St. Joseph, as early as 1894, had completed its eighth dam across the river. Jos. W. Smith wrote of the dedication of the dam, in March of that year. He remarked especially upon the showing of rosy-cheeked, well-clad children, of whom the greater part of the assemblage was composed, "showing that the people were by no means destitute, even if they had been laboring on ditches and dams so much for the last eighteen years." The main prayer of the exercise was brief, but characteristic: "O Lord, we pray that this dam may stand, if it be Thy will--if not, let Thy will be done." The invocation was effective. The dam stood, as is illustrated within this book. Decline and Fall of Sunset Sunset, the lowest of the settlements, was near the present railroad crossing of the river, below the river junction with Clear Creek. There had been a temporary location two miles upstream. The main structure was a stockade, twelve rods square, mainly of drift cottonwood logs. Within were rock-built houses, a community dining hall and a well. Combination was made with Ballenger, across the stream, in the building of a dam, two and a half miles above the settlement. Apparently the sandy land and the difficulty of irrigating it drove the settlers away, until, finally, in 1885, Lot Smith's family was the only one left upon the ground, and it departed in 1888. Years later, Andrew Jenson found the rock walls and chimneys still standing. "Everything is desert," he wrote, "the whole landscape looks dreary and forbidding and the lonely graveyard on the hillside only reminds one of the population which once was and that is no more." Only ruin marks the place where once was headquarters of the Little Colorado Stake of Zion. The settlement was badly placed, for floods came within a rod of the fort and covered the wheat fields. Lot Smith wrote in poetic vein, "This is a strange country, belonging to a people whose lands the rivers have spoiled." Very practically, however, he wrote of good lands and slack water supply, "though the river shows it would be a mighty rushing torrent when the rains commence in summer, with the appearance of being 25 miles broad, and the Indians told us that if we are indeed to live where we are encamped, we had better fix some scaffolding in the trees." In August, 1878, a correspondent of the Deseret News wrote from Sunset that for a week the rain had been pouring down almost incessantly, that the whole bottom was covered with water, that some of the farms were submerged and grain in shocks was flooded, that the grain of Woodruff was entirely destroyed, the grist mill of Brigham City inundated and the grain stacks there were deep in water, with the inhabitants using boats and rafts to get around their farms. Village Communal Organization