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
... Nigger, [a white mule] went along very well and I was in Kanab by
three o’clock. The village which had been started only a year or two,
was laid out in the characteristic Mormon style, with wide streets and
regular lots fenced by wattling willows between stakes. Irrigating
ditches ran down each side of every street and from them the water,
derived from a creek that came down a canyon back of the town, could
be led into any of the lots, each of which was about one quarter of an
acre; that is, there were four lots to a block. Fruit trees and vines
had been planted and were already beginning to promise near results,
while corn, potatoes, etc., gave fine crops. The original place of
settlement was a square formed by one-story log houses on three sides
and a stockade on the fourth. This was called the fort and was a place
of refuge though the danger from Navajo attack seemed to be over and
that from any assault by the Paiutes certainly was past. One corner of
the fort was made by the walls of the schoolhouse, which was at the
same time meeting-house and ball-room. Altogether there were about 100
families in the village. The houses that had been built outside the
fort were quite substantially constructed, some of adobe or sun-dried
brick. The entire settlement had a thrifty air, as is the case with
the Mormons. Not a grog-shop, or gambling saloon, or dance-hall was to
be seen; quite in contrast with the usual disgraceful accompaniments
of the ordinary frontier towns. A perfectly orderly government
existed, headed by a bishop appointed by the church authorities in
Salt Lake City, the then incumbent of this office being an excellent
man, Bishop Stewart.[85]
After the Navajo peace settlement many of the places abandoned in 1866
were reoccupied and within a few years further expansion filled most of
the remaining areas suitable for settlements or ranches. In Long Valley,
Berryville (now Glendale), and Winsor (Mt. Carmel) were revived in 1871.
Johnson was settled in the spring of the same year by five brothers,
Joel, Benjamin, Joseph, George and William Johnson, on the site of
Scutumpah, formerly John D. Lee’s ranch. In 1872, Graham, on the
headwaters of Kanab Creek (upper Kanab), was reoccupied and the settlers
engaged in dairying and lumbering.
The upper reaches of the Paria, however, attracted settlers from the
north. Panguitch was re-founded in March, 1871 under George W. Sevy and
counted seventy-five families the next year. Joel H. Johnson and George
D. Wilson established a sawmill in 1871 near the present location of
Hillsdale, and were soon joined by twenty families, including those of
Nephi and Seth Johnson. Other cattlemen located farther up the Sevier,
where Meltiar Hatch founded the village bearing his name. Nephi Johnson,
discoverer of Zion Canyon, was made bishop of Hillsdale in 1874.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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