Mormon Mountain, Mormon Lake and Mormon Dairy still are known as such, 28
miles southeast of Flagstaff. The Dairy was established in September,
1878, by Lot Smith, in what then was known as Pleasant Valley, in the
pines, sixty miles west of Sunset. In that year 48 men and 41 women from
Sunset and Brigham City, were at the Dairy, caring for 115 cows and
making butter and cheese. Three good log houses had been built.
Seven miles south of Pleasant Valley (which should not be confounded with
the Tonto Basin Pleasant Valley of sanguinary repute), was the site of
the first sawmill on the Mogollon Plateau, upon which a half-dozen very
large plants now operate to furnish lumber to the entire Southwest. This
mill, probably antedated in northern Arizona only at Prescott, first was
erected, about 1870, at Mount Trumbull, in the Uinkaret Mountains of
northwestern Arizona, to cut lumber for the new temple at St. George,
Utah, fifty miles to the northward. This mill, in 1876, was given by the
Church authorities to the struggling Little Colorado River settlements.
Taken down in August by the head sawyer, Warren R. Tenney, it was hauled
into Sunset late in September and soon was re-erected by Tenney, and,
November 7, put into operation in the pine woods near Mormon Lake, about
sixty miles southwest of Sunset, soon turning out 100,000 feet of boards.
Its site was named Millville. The mill, after the decline of the first
settlements, passed into the possession of W. J. Flake. In the summer of
1882, it was transferred to Pinedale and in 1890 to Pinetop. It now is at
Lakeside, where, it is assumed, at least part of the original machinery
still is being operated. Its first work at Pinetop was to saw the timbers
for a large assembly hall, or pavilion, to be used for the only
conference ever held that included all the Arizona Stakes.
Also in the timber country are to be noted Wilford, named in honor of
President Wilford Woodruff, and Heber, named for Heber C. Kimball, small
settlements fifty miles southwest of St. Joseph, established in 1883 from
St. Joseph and other Little Colorado settlements, for stock raising and
dry farming. John Bushman is believed to have been the first Mormon
resident of the locality. Log houses were built and at Wilford was a
schoolhouse, which later was moved to St. Joseph, there used as a
dwelling. When a number of the brethren went into Mexican exile, their
holdings were "jumped" by outsiders. Wilford has been entirely vacated,
but Heber still has residents.