Early Mormon Settlement
While trade between California and New Mexico was beating the path of the Old Spanish Trail into a road across southwestern Utah, events elsewhere were leading to the elimination of Spanish influence and the rise of Anglo-Saxon power. The Mexican War ended Spanish domination, but it was the Mormon migrations which were to fill the region with settlements.
In 1847, the Mormons began to move west from the Missouri River to the Great Salt Lake Valley. The precedent of Texas breaking away from Mexico was before them as they traveled across the plains to enter Mexican territory, where they would be free from those who had persecuted them, and where they would be practically isolated from Mexican authority by the barrier of the Grand Canyon. What dreams of empire held their thoughts as they trekked across the plains can only be conjectured.[17]
Outposts, forts, and settlements were scattered throughout the vast area they hoped to dominate. Western Colorado, southwestern Wyoming, southern Idaho, Utah, Nevada, northern Arizona and southern California were all included in their colonization plans. Strategic points throughout this whole vast empire were to be occupied and controlled. The intervening territory would be filled in later with the great number of converts to the faith pouring in from Europe. The transfer of this entire territory to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo exercised a restraining influence upon their ambitions and brought them once more under the hand of the Federal government.
During the first few years of settlement, there was little change in governmental organization and the people were for the most part guided and controlled by their religious leaders. In March, 1849, they set up a provisional government for their proposed State of Deseret.[18] In 1851, however, Congress carved this western empire into territories, paying no attention to the proposed State and designating its heart as the Territory of Utah (named for the dominant Indian nation of the region, the Utes or Utahs). The Mormon dreams were thus dimmed, but they did not finally die until 1858, when Albert Sydney Johnston’s army marched to Utah and completely ended all hopes of an independent political unit. Thereafter, the Mormon attitude gradually changed from one of open opposition to one of conditioned loyalty and the long struggle for statehood began.[19]
It was during the period of expansion and occupation that southwestern Utah was generally explored with a view toward settlement. Late in the fall of 1847, a small party under the leadership of Captain Jefferson Hunt pushed to the Pacific coast to secure provisions and livestock, carrying instructions to the Mormon Battalion members mustered out in California to remain there that winter and not to attempt to come to Salt Lake until Spring.[20] The party followed approximately the route of U. S. Highway 91 from Great Salt Lake to Little Salt Lake, Iron County, where it picked up the Old Spanish Trail and followed it to the coast. Hunt’s men were the first Mormons to travel the route later known as the Mormon Trail. Where they obtained information to guide them is a question, but it is known that the Mormons were acquainted with Fremont’s report of his trip along that route in 1844. There was an important deviation from Fremont’s path, however; they went through Scipio Valley and the pass to the east of the Canyon range of mountains, whereas Fremont had gone on the west side. Further details of this trip are lacking.[21]
The party wintered in California, where negotiations were entered into between Hunt and United States Army officers for raising another battalion of Mormons to garrison posts in California. When Hunt returned to Salt Lake in the spring of 1848, he carried the details with him, but no report of his trip is extant.
On September 17, 1848, while Brigham Young was visiting at Fort Provo, a group of leaders gathered at Hunt’s house in the evening to “converse about the southern country and the prospects of settling it.... Many questions were asked in regard to routes, traveling, locations, incidents, etc., and the prospects before the Saints caused quite a good feeling.”[22]
During the late summer and fall of 1849, hundreds of emigrants on their way to seek gold in California poured into the Salt Lake Valley too late to make the trip westward across the Sierra Nevada Mountains before snow blocked the way. There was little food and the Mormons were not eager to have these people winter with them. The difficulty was solved by the offer of Captain Hunt to pilot them across the southern route.
