The settlers at Harmony found a better location a few miles farther upstream on Ash Creek and during the summer of 1854 moved thither, calling it New Harmony. They built a fort there that fall. The missionaries in the Virgin and Santa Clara valleys found their remoteness inconvenient; accordingly a settlement was made on the Santa Clara where they could live among the Indians, and on December 1, Jacob Hamblin, Thales Haskell, Ira Hatch, Samuel Knight and A. P. Hardy established the nucleus of a permanent colony. Two weeks later Rufus Allen and Hyrum Burgess left Harmony for Tonaquint on the Santa Clara near its junction with the Virgin River where they built three log cabins. The missionaries helped the Indians construct substantial dams and ditches for diverting irrigation water. The first dam across the Santa Clara Creek, built in 1855, was a feat which aroused much enthusiasm among the Indians, five hundred of whom gathered to watch its completion. When the dam (100 feet long and 14 feet high) was finished and the water began to rise and run out, half on one side for the Indians and half on the other for the whites, a great shout of exultation went up from the dusky spectators. The hard labor and poor nourishment which Jacob Hamblin had endured brought on a spell of sickness. To procure medicines and proper food for him, Gus Hardy went to Parowan. While there, Mrs. Nancy Anderson, a southerner, asked him about the mission of the Santa Clara and learned of the long, warm growing season. Believing that the climate might be suitable for cotton, she gave him a quart of cotton seed which she had brought with her from her old home. The missionaries planted the seed on the Santa Clara and raised a crop during the summer of 1855. This cotton was carded, spun, and woven into cloth by the women at the mission. Some of this cloth was sent to Salt Lake City and aroused no little interest there. Samples of the cloth even found their way into England and were said to compare favorably with cotton grown elsewhere. This was the beginning of cotton culture there, which finally led to the fuller settlement of the “Utah Dixie” along the Virgin River, much as the iron industry had led to the development of Iron County. Moreover, like the iron industry, it answered a temporary need by supplying clothing when it was impracticable to import cotton.[39] A sad mishap occurred at the mission late in 1855, when a young Indian living at the home of Thales Haskell, while examining a gun, accidentally shot the missionary’s young wife, Maria Woodbury Haskell. The death, naturally, cast a pall of gloom over the mission.[40]