Mormon Settlement in Arizona: A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the DesertMcClintock, James H.
History
Mormon Settlement in Arizona: A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the Desert
McClintock, James H.
Arizona -- History -- To 1950; Latter Day Saints -- Arizona -- History
Lehi now is a thriving settlement in bottom lands along Salt River, where
growth necessarily is limited. Its school-house is about three miles
north of Mesa, which has made by far the greater growth. First known as
Camp Utah, or Utahville, for years it was called Jonesville, but finally
the postoffice name of Lehi, suggested by Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., has
firmly attached.
The first Mormon marriage in the Salt River Valley was at Lehi, that of
Daniel P. Jones and Mary E. Merrill, August 26, 1877. The first birth was
of their son. The first permanent separate house, of adobe, at Lehi, was
built by Thomas Biggs, in the spring of 1878. There was a public school
as early as 1878, taught by Miss Zula Pomeroy. In 1880 an adobe
schoolhouse was built at a cost of $142, the ground donated by Henry C.
Rogers, with David Kimball its main supporter. The following year was
built a much better schoolhouse.
The settlement has a townsite of six blocks, each 26 rods square, with
streets four rods wide, surveyed in November, 1880, by Henry C. Rogers.
Lehi was badly damaged February 19, 1891, when Salt River reached a
height never known before or since. The stream flooded the lower parts of
Phoenix and inundated a large part of the farming land at Lehi. A second
flood, a few days later, was three feet higher than the first. Five Lehi
Indians were drowned and several hundred of them lost their possessions.
Chapter Nineteen
The Planting of Mesa
Transformation of a Desert Plain
Though by no means with exclusive population of the faith, Mesa, sixteen
miles east of Phoenix and in the Salt River Valley, today includes the
largest organization of the Saints within Arizona and is the center of
one of the most prosperous Stakes of the Church. It is beautifully
located on a broad tableland, from which its Spanish name is derived, and
is the center of one of the richest of farming communities. In general,
the soil is of the best, without alkali, and its products cover almost
anything that can be grown in the temperate or semi-tropic zones.
At all times since its settlement, Mesa has prospered, but its prosperity
has been especially notable since the development, a few years ago, of
the Pima long-staple cotton. Nearly every landowner, and Mesa is a
settlement of landowners, has prospered through this industry, though
it has been affected by the post-war depression. The region is one of
comfortable, spacious homes and of well-tilled farms, with less acreage
to each holding than known elsewhere in the valley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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