop.
Douglas D Alder is professor emeritus and past president at Dixie State College in St George He serves in the Library Archive, collecting documents relating to the area, and is writing a history of the college.
1 Southwest Utah has been called "Dixie" since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) established the Cotton Mission there in 1861.
2 Orval Hafen, Orval Hafen journal, volume I, 69, October 8, 1935 A copy of this journal is privately held by the family; access to the original, located in the Harold B Lee Library, Special Collections, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, is restricted.
3 Ibid., I, 9.This is from his introduction, written August 5,1934
4 Ibid., I, 16 From the introduction
5 He was only twenty-seven and still single—unusually young for someone appointed to this high church position
6 Ibid., I, 13 From the introduction See also Washington County News, January 10, February 9, 16, 23, March 9, 1933, and Edna J Gregerson, Dixie College (Salt Lake City: Franklin Quest, 1993), 199-207
7 Hafen journal, I, 69, August 8, 1935, and ibid., II, 70, March 17, 1957 See also Bruce Hafen, "Making a Difference," St. George Magazine, January/February 1993, 24 In this article, Orval's son sees him as "plagued throughout his adult life" with these questions
8 Hafen journal, 1,18, December 16, 1934
9 Ibid., II, 154, December 16, 1958.
10 Ibid., I, 25, March 31, 1935
11 Ibid., I, 93, April 7, 1936
12 Ibid., II, 10, September 27, 1952.
13 Ibid., II, 135, August 23,1958.
14 Ibid., II, 156, December 16,1958
15 Ibid., II, 69, March 17, 1957 Examples of the many advertisements for his dealership can be seen in Washington County News, December 17, 1953, and January 21, 1954
16 Hafen journal, II, 81, August 17, 1957.
17 Ibid., III, 24, April 14,1961
18 Ibid III, 122, September 28, 1963
19 Douglas D Alder and Karl Brooks, A History of Washington County: From Isolation to Destination (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1996), 303 The efforts of Sid Atkin and Neal Lundberg are featured in Washington County News, July 30, 1964 Heber J Grant was an avid golfer
20 Hafen journal, II, 102, "New Year's Day," 1958
21 Ibid., II, 117, July 4,1958
22 Lyman Hafen, Making the Desert Bloom (St George: Publishers Place, 1991), 11—14
23 Hafen journal, 1,19, December 16, 1934.
24 Ibid., Ill, 165, August 19, 1964 See also Washington County News, August 20, 1964
25 The development of water in Utah's Dixie required several major reclamation projects Many started in the 1890-1910 period—the Cottonwood Canal (1890-91), the Enterprise Reservoir (1890-1911), the LaVerkin Canal (1885-90), the Hurricane Canal (1893-1905), and the Washington Fields Dam (1891-93) By mid-century the next generation of projects began—the Baker Dam (1954), the Kolob Reservoir (1950s), the failed Dixie Project of the 1960s, Gunlock Reservoir (1970), the Quail Creek Dam (1982-87), and an expansion of Quail Creek at Sand Hollow in 2001 (The Quail Creek project diverted water from the Virgin River to a suitable storage spot; Sand Hollow, located south of Quail Creek, will store excess runoff of the same Virgin water brought through the same canal.) The possibility of a pipeline from Lake Powell, to empty into Sand Hollow, is currently under discussion.
26 Utah State Senate, First Special Session, 1853, Senate Bill 39, pp. 144,220. See also Washington County News, December 10, 17, and 24, 1953.
27 Utah State Senate, 1957, Senate Bill 54, p 69; Utah State Senate, 1959, Senate Bill 54, p 65
28 Utah State Senate, 1961, Senate Bill 1, p 52; Utah State Senate, 1963, Senate Bill 63, p 96
29 Hafen journal, III, 104, July 18, 1963 See also Baker v Carr, Supreme Court of the United States, 309 US, April 19-20 , 1961, March 26, 1962, LexisNexis Academic Universe documen t (www.lexisnexis.com) To meet requirements of the Supreme Court decision in Baker v Carr, the legislature had to let the urban counties have a majority in the house However, Hafen made sure the rural counties maintained a majority in the senate so the rural caucus could stop legislation if it had to
30 Utah State Senate, 1957, Senate Bill 62, p 74; ibid., 1963, Senate Bill 62, p 218
31 An admiring neighbor child thought otherwise, later remembering Orval Hafen as a people person, especially one who enjoyed children See Rula Jean Snow Williams, "My Memories of Orval Hafen," November 18, 2000, essay in possession of author
32 Hafen, II, 97, November 5, 1957; ibid., 122-23, July 14,1958
33 Farley Reynolds, The New American Reality: Who We Are, How We Got Here, Where We Are Going (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1996), 287-88 Reynolds writes, "The South and the West generally benefit because they attract a rather prosperous older population whose income is unlikely to go down very much during a recession...." See also Population Profile of the United States, 1984-85, Special Studies, Series P23 #150 (Washington, DC : Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census), 7: "The South and West Regions continue to dominate the nation's growth, capturing 91.4 percent of the country's 1980-85 population increase."