Altogether there were about 125 wagons and 1,000 head of cattle. The Argonauts were a nondescript lot, everyone intent upon his own personal problems and not actuated by a common ideal as were the Mormons. They caused Hunt a great deal of trouble and even threatened his life over certain details of the trip. Dissensions arose which split the party several times. At last, near the rim of the Great Basin not far from the Mountain Meadows, most of them left him for a supposed cutoff via Walker’s Pass in the Sierras. Hunt, in peace, safely piloted the remaining six or seven wagons to the coast. The party taking the cutoff ended in disaster in Death Valley.[23] Captain Hunt stayed in California more than a year and returned to Utah early in 1851.
In December, 1849, the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret commissioned a company already organized under the leadership of Parley P. Pratt, to explore the south and ascertain its possibilities for sustaining settlements.[24] The expedition of nearly fifty men had left on November 25. They pushed south during the cold weather via the new settlement of Manti. Following the Sevier River to Circleville Canyon, they turned up a defile to the southwest and followed it about twelve miles north of the Spanish Trail over the mountains into the Little Salt Lake Valley, December 21. Two days later they camped on Red Creek (now Paragonah) where they paused to recuperate among the excellent meadows, willows and bunch grass abounding there at that time.
Here it was decided to divide the party, some to guard the recuperating cattle, while twenty of the men with horses and mules were to push the exploration southward. Those who remained moved their camp to Birch Creek (now Parowan) and while waiting explored the surrounding region. Some went up Parowan Canyon where they discovered accessible timber, plaster of paris (gypsum), water lime (limestone) and iron ore.
Between Jan. 2 and 6, 1850, a company of ten men explored west of Little Salt Lake, where they found many Indian pictographs on the rocks. A few miles west of the present site of Cedar City they came upon a “range of hills filled with iron ore of the richest quality—probably 75 per cent.” Four Indians visited them and when told that the explorers were Mormons, they said ... “Captain Walker had told them about us, that we were his friends. They said they were our friends and would not kill our cattle or horses. Walker told them the Mormons raised Shaunt Tickup [lots of food] and they wanted us to come and raise it among them. They said they loved the Mormons. They are very poor and have no horses or skins. They live upon rabbits which are plenty in their valley (now Cedar Valley) and clothe themselves with their skins.”[25] This party of ten rejoined the camp on January 6.
An exploring party of twenty went south on December 26, reached the rim of the Great Basin at the present site of Kanarra two days later, and then descended Ash Creek, as had Escalante in 1776 and Jedediah Smith in 1826 and 1827. They crossed the black volcanic ridge, probably camping in the vicinity of Pintura. On December 31, 1849, Pratt summarized his impressions:
From the Basin Rim 13 miles of rapid descent brought us to milder climate and first cultivation [Indian]. A mile or so farther brought us to the banks of the Virgin.
The great Wasatch range along which we had traveled our whole journey here terminates in several abrupt promontories [Kolob, La Verkin and Zion]. The country southward for 80 miles showing so signs of water or fertility; ... a wide expanse of chaotic matter presented itself, huge hills, sandy deserts, cheerless, grassless plains, perpendicular rocks, loose barren clay, dissolving beds of sandstone ... lying in inconceivable confusion—....
January 1, 1850, they continued down the fertile valleys of the Virgin River as far the Santa Clara Creek. Pratt says:
The bottoms now expanded about one mile in width and several miles in length, loose sandy soil, very pleasant for farming, extremely fertile and easily watered and sometimes subject to overflow. No timber in the country except large cottonwoods along the stream, sufficient for temporary building and fuel....
The country below [to the southwest, where the river cuts through a range of mountains] being of the most unpromising character ... and our animals almost unable to travel, ... it was thought imprudent to venture farther. We therefore turned to the north up the Santa Clara.... The Indians were ... well armed with bows and poison arrows and nearly equalling us in numbers. We fed them, sung for them.... The chief made us a speech, bidding us welcome to his country.... He strongly urged our people to settle with them and raise “tickup” [food]. They returned again next morning, piloted us all day. We saw no appearance of women or children among them. They cultivate small patches only, raise good crops by irrigation. We gave them peas for seed, presents of dried meat....
