During these years death came in its usual manner, taking the old, the sick, and the very young. Even without flooding, irrigation ditches regularly filled with sand and required such continuous attention that one settler remarked, “making ditches at Grafton is like household washing it’s a weekly chore!”ĭespite Dixie’s limited farmland, scant rainfall and problematic irrigation, Grafton’s settlers were optimistic and, for the most part, in good health. Irrigation dams were repeatedly washed out, sometimes two or three in a single year. Grafton’s existence is a testament to the early settlers’ perseverance and industrious spirit.Įven in their new location, Grafton’s troubles were not over. A resident of Virgin wrote, “the houses in old Grafton came floating down with the furniture, clothing and other property of the inhabitants, some of which was hauled out of the water, including three barrels of molasses.” Grafton’s settlers relocated to higher ground one mile upstream of their first town, where the current town site now stands. In January 1862, a raging flood destroyed most of Grafton, Duncans Retreat, Adventure, and Northup. Survival in this arid place alongside a tempestuous river would require their undivided attention and all their land.Ĭotton wasn’t the only thing that consumed precious land. In coming years Virgin River farmers would scale back cotton in favor of food production. Grafton was so zealous in its first year of cotton cultivation that farmers didn’t plant enough corn, cane and other crops to feed their families. Civil War began, cotton became scarce, and Brigham Young’s vision of Utah’s Dixie began to bear fruit. The small community cooperated to plant crops, dig irrigation ditches and build homes-the idea was never profit, but rather community and faith. In 1859, Nathan Tenney led five families-the Barneys, Davies, McFates, Platts and Shirts-from nearby Virgin to a site one mile downstream of today’s Grafton. Ten farming settlements grew along the upper Virgin River in the only places they could: Virgin (1857), Grafton (1859), Adventure (1860), Duncan's Retreat and Northup (1861), and Shunesburg, Rockville and Springdale (1862). To grow cotton, or anything else, pioneers needed two things-land flat enough to farm and water enough to irrigate it-and both were scarce in the Utah Territory.
He was right.Ĭotton flourished in an experiment at Santa Clara (1854), and Young sent numerous families to Utah’s “Dixie” as part of the Cotton Mission. Brigham Young also reasoned that the warm land south of Cedar City might, if irrigated, produce another costly and U.S.-dependent staple: cotton. was difficult and expensive, and when iron deposits were discovered in hills near what is now Cedar City, Young issued the Iron Mission call, and the faithful answered. For example, in 1851 the villages of Cedar City and Parowan were settled as part of the Iron Mission. Skilled craftsmen and volunteers were called on colonizing missions.
Territory.īetween 18, Mormons settled perhaps 500 Mormon villages throughout the west in an effort to claim territory and secure resources for self-sufficiency. In 1850 after the Mexican American War, Deseret became a U.S. There, outside the U.S., Young hoped to establish the “state” of Deseret where Mormons could practice their religion freely. Their leader, president of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, Brigham Young, said, “This is the place.” The Saints, also known as Mormons, arrived in the Utah Territory after fleeing religious persecution in the United States. In 1847 a tired group of pioneers stood at Emigration Canyon gazing at the valley of the Great Salt Lake.