Virgin City 56 336
Duncan’s Retreat 8 50
Grafton 28 168
Rockville 18 95
Northrop 3 17
Shunesburg 7 45
Springdale 9 54
129 765
This indicates a considerable decline in population from the previous
year. The settlers had come to Dixie filled with high hopes of raising
cotton, had planted that crop to excess in 1862 and 1863 and had failed
to raise enough foodstuffs. They were on famine rations during the
winter of 1863-64 and were not relieved until summer. Moreover, the
difficulties of hauling cotton to the northern settlements and
exchanging it for foodstuffs had driven many of the settlers away; some
returned to their former homes, while others sought opportunities
elsewhere.
Enough cotton was now being grown to create a vexatious problem of
marketing. Bleak records that in the spring of 1864, 11,000 pounds were
hauled to California and estimated that 16,000 pounds were still in
storage. Some was even hauled to the Missouri River where it brought a
fair price because of the war shortage. David Bullock and other men from
Cedar City, traveling east for poor emigrants, started out loaded with
Dixie cotton. It soon became necessary to set up machinery for ginning
the cotton and weaving it into cloth. Gins were soon in operation in
several places and hand looms and spinning wheels were found in many
homes.[56]
In 1865, Brigham Young personally made plans for the construction of a
cotton mill at Washington. The building was finished by December, 1866.
Later it was sold to a cooperative concern, the Rio Virgin Manufacturing
Company, and more up-to-date machinery was installed, making it the most
complete factory in Utah for the processing of cotton and wool. It
continued to operate until the close of the century.[57]
Parunuweap Canyon was fully settled almost from the start, but
Shunesburg gradually declined until today there are but one or two small
farms left. This is due primarily to the ravages of floods which washed
away the good agricultural land. On the other hand, tillable land in
Zion Canyon was not brought under cultivation for a dozen years or more.
Flat lands suitable for agriculture in Zion were found in two areas
along the canyon floor, separated by a mile or more of rocky,
steep-sided canyon difficult to travel. The lower area, in which
Springdale was located, was a narrow valley less than a mile wide and
four or five miles long separated from the Parunuweap fork of the river
by a reef of Shinarump Conglomerate, more resistant to erosion than the
overlying Chinle shales in which the valley had been cut. The upper area
was an old lake bed filled by sediments. It extended from the old
blockade in the river below the Court of the Patriarchs that had
anciently produced the lake, nearly five miles upstream to the Temple of
Sinawava. It was much narrower than the lower unit and the tillable land
was scattered in narrow fields along the banks.
Joseph Black seems to have been the first to investigate the upper area,
probably in the late fall of 1861 or 1862. The difficulties of reaching
the upper part of Zion were too great, however, and he finally located
in the lower valley. His descriptions of the canyon were such that the
cynical referred to it sometimes as “Joseph’s Glory.” Nevertheless his
stories were listened to and some scoffers remained to pray. E. C.
Behunin says:
It was Joseph Black who interested my father in Zion Canyon. Black had
made a trip into the canyon before we came here and in talking to my
father, he had praised it so highly that my father became interested
and moved up into the canyon upon Black’s advice and suggestion.
Isaac Behunin had come to Dixie in the fall of 1861 and settled at
Northrop until the flood in January, 1862, after which he moved to
Springdale and built a home. In addition to farming in Springdale he
visited Zion in the summer of 1863 and started some operations there,
building a one-room log cabin not far from where Zion Lodge now
stands.[58]
The cabin was a crude shelter used only during the summer, for the
Behunins wintered in Springdale. It was built of cottonwood logs and the
cracks were chinked with mud. The roof had a ridgepole to which ash and
maple sticks were lashed on either side and covered with corn-fodder and
dirt. The single room had a door and a window with glass panes. At one
side was a fireplace, but the cooking was usually done on a stepstove
outside.
The Behunins were real mountaineers, inured to the hardships of their
life. To make a wash basin, they cut down a cottonwood tree in the
dooryard and scooped out a bowl-like depression in the top of the stump.
