SINKING R O O T S
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.ormons were institution builders. Once their immediate survival was assured, they turned to anchoring their institutions. This was true in the Great Basin, and the Dixie pioneers implemented it without question when they arrived at the base of the Colorado Plateau. Even though their assignment took them below the Great Basin into the sandy desert, they assumed they would conquer it through irrigation, family farms, villages, churches, schools, shops, newspapers, libraries, banks, theaters, and courts, just as their co-religionists were doing in scores of other settlements at higher elevations. This institutional solution was working throughout the Mormon settled portion of the Great Basin and they intended to make it work in Dixie within the first decade. The initial Washington County settlers accomplished the basics of laying out townsites on the grid pattern Joseph Smith had adopted for his ideal City of Zion. Settlers drew lots for a town plot and acreage in nearby fields, diverted water onto the land, and arranged temporary shelters for their families. Then they automatically turned to the next step in their minds: building civic institutions. 52
