CAUSATIVE FACTORS IMPACTING TWO MAJOR WAVES OF SETTLEMENT IN BOX ELDER COUNTY, UTAH

CAUSATIVE FACTORS IMPACTING TWO MAJOR WAVES OF SETTLEMENT IN BOX ELDER COUNTY, UTAH 1849-1925 Frederick M. Huchel THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS OCCASIONAL PAPERS OF THE FRITHUREX ATHENÆUM CAUSATIVE FACTORS IMPACTING TWO MAJOR WAVES OF SETTLEMENT IN BOX ELDER COUNTY, UTAH 1849-1925 Frederick M. Huchel The Frithurex Athenæum 2016 Copyright © 2016 The Frithurex Athenæum Frithurex LLC All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — except for brief, referenced quotations in scholarly books or articles — without the written permission of the publisher. Published by Frithurex Press for the Frithurex Athenæum Printed in the United States of America CAUSATIVE FACTORS IMPACTING TWO MAJOR WAVES OF SETTLEMENT IN BOX ELDER COUNTY, UTAH 1849-1925 Abstract The prevailing belief among historians is that the settlement of early Utah’s towns and villages was chiefly a result of hiving off from the mother settlement in “Great Salt Lake City, Great Basin, North America.” As it turns out, the actual cause of the early diaspora of settlements in Utah had not so much to do with the natural process of growth as it did with other factors which caused that settlement process to begin far earlier than it otherwise would have done. A half-century after that initial colonization of the geography of Deseret, there was another major colonization process in Utah — at least in Box Elder County, located in the far Northwestern corner of the state. This paper, based in the research of the author for his 1999 book, A History of Box Elder County discusses those two colonizations, particularly as they relate to the settlement and growth of Box Elder County. The original edition, published by the Utah State Historical Society, was heavily edited — due in large part to requirements that the volumes not exceed 450 pages — and was significantly truncated from the author’s original submitted manuscript. The project was actually a first in the United States. It was the first time that any state had authorized and published a series of book-length volumes on every county in the state, at one time. That original volume is out-of-print, now, seventeen years after its publication. A new edition, bearing the title, Box Elder County: a History, is subtitled “author’s original text edition.” The new addition contains the entire, unedited text of the author’s original manuscript, as written. As such, it contains material which did not find its way into the 1999 published volume. The material covered in this paper is taken from that larger manuscript. THE DRIVING CAUSES OF SETTLEMENT IN BOX ELDER COUNTY, UTAH among historians is that the settlement of early Utah’s towns and villages was chiefly a result of hiving off from the mother settlement in “Great Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Valley, Great Basin.” As it turns out, the actual cause of the early Diaspora of settlements in Utah had not so much to do with the natural process of growth as it did with other factors which caused that settlement process to begin far earlier than it otherwise would have done. The exacerbating cause of the settlement of the territory which became the state of Utah was not the natural growth of the main settlement in the Salt Lake Valley. Settlement began in earnest in the middle of the year 1847, as a wagon-train moved slowly and laboriously down Emigration Canyon and out onto a prominence with a view of the valley of the Great Salt Lake. This pioneer company, as it began its journey, nearly 1,800 miles to the east, consisted of 143 men, 3 women, 2 children, 73 wagons, 93 horses, 52 mules, 66 oxen, 19 cows, 17 dogs, “and some chickens.”1 It was the advance company of a migration unparalleled in the history of the American West, and one which changed the face of the Great Basin, of Utah, and of Box Elder forever. All 147 members of that weary entourage were Mormons, members of a seventeen-year-old religious movement unique in American history. This was a religious exodus, to the Mormons one like unto the exodus of the Children of Israel out of Egypt to their promised land. Brigham Young has been compared to Moses in leading his American Israel on trek of the century. Brigham Young, acutely conscious of biblical symbolism, originally intended that his pioneer company be composed of T HE PREVAILING BELIEF 1 Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 101. 2 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY twelve-times-twelve men, but one become ill, and the pioneer company had only 143 men. When the company came out of Emigration Canyon, Brigham Young gave his prophetic approval to the valley as the place for the Mormons to settle, having seen the spot, he said, in a vision. As the little colony began to set up housekeeping in the new Promised Land, on the shores of the western Dead Sea, Brigham Young headed back to Winter Quarters to direct the migration of the remainder of the homeless Latter-day Saints. Latter-day Israel began their analogous migration, to their analogous homeland with its analogous geography. The similarity of Utah Lake, the Jordan River and Great Salt Lake to the Sea of Tiberius, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea has been noted from the time of the Mormon pioneer trek. The new settlement was grandly named “Great Salt Lake City, Great Basin, North America.” The name was grand, but the settlement was not. The little group of Mormons survived that first winter, grateful for the unusual mildness of the weather, but come spring, before the first green harvest, they nearly starved. One of the most articulate of the early Mormon pioneers, Parley P. Pratt, described the extremity of their condition. We had to struggle against great difficulties in trying to mature a first crop. We had not only the difficulties and inexperience incidental to an unknown and untried climate, but also swarms of insects equal to the locusts of Egypt, and also a terrible drought, while we were entirely inexperienced in the art of irrigation; still we struggled on, trusting in God. During this spring and summer my family and myself in