Mormon Pioneer History

Pioneer Story 01

1861

St. George and Washington

Why They Call It Dixie

Brigham Young wanted the church to grow its own cotton, and when the Civil War cut off Southern supplies, he called 309 families in 1861 to settle the hot desert along the Virgin River. A lot of the first settlers here came from the South, and they had already started calling the area Dixie.

They started building a cotton factory in Washington in 1866 with donated labor and materials. Cotton never really paid off in the desert, and the factory shut down by 1904, but the name Utah’s Dixie stuck around for good.

See it: the old Washington Cotton Factory still stands at 385 W Telegraph St in Washington.

Pioneer Story 02

1863

Zion Canyon

The Man Who Named Zion

In the summer of 1863, pioneer Isaac Behunin built a one room log cabin near where the Zion Lodge stands today and planted an orchard. He is credited with naming the place, saying a man could worship God among these great cathedrals as well as in any church. This is Zion.

He farmed there about ten years, then sold out for 200 bushels of corn and moved on. Explorer John Wesley Powell later used the Paiute name Mukuntuweap, and that was the name when it was first protected in 1909. It became Zion a few years later, and the pioneer name won.

See it: Behunin Canyon, above the Emerald Pools, is named after him.

Pioneer Story 03

1866

Toquerville

When Dixie Made Wine

Before the Word of Wisdom was strictly enforced, Latter-day Saints here grew grapes and made a lot of wine. Brigham Young sent trained winemaker John Naegle to Toquerville, where he built a big stone house with a wine cellar and sold his “Nail’s Best” to mining camps, up to about 3,000 gallons a year.

Wine was used in the sacrament, and so many members paid tithing in grapes that the church became the biggest wine producer in Dixie. That changed as church leaders started preaching against drinking and cheap California wine moved in.

See it: the Naegle Winery, a big two story stone house, still stands in Toquerville.

Pioneer Story 04

1868

Pine Valley

The Church Built Like an Upside Down Ship

When Pine Valley needed a chapel, they asked Ebenezer Bryce, a Scottish shipbuilder. He said he didn’t know how to build a church, but he could build a ship. So the attic is framed like a ship’s hull turned upside down, and the corners were wrapped in rawhide that tightened as it dried.

When it was done he reportedly said, “If the floods come, it will float.” Finished in 1868, it’s the oldest Latter-day Saint chapel still in use. Bryce later moved east, and Bryce Canyon is named after him.

See it: Pine Valley is about 45 minutes north of St. George, and the chapel is often open for tours.

Pioneer Story 05

1871

Pipe Spring, Arizona

The Fort That Hid Wives

Church ranchers built a stone fort right on top of the spring at Pipe Spring in the early 1870s. Locals nicknamed it Winsor Castle after its manager, Anson Winsor. In December 1871 it opened the first telegraph office in Arizona, run by a teenage operator named Ella Stewart.

In the 1880s and 1890s, when federal marshals were arresting men for polygamy, the remote fort became a hideout for plural wives, since it sat just over the line in Arizona. Several babies were born there on the underground. The church sold the ranch in 1895.

See it: Pipe Spring National Monument, about an hour south of Hurricane on SR 59. Fort tours run daily.

Pioneer Story 06

1875

Orderville

The Town Where Nobody Owned Anything

Orderville was founded in 1875 to live the United Order, a church system where everything was shared. Families turned over everything they owned, ate together in a big dining hall, wore matching homemade clothes and lived in the same kind of houses.

It worked better and longer than anywhere else, about ten years. But the young people started envying the fashions in other towns, the shared meals ended in 1880, and anti polygamy raids drove leaders into hiding. By 1885 the experiment was over. Isaac Behunin, the man who named Zion, had left his canyon farm to join the United Order just down the road in Mount Carmel.

See it: Orderville is on US 89, about 30 minutes past the east entrance of Zion. The town museum tells the story.

Pioneer Story 07

1877

St. George Temple

The Oldest Working Temple

The St. George Temple was finished in 1877, the first Latter-day Saint temple in Utah and the only one completed while Brigham Young was alive. It’s now the oldest temple the church still uses. Builders found out the hard way that the site was a swamp full of underground springs.

About a year after it was dedicated, lightning hit the original tower and badly damaged it. The replacement, finished in 1883, was built taller. It was also the first temple where the church wrote its ceremonies down instead of passing them on by memory.

See it: the temple grounds and visitors center in downtown St. George are open to everyone.

Pioneer Story 08

1877

St. George Temple

The Night the Founding Fathers Showed Up

Apostle Wilford Woodruff ran the new St. George Temple in 1877. He later said that the signers of the Declaration of Independence, along with George Washington, appeared to him there for two nights in a row and asked why their temple work had never been done.

On August 21, 1877, Woodruff was baptized on behalf of 100 famous men, including the signers, while local women stood in for dozens of famous women. He told the story in sermons for the rest of his life.

Today: it’s still one of the most retold stories in Latter-day Saint history.

Pioneer Story 09

1904

Hurricane

The Canal They Dug by Hand

Farmers along the Virgin River kept getting wiped out by floods, so in 1893 a group from Virgin, Toquerville and nearby towns set out to bring water to the empty Hurricane Bench. Engineers had called it impossible. There was no room for horses on the cliffs, so they used picks, shovels, wheelbarrows and hand drills.

It took eleven years, mostly in winter when farm work was slow. They blasted 12 tunnels and hung wooden flumes off the canyon walls for a 7.5 mile ditch. On August 6, 1904, families gathered to watch the first water pour onto the bench, and the town of Hurricane was born.

See it: Hurricane Valley Pioneer Heritage Park at 35 W State St, plus a walking trail along the old canal.

Pioneer Story 10

1857

Mountain Meadows

The Darkest Chapter

On September 11, 1857, local Latter-day Saint militia leaders and men under their command, along with some Paiutes they had drawn in, killed about 120 men, women and children from a wagon train heading from Arkansas to California. Only 17 young children were spared.

It happened while a federal army was marching on Utah and fear was running high. Twenty years later John D. Lee was the only person convicted, and he was executed at the meadows in 1877. In 2007 the church expressed profound regret for what its members did, and in 2011 the site became a National Historic Landmark.

Visit with respect: the memorial is about 30 miles north of St. George off SR 18.

Sources: Utah History Encyclopedia, Utah Humanities, Washington County Historical Society, National Park Service, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Deseret News, Salt Lake Tribune and St. George News.

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