A hole was bored in the bottom, downward and outward. This was stopped
on the outside by a wooden plug. To wash, they dipped fresh water into
the bowl.
The family included, in addition to the parents, five sons and one
daughter. All except the daughter were confirmed smokers. Indian tobacco
grew well in Zion Canyon in those days and at first they could gather
their supplies from the wild plants. Indeed, their more censorious
neighbors ventured the opinion that the wild tobacco was the inducement
that led the Behunins into Zion Canyon. Later they introduced domestic
varieties.
The cabin seems to have been completed late in the season after the corn
had been harvested. There was no road into Zion Canyon at that time, but
a heavy team had hauled in a plow and other necessities. An irrigation
ditch was dug and the flats cleared of vines and rosebushes. By the next
season several acres were under cultivation, and fruit trees, cane and
garden stuff had been planted.
The Behunins also owned fifteen or twenty head of cattle all broken to
work, including milk cows. They raised pigs on the surplus corn and did
their own butchering and curing. James H. Jennings (born in 1853) tells
of watching them slaughter thirteen hogs one day. They filled a shallow
pool with water and heated it by dropping into it hot rocks from a
nearby bonfire. When the water was near boiling, they dipped the hogs in
the pool to scald them and loosen the hair. The meat was cut up and
salted to make old-style home-cured hams, shoulders and bacon.
[Illustration: The Watchman, overlooking Springdale in Zion Canyon.
_Photo by O. J. Grimes._]
[Illustration: The Angel Landing in Zion Canyon.
_Photo by U. S. National Park Service._]
Mrs. Eunice Munk of Manti, who as a girl of 12 or 14 spent more than a
year in Springdale, recalled that in the summer of 1864 the Behunins
told her that in Zion Canyon the chickens went to roost soon after
sundown, but that the twilight was so long that they would get tired of
waiting for darkness and come out again.
Within a few years, other settlers found their way into the canyon.
William Heap took up a farm across the river from the Behunins at the
mouth of Emerald Pool Canyon and built a log cabin on the west bank of
the river north of the Emerald Pool stream. He planted an orchard and
raised annual crops such as cane, corn, and garden stuff. John Rolf
built his cabins above the Behunins. A polygamist, he needed separate
dwellings for his families; one he located near the Behunins; the other
on the site of the present grotto camp.
Protection was afforded by buck or rip-gut fences from cliff to river at
each end of the farms. These were made of short poles set in the ground
and pointed in various directions so as to effectively prevent large
animals from breaking through.
Hand plows pulled by horses or oxen were used for turning the soil.
Harrows were fashioned of hewn timbers fastened together in a triangle.
Sharpened pegs of oak were fixed in holes bored in the framework and
turned downward so that they scratched the ground when pulled by a team.
The first shovels were short-handled, but later they had what they
called “lazy man’s shovels,” because the handles were longer and a man
did not have to bend his back so much when working. The rakes were
handmade of wood with sharp pegs for teeth. Scythe and cradle were
seldom used since little hay or grain was raised.
It was about this time that the canyon received its name. The three
settlers, hardy mountaineers though they were, nevertheless were of a
devout and religious turn of mind. It seems to have been old father
Behunin who proposed the name of Zion, to which the others agreed. Isaac
Behunin had been with the Mormons ever since they left New York. He had
helped build the Temple at Kirtland, Ohio, and had at one time acted as
body-guard to the founder of the Church, Joseph Smith. He had been
through all the “drivings of the Saints” in Missouri and Illinois and
nourished the typically bitter resentment towards the “enemies” who had
been responsible for such “atrocities.” Here in Zion he felt that at
last he had reached a place of safety where he could rest assured of no
more harryings and persecutions. No wonder he proposed the name Zion,
which implies a resting place. He went even further, maintaining that
should the Saints again be harassed by their enemies, this would become
their place of refuge.
On one of Brigham Young’s visits to Springdale, probably in 1870, he was
told of Zion. He inquired how it came to be so named. The explanation,
it seems, was not satisfactory to the Mormon leader after a toilsome
journey into the canyon and he questioned its propriety, saying that “it
was not Zion.” Some of his more literal-minded followers thereafter
called it “Not Zion.”