common with many of the camp, suffered much for want of food. This was the more severe on me and my family because we had lost nearly all our cows, and the few which were spared to us were dry, and therefore, we 3 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS had no milk to help out our provisions. I had ploughed and subdued land to the amount of near forty acres, and had cultivated the same in grain and vegetables. In this labor every woman and child in my family, so far as they were of sufficient age and strength, had joined to help me, and had toiled incessantly in the field, suffering every hardship which human nature could well endure. Myself and some of them were compelled to go with bare feet for several months, reserving our Indian moccasins for extra occasions. We toiled hard and lived on a few greens and on thistle and other roots. We had sometimes a little flour and some cheese, and sometimes we were able to procure from our neighbors a little sour skimmed milk or buttermilk. In this way we lived and raised our first crop in these valleys. And how great was our joy in partaking of the first fruits of our industry.2 Their first crop was nearly consumed by crickets, and other pests. They were still in desperate straits when, during a meeting, Brigham Young’s counselor, the prophetic Heber C. Kimball, while addressing the congregation, suddenly began to prophesy. He later recalled the occasion: I have seen the time when our brethren have had to eat beef-hides, wolves, dogs and skunks. You may smile, but I can tell you that it was no laughing matter at that time, for there were many who could not get even dogs to eat. Many of the brethren in those trying times were clothed in skins of wild animals.”3 2 Parley P. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1966), p. 363. 3 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 247 (July 19, 1863). 4 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY Some sources say that some of the Saints were reduced to the exigency of boiling their saddle and harness leather to make soup in order to survive. B. H. Roberts wrote, In this emergency a public meeting was held and the proposition made that the whole camp be put on rations, that those who were already destitute might be supplied with food. This was agreed to and bishop Edward Hunter and Tarlton Lewis were appointed to act in behalf of the destitute, and see that they did not suffer.’ Beef was scarce as the cattle must be kept for work teams and the cows for milk. The few “beef” that were killed were poor and their meat tough.’ Prevailing hunger drove many in search of the earliest vegetation that made its appearance. This was the hardy thistle, native to the valley, the tops of which were gathered and used for “greens,” and pronounced excellent: the roots of the thistle were also cooked and eaten. The sego root was used as an article of food, the colonists in this but following the custom of the native Indians.’ Some deaths occurred from eating poisonous roots, chiefly the wild parsnip that grew in the valley.4 According to another history, The year 1848 opened with the Mormon camp of Great Salt Lake in fair contentment. At first there seemed to be food enough if they apportioned it day by day to each person. But they pinned their hope on the soil which had brought them through the last half year and unquestionably would do even better by them this spring. 4 B. H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church 3:330. Hereinafter CHC. Other accounts say the saints ate wild parsnips, but were poisoned by “death camas” which looked deceptively similar to the sego lily, when the flower was not evident. 5 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS Then flour became scarce. Meat was tough. Butter and tallow were needed. A herd of deer crossing from one range of mountains to another one day was startled by the unexpected obstruction of the fort. One sprang over the wall and into the enclosure and was killed. The pioneers rejoiced and feasted. Wild sago and parsnip roots constituted the vegetable food of the settlers. What was worse, stirred by the vigorous climate and hard labor, the settlers grew hungry and hungrier.5 It was that spring of 1848 which brought the Sego Lily (Calchortus Nuttalii) to fame and to become the state flower of Utah, not only because of its beauty, but because of its nutritious bulbs.6 Not only were the people close to starvation, they had to fight “pests” which came to eat their tender crops, that first season of 1848. The pests came in the form of mammals, such as hordes of mice,7 and also flying and hopping insects. It was also that summer that “Black Crickets by tens of millions came, like fog on the British coast, and the finger of devastation marked its course on the Mormon host.”8 The stately Seagull Monument on Temple Square in Salt Lake City memorializes the saving of the crops that year of 1848, as flocks of California Gulls flew in from islands in Great Salt Lake, and devoured the cricket hordes. 5 Marguerite Cameron, This Is the Place (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Priinters, Ltd., 1939), p. 142. 6 See CHC 3:330-331. 7 See Isabella Horne, “Pioneer Reminiscences,” Young Women’s Journal, vol. 13 [July 1902], p. 294. 8 “The Sea Gulls and the Crickets,” folk song of the period. See Richard E. Lingenfelter, Richard A. Dwyer, and David Cohen, Songs of the American West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). p. 245. Song collected by L. M. Hilton, and published by Austin and Alta Fife. 6 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY The Mormons of Salt Lake Valley eked out an existence through the winter of 1848-1849. We return to Heber C. Kimball’s prophecy of plenty, as the saints huddled in nearstarvation. I have seen the time when our brethren have had to eat beef-hides, wolves, dogs and skunks. You may smile, but I can tell you that it was no laughing matter at that time, for there were many who could not get even dogs to eat. Many of the brethren in those trying times were clothed in skins of wild animals. I felt impressed to prophesy to them, and I said, “Never mind, boys, in less than one year there will be plenty of clothes and everything that we shall want sold at less than St. Louis prices.”9 Heber C. Kimball was known among his people for his gift of prophecy. Even so, when he sat down, fellow apostle Charles C. Rich leaned over and said “that he thought I had done up the job at prophesying that time.”10 Heber was inclined to agree. “I thought when I came to reflect upon it that it was a very improbable thing.”11 But, as Heber later explained, “the sequel showed the prediction to be of the Lord. In less than six months, the emigration to California came through here laden down with good clothing, bacon, flour, groceries and everything we wanted.”12 The gold rush provided the Mormons with a mixed blessing, primarily, it 9 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 247 (July 19, 1863). 