Sunset, the lowest of the settlements, was near the present railroad
crossing of the river, below the river junction with Clear Creek. There
had been a temporary location two miles upstream. The main structure was
a stockade, twelve rods square, mainly of drift cottonwood logs. Within
were rock-built houses, a community dining hall and a well. Combination
was made with Ballenger, across the stream, in the building of a dam, two
and a half miles above the settlement.
Apparently the sandy land and the difficulty of irrigating it drove the
settlers away, until, finally, in 1885, Lot Smith's family was the only
one left upon the ground, and it departed in 1888.
Years later, Andrew Jenson found the rock walls and chimneys still
standing. "Everything is desert," he wrote, "the whole landscape looks
dreary and forbidding and the lonely graveyard on the hillside only
reminds one of the population which once was and that is no more." Only
ruin marks the place where once was headquarters of the Little Colorado
Stake of Zion. The settlement was badly placed, for floods came within a
rod of the fort and covered the wheat fields.
Lot Smith wrote in poetic vein, "This is a strange country, belonging to
a people whose lands the rivers have spoiled." Very practically, however,
he wrote of good lands and slack water supply, "though the river shows it
would be a mighty rushing torrent when the rains commence in summer, with
the appearance of being 25 miles broad, and the Indians told us that if
we are indeed to live where we are encamped, we had better fix some
scaffolding in the trees."
In August, 1878, a correspondent of the Deseret News wrote from Sunset
that for a week the rain had been pouring down almost incessantly, that
the whole bottom was covered with water, that some of the farms were
submerged and grain in shocks was flooded, that the grain of Woodruff was
entirely destroyed, the grist mill of Brigham City inundated and the
grain stacks there were deep in water, with the inhabitants using boats
and rafts to get around their farms.