By this time moreover, there was sufficient evidence from settlers and the experimental farm to prove the practicality of cotton as a staple crop. During the summer of 1861, plans were laid for more extensive colonization. Heretofore, the settlements had been outposts of Iron County. Now the region was to come into its own as a separate colony with the central settlement to be located in the valley above Tonaquint, and to be named St. George.
At the general church conference in Salt Lake City on October 6, about three hundred families were “called” to the Dixie Mission to accelerate the cotton industry. Many of these people were abruptly informed of what awaited them when they heard their names read out, but most of them responded with good will. The families were carefully selected in such a way as to insure balanced communities: farmers, businessmen, educators, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, entertainers; all in the proportions needed.[47]
The colonists got under way in November with Apostles George A. Smith, Erastus Snow and Orson Pratt, as leaders. Towards the end of the month the vanguard stood at the forks of the road west of Toquerville at the parting of the ways up and down the river. The leaders had already traveled upstream looking over possible locations, going through the settlements of Virgin, Grafton, Adventure and up both forks of the Virgin River into Zion and Parunuweap canyons, investigating the agricultural lands along the way.[48] How far they went up Zion Canyon is unknown. Erastus Snow later reported that ten miles above Grafton the mountains closed in, leaving but a narrow gorge, through which the east fork of the Virgin forced its way, allowing no room for the passage of man or beast. His factual report indicated no wonder at the marvels he must have beheld. The sense of awe awakened today by such inspiring spectacles of nature’s handiwork appears to have been largely lacking in the hard-working pioneers who spent all their energy in wringing a meager existence from the wilderness.
At the forks of the road, the paths divided. A few went upstream with Orson Pratt, but the majority went down, arriving in early December at the site of St. George. Other settlements quickly sprang up along the length of the Virgin Valley wherever water could be diverted for irrigation. Thus the “cotton-wave” ushered many pioneers into the Virgin River valleys and insured the growth of the area.
Settlement of Zion Canyon
The cotton migrations were the prelude to the settlement of Parunuweap and Zion canyons. Because of a disagreement with Erastus Snow, Orson Pratt did not go to St. George, but led his group over the Johnson Twist up the Virgin River to the last outpost at Adventure (the lower end of the present Rockville fields), arriving in late November or early December, 1861. Here he paused long enough to gather information and make plans for settlement.
Coming up the river, Pratt undoubtedly conferred with Nephi Johnson and other settlers at Virgin, Old Grafton and Adventure. Members of the expedition, of course, went scouting for themselves, but the advice of Johnson probably led some of them to decide upon Shunesburg, where on his visit in 1858 he had reported a settlement could be made.
Adventure was a small place with limited prospects for expansion but just above it was a much larger tract of land requiring more extensive irrigation. A townsite was selected on the bench high above the river, and at a meeting held at Old Grafton on December 13, it was decided to name the new townsite Rockville because of the many boulders along the foot of the hill where it was located.
Of those who went up the river above Adventure, three families stopped at the forks of the Virgin at a place afterward called Northrop, while six continued up the Parunuweap four or five miles to the farm of an old Indian named Shunes. They purchased the land for a trifling consideration, but the price proved to be only the first installment, for the old Indian continued to live in the vicinity for many years, working and begging for food from the whites to add to his native supply of seeds, lizards and wild game.
The settlers were hardly located when a stormy period began. They were digging irrigation ditches and cutting timber for log houses, but were still living in their covered wagons when bad weather set in. Rain started on Christmas day, 1861, and continued for forty days. The Virgin became a raging torrent and, at least twice, great floods washed out the dams, filled the ditches, undermined banks, overflowed the plains and despoiled valuable farm lands. On January 8, the flood inundated the village of Grafton, the water rising suddenly during the night. As the waters swirled around the wagon box home of Nathan Tenney, several men picked it up with his expectant wife in it and carried it to higher ground north of the river, where a son was born. He was named, appropriately enough, Marvelous Flood Tenney.