| Families | People | |
|---|---|---|
| Virgin City | 56 | 336 |
| Duncan’s Retreat | 8 | 50 |
| Grafton | 28 | 168 |
| Rockville | 18 | 95 |
| Northrop | 3 | 17 |
| Shunesburg | 7 | 45 |
| Springdale | 9 | 54 |
| 129 | 765 |
This indicates a considerable decline in population from the previous year. The settlers had come to Dixie filled with high hopes of raising cotton, had planted that crop to excess in 1862 and 1863 and had failed to raise enough foodstuffs. They were on famine rations during the winter of 1863-64 and were not relieved until summer. Moreover, the difficulties of hauling cotton to the northern settlements and exchanging it for foodstuffs had driven many of the settlers away; some returned to their former homes, while others sought opportunities elsewhere.
Enough cotton was now being grown to create a vexatious problem of marketing. Bleak records that in the spring of 1864, 11,000 pounds were hauled to California and estimated that 16,000 pounds were still in storage. Some was even hauled to the Missouri River where it brought a fair price because of the war shortage. David Bullock and other men from Cedar City, traveling east for poor emigrants, started out loaded with Dixie cotton. It soon became necessary to set up machinery for ginning the cotton and weaving it into cloth. Gins were soon in operation in several places and hand looms and spinning wheels were found in many homes.[56]
In 1865, Brigham Young personally made plans for the construction of a cotton mill at Washington. The building was finished by December, 1866. Later it was sold to a cooperative concern, the Rio Virgin Manufacturing Company, and more up-to-date machinery was installed, making it the most complete factory in Utah for the processing of cotton and wool. It continued to operate until the close of the century.[57]
Parunuweap Canyon was fully settled almost from the start, but Shunesburg gradually declined until today there are but one or two small farms left. This is due primarily to the ravages of floods which washed away the good agricultural land. On the other hand, tillable land in Zion Canyon was not brought under cultivation for a dozen years or more.
Flat lands suitable for agriculture in Zion were found in two areas along the canyon floor, separated by a mile or more of rocky, steep-sided canyon difficult to travel. The lower area, in which Springdale was located, was a narrow valley less than a mile wide and four or five miles long separated from the Parunuweap fork of the river by a reef of Shinarump Conglomerate, more resistant to erosion than the overlying Chinle shales in which the valley had been cut. The upper area was an old lake bed filled by sediments. It extended from the old blockade in the river below the Court of the Patriarchs that had anciently produced the lake, nearly five miles upstream to the Temple of Sinawava. It was much narrower than the lower unit and the tillable land was scattered in narrow fields along the banks.
Joseph Black seems to have been the first to investigate the upper area, probably in the late fall of 1861 or 1862. The difficulties of reaching the upper part of Zion were too great, however, and he finally located in the lower valley. His descriptions of the canyon were such that the cynical referred to it sometimes as “Joseph’s Glory.” Nevertheless his stories were listened to and some scoffers remained to pray. E. C. Behunin says:
It was Joseph Black who interested my father in Zion Canyon. Black had made a trip into the canyon before we came here and in talking to my father, he had praised it so highly that my father became interested and moved up into the canyon upon Black’s advice and suggestion.
Isaac Behunin had come to Dixie in the fall of 1861 and settled at Northrop until the flood in January, 1862, after which he moved to Springdale and built a home. In addition to farming in Springdale he visited Zion in the summer of 1863 and started some operations there, building a one-room log cabin not far from where Zion Lodge now stands.[58]
The cabin was a crude shelter used only during the summer, for the Behunins wintered in Springdale. It was built of cottonwood logs and the cracks were chinked with mud. The roof had a ridgepole to which ash and maple sticks were lashed on either side and covered with corn-fodder and dirt. The single room had a door and a window with glass panes. At one side was a fireplace, but the cooking was usually done on a stepstove outside.