The first settlers made their way into the canyon on horseback, using
the river bed, crossing and recrossing the stream. It soon became
necessary, however, to provide other means of transportation. A wagon
road was no problem through the flats in both the upper and lower
valleys, but the precipitous canyon between was baffling. It is
related[59] that Hyrum Morris, Shunesburg settler, and a companion were
the first to enter the upper valley by means other than horseback. They
hitched a yoke of oxen to the hind wheels of a wagon and lashed a plow
and supplies on it. When they entered the canyon, near the present site
of the bridge, they climbed the west bank over the sand bench, down into
Birch Creek and thence into the upper Zion Valley. This did not prove to
be a practicable route, and no one seems to have followed it. Today one
can hardly traverse the route on foot.
The remains of an old cart road which followed the east bank, high up
opposite the sand bench, coming out into the upper valley about half a
mile above the present Union Pacific garage, may still be traced. This
route was used for some years, but was far from satisfactory. Other
settlers from the towns below began to cultivate tracts in the upper
valley and the timber resources of the canyon made a better road
imperative. During the winter of 1864-65, a wagon road[60] was built up
the river bed, crossing the stream many times. This is the road which,
with minor improvements, served as the main highway into Zion until the
National Park Service built the road that first made it fully accessible
to the public. This road in turn served until 1930, when the present
well-graded highway was constructed midway between the river and the
older road that it replaced.
It was while constructing this first wagon road on January 9, 1865, that
George Ayers was killed. A short dugway was being graded on the slope
above the river. With no blasting powder, the men were excavating a
large boulder, and George Ayers and Orson Taylor had stopped to rest in
the shade of the huge stone, rolling cigarettes. Suddenly it began to
move. A shout of warning came from Samuel Wittwer and Heber Ayers.
Taylor was able to scramble out of the way but Ayers was squarely in its
path and it fell directly upon him, crushing and killing him
instantly—the first victim of Zion Canyon.
Indian troubles, treated in a later chapter, broke out in the spring of
1866. Martial law was declared and instructions were issued from the
military headquarters for the settlers to concentrate in towns of at
least 150 families. It was at first decided to gather all the settlers
of the Upper Virgin River at Rockville and Toquerville, and later, at
Virgin. James Jepson[61] recalls that his father had just moved his
cabin from Virgin to Rockville when the revised decision reached him and
he moved back to Virgin again. This was the fifth time the cabin had
been moved and his father dryly remarked that it was so used to the
process now that all he had to do was throw the logs into the yard and
they would fit themselves together.
This concentration order meant the abandonment of all smaller places:
Duncan, Grafton, Northrop, Shunesburg, Springdale and Zion. Those who
could not buy or rent a house simply dumped their belongings in the
shade and set up housekeeping under the trees. Some moved their log
houses with them, others made dugouts and still others built new log
houses.
Although the outlying towns had been abandoned, the crops had been
planted and had to be tended. Workers went in armed groups of ten,
twenty, or thirty to the fields, usually remaining during the week in
the more distant places and returning to Rockville on Sunday. In Zion,
headquarters were at the Behunin cabin, where eight or ten men usually
camped while working the crops. In Springdale, they usually stayed at
Albert Petty’s home or nearby. Petty himself refused to abandon his
ranch and stayed there throughout the Indian scare.
This concentration continued through 1867, but with the close of the
“Black Hawk War” and the subsidence of troubles with the Paiutes, there
was a general reoccupation of the villages except Long Valley and Kanab,
abandoned during the Indian troubles. This occasioned some shifts in the
population; some returned to their former homes and lands, some stayed
where they were, and a few moved elsewhere. Springdale was reoccupied by
Albert Petty and several other families, but it did not regain its
former size until about 1874. Shunesburg and Grafton also seem to have
lost slightly in population in the reshuffling. To Zion, however, the
same settlers, Behunin, Heaps and Rolfs, returned and took up their
usual tasks of raising crops and tending livestock.