10 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 247 (July 19, 1863). 11 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 247 (July 19, 1863). 12 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 247 (July 19, 1863). 7 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS provided them with needed goods. In Heber C. Kimball’s words, “The opening of the gold mines had caused them to rush for the scene of excitement; they came with their trunks full of the best of clothing, and they opened them and turned out a great deal of the clothing, and the brethren and sisters bought good coats, vests, shawls and dresses at a mere nominal price, and in this way the Lord supplied our wants, and he will do so again if the circumstances ever require it.”13 Heber’s biographer and descendant, Stanley B. Kimball, reminds us that even this has a parallel with ancient Israel, a text from “2 Kings, where there is described, at the time of the Syrian Wars, a famine so terrible that people ate asses’ heads, doves’ dung, even their own children. At the height of this crisis, Elisha prophesied a miraculous end to the famine, and the next day the Syrians, leaving behind all their stores, fled before the rumor of approaching Hittite and Egyptian mercenaries.”14 Stanley Kimball notes that, “From 15,000 to 20,000 passed through Salt Lake City in need of fresh supplies, ground grain, wagon and harness repair, and help in lightening their loads.”15 He notes that “The Mormons . . . were able to trade at one-fifth to one-half of eastern market value. Three heavy wagons went for one light one, and sometimes a team of oxen would be thrown into the deal; a wagon could be bought for half what the iron would cost in St. Louis; horses and mules rose to $200 a head.”16 About the same time, a group of veterans who had marched with the Mormon Battalion of the United States 13 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 247 (July 19, 1863). 14 Stanley B. Kimball, Heber C. Kimball: Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), p. 190. 15 Stanley B. Kimball, Heber C. Kimball: Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), p. 190. 16 Stanley B. Kimball, Heber C. Kimball: Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), p. 190. 8 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY Army in the War with Mexico, were returning from their enlistment. They had traveled up the coast from their mustering-out at San Diego, and had worked for a time building a sawmill for Johann August Sutter, on the American River. While they were there, gold was discovered in the tail race of the mill. Credit for the discovery is given to James Wilson Marshall. The discovery was recorded in journals of two of the “Battalion Boys,” Azariah Smith and Henry W. Bigler, who recorded the date of the discovery as January 24, 1848. There is some claim, stated privately in the family of Henry W. Bigler, that it was he who made the first discovery, and that Marshall paid him to keep quiet, so that Marshall could claim the discovery of gold.17 It was another Mormon, Samuel Brannan, who shouted the discovery of gold on the streets of San Francisco, chiefly to boost sales of mining supplies at his store. That public announcement began the gold rush of 1849, and the flood of forty-niners from the eastern states to California. It was that flood of California-bound immigrants which provided the most immediate of the two reasons for the Mormon settlement of Box Elder. The relationship of the gold rush to the settlement of Box Elder County began with the Salt Lake-bound trip of a group of Mormon Battalion veterans, who pioneered what become known as the Salt Lake Cutoff. The Salt Lake Cutoff was pioneered in 1848, when the “Battalion Boys,” discharged members of the Mormon Battalion returning from California after the discovery of gold at Sutter’s sawmill, met Captain Samuel J. Hensley, a U. S. 17 This author will respect the identity of his informant, who informed him of a discussion among members of the Battalion, years later, in the Manti temple, regarding the event. 9 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS Army captain, traveling with ten men on the way west. It was Hensley who “discovered” the route, and the Battalion Boys who made a wagon road. Hensley’s name, applied to the route, a spring, a mountain, and a valley in the immediate area of his meeting with the returning Battalion members, was heard, orally transmitted, and became, in turn, “Hensell,” “Hansel,” and even “Hazel” on one map. So, we find that Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley was named for Captain Samuel J. Hensley.18 Hensley’s party traveled with horses. The Battalion Boys had wagons, and thus, they are the ones who make the trail a road which could serve the wagons of the gold seekers. Often called the “Salt Lake Cutoff,” the trail around the north end of Great Salt Lake ought, in fairness, to be known as “Hensley’s Cutoff.” When a party of men with saddle and pack horses under Samuel J. Hensley headed north from Salt Lake City in early August 1848, they did not realize they were about to make history. The event was mentioned in a letter dated August 9, 1848, from Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor, and John Smith to Brigham Young, who was en route his second trip West. The letter stated, “Ten of the U. S. Troops under Captain Hensley lately arrived in our valley on their way to California; they tried Hasting’s route, but the desert was so miry from heavy rains that they have returned and gone on by way of Fort Hall.”19 18 L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, “The Road to ‘Fortune’: The Salt Lake Cutoff,” Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3 [Summer 1965], p. 255. 