Mormon Mountain, Mormon Lake and Mormon Dairy still are known as such, 28 miles southeast of Flagstaff. The Dairy was established in September, 1878, by Lot Smith, in what then was known as Pleasant Valley, in the pines, sixty miles west of Sunset. In that year 48 men and 41 women from Sunset and Brigham City, were at the Dairy, caring for 115 cows and making butter and cheese. Three good log houses had been built.
Seven miles south of Pleasant Valley (which should not be confounded with the Tonto Basin Pleasant Valley of sanguinary repute), was the site of the first sawmill on the Mogollon Plateau, upon which a half-dozen very large plants now operate to furnish lumber to the entire Southwest. This mill, probably antedated in northern Arizona only at Prescott, first was erected, about 1870, at Mount Trumbull, in the Uinkaret Mountains of northwestern Arizona, to cut lumber for the new temple at St. George, Utah, fifty miles to the northward. This mill, in 1876, was given by the Church authorities to the struggling Little Colorado River settlements. Taken down in August by the head sawyer, Warren R. Tenney, it was hauled into Sunset late in September and soon was re-erected by Tenney, and, November 7, put into operation in the pine woods near Mormon Lake, about sixty miles southwest of Sunset, soon turning out 100,000 feet of boards. Its site was named Millville. The mill, after the decline of the first settlements, passed into the possession of W. J. Flake. In the summer of 1882, it was transferred to Pinedale and in 1890 to Pinetop. It now is at Lakeside, where, it is assumed, at least part of the original machinery still is being operated. Its first work at Pinetop was to saw the timbers for a large assembly hall, or pavilion, to be used for the only conference ever held that included all the Arizona Stakes.
Also in the timber country are to be noted Wilford, named in honor of President Wilford Woodruff, and Heber, named for Heber C. Kimball, small settlements fifty miles southwest of St. Joseph, established in 1883 from St. Joseph and other Little Colorado settlements, for stock raising and dry farming. John Bushman is believed to have been the first Mormon resident of the locality. Log houses were built and at Wilford was a schoolhouse, which later was moved to St. Joseph, there used as a dwelling. When a number of the brethren went into Mexican exile, their holdings were "jumped" by outsiders. Wilford has been entirely vacated, but Heber still has residents.
Where Salt Was Secured
Salt for the early settlements of northern Arizona very generally was secured from the salt lake of the Zuni, just east of the New Mexican line, roughly 33 miles from St. Johns. As early as 1865, Sol Barth brought salt on pack mules from this lake to points as far westward as Prescott. In the records of a number of the Little Colorado settlements are found references to where the brethren visited a salt lake and came back with as much as two tons at a load. This lake is of sacred character to the Zuni, which, at certain times of the year send parties of priests and warriors to the lake, 45 miles south of the tribal village. There is elaborate ceremonial before salt is collected. Undoubtedly the lake was known to prehistoric peoples, for salt, probably obtained at this point, has been found in cliff ruins in southern Colorado, 200 miles from the source of supply. The Zuni even had a special goddess, Mawe, genius of the sacred salt lake, or "Salt Mother," to whom offerings were made at the lake. Warren K. Follett, in 1878, told that the lake lies 300 feet lower than the general surface of the country. The salt forms within the water, in layers of from three to four inches thick, and is of remarkable purity.
The Hopi secured salt from a ledge in the Grand Canyon, below the mouth of the Little Colorado, about eighty miles northwest of their villages. At the point of mining, sacrifices were made before shrines of a goddess of salt and a god of war. The place has had description by Dr. Geo. Wharton James, whose knowledge of the gorge is most comprehensive.
On the upper Verde and in Tonto Creek Valley are salt deposits, though very impure. Upper Salt River has a small deposit of very good sodium chloride, which was mined mainly for the mills of Globe, in the seventies. The Verde deposit now is being mined for shipment to paper mills of its sodium sulphate. Reference elsewhere is made to the salt mines of the Virgin River Valley.
[Illustration: GRAND FALLS ON THE LITTLE COLORADO RIVER]
[Illustration: ORIGINAL FORT MORONI WITH ITS STOCKADE]
[Illustration: FORT MORONI IN LATER YEARS]