The following years were prosperous and the settlements were greatly
strengthened. Markets were established in northern Utah, at mining camps
in southern Nevada, and even in California. Commerce was restricted
because of transportation difficulties but it was an important factor in
helping to balance needs by exchange of livestock products and cotton
for goods the settlers could not produce.
The national financial panic of 1873 gradually worked its paralyzing
effects into Utah and spread to the southern Utah colonies. The
repercussions were not marked on the Virgin River, but Brigham Young was
gravely concerned about the more general conditions in Utah when he came
to St. George to spend his second winter there (November, 1873).
During the spring of 1874 he initiated near St. George a communistic
movement known as the United Order. An experiment of similar nature had
been tried by the Mormons in Missouri more than thirty years earlier. It
was an attempt to combine cooperatively the efforts of the Saints, so
that all might share the benefits in accordance with their needs. The
scheme had been inaugurated in a few communities with encouraging
success and it was now proposed to launch it on a large scale.[62] In
February, St. George, Price City, and Washington were all organized on
this basis. Price City, near St. George, is reported as the first
working farm community in which the combined farms were managed as a
unit and the farmers lived as one large family. Some of the men were
assigned to irrigation, some to raising hay, corn, cane, garden stuff,
or other crops according to the estimated needs of the community. Fuel
was supplied seasonably by hauling wood from the scrub forests of the
hills. The women were assigned as cooks, dish washers, baby tenders,
clothes makers, and nurses. In Price and a few other places the settlers
ate together, but in most of the communities each family had its own
home.
On March 5, Brigham Young visited Virgin and Rockville and organized the
United Order. During March and April, nearly all the settlements in
Dixie fell in line and a confederation of all the settlements, known as
the St. George Stake United Order, was set up to correlate the
activities of the individual settlements.
During late April and early May, Brigham Young moved northward to Salt
Lake City, initiating the novel movement in many of the towns along the
way, including Cedar, Parowan, Beaver, Fillmore and Nephi. Upon reaching
Salt Lake City, a general agency to correlate the stake activities,
known as the “United Order for all the World,” was established.
The movement enjoyed only a brief period of prosperity. The utopian
ideal encountered difficulties when it came to the division of benefits.
Wages were assigned to each person and the benefits drawn were charged
against each family. It was soon alleged that some were drawing more
than their wages entitled them to, whereas others were not getting all
that they felt they should.
In a few favored communities having access to large natural resources,
such as abundant pasturage for livestock, either dairy or range, the
produce was more than sufficient to pay the wages assigned and to build
up a surplus capital. In most, however, where agriculture was the chief
dependence and products of the farms were insufficient to pay wages,
stinting was inevitable. Under such conditions, there was general
dissatisfaction with the cooperative scheme and more progressive
individuals sought to withdraw.
Many settlements abandoned the experiment at the end of the first
season. Such was the case at Rockville, but Shunesburg and Springdale
held on for another year, through 1875. A new ditch on higher ground was
dug at Springdale at this time and the town was moved to its present
location, half a mile north of its old site. This offered opportunity
for expansion. The Gifford family from Shunesburg and several families
from Rockville came to join the United Order in 1875.
It seems to have been the United Order movement which depopulated Zion
Canyon. In 1872, Isaac Behunin, getting old, sold out to William Heap
for two hundred bushels of corn, and moved to Mt. Carmel, then beginning
to be resettled, where he later died. With the establishment of the
United Order in Rockville in 1874, Heap and Rolf joined, turning over
their property in Zion to the corporation. With the collapse of the
Order in the fall, they withdrew their share of the proceeds and moved
to Bear Lake and later to Star Valley, Wyoming.
These families were the last to live regularly in Zion Canyon. Farming,
however, was still carried on by settlers living in the village below.
Such names as Dennett, Gifford, Petty, Russell, Terry, Dalton, Crawford,
Stout and Flanigan, recur as farmers in Zion in the following years.
Oliver D. Gifford, long-time bishop of Springdale, related that about
1880 he was farming the land south of the river and west of the Great
White Throne at the site of the grotto camp when the Great Red Arch fell
out, the rock pulverizing and covering up a spring and large pine trees.