19 “Journal History” of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS Church Archives, under the date August 9, 1848; cited in L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, “The Road to ‘Fortune’: The Salt Lake Cutoff,” Utah Historical Quarterly, volume 33, number 3 [Summer 1965], pp. 249-250. Fleming and Standing note (p. 250, note 1) that “The Hastings route was across the salt flats south of Great Salt 10 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY Hensley and his pack train had stopped in Salt Lake City, then had tried the Hastings Cutoff across the Salt Desert.20 They fell prey to the dangers of the Cutoff and the vicissitudes of the Salt Flats. Moving rapidly, as packers did, they had reached Salt Lake City. Thoroughly schooled in western travel, Hensley decided...that Hastings’s Cutoff offered the best route for packers. But when well out on the salt flats, the party was overwhelmed by a cloudburst such as occasionally strikes during the summer in that desert region. The abundant water softened the salt crust, and the whole plain became mere mush. The animals bogged down immediately. The equipment and provisions had to be sacrificed; pack saddles were cut loose in a desperate attempt to save the animals. During forty-eight hours without food or fresh water, the men labored, and finally managed to retrace their course and escape from the trap. There was nothing for [them], then, but to return to Salt Lake City, and to reprovision.21 Captain Hensley, a veteran of traveling in the West, had traveled with Joseph C. Chiles in 1843, and had worked for John Sutter in California. He had even been an officer in Lake followed by the Donner and other parties in 1846. For an account of the location of this trail, see Henry J. Webb, ‘The Last Trek Across the Great Salt Desert,’ Utah Historical Quarterly, 31 (Winter, 1963), 26-33.” 20 See Henry J. Webb, ‘The Last Trek Across the Great Salt Desert,’ Utah Historical Quarterly, 31 (Winter, 1963), pp. 26-33; L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, “The Road to ‘Fortune’: The Salt Lake Cutoff,” Utah Historical Quarterly, volume 33, number 3 [Summer 1965], p. 250-251; George R. Stewart, The California Trail (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), pp. 201-202. 21 George R. Stewart, The California Trail (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), p. 202. 11 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS Frémont’s Bear Flag Revolt. Returning to the East, he had testified at Frémont’s court-martial in November, 1847January, 1848.22 When he made history in Box Elder, Hensley was on his way to California again. Having lost so much time in the abortive attempt to cross the Salt Desert, instead of going north to Fort Hall as Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor and John Smith were given to believe, Hensley’s party forded Bear River somewhere in Box Elder county, and rode west along the route of Interstate Highway 84 to Snowville, then west to join the California Trail from Fort Hall in what is called Emigration Canyon, at a place called the Twin Sisters, just south of City of Rocks, Idaho. They first went north about eighty miles, following [Hazen] Kimball’s track. Then they prepared to swing off to the northwest and west; after a distance which they could feel certain was about a hundred miles, they would hit the emigrant road. They could feel moderately sure that they would encounter springs and grass. In any case, such an exploration on horseback offered no great hazard, since [one] could ordinarily expect to turn around and return to a place from which [one] had taken off. So they forded Bear River and set out boldly on their three-or four-day ride across the unknown.23 On Sunday, August 27, 1848, a little more than a fortnight after leaving Salt Lake City, Hensley met a group of the returning Battalion Boys, who had come up the Humboldt and Mary’s rivers on their way to Great Salt Lake City. The 22 L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, “The Road to ‘Fortune’: The Salt Lake Cutoff,” Utah Historical Quarterly, volume 33, number 3 [Summer 1965], p. 250. 23 George R. Stewart, The California Trail (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), p. 202. 12 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY encounter was chronicled by no less than the indefatigable diarist, Henry W. Bigler: . . . Laid by at 3 p.m. the camp came together at Addison Pratts tent and held prayer meeting, just as meeting was over Captain S. Hensley and Company of ten on packs came up we were informed by Capt. H. that it was not more than 380 miles to Salt Lake by takeing a certain route that he had found and had just come he gave us a way bill saying the route was a good one and easy to be found saveing at least 8 or ten days travel as it was our intention to go by way of Fort Hall. Mr. Hensley had got defeated in attempting to take Haistings Cutoff and had turned back by so doing discovered this new route and found it to be much nearer than Hasting’s . . . .24 Having guessed and traveled successfully, Samuel Hensley and party rejoined the emigrant trail just south of Cathedral Rocks, and then continued west, encountering the Battalion returnees on August 27th. After his meeting with the Mormons, Captain Samuel J. Hensley passed on out of Box Elder county into virtual oblivion, leaving his name, not on the cutoff which deserved it, but on several other features in Box Elder County on his route. Sadly, though, the name, passed on through oral tradition, was garbled by the time it was committed to a map, and we find it only as Hansel Valley, Hansel Spring, and the Hansel Mountains. After two more days’ travel, the Mormons met a large company, forty-eight wagons under the command of none other than J. B. Chiles. Chiles had traveled the West before, in 1841, pioneering the route to Fort Hall via Fort Bridger, 24 L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, “The Road to ‘Fortune’: The Salt Lake Cutoff,” Utah Historical Quarterly, volume 33, number 3 [Summer 1965], p. 250, quoting from “West from Fort Bridger” in Utah Historical Quarterly, XIX (1951), p. 250. 