5. Iron County: chief town Parovan, so called from the Pavant Indians; built on Centre Creek, 255 miles S. of Great Salt Lake City, and 96 miles from Fillmore, and incorporated in 1851. Also Cedar City, near Little Salt Lake, 275 miles S.; St. Joseph’s Springs and Vegas de Santa Clara, 200 miles from Cedar City. The Aztecs, as their rock inscriptions prove, once extended to Little Salt Lake Valley.
6. Tooele County: chief town Tooele City, 32 miles W.; also “Eastern Tooele City,” 26 miles W.; Grantsville, 27 miles W.; Richville and Cedar Valley, 40 miles W.
7. San Pete Valley County and City, 131 miles, laid out by the presidency in 1849, and incorporated in 1850; Fort Ephraim, 130 miles; Manti City, 140 miles, on the southern declivity of Mount Nebo. Aztecan pictographs have been found upon the cliffs in San Pete Valley.
8. Juab County: chief town Salt Creek, in a valley separated from Utah Valley by a ridge, on which runs Summit Creek.
9. Box-Elder County and City, 60 miles N.; also Willow Creek and Brigham’s City.
COAL.10. Washington County: chief town Fort Harmony, on Ash Creek, 291 miles S., and 20 miles N. of Rio Virgen.[165]
[165] I annex a description of Washington County, which lately appeared in the “Deserét News:”
“Yesterday afternoon I met in the library of the University the Hon. Wm. Crosby, the representative from Washington County to our Legislature, who furnishes me with some items of information respecting the county he represents worthy a passing notice, especially as there is so little known of that county. The inhabitants are estimated at about 1500 persons, chiefly engaged in farming and grazing. The county of Washington in area is as large as the State of Connecticut, generally of a barren, desert character, broken and mountainous. On the borders of the Rio Virgen and the Santa Clara there are narrow strips of land exceedingly fertile, on which every thing grows with great richness, and at a cost of very little labor. During the present year only 50,000 pounds of cotton have been raised, but, properly cultivated and attended to, the inhabitants there could raise all the cotton ever required by the inhabitants of this Territory. At present its cultivation is almost neglected for the want of proper facilities for its manufacture. The entrance also of the army in 1857, followed by immense trains of goods—which, by-the-by, some of the merchants never paid a cent for, and it is very doubtful if they ever will—was also a crushing competition to the people of Washington County.
“Every kind of fruit that has been tried there grows with great luxuriance. The apple, pear, plum, apricot, peach, and fig trees do exceedingly well. The English walnut-tree grew this year nine feet, and the Catawba grape grew nineteen feet and a half before the 6th of September. The bunches of those grapes, many of them, measured nineteen inches in length. At Tocqueville, one of the small towns in that county, one man raised this year two water-melons from one vine that weighed, the one sixty, and the other fifty pounds.
“At the Agricultural Exhibition, held there last September, the fine grapes which I have mentioned were on exhibition. At the same time there was exhibited a stalk of cotton containing three hundred and seven forms; a radish measuring eighteen inches in circumference; a sunflower head thirty-six inches; and a monster castor-bean stalk; a sweet potato-vine five feet and a half long; and one Isabella grape-vine twenty-five feet long. One man had in his garden trees which in six months grew as follows: