Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, Number 1, 1981

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Utah's Harsh Lands

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY ( I S S N 0042-143X)

EDITORIAL STAFF MELVIN T. SMITH,

Editor

STANFORD J. L A Y T O N , Managing M I R I A M B. M U R P H Y , Associate

Editor Editor

T H O M A S J. ZEIDLER, Assistant

Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS M R S . I N E Z S. C O O P E R , Cedar City, 1981 S. G E O R G E E L L S W O R T H , Logan,

1981

PETER L. G O S S , Salt Lake City, 1982 G L E N M. LEONARD, Farmington,

1982

LAMAR PETERSEN, Salt Lake City, 1983 R I C H A R D W . SADLER, Ogden,

1982

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1981 G E N E A. S E S S I O N S , Bountiful,

1983

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, a n d reviews contributing t o knowledge of Utah's history. T h e Quarterly is published by the U t a h State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, U t a h 84101. Phone (801) 533-6024 for membership a n d publications information.

Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Beehive History, a n d the bimonthly Newsletter upon payment of the annual d u e s ; for details see inside back cover.

Single copies, $2.50.

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate accompanied by return postage a n d should be typed double-space with footnotes a t the end.

Additional information on requirements is available from the managing editor. T h e Society assumes n o responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by contributors.

The Quarterly is indexed in Book Review Index to Social Science Periodicals, America: History and Life, Combined Retrospective Index to the Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals, 1886-1974, and Abstracts of Popular Culture.

Second class postage is paid a t Salt Lake City, U t a h .

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Contents WINTER 1981/VOLUME 49 / NUMBER 1

IN THIS ISSUE UTAH'S HARSH LANDS, HEARTH OF GREATNESS

JACKSON

4

LAST FREE LAND RUSH

CARLTON CULMSEE

26

NINE MILE: EASTERN UTAH'S FORGOTTEN ROAD

EDWARD

"GOOD ROADS ROBERTS" AND T H E FIGHT FOR UTAH HIGHWAYS

RICHARD

GEARY

42

R. BALMFORTH

56

L.

KING

66

THOMAS CARTER

68

CHARLES S. PETERSON

78

JANET

THE BLUE DUGWAY CULTURAL VENEER:

H.

A.

DWIGHT

DECORATIVE PLASTERING

IN UTAH'S SANPETE VALLEY

LIFE IN A VILLAGE SOCIETY, 1877-1920

BOOK REVIEWS

97

BOOK NOTICES

103

THE COVER No matter how hostile the land, settlers attempted to live on it. Some of the most forbidding areas in the United States thus became outposts of human habitation. The isolated Mantle ranch in southern Utah's slickrock country symbolizes the struggle of men and women against the natural forces that made the harsh lands a crucible. USHS collections.

© Copyright 1981 Utah State Historical Society

SANDRA L. M Y R E S . HO for

Women's Huntington

Overland

California!

Diaries from the

Library

.

K A T H E R I N E A. H A L V E R S O N

97

E V E BALL with N O R A H E N N a n d L Y N D A

S A N C H E Z , lndeh: Apache Odyssey

An

ESTELLE WEBB T H O M A S .

Sanctuary: Pioneering

R. DAVID E D M U N D S

98

J O S E P H B. R O M N E Y

99

Uncertain

A Story of

Mormon

in Mexico

.

.

.

Books reviewed

L. W. MACFARLANE. Yours John

Sincerely,

M. Marfarlane

.

F R E D C O Y O T E et al. I Will

an Indian

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W A Y N E K. H I N T O N

100

RICHARD N . E L L I S

101

Die

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PAUL BAILEY. Hawaii's Royal Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Walter Murray Gibson

G. BARRETT

102

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In this issue . . .

The land — few words evoke so many images or stir us so deeply, for we both possess the land and are possessed by it. Complicating this relationship are our changing perceptions of it — the myths and the realities. A myth of prime importance has been that of "the desert blossoming as the rose." A concomitant reality has been that on Utah's harsh lands human muscle and will fought to create Edens in the sagebrush and largely failed. The first article provides a powerful analysis of the disparity between myth and reality as the Mormon leadership planted colonies beyond the fertile Wasatch Front valleys. The second piece sees similar phenomena at work in the lives of a twentieth-century homesteading family at a forgotten townsite in central Utah.

If not all of Utah's lands delivered agricultural bounty, they nevertheless required a network of connecting roads. Two of these — the heavily traveled freight road through Nine Mile Canyon to the Uinta Basin and the Blue Dugway in Wayne County — were the scenes of drama, tales told and retold. Then, as the twentieth century advanced, the washboard surfaces linking many towns were paved as the good roads movement caught on locally.

In contrast to the harsh lands, the Sanpete Valley provided a benign environment where settlers could devote more time to the aesthetics of housing, giving later folklorists material for the study of decorative plastering techniques.

Finally, in an article examining the middle years of Utah's Dixie, one returns to the harsh lands and the struggle to possess them that triggered tragedies and inspired triumphs, all the while creating a unique regional history.

But the story of Utah's harsh lands is not over. Rather, contemporary events suggest that new realities and, for some, new myths may force development on lands once seen as useful "only to hold the world together."

Utah's Harsh Lands, Hearth of Greatness â&#x20AC;¢ BY R I C H A R D H .

JACKSON

Utah's Harsh Lands

5

to divide Utah into harsh lands and fertile lands. It has long been part of the accepted U t a h / Mormon folklore that the entire state was a desert of the harshest nature when first settled by the Mormon pioneers. This view was succinctly stated by Brigham Young in 1857 when he offered thanks that the "Lord has brought us to these barren valleys, to these sterile mountains, to this desolate waste, where only the Saints could or would live, to a region that is not desired by another class of people on the earth.' n An even IT

MAY SEEM P R E S U M P T U O U S TO A T T E M P T

Dr. Jackson is professor of geography at Brigham Young University.

1 Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, 1854-86), 4 : 3 4 4 .

Irontown ruins near Cedar City.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

grimmer view of the state was given in 1865 by George A. Smith who stated that "we came to this land because it was so desert, desolate, and godforsaken that no mortal upon earth would covet it."2 In the view of Smith the Salt Lake Valley when the pioneers had entered it eighteen years earlier was "a howling d e s e r t . . . in the heart of the Great American Desert."3 Such statements by church leaders are the basis for the official view of Utah as desert. They are in direct contrast to the original views by the same individuals and other settlers as they entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Wilford Woodruff's initial response to the Great Salt Lake Valley was recorded on July 24, 1847: After traveling through the deep ravine valley ending with the canyon, we came in full view of the valley of the Great Salt Lake, or the Great Basin â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the Land of Promise, held in reserve by the hand of God as a resting place for the Saints.

We gazed with wonder and admiration on the most fertile valley. . . .4

This overwhelmingly favorable view was mirrored by the other pioneer settlers. William Clayton, for example, noted that when he first looked down on the Salt Lake "a very exclusive valley burst forth upon our view, dotted three or four places with timber â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I could not help shouting 'hurra, hurra, here's my home at last.' " 6 The favorable reaction of the Mormons to their first view of the Salt Lake Valley was apparently reinforced upon closer examination.

Entering the valley they reported they found the soil to be of a "most excellent quality," with the flood plains of the streams and the valley floor covered with a great variety of green grass, which was "very luxuriant." Streams from the mountains entered about "every 1 or 2 miles," with "water excellent," and some streams "sufficiently large to carry mills and other machinery."6 A pioneer reported of their journey across the valley to where they camped that "the wheat grass grows 6 or 7 feet high, many different kinds of grasses appear, some being 10 or 12 feet high." The pioneers, "after wading thro' thick grass for some distance," found "a place bare enough for a camping ground, the grass being only

Mbid., 11:176-77.

3 Ibid.

4 Journal of Wilford Woodruff, typescript copy, July 24, 1847, p. 313, Brigham Young University Library, Provo, U t a h .

5 William Clayton's Journal (Salt Lake City: Clayton Family Association, 1921), p. 309. " F r o m Orson Pratt's Journal as quoted in Millennial Star 12 (1850) : 178.

Utah's Harsh Lands

'

knee deep but very thick."7 At the site of the pioneer camp they found the soil was "black," and looked "rich," and was "sandy enough to make it good to work."8 Closer to the Great Salt Lake the land was reported to be less fertile and the soil began to "assume a more sterile appearance," apparently because "at some seasons of the year [it] overflowed with water."6 In the drier portions of the valley the vegetation was "swarming with very large crickets, about the size of a man's thumb," 10 a phenomenon that subsequently came to dominate official Mormon accounts of the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847.

Initial reaction to the climate indicated that these first pioneers had expected it to be completely arid. Commenting on an afternoon thunderstorm, one noted, "we felt thankful for this, as it was the general opinion that it never rained in the valley during the summer season."1 In general, however, they viewed the Salt Lake Valley as having an "excessive dry climate,"12 but the dry climate made "the sky very clear and the air delightful."13 After a year in the valley a member of the pioneer company could write to his father that the climate of the Salt Lake Valley was "a beautiful dry and salubrious climate and exhilerating atmosphere" which was "the most favored spot for health on the globe," even "surpassing any place that can be found on the coast."11 The general reaction of the Mormons to the Salt Lake Valley, then, was favorable, and although it was more arid than lands they had left, the availability of streams made irrigation possible. Timber was limited in the valley, but one diarist noted, "we had not expected to find a timbered country,"15 and after exploring the general area "the brethren reported plenty of timber in the mountains."16 The Mormons had found a different environment but were "happily disappointed in the appearance of the valley of the Lake," for "if the land be as rich as it has the 7 Journal of Thomas Bullock, typescript copy, July 22, 1847, U t a h State Historical Society, Salt Lake City.

8 William Clayton's Journal, p. 311.

D From Orson Pratt's Journal as quoted in Millennial Star 12 (1850) ; 1 78. i° Ibid.  Journal of Wilford Woodruff, p. 38.

12 Diary of Norton Jacob, typescript copy, July 22, 1847, p. 114, U t a h State Historical Society.

13 Journal of Thomas Bullock, July 22, 1847, p. 38. w Diary of Norton Jacob, April 23, 1848, p. 151.

15 William Clayton's Journal, p. 314. ic Journal of Thomas Bullock, July 25, 1847, p. 44.

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Utah Historical

Quarterly

appearance of being, [we] have no fears but the Saints can live here and do well while we do right."17 Noticeably absent from diaries and official accounts are references to the Salt Lake Valley as a desert or general dissatisfaction with the area as a home.

The initial reaction of the Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley reflects geographic reality. The valleys of Utah, Salt Lake, Davis, Box Elder, and Cache counties receive sufficient precipitation to remove them from the category of desert (fig. 1). In the Wasatch and Uinta mountains even greater precipitation occurs, reaching fifty inches in places. This further benefits northern Utah in the form of abundant perennial streams. By comparison, Juab, Millard, Iron, Washington, Beaver, Tooele, and other central and southern Utah counties have less nondesert land (fig. 1). Their lack of precipitation is compounded by the absence of such reliable rivers as the Ogden, Provo, Spanish Fork, or Bear which drain large catchment basins.

17

William Clayton's Journal, p. 309.

Fig. 1: Precipitation Averages for Selected Utah Non-Wasatch Front

Cities

Communities.

Wasatch Front

Utah's Harsh Lands

9

Utah's harsh lands are south, west, and southeast of the Wasatch Front. The development of the idea that the Salt Lake Valley was a desert came as the leaders began serious efforts to encourage settlement of these harsh lands. The increasing aridity and harshness of the Salt Lake Valley in leaders' remarks in the period 1855-80 reflect their attempts to encourage settlers to go to places such as Parowan, Cedar City, St. George, or Blanding.18 These and other sites were viewed by settlers as having both a harsher geography and an isolation from the limited culture of the Great Basin founded in Salt Lake.

Church leaders' descriptions of the Salt Lake Valley increased its aridity and desolateness in direct correlation to the harshness of the area they were then encouraging settlers to occupy. Statements such as this from Wilford Woodruff in 1877 epitomize the transformation of Utah's fertile lands into an official desert: "But when we came to this country, what did we find here? A barren desert, as barren as the Desert of Sahara; and the only signs of life were a few black crickets, some cayote wolves, and a few poor wandering Indians."19 The effect, if not the intent, of such statements was to encourage settlers to go to the harsher lands south of the Wasatch Front. Explicitly or implicitly all of the descriptions that transformed the fertile lands of the Wasatch Front into a desert stated that the desert had been made into its present garden state by the faith and work of the settlers, and that those called to settle Utah's harsh lands could accomplish the same transformation. In the words of Brigham Young, . . . the climate of these valleys has been modified and mollified for their [the settlers] sakes. W h e n we first came here, neither an apple nor an ear of wheat could have been raised in this valley [Cache]. But is there a finer place to live in on this continent? N o . T h e r e is not. 2 0

With such encouragement thousands of settlers went forth to seek out those spots within the mountains and deserts of Utah's harsh lands where they could make a living. The words of George Q. Cannon as he attempted to get settlers to go to Arizona in the 1870s portray the attitude of the church leaders toward the harsh lands: W h e n we came here I thanked God for the isolation of these mountains; I thanked him for the grandeur of the hills and bulwarks which he had 38 Richard H. Jackson, "Mormon Perception and Settlement," Annals of American Geographers 68 (1978) : 317-34. r9 Journal of Discourses, 19:224.

- > 0 Ibid., 16:68.

of the

Association

10

Utah Historical Quarterly reared around us. I thanked him for the deserts and waste places of this land . . . and when we go hence to extend our borders^ we must not expect to find a land of orange or lemon groves, a land where walnut trees and h a r d timber abound. . . . But if we find a little oasis in the desert where a few cattle can settle, thank God for the oasis. . . . 21

This attitude was responsible for the multitude of communities established in marginal locations in Utah outside of the Wasatch Front.

The litany of towns such as Monticello, Blanding, Bluff, Kanosh, Panguitch, Loa, Meadow, Kanab, or Harmony is a testimonial to the willingness of settlers to accept the leaders' admonitions to seek out the oases and the Lord would modify the climate.

It should be emphasized that the settlements occupied the best sites, but even then the resource base for the Mormon agrarian economy was more limited than in the well-watered north. Descriptions of the stream sites ultimately settled range from the enthusiasm of church leaders, charged with the responsibility of settlement, to negative appraisals by those who had left established homes in the Wasatch Front to settle in the south. Between these two extremes is found every shade of reaction, but in general the leaders tended toward optimism, the rank-and-file to pessimism.

The earliest views of Utah's harsh lands came from reports made to Brigham Young by Jim Bridger when the Saints met with him on June 27, 1847, during their journey west. According to the most com2i Ibid., 16:143-44.

Mormon settlers crossing the Colorado River with of oxen pulling their wagons. USHS collections.

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Utah's Harsh Lands

plete account of that meeting, Bridger thought "the region around the Utah Lake is the best country in the vicinity of the Salt Lake, and the country is still better the farther south one goes until the desert is reached, which is upwards of two hundred miles south of Utah Lake.

There is plenty of timber on all the streams and mountains and an abundance of fish in the streams."22 The old mountain man was probably trying to put as much distance as possible between the Mormon settlements and his own trapping activities with this comment. If he is to be believed, the best place in Utah for settlement was in the area from Beaver to Cedar City.

The significance of Bridger's comment is that it corresponded with information Brigham Young had previously obtained from reading Lansford Hastings's Emigrant Guidebook to Oregon and California and lengthy discussions with Hastings himself. Young seems to have accepted wholeheartedly Hastings's statement that areas north of the 42d parallel (present northern border of Utah) were too cold to grow common crops. Bridger's confirmation of this was a major factor in his determination to force Mormon settlement south into southern Utah, Nevada, and Arizona while largely ignoring Idaho and areas northward.

It also played a role in the decision to locate the territorial capital in Fillmore in hopes of encouraging greater settlement there.

Brigham Young's interest in the south led to the southern exploring party in the winter of 1849-50 under the leadership of Parley P. Pratt.

As might be expected, Pratt's views of the lands visited in the Sanpete and Sevier River area, in the Little Salt Lake Valley, Mountain Meadow, and Santa Clara regions were generally favorable. His report of -- William Clayton's Journal, p. 274.

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Utah Historical

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the Cedar City and Parowan region of the Little Salt Lake Valley epitomizes these favorable reports: O n the southwestern borders of this valley are thousands of acres of C e d a r constituting an almost inexhaustible supply of fuel, which makes excellent coal. In the center of these forests rises a hill of the richest iron ore.

T h e water, soil, fuel, timber, and mineral wealth of this and little Salt Lake Valley, it was judged, were capable of sustaining and employing from 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, all of which would have these resources more conveniently situated than any other settlements the company h a d seen west of the States.- 3

All of the areas reported on by this exploring party were the focus of settlement efforts by the Mormons, beginning with the Iron Mission (which established Parowan) leaving Salt Lake in the fall of 1850.

Reports of rank-and-file members of the southern Utah exploring company are less voluminous than those kept by the official clerk, but they still indicate an appreciation for the scenic beauty of the lands traversed.24 Scenic beauty may attract migrants to Cedar or Parowan today, but it was of little concern to Brigham Young and other leaders of that time. But reports of abundant iron ore and cedar for charcoal sufficient to support 100,000 people (ten times the then population of the territory) was of immediate interest to Young, and by July 1850 the Deseret News had printed a call for settlers to the Iron Mission.25 The Iron Mission represented the first attempt to impose anything other than an agricultural settlement on Utah's harsh lands. It is important to note that it came as a result of outside needs and pressures.

Since the church and government in Utah Territory at this time were virtually synonymous, it represents the first example of government intervention in the development and use of the harsh lands. Of secondary importance was the request that individuals serve for one year. The acceptance of the idea that movement to Utah's marginal lands was a short-term mission after which the faithful could return to their homes in the Salt Lake Valley was one that constantly handicapped settlement efforts in the marginal regions.

Once the church leaders had determined that there was a resource that could be profitably exploited in the Little Salt Lake Valley, the 23 "Journal History of the C h u r c h , " December 28-29, 1849, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

24 Journal of Isaac Chauncey Haight, typescript copy, January 9, 1850, Brigham Young University Library.

-'Deseret News, July 27, 1850.

Utah's Harsh Lands

13

settlement effort moved ahead. Apparently the newspaper solicitation did not inspire sufficient recruits, because in October and November of 1850 individuals were personally requested to participate. The response of John D. Lee is indicative of the enthusiasm that greeted requests to exchange homes in the Salt Lake Valley for the unsettled Little Salt Lake Valley.

J. D. Lee replied that he was willing to help build up Zion in any way that the Lord wished but to go to Little Salt Lake was revolting to his feelings and could he do as much by $2,000 of his possessions he would cheerfully do it sooner than to go this fall, President Young said to make a settlement at that point was one of the most important things now in contemplation.20

But in spite of the reservations of those called to participate, a party of 119 men, 30 women, and 18 children left in late December for what is now Parowan. The presence of only "30 women over 14" suggests the temporary nature of the trip as perceived by a majority of the participants.27 Assuming that some of the younger "women" were dependents rather than wives, only about twenty families seem to have gone.

The participants in the first effort to produce greatness in Utah's harsh lands commented favorably on many sites they passed en route to Parowan, but they were less than ecstatic over the site of the community itself. At present Fillmore, Lee reported that Chalk Creek was "a bold running stream . . . , this stream is quite sufficient for Mill purposes and would Eregate some thousands of acres of land. . . ."28 At present Meadow, Utah, he stated that "the quality of the soil is of a rich Black Red and certainly will produce well and from the present knowledge of the situation of this Point the conclusion would be that a good heavy settlement can be made here."29 At Corn Creek (Kanosh) the settlers reported : "This is inevitably the best prospect for a large Settlement that we have discovered on the (trip) since leaving the Settlements."30 Diarists seemed able to recognize opportunities for settlements so long as they were not asked to establish them.

Arriving at their destination at Parowan on January 13, 1851, the settlers shuddered at the sight before them. George A. Smith, the leader, wrote of the moment: 20

Diary -'â&#x20AC;˘ Ibid., 2S Ibid., 29 Ibid., 30 Ibid.,

of John D. Lee, ca. December 2, 1850, Brigham Young University Library.

December 20, 1850.

December 30, 1850.

December 31, 1850.

January 2, 1850.

14

Utah Historical

Quarterly

Thermometer this evening at 32°. The whole of the camp moved on to Center Creek and camped at the mouth of the canyon. A very fine rapid stream, larger than that of North Cotton Wood [in Salt Lake Valley].

Red sandy soil covered with bunch grass, sage and rabbit brush and grease wood (I found a track of land which pleased me, but not so with a great majority of our farmers who make up rye faces and say they can see no facilities here) ,31

John D. Lee noted that the area "seemed rather forbidding to a farmer especially. Scarce anything to be seen but sage and greasewood."32 In spite of their apparent disappointment the settlers proceeded to establish their community. Land was selected for a fort, farms, and pasture, but then difficulties ensued. An indication of the problems facing the settlers of Utah's marginal lands is given by Smith two weeks after their arrival.

I called the camp together this morning and told them that there was no call for public work today and that every man was at liberty to do what he pleased upon which there was a regular stampede for the canyon, every man taking his ax and leaving his gun. There was not half a dozen men about the camp during the day. Every accessible tree that would make a house log within 4 miles stood a slim chance today.33

Although somewhat facetious, Smith's report points up the unsuitability of the region for the agrarian economy of the time. Limited resources of timber, level land, and, even more important, water, effectively prevented the agricultural villages of the marginal lands from supporting more than a few thousand inhabitants. The potential of 100,000 could be reached only through creation of a manufacturing sector based on iron and steel. Establishment of Cedar City by converts from England's manufacturing centers in November 1851 culminated in a small quantity of smelted iron on September 29, 1852. Although iron was subsequently produced for some fifteen years, the great population and manufacturing center conceived by Brigham Young never emerged in his lifetime. The Mountain Meadow Massacre, the Utah War, and most important the advent of the transcontinental railroad doomed the enterprise. The Iron Manufacturing Company of Utah was organized under church direction in the 1880s and rails, cars, and other railroad equipment purchased to connect the iron furnaces with the 31

Diary of George A. Smith, typescript copy, January 13, 1851, Brigham Young University

Library.

32 33

Diary of John D. Lee, January 13, 1851.

Diary of George A. Smith, January 31, 1851.

Utah's Harsh Lands

15

present Union Pacific line (then Utah Southern) at Milford and renew and expand iron production. In spite of this, the iron resources were not tapped fully until the twentieth century, and the actual steel making became concentrated in the Wasatch Front. Thus, the first attempt at greatness in Utah's harsh lands failed. The dream of 100,000 people in Little Salt Lake Valley withered and died. It died as a result of both the handicaps presented by the geography of the Iron Mission and the emergence of more efficient industrial centers in the East.

Exploitation of resources fostered the move south to Parowan and Cedar City, but agricultural goals fostered other attempts at greatness.

Brigham Young's report of the area from the Little Salt Lake Valley north to the Utah Valley envisioned agricultural settlements totaling millions of people. According to one diarist: President Young gave a glowing description of the different vallies he had passed through also Iron Co. which abounds with extensive mines of Iron ore of the best quality. Good stone coal beds which appear extensive. . . . [The Pavant] valley 100 miles this side is a very large good place with extensive range plenty of farming land Father and Bishop Anson Call have

Flood waters rush by the Cedar City Co-op Store and the Bank of Southern Utah. USHS collections.

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Utah Historical

Quarterly

The fertile farmlands of Davis County provide a dramatic contrast to the harsh landscape opposite. USHS collections. been appointed to take a company there this fall H e thinks this valley capable of supporting at least a million souls All the valleys this side a r e capable of cultivation with plenty water wood and grass H e wants t h e people to settle these valleys as soon as possible and not keep hived u p here in town. 3 4

It is unclear whether Young's view that the Pavant Valley would support one million represented his actual view or was just propaganda to encourage settlers to move southward. Certainly his view is supported by other leaders, including Parley P. Pratt, who described the Pavant Valley in glowing terms: H e r e are resources for farming, stock raising, fuel, etc., in sight of o u r present encampment, probably more than sufficient to sustain the present population of R h o d e Island; a n d yet, not a domestic animal, except those of the passing traveller, or a h u m a n being, save the occasional savage in his wanderings, occupies any portion of the wide domain. 3 5

34

Library.

Diary of Lorenzo Brown, typescript copy, May 25, 1851, Brigham Young University

35 Diary of Parley P. Pratt, typescript copy, March 31, 1851, p. 417, Brigham Young University Library.

Utah's Harsh Lands

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South end of the House Range, looking north, and the Confusion Mountains of west Millard County. USHS collections.

Young's infatuation with the Pavant Valley peaked with the establishment of the territorial capital at Fillmore. Had his assessment of the area been accurate, such a location would have been a rational choice.

However, since the region has inadequate water, it represented but one more attempt to impose greatness on the harsh lands through external manipulation. As with the Iron Mission and subsequent endeavors, the idea of Fillmore as the capital met failure. The few times the legislature convened there in the 1850s were sufficient to allow them to recognize the geographical realities of the region.

The agricultural empire visualized in the Pavant failed to meet Young's expectations, but the concept was expanded to the Dixie mission and attempts to produce cotton and wine. Parley P. Pratt, in his initial visit to the Santa Clara in 1849-50, reported on the warm climate but had only faint praise for the possibility of settlement of the area. Camped south of the black volcanic ridge near Pintura, he reported: The country southward for 80 miles showing no signs of water or fertility;... a wide expanse of chaotic matter presented itself, huge hills, sandy deserts, cheerless, grassless plains, perpendicular rocks, loose barren clay, dissolving beds of sandstone . . . lying in unconceiveable confusion.30 30

"Journal History of the Church," December 31, 1849.

18

Utah Historical Quarterly

Pratt's report of the land along the Virgin and Santa Clara rivers was more favorable but is still somewhat subdued compared to his praise for areas north of the rim of the Basin.37 Jacob Hamblin and other missionaries to the Indians also traveled to the Virgin River. Of the trip from Harmony, Hamblin reported that "we found rough Desert country, destitute of water and almost everything else. We traveled 3 days without finding water, only in hollow places of the rocks deposited by a heavy rain the second night after we started."38 Once arrived at the Santa Clara, Hamblin and company, assisted by local Indians, constructed a rock dam 80 feet long, 14 feet high, and 3 feet thick across the stream with the avowed purpose of aiding the Indians in producing their food.39 In 1855 a little cotton was grown by the Indian missionaries, prompting the next attempt to create greatness in the harsh lands.

The story of the beginning of the Cotton Mission has been previously told, but it is important to note that settlers of this area were moving into even harsher lands as measured by the critical resource, water.

Settlement of Dixie for purposes of producing cotton began with the first group of 160 persons arriving at present Washington on May 5, 1857. Their cotton crop was a failure, but the perception of this group, which included migrants from the southern states, fostered the idea that the area was "Utah's Dixie." This perception ultimately came to be a negative one rather than a positive one as some of these settlers returned home or wrote home at the end of the season with reports of the failure of the cotton, lack of water, and limited arable land.

Other locations were slightly more successful in growing cotton, however, and in 1858 more settlers were sent. Convinced of the need and profitability of the cotton endeavor, Brigham Young visited the settlement at Santa Clara in the summer of 1861, and at the general church conference in Salt Lake City that October 309 people were called to settle Dixie. The importance of the endeavor is indicated by the presence of three apostles, Orson Pratt, Erastus Snow, and George A. Smith, as leaders.

Smith had visited the Virgin River settlements in 1857, and his report at Salt Lake City in September of that year played a significant role in Young's decision to send more settlers to some of the harshest 37 38

Ibid., January 1, 1850.

Diary of Jacob Hamblin, typescript copy, October 15, 1854, p . 4, U t a h State Historical

Society.

39

Ibid., February 11, 1855.

Utah's Harsh Lands

19

lands yet colonized by the Mormons. As an apostle and leader of the successful settlement at Parowan, Smith's judgment was unquestioned.

In examining his assessment of Dixie, however, one is struck by the fact that in spite of efforts to report positively on the area, the harshness of the region could not be denied. In discussing the trip from the rim of the Great Basin to the Virgin River he stated: I t is rather rough [country]; b u t I could not but admire its extreme beauty; and I think, if the Lord had got up all the rough, rocky, and the broken fragments of the earth in one, he might have dropped it here.

W h e n I reached the cotton country, I had previously learned that they were failing in their attempts to raise cotton, and that the waters of the R i o Virgin were poisoning the cotton. But I learned that the seed h a d not come u p : but what had come up 5 perhaps one-third of was exceedingly fine. T h e difficulty was, that their cotton was planted very late, and the sun heated the sand, for the soil is nothing but the red sand of the Sahara.

T h e y planted it in the sand, as tiiere was nowhere else to plant it, and the sun was scorching it; b u t they found that all that was necessary was to keep the seed wet; and when they poured on the water, the cotton grew, and old cotton-growers tell m e that they have never seen a better prospect for cotton, for the time it has been planted, in the w o r l d ; . . . and the prospect is, that they will have pretty good cotton and about the third of a crop, and the next year they will be able to raise lots of cotton; for they will be there early enough, and have seed that can be depended upon. 4 0

It takes a true optimist to report that a crop of one-third germination, and that only partly grown, is a good crop, but his concluding comments about the cotton-growing efforts along the Virgin certainly were not designed to encourage a mass rush to the area: If the sand was not wet, it would all blow away. T h e country seemed very hot to m e ; otherwise I enjoyed the visit very well. But the brethren insisted that it was a very cool spell while I was there.

I preached to them in Washington City, and I thank the Lord for the desert holes that we live in, and for all the land that can be watered, in all, amounting to but a few hundred acres. T h e r e are but a few rods wide that can be watered in a place. . . . 4 l

The elements in Smith's 1857 report, coupled with reports of those who returned from the abortive 1857 Cotton Mission, were quickly adopted as an apparently wide-based view of Dixie as the harshest area for settlement. Major elements of the popular view were the extreme heat, drought, lack of trees, and infertile and limited level land. In Dixie, Smith had found the Sahara Desert he later applied to the Salt Lake 10

Journal

-Âť Ibid.

of Discourses,

5:222.

20

Utah Historical

Quarterly

Valley. The reluctance of settlers to go to Dixie was even greater than that of those earlier called to Parowan, Cedar City, Fillmore, Nephi, Manti, or other areas, which were not so radically different from the central settlements in the Salt Lake Valley. In consequence the leaders devoted numerous sermons to encouraging settlers to move to the truly harsh lands of Dixie. Smith played a major role in these attempts, and his efforts to overcome his earlier rather negative reports of the area took interesting forms. In September 1861 at Logan he attempted to encourage potential settlers with nationalistic statements aimed at the need for self-sufficiency by the Saints: We have got to provide for ourselves as a great family and as a nation.

All enlightened nations have endeavored to get control of a northern and southern climate. The God of heaven, in his abundant mercy, has given us the control, in these elevated valleys of a northern and southern climate.42

Having already gone on record that the southern climate suffered from excessive heat and sandy soil, Smith made no attempt to revise the popular image of Dixie as a desert; rather he transformed the Salt Lake Valley of 1847 into the same geographic condition and implied that through obedience those called to Dixie could transform it into the farms and gardens found in the Salt Lake, Cache, and Utah valleys by 1861."

He was explicit on this point at church conference in October 1861: "When you first came here [Salt Lake Valley] you dropped down into a desert, went to work and made it blossom as the rose. Then, when you have done this, you have to go to other places and make them blossom also."44 In spite of the leader's encouragement and repeated claims that with a little work they could change the geography of the harsh lands, most prospective settlers departed for Dixie reluctantly. An example of both a willing and an unwilling immigrant comes from Allen J. Stout's family in 1861. In writing of his call to go to the Cotton Mission he stated: "Now this was joyful to me for I was glad to leave that cold country [south of Pleasant Grove] and get where I could raise southern products; but my wife felt bad for she thought she could not live in a hot climate, for she was very fleshyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;she weighed 250 pounds. . . .'"5 42

Ibid., 9 : 1 1 3 .

Ibid. ÂŤ I b i d . , 9:116.

45 Journal of Allen J. Stout, typescript copy, January 15, 1861 [1862], p. 24, U t a h State Historical Society.

43

Utah's Harsh Lands

21

Actual involvement in the Cotton Mission endeavor seems to bear out the wife's view. Stout's comments after arrival in Dixie reflect only the difficulty of settlement. Typical is his entry for July 9, 1863. "The weather is very hot and our water is nearly gone, so that it is uncertain whether we can save our crops or not."40 The expectations of those called to Dixie were fairly accurate insofar as the hardships associated with settlement were concerned. The recurrent efforts to construct dams on the Virgin, the loss of the limited agricultural land along the Santa Clara to floods, the emergence of alkali as a result of irrigation, and the lack of water in summer were perennial events. In 1859 James Bleak reported that: "Last year [1859] the Washington Dam in the Rio Virgen had been swept away twice . . . ditches partly swept away and where this was not the case, they were filled with mud and debris."47 When floods or droughts failed to handicap them sufficiently, the settlers' own lack of expertise did. The difficulties presented by the harsh environment caused many to return to the north.48 It should not be assumed that such problems were unique in Dixie.

The trials of the settlers at Delta as they attempted to place a diversion dam in the Sevier, or those of settlers at Bluff on the San Juan, mirror them. The words of a visitor in 1868 succinctly state the nature of colonization in the harsh lands: "They have a hard time to get along in this Desert country."49 The difficulties of settling the ever harsher lands south and east of the Wasatch Front discouraged many people, and the problem faced by the leaders in developing the region was summarized by Brigham Young in 1874 in noting that when he asked people to go to St. George they responded: "St. George! Are you going to send me to St. George? Why it is like sending me out of the world."50 The constant problem of getting people out of the Wasatch Front and into the harsh lands is summarized by the report of a Scandinavian who was returning to Ogden in 1873 after an abortive settlement attempt: ". . . in relation to what President Young sent by telegraph about the brethren remaining here till fall he 40 47

Ibid., July 9, 1863, p . 26.

Journal of James Bleak, typescript copy, Book A, p. 48, Dixie College Library, St. George,

Utah.

4S Ibid., p. 199. Bleak reports an expenditure of $1,800.00 plus labor for a ditch from the Virgin River which was useless because it ran uphill. See ibid., p. 95.

49 Letter from Samuel Bateman, December 19, 1868, contained in his journal, typescript copy, Brigham Young University Library.

50 Journal of Discourses, 17:42.

Flood plain of the Virgin River with the St. George Temple a distant landmark. USHS collections.

said that they would not stay if he should come with Jesus Christ himself."51 Like the Iron Mission, and the dream of a million settlers in the Fillmore region, Young's vision of a major cotton-producing region, with outlets to the West Coast via a river port on the Colorado, foundered on the geographic realities. Dixie is a marginal area for agriculture and could not compete with the South once the Civil War ended. In Dixie, as elsewhere in Utah's own harsh lands, demand by outside interests was the basis for occupancy, but the geography of the region, combined with changing events beyond its borders, assured its failure.

What then of the theme "Utah's Harsh Lands, Hearth of Greatness"? The large cities and dense population envisioned by Mormon church leaders have yet to be realized, but the greatness is there. The region is a hearth of greatness because in spite of the harsh nature of the geography of the area when compared to the Wasatch Front, and in spite of the apparent failure of the settlers in achieving the goal of Young, they were successful in establishing homes, farms, towns, and a way of life that is unique in the United States.

The settlements themselves were not necessarily great, as shown by descriptions of visitors. Even the Mormons found the settlements in the harsh lands unappealing. One noted that "Fillmore is the seat of Government and a fine state House is built of red sandstone The town looks the least like a civilized place of any I have seen being a few 51 Diary of Levi Savage as quoted in Charles S. Peterson, Take up Your Mission: Mormon Colonizing along the Little Colorado River, 1870-1900 (Provo, U t . : Brigham Young University Press, 1973), p. 14.

Utah's Harsh Lands

23

houses in fort form filled with cattle yards, [corrals], etc."51 Parowan was apparently somewhat more pleasing as the following description indicates: "This [Parowan] is a pretty valley and town. The town is neat and clean with a good mill and plenty of first rate good people."5 Cedar City was larger than Parowan, but apparently a less pleasant place. "[Cedar City] is a much larger place than Parowan Situated on Coal Creek and like all the towns built in fort form It is not as neat as Parowan being filled with cattle yards [corrals] etc a thing very essential but easily be put a little back instead of occupying the center of town."54 No visitors were overwhelmed by the towns themselves, but several remarked on the beauty of their location. A visitor to St. George in 1864 reported that . . . this little town is situated on a beautiful incline baring to the south, the city stands at the foot of the mountains, on the north, there is a formation of a redish sand stone. M a n y of them rising hundreds of feet perpendicular which gave the country a very beautiful appearance, with the Vergen river lying some miles in the south, a way to the south, and east were to be seen many lofty, rugged, volcanic-looking mountains which gave to the country a very romantic appearance. 5 5

It was hard to find anything romantic in the typical farming village in the harsh lands. Streets were either dust or mud, depending on the season and the locale; and the noise and odor of pigs, sheep, cows, and horses composed a central part of the atmosphere of each. Such mundane aspects of life in a rural village are rarely mentioned by observers. Descriptions of the towns quoted above may be criticized as atypical since they represent views of towns usually less than a decade after establishment. The heritage of the pioneer period, however, is still found in the towns and villages of Utah's harsh lands, and even casual observers note them.50 The persistence of such architectural and economic functions in the towns of Utah's marginal lands relate to the limited resource base upon 52

Diary of Lorenzo Brown, May 14, 1856. â&#x20AC;˘r'3 Ibid., May 20, 1856. " Ibid., May 24, 1856.

55 Diary of John Clark Dowdle, typescript copy, December 25, 1864, Brigham Young University Library.

56 An analysis of the Mormon landscape in the 1970s by a perceptive eastern observer concluded that the key elements in recognizing a Mormon village included: (1) abandoned farm equipment in town, (2) unpainted barns in town, (3) corrals and livestock in town, (4) hay derricks in town, (5) the Mormon fence comprised of a variety of materials, (6) functional irrigation ditches in town, and (7) Mormon l-style houses dating from the period 1860-90. See Richard V. Francaviglia, "The Mormon Landscape," Proceedings of the Association of American Geographers (Lawrence, Kan., 1970), pp. 59-61.

24

Utah Historical

Quarterly

which they rely. Enormous effort was required to successfully occupy such areas. Perseverence, industry, sacrifice, frugality, and brotherhood were essential ingredients; and from them came many remarkable achievements. Typical of these is the canal to bring water from the Virgin River to the Hurricane Bench south of Hurricane. First contemplated in the 1860s, the project was finally completed in 1903. It consisted of some five miles of canal along the cliffs on the south side of the river. T h e work was accomplished by farmers from the settlements along the Virgin, not for speculation but to provide additional farm lands so their children would be able to get land for a livelihood.

Actual construction began in the winter of 1893-94, and work proceeded each winter and during slack times in the summer. Construction of the canal along the cliffside required use of nine short tunnels through precipitous rock outcroppings and flumes to carry the ditch over areas where the rock was unstable. T h e ditch was four feet deep with a bottom eight feet wide sloping to ten feet at the top. Total cost was estimated at $65,000, most of it in the form of labor. It was originally estimated that 2,000 acres could be irrigated, but only about 1,500 were able to be served. The significance of the project is that the settlers accomplished it on their own, except for $5,000 obtained from the Mormon church in 1902. Equally as important, the canal has remained in use to the present day. This story could be repeated throughout Utah's harsh lands, as today's residents continue to use the ditches, trees, roads, wells, and houses of those who came to the area in spite of its harshness and persisted in their efforts to occupy the land.

Not all of the attempts to occupy these marginal lands ended with even a modicum of success. Fully twenty-seven settlements established in U t a h were ultimately abandoned, some lasting only a few months, others several years. Zion, Dalton, Tonaquint, Adventure, Duncan's Retreat, Shonesburg, Paria, Scutumpah, Bloomington, Georgetown â&#x20AC;&#x201D; simply names today but each at one time consisted of individuals who left established settlements with hopes of creating a new oasis.

Measurement of the achievements of those who settled Utah's harsh lands is difficult. It is impossible to place a value on either the human sacrifice or the results of that sacrifice. An examination of the population of U t a h reveals that residents of the non-Wasatch Front areas of Utah have become proportionally less important within the state in the last one hundred years (fig. 2 ) . Growth in population, industry, and economic well-being has been concentrated along the Wasatch Front,

Utah's Harsh Lands

25

but the figures alone are partially misleading. Many of those who participated in the growth and development of the Wasatch Front in the twentieth century, including governors, scientists, and university presidents, were reared in Utah's harsh lands. Their commitment to hard work and persistence was an obvious factor in their successful careers.

Viewed in this light, the contributions of the residents of Utah's harsh lands have a significance beyond that suggested by their limited number.

What is obvious is that Utah's harsh lands are at the threshold of a period of growth in population and economic base. The non-Wasatch Front counties of Utah that have consistently lost population in the postWorld War II decades are now beginning to grow. It is indeed ironic that the very harshness of the geography of these regions that made it impossible to support large numbers in an agrarian economy may be the basis for future growth. The rugged mountains that prohibited expansion of agriculture have become the home of national parks and other recreational opportunities attracting thousands of visitors each year. The same mountains hold vast reserves of coal, oil, natural gas, and oil shale at a time when energy demand is a critical issue. The existence of vast areas of open space with sparse populations will attract such disparate economic activities as power-generating plants, mineral extraction, and defense facilities. Utah's harsh lands may yet support the large population envisioned by Brigham Young, but whether this large population will reflect the same values and attributes of the original settlers remains to be seen.

Fig. 2: Population

Changes in

Utah.

Percent 80

70

77%

<c<&s~

-

60

-

50

-

r

53% ^ ^

J/

~~~^*-~S//'^

^

40 --

*.

30 23%

20 1 Year

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

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1

1

If

w W

# ' J • %

•

w

%

Dr. L. A. Culmsee in his oasis won from the desert after twenty years of effort. Courtesy of the author.

Last Free Land Rush

BY CARLTON CULMSEE

U T A H S E E M S NOT TO HAVE RECEIVED general recognition for initiating America's last expansive free land rush. Reed Smoot led the 1909 ConDr. Culmsee is dean emeritus, Utah State University.

Last Free Land Rush

27

gress to double the original 1862 homestead to 320 acres.1 Thus stimulated, the land-hungry pioneered millions of acres in a dozen states.

Even the collapse of the movement was important in marking the end of the frontier as we usually visualize it. Furthermore, cultivation of large tracts apparently unsuitable for diversified farming helped bring the legend of the Great American Desert nearer actuality.

Response to the Enlarged Homestead Act dominated a major chapter of my family history. Some of us participated in the homestead effort for twenty-three years. Father's impetuosity ruled. Mother agreed happily. My sister El Vera, twelve, and I, eight, were consequently swept into the movement. Thus, inclusion of the personal appears necessary.

This twentieth-century land rush could be narrated in chronicles of hundreds of homestead communities, but such exhaustive compilations are not feasible here. Therefore, intensive focus on Nada may be justified, both for exemplifying features common to all settlements of like origin and to suggest need for alertness to identify distinctive aspects of communities scattered throughout the West.

My father2 receives extensive treatment in this account, partly because he obtained a post office for Nada and was postmaster during the life of the community. His cheerful optimism helped buoy up homesteaders' hopes through the decline from the early phase of comparative humidity into desert aridity. Also, he employed men for varying intervals and extended store credit to numerous families.

1 An Act to Provide for an Enlarged Homestead.

S. 6155, passed by 60th Congress. T h e Stock Raising Homestead Act, 1916, again doubled the size, lending another impulse to the "rush." Thus, each entry added a full square mile to the acreage total. With some different requirements, the act imparted a new character to the movement. Perhaps because the new act introduced one or two formidable stipulations in the way of gaining title, we heard of no one filing on land under the 1916 act in our region.

2 Ludwig Alfred Culmsee was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1860. At age eight, he moved with his parents to Stavanger, Norway. At eighteen, he emigrated to America alone. For eighteen years he worked on Midwest farms or taught courses in Decorah College, Decorah, Iowa.

T h u s he worked his way through State University of Iowa and Medical College; M.D., 1897.

H e began practicing medicine in Saint Ansgar, Iowa, because the town with engirdling hamlets lacked a physician. H e and Clara Belia Hansen married there in 1899. She was a daughter of Norwegian parents, who were among the first pioneers in north-central Iowa.

Clara had had early frontier experience. At sixteen, she'd taught a one-room school near Fargo, N.D. T h e n she returned to Saint Ansgar to teach. She was little more than half her husband's age.

Calling on patients in buggy or sleigh, father often "worked around the clock." At Nada his face still retained marks of frostbite.

I n 1906 he took his wife and their children, El Vera, six, and myself, two, to Europe.

He pursued postgraduate studies, specializing in surgery, in Copenhagen and Vienna, for two years. On returning to America he settled in Norfolk, Nebr., to have access to hospital facilities.

Dr. Culmsee was sensitive, idealistic, but doggedly persistent. He suffered periods of ill health and retired in middle life. We moved to California in 1912.

28

Utah Historical Quarterly

Father was paradoxical. He possessed an imaginative, enthusiastic nature fibered with iron tenacity of purpose. He was, for example, proud of having sung in the boys' choir of Stavanger, Norway, cathedral, but also a bit vain about having had successful fights with sailors on the waterfront. He was glad he had puritanical habits inculcated by pious parents, yet sheepish about a tendency to gamble in his teens. When shocked by a sharp reversal of fortune in gaming, he vowed never to gamble again and held to the pledge all his life. But as in the Nada venture, his impulsiveness could burst forth in plunges that were akin to gambling.

Anxiety over dangerously ill patients caused him to overwork and lose sleep. He had intervals of severe headache and nausea. He retired from medicine at fifty-three in 1912 and moved us to California.

After six months of travel and rest, my father rebounded in health and revived his boyhood dream of the frontier. He saw advertising placed in newspapers by a land-locating company. They excited him with fantastic tales of a virgin valley in Utah where he could gain possession of a ranch a mile long â&#x20AC;&#x201D; free!

The San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad, completed a few years before, provided a link between hinterlands and the Pacific.

Executives offered homeseekers encouragement: low excursion rates to see the Escalante land and tempting rates on "immigrant" or boxcars to haul pioneers' furniture and livestock. Brisk salesmen for the landlocators avoided using the word Desert with Escalante; it was Valley.

"The least we can do is look at it!" father declared, all aglow. "It'll cost next to nothing to do that." As always, mother supported his decision zestfully.

Such companies sprang up in most states with public domain open to homestead entry. But this Los Angeles organization enjoyed advantages. That new railroad was paramount. Management was eager to develop farming and business along the route.

Also the land-locators benefited from a rare wet phase of the precipitation cycle in springs of 1912-13. Grasses flourished in the Escalante.

Wild horses frolicked on the benches, deer roamed the hills, pools sparkled in low places. Illusions of undiscovered amplitudes of soil, which looked fertile when dark with moisture, could be created.

Government surveyors had recently surveyed broad areas in Iron County. Homeseekers could consult the metal stakes, then immediately file on their chosen claims at Milford land office.

I^ast Free Land Rush

29

Moreover, southern California held thousands of prospective pioneers. Many had come west on waves of publicity Los Angeles, after a stagnation interval, had sent eastward. T h e new harbor near San Pedro, petroleum wells, and industrial expansion invited ships from afar. T h e new rail link promised the very progress we have since seen in southern California.

New arrivals, however, found the old Spanish ranchos and mission lands being divided and subdivided with ballooning prices. Most of the hopefuls lacked sufficient capital to profit from the boom. They were ripe to join a backlash to free land. 3 When father and mother arrived at Nada signpost on the evening local train, a land-locator guide escorted them to a rambling temporary "hotel." This hostel had been erected to serve the 1912 wave of prospects who were attracted by recently surveyed tracts in southern Iron County. Now the structure accommodated a new surge of the landhungry to unsurveyed lands in northern Beaver County.

Within the paintless, rough shack my parents gloated over big bottles of plump wheat, rye, oat kernels. Ostensibly this abundance had sprung from Escalante soil. As a matter of fact, it had thriven in irrigated fields of Minersville, Utah, or of California's San Joaquin Valley.

Photo-enlargements of luxuriant crops came from the same sources.

Folders on the exhibit table pictured a benign Uncle Sam holding out to every comer a deep slab of Mother Earth bearing lush grain and a Dutch Colonial cottage embowered in an orchard. This much was true: 320 acres of free land awaited each hardy homeseeker.

After attempting to sleep in a muslin-walled cubicle, my folks breakfasted at a plank table. They set off to inspect possible sites. T h e buckboard driver trebled as troubadour and drumbeater. As they jolted over brush-rough wheeltracks, he trolled a parody of a popular song: "Everybody's doin' it! Doin' what? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Dry-farmin' it!" H e amplified

3 This backlash was part of a "natural reaction of Americans to a long generation of industrialism. . . . that reaction took the form of a back-to-the-land movement which originated during the first decade of this century and reached a crescendo during the second." From abstract of a doctoral dissertation by Stanford J. Layton, who analyzed significances of the 1909 Enlarged Homestead Act and the 1916 Stock Raising Homestead Act. Dr. Layton's studies, furthermore, led him to state that "millions of Americans left the cities for the farms during the first third of this century." The Congress met "this great demand for access to land ownership" in part through the 1909 and 1916 Homestead acts. The movement back to the land gained, he observed, acceleration from certain popular periodicals that often pictured farm life as a panacea for physical and social ills. See " T h e Politics of Homesteading in the Early Twentieth-century American West: T h e Origin and Supersession of the Enlarged Homestead Act and the Stock Raising Homestead Act" (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1972).

30

Utah Historical Quarterly

sales talks the land-locators had given father when they located him in Los Angeles.

Those alchemists, the promoters, transmuted obstacles into gold.

Land unsurveyed! That simply proved the pure virginity of this frontier you have found. Oh, no problem about nailing down a half-section.

The company had hired a dutiful couple to do a wagon-wheel survey.

Keen eye on compass, the husband steered his nags straight while his wife noted revolutions of a rag tied to a rear wheel. When she'd counted enough for a half-mile, she'd cry, "Whoa," and her mate would jump down to drive a stake. The hotel had an unofficial township map.

True, you couldn't file papers right away. But the company had solutions. To fend off claim-jumpers you could get the company employees to build a house of legal size. At a price, of course. And you could have a field tilled. These evidences of your good faith would stave off usurpers until you could move family and furniture, team and your good old milch cow to your splendid ranch. Think! â&#x20AC;&#x201D; three miles around it.

My parents selected a claim across which the railroad angled. Of course the right-of-way took many acres from our "ranch." But the half-section was near Nada sidetrack, and father planned to build a community center, post office, store, a room for civic gatherings with a free library. This was to be more than a homestead â&#x20AC;&#x201D; it was a townsite.

That night he received a vision of a second townsite. About 10 P.M., through the muslin partition, he and mother overheard two of the land-locator staff bemoaning the dilemma of a California friend. The latter owned school land, one of those sections set aside in each township for aid of future schools. After survey these sections were to be sold or otherwise used to help finance education. The section being discussed sotto voce was at Kerr sidetrack ten miles south of Nada, in that portion of Iron County already surveyed.

Kerr, the unseen speakers agreed vehemently, must soon supplant Lund four miles farther south as junction point between main line and the stage-freight road to Cedar City. That highway served not only county seat Parowan and Cedar City but also the huge Dixie country and glamorous scenic spectacles, Zion and Grand canyons and others.

A branch line of the railroad was, they hinted, soon to be constructed.

But from Lund? Never! Why, Lund lay squalid in the bottom of an old lake bed, a godforsaken mudhole. Now take Kerr: it stood on a well-drained bench, a perfect site for the junction town-to-come.

Last Free Land Rush

31

Unfortunately for their friend Matson, who had recently bought the Kerr school land, he writhed in a temporary financial bind. He'd over-invested, and he must unload or face serious trouble. He must sell this townsite at a sacrifice.

Next morning the principal actor in the muslin-curtained dialogue did not approach father. That is not how it's done. Unobtrusively he made himself available, identified by voice. He quietly helped Dr. Culmsee make travel and other arrangements. He let father broach the deal.

The upshot you have guessed. For a modest $10,000, father purchased Kerr. His new land had Kerr siding and signpost on it. Seductively the con man had waved the name Kerr as a magician's wand.

It stood for William J. Kerr, fourth president of the Utah State Agricultural College. That institution virtually assured our success because its nationally known scientists had revealed tested methods to subdue just such a wilderness as the Escalante. Indeed, the current president, Dr. John A. Widtsoe, had himself authored masterful books on the new dry-farming. The college was revolutionizing farming in all the West.

We could not fail!

Father did not feel he was gambling. To buy Kerr was simply to protect his Nada site. Think! — two townsites on the mainline of the SPLASL within ten miles of each other.

Were such con games common on the frontier? Although I've heard tales, I can document only the Kerr instance.

In pioneer effervescence, however, chicanery might thrive. Shrewd as men might ordinarily be, they were naive in this entirely new situation. Thrilling, to have federal guaranties of a free ranch — "It wears you out, just to walk around it!" Underground, a limitless lake lay waiting. The rare wet spring was a bunco job nature herself perpetrated.

Greedy haste to seize unsurveyed land led to bilking. "Improvements" that land-locators contracted to make to fend off claim-jumpers totaled large sums, yet were well-nigh worthless in most cases.

That legal-size house, costing $400-plus depending on various factors, proved uninhabitable, a rough box plumped down in the brush. Oh, 12-by-16, all right. Now consider how green lumber shrank, warped, cupped, especially the roof — "Cracks you could throw a cat through!"

— from sun and wind. "Tilled field" meant a few slovenly furrows halfburying, not clearing, sage.

So crude was the wagon-wheel survey, some settlers found well and house on the wrong homestead, after the official survey was made.

32

Utah Historical Quarterly

May I encapsulate changes the desert forced on us? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; long wasteage of energies and abilities in that appalling gray emptiness. Such costs proved free land expensive for any pioneering family that persisted.

Father predicted impossible progress. Contrasting remembered tales of Midwest frontier hardships with contemporary Iowa abundance, his imagination achieved swift transition from initial cruelty to affluence.

We were, in actuality, flung back a century. Roads, electricity, telephones, theaters? None. No library except our private one. Father outfaced ordeals as necessary concomitants of subduing brute nature.

He drew hope from science, remaker of his youth, not medicines, but scientific dry-farming, then pump-well irrigation. Research heartened us.

What obtruded? In mindless obduracy, gales from southwest aridity worse than ours funneled up our dogleg crook of desert. They bared talons to rip crops and tear precious topsoil away.

From respected professional man and his cheerful, spirited wife â&#x20AC;&#x201D; responsive to science, arts, history â&#x20AC;&#x201D;my parents eroded to drudges of a settlement that, after a decade, diminished. Oh, they had anodynes.

They enjoyed serving. They read books. But the wasteland took its toll.

At first, for homesteaders who departed, replacements arrived.

We became promoters without profit. We circulated our own pamphlets of puffery. Mother wrote columns of "Nada Notes" by hundreds for newspapers, for obviously news was more effective than paid advertisements. Father put more and more money and labor, hired and his own, into the Experiment Farm. But newcomers decreased in numbers and quality. Most were dregs of the back-to-the-farm surge; braggarts, spineless and ineffectual.

Father immersed himself in chores as postmaster, storekeeper, assistant to experts from Logan. In summer they visited us every week or two. In emergencies father gave medical aid. He'd give first aid for a broken leg or a chopped foot, but never for pay. Scrupulously he refused to practice; he'd retired and had not sought Utah certification.

He'd get the injured one to a Milford physician. He had a weak town to care for!

Because the Beaver-Iron line divided Nada children into groups smaller than the required twelve, we often could not have a school.

Without pay, mother taught us and neighbor kids, although store-post office clerking frequently took her away. She had many eighteen-hour clays, or longer.

Section of General Land Office map of Utah, 1926, showing Nada and other forgotten sites on the SPLASL route. USHS collections.

My sister El Vera must go away to high school. She chose Wasatch Academy, Mount Pleasant." She acquired secretarial skills enabling her to work in Salt Lake City and Denver. With inherent idealism, she finally began helping young drug addicts cope with their addiction. For this she returned to California to become a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles County.

Being only eight when we arrived in Nada, I felt a deep loyalty to my parents and their dream. I must go to Cedar City for high school, but I'd return when I could. After graduation I taught in one-room desert schools three years so that I could often lend father a hand. I persuaded him to buy a modest-sized flock of sheep, which I herded and sheared. I studied correspondence courses, wrote free-lance articles.

At twenty-one I filed on a homestead others had twice abandoned, in

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Utah Historical Quarterly

a dry tentacle of Lake Bonneville's ghost. Three years, and I'd met requirements for ownership. I proved up.

Eventually I too left to attend college. Later I joined the BYU faculty, married an LDS girl, and was baptized. Adding administration to teaching, I'd go home less often.

Father held to his hope. At three score and ten he proved to watchers and himself that he had been, in a measure, right. (I explain later.)

But at last father's life flickered out. I brought mother to Provo. Nada's sorry little saga was ended.

Our free land cost us more than Iowa farms. Yet, depressed thirties forced us to abandon it all without selling an acre. Kerr was a comparative bargain. But we left it too as a total loss.

We twentieth-century invaders of the Escalante viewed Mormons with scorn. Those backward fanatics (we scoffed) had been too foggyheaded to see a splendid frontier right under their noses. Look at their little fields clustered like suckling shoats at creeks running out of canyons ! See how the Mormons dipped culinary water out of corral-polluted irrigation ditches. (That was true in villages early in this century. We Gentiles each had a well out there in the Escalante.)

Latter-day Saints in Beaver, Minersville, Parowan, Cedar City, and Panguitch returned our contempt redoubled. Having grazed the desert in winter for decades, they deemed us mad to turn under thousands of good range acres for "fields" doomed to failure before wind and drought. They had not only religious truth but common sense. Pioneers? They sneered at our pretensions. We were mere self-deceived Johnnies-come-lately and mistakenly, no descendants of Brigham's 1847 wagon train, nor of Mormon Battalion members, nor handcart pioneers.

We homesteaders, mostly midwesterners from humid climes after brief stays in California, expected rain to raise our crops. And, as noted, we rejoiced in an unusually moist spring in 1913. Furthermore, literature on dry-farming experiments systematized by Dr. John A. WTidtsoe and USAC agricultural experiment aides had come to our eager eyes.

Here then was an ephemeral Gentile community contrasting with stable LDS settlements.

A jackstraw jumble of figures, some overlapping or conflicting, obviously contain significance. But knots of confusion obtrude. Some homesteads were, for example, abandoned and filed on by later hopefuls so that one can become confused by certain types of statistics. As

Last Free Land Rush

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previously noted, the half-section to which I earned title had been twice abandoned. So without apology, I use results of personal observation and experience in hope of throwing light of analogy on other free land booms.

Nada could be no Mormon village compacted around church, school, and irrigation system. Homestead law required each individual or family to live on its holding a mile long and a half mile wide. So we straggled over some two hundred square miles of sand, sagebrush, and greasewood in a crook of the Escalante, where winds were funneled between desert hills. There were no roads, no telephones, no electricity.

What held the settlement together was a need for minimal postal and supply services, and extravagant frontier optimism.

Father hired two itinerant carpenters kicked off a freight train at Thermo water tank. They helped him build a spacious story-and-a-half frame structure to house Nada post office and general store with our family living quarters at the rear. Paralleling the store was a large room in which we offered a private libary and a large space available for community meetings. Thus Nada gained a community center of sorts.

Father initiated an instant post office: a hundred pigeon holes behind a roll-top desk. While red tape unrolled in Washington, D.C., at response to his application, he drove a surrey twenty-eight miles daily to and from Lund to post letters, pick up mail, and run errands for dozens of homesteaders. Over a bumpy wheel track, from June 1913 to March 1914, he devoted most of his time to these unofficial services plus negotiations with the U.S. postal department. Finally came a map with "Nada" printed prominently next to the Iron-Beaver County line, a rubber stamp for cancelling postage stamps, a quart of malodorous ink, a gross of scratchy penpoints, and other necessaries of a primitive U.S. post office. With small population, Nada rated only a fourth class status, which meant no salary.

With the meeting room father had provided as encouragement, Nada Commercial Club was born. George Lewis was voted president for his engaging personality, enthusiasm, and several brothers. Although the land-locators had locked up their hotel and ceased to exploit the Escalante, the club wished to continue to stimulate colonization. Lewis and his family gave positive assistance. George's brother Andrew, with a crippled leg, was assigned to drive a team and buggy temporarily provided by George.

A couple who'd located near us tore down their grandiose sign, "Grande View Ranche," and signed over their 12-by-l 6 shack to father

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Utah Historical Quarterly

for their grocery bill. He had the shanty reroofed and insulated against winter chill and then moved to a site beside the post office. It housed Andrew, the driver. He met morning and evening local trains for months and would convey land-seekers to the store-post office.

There my mother showed visitors township maps she'd made and kept up to date with occupied and open half-sections indicated. She would feed prospects and, if it was evening, provide them with beds upstairs. If it was morning, Andy would haul them about to see available claims. In the evening he would enable them to catch the local to Milford land office to file papers on chosen homesteads or return home disillusioned.

Indicative of the buoyant spirit was loud approval when a salesman, at the store on business, quipped: "Salt Lake's too close to Nada ever to amount to anything!" Nobody took the remark seriously, but nobody rejected it, for it reflected our ebullience. We lived in what the landlocators had assured us would be the New World Eden.

For the private-public library, father obtained Widtsoe's dry-farm writings and other literature from Logan. As base for an experiment farm* he donated ten acres across the SPLASL track. Giving the land was a gesture, because we were land-poor. But he went further. Observing instructions from the Logan station, he hired men to dig a trench around the farm and install a rabbit-proof woven-wire fence with barbed wire above and below.

At that time, Widtsoe, with five aides from the agricultural college, of which he was then president, arrived on the evening local. After inspecting the farm and our valley, the experts agreed that the desert was indeed dry. Over dinner they tactfully suggested that, in addition to dryfarm experiments, we have an adequate well dug and a powerful engine and pump installed for irrigation. They promised to lend us engineers and other advisers.

As agreed, experts came every week or two. Mother provided meals and beds for the day or two they stayed. But more was entailed, and father's temperament let him in for it. So father employed a crew of men to dig a yawning sump of a well twenty feet to the first aquifer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; we had no well-drilling equipment then â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and case out the virtual quicksand in which the water lay. He installed a big Fairbanks Morse gasoline 4 At Malone, across Beaver County near the Millard line, another homesteader, encouraged by pledges of aid from neighbors, started a similar venture which experts from the Logan station visited. We understood he was left holding the financial bag when the boom subsided.

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engine and a centrifugal pump. After varied vexations, we succeeded in obtaining a creek of cold clear water.

Too icy! our irrigation expert Walter W. McLaughlin5 declared.

He urged impounding it a day or two for absorption of solar heat.

Father hired a man with a team and fresno scraper to heap earth banks for a reservoir of generous size. Water accumulated during a day of pumping, however, seeped away at night.

Professor McLaughlin now quoted the social theorist Fourier to the effect that children love to play in mud. We hauled in many loads of adobe clay, and I as a lad of nine puddled to make what the adviser hoped would be a relatively impermeable layer. For several days I covered the reservoir walls and myself with goo. Overnight the water disappeared as before.

With post office and experiment farm, father had a well-nigh fulltime job. His deep-grained conscientiousness and desire to aid farming in the desert took much of his remaining money and time.

In 1914 Commercial Club president Lewis persuaded Gov. William Spry to come to address us. As a colleague of Sen. Reed Smoot, Spry liked to foster the Enlarged Homestead Act. From a platform the club decked with flags, the governor praised our efforts and applauded our enterprise. He lauded Reed Smoot's vision in recognizing the need of the land-hungry, in semiarid regions, to have larger acreage for a family farm.

Besides the postmastership, father took another unpaid but pleasurable task: volunteer weather observer. Government meteorologist J. Cecil Alter early enlisted him to make daily records and reports of cloud cover, precipitation, and wind velocity. Alter furnished simple instruments. Father relished frequent mail contacts with Alter, a genial manysided gentleman. We came to know of Alter's activities with the Utah State Historical Society and his authorship of Early Utah Journalism and other works. Father's weather reports may constitute the most substantial chapter of Nada history. Archives must contain decades of his records, the only such trove for an immense area.

Those records could pinpoint accurately the year and amount of the one cloudburst we enjoyed in the quarter-century. To my memory, 2.51 inches fell in an hour or less; 1914, I think. Father almost burst with pride at this evidence of abundant rainfall. He built me a tiny 5 Other station specialists who came to aid us were Luther M. Winsor, irrigation, and Lew Mar Price, farm management.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

catboat to sail on the "lakes" impounded by the SPLASL grade. Thus I learned rudiments of small boat handling. I had plenty of wind!

As postmaster, father had a most tenuous connection with the Army Air Corps when that service flew the airmail in the mid-twenties. Representatives received his permission to mark an emergency landing strip on one of our unused fields south of the store. At least one biplane landed for motor adjustments.

Homesteaders tried diverse expedients to outwit the grudging land.

Earliest perhaps was the wild horse trap at Thermo Hot Springs where wild animals long had drunk from pungent waters.6 Adventurers whose names I cannot ascertain erected a stockade of half-decayed crossties7 discarded by the "Pedro." Some mustangs were lured in and sold.

Four miles south of Nada, a Californian named Don Lash found a clay bed he pronounced superlative for bricks. A string of huts cobbled up of old corrugated iron and half-rotted ties gave forth bricks of dubious quality. Possibly insufficiently fired, they eroded rapidly.

Father and others experimented with seeds extravagantly extolled in luridly illustrated catalogs. One variety did arouse astonishment, the Himalayan Wonder Bean. We wondered how a short growing season could mature such gigantic beans: two to three feet long and hard as petrified wood. We amazed viewers at county fairs. Neither human being nor animal could dent the horny exterior. I never saw the gem coffered within.

One man used replaced railroad ties to roof a long cellar for growing mushrooms. We admired the mound of earth heaped on the ties, but we never saw mushrooms emerge.

Swarms of voracious jackrabbits impelled two young men to combine community service and moneymaking. "Young Johnnie" Dinwiddie8 and Clyde Bangle, Ozarkian of the whiplash pitching arm, bought a r u ^ J ^ i n N a d a ' s h i s t o r y . we learned a nugget of lore antedating the Mormon conquest. f a t h e r Escalante s diary describes the way the Dominguez-led explorers, in " T h e Valley of Our Lady of the Light," ascended low mounds to peer into boiling pools on October 10, 1776. The account depicts Thermo Hot Springs some eighteen miles south of present Milford.

7 Symbol of dominant transportation in the twentieth-century free-land era and of homesteader penury was the replaced railroad tie. Roads generally being absent, western main and branch lines provided haulage. Usually these lines laid ties on dirt with no gravel for drainage.

Underneath, the ties decayed before they were replaced. Homesteaders used the old timbers for small-scale building or firewood. A few persons found ties more resistant to summer heat and winter cold than frail pine boards. As Mike McGinty bragged, "I just stand 'em on end and toenail 'em in the middle," for his dwelling.

8 The numerous Dinwiddie clan which settled near Blue Mountain had substance and character. From Virginia via Escondido, Calif., they were descended from an early colonial governor. Grandfather Dinwiddie brought in the first auto, a Sears built like a buggy, in 1913.

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mile of woven wire. They made two wings of a V, with a trap-corral at the base. Boosting from the Commercial Club helped them muster a score or more of us on Sundays when the Methodist minister did not drive out to the schoolhouse to preach. Whooping and beating on pans, we fanned out to drive rabbits toward the trap. The entrepreneurs collected a five-cent bounty from county funds for each pair of ears, and we had the grim joy of clubbing to death some of our crop enemies.

When we saw the hordes thinning in one area, the promoters laboriously took down the mile of wire and moved it to another location. Largest total: 426. Mother's "Nada Notes," published weekly in the Beaver County News, recorded one more profitable drive. That time the prey fled back between us drovers in a strangely desperate way. We had driven seven coyote pups into the corral! At $5.00 a scalp, the promoters received $35.00 in bounty plus $14.50 in rabbit ears.

Steadiest income was from the section gang, track maintenance workers based at Nada siding on the "Pedro," later the Union Pacific.

Sometimes the entire crew came from homesteads.

Nada reached its population peak just before World War I. The draft took several of our bachelors away. Richard Keith died in France a bare month after leaving for training. Most of the others, "After they'd seen Paree," relinquished their claims to take jobs elsewhere.

About 1920 father discontinued efforts to operate the experiment farm in cooperation with Logan. But in his waning sixties he amazed the remaining homesteaders by "putting it all together" to triumph over the desert. Not a towering success but a modest victory accomplished with his hand labor, supplemented by occasional hired help.

Indispensable to his success was a windbreak. He planted Tamarix slips that, with frequent watering when they were young, finally gave him a wind-resistant hedge six to ten feet high around some acres of gently sloping sandy loam. Another factor was his utilizing the fierce wind. Instead of merely submitting his crops to sand-toothed gales, he used wind to pump water virtually without cost. But he had to have a new well favorably situated atop a small rise.

He hired "Old Johnnie" Dinwiddie, father of the rabbit-drover, to drill it. Johnnie had somehow acquired a manually operated outfit.

It required lots of elbow grease, but it worked. Between sessions of college, I assisted.

We cased out the first aquifer because the water flowed in quicksand so fine it seeped through any hole to clog pipes and pumps. Below

Nada post office-store seen from the experiment Courtesy of the author.

farm.

the quicksand we encountered an alternation of hardpan and gummy, greasy clay almost as obstinate as the hardpan. For days we pushed against the bar that drove the auger, toiling 'round and 'round like oxen.

We wired increasing weight on the bar with baling wire. Suddenly the bit jarred, jerked. We had ground through into coarse gravel and cold pure water that actually rose in the casing! Not a gusher but most of the way up through the intervening hardpan and clay. With an oversized windmill, we could overcome the twenty-one-foot depth, and overnight we could fill our sizable cement-lined reservoir.

Behind its shield of Tamarix, the sandy loam produced as though eager to do so. Looking back, since I was gone at school much of the time, I see his achievement as though he had used magic: raspberries red and black, and of course gooseberries; radishes, lettuce, carrots; and in the fall, cantaloupes, watermelons, and squash. Beaming with pride, father brought in the unaccustomed yield of the desert as each variety came to fruitage. All had drunk from the little streams discharged from the reservoir.

Mischievously, father and mother led me back to a back shelf in the dugout to reveal small bottles of wine, purple mulberry and scarlet raspberry. Prohibition had just been voted down. But the irony was, neither drank. "Why, you're good Mormons!" several visitors said to this abstemious Gentile couple. But as in the Whiskey Rebellion in remote Pennsylvania long ago, my parents had no way to ship out surpluses in

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perishables, and the wine was a useful "conservation" device. They gave the bottles to friends who did drink.

Then at seventy-six, father fell before a massive stroke. His little oasis crumbled. Nada post office ended after twenty-three diligent years.

Of all the flares of twentieth-century free land optimism, this must have endured longer than most that were originally doomed.

What remains of the free land rush beginning in 1909 and dwindling from, say, 1920 to FDR's withdrawals of extensive tracts from homestead entry in the early thirties?

Scars â&#x20AC;&#x201D; hundreds of square miles of waste areas â&#x20AC;&#x201D; where homesteaders turned over soil that was "rightside up in the first place," oncevaluable grazing land destroyed, when brush and bunchgrass were railed and burned and the naked soil tilled so that winds could carry off topsoil accumulated since time began. Nadas in the Escalante, in Skull Valley, in Buckhorn Flats. Add stricken acres on the lee sides of fields.

Admittedly, there are many dry-farms â&#x20AC;&#x201D; mostly uninhabited except for periods of tilling and harvesting: Promontory Points and Park Valleys, lake terraces and low hills in hundreds of places, cropped in alternate years to use meager moisture with care.

And there are pump-well irrigated lands, such as north of Enterprise at the south end of Lake Bonneville's bed, around Phoenix, Arizona, and in parts of southern California. Dwellers of those areas were periodically exhilarated by the myth of "vast inexhaustible underground lakes."

Inexhaustible is nonsense. Quickly reached is a limit, after which the water table declines because the "lakes" cease to be adequately recharged by precipitation within the drainage basin.

Thus portions of the desert have been profitably reclaimed. But maps show the producing areas are mere freckles on the vast sunburned face of public domain. Dustbowl fiction of the depressed thirties illustrated how the desert was expanding, even somewhat east of the traditional bounds of the Great American Desert. Overgrazing has impaired the fragile ecology of semiarid and arid lands more slowly, but inevitably it helps make wasteland of increasing thousands of square miles.

Dust, emissary borne on the wind, filtered into the national capitol to lobby for regulatory laws. Most of them have been ineffectual.

And of course my mind reverts to windrows of sand sifting among dead Tamarix trunks, gnarled remnants of the twigs father and I planted for the windbreak in the twenties. Desert has reconquered his hard-won province.

Nine Mile: Eastern Utah's Forgotten Road

BY EDWARD A. GEARY

I N AREA UTAH IS ALMOST EQUALLY DIVIDED between the Great Basin on the west and north and the Colorado Plateau on the east and south.

However, the state's population and its best-known history are concentrated in the Great Basin half. Except for the Virgin River Valley, the

Eastern Utah's Forgotten Road

43

Colorado Plateau was late to be settled, difficult to develop because of its terrain, and generally held in small esteem, as was indicated in the 1861 report on the Uinta Basin which termed it a "vast contiguity of waste . . . valueless excepting for nomadic purposes, hunting grounds for Indians and to hold the world together." 1 One important reason for the little understanding or appreciation of eastern Utah in the early days was the difficulty of access. A continuous mountain barrier separates eastern and western Utah, with very few natural passes. The Dominguez-Escalante party crossed through Strawberry Valley and Diamond Fork, which has never developed into a through route, later travelers having preferred the Daniels Summit route out of Strawberry Valley. In the first few decades of the nineteenth century the most important route across the region was the Old Spanish Trail, which crossed Salina Pass. The Rio Grande Railway, after first looking at Salina Canyon, chose the Midland Trail over Soldier Summit.

These three passes, Daniels, Soldier Summit, and Salina, remain the only feasible year-round routes, with the addition of the route over Fishlake Pass from Richfield to the Fremont River Valley. South of that point, the rugged canyon country makes a through road virtually impossible, as the Hole-in-the-Rock party discovered a century ago.

Within the province of eastern Utah, too, the historic routes remain important today: the Escalante and the Gunnison crossings of the Green River and the Spanish Valley route to the San Juan country. But there is one road, very important in the development of eastern Utah, that has fallen into near obscurity and disuse: the route between Price and Fort Duchesne, which for some twenty years was probably the most heavily traveled wagon road in eastern Utah and was aptly termed the "Lifeline of Uinta Basin."2 The key segment of this road ran through Nine Mile Canyon, one of the most colorful and little-known areas in Utah. Nine Mile does not quite belong to any of the state's usually recognized regions. From Castle Valley, the West Tavaputs Plateau forms the northern skyline, and the usual perception is that the Uinta Basin lies on the other side. From the Basin, on the other hand, the southern vista is of dry benches terminating Dr. Geary is associate professor of English at Brigham Young University. This paper was presented at the Historical Society's Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting in September 1980.

1 Deseret News, September 25, 1861 ; quoted in Charles S. Peterson, Utah: A Bicentennial History (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 137.

2 Evelyn Richardson, "Lifeline of Uintah Basin," Builders of Uintah: A Centennial History of Uintah County (Uintah County, U t . : Daughters of U t a h Pioneers, 1947), pp. 2 6 0 - 6 3 .

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Utah Historical Quarterly

in the Bad Land Cliffs. But between those landmarks there lies a long east-west canyon that straddles the Carbon-Duchesne county line and belongs really to neither valley. The canyon heads at about 8,000 feet on the West Tavaputs Plateau and drains into the Green River at an elevation of 4,610 feet. The settled portion lies at about the same elevation as the Uinta Basin and Castle Valley, but the landscape more nearly resembles that of the southern Utah canyonlands with its vivid contrast of castellated cliffs and bright green fields on the canyon floor. The climate, too, is considerably milder than that of the Uinta Basin. The reasons for this seem to be primarily the air drainage provided by the canyon and perhaps also the tendency of the south-facing cliffs to hold the sun's warmth in the winter. In any case, old-timers in Nine Mile brag that they can raise fruits that would be impossible to raise in the Basin.

The Nine Mile region is rich in prehistorical interest. It was an important center of the Fremont Culture and has numerous petroglyphs and ruins that have been the object of archaeological investigations since the 1890s.3 The canyon was apparently a route for trappers and Mexican slave traders as well as Indians. There is a possible Spanish inscription at the mouth of one side canyon, together with a date that may be 1819 but has also been read as 1839 and 1879.4 Human occupation goes way back in Nine Mile, then, but it is difficult to determine just when the region first became known to the white settlers of Utah. The 1866 General Land Office map of Utah shows a stream labeled White River in the approximate location of Nine Mile. The Price River was originally named the White River (as one of its tributaries still is), but the 1866 map also shows (though it does not label) the Price River in its approximately correct location. More precise mapping of eastern Utah awaited the Powell surveys beginning in 1869. The earliest known reference to the name Nine Mile is found in the profile map appended to Powell's Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries (1875). 5 In the 1878 Powell volume on the arid lands, A. H. Thompson gives a good though brief A r> 3 SL6,e' f °- r e x a m P l e > J o h n Gillin, Archeological Investigations in Nine Mile Canyon, UtahA lie-publication, Anthropological Papers, no. 21 (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press 19o5). ' 4 Interview with Howard C. Price, Jr., July 24, 1980.

5 J. W. Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries Explored in 1869^ 1870, 1871, and 1872, under the Direction of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C., 1875).

Eastern Utah's Forgotten Road

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description of the canyon but calls the creek the Minnie Maud.'5 The 1878 U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey map adopts the same name for the creek but shows Nine Mile Valley as the upper portion of the south fork of the Minnie Maud.

Thus, from the earliest reports occurs the confusion of names that has persisted to the present. The canyon, as far as current research can tell, has usually been called Nine Mile, but the creek has more often been known as the Minnie Maud. The 1950 Rand McNally standard map of Utah adds another element to the confusion by identifying an "8 Mile Creek" between Nine Mile Valley and Minnie Maud Creek.

The 1976 USGS map reverses the names, making the main creek Nine Mile and the south fork the Minnie Maud. This is apparently the official designation now, as a result of efforts to clarify water rights on the creek.7 The existence of two names for the same creek and canyon has led to numerous folk etymologies. One story has it that Minnie and Maud were sisters who lived in the upper part of the canyon. (There are two similarly shaped hills near the confluence of two upper tributaries that are referred to as Minnie and Maud.)* Another view holds that the name has an Indian origin, and it is sometimes spelled as one word, Minnemaud. The name Nine Mile poses problems because it is difficult to find a distinct stretch of the canyon that is nine miles long. One story from Carbon County claims that an early traveler, on asking how far he had to go, received the reply, "About nine mile."9 Another folk account, this one from Duchesne, has it that the name does not refer to distance at all but rather to the Miles family with its seven daughters, thus, with the parents, "the nine Mileses."10 However, the region was called Nine Mile long before the Miles family arrived. Howard Price suggests that the name Nine Mile might have come from the nine-mile triangulation used by Powell's surveyor, and that Powell might have had a niece named Minnie Maud.11 It is clear at any rate that both names were used by the Powell party. fi A. H. Thompson, "Irrigable Lands of T h a t Portion of Utah Drained by the Colorado River and Its Tributaries," chap. 9 of John Wesley Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, ivith a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah, ed. Wallace Stegner (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 172-73.

7 Price interview. * Ibid. * Unidentified informant, East Carbon City, U t a h , April 10, 1980.

10 Interview with Arwella P. Moon, June 26, 1980; Price interview.

11 Price interview.

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Quarterly

If the names in Nine Mile are confusing and sometimes contradictory, it is equally difficult to determine when the first white settlement of the canyon occurred. No doubt cattle herds ranged through the area in the 1870s, as they did throughout eastern Utah. The Midland Trail, which was a well-established route by the late 1860s, passed within two miles of the canyon; and the Price River settlers, who came by this route, would likely have known of its existence in 1878. However, the 1878 USGS map does not show even a trail running through the canyon.

Mildred Dillman claims that the first settlers came into Nine Mile "long before 1880" but does not specify a year.12 The earliest names associated with Nine Mile and the West Tavaputs Plateau in the local histories are those of George Whitmore and Shedrach Lunt, who had established ranches in the area, though not in Nine Mile Canyon itself, by 1880.13 It seems doubtful that settlers came into Nine Mile before the building of the road in the fall of 1886. At any rate, this marked the beginning of Nine Mile's real importance in the development of eastern Utah. The Nine Mile route provides the lowest elevation entry point into the Uinta Basin from the rest of Utah. However, the first settlers in the Basin, in the Ashley Valley area, entered by the much higher Strawberry Valley route, and for the first decade this long and often impassable trail remained their chief supply line. The U.S. Army hacked out a wagon road through the Uinta Mountains to Carter, Wyoming, in about 1882 to supply Fort Thornburgh. 11 With the establishment of Fort Duchesne in August 1886 this route was used for supplies at first but was clearly not satisfactory. The Salt Lake Tribune reported in a dispatch from Fort Bridger that there seems to be much doubt regarding the route of transportation to be adopted for the new post. There is arriving at Carter station over one million pounds of freight to be sent forward, and the contractor, Mr. Winston, of Virginia, is pushing it forward as fast as he can, the distance being 130 miles.15

12 Mildred Miles Dillman, " H a r p e r (Nine M i l e ) , " Early History of Duchesne County (Duchesne County, U t . : Daughters of U t a h Pioneers, 1948), p. 253.

13 Ibid., p. 258; James Liddell, " T h e Cattle and Sheep Industry of Carbon County," Centennial Echoes from Carbon County (Carbon County, U t . : Daughters of U t a h Pioneers, 1948), p. 5 1 .

14 Thomas G. Alexander and Leonard J. Arrington, " T h e Utah Military Frontier, 18721912: Forts Cameron, Thornburgh, and Duchesne," Utah Historical Quarterly 32 ( 1 9 6 4 ) : 342-43.

15 Salt Lake Tribune, September 2, 1886.

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This was about forty miles farther and almost 2,000 feet higher than the Nine Mile route to the railroad at Price, a fact that must have impressed itself on the military leaders, since the Tribune of October 8, 1886, reported the return of Fort Douglas troops to their post after constructing "a first-class roadway from Price's Station to Fort Duchesne."16 " According to a family tradition, John A. Powell, one of the early settlers of Price, assisted the army in locating the route through Gate Canyon and Nine Mile.17 This would indicate that there was not an established road before that time. However, Henry Fiack, one of the original soldiers at Fort Duchesne, wrote of "making the road to Price passable," which could suggest that they improved an earlier road.18 It rapidly became a well-traveled way after that time. In April 1887 work was begun on a telegraph line that was completed in August.19 According to Henry Fiack, the line was no sooner constructed than a bunch of young Ute braves promptly cut it down and made firewood out of the poles, with the net result that the cavalry herded them to the fort, where they were confined to the guardhouse for a time, on a very wholesome diet of bread and water.20

In July the Tribune published a dispatch from Price arguing that It [Price] ought to be the point for sending mail to Fort Duchesne and the Uintah country, and the report of an agent of the Postoffice Department lately visiting here may result in sending this mail over this route. It is claimed that it is a much better route than from the Union Pacific in Wyoming.21

The same dispatch reported, • A contract for hauling 2,000,000 pounds of Government supplies to Fort Duchesne, from here, was lately let at the low figure of $1.12 per 100 pounds. The distance is about ninety miles and requires about fifteen days for the big teams to make the round trip.

Two million pounds would represent more than 220 trips for a two-wagon outfit, if one accepts Evelyn Richardson's estimate of 9,000 *« Salt Lake Tribune, October 8, 1886.

17 Interview with Leland Powell, March 20, 1980.

18 Henry Fiack, "Fort Duchesne's Beginnings," Utah Historical Quarterly 2 ( 1 9 2 9 ) : 32.

19 Post Returns, Fort Duchesne, U t a h , April, June, July, August, 1887. Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

20 Fiack, "Fort Duchesne's Beginnings," p. 32.

'•* Salt Lake Tribune, July 10, 1887.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

pounds as the maximum capacity.22 At an average of fifteen days per trip, that means more than 3,300 man-days on the road for this contract alone. The "low figure" of $1.12 per hundred represents an income of $22,400 for the contractor and teamsters. These figures take on added significance when one considers that the population of Price was less than 500 at that time. Clearly, the freight business had a heavy impact. Indeed, it was probably the chief factor in establishing Price as a commercial center for the region.

The "first-class roadway" evidently left something to be desired because the Tribune reported in September 1887 that troops from Fort Douglas were again working on the road. One of the soldiers wrote, "There are quite a few travel this road, to different mines, the Fort, Ashley and surrounding country. . . ,"23 Thus, in its first year the Nine Mile road had clearly established itself as the main route to and from the Uinta Basin. A twice-weekly stage line was established in 1888 to carry passengers and mail, and this became a daily service in 1889.24 Also in 1889 the first gilsonite mines were opened in the Basin, enabling the freighters to haul a full load both ways. The Price Eastern Utah Telegraph reported in its first issue that 1,618,407 pounds of freight had been shipped to Price on the railroad in the single month of December 1890.25 The following week the Telegraph reported, "Half a million of gilsonite has been shipped from this point in the last eight days."20 In light of the strong strain of boosterism that characterized the rural press in those days, it is doubtful that these are typical figures, but clearly the freight traffic to and from the Uinta Basin was heavy â&#x20AC;&#x201D; perhaps an average of fifty trips per week, each way. Considering that the round trip took two weeks or more, that means there were about a hundred teamsters on the road at a time. The army constructed a warehouse in Price and stationed a quartermaster there to receive incoming freight. A large campground developed that was for several years a prominent feature of Price, where teamsters waited for their wagons to be loaded. There is further evidence of the activity on the freight road in the numbers of freighters cited in local histories. Richardson includes thirty-one names in an admittedly incomplete list of teamsters from the

--' Richardson, "Lifeline of Uintah Basin," p. 260.

Salt Lake Tribune, September 23, 1887.

24 Post Returns, Fort Duchesne, Utah, August 1888, July 1889.

25 Eastern Utah Telegraph, January 15, 1891.

26 Eastern Utah Telegraph, January 22, 1891.

23

Eastern Utah's Forgotten Road

49

Vernal area.27 Arthur E. Gibson, writing of early Carbon County, says, Most of our fanners a n d early settlers were . . . also freighters. Money was not as plentiful in those days as it is today a n d any farmer who h a d either two, four, or six good horses a n d a couple of wagons would be ready at most any time to make a trip on the freight road. 2 8

In addition, the Indian agencies had their own outfits and hauled a large portion of their own freight with Indian teamsters.

Normally, the individual teamsters did not deal directly with the army or the Gilson Asphaltum Company. Instead, merchants in Price and Vernal would contract for the transportation of goods and then subcontract to individual freighters at the usual rate of one dollar per hundred pounds, sometimes in cash but more often in merchandise, or "calico pay."29 Theoretically, a freighter with a good outfit and a full load both ways could make as much as ninety dollars per week on the freight road. In practice it is unlikely that anyone approached that income because of the irregularity of shipments, the uncertainties of the weather, which could sometimes make the trip take twice as long as normal, and the expenses of maintaining the teams and equipment.

Moreover, the freighter was liable to deductions if there were any loss or damage to the goods, and sometimes the teamsters felt that they were shortchanged by different methods of calculating weights at different ends of the route.30 On the other hand, there were sometimes opportunities to make extra money. My grandfather, who drove on the freight road throughout the 1890s, recalled a trip in 1897 when the agent at Ouray offered him twice the usual rate â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and in gold â&#x20AC;&#x201D; if he would haul a load of wool to Price in one of his wagons instead of gilsonite. Grandpa used his windfall to finance an excursion to the Pioneer Jubilee celebration in Salt Lake City later that summer.31 All in all, the freight road made an important economic contribution to the development of eastern Utah, especially in the depression years of the 1890s when money was scarce. Price benefited the most

27

Richardson, "Lifeline of Uintah Basin," p. 263.

Arthur E. Gibson, "Industries, Other Than Coal, Which Were Important in the Development of Carbon County," in Centennial Echoes, p. 45.

29 Ibid., p. 45; Richardson, "Lifeline of Uintah Basin," p. 260.

30 Richardson, "Lifeline of Uintah Basin," p. 261.

31 Edward G. Geary, "Personal History," pp. 13-14, manuscript, 1957, in author's possession.

28

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Utah Historical Quarterly

from this economic infusion, a fact that led to some envy in Vernal, which was a larger community than Price throughout the freight road years. The rivalry between the two towns is apparent in this early comment in the Uintah Pappoose: They are talking of incorporating Price, making a city of it. We are glad of it for there will be a city we country verdants can feel at ease in. We can have all the excitement of knowing we are in a metropolis a n d as we walk its thoroughfares hooking little fingers how natural and homelike to have to j u m p a sage brush to get into the city hall or w a d e a swamp from an overflowed ditch to get to church or to tip our heads to get the alkali dust from our ears before we can listen with awe, as the mayor welcomes us and presents us with the freedom of the city. H a d n ' t you better wait and let Vernal show you w h a t a city ought to be? 3 2

Although Price and Vernal were rivals for the role of metropolis of eastern Utah, they were by no means near neighbors. The distance between them via Nine Mile is about 120 miles, or almost as great as the distance from Price to Salt Lake City. Moreover, the road, despite the periodic labor of the soldiers, was notoriously bad. The most hazardous stretches lay in the higher elevations of Soldier Canyon and in Gate Canyon, which was subject to flash floods. Some teamsters claimed that they had to walk beside their teams in Soldier Canyon during wet weather to hold them on the road.33 In December 1891 the Eastern Utah Telegraph reported, We have heard a great deal of complaint in the last week in regards to the wagon road u p soldier canyon. They say it is almost impossible for a team to get over it, as the road is a glare of ice, besides great danger of upsetting and killing their teams and smashing their wagons to pieces. 34

Though the low-elevation pass was usually free from heavy snow, there were occasional storms so heavy that the troops from Fort Duchesne had to be called out to clear away the drifts.35 In one such storm, in 1891, the stage was stranded for an entire week before a rescue party could reach it.36 But even in the best weather it was a difficult trip. As Mildred Miles Dillman, herself a Nine Mile native, puts it, "To ride on the stage with its swinging seat of buckskin over that road was an experience

32

Uintah Pappoose, January 23, 1891.

Dillman, "Harper," p. 38.

34 Eastern Utah Telegraph, December 11, 1891.

35 Post Returns, Fort Duchesne, Utah, January 1888, March 1891.

3<i Eastern Utah Telegraph, March 5, 1891.

33

Eastern Utah's Forgotten Road

51

not to be duplicated in many other places in the world and, thank heaven, not very often."37 The teamsters who traveled the route regularly became well acquainted with one another, and a fellowship of the road developed as they helped each other repair broken wagons or doubled up their teams to pull exceptionally heavy loads up Gate Canyon. My grandfather remembered one bitterly cold trip when he came close to freezing to death after sitting on the wagon seat all day. At the night's camp, one of the other freighters recognized the dangerous state he had reached and forced him to run around the camp until his body heat was restored.

Besides the regular freighters there were also drifters along the road, men close to the edge of the law. (Nine Mile is the easiest route between the outlaw havens at Brown's Park and Robbers' Roost; old-time residents remembered being awakened in the night by herds of stolen horses being driven through the canyon.88) My grandfather recorded an incident in which he suffered an attack of asthma that made him unable to care for his horses, and a young man "with questionable reputation" called "Six-Shooter Bob" offered to drive the team to Price.

T h e m e n folks m a d e a bed on top of the load u n d e r the cover of one of my wagons and I rode there most all the way to Price, which took five days.

W e were coming u p nine-mile canyon when we m e t some teams going down the canyon. O n e of the men was acquainted with "Six-Shooter Bob" and asked whose team he was driving. I heard the conversation from under the cover. Bob answered, "Ed Geary's." " W h e r e is the kid?" the other one asked, and Bob answered, " O h , he is d a m n sick and will be dead before we get to Price." I did not die, however. 3 9

The settlement of Nine Mile Canyon developed along with the freight road, which provided a supplementary income for many of the residents. Nine Mile has never had a townsite, or a permanent community center, or a ward or branch of the LDS church (which must make it almost unique among Utah communities), though it was, and still is, very much a community. Ranches were scattered along thirty miles of the canyon. The logical center point was William Brock's ranch at the mouth of Gate Canyon. When the telegraph line was built, a relay station was established there and manned by soldiers from the fort. It was the last campground with good water before the long two-day pull to the

37

Dillman, "Harper," p. 256. as p r i c e interview.

39 Geary, "Personal History," p. 16.

52

Preston Nutter ranch in Nine Mile Canyon. Fire these buildings in 1935. USHS collections.

Utah Historical Quarterly

destroyed

Duchesne River, and so the freighters usually camped under the cliffs there. Brock must have been one of the first ranchers to settle in Nine Mile, but his career was a short one as he killed a man named Foote in a dispute and had to flee the country. His place was taken by Pete Francis, who operated a saloon (which still stands, as does the telegraph station) and built a twenty-room hotel. But Francis was also caught in the recurring violence of Nine Mile history, dying in a brawl in his saloon.

Shortly thereafter, in 1902, Preston Nutter purchased the Brock ranch from Francis's widow and made it the headquarters of his far-flung operations. Nutter was not interested in being an innkeeper. He closed the saloon and converted the hotel into a bunkhouse. He kept the peacock he inherited from Pete Francis, however, and found a mate for it, thereby starting the flock of peafowl that remains one of the distinctive features of Nine Mile.40 The Brock precinct is listed with a population of 50 in the 1890 census. In 1900 the precinct, now called Minnie Maud, had a population 40 Virginia N. Price and John T. Darly, "Preston Nutter: Utah Cattleman, 1886-1936," Utah Historical Quarterly 32 (1964) : 245-47.

Eastern Utah's Forgotten Road

$3

of 121. Shortly thereafter, the post office was moved from Brock's to Frank Alger's ranch, a couple of miles up the canyon. Alger also drove the stage and operated a small store, and his place became the center of activity in the canyon for a time. In 1905 the name of the precinct and post office was changed to Harper, and the 1910 census showed the population at its high point of 130. The precinct center remained quite movable. The rock house of E. L. Harmon was the main stage stop for a time, and there was a schoolhouse nearby. The last stage stop was the Ed Lee ranch, where the log hotel still stands and the names of the horses can still be seen over the harness pegs in the old barn.41 The stage line had stations spaced about twenty miles apart along the route, and the freighters tended to camp at the same locations since twenty miles was a good day's travel for their teams. From Price the road went over the foothills to the mouth of Soldier Canyon. The first stopping place was Soldier Station. The second night, for the freighters, was spent in the upper reaches of Nine Mile Canyon. The stage evidently made its second stop in the middle reaches of the canyon at the stations mentioned. The third stage stop, and in some ways the most interesting, was at Smith's Wells in the waterless stretch of the southern Uinta Basin.

Here Owen Smith dug a deep well for water and built a hotel and other buildings from the native rock.42 The next stop and campground was at 41 42

Dillman, "Harper," pp. 256-58.

Richardson, "Lifeline of Uintah Basin," p. 263.

Early view of Myton on the Duchesne River, a stage stop and campground originally called Bridges. USHS collections, photograph by Frank L. Hall.

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Utah Historical

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Bridges (present-day Myton) on the Duchesne River. From there it was one stage farther to Fort Duchesne, and there was another stage stop and campground between the fort and Vernal.

Over this route, then, passed the great bulk of the freight, passenger, and mail traffic to and from the Uinta Basin for many years. In 1905 the Uintah Railway was opened from Mack, Colorado, to Dragon, Utah, and this took most of the gilsonite shipments. This loss of traffic was more than offset by the opening of the Indian reservation to settlement in the same year. The majority of homesteaders came by the Nine Mile route as did the supplies to maintain them. The agricultural products of the Basin continued to be carried to market on this road as well, including the large quantities of alfalfa seed produced in those years. The Uintah Railway attempted to capture the mail and passenger traffic in 1910, but Nine Mile held its own. The Vernal Express of May 27, 1910, reported, The mail company which Mr. Lee represents has bought the Soldier Station and the Wells, and all the stations along the road will be equipped to give perfect satisfaction. Soldier Station will be a stopping place for dinner. A change of horses at Myton, dinner at Moffat and then to Vernal.

Four of the best Concord coaches have been bought for the service and sixty good horses.43

In the end, it was not the railroad that brought the eclipse of the Nine Mile road (the Uintah Railway itself ceased operation after a few years), but alternative wagon and automobile routes. The higher but shorter route from Castle Gate to Duchesne over Indian Canyon was improved in 1919-20, and the mail was carried by that route until 1934 when the Daniels Canyon route, with its more direct connections to the state's population centers, finally became the main access to the Uinta Basin.44 The Nine Mile road has seen little improvement over the years, except for an annual grading in preparation for the deer hunt. There is little traffic today except for ranchers, oil and gas drilling crews, the few tourists who deliberately seek out the interesting features of the region, and the unfortunate few who misunderstand Nine Mile as referring to the distance between Myton and Wellington.

Being off the beaten track has its advantages, however, one of which is the preservation of the landscape. There is perhaps no place in Utah where the atmosphere of the Old West is as clearly felt as in Nine Mile.

43 44

Quoted in Builders of Uintah, p. 265.

Dillman, "Harper," p p . 3 7 - 3 9 .

Eastern Utah's Forgotten Road

55

The cattle ranches remain, still benefiting from the natural grazing drift from the summer range on the West Tavaputs Plateau to the winter range in the lower canyons along the Green River. In Nine Mile, indeed, can be found in microcosm the history of the cattle industry from the 1880s to the present: the early expansion of the herds; the sharp decline about 1910 as a result of competition from sheep herds on the Plateau; the sharper decline in the early 1920s with the collapse of the beef market; and the continuing adjustments and consolidation to the present. There are fewer operators today, and far fewer year-round residents, but in the Preston Nutter Corporation there is still a direct link to the great era of cattle ranching in the West. Another link to the Old West can be found in the name of Art Acord, daubed on the rock wall near the Nutter ranch. Acord came to Nine Mile as a runaway boy of about twelve and worked for Nutter until he drove a herd of horses off a cliff. From that inauspicious beginning, he went on to become a championship cowboy and performer in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and later a silent film cowboy star.45 Many of the ranch houses and outbuildings still remain, though in decay, defining by their intervals the scale of life of an earlier period, and the old shade trees and orchards mark the oases where the teamsters on the freight road found refreshment. The stone Harmon house raises interesting conjectures about architectural influences, as it seems to resemble a European cottage more than the usual folk architecture of early Utah. The Miles-Pace ranch in the lower part of the canyon is almost a museum of ranch life, with its clustered sheds and bunkhouses, its stone ranch house, its cellar built into the canyon wall, and its spectacular setting surrounded by high, vertical cliffs. Traces of the old road remain in the bottom of Gate Canyon, and all along the way there are names and dates written in axle grease on the rocks by teamsters. The iron telegraph poles, erected in 1890-95 to replace the original wooden poles, still march down the canyon carrying the single telephone line.40 Cattle still graze as they have done for a century in the fields, and the wild black currant bushes grow abundantly along the fence lines, their tart fruit in midsummer coated lightly from the dust of occasional vehicles that pass where once the six-horse teams pulled their heavy loads along eastern Utah's forgotten road.

45 46

Price interview; family records.

Post Returns, Fort Duchesne, Utah, July 1890, August 1895.

"Good Roads Roberts" and the Fight for Utah Highways

BY J A N E T R. BALMFORTH

M O S T U T A H N S ACCEPT WITHOUT THOUGHT the thousands of miles of free-flowing highways that crisscross the state. With few exceptions cars travel from one point to another with ease and speed. Only when highway building and maintenance crews are slow in filling chuckholes, late in salting and sanding icy surfaces, or delay in getting rid of detours does the motorist complain. However, good roads have not always existed in Utah. The six-lane freeway between Salt Lake City and Provo was completed by the state less than ten years ago. The well-maintained highway to the top of Monte Cristo in northern Utah was finished less than thirty years ago. And seventy-five years ago there were few hard-surfaced roads in the entire state.

Early Utah roads, like roads in most other parts of the country, were a mire in winter, dusty in summer, and full of ruts, rocks, bumps, Mrs. Balmforth is a writer living in Provo.

'Good Roads Roberts'

57

and hollows all year around. A majority of the people accepted these conditions as normal and saw no reason to change. But in 1902 a group of people comprising the Republican party leadership of Cache County wanted to change the road-building system of the state. They adopted as their party platform slogan: "We pledge our legislative nominee to work for the passage of legislation that will bring about cooperation of the state and the various Counties in the Good Roads Building."1 The Republican party staged a major upset by winning this election in strongly Democratic Cache County. The Democrats found their defeat difficult to accept, and they balked at the measures the Republicans tried to adopt.2 David Robert Roberts, the winning state representative for the Republicans, was an enthusiastic, hardworking, thirty-one-year-old man who took his new responsibilities seriously. During the next ten to twelve years he devoted much of his time and money to the good roads project.

Those who knew David Roberts were not surprised by his tenacious fighting for the road system. He would have fought just as hard for any cause he felt was important. This dark-haired, dark-bearded man of 1 From a life sketch of David R. Roberts written by his daughter, Florence R. Rasmussen of Salt Lake City.

2 Logan Triweekly Journal for this time period. It was surprising to read the biased editorials and articles both before and after the election. Before the election no mention was made of the Republican party and its candidates. The only times their names, and the party platform, appeared were on the sample ballots. The Democrats at all times had favorable news coverage.

Dr. A. L. Inglesby and Wallace Bransford in Pierce Arrow heading for Grand Canyon. USHS collections.

â&#x20AC;˘

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Quarterly

Street improvementsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;sidewalks, curbs and gutters, and pavingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; were slow to come even in Utah's capital. Ninth East between Ninth and Tenth South,1908.

USHS collections.

medium build was fiercely proud of his Welsh background, and in everything he did he wanted to prove himself and his heritage. He always finished what he started.

An incident in his later life illustrates this attitude. In May 1913, when he was a practicing attorney in Ogden, he flung a challenge at the city and county authorities to climb Mount Ben Lomond, the 12,008foot peak to the north of town, to erect a flagpole on top, and to unfurl the stars and stripes on that pole. The challenge, or the petition as it was formally called, was accepted. David Roberts with his usual enthusiasm and vigor gathered the materials for the erection of the pole, and just after dawn on the morning of July 31 the climb up the steep, rugged slopes began.3 In recalling the climb later, a fellow Ogden attorney, David Jenson, said, "Well do I remember that day and David 3

Ogden Standard Examiner, July 15, 22, 31, 1913.

'Good Roads Roberts'

59

Roberts! He climbed quickly, about twenty yards ahead of everyone else. He kept shouting to the others — 'Hurry up! Don't be so slow!' " 4 Roberts felt the same way about road building in Utah. Why did it take so long to convince others of the necessity for good roads? How could he speed up the process and assure the completion of good roads?

When the Utah State Legislature met in January 1903, Roberts introduced a bill "to provide for the establishment and cooperation of a system of state highways."5 It passed both the house and senate and was signed by Gov. Heber M. Wells. Of this bill Roberts wrote: "It was approved in the hope that it would be an opening toward the desired goal, i.e., something effective for systematic good roads. Governor Wells was interested in it and hopeful for the movement."6 This was the be4 5

Incident related to author by David Jenson in 1958.

Utah House Journal, 1903, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo,

Utah.

G Life sketch written by David R. Roberts in possession of his son, David L. Roberts of Salt Lake City.

Signs photographed in 1941 tell the story of travel dangers in remote areas of the state. USHS collections.

NOTICE

, Wm.

••:, « s , , ••mifi Wi:, • • m-:,.- • w • •;

STATE LINE

-

t*-

K*j?r-

Si MILES OF NARROW ROAD STEEP GRADES & UNBRIDGED WASHES DANGEROUS WHFN N 'FLOOD "BE CAREFUlf

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Utah Historical

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ginning of a long, hard, but eventually successful, battle for good roads in Utah.

In spite of continued efforts by Roberts, that legislative session accomplished nothing more toward road building. Two years later, in the 1905 legislature, the reelected Roberts wrote a petition that was sent to President Theodore Roosevelt and to the Congress: Whereas, the Hon. W. P. Brownlow, Congressman from Tennessee, has introduced into Congress a resolution providing for an appropriation by the Federal Government of twenty-four million dollars to be distributed among the States of the Union according to their population for Federal cooperation in road-building on condition that the states, counties and towns raise an equal proportion to that which they receive from the Federal Government. . . . Whereas, should said bill become law, the State of Utah will receive two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. . . . We, therefore, heartily endorse the provisions of the Brownlow Bill and desire its passage. . . .7

The Utah State Legislature and the new governor, John C. Cutler, hoped that the Congress would approve the appropriations for state road building, but Brownlow's bill was defeated and no federal money was received for Utah roads. Although the $250,000 that was hoped for sounds small when compared to the $70 million Utah received in 1977 from the federal government for highway construction,8 it was a large sum in 1905 and would have gone far in the road-building program.

During this 1905 legislative session Roberts introduced another bill for road construction, but Governor Cutler rejected it. Roberts was keenly disappointed.

Due to personal and family pressures, Roberts did not run for reelection in 1906. However, that did not stop him from working for good roads. In the next two legislative sessions, 1907 and 1909, he lobbied for the roads and actually wrote all the bills presented on the subject.

In those days, special funds for the study of public problems were unknown; but Roberts, at his own expense, made it his business to know all there was to know about road building, not only in Utah but all over the United States and Europe. He secured and read all the available information. He wrote to authorities for advice, and he collected reports, surveys, cost sheets, and essays on good roads. He became an authority on the subject.9 7

Utah House Journal, 1905, p. 7 3 - 7 5 , Lee Library.

Deseret News, December 23, 1977.

9 All the material h e gathered is in the collected papers of David R. Roberts in possession of his son, W. R. Roberts of Ogden, hereafter cited as Roberts Papers.

8

Road construction crew at Smithfield crossroads.

All are Utah State Road Commission photographs in USHS collections.

Above: Automobile kicks up dust at road construction site in Cache County.

Below: Men use jackhammer to widen curving road in Cache County.

62

Utah Historical Quarterly

Roberts did his good-roads homework thoroughly. He had to in order to break the opposition he had encountered. With all the information he collected and with his own brand of enthusiasm, he hammered away at getting the road bills passed, but the 1907 legislative session ended with Governor Cutler vetoing all road bills.10 Roberts's persistence in fighting for good roads caused some legislators and others, in a spirit of jest and ridicule, to dub him "Old Good Roads Roberts."11 He later described a typical reaction to his efforts: . . . I remember, too, t h a t during those years, on more than one occasion, farmers shook their fists in my face and said, D n you! Why do you persist in the building of a system of roads with our taxes for the rich m a n to drive his automobile on, a n d to scare our teams off the road, causing them to run away and kill our families. We are not going to stand for it! 1 -

Trying to convince the farmers of Utah of the advantages of good roads to them, Roberts wrote articles for the Deseret Farmer and the Deseret News.13 Discouraging as the fight was, by the end of the 1907 legislative session Roberts had many people thinking seriously about the road situation in Utah. Some were beginning to ask, "Why do we wallow in the mud and choke in the dust, and bruise ourselves over the chuckholes and rocks, and sweat and swear?"14 As the fight continued, Roberts researched more, wrote and published more articles, talked with more groups and individuals, and prepared for his next attack on the legislature. By late 1908, at the instigation of Governor Cutler, who was now convinced of the need for good roads, a convention of leading Utah citizens was called to discuss the problem. This group, according to Roberts, "was a thinking body of men, full of interest, ideas, and experience. They had a fighting spirit and used it."15 These men favored the good-roads bills, but, as expected, they found bitter opposition from other groups. The attack was on, and Roberts was in the thick of it.

As the convention proceeded, it became a scene of tumult. The Salt Lake Evening Telegram for Friday, January 13, 1909, headlined

1908.

io Ibid. " Ibid. i 2 Ibid.

13 Deseret News, December 15, 1906, February 8, 1905; Deseret Farmer, September 26, 14 Roberts Papers.

15 Ibid.

'Good Roads Roberts"

63

the battle: "Good Roads Convention In Tumult â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Catcalls And Cries Of 'Sit Down' When Roberts Was Speaking â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Politics Creeps Out During Argument." A front page article described the scene: Stinging insinuations were flung back and forth in the Good Roads Convention this morning when D. R. Roberts began to submit his measures. A war of words as heated as anything ever heard in a local convention burst forth, and was still crackling sharply when an adjournment was called at noon. Roberts, facing four hundred delegates, talked for his proposed commission to consist of the Governor, the State Engineer, and the State Treasurer.

"There's a nigger in the woodpile!" he shouted. "This motion to adjourn will not muzzle me!"

This convention must be considered a success. It made plans to organize all efforts toward good roads. The members of the 1909 legislature and the citizens of Utah were deluged with publicity about the advantage's of good roads. Articles appeared in local newspapers, and talks were given by supporters all over the state. The governor appointed a select committee to decide what was needed in the way of road construction and maintenance. Roberts wrote the bills, and they were given to various members of the legislature to present.

Service stations like this one at Fourth South and Main Street in Salt Lake City sprang up everywhere to cater to motorists. USHS collections, Earl Lyman photograph, courtesy of L. V. McNeely.

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A once-common sight â&#x20AC;&#x201D; sheep clogging highway between Provo and Salt Lake City in semiannual trek to summer or winter ranges.

USHS collections.

Seven bills were presented: H.B. 55, an administrative bill to create a State Road Commission; H.B. 56, a maintenance measure to establish a system of road construction; H.B. 57, an administrative measure defining the power of county commissioners over roads; H.B. 58, a district revenue measure to provide for a special road tax; H.B. 59, a revenue measure to provide for the annual vehicle road tax; H.B. 60, an administrative measure to provide for the use of convicts and prisoners in road building; and H.B. 61, a maintenance measure providing for compulsory wide tires on vehicles and addressing problems of the flooding of roads by irrigation waters and the trampling by sheep and cattle.16 Roberts wrote of this success: . . . T h a t was the result of six years of struggling. . . . I have written briefly only a small p a r t of w h a t happened. I t was a h a r d financial strain on m e â&#x201E;˘ Copies of all bills are in ibid. See also in Utah House Journal, 1909, Lee Library.

"Good Roads Roberts"

65

at the time. I never received a dollar in assistance to pay expenses in all the work I did. N o pay for my time, only as a member of the legislature I served in. During the last part of the 1909 campaign, I p u t u p the last collateral I had to borrow the last $50.00 I needed to pay my expenses to see it through, now that we were so near the goal. 17

In the years that followed Roberts continued the fight to keep the roads of the state growing. As late as 1915-16 he was still writing articles for newspapers and farm journals trying to convince some of the stillreluctant farmers that good roads were necessary for the development of the state. But the biggest part of the battle was over, and Utah roads were on their way. As the residents of the state became aware of the advantages of good roads, every county and hamlet demanded their share of the money and construction crews to build and maintain the roads in their areas. Roberts could be proud of his efforts, for as one historian weighed his contribution, Because of his championship of the Good Roads Movement and his active and effective work in behalf of the public Highways in his native state, he is popularly known as "Good R o a d s Roberts." H e was the author of the U t a h R o a d Laws of 1903 a n d 1909, a n d worked m u c h of his time to bring about the passage of the laws of 1909. H e has done m o r e for the cause of good roads than any other m a n in the history of U t a h , and is therefore known as the "Father of Good Roads in U t a h . " 1 8

Today, there are more than 23,000 miles of surfaced roads in the state of Utah. 19 Utahns no longer have to be convinced that good highways and roads are necessary. I n a modern automobile, it takes about an hour and a half to drive from Ogden to Provo on the freeway. It is an easy trip. There are no herds of cattle or sheep meandering back and forth, blocking the way. There are no runaway irrigation streams making m u d holes and furrows down the length of the highway. And there are no irate farmers cursing and shaking their fists at the passing traffic. i7 Roberts Papers. In 1908, Governor Cutler extended an invitation to Roberts to attend a National Road Convention in Maine. A check for $25.00 to cover expenses was included in the invitation. Being unable to attend, Roberts sent the money back. It was the only money ever offered him.

18 Noble Warrum, ed., Utah Since Statehood: Historical and Biographical, 4 vols. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1919), 3 : 7 0 3 .

19 1979 Utah Statistical Abstract (Salt Lake City: Bureau of Economic and Business Research, College of Business, University of Utah, 1979), p. XIV-3, Table 3, lists 1976 surfaced road mileage at 23,279.

The Blue Dugway, a perilous dirt road in Wayne County, now part of Utah Highway 24. USHS collections.

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W H E N I WAS A CHILD LIVING IN Teasdale in Wayne County, the road that led from Rabbit Valley to Caineville provided the only way for settlers in Caineville to receive supplies and was the only link between the town of Caineville and the outside world.

The road was primitive, ungraded, fit only for use by freight wagons of the Conestoga type, or buggies, or men on saddle horses. It passed through what is now the Capitol Reef National Park, down the bottom of a deep gully called Capitol Wash where the ledges were straight up from each side of the road and there was barely room for a wagon to pass along the bottom of the dry wash. After the road came out of the Waterpocket Fold at the bottom of Capitol Wash, it wound through a blue clay country where there stood a series of reef formations with a cap rock of sandstone and dark blue clay for a base.

About two or three miles before the road reached Caineville, it passed along the face of a blue clay reef under the sandstone cap rock.

Mr. King is an attorney in Salt Lake City.

The Blue Dugway

67

The narrow road was called the Blue Dugway. The Blue Dugway passed along the northwest slope of the face of the reef. In the winter snow melted last from the slope, and during the summer the rainstorms dried last from along the Blue Dugway.

Anyone who has ever traveled over blue clay knows that when it's wet its consistency is that of gumbo â&#x20AC;&#x201D; slick, slippery, and sticky. The horses pulling the freight wagons bringing supplies to Caineville during all of the winter and in the summer on rainy days traversed the area with great difficulty and often fell and slid off the road or were injured as they attempted to pull the heavy freight wagons around the Blue Dugway.

On the left-hand side of the Blue Dugway, the hill sloped precipitously for several hundred feet. On the right-hand side, it sloped to the sandstone cap rock. There was no room for freighters to turn around, stop, or make any kind of an adjustment once they started up or down the Blue Dugway. On cloudy, rainy days it was dismal. The dark blue clay and overcast sky blended to make it seem a hellish place.

Many of the people who lived in Wayne County made a living freighting supplies, carrying mail, or passengers from Rabbit Valley to Caineville. Many of the teamsters were also the Sunday School teachers.

A favorite story told to the Primary and Sunday School children was one involving the Blue Dugway.

The story went that a teamster on a dark and dreary day, overcast and stormy, had started down the Blue Dugway when suddenly there appeared before him, in front of his team, the devil himself, with his tail twitching, his eyes sparkling, the hair on his face standing erect, breathing venom and hatred. As he stood in the road, blocking any possibility of passing, he issued a challenge to the teamster to do battle, to fight to the death. The response that always caused Satan to give a scream of rage and disappear in a cloud of smoke was that battle would be done with one thing only â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the Book of Mormon, which the teamster pulled from his grub box and waved in Satan's face.

Versions of this story were often told with embellishments calculated to scare the children into being good. They reached a state of such horribly descriptive detail that many of the children were haunted by nightmares and afraid to enter any darkened room without adult accompaniment. Finally, orders were issued by church leaders that this story was no longer to be used or told in the Primary and Sunday School classes.

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F/^. 7; Frederick Christian Sore?isen house, Ephraim, ca. 1850, reveals attractiveness of red plaster veneer scored in Flemish bond pattern. Courtesy of Wanda Bachman.

Cultural Veneer: Decorative Plastering in Utah's Sanpete Valley

BY THOMAS CARTER

Architecture, having no pattern in nature is the most difficult and least regulated of all the fine arts. . . . Architecture is not the imitation of anything in nature or science, it is wholly artificial, hence improvements in it are more difficult, being new intellectual creations.

William H. Ranlett The Architect (1847) B E F I T T I N G ITS SAINTLY PROVENANCE, Mormon nineteenth-century domestic architecture in the West has often been characterized as austere

Decorative Plastering

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and spartan.1 Some new evidence, however, must be considered before discussion is closed on the subject of a Latter-day Saint architectural style. A case in point is the decorative plastering tradition found in the Sanpete Valley of central Utah. This plastering is not extravagant but nevertheless suggests a pretentiousness that has been consistently overlooked. Indeed, the fact that this decorative touch has gone generally unnoticed is in itself a compliment to the genius at work here; for success in this type of plastering from the outset was measured in the inconspicuous nature of the finished product.

Plasterers in the Sanpete Valley during the second half of the nineteenth century joined in a design conspiracy to make one substance, judged inferior, look like another that would be visually pleasing and socially acceptable. In normal practice such plastering was used to make adobe or randomly laid stone2 appear to be brick or skillfully worked masonry. This was a purely deceptive activity, and properly executed the resulting plaster veneer was intended to go unheeded by passers-by.

A good bricking, as this decorative technique is often called,3 could transform an adobe house quickly into "brick," the owner enjoying the status of brick at the price of adobe. Such duplicity cannot be viewed as merely eccentric behavior, for the widespread occurrence of this technique through the Sanpete Valley and in many other parts of central and southern Utah clearly establishes its legitimacy. One nineteenthcentury observer in Utah Valley reported adobe cottages "painted of a brick color, with the joints laid off in white paint." 4 Similar examples have been recorded in Salt Lake, Utah, and Sevier counties. Paragonah in Iron County is particularly rich in homes veneered as stone. Bricking becomes a clue to the historian that many early Utah builders held Mr. Carter is an architectural historian for the preservation office of the U t a h State Historical Society and a doctoral candidate in folklore at Indiana University. H e wishes to extend thanks to H u g h Davis, Spring City; Paul Mortensen, Ephraim; and Manual Hansen, M a n t i ; for talking with him about early Sanpete plastering. These interviews were conducted during March 1979. i T h e tendency has been to view Mormon folk architecture as simple, sturdy, and economical. See Austin E. Fife, "Stone Houses of Northern U t a h , " Utah Historical Quarterly 40 (1972) : 7 - 8 ; Leon S. Pitman, "A Survey of Nineteenth Century Folk Housing in the Mormon Culture Region" (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 1973), pp. 193-95; and Cindy Rice, "Spring City: A Look at a Nineteenth-Century Mormon Village," Utah Historical Quarterly 43 ( 1 9 7 5 ) : 2 7 1 .

2 I n referring to the varieties of stonemasonry, scholars have worked out the following categories: rubble wall, uncut fieldstone or irregularly cut quarried stone laid randomly; rubblecoursed wall, as above, laid in evenly rising horizontal courses; ashlar, geometrically cut quarried stone that is laid in even courses; and random ashlar, cut stone stacked in a haphazard fashion.

See Harley J. McKee, Introduction to Early American Masonry: Stone, Brick, Mortar, and Plaster (Washington, D . C . : National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1973). Âť Ibid., p. 86.

4 David W. King, Homes for Home Builders (New York, 1886), p. 112.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

certain materials, like brick, above the more common adobe and that these Utah pioneers, despite their harsh frontier life, were extremely concerned about the look of their homes. Plastering over adobe did perform a utilitarian service by shielding the sun-dried clay from the dissolving effects of wind and rain. Yet, stone, relatively immune to climate, was also plastered in this manner. Aesthetic as well as practical motives stirred the pioneer folk architect.5 Arriving in the Sanpete Valley after 1849, Mormon colonists found native materials in abundance to satisfy their building needs. Timber was available in adjacent canyons, but log buildings were frowned upon by the LDS church leadership. President Brigham Young's aversion to log construction is oft-quoted: "Log buildings do not make a sightly city, we should like to see buildings that are ornamental and pleasing to the eye, as well as comodious."6 Sawmills were in operation by the early 1850s in the Sanpete Valley, but the lumber produced generally went into furnishing houses with rafters, doors, floors, windows, and furniture. Frame houses did not surface in sizable numbers here until the 1880s. Masonry dominated the domestic building scene during the first quarter of settlement.

Like the Mormon religion itself, Sanpete Valley colonists were "gathered" from diverse regional and national origins. Most residents, whether they came from New England, the South, England, Wales, or the Scandinavian countries, arrived having a general acquaintance with fired or burned brick construction. In Sanpete the extant architectural record indicates that when suitable clay was obtainable the settlers relied primarily on brick for house building. Sun-dried adobe bricks and stone were employed in those communities lacking brick quality clay. On the western side of the valley (fig. 2) where fireable clay was available, small kilns and brickyards were quickly established. Moroni, Fountain Green, and Wales contain many brick homes from the 1860s and 1870s, with adobe in a clear minority and only a rare instance of stone. Eastern slope settlements, however, did not fare so well as a burning grade clay was not located until the late nineteenth century.7 During the first decades of settlement, residents of Manti, Ephraim, Spring City, and Mount

5 /o ?ff T i 0 - T S C ^ t e r ' " F o l k D e s I S n i n Early U t a h Architecture: 1849-90," Utah Folk Art (Provo U t . : Brigham Young University Press, 1980) ; Linda Bonar, "Thomas Frazer: Vernacular Architect in Pioneer Beaver, U t a h " (M.A. thesis, University of U t a h , 1980).

6 Quoted in Pitman, "A Survey of Nineteenth Century Folk Housing," p p 5 8 - 5 9 A Jt^ir i w ? S o e i ) £ ^ m m . i t t T e T e ' i0?8 °f a CenturyCentennial History and Memory Book of Manti, 1849-1949 (Manti, U t . : M a n t i Centennial Committee, 1949) p 89

Decorative Plastering Pleasant relied principally on a cream-colored limestone found in the nearby foothills and an adobe shaped from clay excavated from individual building sites.8 Though convenient, stone and adobe posed serious aesthetic problems for the folk builder, for by nature they contradicted certain prevailing ideas about architectural style.

Along with the essential pioneering tools, Sanpete colonists brought to the valley deeply held cultural ideas about how things should be done and about how things should look. Customary practice was the most dramatic influence on local building design. Newcomers to Utah held particular tastes in house appearance, and in nineteenth-century America such tastes were largely structured on a Georgian stylistic model.

Georgian architectural thinking was introduced into the United States from England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, gaining ascendancy about the time of the American Revo8 Several early brick homes may be found in each of these communities, often of a relatively soft yellow brick.

Fig. 2: Map of Sanpete Valley from author's sketch.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

lution.9 More than simply a fleetingly popular style, the Georgian model significantly restructured the way people perceived architecture.

Based on a Renaissance fascination with the harmonic proportions of classical design, Georgian architecture replaced the organic irregularities Of the Medieval world with orderly propriety. Architectural historian Hugh Morrison describes the Georgian style as "essentially a formal style.

House shapes themselves became simple and regular geometric figures, no longer expressive of the accidents of internal asymmetries or evolutionary growth."10 Smoothly surfaced exteriors with rigidly symmetrical facades became trademarks of the Georgian house, with architects devoting "considerable attention to the texture of wall surfaces, often treating them artificially (from the standpoint of the material employed) to gain desired effects of pattern or composition."11 Imposing geometric order on the peculiarities of nature, the Georgian aesthetic transcended its colonial identity and figured prominently in subsequent architectural styles of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Georgian canons remained popular with country builders well into the 1880s, and it was this aesthetic â&#x20AC;&#x201D; based on artificiality and symmetry â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that formed the design theory that wended its way into the Sanpete Valley after midcentury. The Mormon settlers arrived with particular ideas about how they would treat the building materials found at their disposal.

In a dissertation on Mormon folk building, Leon S. Pitman has expertly traced the origins of Mormon adobecraft to the southwestern United States.12 Adobe technology was carried to Utah from New Mexico and California by members of the Mormon Battalion at the close of the Mexican War. Although the concept of sun-dried bricks had not been practicable in the damp East, the process involved in making adobes was close enough to brick that handling it required no significant retooling on the builder's part. For conventional brick, a drying step was necessary before firing in order to reduce the chance of cracking and explosion. For adobes, the pioneers found that the last step in brickmaking, burning, was simply discarded. If the settlers quickly learned to deal 9 See James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life (Garden City, N . Y . : Anchor Press, 1977) ; Henry Glassie, " T h e Impact of the Georgian Form on American Folk Housing," Forms on the Frontier, ed. Austin E. Fife, Alta Fife, and Henry Glassie (Logan, U t . : U t a h State University Press, 1969), pp. 23-25.

10 H u g h Morrison, Early American Architecture (New York: Oxford University Press 1952), p . 304. ' 11 Ibid.

12 Pitman, "A Survey of Nineteenth Century Folk Housing," pp. 41-54.

Decorative Plastering

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effectively with adobe, it never achieved status as a building material comparable to that of brick or stone. Adobes are coarse in texture with the surface often laced with small stones and straw and with a quite dismal grayish-brown coloring. Such earthy composition was viewed as inferior in quality.13 An adobe wall could be spruced up by laying it in a fancy bonding pattern, but covering it with a coat of plaster was a more common remedy for its bleak, almost muddy, appearance.

The plaster used in the Sanpete Valley during the early years was the lime-sand variety.14 Hard limestone (called blue limestone locally) was hauled from the canyons and burned in kilns. Each Sanpete community had its own lime kilns. Kiln-firing reduced the limestone to small chinks of quicklime. A large hole was then dug near the building site and the quicklime was mixed with water, a process called slaking.

Slaked lime was a creamy mixture that was thickened with sand to produce plaster. This lime-sand plaster, often simply called mud in Sanpete, was then applied directly to the adobe wall. The bond was achieved without lath and was strong enough to endure on many houses into the present day. Most early examples can be found with only one thin coat of plaster. Several older homes, however, are covered with two coats; a smooth fine layer conceals a coarse undercoat that is darker and roughly formed (often with horsehair added). The finished plaster veneer could be allowed to dry a light brown color, or could be marked off to simulate brick or stone.

Opting for the decorative style, the plasterer first let the veneer set up so as to be firm but still workable. Choosing either a brick or stone pattern, the grid was first laid off straight with a chalkline. The plaster was then scored to approximate the desired material with a jointing tool.

Against the light plaster background the fake brick courses were often highlighted with a red brick dye to emphasize the decorative pattern (fig. 3). In several examples (figs. 1 and 4) the plaster itself was colored red and then scored like brick. When the lines were accented with white the technique produced a very close copy of red brick. One house, dating from the early twentieth century, features black lines painted over a red veneer (fig. 5). The Severine Jensen house in Spring City (fig. 6) sports a brightly whitewashed veneer with an overlay of red bricking.

13 Despite its drawbacks, adobe was used extensively throughout Mormon settlements in the Great Basin. Brigham Young was a staunch advocate, even recommending that the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City be built of this earthy material. His interest in adobe apparently stemmed more from practical than aesthetic considerations. See Laurel B. Andrew The Early Temples of the Mormons (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1978), pp. 99-100.

14 See McKee, Introduction to Early American Masonry, pp. 81-82.

Fig. 3, left: Stretcher bond veneer, Manti, ca. 1880. Fig. 4, top: Stretcher bond bricking on James Rasmussen house, Spring City, 1884.

Fig. 5, right: Painted coursing on plaster, Manti, ca. 1915. All photographs on both pages by author.

Fig. 6, top right: Severine Jensen home, Spring City, ca. 1875. Fig. 7, top left: Expertly cut, coursed, and polished limestone, Jens Peter Carlson house, Spring City, ca. 1885. Fig. 8, bottom left: Accented stone coursing over adobe, Christian Mickelson house, Spring City, ca. 1875. Fig. 9, bottom right: Quoins inscribed on plaster, Manti, ca. 1870.

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Plasterers also found expression in simulated stone. The stonework found in the Sanpete Valley is of an overall high quality. The mason's goal lay in chiseling out fine square blocks that could be stacked in evenly rising courses. Wall composition stressed geometric stability. The best stonework in the valley is found on the Manti Temple and the Jens P. Carlson house15 (fig. 7) in Spring City. Clever plasterers easily copied such stonework on veneered adobe houses (fig. 8). Scored lines were again colored to add emphasis (fig. 9 ) . The facsimile even was given the heavy cornerstones, or quoins, so popular on stone buildings (fig. 10).

Stone itself was sometimes given a plaster veneer. Not all residents could afford the luxury of a skilled mason yet still wanted a stone house.

In several cases, a hastily thrown-together stone wall of rubble, coursed rubble, or random ashlar was elevated to respectability with the application of a plaster veneer. The Jacob Johnson house in Spring City16 and the Hans A. Hansen house in Ephraim (fig. 11) were both plastered to give the external appearance of expertly cut stone. These stone houses were made to look like stone houses should look.

Decorative plastering remained a viable construction possibility in the Sanpete Valley from the 1860s to about 1915. In most cases the decorative veneer was applied at the time of original house construction.

The technique was known to the early settlers of the valley and clearly has a long history. In England during the 1780-1850 period stuccoed (plastered) houses were covered with a "mesh of punctiliously incised lines" to suggest stone.17 Plastering was regularly practiced during the same period in Scandinavia. In Denmark and southern Sweden where sun-dried brick (lertegel) was used for the filling in of half-timbered houses, plastering was necessary to protect against the wet climate. When burned-brick houses 'became fashionable during the mid-nineteenth century, the walls of the older half-timbered structures were often repainted to imitate the new material. New England examples have been recorded,18 and Hugh Morrison calls attention to the practice in eastern cities: 15 Jens Peter Carlson enjoyed a fine local reputation as a stonemason. His work can be found on the Manti Temple, the Spring City W a r d chapel, and many homes in Spring City.

See Rice, "Spring City," p . 276.

16 An excellent early photograph of the Jacob Johnson home, showing the veneered exterior, is found in ibid., p. 275.

17 Ronald Brunskill and Alec Clifton Taylor, English Brickwork (London: W a r d Lock, 1977), p . 45.

18 T h e " K i n g " Robert Hooper house, ca. 1774 in Danvers, Mass., is a good example of a New England plastered home. See Alvin Lincoln Jones, Under Colonial Roofs (Boston, 1894), p. 41.

77

Decorative Plastering . . . Georgian architecture was not without examples of arbitrary a n d deceptive treatment of materials for an aesthetic end. F o r example, stucco over brick was perhaps legitimately used in Philadelphia a n d Charleston houses to m a k e walls warmer and more weatherproof; b u t when, as in the formal M o u n t Pleasant, this stucco was incised with lines to make it resemble grooved ashlar masonry, a problem of aesthetic propriety was approached. 1 9

Although Morrison cannot condone such fraudulent activity, his statement does indicate that the plastering technique enjoyed a certain popularity. House pattern books and carpenters' manuals of the period, several of which could have easily been found in Utah, 20 also mention bricking.

In The Architectural Instructor, 1856, Minard Lefever denounced the purposeful imitation of natural materials but acknowledged that "for the sake of economy, houses of coarse brick, rubble stone, or lath walls, are often stuccoed, and marked off and tinted to represent stone."21 Samuel B. Reed's 1878 House Plans for Everybody advocated decorative plastering, outlined the procedure, and dignified the process by allowing that it produced a "pleasing effect."22 Mormon architects had successfully employed such a bricking technique when building their first temple in Kirtland, Ohio, in the 1830s,23 and many of Salt Lake City's early homes, including the William T. Staines house (later called the Devereaux house), sported fabricated exterior surfaces.

Decorative plastering was not found on all adobe houses in Utah, of course. Many adobe structures were not plastered, and a large number remain unsheathed even today. Yet, this plaster brick or stone veneer is encountered with enough frequency to betray a surprising streak of vanity in the spartan Mormon character.

19

Morrison, Early American Architecture, p. 304.

For a listing of architectural pattern books in early Utah, see Catalogue of the Utah Territorial Library (Great Salt Lake City, 1852), p. 27.

21 The Architectural Instructor (New York, 1856), p. 404.

22 House Plans for Everybody (New York, 1878), pp. 24-25.

23 Andrew, Early Temples, pp. 38--39.

20

Fig. 10: Hans A. Hansen house, Ephraim, ca.

1862.

Courtesy of Gladys Sparks.

Life in a Village Society, 1877-1920

BY CHARLES S. PETERSON

Traditional festivities marked the Twenty-fourth of July in St. George. USHS collections.

Apparent to all are its color, the winter relief of its warm climate, and its proud and distinctive heritage. What may be less apparent to those who do not habitually face the past is that 1977 marked the centennial of a divide in Dixie's development quite as clearly as 1976 marked the anniversary of great developments in the nation. Like many benchmark times, 1877 was punctuated by identifying events. On March 23, John D. Lee was exeU T A H ' S DIXIE IS A REMARKABLE COUNTRY.

Dr. Peterson is professor of history at Utah State University. The material in this article was presented as a lecture in February 1977 at St. George as part of a local history lecture series cosponsored by USU and the Utah State Historical Society under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Life in a Village Society

79

cuted at Mountain Meadow at the southern edge of the Great Basin.

Two weeks later the first of Mormondom's western temples was dedicated in St. George. A few days thereafter a dropsical and weary Brigham Young left his winter home and made his way slowly to Salt Lake City where he died in August. These events marked the end of Dixie's formative years. No longer would Brother Brigham's determined experiments in agriculture, communal life, river transportation, and manufacturing jolt and vitalize the community. The temple was an enduring symbol that Dixie was a significant part of the Mormon community, not a foundering mission. And with poor John D. Lee was laid to rest the legal threat that had hung like a pall over Utah's southwest since the Mountain Meadow Massacre in 1857 as well as part of the guilt and fear that understroked the region's heritage with a powerful sense of tragedy. As the more discerning noted then, 1877 was truly a turning point.

From the vantage point of 100 years one may see that the region was entering its middle years or a time of stable village society. Indeed, southwestern Utah's history falls into three broad periods. In 1877 the time of beginning lay behind. Far to the future, in the years after 1920, lay a modern period made distinctive by the vigor of penetrating influences, roads, federal programs, the mass culture of modern communications, and the infiltration of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the Southwest across Utah borders. In between â&#x20AC;&#x201D; after 1877 and before 1920 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; was a time of maximum internal influence. Mormon culture may well have reached the zenith of its peculiarity in these years and in this setting.

The pioneers of Mormon Dixie were a chosen lot, winnowed by the mission call, doubly sifted by disease and poverty, and seared by the tragedy of Mountain Meadow. By 1877 the area's society was fitted to enrich and give regional variation to the character of one of the West's most notable subcultures.

Yet, it is not a Mormon story alone that these pages seek to tell.

The forces of the general frontier were at work in Dixie as well, as were the influences of science and technology. Silver Reef, the livestock frontier, transportation, and governmental exploration and development are all part of the story. In short, the purpose here will be to deal with a society that was "in between" in terms of both time and place and in terms of its relation to the polar influences of Salt Lake City in pioneer times and the broader influences of the Southwest and the nation in recent decades.

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Quarterly

In the first place, Dixie's society was physically insulated. It lay more than three hundred miles from Salt Lake City and was separated from surrounding regions by political borders and some of America's most imposing natural barriers. Although the latter barred all rapid transit to the southwest for decades and to the south until after the end of the middle years, Dixie was early recognized as "color country." Even before 1877 it had begun to attract scientists, explorers, and writers who described its grandeur and beauty in vividly written reports and articles that gave it a regional image in the minds of a large and widespread community. Nevertheless, this essay will look more to cultural phenomena than to natural in its effort to understand the character of Dixie's society in the decades after 1877.

An important factor in the cultural context was the character of the faith embraced by Dixie's people of the middle period. In many ways it was the old faith of Mormonism. More than many Utahns, they continued to believe in direct revelation, in the infallibility of Mormon leadership, and in an imminent millennium, although by 1900 fewer waited in momentary anticipation of Christ's second advent than previously.

The priesthood continued to govern in many matters of a secular character as well as in all spiritual concerns. Bishops at Washington, for example, were also mayors and presidents of the water board. Stake presidents and general authorities were expected to make pronouncements on matters as various as water-witching and thyroid trouble. For many, dreams and personal impressions were devoutly accepted as God's manifestations, and their lives were directed in accord. Most were comforted by the prayers of the priesthood, and a few still looked to stone peeping to locate lost objects. Evil spirits were legion and exorcised by prayer or by application of herbs and various devices of a churchly nature like Priddy Meeks's admonition to a possessed boy to sleep with his Doctrine and Covenants under his pillow. In many respects the predominant faith of the region was quite as old fashioned, quite as firm, and quite as comforting as the faith that had guided the pioneers of the Cotton Mission.

Yet, in the middle years it was a faith that stood more on the merits of the inner stuff of Dixie's own people than in the earlier years. No longer was it necessary to bolster St. George, Washington, and other towns with resident apostles and other general authorities. Indeed, rather than drawing on the wellsprings of faith from outside, Dixie may be said to have become an exporter of faith. Significant in this respect

Life in a Village Society

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until his death in 1888 was Erastus Snow, alter ego to Brigham Young and field marshal of Mormon colonizing in the south. Faith was also exported in settlers to a dozen areas. The character of the Dixie church for example was carried out by Marcus Funk who, after years of poverty on the Muddy River in Nevada and a fruitless struggle with the Virgin River as bishop of Washington, left for Colorado in 1888 hoping that "facilities for making a living" would be "a little better."1 Thomas Jefferson Jones was called to head the Parowan Stake in neighboring Iron County. Hundreds moved to Arizona, to the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming, and to Canada, and after 1910 to California, carrying with them customs and values that marked the new regions and Mormon society in them.

This commitment to the church was apparent in many ways. It showed strongly in polygamy, in its lore of flight and escape and of trial and life in the territorial penitentiary. A quest for security in the brotherhood of Mormon association manifested itself in the successful effort of Toquerville's Levi Savage, Jr., and others to have themselves adopted to the prophet Joseph Smith, sealed in death as in life by an ordinance popular until the late 1890s. Commitment was also apparent in continuing submissiveness to the counsel of church leaders, as it was in the hymns of Joel Hill Johnson and Charles Walker and in the nighttime inspiration by which John M. Macfarlane gave the world the Christmas hymn "Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a story movingly recorded by Andrew Karl Larson.2 Not surprisingly, Dixie faith could also take touches of self-righteousness as when Levi M. Savage looked down his nose at signs of crudeness: This evening as I was going up in town I saw a group of boys and girls playing together a dozen or so in number, whose ages ranged probably from five to twelve years. They were running from the street into the sidewalk a n d back across the ditches and etc. Some of them were indulging in very profane language for little boys a n d girls, T h u s " D a m you to hell, come here if you want to fight." Boys daring girls a n d vicer versa Soon one of t h e rude little misses accosted m e thus, "Cousin Levi come and help us dingbruse these boys." and other simular expressions of vulgarity. Is this the heritage of the Lord? the reliance of the Kingdom of G o d ? 3

1 Andrew Karl Larson, The Red Hills of November: A Pioneer Biography of Utah's Cotton Town (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1957), p. 93.

2 Andrew Karl Larson, "I Was Called to Dixie," the Virgin River Basin: Unique Experiences in Mormon Pioneering (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1961), p. 482.

3 L. M. Savage, "Book A, Tokerville Kane County Territory of Utah U.S.," p. 8, typescript in author's possession.

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This preoccupation with the kingdom lingered too in the journals of Dixie's old men, many of whom wrote in terms of testimony and admonition, leaving record of little else save perhaps a few words of aches and pains and of irrigation and weather.

But village life in the middle era went far beyond the careful portraits of faith and hope left by the journalists. Toil was a given. If anything, life was more demanding than in pioneer times, as suggested by Washington County's quick growth during the 1860s to 3,100 souls and its laborious climb thereafter to 5,100 by 1915.4 Little capital existed and speculative development was impossible. In their stead, development fell directly upon the bone and sinew of the county's people. Perhaps nowhere was the role of work more apparent than in the efforts to build and maintain dams and irrigation systems. Small towns failed to get water, lost their dams, or were literally washed away. Even the larger more prosperous places like Washington faced repeated crisis, replacing dam after dam and struggling to drive tunnels, hang flumes, seal porous ditches, and sluice sand out of ditches. In the main, the tools with which they worked were homemade, including a giant maul of nearly a thousand pounds that was cast from bits of iron collected locally during the construction of the pile dam at Washington.

During the 1890s a group from the upper Virgin acted on plans that had been developing for thirty years to bring water to the Hurricane Bench. Undertaken to provide opportunities for young people, the Hurricane Bench project was completed without capital "other than muscle and determination." 5 Over a period of fourteen years about fifty men and boys built and rebuilt Hurricane's relatively simple dam in a box canyon of the Virgin River and with no other tools than wheelbarrows, shovels, and hammers hung miles of ditch on canyon walls, packed foodstuff and camp gear to remote sites, and enriched the region with such place names as Robbers' Roost and Chinatown Wash. Across the county to the northwest, at Enterprise, a similar group "lived on jackrabbit" for sixteen miserable years as with "no machinery of any kind" they struggled to build a reservoir.6 To make matters worse they faced active opposition from people at Old Hebron whose help and cooperation were 4 Facts and Figures Pertaining to Utah, comp. State Bureau of Immigration, Labor, and Statistics (Salt Lake City: Arrow Press, 1915), p . 331.

5 Report of Irrigation Investigations in Utah (Washington, D . C . : Government Printing Office, 1903), p. 221.

6 Utah, a Guide to the State, comp. Works Project Administration of the State of Utah (New York: Hastings House, 1941), p . 304.

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desperately needed but who rightly regarded the new development as a threat to their water rights. At length, the hand of God seemed to intervene. A 1902 earthquake that shook all of southwestern Utah hit Hebron hardest, leading many formerly in opposition to move to Enterprise and join the thin ranks of the dam builders. As if this were insufficient, the quake that shook San Francisco in 1906 leveled the houses remaining at Hebron while Enterprise remained unscathed, suggesting providence's support of an otherwise almost insuperable job.

In one rare instance at Washington unemployed miners were willing to work for board and irrigation scrip, bringing equipment and experience with them. A few Indians, too, were employed, taking their pay in produce at 50 cents per day. Otherwise, off-season farmers and boys did it all, working off water assessments at $2.00 per day or taking contracts View of St. George with Brigham Young's winter home in foreground. USHS collections.

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that gave them claim to ten or twenty acres under the ditch. Water development was thus far-and-away more costly than land, which in new developments could often be had for the $1.25 minimum purchase price of state lands or entered gratis under homestead provisions on the public domain that in 1915 still accounted for 84 percent of all lands in the county.

There was, however, a great variation in the value of land. Joseph Fish who returned to Utah in 1916 after nearly four decades of colonizing in Arizona canvassed the entire southwest portion of the state, finding that water rights and improvements in established farming areas often ran the price of land to $100.00 per acre. It was a poor established farm that could be had for less than $50.00 per acre. With little cash, Fish finally settled at Enterprise and, despite his seventy-eight years and rueful diary entries about homes in St. George costing as much as $7,000.00, rented a crude shelter for $5.00 per month for a time before planting upright cedar posts to form the walls of his own house. He worked constantly until his death at eighty-five to make a proper home with plastered walls, indoor plumbing, and electricity.

With water development extending completely through these middle years, farmers not only worked small farms but worked scattered fields, which complicated their operations and increased costs in terms of work.

Joseph Fish, for example, farmed about fourteen acres in 1918 that were scattered in "five or six pieces," while in the years before the turn of the century Levi Savage and his wives made several orchards on town lots part of their small fruit operation at Toquerville as well as farming scattered pieces adjacent to the village.7 With wry humor that spoke for the entire community, one of the Hurricane Dam builders commented much later to historian, Karl Larson, "I guess we had more muscle than good sense !"8 More accurate and revealing might have been the observation that muscle and cooperative effort, not investments or government programs, paid the high price of reclamation and new homes.

But too much may be made of the role work played. Life was slower, its rhythm less tense. Winter unemployment was seen more as a normal round of chores, mail pickup, yarning, and petty trade than as a matter of national threat and presidential tension. For many, boredom rested heavy. Days dragged on, forever unchanging. In this setting anything 7 J o h n H. Krenkel, ed., The Life and Times of Joseph Fish, Mormon III.: Interstate Printers a n d Publishers, 1970), p. 496.

8 Larson, "J Was Called to Dixie," p . 402.

Pioneer

(Danville,

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out of the ordinary was welcomed. Breaking the tedium from time to time were the spring horse drive, one-man medicine shows, and begging bands of gypsies who made pathetic bears "dance and do other tricks."£ Even Mr. Smith, the traveling dentist, was something of an event as he made his rounds through Toquerville to knock out or pull a tooth or take a casting of some old-timer's toothless gums.10 In the main, Dixie's people made their own fun. In a period when brass bands flourished throughout the state, Dixie groups excelled. Fiddlers, drummers, and, as 1920 approached, indefatigable pianists played for dances, giving their time first as a public service and later — when cars and customs made it possible to import paid musicians — demanding compensation of their own. At Enterprise, for example, boys who had been off to school refused to play for the Christmas dances in 1924 because they knew that "the people had hired some outside musicians."11 This matter of striking musicians finally came to the attention of church authorities who acted to support them, whereupon the chairman of the young folks committee resigned in protest.

For many, life was its own escape from tedium. Will Brooks, for example, found boyish interest in the St. George facility that doubled as jail and poorhouse over which his father's jurisdiction extended as marshal and sheriff. At the poorhouse stayed a few old crocks, one of whom told great yarns and was eternally grateful for Mrs; Brooks's cooking. Another had such a vile disposition that he not only flailed at Will with his cane but finally stabbed the elder Brooks. Yet, prison life was casual. Inmates were as often as not committed to young Brooks to whom they were more entertainers than outcasts of society as they went about chores assigned to them at the Brooks home or wandered to and from the jail in the boy's custody. At Washington a tiny jail with privy facilities in one corner was more an invitation to prankish jail breaks than a serious detention until it was bolstered by an iron cage acquired, like many other building materials, from the mines at Silver Reef which were then in decline.

Even death provided its escape from tedium. The bereaved alternated between sorrow for the departed and joy in reunion with returning relatives. The ranks of townspeople closed comfortingly around the family of the deceased making pine caskets, preparing bodies for burial, and 9

"Levi Savage Jr. Journal," ed. Lynn M. Hilton, privately multilithed, 1966. i« Ibid., p . 151. " Krenkel, Joseph Fish, p. 512.

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Mountain Meadow Massacre site, ca. 1900.

USHS collections, photograph by Josiah W. Gibbs.

hammering at the dry soil as they dug graves. Those with a sense for the morbid listened with fascination to the thud of clods as caskets were covered, and those with family pride or a turn for statistics noted the number of wagons and carriages that made their way to the graveyard.

Folklore at both Washington and St. George suggests that nonMormons were sometimes subjected to harassment, particularly if they happened to be of the missionizing fraternity who sought to bring education and Christian enlightenment to polygamist Utah in the years before statehood. At Washington this spirit focused upon a Presbyterian school that opened in John D. Lee's old house which invited ghoulish pranks in the deteriorating building where Lee's uneasy spirit was said to roam or in the backyard where, it was whispered, figs ripened black over the hidden grave of a refugee child from the Mountain Meadow Massacre killed and buried by Lee when she talked too much. Similarly, a Presbyterian minister who came to St. George, as much for his health as for religious purposes, was interrupted in his meetings by braying donkeys, stray cats, and pranksters made up in theatrical paint. Local lore, which from this distance seems to possess as much boasting as it does remorse, suggested that the heart attack that caused the minister's death was triggered by harassment. A final twist of macabre lore insists that one of the dead minister's tormentors put a can opener to be used on resurrection day in the tin casket in which his body was shipped to more restful climes to be interred.

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Recreation was as various as it was homemade. Children played with bottle-horses and hollyhock babies or copied Indian children in the use of tiny bones from the feet of sheep as human or livestock forms. Karl Larson tells of "walnut keeps," a marble game played with walnuts and glass shooting taws and of "base rounders," an early version of baseball.

Wrestling was a rite of passage by which every young man fitted himself into the local pecking order. Sometimes it brought dire consequences as when Simon Leavitt became angered and knifed a comrade or when one Washington man threw his dearest friend, breaking his neck. Racing both on foot and horseback pitted champions from one town against each other or from the best of other towns in competition that was sweetened by petty betting and institutionalized by formal programs on holidays. On the Fourth and Twenty-fourth of July a self-conscious sense of protocol, spawned of polygamy's long conflict, resulted at St. George in a salvo of thirteen cannon shots for the Fourth â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one for each original state â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and never more than a half-dozen for the Twenty-fourth. Otherwise the Twenty-fourth was probably the grander day as gallons of pink lemonade were consumed, programs and skits presented, and climatic relief found at Dodge's Spring, where facilities for picnicking and water sports were available, or at Pine Valley, where real escape from the 110degree heat could be found.

Inevitably, a rich folklore grew and retold tales became a special Dixie art. Karl Larson, Juanita Brooks, Pansy Hardy, and others have enriched us all by putting much of this in print. What modern is not better for having read "Ithmar Sprague and His Big Shoes," an incident in which an inventive hoaxter terrified all Washington by leaving unexplained tracks of giant size throughout the town?"12 Stories of weddings, fires, false teeth, disease, Indians, school days, and of polygamists escaping from U.S. marshals sustained life and gave it color. Mimicry was practiced endlessly by people gifted with facile tongues and good wit. Often cruel in the jest it focused on the unfortunate, mimicry could also be fond and venerating and helped extend the influence of such patriarchs as Robert Covington, first bishop at Washington, whose practice of prefixing "almost every statement" with the word thus was still reiterated with art and satisfaction in 1920, although the old man had been dead for nearly two decades.13 12 Thomas E. Cheney, Austin E. Fife, and J u a n i t a Brooks, eds., Lore of Faith and (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1971), p p . 31-37.

13 Larson, Red Hills of November, p p . 2 9 7 - 9 8 .

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But nothing belongs more rightly to the middle years than Dixie wine. Introduced with Brigham Young's blessing as a mainstay in the warm climate agriculture that was to be Dixie's specialty, wine was effectively promoted by Joseph Ellis Johnson, pioneer horticulturist and publicist whose periodical The Pomologist for years broadcast the secrets of its culture. John Naegle developed its largest commercial enterprise and helped make Toquerville the greatest exporter of Dixie's most marketable product. Although local use was supposed to have been limited to sacramental purposes, thousands of Dixie residents found relief and pleasure in its consumption. Freely used, it became a social problem and a religious reproach that may have had more than a little to do with the tightened twentieth-century emphasis upon abstinence in the Mormon church.

Sensing such contradictions, one Toquerville stalwart lamented "some elders abuse this blessing by becoming dissipated" while "the youth in Zion are following diligently the example of thoughtless and foolish fathers."14 Taken aback by the social problems thus created, the church tried to control wine's use. Ordinances passed on Brigham Young's recommendation limited sales to lots of five gallons or more in an effort to reduce its local distribution but are said only to have increased drunkenness and to have led to reports that "it is utterly impossible to drink five gallons of wine and stay sober."15 Restrictive efforts notwithstanding, production and drinking continued throughout Dixie's middle period.

Among other things, it influenced sacramental customs in the church until after 1900, creating a rich folklore of heavy drinking patriarchs who emptied the sacramental cup and of disappointed children who could consequently do no more than raise the emptied vessel to their lips in a pantomine that seemed a double mockery. From Silver Reef came reports that Dixie's red wine h a d a kick worse t h a n a government mule, as m a n y newcomers learned to their sorrow. Leeds, with its wine cellars, was a convenient distance away. W i n e was placed on the table in goblets. T h e natives were i m m u n e , b u t woe to t h e "stranger within the gates." 1 6

Neighboring Mormon communities traded anxiously for it and were influenced in their customs and folklore, as evidenced by the colorful and 14 Levi Savage, Jr., Diary, April 10, 1876, photocopy, Utah State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City.

15 Reed W. Farnsworth, "Wine Making in Southern Utah," p. 8, paper read to the Iron Mission Historical Society, copy in Utah State Historical Society Library.

16 Mark A. Pendleton, "Memories of Silver Reef," Utah Historical Quarterly 3 (1930) : 18.

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vivid report of an incident at Panguitch by an English journalist in 1882: I saw a cart standing by the roadside, and a number of men around it.

T h e i r demenour aroused my curiosity, for an extreme dejection had evidently marked them for its own. Some sat in the road as if waiting in despair for Doomsday; others prowled around the cart, and leant in a melancholy m a n n e r against it. T h e cart, it appeared, had come from St. George, the vine-growing district in the south . . . and contained a cask of wine. But as there was no license in Panguitch for the sale of liquors, it cannot be broached! I never saw m e n look so wretchedly thirsty in all my life, a n d if glaring at the cask and t h u m p i n g it could have emptied it, there would not have been a drop left. 17

At Kanarraville an equally thirsty but more inventive group is said to have drilled through the floor boards and barrel and drained off tubs of wine while the owner slept on the top of the barrel in his wagon. A recent student's assessment that "of all remedies that will not cure a cold wine . . . is the most popular" would not have found support among southwestern Utahns who sold it in their drugstores, circulated remedies based upon it, and had faith in its remedial values rivaling their faith in the healing gifts of the priesthood.18 So much for Dixie's famous red cup.

From it is reflected a split heritage â&#x20AC;&#x201D; an irrepressible urge to fun and humor on the one hand and the harshness and tragedy of life on the other.

In the case of wine as in so many aspects of its story, the Dixie world of the middle years does not on first glance appear to have been a woman's world. But superficialities could hardly be more misleading.

Women left their imprint on every element of the entire experience including the culture and use of wine. From early times females constituted a substantial proportion of Dixie's population. After the Indian mission of the 1850s Mormons came as families and bore families. Women shared in all functions of life. Indian women were a lasting link of tribal integrity as changing times and poverty brought their society to the brink of destruction. On Indian women fell the obligation of seed and pinenut harvest, and it was they who suffered the worst indignities of begging in Dixie's towns. On white women, too, fell a major burden for holding society together. Men worked outside or were called on missions or fled from polygamy charges. Women raised children, struggled to farm, and shouldered a surprising number of tasks in farming, ranching, business, 17

Philip Stewart Robinson, Sinners and Saints: A Tour across the States . . . (London, 1882), p. 218.

18 Farnsworth, "Wine Making."

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and communications. Polygamy produced both happy and broken homes and tangled the branches of family trees in almost impenetrable thickets.

Contemplate the maze of relationships possible in such marriages as those of Ann Cooper and her two daughters. Shortly after Levi Savage helped pull their handcart west in the ill-fated Willie's company of 1856 Ann married him. A decade later both daughters likewise married Levi and, intertwined with other polygamist families, moved into the twentieth century with an almost unlimited potential for confusion.

In addition to their family roles, women taught schools, and held political posts (at neighboring Kanab what may have been the first allfemale municipal administration in America was elected in 1912). In every community a surprisingly large number of women served as midwives, delivering babies for a fee fixed at $3.00 by church fiat for many years. A classic example is Mariah Huntsman Leavitt who delivered 500 children in the Mormon towns of southern Nevada, the last of them after she had become so infirm that it was necessary to assign young men to carry her to the home of women about to be confined. The services of midwives were necessary throughout the entire middle period in a region with few doctors and even fewer medical facilities.

Another important point to bear in mind is that in many Dixie towns females outnumbered men. In 1880, for example, females accounted for 52 percent of St. George's population. This statistic is made the more impelling by noting that in the mining society of neighboring Silver Reef only 28 percent of the total was female. By 1909 it seemed to Sarah Comstock, a visitor who wrote for Collier's magazine, that most of St. George's older population were widows. Polygamists who had survived their husbands, they came and went quietly through the red dust streets, dominating a quaint picture: Here would be a huge soap kettle swinging in a yard, an old woman bending over it, stirring with a stick. There walked another older woman, knitting as she walked. At a door a widow stopped to gossip with another of her husband's widows.19

Even the old cemetery where "tamarasks purr over the graves of the old" seemed to be the special preserve of women: On a stone I read the name of a long-dead saint; on each side of his stone bore the name of one of his wives. In another lot a stone bore the names of children of two wives. In still another a somewhat ornate monu-

19

Sarah Comstock, " T h e Mormon Woman," Collier's October 2 and November 9, 1909.

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ment displayed three columns rising from one base; the first wife's name is one of these, the other two are reserved for the husband and the second wife, who are still living.20

The symbol of the monument with three columns is appropriate for Dixie's society in these years. Although the records â&#x20AC;&#x201D;- both the formal written record and verbal lore â&#x20AC;&#x201D; have stressed the role of men, there was little doubt among the people of the period themselves that women on either side righted the column of life and held it steady.

It should also be noted that Dixie's Mormons of the middle years were no strangers to tragedy. Together with the rest of southern Utah their heritage was marked by tragedy in the Mountain Meadow Massacre.

A moral blot hurled again and again by an outraged society, the infamous mass murder was tragic beyond description in itself. Deeper, however, lay a subtle sense that the entire promise of the restored gospel and even the promise of life implicit in Christ's atonement were threatened by the incident. Thus, the Mountain Meadow Massacre left a brooding sense of tragedy that touched the entire southern Utah experience, giving it a tragic counterpoint that has ironically served like the harshness of the country and its moving beauty to make Dixie's heritage fascinating and give it meaning.

Against this backdrop tragedy continued to mark the country throughout the middle period. In part this was a repetition of the old tragedy first sketched in primordial times as man and the civilization his doings represent met the wilderness. Dixie's desert wilderness was a killer, and the tragedy of man's puniness as he ventured into it was repeatedly thrust upon Dixie dwellers by lonely death. Near Old Hebron express rider Lehi Jones came on the frozen body of a man lost and alone who had fallen from his wagon and died. Tragic, too, in its narrative of humanity's failure in the face of wilderness is Will Brooks's story of the gruesome last hours of a vagrant with a cut throat he picked up and got to a doctor only to have him succumb when his wound was sewed up.

But an incident even more filled with the pathos of failing hope was the tragedy of a family of English converts in 1869 as they undertook to make a desert passage between the Muddy settlements and St. George.

Without water, the parents ended their quest for a new life by sending their son on by horseback while they composed themselves on a blanket under a mesquite tree and quietly expired. The boy's body was found only a short distance from water.

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Old factory in Orderville, a successful United Order community in Kane County, and later the scene of a tragedy memorialized in a folk song.

USHS collections.

But even such tragedy is less heart-rending than when the wilderness in man erupts uncontrollably and turns him on his fellows. In 1899 all southern Utah was filled with horror at what was possible within their society when in a quarrel over irrigation water, William Roundy, a respected resident of Kanab, killed his neighbor Daniel Seegmiller, an equally respected man, and then himself. The irony of wilderness and human passion was laid out in even more stark horror a few years later at Orderville. An eighteen-year-old girl's body was found in a remote canyon where it had been hidden. She had been seduced and, when she became pregnant, murdered by her lover whose motives were later recounted in a folk song made available by Olive Burt.

He said he's been friends with Mary, And had promised to be true; She wanted him to marry her, For a wedding was her due.

He begged her not to press him, Some excuses must be found; For she was not attractive; She weighed two hundred pounds. 21 - 1 Olive W. Burt, "Ditties of Death in Deseret," in Cheney et ah, Lore of Faith and Folly, pp. 169-71.

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Wrhile all these customs and activities were as characteristic of Dixie as red rock and sorghum, they and the Mormon society of which they were part fell very much within the cultural influences of Salt Lake City.

Although Dixie was discernibly different from other subregions within the Mormon cultural area, its society looked to the mother city for most of its connections, and, more than most, maintained the attitudes and customs that had led to the flight from the Midwest and the effort to develop a self-sufficient religious commonwealth centered at the Mormon capital. Thus, as distinctive as Dixie may have been, it remained very much in the orbital field of Salt Lake through the half-century following 1877. However, this should not be construed to mean that broader influences were not felt. The contrary is true. A variety of developments between 1877 and 1920 may be recognized as belonging to the larger frontier of America or as the product of federal influences. These brought new people with different values and broadened the activities and thinking of those already in Dixie.

One of the earliest and most individualistic developments was mining. As early as the 1860s when Gen. Patrick E. Connor sent his troops prospecting in the hopes of transforming Utah's society by a great gold rush, there had been mineral interest in Dixie. With mines opening in Nevada this continued until after the mid-1870s when unlikely deposits of silver were found in sandstone at Silver Reef, enabling mining to flourish in the heart of Dixie for a decade and to play a diminishing role during the remaining years of the century. In some respects Silver Reef was typical, a "worldly . . . treeless, grassless, red-sand location"â&#x20AC;&#x201D; its residents "bonanza-minded, carefree, reckless," and from all quarters of the globe,22 Over a hundred petty businesses struggled for a stake in its wealth, but only a few big companies, including the Barbee and Walker and Stormont, struck it rich. Violence was common, and at least one accused murderer was seized from the St. George jail and lynched.

Labor troubles revealed the basic sympathies of the Mormon community. In their anger, Mormons supported the companies when county authorities bundled miners off to court in Beaver after Enos Wall, who managed the Barbee, was taken hostage in lieu of unpaid wages. In time, it came to boast a Wells Fargo station, thriving saloons, and even a newspaper or two. Isolated by distance, Silver Reef does not appear to have exhibited much of the chest-thumping instinct common to mining towns of the era.

22 Nels Anderson, Desert Saints: Chicago Press, 1942), p. 428.

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On the other hand, Silver Reef provided unprecedented work opportunities and cash pay to southern Utahns. Boys and men from towns nearby worked there, although Nels Anderson assures us that less than 5 percent of Silver Reef's population "were Mormons in good standing."23 Many more sold wood to the mills and engaged in freighting or peddling which in the years after 1877 became an integral part of the agricultural experience in Dixie. Indeed, everyone seemed to have something to trade.

Although wine and sorghum were the staples of this petty trade, garden, farm, and orchard products of varying sorts were peddled. With their wagons and carts loaded â&#x20AC;&#x201D; often with perishable goods â&#x20AC;&#x201D; peddlers made their way from Silver Reef to the Nevada camps and to the towns in Iron County and beyond. Dode Brooks, who sold needles and buttons, would return from a good day with the jubilant song, "Hurrah, hurrah, hurray, I've made twenty dollars today." Russell Chandler, an eccentric blacksmith who sometimes hitched rides in Dode's wagon, would roll through town, rattling a length of chain and in a tuneless chant sing "Chain-lengths, open links, bolts and screws, bars and clevises" until his stock was gone.24 In time Silver Reef ran its course. With nothing to hold them, most of its citizens departed, and the declining town became little more than a junk paradise from which iron parts and used lumber and buildings were gleaned. Later, about 1911, an incipient oil boom near Virgin City rocked Washington County. Although petroleum meant 2

3 Ibid.

Juanita Brooks, Uncle Will Tells His Story (Salt Lake City: Taggart and Co., 1970), 52-53.

24

PP.

Life in Gentile Silver Reef, photograph ca. 1890, differed from that in nearby Mormon villages, but the town provided economic opportunities for area residents. USHS collections.

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little to the county, the expectant reaction to it suggests that a mentality of promotion was replacing the old values of the kingdom.

Space prohibits their full examination, but other broadening influences also made themselves felt. John Wesley Powell and his surveyors made southwestern Utah the basis for remarkable advances in the sciences of geology and ethnology. The woodcuts, sketches, and photographs that accompanied their reports along with the popular writing of one of their numbers, Frederick Dellenbaugh, did much to attract America's attention to Zion Canyon and led ultimately to the establishment of Zion National Park in 1919. Other government surveyors studied things as various as animal life, water, and the Dixie National Forest. Livestock in the region expanded from the cow or two and half-dozen sheep necessary to the self-sufficient farm of the early days to the large herds of the Canaan Cooperative Stock Company and to large stockmen. Moreover, it may properly be said that outside influences and individuals increasingly dominated the character of Dixie's grazing industry. NonMormons, including F. B. Saunders and Preston Nutter, competed vigorously to control range rights on the Arizona Strip and elsewhere. Even people from neighboring Mormon localities appear to have been more aggressive than most Dixieites in pushing livestock claims. The Orderville holdings and those of Lehi Jones and David Bulloch of Cedar City were, for example, among the most important in Washington County and adjacent areas of Arizona. Dixie dwellers who did respond to the livestock influence were nevertheless important and among others included the Atkins family, Anthony W. Ivins, and the Maxwells whose Maxwell and Grand Canyon Cattle Company is said to have included much of the Arizona Strip and to have run "more than 100,000" cattle by 1910.25 Ironically, broadening influences also reached Dixie by means of its migrating people. During the entire period after 1877 the outflow continued as people found better options in new surroundings. The names of Dixie families are included in every colonizing venture of the church during the years before 1920, including the Little Colorado in Arizona, the San Juan in southeastern Utah, the San Luis Valley in Colorado, Colonia Diaz in Mexico, the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming, the Grand Ronde Valley in Oregon, and the Canada settlements.

25 Herbert E. Gregory, "Population of Southern U t a h , " Economic 1945, p. 55.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Perhaps an even more important influence upon the spread of Dixie's culture were the young who went to school. Hundreds were educated in Salt Lake City and at Provo. By the turn of the century institutions of higher learning, including Brigham Young University, taught commercial economic practices, scientific agriculture, and about the forbidden fruits of Darwinian evolution. At the great universities of America, students hailing from Dixie found the broadening leaven of the nations' intellectual currents. Many of these never left Dixie, returning in person or in their hearts and bringing influences that became a second voice to the pulpit oratory that in the early years had made church leaders the primary interpreters of the regional society. Important in this process was Nels Anderson, an adopted son of Dixie, whose book Desert Saints may be said to be Utah's first modern history. Drawing heavily from southern Utah, Anderson's book is also among the first studies in which the culture of a Mormon subregion is presented in its own light rather than as a reflection of Salt Lake City.

Other products of Dixie's middle period who also recognized that the experience in which they had grown up was regionally distinctive were Andrew Karl Larson, Juanita Brooks, LeRoy R. Hafen, and Maurine Whipple. Perhaps no other Utah community has produced so distinguished a group of interpreters of its past. Individually they have fleshed out the country's image. Cumulatively they have made the heritage of Dixie's middle period the heritage of all Utahns. In writing "I Was Called to Dixie/' The Mountain Meadows Massacre, Giant Joshua, and numerous other works they have given this country and its society an image that goes beyond the simple image of Mormon, of Utahn, or of American. It is the image of Utah's Dixie, an important additional dimension. It is a culture initiated in the pioneer years before 1877 but which came to full flower in the half-century of the middle period.

In the decades since 1920 Dixie has changed drastically. It has turned its eyes increasingly from the red dust streets of St. George and the bonds that held it to Salt Lake City to the power marts of Washingon, D.C., and the hurdy-gurdy of Las Vegas and Los Angeles. But fortunately for a people swept ever more into one great national culture, the Dixie experience of the middle years was not only distinctive but it has been faithfully and skillfully recorded. In the process it has become the lasting culture of all who have eyes to see.

