Part 5

This failure did not kill the idea of raising cotton in Dixie, but further experiments were necessary before the industry could properly expand. In January, 1857, a small company had been fitted out in Salt Lake City under Joseph Home to establish an experimental cotton farm on the Virgin River. They arrived in early February and located on the Virgin just below its junction with the Santa Clara. Dams and ditches were constructed and land cleared and planted by May 6. The crop was harvested and hauled back to Salt Lake City. The total cost of raising this first crop, including all expenses of the trip to and from Salt Lake City, was $3.40 per pound. A similar experiment the next season reduced the price per pound to $1.90.[43]

In the meantime, other settlers had been looking enviously toward the warm semi-tropical lands of the Virgin Valley. As early as 1854, Brigham Young had inquired about the possibilities of building a road into the valley from Cedar City, but the cost of construction over “the black-ridge” barrier seemed prohibitive. In 1858, with the advice and consent of Isaac C. Haight, bishop of Cedar City, six families moved down Ash Creek and settled Toquerville. These included Joshua T. Willis, John Willis, Samuel Pollock, William Riggs, Josiah Reeves and Willis Young, all of whom had been attracted by the stories of cotton-raising.

The movement had already received considerable impetus and the Mormon leaders desired more information about the possibilities of settlement. Nephi Johnson, a young missionary among the Virgin River Indians, and who had been Indian interpreter for many emigrant parties passing over the Mormon Trail, was called by Brigham Young to explore the Virgin River farther upstream and hunt for suitable places for settlement.

In the fall of 1858 he rode from Cedar City to Toquerville, where he fraternized with the Indians and persuaded them to guide him up the river. They led him over the Hurricane Fault which had hitherto blocked progress of the missionaries upstream. He explored the upper Virgin River and thus was probably the first white man to enter both Parunuweap and Zion Canyons. He says in his autobiography that in September, 1858, he went into the upper Virgin River valley as far as the site of Shunesburg and reported that a settlement could be made where Virgin was later built.[44]

He does not mention Zion Canyon, but his daughter, Lovina A. J. Farnsworth[45] relates that her father often told her of visiting it. According to her account, he followed the Virgin River with his Indian guide and reached Oak Creek, above the present site of Springdale, where the Indian stopped and refused to go any farther. Wai-no-pits, he said, might be found up there in the shadows of the narrow canyon. But the Indian agreed to wait there if Johnson insisted on going on, provided he returned before the sun (tab) went down. It is not known how far Johnson went up the canyon, but later, recalling his experience, he used to say that there were places where the “sun never shone” because the walls were so high and the canyon so narrow. He was gone much longer than he expected, and when he returned, the sun was setting and the Indian had his arm over the horse ready to mount and depart.

Back at Cedar City, Johnson was sent to found a settlement at Virgin. He gathered a small group together and set out in early December. On the 6th, they began building a road over the Hurricane Fault below Toquerville and drove their wagons into Virgin on the 20th, over a route since known as the “Johnson Twist.”

In the fall of 1860, Philip Klingensmith led five other families from Iron County over the Johnson Twist, and passing up the Virgin River selected a spot two or three miles above Grafton where water could be diverted for irrigation, and founded a settlement called Adventure (between Grafton and Rockville).

In 1861, Brigham Young paid his first visit to the Dixie settlements. Leaving Salt Lake City on May 15, he reached Cedar City about the 22nd and followed the Mormon Trail westward to Pinto and the Mountain Meadows, then southward down the Santa Clara Creek. He left the trail where it struck over the hills toward the Beaver Dam Wash, and followed the stream down to the Santa Clara mission, then comprising thirty-four men, thirty houses and two hundred and fifty acres under cultivation. Several orchards and vineyards were already producing apples, peaches, apricots, plums, nectarines, pears, quinces, almonds, figs, English walnuts, gooseberries, currants, and grapes of both Isabella and California Mission varieties. The cotton crop and casaba melons were flourishing.

The next day he drove to Tonaquint at the junction of the Santa Clara and the Virgin. This was the strategic point at which Jedediah Smith’s two trips had forked in 1826 and 1827; where Parley P. Pratt’s exploring party had turned homeward on January 1, 1850; and where John D. Lee’s party on February 3, 1852, had halted in the exploration of the Virgin River. After Brigham Young left Tonaquint, a settlement of twelve families, he stopped his carriage near the center of the valley in which St. George was later located. As members of his party crowded around him, he seemed to envision the future. On his left, running north and south, was a black ridge. Three miles to the east was a parallel black ridge. Fronting him two miles to the north was a red sandstone bluff running east and west, down the face of which were streaks of vivid green vegetation marking springs or streams. The Virgin River behind him made the fourth side of the square. According to Bleak, Young prophesied: “There will yet be built between those volcanic ridges a city with spires, towers and steeples; with homes containing many inhabitants.”[46]

The party then proceeded up the Virgin River via Washington, Toquerville and Virgin as far as Grafton. From here it retraced its steps to Toquerville and then started homeward via Harmony, Cedar City and Parowan, arriving in Salt Lake City on June 8, 1861.

