One of the most remarkable of Arizona settlements is St. Johns, 58 miles
southeast of Holbrook, its railroad station. Though its development has
been almost entirely Mormon and though it is headquarters for the St.
Johns Stake of the Church, its foundation dates back of the Mormon
occupation of the valley of the Little Colorado.
Very early in the seventies, New Mexican cattle and sheep men spread
their ranges over the mountains into the Little Colorado Valley and there
were occasional camps of the Spanish-speaking people. In 1872 a mail
carrier, John Walker, had built a cabin on the river, five miles below
the site of St. Johns. As early as 1864 the locality had been visited by
Solomon Barth, a Jewish trader, who dealt with the Indians as far
eastward as Zuni and who, on burros, packed salt from the Zuni salt lake
to the mining camps of the Prescott section. Barth, oddly enough, for a
while had been connected with the Mormons, at the age of 13, a new
arrival from Posen, East Prussia, joining his uncle in a push-cart
caravan to Salt Lake. Later he was in San Bernardino, there remaining
after the 1857 exodus, to go to La Paz, Arizona, in 1862. In 1864 he
carried mail on the route from Albuquerque to Prescott, as contractor.
In November, 1868, he was captured by Apaches, but was liberated, with
several Mexican associates, all almost naked, reaching the Zuni villages,
on foot, four days later. For food they shared the carcass of a small
dog. In 1870 he was post trader at Fort Apache, then known as Camp Ord,
in the year of its establishment. In 1873, a game of cards at El Badito
(Little Crossing), a settlement on the Little Colorado, on the St. Johns
site, determined his future terrestrial place of residence. From his
adversaries, New Mexicans, he won several thousand head of sheep and
several thousand dollars. Then he left the life of the road and settled
down.
A.F. Banta, a pioneer of Arizona pioneers, then known by his army name of
Charlie Franklin, tells that he was at Badito (Vadito) in 1876, the place
then on a mail route southward to Fort Apache and the military posts on
the Gila. In the same connection, James D. Houck, in 1874, contracted to
carry mail across the Little Colorado Valley, between Fort Wingate and
Prescott. Another mail route was from Wingate to St. Johns and Apache.
Sol Barth and his brothers, Morris and Nathan, settled at St. Johns in
the fall of 1873, with a number of New Mexican laborers. At once was
commenced construction of a dam across the Little Colorado and of ditches
and there was farming of a few hundred acres adjoining the site of the
present town. In all, Barth laid claim to 1200 acres of land, though it
proved later he had only a squatter title. With him originated the name
of St. Johns, at first San Juan, given in compliment to the first female
resident, Senora Maria San Juan Baca de Padilla. With this conspicuous
exception, all saintly names in Arizona were bestowed by either Catholic
missionaries or by Mormons.
Ammon M. Tenney, a scout of Mormondom second only to Jacob Hamblin, in
1877 at Kanab received from President Brigham Young instructions to go
into Arizona and select places for colonization. He visited many points
in western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, but his recommendation was
confined to St. Johns, Concho, sixteen miles west of St. Johns, The
Meadows, eight miles northwest, and Woodruff.
With the Tenney report in mind, in January, 1879, St. Johns was visited
by Jesse N. Smith, just arrived in Arizona to be president of the Little
Colorado Stake. But Smith was unable to make terms with Barth and his
Mexican neighbors and turned back to Snowflake.