13 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS then north-westward along the Snake River to Fort Boise, then crossing the present-day California border at Goose Lake, and following the Sacramento River south to Sutter’s Fort. Upon being informed of Hensley’s discovery, Chiles told the Battalion Boys that there was a cutoff that was shorter yet, and gave the Boys a “waybill”25 for his projected cutoff. The Mormon travelers sent scouts ahead to find Chiles’ route. Nine days later, the main group encountered their scouts near the head of Mary’s River. Chiles’ fabled cutoff had been a figment of the old explorer’s imagination. The Boys then decided to follow the route described by Captain Hensley.26 On September 15, they reached the place where Hensley’s cutoff separated from the trail north to Fort Hall. That spot was the small valley dotted with spires of wind-eroded granite, a surreal landscape of fantastic shapes called Cathedral Rocks. At the point where the new cutoff left the old road was a notable landmark, mentioned by Hensley, a pair of tall rocks which one of the men, Addison Pratt, gave the name “the Twin Sisters.”27 From Cathedral Rocks, now more commonly called the City of Rocks, the Salt Lakebound Mormon Battalion Boys descended to the site of present-day Almo, Idaho, then followed the Raft River (called by them Cajnes or Cazier Creek), through the narrows east of Almo, then southeasterly to the site of Naf. The Boys made Hensley’s trail into a road, crossing the present-day Idaho- 25 A waybill was, in effect, an itinerary, listing the route, the landmarks by which it could be followed, mileages, and noting springs, rivers, and sources of feed for animals. 26 George R. Stewart, The California Trail (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), pp. 202-204; L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, “The Road to ‘Fortune’: The Salt Lake Cutoff,” Utah Historical Quarterly, volume 33, number 3 [Summer 1965], pp. 250-251. 27 L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, “The Road to ‘Fortune’: The Salt Lake Cutoff,” Utah Historical Quarterly, volume 33, number 3 [Summer 1965], p. 204. 14 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY Utah border just south of Naf, then following just south of the route of Utah highway 42, past Cedar springs, Emigrant springs and Pilot springs across what is known as the Rose Ranch. The cutoff passed south of Snowville to Hansel spring, where the highway passes the Hansel Mountains.28 Following a route necessary for wagons, oxen and horses, the road continued to the next source of water, Blue spring, then past Blind springs to the site of Garland. From there, the trail went north to the only good wagon crossing of the Malad River at Rocky Ford, west of Plymouth, then south-east through Fielding to the best ford of the Bear River, later known as Hampton’s Ford. From there the road followed Hazen Kimball’s track along the route of present highway 69, from spring to spring to the north end of what was to become Box Elder settlement. Where the Kotter farm now is, the road turned east to meet Rees spring and avoid the marshy country below the foothills. From there the road turned west and traveled along what is now Brigham City’s main street, becoming U. S. Highway 89 south of town. The road followed the springs, to allow for watering both man and beast.29 At Cold spring, near the Box Elder-Weber county 28 As often happens as trails become roads and place names are conferred by chance, Samuel Hensley has not been accorded the recognition he deserves. His route, which became the main route to California during the Gold Rush, traveled by tens of thousands of emigrants, became known as the Salt Lake Cutoff. Although his name was conferred on a spring, a range of mountains, and a valley, by the time it was written down, it had become Hansel Valley, Hansel Mountains, and Hansel Spring (also called Dillie Spring), short shrift given to the route’s pioneer, Samuel J. Hensley. 29 One of the prominent springs in southern Box Elder is Porter Spring, just west of the tiny town of Perry. Not only was it one of the important springs along the Salt Lake Road, it bridges the gap between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in an interesting, entrepreneurial way. In the 1850s, LDS apostles Charles C. Rich and Amasa Lyman 15 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS line, the route of the Salt Lake Cutoff turns west, along a line which follows the springs and avoids the sand and the marshes, through Plain City, Hooper, and Syracuse, then curving east to meet U. S. highway 89 at theformer site of the USU experimental Farm north of Farmington. The road then went along the foothills past Bountiful to the City of the Great Salt Lake. The Hensley Cutoff became one of the major routes to the gold fields, in fact, the major route for summer travel. It also became the route many Mormon missionaries traveled to San Francisco to take sail for their fields of labor, particularly in the Pacific islands. Most discussions of the “California Trail” treat the Fort Hall route and the southern route to the exclusion of the route via Hensley’s Cutoff. Even a very recent work on Old Utah Trails features the southern route and ignores the northern. The northern route was probably the more significant of the were sent to California to reclaim tithing funds collected by renegade Mormon adventurer Samuel Brannan. They took along as their guide, no doubt-bodyguard, and probable enforcer, Orrin Porter Rockwell. Rockwell had been to the California gold fields, and knew the territory. After their return, Rockwell realized that money was to be better made off the gold seekers than in the gold fields. Accordingly, he homesteaded on the spring which bears his name, making it a “recruiting” place for men and animals. It was the northernmost of the springs along the Salt Lake Road which had both plenty of water and plenty of grass. Travelers to the gold fields could stop a while, fatten their horses, oxen, and milk cattle (for a price, collected by the enterprising Porter Rockwell) and then head out across the desert in much better condition. It was a veritable Flying J Travel Plaza of antiquity. It is interesting that, in the 1970s, Porter Spring was purchased by Jay Call, descendent of Mormon pioneer Anson Call, and owner of Flying J. Mr. Call built his dream house on the edge of the pond at Porter Spring, and it serves today (1966) as his private “recruiting” place, a home in an edenic spot with a considerable heritage. [See J. Kenneth Davies, Mormon Gold (op. cit.); Howard M. Carlisle, Colonist Fathers, Corporate Sons: A Selective History of the Call Family (Calls Trust, 1996), p. 190]. 