The Cotton Wave

It was this trip to the Virgin River settlements that convinced Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders of the wisdom of pushing the settlement of Utah’s southland. The outbreak of the Civil War may have clinched the argument. When it became apparent that the cotton supply from the southern states would be cut off, the decision to advance the Dixie settlements with a view toward cotton culture was strengthened.

By this time moreover, there was sufficient evidence from settlers and the experimental farm to prove the practicality of cotton as a staple crop. During the summer of 1861, plans were laid for more extensive colonization. Heretofore, the settlements had been outposts of Iron County. Now the region was to come into its own as a separate colony with the central settlement to be located in the valley above Tonaquint, and to be named St. George.

At the general church conference in Salt Lake City on October 6, about three hundred families were “called” to the Dixie Mission to accelerate the cotton industry. Many of these people were abruptly informed of what awaited them when they heard their names read out, but most of them responded with good will. The families were carefully selected in such a way as to insure balanced communities: farmers, businessmen, educators, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, entertainers; all in the proportions needed.[47]

The colonists got under way in November with Apostles George A. Smith, Erastus Snow and Orson Pratt, as leaders. Towards the end of the month the vanguard stood at the forks of the road west of Toquerville at the parting of the ways up and down the river. The leaders had already traveled upstream looking over possible locations, going through the settlements of Virgin, Grafton, Adventure and up both forks of the Virgin River into Zion and Parunuweap canyons, investigating the agricultural lands along the way.[48] How far they went up Zion Canyon is unknown. Erastus Snow later reported that ten miles above Grafton the mountains closed in, leaving but a narrow gorge, through which the east fork of the Virgin forced its way, allowing no room for the passage of man or beast. His factual report indicated no wonder at the marvels he must have beheld. The sense of awe awakened today by such inspiring spectacles of nature’s handiwork appears to have been largely lacking in the hard-working pioneers who spent all their energy in wringing a meager existence from the wilderness.

At the forks of the road, the paths divided. A few went upstream with Orson Pratt, but the majority went down, arriving in early December at the site of St. George. Other settlements quickly sprang up along the length of the Virgin Valley wherever water could be diverted for irrigation. Thus the “cotton-wave” ushered many pioneers into the Virgin River valleys and insured the growth of the area.

Settlement of Zion Canyon

The cotton migrations were the prelude to the settlement of Parunuweap and Zion canyons. Because of a disagreement with Erastus Snow, Orson Pratt did not go to St. George, but led his group over the Johnson Twist up the Virgin River to the last outpost at Adventure (the lower end of the present Rockville fields), arriving in late November or early December, 1861. Here he paused long enough to gather information and make plans for settlement.

Coming up the river, Pratt undoubtedly conferred with Nephi Johnson and other settlers at Virgin, Old Grafton and Adventure. Members of the expedition, of course, went scouting for themselves, but the advice of Johnson probably led some of them to decide upon Shunesburg, where on his visit in 1858 he had reported a settlement could be made.

Adventure was a small place with limited prospects for expansion but just above it was a much larger tract of land requiring more extensive irrigation. A townsite was selected on the bench high above the river, and at a meeting held at Old Grafton on December 13, it was decided to name the new townsite Rockville because of the many boulders along the foot of the hill where it was located.

Of those who went up the river above Adventure, three families stopped at the forks of the Virgin at a place afterward called Northrop, while six continued up the Parunuweap four or five miles to the farm of an old Indian named Shunes. They purchased the land for a trifling consideration, but the price proved to be only the first installment, for the old Indian continued to live in the vicinity for many years, working and begging for food from the whites to add to his native supply of seeds, lizards and wild game.

The settlers were hardly located when a stormy period began. They were digging irrigation ditches and cutting timber for log houses, but were still living in their covered wagons when bad weather set in. Rain started on Christmas day, 1861, and continued for forty days. The Virgin became a raging torrent and, at least twice, great floods washed out the dams, filled the ditches, undermined banks, overflowed the plains and despoiled valuable farm lands. On January 8, the flood inundated the village of Grafton, the water rising suddenly during the night. As the waters swirled around the wagon box home of Nathan Tenney, several men picked it up with his expectant wife in it and carried it to higher ground north of the river, where a son was born. He was named, appropriately enough, Marvelous Flood Tenney.

