Three months later, on December 14, 1870, six lives were lost in a fire at the fort. These included Bishop Stewart’s wife, Margery, and three of his sons.[84] Brigham Young made a special trip to Kanab from St. George, where he was wintering, to comfort the bereaved families. Soon after, the settlers began to build their homes on the townsite. Within a few years, the fort was deserted but it was maintained for some time for use in case of emergency. Dellenbaugh, a member of Major J. W. Powell’s party, thus describes his visit to Kanab in the early 70’s:
F. S. Dellenbaugh in Zion Canyon (1930) with the flag of the Emma Dean boat that made “a canyon voyage” about 60 years earlier. Photo U. S. Nat. Park Service.
Viewing Bryce Canyon from the rim. Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad.
... Nigger, [85]
After the Navajo peace settlement many of the places abandoned in 1866 were reoccupied and within a few years further expansion filled most of the remaining areas suitable for settlements or ranches. In Long Valley, Berryville (now Glendale), and Winsor (Mt. Carmel) were revived in 1871. Johnson was settled in the spring of the same year by five brothers, Joel, Benjamin, Joseph, George and William Johnson, on the site of Scutumpah, formerly John D. Lee’s ranch. In 1872, Graham, on the headwaters of Kanab Creek (upper Kanab), was reoccupied and the settlers engaged in dairying and lumbering.
The upper reaches of the Paria, however, attracted settlers from the north. Panguitch was re-founded in March, 1871 under George W. Sevy and counted seventy-five families the next year. Joel H. Johnson and George D. Wilson established a sawmill in 1871 near the present location of Hillsdale, and were soon joined by twenty families, including those of Nephi and Seth Johnson. Other cattlemen located farther up the Sevier, where Meltiar Hatch founded the village bearing his name. Nephi Johnson, discoverer of Zion Canyon, was made bishop of Hillsdale in 1874.
Attention was then focused on the upper Paria. The first settlers, David O. Littlefield and Orley D. Bliss, located near the present site of Cannonville on Christmas Eve, 1874. Early the next day eight other families arrived, who built log houses at a place called Clifton and began farming along the Paria and on Henrieville Creek. Ebenezer Bryce, from Pine Valley, selected a place farther upstream, a mile or two east of the present site of Tropic near the mouth of Bryce Canyon. Bryce used the famous canyon for a cattle range, and thus immortalized his name.
Clifton was not well located and in 1877 some settlers moved to a new townsite called Cannonville, in honor of George Q. Cannon, high Mormon official who had taken a special interest in their affairs. Other settlers moved over to Henrieville Creek to be near their farms, and thus the town of Henrieville (named for James Henrie, president of Panguitch Stake) was born.