16 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY two, particularly with reference to the gold rush. According to prolific Utah historian Brigham D. Madsen, “During 1849 most of the approximately 10,000 gold emigrants who passed through Salt Lake City chose to travel the Salt Lake Road. Only a few parties attempted Hastings Cutoff south of Great Salt Lake. Similarly, nearly all of the 15,000 who went via Salt Lake City also used the Salt Lake Road.”30 It was this northern route, Hensley’s Cutoff, or the Salt Lake Road, that figures prominently into the story of Box Elder County. It is not uncommon to think of the land surrounding the Great Salt Lake, prior to 1847, and that in Box Elder County in particular, prior to 1851, as virgin, trackless desert, through which the Mormon pioneers made the first trails. The facts do not support that impression. The road north from Salt Lake City to the Bear River was a trail from pre-historic times. Native American encampments show that the area was welltraveled from antiquity. As we have seen, between the foothills and the lake shore are found numerous sites inhabited by the ancient pre-historic peoples of Box Elder. Their camp-sites and burials dot the land. The Shoshoni became their successors in use and possession of the land we now call the northern Wasatch Front. Still to be seen is evidence of the trail between the summer hunting grounds of Cache and Bear Lake valleys and the wintering caves on Promontory peninsula, as it comes through Flat Bottom canyon and down the west face of Wellsville Mountain. Both Bear River Canyon and Box Elder Canyon were frequented by trappers of the fur companies in the 1820s. Both Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith came into Box Elder in 30 Brigham D. Madsen, ed., Exploring the Great Salt Lake: The Stansbury Expedition of 1849-50 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989), p. 173, note 42. 17 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS 1824 and 1826, respectively. Peter Skene Ogden came through in 1828.31 The trails there before the Mormons came. In 1843, John C. Frémont’s exploring party came down the Malad river to its confluence with the Bear, and down the latter stream nearly to its mouth. They then followed a beaten trail along the foothills of the Wasatch to the vicinity of present-day Ogden. With the westbound travel of such companies as that of Captain Hensley and eastbound travelers such as the returning Battalion Boys, the trails were wellmarked by 1849, when Howard Stansbury and his mapping team passed along the foothills of the northern Wasatch. With ten thousand forty-niners passing around the Lake using Hensley’s Cutoff, followed by nearly fifteen thousand the following year, it is apparent that when the first Mormon scouting party came to Box Elder in the fall of 1850, they were not blazing a trail through a trackless wilderness. Indeed, the Salt Lake Cutoff had become a major highway, with many of the problems of a busy thoroughfare, 1840s style. Grass along the trail was eaten by oxen and mules and soon became depleted. The trail became wider and wider as cattle ranged further and further afield in search of fodder. The wide road grew dusty under the hoofs and wheels of countless wagon trains. With tens of thousands of gold-fevered fortune-hunters traveling through Salt Lake Valley, and around the northern end of Great Salt Lake on their way to the new El Dorado, the route became not only a wide, dusty thoroughfare, but one littered with more than the digested grass and hay of horses and cattle. The trail was littered with discarded furniture, stoves, spoiled and discarded bacon and other foodstuffs, broken wagons, and the carcases of unnumbered cattle and horses. The debris was everywhere, and in some places the stench was terrific. This was particularly annoying to 31 Fred R. Gowans, “Early Trappers,” (1981), pp. 80-81. 18 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY travelers who moved in the open, on foot, at a very slow pace. According to historians Fleming and Standing, Estimates of the number of emigrants who traveled by various routes to the Humboldt River and over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to California in 1849 vary from 22,500 to about 40,000. George R. Stewart, who probably has made the most conservative and most accurate calculations, estimates there were 21,500 people with 6,200 wagons plus another 1,000 people traveling with riding and pack animals for a total of 22,500 in 1849. He estimates in addition, there were 40,000 draft animals pulling the wagons plus about 20,000 riding animals, packhorses and mules, milk cows, and “oxen driven along as spares or to be slaughtered for food,” which adds up to a total of 60,000 animals. Mr. Stewart estimates that the migration over the California Trail totaled about 45,000 in 1850; only 1,000 in 1851; 52,000 in 1852; 20,000 in 1853; 12,000 in 1854; only a few hundred in 1855; 8,000 in 1856; 4000 in 1857.32 Stewart calculates that more than 165,000 people and nearly a million animals crossed to California between 1849 and 1857.33 A good many of those travelers wended their dusty way along the track that was to become the main axis of Brigham City, Utah. Box Elder County was not a trackless waste in 1850, nor in 1847, nor in 1843, nor any time in 32 L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, “The Road to ‘Fortune’: The Salt Lake Cutoff,” Utah Historical Quarterly, volume 33, number 3 [Summer 1965], p. 258. 