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 three Johnson Brothers. Seth (left), Sixtus and Nephi, prominent in Southern Utah history. Courtesy of the Johnson Family.