After the floods subsided Old Grafton was abandoned and a new site was selected on the south bank on a higher bench a little farther upstream. The area was surveyed and laid off in town lots and fields. A new ditch costing $5,000 was dug within the next year. The new townsite of Rockville was similarly laid off into lots and fields during the summer of 1862, and an irrigation ditch was completed in time for use during 1863. In the meantime the settlers at Adventure continued to cultivate the land irrigated by their first ditch. At the forks of the river at Northrop, a ditch was built by James Lemon and others to irrigate a stretch of land below the junction of the two forks of the streams. At Shunesburg, the town and fields were surveyed and ditches constructed to divert the water from both Shunes Creek and the east fork of the Virgin.

The known settlers in Adventure included the following: Orson Pratt, Dr. S. A. Kenner, John C. Hall, Henry Stocks, William Ashton, and Elijah Newman. Those at Northrop included James Lemon, Isaac Behunin, and probably Joseph Black. The following went to Shunesburg, all of them having come together from San Pete Valley: Oliver DeMille, Hyrum Stevens, Alma Millett, George Petty, Hardin Whitlock and Charlie Klapper.

Whether anyone was located at Springdale at that time is debatable. E. C. Behunin says that his father, Isaac, stayed at Northrop until after the flood and then moved to Springdale where others had already located. Nevertheless, it is the impression of several early pioneers of the region that Albert Petty was the first settler of Springdale in the fall or winter of 1862-3. It is related that he took his wife to the spot he had selected beside some large springs and asked her to name it. She called it Springdale. It is probable, however, that the lower Springdale irrigation ditch was taken out early in 1862. It is also probable that Joseph Black came with the main group in 1861 despite his journal date of 1862, written in his old age.[49] His parents came in 1861 and it is almost certain that he was with them. He is credited by three different sources with being the first to explore Zion Canyon after the settlers arrived, although he says nothing about it.[50]

When Albert Petty came to Shunesburg, he brought with him the rock grinding stones for a grist mill. Not finding a suitable mill site at Shunesburg, he and his son, George, moved to the newly surveyed town of Springdale where they set up the mill that served as a public utility in grinding the coarse flour for the settlers of the upper Virgin.

The fall of 1862 saw another influx of settlers. Another general “call” for 250 men to go south was issued Sunday, October 19, and many others volunteered to go to Dixie. Charles L. Walker describes the incident in his journal:

Sunday, October 19, 1862.... Went up to the Bowery.... At the close of the meeting, 250 men were called to go to the cotton country. My name was on the list and was read off the stand.

At night I went to a meeting in the Tabernacle of those who had been called. Here I learned a principle that I shan’t forget in a while. It showed me that obedience is a great principle in Heaven and on earth. Well, here I have worked for the last seven years, through heat and cold, hunger and adverse circumstances, and at last have a home and a lot with fruit trees just beginning to bear and look pretty. Well, I must leave it and go and do the will of my Father in Heaven ... and I pray God to give me strength to accomplish that which is required of me.

Monday, October 20, to Wednesday, October 22. Not very well. Working around the home and fixing to dispose of my property.[51]

The spirit of “moving south” had been encouraged by the previous year’s migration and many had become interested, some because of friends or relatives who had preceded them, others because of crop losses or because they were seeking better places to locate. John Langston, who came to Rockville at this time, says in his journal that he had tired of having his crops eaten up by crickets at Alpine, Utah County, so tried farming at Draper. His crops in 1862 were destroyed by flooding of the Jordan River, so he volunteered and was “called” on the mission to settle Dixie.[52]

These recruits enlarged the settlements even to overcrowding. Rockville suddenly expanded by the abandonment of Adventure and the influx of new settlers to a town of nearly thirty families.[53] Shunesburg increased to fifteen or sixteen and the others in proportion.[54] The townsite and fields of early Springdale were surveyed during the fall and winter of 1862-63, and a town of some twenty families was established, with Albert Petty as presiding elder.[55]

With crowded conditions and scanty food supplies, many became discouraged and some left Dixie. Most, however, proved faithful to the “call” and remained to make the settlements permanent.

The settlements were still in a precarious state, the pioneers moving from place to place attempting to find suitable locations, some leaving and others coming, when, in 1864, a church census enumerated 765 persons (129 families), distributed along the upper Virgin River as follows:

Families People

Virgin City 56 336 Duncan’s Retreat 8 50 Grafton 28 168 Rockville 18 95 Northrop 3 17 Shunesburg 7 45 Springdale 9 54 129 765

This indicates a considerable decline in population from the previous year. The settlers had come to Dixie filled with high hopes of raising cotton, had planted that crop to excess in 1862 and 1863 and had failed to raise enough foodstuffs. They were on famine rations during the winter of 1863-64 and were not relieved until summer. Moreover, the difficulties of hauling cotton to the northern settlements and exchanging it for foodstuffs had driven many of the settlers away; some returned to their former homes, while others sought opportunities elsewhere.

