A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks (Revised)Woodbury, Angus M. (Angus Munn)
History
A History of Southern Utah and Its National Parks (Revised)
Woodbury, Angus M. (Angus Munn)
National parks and reserves -- Utah -- History; Utah -- History
Re-settlement of Long Valley and Kanab does not seem to have been
attempted until 1870, although Kanab and Paria were occupied by
missionaries under Jacob Hamblin in 1867 as frontier outposts. At Paria
a strong guard house and corral was built and some land was cultivated,
beginnings out of which the settlement grew with the accession of
several families in 1872 and 1873.
Kanab was similarly restored. The necessity of a fort there was
impressed upon the whites by the continued Navajo raids. Five stone
masons were sent from St. George in 1869 to construct the fort. They
reached Kanab on August 28 and worked until early in September, when
John R. Young told them they had finished their mission and could go
home.
This building expedition brought new settlers to Kanab, for John Mangum
(or Mangram), his brother, James, James Wilkins, and George Ross, moved
there soon after. Nate Adams, who visited Kanab in September, 1870, and
who moved there March 14, 1871, says the first three were in hiding and
that John D. Lee, also in hiding, took up Scutumpah Ranch and explored
Lee’s Ferry in 1869. Several missionaries were sent to aid Hamblin about
the same time. They were fencing and cultivating land when Brigham Young
made his first visit to the Kanab country about the 1st of April, 1870.
George Albert Smith wrote of this visit:
At Kanab we met Brothers Jacob Hamblin and Jehiel MacConnel
[McConnell], and several other missionaries, who were engaged in
teaching the Indians how to cultivate the soil and to obtain a living
by peaceful pursuits. We were much pleased with the country.... As
soon as measures shall be taken to prevent the annual raids of the
Navajos, this land of Canaan will be re-occupied by the Saints and
become a valuable acquisition to our southern settlements.[80]
A pioneer Salt Lake photographer, C. R. Savage, took many pictures along
the way, including one of Brigham Young and his party on the Colorado at
the mouth of the Virgin, and several of Zion Canyon.
Upon his return to Salt Lake City on April 16, 1870, Brigham Young sent
a group of fifty-two people led by Levi Stewart, to re-settle the Kanab
country. They went down through the Dixie settlements and reached Pipe
Springs on June 1. They remained there and at Moccasin Springs several
days while exploring the region.[81] On the 14th they moved over to
Kanab Creek and joined Jacob Hamblin at the old fort, now too small to
house so many.
Brigham Young manifested much interest in the success of the colony. He
promised Stewart that he would visit him in the fall and asked him to
find a more direct route to Kanab from the north that would obviate the
long roundabout approach through the Dixie settlements and the Arizona
strip. Stewart sent out two expeditions, the second of which found a
road from the head of the Sevier River through Upper Kanab and Johnson
Wash.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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