Orville Southerland Cox, Pioneer of 1847

by Adelia B. Cox Sidwell

To be sure, nobody appreciated more than he did a liberty pole, and all that it typified, so he was commissioned to find one at the earliest convenient moment for Manti; this he did in 1850. Ten years he labored faithfully for the upbuilding of Manti, and then like Boon and Crockett, "he wanted more elbow room" and moved to Fairview, Sanpete County. He also moved part of his family to Gunnison (Hog Wallow, it was called then) and raised two crops there. In February 1864, he moved part of his family to Glenwood, built a cabin there and raised a crop. He sold out and moved elsewhere to engineer ditches. He engineered over forty ditches in Utah and Nevada, as near as his children can remember in 1910, as well as doing all other kinds of pioneer work.

In 1865 he was advised by Lorenzo Snow to move to the Muddy, a branch of the Rio Virgin, a stream running through Moappa Valley, to assist in surveying and making irrigation ditches there. The soil was very rich, but there was so much quick sand that it made it almost impossible to build a dam that hold or to irrigate without washing away the soil. So he went south into southeastern Nevada. He thought that was the route the saints would travel going back to Jackson County, so he was that much nearer the final home. He labored here for six years, and engineered a number of dams that would hold against the floods and treachery of quicksand. They had only poor home made plows and a few other tools to work with, and no cement or modern building material. He also built cabins and cleared and tilled the land there. In clearing the land, the "Mesquite" brush root was the hardest digging they encountered. St. Thomas, St. Joseph and Overton, the 3 towns in the valley were partly of his building. The first trip, he took with him his third wife, Eliza, and her one child, a little two year old girl; and Walter, a 14 year old son of the first wife, Elvira. The following year, after crops were in and the spring work done, he returned to Fairview after another section of his family—Mary, the second wife, and her five children. From that time on O.S. Cox's life is a volume of tragedy and hardship. The life in the burning desert is always more or less unpleasant, and pioneering is excessively hard. And he was past fifty years old.

During his absence, Eliza's little girl Lucinda, took her little pail to the creek to get some water; the quicksand caused her to slip and she was drowned. They took her out not very far from down the stream, but could not resuscitate her. The poor mother, among strangers and homesick, was unconsolable in her sorrow. Walter, seeing his little pet companion stricken in all her robust beauty and health, was wild with grief, and could not be comforted. After a time the neighbors concluded that Walter would die if some change did not come to get him to sleep and eat. They told Eliza of their fears for him, and so the disconsolate mother tried to hide her own grief and comfort him. It is said it was the saddest thing the woman there ever saw, to see the brave mother and the boy trying to comfort each other in their loneliness. Fifty years later, it was a nightmare to Walt.

Almer, Laun and Walt all went to the Muddy in 1867, the year Mary was moved. In 1868 Philmon, fifth son of Elvira, a very promising lad of thirteen, died of appendicitis, at that time called inflammation of the bowels. Then Mary lost a little daughter, Lucy for whom she grieved many years.

Financially the prospects were more promising than ever before. They had planted a large orchard, and a vineyard that was just coming into bearing. Then a new line was run between the states of Utah and Nevada, which gave this section to Nevada, and Nevada demanded back taxes; and they amounted to more than their farms and houses were worth. So Brigham Young said, "Come home to Utah." They came.

Elvira, with Orville a grown son, Walter 17, Tryphena, Amasa and Euphrasia, returned to the old home in Fairview, leaving all of their beautiful peach orchards and vineyards, fields of cotton, cane, wheat and the comfortable houses in the most fertile of lands, which they had subdued and made to "Blossom as the Rose" by seven long years of toil and privation. They rendered absolute obedience to their great leader; and so they hitched up their teams, took their most choice belongings, and wended their way back to Utah, leaving their settlement and farms to pay Nevada the back taxes it had demanded.

One company which had thoroughly learned the trick of building a dam in quick sand of the desert, stopped at an abandoned settlement in Long Valley, Kane County. O.S. Cox and sons began the engineering of irrigation canals and dams, and so on, as they had cleaned and repaired the deserted cabins, so that they offered partial shelter from the February storms. The people named this town Mt. Carmel.

When the former settlers learned that they had builded dams that would stand, they came back and said, "Get Out, this is ours," So the weary pioneers moved again, this time only a few miles farther up the valley into a pleasant narrow cove, and went to work to build more dams, more ditches and more cabins. In one place the water had to be carried across a gulley, and it gave more trouble than all the rest of the canal. After a while Cox, without comment or consultation, went into the timber and found a very large log and felled it, made of it a huge trough, placed it across the gully and it reached far enough to secure a solid bed above the quicksand. Thirty years later, this "Cox Trough" was still doing successful service as a flume.

In 1875, when Brigham strongly taught the principle of Cooperation, this company of saints were organized by unanimous consent into the united order of Enoch, and named their town Orderville. Their little property, mostly cattle, horses and wagons, were owned jointly. Twelve years father labored joyously and unselfishly in the "Order". The town grew and thrived; the arts, schools and trades were remarkably well represented by the young. Prosperity and a measure of plenty was there, in spite of the fact that there were more infirm people in that ward than any ward in the church.

Then dissatisfaction and disunion came, and the "Order" broke up. There was not a great deal of property to divide, although some people came out with more property with others, according to the amount they consecrated in. Mary and Eliza, father's second and third wives, each received a team and wagon. Mary and her family located in Huntington, Emery County, Eliza and her family in Tropic, Garfield County. Father well along in years, and broken in health, could do little more than advise his sons. Eliza was dying of cancer. In 1886 Orville S. Cox came to Fairview to the best-provided for branch of his family. One year he remained an invalid, and on July 4, 1888 he laid his exhausted body down to rest. The passing was quiet and peaceful. His two wives Elvira and Mary and many of his descendants were with him at the last.