Re-settlement of Long Valley and Kanab does not seem to have been
attempted until 1870, although Kanab and Paria were occupied by
missionaries under Jacob Hamblin in 1867 as frontier outposts. At Paria
a strong guard house and corral was built and some land was cultivated,
beginnings out of which the settlement grew with the accession of
several families in 1872 and 1873.
Kanab was similarly restored. The necessity of a fort there was
impressed upon the whites by the continued Navajo raids. Five stone
masons were sent from St. George in 1869 to construct the fort. They
reached Kanab on August 28 and worked until early in September, when
John R. Young told them they had finished their mission and could go
home.
This building expedition brought new settlers to Kanab, for John Mangum
(or Mangram), his brother, James, James Wilkins, and George Ross, moved
there soon after. Nate Adams, who visited Kanab in September, 1870, and
who moved there March 14, 1871, says the first three were in hiding and
that John D. Lee, also in hiding, took up Scutumpah Ranch and explored
Lee’s Ferry in 1869. Several missionaries were sent to aid Hamblin about
the same time. They were fencing and cultivating land when Brigham Young
made his first visit to the Kanab country about the 1st of April, 1870.
George Albert Smith wrote of this visit:
At Kanab we met Brothers Jacob Hamblin and Jehiel MacConnel
[McConnell], and several other missionaries, who were engaged in
teaching the Indians how to cultivate the soil and to obtain a living
by peaceful pursuits. We were much pleased with the country.... As
soon as measures shall be taken to prevent the annual raids of the
Navajos, this land of Canaan will be re-occupied by the Saints and
become a valuable acquisition to our southern settlements.[80]
A pioneer Salt Lake photographer, C. R. Savage, took many pictures along
the way, including one of Brigham Young and his party on the Colorado at
the mouth of the Virgin, and several of Zion Canyon.
Upon his return to Salt Lake City on April 16, 1870, Brigham Young sent
a group of fifty-two people led by Levi Stewart, to re-settle the Kanab
country. They went down through the Dixie settlements and reached Pipe
Springs on June 1. They remained there and at Moccasin Springs several
days while exploring the region.[81] On the 14th they moved over to
Kanab Creek and joined Jacob Hamblin at the old fort, now too small to
house so many.
Brigham Young manifested much interest in the success of the colony. He
promised Stewart that he would visit him in the fall and asked him to
find a more direct route to Kanab from the north that would obviate the
long roundabout approach through the Dixie settlements and the Arizona
strip. Stewart sent out two expeditions, the second of which found a
road from the head of the Sevier River through Upper Kanab and Johnson
Wash.
Brigham Young started for Kanab on August 26, 1870. Accompanying him
from Parowan was the intrepid explorer and topographer of the U. S.
Geological Survey, Major J. W. Powell, who had already made one trip
through the Grand Canyon and was returning to make plans for further
geological studies and his second trip through the canyon.[82] In
attempting to follow Stewart’s directions, the party lost its way and
wandered into the Paria River valley and thus went many miles out of its
direct route. According to Nate Adams,[83] “old Humpy Indian” guided the
company safely into Kanab on the evening of September 9, 1870. While
there, a townsite and fields were surveyed east of the fort beyond the
path of the canyon winds. Brigham Young returned to Salt Lake City via
St. George and the Dixie settlements.
Three months later, on December 14, 1870, six lives were lost in a fire
at the fort. These included Bishop Stewart’s wife, Margery, and three of
his sons.[84] Brigham Young made a special trip to Kanab from St.
George, where he was wintering, to comfort the bereaved families. Soon
after, the settlers began to build their homes on the townsite. Within a
few years, the fort was deserted but it was maintained for some time for
use in case of emergency. Dellenbaugh, a member of Major J. W. Powell’s
party, thus describes his visit to Kanab in the early 70’s:
[Illustration: F. S. Dellenbaugh in Zion Canyon (1930) with the flag
of the Emma Dean boat that made “a canyon voyage” about 60 years
earlier. _Photo U. S. Nat. Park Service._]
[Illustration: Viewing Bryce Canyon from the rim.
_Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad._]
... Nigger, [a white mule] went along very well and I was in Kanab by
three o’clock. The village which had been started only a year or two,
was laid out in the characteristic Mormon style, with wide streets and
regular lots fenced by wattling willows between stakes. Irrigating
ditches ran down each side of every street and from them the water,
derived from a creek that came down a canyon back of the town, could
be led into any of the lots, each of which was about one quarter of an
acre; that is, there were four lots to a block. Fruit trees and vines
had been planted and were already beginning to promise near results,
while corn, potatoes, etc., gave fine crops. The original place of
settlement was a square formed by one-story log houses on three sides
and a stockade on the fourth. This was called the fort and was a place
of refuge though the danger from Navajo attack seemed to be over and
that from any assault by the Paiutes certainly was past. One corner of
the fort was made by the walls of the schoolhouse, which was at the
same time meeting-house and ball-room. Altogether there were about 100
families in the village. The houses that had been built outside the
fort were quite substantially constructed, some of adobe or sun-dried
brick. The entire settlement had a thrifty air, as is the case with
the Mormons. Not a grog-shop, or gambling saloon, or dance-hall was to
be seen; quite in contrast with the usual disgraceful accompaniments
of the ordinary frontier towns. A perfectly orderly government
existed, headed by a bishop appointed by the church authorities in
Salt Lake City, the then incumbent of this office being an excellent
man, Bishop Stewart.[85]
After the Navajo peace settlement many of the places abandoned in 1866
were reoccupied and within a few years further expansion filled most of
the remaining areas suitable for settlements or ranches. In Long Valley,
Berryville (now Glendale), and Winsor (Mt. Carmel) were revived in 1871.
Johnson was settled in the spring of the same year by five brothers,
Joel, Benjamin, Joseph, George and William Johnson, on the site of
Scutumpah, formerly John D. Lee’s ranch. In 1872, Graham, on the
headwaters of Kanab Creek (upper Kanab), was reoccupied and the settlers
engaged in dairying and lumbering.
The upper reaches of the Paria, however, attracted settlers from the
north. Panguitch was re-founded in March, 1871 under George W. Sevy and
counted seventy-five families the next year. Joel H. Johnson and George
D. Wilson established a sawmill in 1871 near the present location of
Hillsdale, and were soon joined by twenty families, including those of
Nephi and Seth Johnson. Other cattlemen located farther up the Sevier,
where Meltiar Hatch founded the village bearing his name. Nephi Johnson,
discoverer of Zion Canyon, was made bishop of Hillsdale in 1874.
Attention was then focused on the upper Paria. The first settlers, David
O. Littlefield and Orley D. Bliss, located near the present site of
Cannonville on Christmas Eve, 1874. Early the next day eight other
families arrived, who built log houses at a place called Clifton and
began farming along the Paria and on Henrieville Creek. Ebenezer Bryce,
from Pine Valley, selected a place farther upstream, a mile or two east
of the present site of Tropic near the mouth of Bryce Canyon. Bryce used
the famous canyon for a cattle range, and thus immortalized his name.
Clifton was not well located and in 1877 some settlers moved to a new
townsite called Cannonville, in honor of George Q. Cannon, high Mormon
official who had taken a special interest in their affairs. Other
settlers moved over to Henrieville Creek to be near their farms, and
thus the town of Henrieville (named for James Henrie, president of
Panguitch Stake) was born.
In 1879 Daniel Goulding settled near Bryce’s ranch. Seeking water for
irrigation, he and Bryce devised a scheme to divert water from Pine
Creek in the Great Basin by means of a canal over the divide. This they
finished, but upkeep was expensive, their crops were poor, and Goulding
lost about five hundred fruit trees from drouth. Bryce became
discouraged and left for Arizona in 1880 and Goulding moved to
Henrieville in 1883. Bryce, unimpressed by the beauty of the canyon,
considered it “awful hard to find a cow that was lost” in the intricate
maze of its pinnacles.
Seth Johnson and several others located in 1886 on Yellow Creek (Kane
County) about three miles southwest of Cannonville and named the
settlement Georgetown, in honor of the same man for whom Cannonville was
named.