Enough cotton was now being grown to create a vexatious problem of marketing. Bleak records that in the spring of 1864, 11,000 pounds were hauled to California and estimated that 16,000 pounds were still in storage. Some was even hauled to the Missouri River where it brought a fair price because of the war shortage. David Bullock and other men from Cedar City, traveling east for poor emigrants, started out loaded with Dixie cotton. It soon became necessary to set up machinery for ginning the cotton and weaving it into cloth. Gins were soon in operation in several places and hand looms and spinning wheels were found in many homes.[56]

In 1865, Brigham Young personally made plans for the construction of a cotton mill at Washington. The building was finished by December, 1866. Later it was sold to a cooperative concern, the Rio Virgin Manufacturing Company, and more up-to-date machinery was installed, making it the most complete factory in Utah for the processing of cotton and wool. It continued to operate until the close of the century.[57]

Parunuweap Canyon was fully settled almost from the start, but Shunesburg gradually declined until today there are but one or two small farms left. This is due primarily to the ravages of floods which washed away the good agricultural land. On the other hand, tillable land in Zion Canyon was not brought under cultivation for a dozen years or more.

Flat lands suitable for agriculture in Zion were found in two areas along the canyon floor, separated by a mile or more of rocky, steep-sided canyon difficult to travel. The lower area, in which Springdale was located, was a narrow valley less than a mile wide and four or five miles long separated from the Parunuweap fork of the river by a reef of Shinarump Conglomerate, more resistant to erosion than the overlying Chinle shales in which the valley had been cut. The upper area was an old lake bed filled by sediments. It extended from the old blockade in the river below the Court of the Patriarchs that had anciently produced the lake, nearly five miles upstream to the Temple of Sinawava. It was much narrower than the lower unit and the tillable land was scattered in narrow fields along the banks.

Joseph Black seems to have been the first to investigate the upper area, probably in the late fall of 1861 or 1862. The difficulties of reaching the upper part of Zion were too great, however, and he finally located in the lower valley. His descriptions of the canyon were such that the cynical referred to it sometimes as “Joseph’s Glory.” Nevertheless his stories were listened to and some scoffers remained to pray. E. C. Behunin says:

It was Joseph Black who interested my father in Zion Canyon. Black had made a trip into the canyon before we came here and in talking to my father, he had praised it so highly that my father became interested and moved up into the canyon upon Black’s advice and suggestion.

Isaac Behunin had come to Dixie in the fall of 1861 and settled at Northrop until the flood in January, 1862, after which he moved to Springdale and built a home. In addition to farming in Springdale he visited Zion in the summer of 1863 and started some operations there, building a one-room log cabin not far from where Zion Lodge now stands.[58]

The cabin was a crude shelter used only during the summer, for the Behunins wintered in Springdale. It was built of cottonwood logs and the cracks were chinked with mud. The roof had a ridgepole to which ash and maple sticks were lashed on either side and covered with corn-fodder and dirt. The single room had a door and a window with glass panes. At one side was a fireplace, but the cooking was usually done on a stepstove outside.

The Behunins were real mountaineers, inured to the hardships of their life. To make a wash basin, they cut down a cottonwood tree in the dooryard and scooped out a bowl-like depression in the top of the stump. A hole was bored in the bottom, downward and outward. This was stopped on the outside by a wooden plug. To wash, they dipped fresh water into the bowl.

The family included, in addition to the parents, five sons and one daughter. All except the daughter were confirmed smokers. Indian tobacco grew well in Zion Canyon in those days and at first they could gather their supplies from the wild plants. Indeed, their more censorious neighbors ventured the opinion that the wild tobacco was the inducement that led the Behunins into Zion Canyon. Later they introduced domestic varieties.

The cabin seems to have been completed late in the season after the corn had been harvested. There was no road into Zion Canyon at that time, but a heavy team had hauled in a plow and other necessities. An irrigation ditch was dug and the flats cleared of vines and rosebushes. By the next season several acres were under cultivation, and fruit trees, cane and garden stuff had been planted.

The Behunins also owned fifteen or twenty head of cattle all broken to work, including milk cows. They raised pigs on the surplus corn and did their own butchering and curing. James H. Jennings (born in 1853) tells of watching them slaughter thirteen hogs one day. They filled a shallow pool with water and heated it by dropping into it hot rocks from a nearby bonfire. When the water was near boiling, they dipped the hogs in the pool to scald them and loosen the hair. The meat was cut up and salted to make old-style home-cured hams, shoulders and bacon.