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Ho for California! by

SANDRA L.

Women's MYRF.S.

Overland (San

Diar ies from the Huntington Library. Edited C alif.: H u n t i n g t o n Library, 1980. Xvi +

Marino,

314 p p . $20.00.)

Ho for California! is an excellent presentation of an often overlooked aspect of western emigrant history — the experiences and impressions of women who m a d e the arduous overland journey to California. It includes the diaries of five women who recorded their travels on different routes between 1849 and 1870.

Not inappropriately, since the Oregon Trail carried the greatest p a r t of the mid-1800s overland travel, half of the book is devoted to the diaries of two women who traveled that road. Most articulate of the diarists was the nineteen-year-old bride, Helen Carpenter, w h o traveled from Kansas to California with her young husband and numerous relatives. H e r comments reflect not only a better t h a n average education for her time but also her lively interest in everything on the long trip — fellow travelers, Indians, landmarks, and the routine life on the trail.

H e r journal is also a detailed log of distances traveled, weather and road conditions, a n d wood, grass, and water supplies. Evident throughout is her sense of h u m o r as well as her compassion for the inevitable misfortunes and tragedies that occurred.

M a r y Bailey's less detailed journal along the same route five years earlier does not reveal her personality as does Carpenter's. I n rather poor health and with misgivings about a future life in California, she found the trip more of a personal hardship and commented frequently about the constant travel with few rest stops.

Both these journals show the Indian threat to have been notably less than indicated in m u c h western fiction. Roving bands were bothersome in driving off stock and in their petty thievery, b u t full-scale attacks on wagon trains were rare. Nor was isolation on the Oregon Trail a major problem in the 1850s.

Actually, the diarists sometimes expressed the wish that there were fewer people traveling a n d often wrote of visiting friends in other wagon trains c a m p e d nearby.

T h e journals of H a r r i e t Bunyard a n d M a r i a Shrode, written in 1869 a n d 1870 on the southwestern Gila Trail, reflect quite different conditions in the closing years of overland wagon travel. T h e r e were frequent stops at forts, stage stations, and trading posts; and travelers regularly purchased "nice fish," melons, and other produce along the way. Such a luxury would have been inconceivable to Bailey and Carpenter twenty years earlier.

T h e 1849 diary of Mrs. J a n e McDougal is not really t h e account of an overland trip inasmuch as she was returning to the states from California gold fields by boat t h r o u g h the P a n a m a Canal. This diary provides an interesting comparison to the others. McDougal frequently noted her discomfort from sea sickness as, well as her boredom a n d impatience with the slow journey, b u t she also recorded numerous shipboard amenities and social affairs at the several ports of call, in distinct contrast to travel on the prairies behind ox teams.

Utah Historical

98 T h e five diaries have been edited for readability, according to the editor. She has regularized the g r a m m a r , punctuation, a n d occasionally the spelling. "Alt h o u g h editorial purists m a y disagree with the methodology," she states, " I believe it is j u s t i f i e d . . . (the) journals are of interest from a narrative point of view a n d every effort has been m a d e to

Jndeh:

An Apache

Odyssey.

Quarterly

make them readable while preserving the flavor of the language a n d each author's individual style." T h e success of her m e t h o d is a p p a r e n t in a historically sound a n d very readable book.

K A T H E R I N E A. H A L V E R S O N

Cheyenne,

Wyoming

By E V E BALL with N O R A H E N N a n d L Y N D A S A N C H E Z .

(Provo, U t . : Brigham Young University Press, 1980. Xxii + 334 p p . $19.95.)

This book is a fascinating account of A p a c h e history a n d ethnography. I t contains a series of interviews compiled by Eve Ball during h e r long association with the Apache people on the Mescalero Reservation in N e w Mexico. Most of her informants, however, were not Mescaleros b u t remnants of the Chiricahua, W a r m Springs, Nednhi, a n d Bedonkohe bands â&#x20AC;&#x201D; people originally banished with Geronimo to Florida a n d O k l a h o m a b u t allowed to resettle on the Mescalero reservation in 1913. M a n y of these people retained vivid memories of their armed struggles against the government a n d of their experiences in exile. Others shared with h e r the traditional accounts of earlier episodes, passed o n to them by their parents. All the narratives have been carefully chosen to illustrate imp o r t a n t facets of the Apache experience.

Moreover, they make very interesting reading.

Although Ball includes interviews with m a n y Indians, her most i m p o r t a n t informant was Asa Daklugie, son of J u h , a contemporary of Geronimo. Born about 1870, Daklugie survived the A p a c h e campaigns of the 1880s, accompanied the exiles to Florida, a n d in 1886 was enrolled at Carlisle I n d i a n School. I n 1894 he rejoined his people at F o r t Sill, O k l a h o m a , married a n A p a c h e w o m a n , a n d two decades later accompanied his family to the Mescalero Reservation. T h e r e he held a position of leadership until his death in

1955. Daklugie's testimony contradicts m a n y p o p u l a r accounts of Apache leadership in t h e 1880s. N o t surprisingly, he champions his father J u h as being more influential t h a n Geronimo. H e also provides some interesting impressions of R i c h a r d P r a t t a n d Carlisle I n d i a n School. Although Daklugie's narratives are interspersed with diatribes against whites, they obviously reflect the sentiments held by m a n y Apaches of his generation.

Indeh should prove invaluable to Apache historians a n d ethnographers.

I t is easy for historians to acquire primary materials describing white participation in Indian-white relations b u t very difficult to find I n d i a n testimony discussing the I n d i a n side of such affairs.

Ball's volume does m u c h to remedy this situation for Apache-white relations in the late nineteenth century. T h e book also contains a wealth of details regarding the lives a n d careers of individual Indians. Academic historians often can illustrate that certain Apaches were p a r t of a group participating in a specific event, b u t the interviews in Indeh often indicate the particular roles played by these individuals. Such detailed accounts of I n d i a n activities are rare indeed.

Moreover, ethnologists should welcome Daklugie's a n d other informants' observations upon Apache culture. T h e narratives are rich in their depiction of Apache life a n d especially valuable for their comments upon Apache religion.

Book Reviews and Notices If this volume has a flaw, it is a lack of continuity. Scholars familiar with Apache history will have no difficulty in correlating events described in the interviews with a traditional account of Apache-white relations, b u t general readers may find the depiction of these incidents somewhat disjointed. Yet, Ball's editorial comments a n d documentation do m u c h to remedy this situation. She introduces or concludes many of the interviews with observations designed to place the narratives within a historical context, a n d footnotes provide references to more conventional histories of the

99 Apaches. Still, nonspecialists may want to keep a more traditional survey of Apache history at h a n d while reading through Indeh.

Such minor criticism aside, this is a major contribution to both Apache history a n d to the history of the Southwest. M a n y of the accounts make excellent reading a n d the book should a p peal to a very wide audience. I t also should be well received by the Native American community. Indeh is oral history at its best.

R. DAVID E D M U N D S

Texas Christian

University

Uncertain Sanctuary: A Story of Mormon Pioneering in Mexico. By E S T E L L E W E B B T H O M A S . (Salt Lake City a n d Chicago : Westwater Press, 1980. 146 pp. Cloth, 11.95; paper, $6.95.)

This story of the family of Edward Milo Webb in Mexico is a delightful narrative a n d collection of vignettes describing some aspects of life in the M o r m o n colonies before the exodus.

Beginning with a useful introduction composed by Stewart a n d Ermalee W e b b Udall, the first a name that may attract some national attention, the book includes a table of contents, a cast of characters, a chronology, five maps, twenty illustrations, a n d a glossary of Mormon terminology.

T h e book is intended as a microcosm â&#x20AC;&#x201D; idyll or cameo the Udalls say â&#x20AC;&#x201D; of M o r m o n experience in Mexico. I t begins in 1898, thirteen yars after the first M o r m o n colonies were founded in the northern Mexican states of C h i h u a h u a and Sonora, a n d continues into 1912 when the colonies were evacuated during the Mexican Revolution. I t is also a personal love letter to her parents from the author, still alert at ninety, a daughter of Charlotte, one of the three wives of E d w a r d Webb. I n addition, it is offered as a valedictory for these colonists, a task it will not have to perform, thanks to the growing collection of writings a n d oral history interviews pertain-

ing to them.

T o the degree that this story is a firstperson account, or closely related to the Webb family experience, it makes a firstclass contribution. F o r the most part it is not unique in what it has to say.

Colonia Juarez a n d Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz, to n a m e two published sources, treat similar information. But when the writer describes such experiences as their family singing together, her mother's illness a n d ordeal, or some schoolteachers she h a d , the insight into Mormon cultural experience is valuable. When she describes such things as the flood of 1905 in Morelos a n d the smuggling of guns in which she participated, albeit as a youthful cover for the operation, the description illuminates other events of significance in the colonies. These firsth a n d experiences are very entertaining and well worth reading.

But that p a r t of the book that deals with the broader political developments in Mexico, or even colony events in which the author did not participate, is not of great value. Of course, some such information needs to be included so that the experience of t h e W e b b family can be seen in its context, but too much of it

100 detracts from the primary purpose of the story. Perhaps the problem, is that when general information is used, and some is clearly not p a r t of the writer's personal recollection, its source is not indicated, although it should be since some of the assertions are at least questionable. I n only three instances is reference m a d e to outside sources â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the writings of K a r l Y o u n g and T h o m a s C. Romney. Citations should be m a d e more often or less secondary information used.

Several editorial changes would have improved the book. Chapter titles should be b o t h poetic and descriptive in all cases, e.g., " L a n d of the Mist" referring to C h u i c h u p a , is an attractive title, but that subject is mentioned only in the

Utah Historical

Quarterly

last p a r a g r a p h of the chapter. M a p s should be included only if they aid the text â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the last three, from outside sources, add little of value. T h e chronology should pay greater attention to the story in the book and delete the early extraneous references. Photographs could feature more of the central activities of the family.

Enjoy this well-written book as an idyll of life in the colonies as carefully recalled by a sensitive participant. H e r story is delightful in its own right and representative of the experience of many others.

J O S E P H B. R O M N E Y

Ricks

College

Yours Sincerely, John M. Macfarlane. By L. W. MACFARLANE. (Salt Lake City: Author, 1980. X x + 395 p p . $22.50.)

M a n y students of M o r m o n history contend that one great void left to b e filled in the telling of the M o r m o n epic is that of biographies of second-echelon leaders. L. W. Macfarlane has contributed a biography of his grandfather, J o h n M . Macfarlane, as one endeavor in filling this gap.

J o h n M, Macfarlane came from Scotland to U t a h and was called to settle at the new Iron Mission in Cedar City.

H e later moved on to the Cotton Mission in St. George and still later became one of the M o r m o n polygamists living in exile in Mexico. As a multitalented individual, he was a valuable pioneer, providing southern U t a h with some m u c h needed expertise as a teacher, writer-musician, surveyor, and lawyer.

H e was generally regarded by his contemporaries as an influential secular a n d ecclesiastical leader at the local level.

Because of his responsibilities, his activities sometimes cut across those of other significant M o r m o n s including his stepfather, Isaac C. Haight, and J o h n M .

Higbee, J o h n D . Lee, Brigham Young, a n d Erastus Snow. John M . Macfarlane was a significant second-echelon leader

and his life contains m u c h of interest and significance.

L. W. Macfarlane is a medical doctor rather t h a n a professional historian or biographer, and this work is privately printed. T h e r e are many virtues in this book, but it contains many of the shortcomings seemingly inherent in works by lay historians and of privately printed works. O n e fault is that the a u t h o r views his audience too narrowly. Macfarlane seems to be writing specifically and directly to the descendants of J o h n M. Macfarlane. Were the work directed toward a larger audience some of the flaws might well have been omitted.

For example, the first three chapters contains little of interest to anyone but the Macfarlane family or perhaps professional genealogists. T h e r e are disconcerting digressions relating various family legends and detailed accounts of the author's research efforts to find the authentic version. Additionally, there is some minor idiosyncrasy of style, some redundancy, a few lengthy quotes that could easily be paraphrased, a n d some anachronistic spellings such as Virgen rather than Virgin River.

Book Reviews and Notices Despite the generally commendable objectivity, occasionally unsubstantiated biases emerge â&#x20AC;&#x201D;- for example, the conclusion that the antipolygamy crusades were motivated by "intolerance and hatred" (p. 2 2 3 ) . And from the author's rather severe j u d g m e n t of the United O r d e r concept the reader is led to believe there will be specific documentation from Macfarlane's experiences in the St. George U n i t e d O r d e r to substantiate the judgment. But one looks in vain.

I n fact, the discussion of the United O r d e r in St. George is brief and disappointing.

O n the other hand, this work is not without its virtues. T h e book is basically attractive a n d extensively researched, particularly in regard to the specific events of J o h n M . Macfarlane's life.

Generally, the narrative is objective, the

101 literary quality is adequate, and the research makes a contribution to the body of knowledge of Mormonism â&#x20AC;&#x201D; colonization, institutions, a n d cultural and social life. T h e restraint of the author in refraining from glossing over defects in J o h n M. Macfarlane's character is commendable. H e does not glamorize or romanticize. H e also provides insights into the strains a n d difficulties of maintaining domestic tranquility among a M o r m o n polygamist's plural families.

Yours Sincerely is further buoyed by some incisive statements on M o r m o n interactions with non-Mormans, on formal a n d informal decision-making processes, and on M o r m o n legal processes.

W A Y N E K.

Southern

HINTON

Utah State

College

I Will Die an Indian.

By FRED COYOTE et al. (Sun Valley, I d a . : Institute of the American West, 1980. Viii + 100 p p . Paper, $4.95.)

I n July 1978 the Institute of the American West, a division of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and H u m a n ities, held a conference on T h e Writer a n d the West, devoting a day to the topic of Indians, Whites a n d Western Lands. Participants included Alvin M .

Josephy, former editor of American Heritage and a u t h o r of several books, including The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest; Edward C. Johnson, c h a i r m a n of the Walker River Paiute Tribal Council; J o h n E. Echohawk, director of the Native American Rights F u n d and a member of the American I n d i a n Policy Review Commission; C. Gregory C r a m p t o n a n d Floyd A. O'Neil of the University of U t a h ; Fred Coyote, who has been active in environmental issues and in I n d i a n affairs; a n d others. This small volume consists of presentations at that conference, questions and answers, a n d a few related items.

Although it remains unclear whether these were written papers or less formal

oral presentations, all are quite brief and r a t h e r general. Basically, three major topics are covered: I n d i a n policy, I n d i a n water rights, and I n d i a n lands.

Historical material is occasionally included, b u t t h e real thrust of t h e discussions focused on contemporary issues.

I n large measure the panelists offered a n indictment of J i m m y Carter's Indian policy.

Such discussions undoubtedly provided a stimulating conference for those in a t t e n d a n c e but unfortunately do not have a similar impact in published form because of the diffuseness and lack of d e p t h in the individual presentations.

T h e reading public would gain more h a d there been fewer but lengthier talks t h a t would have permitted speakers to better develop the issues under discussion. Specialists in I n d i a n history will find little if anything that is new.

R I C H A R D N.

University

of New

ELLIS

Mexico

102

Utah Historical Quarterly

Hawaii's Royal Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Walter Murray

By PAUL BAILEY. (New York: Hastings House, 1980. 315 p p . $13.95.)

Well-read in Hawaii's history and lore, Paul Bailey has produced an entertaining biography of one of the kingdom's most controversial "haoles," an energetic m a n w h o was deported in 1887, six years before the Hawaiian Revolution. I n so doing, Bailey correctly concludes that Gibson's "unforgivable crime was t h a t he had stood with Hawaii's king [David Kalakaua] against the dualcitizened Americans who, after enriching themselves, simply and baldly had set their course toward complete and final takeover." Yet, throughout his book Bailey relies heavily upon the opinions of earlier writers who gathered evidence to support their conviction that Gibson was a "rascal."

While more balanced than most accounts that with few exceptions are antiGibson, Bailey might have m a d e better use of R a l p h S. Kuykendall's third volume, The Hawaiian Kingdom: The Kalakaua Era, and Jacob Adler's Claus Spreckels, scholarly accounts of the Gibson premiership. For Gibson's connection with, and eventual excommunication from the M o r m o n church, Bailey cites for the most part M o r m o n writers Andrew Jenson and Joseph B. Musser.

According to Bailey, Frank McGhie's thesis, " T h e Life and Intrigues of Walter M u r r a y Gibson" (written in 1958 before Gibson's 1886-87 diaries were edited by Adler and G. B a r r e t t ) , is a "well-written meticulously researched dissertation."

M c G h i e , while neglecting contemporary sources that were favorable, relied u p o n Jenson, Musser, and Gibson's antagonist in Honolulu, T h o m a s G. T h r u m , a u t h o r of the derogatory Shepherd Saint of Lanai. Bailey notes that Kathleen Mellen's An Island Kingdom Passes is " a book sympathetic to Gibson," as it is, but the reader is not reminded t h a t most of Bailey's sources are openly negative toward Gibson.

Gibson.

This reviewer concluded several years ago in Utah Historical Quarterly (spring 1972) that Gibson was not "simply an intriguer or an opportunist who used the Mormons in order to achieve his own personal objectives," the most significant being the premiership of Hawaii. Bailey's book has not altered that opinion, nor has R. L. Britsch's recent article (UHQ, winter 1978). Although more objective than most of the previous accounts (Kuykendall, Adler, and a thesis Bailey ignored, Esther Sousa's 1942 "Walter M u r r a y Gibson's Rise to Power in H a w a i i , " exc e p t e d ) , Bailey's biography might make readers ponder the following problems.

T h e r e is no evidence to support Bailey's conclusion t h a t Gibson was "worrisome" to Brigham Young, who felt he must "silence this sorcerer" by sending a reluctant Gibson to New York. Gibson was an eager, willing missionary who returned to U t a h in six m o n t h s with Young's permission, as revealed in the Gibson-Young letters (not consulted by Bailey) located in the M o r m o n archives in Salt Lake City. His m o d e of travel, a new carriage and fleet of horses, while humble h a n d c a r t pioneers were walking westward, was suggested earlier by Musser.

Gibson's sojourn in California, while en route to the F a r East, has not been accurately portrayed. Gibson lectured in order to earn money for his subsistence and passage to Hawaii. Young's letter instructing Gibson to stop there is extant. Eddy, w h o m Gibson met in San Francisco, and Cummings, an acquaintance aboard the Yankee, were baptized by Gibson in Honolulu two weeks after their arrival there July 1, 1861. These two young men soon turned against Gibson a n d circulated misinform a t i o n relied upon by several of Bailey's sources.

Book Reviews and Notices

103

Bailey observes that the U t a h elders, who h a d been recalled four years before Gibson's arrival, had converted "thousands upon thousands," suggesting overwhelming success. This was not the case.

Their early efforts were so discouraging Brigham Young called most of the missionaries home, a n d the eleven who remained returned when the U t a h War began in 1857.

Did Gibson "establish liaison with the Mormon mission in Samoa?" (p. 131).

There was no mission there until Gibson sent two Hawaiian elders, Belia and M a n o a ; the first U t a h elder arrived in Samoa in 1888, more than two decades later. I n all, most of Bailey's interpretation of Gibson's early life through his M o r m o n years, nearly half of the book, reads much the same as the earlier "rascal" narratives.

Bailey's treatment of Gibson's rise to

political power has merit. Better use might have been made of Gibson's Nuhou, meaning News rather than "gossip" (p. 155), a n d his Sanitary Instructions for Hawaiians. With this, more might have been said about Gibson's notable work in behalf of the lepers.

T h e hanging scene (p. 261) a n d the dramatic arrival of his daughter, Talula, are quite imaginative, but Bailey's final assessment of Gibson ( p p . 273-75, 2 8 4 89) is redeeming. Bailey found that, while it is easy to be cynical a n d critical, Gibson's accomplishments for Hawaii should have secured for h i m "a real measure of adulation a n d immortality."

Read the last chapter first, then go back and enjoy Bailey's readable account of Gibson's "astonishing a n d statesmanlike political career."

Saints of Sage and Saddle: Folklore among the Mormons. By A U S T I N E.

own ethnic or other g r o u p " â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and thus at a view of the discipline to which they have devoted their lives.

A second a n d more profound benefit of their studies has been a realization that different groups have more lore they share than lore that is unique. For example, the lore of Mormon colonization is unique as to its specific historical setting, b u t its "narrative motifs are themselves substantially the same as those of the saints' legends of primitive Christianity: accounts of miracles, healings, rewards and punishments, blasphemy, the supernatural, divine deliverance in the hour of need, answer to prayer." I n a world where competing

F I F E a n d A L T A S. F I F E .

(Salt Lake

City: University of U t a h Press, 1980.

Xviii + 367 p p . Paper, $15.00.)

This classic in regional folklore, first published in 1956 by Indiana University Press, is once again in print. In a brief preface to the reprint edition the authors ponder the worth of the years of work that culminated in this volume.

O n e benefit, they assert, has been their subsequent arrival at a definition of folklore â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "that portion of man's traditional learned behavior which he shares with the commonalty of human beings of his

G. BARRETT

Boise State

University

104

Utah Historical Quarterly

groups aggressively seek to make their particular views prevail, the Fifes' apprehension of "more alike than differe n t " provokes more than casual interest.

Discovering Mormon Trails: New York to California, 1831-1868. By STANLEY B . K I M B A L L . (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1979. Vi + 50 p p .

Paper, $4.95.)

Anyone interested in historic trails generally or in M o r m o n trails specifically will find this guide, with maps by D i a n e Clements, a highly informative a n d useful companion in retracing more t h a n a dozen routes. Kimball is historian of t h e M o r m o n Pioneer Trail Foundation a n d a member of the history faculty at Southern Illinois University. H e correctly reminds the reader that the Mormons were not, for the most part, trailblazers. " T h e i r journeys were m a d e as expeditiously a n d conveniently as possible along the best available roads."

(They did, however, locate colonizing trails within t h e Great Basin.) H e also reminds us that trails a r e a fragile a n d disappearing part of the American heritage that should be preserved.

Miners, Merchants, and Missionaries: The Roles of Missionaries and Pioneer Churches in the Colorado Gold Rush and Its Aftermath, 1858-1870.

By A L I C E C O W A N

COCHRAN.

ATLA

M o n o g r a p h Series, no. 15. (Metuchen, N . J . : Scarecrow Press a n d American Theological Library Association, 1980.

X i + 287 p p . $15.00.)

Miners^ Merchants, and Missionaries might a p p e a r from its subtitle to be so limited in scope as to have little value for those with a more general interest in western history or American studies.

Such is n o t the case. Cochran's research has led h e r to question the hypothesis of T u r n e r a n d his followers "that frontier environments forced pioneers to change their social organizations a n d to

create unique social institutions." R a t h er, the pioneers of Colorado "set out to transplant the eastern a n d midwestern society they admired." Indeed, it was the mission of t h e churches to re-create on the frontier the American civilization they h a d left behind, imposing " a familiar order on chaos. Innovative social organization would have been contrary to their purposes."

Cochran's monograph deserves a wider audience. I t makes a detailed, although necessarily limited, study of the role of churches in American society that is timely, a n d in challenging some old notions it suggests avenues for further research. Moreover, the a u t h o r writes lucidly, no mean achievement in a monograph.

Great

Surveys

of the American

By R I C H A R D A. BARTLETT.

West.

(Norman:

University of O k l a h o m a Press, 1980.

X v + 410 p p . Paper, $9.95.)

T h e four great post-Civil W a r geological a n d geographical surveys in the West, led by Ferdinand V . Hayden, Clarence King, J o h n Wesley Powell, and George M . Wheeler, a r e re-created in this paperback reprint of Bartlett's 1962 book. I n their scientific scope the surveys made monumental contributions to knowledge of what lay west of the h u n d r e d t h meridian; in their h u m a n dimension t h e surveys created high adventure for the participants. Bartlett's account makes engrossing reading.

The

World's

1980. and

Great News Photos, 1840-

E d i t e d by CRAIG T .

MELVIN

GRAY.

NORBACK

(New

York:

Crown Publishers, 1980. Xiii + 210 pp. $14.95.)

A book almost everyone is sure to enjoy browsing through. T h e more than 250 black-and-white photographs cover a wide range of h u m a n activity. M a n y are highly evocative. Some a r e etched in the memory of most adult Americans.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY D e p a r t m e n t of C o m m u n i t y a n d E c o n o m i c D e v e l o p m e n t D i v i s i o n of S t a t e H i s t o r y BOARD O F STATE

HISTORY

M I L T O N C. A B R A M S , Smithfield, 1981

President M E L V I N T . S M I T H , Salt Lake City Secretary T H O M A S G. ALEXANDER, Provo, 1983 M R S . E L I Z A B E T H G R I F F I T H , O g d e n , 1981

W A Y N E K . H I N T O N , C e d a r City, 1981 T H E R O N L U K E , Provo, 1983

DAVID S. M O N S O N , L i e u t e n a n t G o v e r n o r /

Secretary of State, Ex officio M R S . E L I Z A B E T H M O N T A G U E , Salt Lake City, 1983 WILLIAM D . O W E N S , Salt Lake City, 1983 M R S . H E L E N Z . PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City, 1981 T E D J . W A R N E R , Provo, 1981

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH,

Director

STANFORD J . L A Y T O N , Managing Editor J A Y M . H A Y M O N D , Librarian DAVID B. M A D S E N , State Archaeologist

A. K E N T P O W E L L , Historic Preservation Research W I L S O N G. M A R T I N , Historic Preservation Development J O H N M . B O U R N E , Museum

Services

T h e U t a h State Historical Society was organized i n 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, a n d publish U t a h a n d related history. Today, u n d e r state sponsorship, t h e Society fulfills its obligations by publishing t h e Utah Historical Quarterly a n d other historical materials; collecting historic U t a h artifacts; locating, documenting, a n d preserving historic a n d prehistoric buildings a n d sites; a n d maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs, museum, or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live u p to its responsibility of preserving the record of U t a h ' s past.

MEMBERSHIP Membership i n the U t a h State Historical Society is open to all individuals a n d institutions interested i n U t a h history.

Membership applications a n d change of address notices should be sent to the membership secretary.

Annual dues a r e : individual, $10.00; institutions, $15.00 ; student a n d senior citizen (age sixty-five or over), $7.50; contributing, $15.00; sustaining, $25.00; patron, $50.00; life member, $150.00. Your interest a n d support a r e most welcome.

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