33 George R. Stewart, The California Trail (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), p. 231-232, 319; L. A. Fleming and A. R. Standing, “The Road to ‘Fortune’: The Salt Lake Cutoff,” Utah Historical Quarterly, volume 33, number 3 [Summer 1965], p. 258. See especially note 20. 19 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS history, and even many years into pre-history, and the trappers, the government explorers, and the gold seekers joined the pre-historic and historic Native Americans in making it so. So, though Box Elder was not a trackless waste, neither was it settled. That began to change in 1849. The flood of gold-seekers who came rushing along what would become the main street of Brigham City provided a thoroughfare along which the settlement of Box Elder could take place. Brigham Young and his followers had come to the valleys of the Rocky Mountains to be alone, to be among those of their own religious persuasion. They had had nothing but trouble with their “gentile” neighbors in the East, and they had come here to build their Zion in peace, and in solitude. The last thing Brigham Young wanted was the encroachment of the kind of people who sought for quick riches in the gold fields, and many of whom were the very people they had fled only a handful of years before. This being the case, the Mormon leader saw that he had to secure all the settle-able valleys and all the arable land, before the “gentiles” came in upon them. For that reason, even amidst their poverty, and before Salt Lake Valley was properly settled, Brigham Young stepped up his colonization of a much wider area, both in the northern valleys of the Great Basin, and the long Mormon Corridor to the south. Only limited settlement had taken place outside the main colony by 1849. In September, 1847, Peregrine Sessions arrived and moved north to found Sessions’ Settlement about ten miles north of the main camp.34 Not long after, Hector C. Haight 34 Sessions Settlement became Bountiful. See Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 174. 20 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY settled about seven miles north of Sessions’.35 In January, 1848, Mormon Battalion veteran Captain James Brown bought out Miles Goodyear’s plot in Weber valley, with $3,000 of California gold.36 By the end of 1848, the Salt Lake Valley itself had seen the founding of Big Cottonwood, East Mill Creek, Sugar House, Bingham, South Cottonwood, North Jordan, and West Jordan, as well as the founding of Centerville between Sessions’ and Haight’s settlements.37 This expansion was fueled by the arrival of more and more Mormons from the East. On September 20, 1848, Brigham Young arrived with a contingent of 1,229 people, with “397 wagons, 74 horses, 19 mules, 1,275 oxen, 699 cows, 184 loose cattle, 411 sheep, 141 pigs, 605 chickens, 37 cats, 82 dogs, 3 goats, 10 geese, 2 hives of bees, and 8 doves.”38 A few days later, Heber C. Kimball arrived “with 662 people and 226 wagons, 57 horses, 25 mules, 737 oxen, 284 cows, 150 loose cattle, 243 sheep, 96 pigs, 299 chickens, 17 cats, 52 dogs, 3 hives of bees, 3 doves, 5 ducks, and 1 squirrel.”39 The Kimball company was followed by the combined companies of Willard Richards and Amasa Lyman “with a company of 526 souls (502 whites and 24 Negroes) with 169 wagons, 50 horses, 20 mules, 515 oxen, 426 cows and loose cattle, 369 35 Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 174. Haight’s settlement became Kaysville. 36 Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 174. This became the site of Ogden city. 37 Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), pp. 174-175. 38 Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 175. 39 Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 175. 21 sheep, 63 pigs, 44 dogs, 170 chickens, 4 turkeys, 7 ducks, 5 doves, and 3 goats.”40 According to Russell Rich, in 1848, “The population of the valley was increased more than 2,500 souls, and the second winter saw about 4,500 souls living in the valley.”41 The year 1849 saw settlement of Genua, Union, Little Cottonwood, Brighton, Granger, and Draper in the Salt Lake Valley. Brigham’s worries about the influx of “Americans” from the east (and back from California) brought settlements further to the south, along the route of the trail to California. The first major settlement outside the valley was Fort Utah, about forty miles south of the capital city.42 The next settlement, under the direction of Nauvoo veteran Isaac Morley, was sent to the Sanpete valley, on the San Pitch river. Hard upon the heels of the arrival of the Sanpete company, Brigham Young sent out his first major expedition to the south. The Southern Exploring Company was sent south in December, 1849. The company had as its presiding officer the intrepid Parley P. Pratt. All this was, if not caused by, then at least greatly advanced by the discovery of gold in the tailrace of Sutter’s sawmill, some seven hundred miles to the west. When James W. Marshall walked up out of the tail race of Johann Sutter’s saw mill on the American river, he was a man much pleased with himself. His thoughts were certainly of gold and of prosperity, but he could not have comprehended in his wildest imagination the effect of his discovery on the Mormons, on California, on the United States, or on Box Elder. The chain of events set in motion by James Marshall that January day in 1848 had ripples which reached far indeed. The population surge to the American west coast, and the naval presence the United States built up in the Pacific as a 40 Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 175. 41 Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 175. 