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.