Following up the Santa Clara, they reached the new wagon road made by Captain Jefferson Hunt and followed it over the divide into the Great Basin, via the Mountain Meadows. Continuing on the Old Spanish Trail eastward, they also discovered the iron ore in the range of hills that the smaller party of ten had found a day or two previously.
Back at the base camp after they arrived, preparations were made for a big celebration on January 8, 1850. Pratt further reported that a liberty pole was erected, and a flag marked with “one star and a great basin was hoisted together with a free soil banner.” A dinner was prepared and “all sat down to a most substantial public dinner, being the first celebration of the Peopling of Little Salt Lake Valley, which we hope will be celebrated annually around that Spot, ’till a hundred thousand merry hearts can join in the festival.”
The trip home was a hard one. They followed the west base of the mountains, crossing Beaver Creek (Smith’s Lost River), where they camped on the night of January 12. It continued to snow so hard that by the time they reached Rock Creek (now Fillmore), they decided (January 20) to winter there. Several, however, pushed on home, arriving about the end of the month.
The information thus brought to Mormon headquarters was encouraging and the early settlement of southern Utah was decided upon. The report of finding large quantities of iron ore west of the present site of Cedar City aroused considerable interest. During the summer of 1850 plans were laid for colonizing the newly created Iron County, the seat to be located at Center Creek, later called Parowan. After harvest in 1850, colonists were called by the Mormon leaders to settle that region. The “call”[26] in this case was published in the Deseret News of November 16, 1850, and was a request for those listed to meet at Fort Provo as soon as possible to organize the expedition.
The group formed in mid-December under the leadership of George A. Smith and traveled south for nearly a month during the cold of late December and early January over a wretched road, in many places covered with snow. The leaders arrived at Center Creek on January 13, 1851, and immediately set out to explore the surrounding country. The next day one party explored Parowan Canyon, another party went up Summit Creek Canyon, a third re-explored the Little Salt Lake, a fourth went up Red Creek, while George A. Smith and more than twenty others went on southwestward to the region around Cedar Valley and Iron Springs.
On the way they met Captain Jefferson Hunt returning from California, and invited him to remain with them while his party went on to Center Creek. Around the camp fire on the night of January 15, they discussed the organization of a local government, appointed a committee to nominate the officers needed and decided to hold an election on January 17. Convinced that Center Creek was the proper place to establish their settlement, they held the election there as scheduled, and a pioneer celebration was staged.
John D. Lee describes this event as follows:
At 10 oclock [a.m.], Thomas S. Smith, one of the judges of election cried three times in an audible voice, declaring that the polls were open and ready to receive votes.... At 3 o’clock [p.m.], at the sound of the trumpet, the people assembled around the public dinner, each man and his lady (that is those who had any) in their respective places as follows: The judge was placed at the head, then the gentlemen were seated on his left according to their rank and the ladies on his right facing their partners. Previous to sitting down, President George A. Smith, delivered an oration suitable to the circumstances of the citizens of Iron County in celebrating the day on which law and order was first established in that part of Utah. All the citizens of Iron County then sat down upon the ground around the public dinner spread upon buffalo robes; these were placed next to the ground with clean and white table cloths on top upon which were spread a variety of the refreshments of life.... At 6 o’clock the polls were closed.[27]
Jefferson Hunt was elected representative. On January 18, after four days “residence” in Iron County, he went on with his party toward Great Salt Lake with his credentials in his pocket.
The settlers immediately set to work building a combined town and fort, making roads to the mountains for timber, clearing land for cultivation, digging irrigation ditches, setting up workshops and mills. On April 10-12, 1851, Parley P. Pratt, on his way to the Pacific Coast, passed through the settlement and found it in a flourishing condition.
