This concentration continued through 1867, but with the close of the “Black Hawk War” and the subsidence of troubles with the Paiutes, there was a general reoccupation of the villages except Long Valley and Kanab, abandoned during the Indian troubles. This occasioned some shifts in the population; some returned to their former homes and lands, some stayed where they were, and a few moved elsewhere. Springdale was reoccupied by Albert Petty and several other families, but it did not regain its former size until about 1874. Shunesburg and Grafton also seem to have lost slightly in population in the reshuffling. To Zion, however, the same settlers, Behunin, Heaps and Rolfs, returned and took up their usual tasks of raising crops and tending livestock.
The following years were prosperous and the settlements were greatly strengthened. Markets were established in northern Utah, at mining camps in southern Nevada, and even in California. Commerce was restricted because of transportation difficulties but it was an important factor in helping to balance needs by exchange of livestock products and cotton for goods the settlers could not produce.
The national financial panic of 1873 gradually worked its paralyzing effects into Utah and spread to the southern Utah colonies. The repercussions were not marked on the Virgin River, but Brigham Young was gravely concerned about the more general conditions in Utah when he came to St. George to spend his second winter there (November, 1873).
During the spring of 1874 he initiated near St. George a communistic movement known as the United Order. An experiment of similar nature had been tried by the Mormons in Missouri more than thirty years earlier. It was an attempt to combine cooperatively the efforts of the Saints, so that all might share the benefits in accordance with their needs. The scheme had been inaugurated in a few communities with encouraging success and it was now proposed to launch it on a large scale.[62] In February, St. George, Price City, and Washington were all organized on this basis. Price City, near St. George, is reported as the first working farm community in which the combined farms were managed as a unit and the farmers lived as one large family. Some of the men were assigned to irrigation, some to raising hay, corn, cane, garden stuff, or other crops according to the estimated needs of the community. Fuel was supplied seasonably by hauling wood from the scrub forests of the hills. The women were assigned as cooks, dish washers, baby tenders, clothes makers, and nurses. In Price and a few other places the settlers ate together, but in most of the communities each family had its own home.
On March 5, Brigham Young visited Virgin and Rockville and organized the United Order. During March and April, nearly all the settlements in Dixie fell in line and a confederation of all the settlements, known as the St. George Stake United Order, was set up to correlate the activities of the individual settlements.
During late April and early May, Brigham Young moved northward to Salt Lake City, initiating the novel movement in many of the towns along the way, including Cedar, Parowan, Beaver, Fillmore and Nephi. Upon reaching Salt Lake City, a general agency to correlate the stake activities, known as the “United Order for all the World,” was established.
The movement enjoyed only a brief period of prosperity. The utopian ideal encountered difficulties when it came to the division of benefits. Wages were assigned to each person and the benefits drawn were charged against each family. It was soon alleged that some were drawing more than their wages entitled them to, whereas others were not getting all that they felt they should.
In a few favored communities having access to large natural resources, such as abundant pasturage for livestock, either dairy or range, the produce was more than sufficient to pay the wages assigned and to build up a surplus capital. In most, however, where agriculture was the chief dependence and products of the farms were insufficient to pay wages, stinting was inevitable. Under such conditions, there was general dissatisfaction with the cooperative scheme and more progressive individuals sought to withdraw.
Many settlements abandoned the experiment at the end of the first season. Such was the case at Rockville, but Shunesburg and Springdale held on for another year, through 1875. A new ditch on higher ground was dug at Springdale at this time and the town was moved to its present location, half a mile north of its old site. This offered opportunity for expansion. The Gifford family from Shunesburg and several families from Rockville came to join the United Order in 1875.
It seems to have been the United Order movement which depopulated Zion Canyon. In 1872, Isaac Behunin, getting old, sold out to William Heap for two hundred bushels of corn, and moved to Mt. Carmel, then beginning to be resettled, where he later died. With the establishment of the United Order in Rockville in 1874, Heap and Rolf joined, turning over their property in Zion to the corporation. With the collapse of the Order in the fall, they withdrew their share of the proceeds and moved to Bear Lake and later to Star Valley, Wyoming.