In 1890 the two Ahlstrom brothers built homes on the present site of
Tropic and with several others began a second and more ambitious attempt
to divert water from the East Fork of Sevier River over the divide into
Paria Creek. This time the project succeeded. Tropic townsite was
surveyed in 1891 and settlers began to flock there and prepare homes and
lands in anticipation of the coming of the water. A fitting celebration
was staged on May 23, 1892, when the water was turned into the canal.
By this time, most of the suitable valleys and canyons had been
occupied. Erosion, however, caused trouble at Kanab. From 1883 to 1890,
floods presumably resulting from overgrazing tore out dams and ditches
and gutted the canyons and valleys with deep washes. Water arose in the
bottom of the washes and that in Kanab Wash (below Kanab) was diverted
about 1886 onto a new townsite just beyond the state line in Arizona,
called Fredonia, which later served as a refuge for a number of
polygamous wives during the Federal offensive against the practice.[86]
While southern Utah was thus growing, a new movement was developed. In
1879, the Mormon Church leaders called for eighty men from the Southern
Mission to establish an outpost for the purpose of “cultivating and
maintaining friendly relations with Indians whose homes were near the
point where the state of Colorado and the Territories of Utah, New
Mexico and Arizona come together.” Twenty-five men, including Kumen
Jones, went out to investigate routes and locations. They traveled via
Lee’s Ferry, Tuba City and Monument Valley to the San Juan River as far
as Four-Corners, spent about three months exploring the region, and then
returned home via a northern route, past the sites of Monticello and
Moab.[87]
While they were away, another party set out from Escalante seeking a
short-cut to the San Juan country. A route much more direct than that
mapped by the first party was reported, apparently on imperfect
observation. It was, however, accepted, and by October the party was on
its way. It passed through Escalante and reached Forty-mile Spring where
it was held up by excessively rough country, while snows in the
mountains blocked retreat.
Three scouts were sent ahead to investigate some of the wildest and most
rugged scenic areas of America. The three returned in disappointment;
one held the route feasible, another positively rejected it, while the
third thought it might be possible to get through with special help.
Envoys were sent to Salt Lake City to appeal for assistance, which was
given in the form of a legislative appropriation for blasting a way
through.
It took fifty days to get eighty-two wagons through Hole-in-the-Rock and
down to the Colorado River and ninety days to reach Bluff on the San
Juan River where the first settlement was made. Three babies were born
on the way and the hardships endured form a Western epic.[88]
The story of Orderville has been left for the last. The United Order[89]
was organized at Mt. Carmel, March 20, 1874, by John R. Young, at which
time one hundred and nine members were listed. One summer of the United
Order was enough for most members. Bishop Bryant Jolley, with his
numerous family and relatives, formed the core of the dissenters. To
avoid contention, those who wished to continue with the Order sold their
holdings and moved in a body two miles above Mt. Carmel where title to
all land was vested in the group and where they set up the town
Orderville, under the leadership of Howard O. Spencer. The new town was
surveyed February 20, 1875.
The first building was a hotel where all ate together in the large
dining hall, from July, 1875 to May, 1880. As time passed, living
quarters were provided for each family and work was divided into more
specialized fields.
During the hey-day of the Order, around 1880, it numbered nearly six
hundred adherents and there were some twenty-eight specialized
departments of work which included most of the various activities that
go to make up a simple community. The Order made great progress and
acquired property rapidly. Farming lands were expanded to include areas
scattered through Long Valley and at Kanab.
The growing power of the Order created jealousies, but disintegration
came from internal dissension. The idea of giving everyone an equal
reward regardless of ability or accomplishment tended in many cases to
lessen effort and brought charges of laziness and carelessness.
Gradually, more and more individual property was assigned to each home;
farmers were given a share of their own produce and livestock and
sawmills and freighting were operated under lease or contract. Matters
were hastening toward dissolution when, in 1885, polygamy troubles
began. Fear that the Federal government might confiscate the goods of
the Order forced the final dissolution of most of the property, and
farming lands, livestock, ranches, tannery and sawmill, were all sold to
members. The woolen mill alone was kept and intermittently operated
until 1900. In that year the United Order of Orderville was officially
dissolved, twenty-five years after its incorporation.