By May, coal had been discovered in Cedar Canyon and its value in blacksmithing demonstrated. In the fall, after crops were harvested, a group of settlers moved from Parowan to the present site of Cedar City. The discovery of good coal deposits within a few miles of the iron ore aroused much interest among the Mormon leaders. The prospects for the development of an iron industry invited steps looking toward this. The word was dispatched to their representatives in Europe. Apostles Erastus Snow and Franklin D. Richards, then on missions in England, who organized the Deseret Iron Company in Liverpool in the spring of 1852, for the development of the Utah deposits.[28] Steel and iron workers as well as coal miners among the English converts were encouraged to migrate to Utah to help in the iron industry. Snow and Richards returned to Salt Lake City in August, and in November, Snow went south to arrange matters on the spot. By the spring of 1852, two foundries were in operation.
E. H. Beale and G. H. Heap, California bound, passed through the settlements, August 2-4, 1853. Heap gives a vivid picture of that early life.[29] His party came by the Sevier River over the Old Spanish Trail to Paragonah, Parowan and Cedar City on its way to the coast. Paragonah had thirty adobe houses arranged in the form of a quadrangle to form a fort. Outside the fort was an area of fifty acres enclosed by a single fence and cultivated in common by the inhabitants, a practice soon discontinued when the lands were divided into individual farms. The Indian War under Chief Walker, which had broken out in July 1853, farther north, had spread southward. Walker and his band had been harassing outlying settlements and stealing cattle and horses. Brigham Young sent one hundred and fifty men into action against him, declared martial law and ordered the people to concentrate in large communities. This order came to Paragonah while Heap was there. He says the inhabitants quickly began to move. Houses were demolished, windows, doors and furniture loaded into wagons, and they were soon on the road to Parowan.
Parowan was similarly organized but was much larger, having a hundred houses and a four hundred-acre field outside the fort. In describing Cedar City, Heap states that it was a place of even greater importance than Parowan, having extensive fields outside the fort abundantly irrigated. He writes:
The inhabitants are principally foreigners, and mostly Englishmen from the coal districts of Great Britain. At the time of our visit, the place was crowded with the people of the surrounding country seeking refuge from the Indians, and its square was blocked up with wagons, furniture, tents, farming implements, etc., in the midst of which were men, women and children, together with every description of cattle, creating a scene of confusion difficult to describe.... Mounted men, well armed, patrolled the country, and expresses came in from different quarters, bringing accounts of attacks by Indians on small parties and unprotected farms and houses. In face of these reports, Walker sent a message to Colonel G. A. Smith, military commander at Parowan, telling him that the “Mormons were d—— fools for abandoning houses and towns, for he did not intend to molest them there, as it was his intention to confine his depredation to their cattle, and that he advised them to return and mind their crops, for if they neglected them, they would starve and be obliged to leave the country, which was not what he desired, for then there would be no cattle for him to take.”[30]
The Indian war subsided in the spring of 1854 and the people were again free to attend to farming and mining, although, as a matter of fact, they maintained the military organization for many years thereafter, as long as the Indian menace persisted.
Despite their precaution in maintaining a military organization, the Mormons actually preferred a policy of peaceful penetration and directed positive efforts toward that end. They sent missionaries among the Indians, established missions among them, cultivated friendship with those around the settlements and bestowed gifts and goods upon them. It was easier to penetrate by feeding and friendship than by fighting; moreover, this policy was in line with the teaching of the Book of Mormon that the Indians (there called Lamanites) would be converted and absorbed and would become “a white and delightsome people.” This Mormon policy of keeping peace with the Indians smoothed the course of settlement and improved opportunities for expansion.
At first the iron industry showed considerable promise, but technical difficulties and the enormous cost of transportation without railroad facilities prevented its expansion. Jules Remy, a French observer who passed through the settlements in 1855, states that the mines, both iron and coal, were being worked and the foundries were turning out about a ton of pig iron per day. This was obtained from ore yielding 25 to 75 per cent iron.[31] With the development of railroads across northern Utah, bringing in iron from elsewhere, the industry in the south languished. It had served, however, to accelerate the settlement of this region, and with its passing the pioneers turned to other occupations, especially to agriculture and stockraising, the foundation of the frontier communities.