Expansion in Kane County
Re-settlement of Long Valley and Kanab does not seem to have been attempted until 1870, although Kanab and Paria were occupied by missionaries under Jacob Hamblin in 1867 as frontier outposts. At Paria a strong guard house and corral was built and some land was cultivated, beginnings out of which the settlement grew with the accession of several families in 1872 and 1873.
Kanab was similarly restored. The necessity of a fort there was impressed upon the whites by the continued Navajo raids. Five stone masons were sent from St. George in 1869 to construct the fort. They reached Kanab on August 28 and worked until early in September, when John R. Young told them they had finished their mission and could go home.
This building expedition brought new settlers to Kanab, for John Mangum (or Mangram), his brother, James, James Wilkins, and George Ross, moved there soon after. Nate Adams, who visited Kanab in September, 1870, and who moved there March 14, 1871, says the first three were in hiding and that John D. Lee, also in hiding, took up Scutumpah Ranch and explored Lee’s Ferry in 1869. Several missionaries were sent to aid Hamblin about the same time. They were fencing and cultivating land when Brigham Young made his first visit to the Kanab country about the 1st of April, 1870. George Albert Smith wrote of this visit:
At Kanab we met Brothers Jacob Hamblin and Jehiel MacConnel [McConnell], and several other missionaries, who were engaged in teaching the Indians how to cultivate the soil and to obtain a living by peaceful pursuits. We were much pleased with the country.... As soon as measures shall be taken to prevent the annual raids of the Navajos, this land of Canaan will be re-occupied by the Saints and become a valuable acquisition to our southern settlements.[80]
A pioneer Salt Lake photographer, C. R. Savage, took many pictures along the way, including one of Brigham Young and his party on the Colorado at the mouth of the Virgin, and several of Zion Canyon.
Upon his return to Salt Lake City on April 16, 1870, Brigham Young sent a group of fifty-two people led by Levi Stewart, to re-settle the Kanab country. They went down through the Dixie settlements and reached Pipe Springs on June 1. They remained there and at Moccasin Springs several days while exploring the region.[81] On the 14th they moved over to Kanab Creek and joined Jacob Hamblin at the old fort, now too small to house so many.
Brigham Young manifested much interest in the success of the colony. He promised Stewart that he would visit him in the fall and asked him to find a more direct route to Kanab from the north that would obviate the long roundabout approach through the Dixie settlements and the Arizona strip. Stewart sent out two expeditions, the second of which found a road from the head of the Sevier River through Upper Kanab and Johnson Wash.
Brigham Young started for Kanab on August 26, 1870. Accompanying him from Parowan was the intrepid explorer and topographer of the U. S. Geological Survey, Major J. W. Powell, who had already made one trip through the Grand Canyon and was returning to make plans for further geological studies and his second trip through the canyon.[82] In attempting to follow Stewart’s directions, the party lost its way and wandered into the Paria River valley and thus went many miles out of its direct route. According to Nate Adams,[83] “old Humpy Indian” guided the company safely into Kanab on the evening of September 9, 1870. While there, a townsite and fields were surveyed east of the fort beyond the path of the canyon winds. Brigham Young returned to Salt Lake City via St. George and the Dixie settlements.
Three months later, on December 14, 1870, six lives were lost in a fire at the fort. These included Bishop Stewart’s wife, Margery, and three of his sons.[84] Brigham Young made a special trip to Kanab from St. George, where he was wintering, to comfort the bereaved families. Soon after, the settlers began to build their homes on the townsite. Within a few years, the fort was deserted but it was maintained for some time for use in case of emergency. Dellenbaugh, a member of Major J. W. Powell’s party, thus describes his visit to Kanab in the early 70’s:
F. S. Dellenbaugh in Zion Canyon (1930) with the flag of the Emma Dean boat that made “a canyon voyage” about 60 years earlier. Photo U. S. Nat. Park Service.
Viewing Bryce Canyon from the rim. Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad.
... Nigger, [85]
After the Navajo peace settlement many of the places abandoned in 1866 were reoccupied and within a few years further expansion filled most of the remaining areas suitable for settlements or ranches. In Long Valley, Berryville (now Glendale), and Winsor (Mt. Carmel) were revived in 1871. Johnson was settled in the spring of the same year by five brothers, Joel, Benjamin, Joseph, George and William Johnson, on the site of Scutumpah, formerly John D. Lee’s ranch. In 1872, Graham, on the headwaters of Kanab Creek (upper Kanab), was reoccupied and the settlers engaged in dairying and lumbering.
The upper reaches of the Paria, however, attracted settlers from the north. Panguitch was re-founded in March, 1871 under George W. Sevy and counted seventy-five families the next year. Joel H. Johnson and George D. Wilson established a sawmill in 1871 near the present location of Hillsdale, and were soon joined by twenty families, including those of Nephi and Seth Johnson. Other cattlemen located farther up the Sevier, where Meltiar Hatch founded the village bearing his name. Nephi Johnson, discoverer of Zion Canyon, was made bishop of Hillsdale in 1874.
Attention was then focused on the upper Paria. The first settlers, David O. Littlefield and Orley D. Bliss, located near the present site of Cannonville on Christmas Eve, 1874. Early the next day eight other families arrived, who built log houses at a place called Clifton and began farming along the Paria and on Henrieville Creek. Ebenezer Bryce, from Pine Valley, selected a place farther upstream, a mile or two east of the present site of Tropic near the mouth of Bryce Canyon. Bryce used the famous canyon for a cattle range, and thus immortalized his name.
Clifton was not well located and in 1877 some settlers moved to a new townsite called Cannonville, in honor of George Q. Cannon, high Mormon official who had taken a special interest in their affairs. Other settlers moved over to Henrieville Creek to be near their farms, and thus the town of Henrieville (named for James Henrie, president of Panguitch Stake) was born.
In 1879 Daniel Goulding settled near Bryce’s ranch. Seeking water for irrigation, he and Bryce devised a scheme to divert water from Pine Creek in the Great Basin by means of a canal over the divide. This they finished, but upkeep was expensive, their crops were poor, and Goulding lost about five hundred fruit trees from drouth. Bryce became discouraged and left for Arizona in 1880 and Goulding moved to Henrieville in 1883. Bryce, unimpressed by the beauty of the canyon, considered it “awful hard to find a cow that was lost” in the intricate maze of its pinnacles.
Seth Johnson and several others located in 1886 on Yellow Creek (Kane County) about three miles southwest of Cannonville and named the settlement Georgetown, in honor of the same man for whom Cannonville was named.
In 1890 the two Ahlstrom brothers built homes on the present site of Tropic and with several others began a second and more ambitious attempt to divert water from the East Fork of Sevier River over the divide into Paria Creek. This time the project succeeded. Tropic townsite was surveyed in 1891 and settlers began to flock there and prepare homes and lands in anticipation of the coming of the water. A fitting celebration was staged on May 23, 1892, when the water was turned into the canal.
By this time, most of the suitable valleys and canyons had been occupied. Erosion, however, caused trouble at Kanab. From 1883 to 1890, floods presumably resulting from overgrazing tore out dams and ditches and gutted the canyons and valleys with deep washes. Water arose in the bottom of the washes and that in Kanab Wash (below Kanab) was diverted about 1886 onto a new townsite just beyond the state line in Arizona, called Fredonia, which later served as a refuge for a number of polygamous wives during the Federal offensive against the practice.[86]
While southern Utah was thus growing, a new movement was developed. In 1879, the Mormon Church leaders called for eighty men from the Southern Mission to establish an outpost for the purpose of “cultivating and maintaining friendly relations with Indians whose homes were near the point where the state of Colorado and the Territories of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona come together.” Twenty-five men, including Kumen Jones, went out to investigate routes and locations. They traveled via Lee’s Ferry, Tuba City and Monument Valley to the San Juan River as far as Four-Corners, spent about three months exploring the region, and then returned home via a northern route, past the sites of Monticello and Moab.[87]
While they were away, another party set out from Escalante seeking a short-cut to the San Juan country. A route much more direct than that mapped by the first party was reported, apparently on imperfect observation. It was, however, accepted, and by October the party was on its way. It passed through Escalante and reached Forty-mile Spring where it was held up by excessively rough country, while snows in the mountains blocked retreat.
Three scouts were sent ahead to investigate some of the wildest and most rugged scenic areas of America. The three returned in disappointment; one held the route feasible, another positively rejected it, while the third thought it might be possible to get through with special help. Envoys were sent to Salt Lake City to appeal for assistance, which was given in the form of a legislative appropriation for blasting a way through.
It took fifty days to get eighty-two wagons through Hole-in-the-Rock and down to the Colorado River and ninety days to reach Bluff on the San Juan River where the first settlement was made. Three babies were born on the way and the hardships endured form a Western epic.[88]
The story of Orderville has been left for the last. The United Order[89] was organized at Mt. Carmel, March 20, 1874, by John R. Young, at which time one hundred and nine members were listed. One summer of the United Order was enough for most members. Bishop Bryant Jolley, with his numerous family and relatives, formed the core of the dissenters. To avoid contention, those who wished to continue with the Order sold their holdings and moved in a body two miles above Mt. Carmel where title to all land was vested in the group and where they set up the town Orderville, under the leadership of Howard O. Spencer. The new town was surveyed February 20, 1875.
The first building was a hotel where all ate together in the large dining hall, from July, 1875 to May, 1880. As time passed, living quarters were provided for each family and work was divided into more specialized fields.
During the hey-day of the Order, around 1880, it numbered nearly six hundred adherents and there were some twenty-eight specialized departments of work which included most of the various activities that go to make up a simple community. The Order made great progress and acquired property rapidly. Farming lands were expanded to include areas scattered through Long Valley and at Kanab.
The growing power of the Order created jealousies, but disintegration came from internal dissension. The idea of giving everyone an equal reward regardless of ability or accomplishment tended in many cases to lessen effort and brought charges of laziness and carelessness.
Gradually, more and more individual property was assigned to each home; farmers were given a share of their own produce and livestock and sawmills and freighting were operated under lease or contract. Matters were hastening toward dissolution when, in 1885, polygamy troubles began. Fear that the Federal government might confiscate the goods of the Order forced the final dissolution of most of the property, and farming lands, livestock, ranches, tannery and sawmill, were all sold to members. The woolen mill alone was kept and intermittently operated until 1900. In that year the United Order of Orderville was officially dissolved, twenty-five years after its incorporation.