42 Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations (Provo: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 175. Fort Utah became Provo. SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY result led as far as Asia when Commodore Perry steamed his four Black Ships into Tokyo harbor in 1853. The opening of Japan to world trade in 1854 was a ripple from the hand of James Marshall dipping into the tail race of Sutter’s sawmill on the slopes of the California Sierras. We have seen that many thousands of gold seekers traveled to Salt Lake City and north around Great Salt Lake, across Nevada, and over the Sierra Nevada to California during the gold rush. Other thousands took the southern route to California, along the Mormon Corridor to San Bernardino. As more and more people came through Utah, their widening trails did not go unnoticed by Brigham Young. Brigham the prophet, the 19th-century Moses, had led latter-day Israel to the desert valleys of the Great Basin for a reason. In the valleys of the mountains the Saints of the Latter-days could be alone, to live and to worship as they pleased. They were different from other American people. Their ways and their beliefs and their view of their destiny was not accepted where they had settled. They had been persecuted and driven from the finger lakes of New York, then from Missouri’s vales, from Kirtland on the Chagrin river, and finally from Nauvoo, the City of Joseph on the mighty Mississippi. Brigham Young was tired of the friction and the sparks of the Saints’ uncomfortable interface with the gentiles. They had left the settled part of the country to be alone in the mountains of Deseret. There they wanted to be left alone, at least for a while. Brigham had said, “if our enemies will let us alone for ten years we will ask no odds of them.”43 The time was not yet up. The sprouts of the growing Zion in the Rocky Mountains were yet tender, and here were 43 Brigham Young, Jr., JD 15:196 [October 8, 1872]. In a sad irony, Elder Smith added, “Ten years that day, brethren, we got news that an army had left the confines of the States at that time, for Utah. What for? Their boast was, to destroy the ‘Mormons.’” 23 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS gentile hoards, coursing through the villages of Zion on the way to worship at the altars of the god of gold. The prophet of Deseret knew that sooner or later, some of those hoards, having seen the vales of Deseret, would either tarry by the wayside or, in returning from El Dorado, would neglect to return all the way to the “states.” Brigham Young was not about to let the gentiles get a foothold in Deseret. The Lord had foretold the Saints, through Heber C. Kimball, that the gold-seekers would come, and that their states’ goods and their need for food would be a boon to the struggling Saints. Their money was welcome, their goods were welcome for trade, but they themselves were not welcome. It was obvious to the Colonizer that all of Zion must be secured in the control of the Latter-day Saints. The waste places of Zion must be settled. The valleys, the springs, the rivers along the California trail, both north and south had to be settled and secured. Brigham Young quickened the pace of his colonizing of the Great Basin. The valleys of Box Elder and Cache had been explored in August, 1847. As the gold rush made of the Salt Lake Cutoff in some places a five-hundred-foot-wide thoroughfare, as the quadrupeds which pulled the wagons and carried the travelers foraged at the margins of the trail, which was also littered with trunks, stoves, books, and tons of rotting bacon — augmenting the stench of animal droppings and other detritus along the route, it made Box Elder an integral part of the Cutoff route. In 1849, Brigham Young, as we have noted, settled the southern portion of the Salt Lake Valley. That same year, he sent a group to found Fort Utah on Utah Lake in Utah Valley, 24 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY and sent Isaac Morley to Sanpete, to begin settlement in that valley.44 The settlement of Box Elder under the colonizing eye of Brigham Young began in the fall of 1850, with the arrival of William Davis, James Brooks, and Thomas Pierce. They came as far north as Box Elder Creek, three miles north of Orrin Porter Rockwell’s homestead on Porter Spring. The infamous “Port” bears the honor of being probably the first Mormon to settle in Box Elder. In 1849, Porter Rockwell had accompanied Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich to California to visit the Mormon colony at Yerba Buena.45 A group of Mormons, under the direction of the unstable Sam Brannan, had sailed around the “Horn” by ship, landing at the tiny Spanish settlement of Yerba Buena on San Francisco Bay. Brannan, who had grand aspirations, had tried to persuade Brigham Young to continue west to the lush lands overlooking the Pacific. This Brigham declined to do, since he wanted his saints to settle in a place which was not as attractive to immigrants as the Pacific Coast, as well as being true to his mandate to settle near the Book of Mormon Remnant.46 Brannan, his pride injured, his feathers ruffled, and his delusions of grandeur better fed a long distance from the powerful Brigham Young, stayed in California, and tried to build his own version of Zion there. Being the presiding officer of the Church in that area, he collected the tithing of 44 Jesse C. Little, Journal, p. 47, MS, cited in Milton R. Hunter, Brigham Young the Colonizer (Salt Lake City: The Deseret News Press, 1940), p. 34. 45 Present-day San Francisco. 46 Book of Mormon Title Page; DHC 1:315; Ronald W. Walker, “Seeking the ‘Remnant’: The Native American During the Joseph Smith Period,” Journal of Mormon History, Volume 19, Number 1 [Spring 1993], pp. 1-33. 25 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS the saints under his wing. He neglected, however, to forward the tithes to Salt Lake City. In 1849, Brigham Young sent apostles Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich to visit the Yerba Buena colony, and the contingent of Mormon Argonauts in the vicinity, and perhaps not incidentally, to recover the sacred tithing funds of the Church. Perhaps the inclusion of Orrin Porter Rockwell, with his fierce reputation was not merely for his abilities as a guide. An any rate, the party reached California, and visited not only the saints, but the brazen Sam Brannan. When the apostles asked for the Lord’s tithing, Brannan grandly retorted, “When the Lord comes in person to ask, then, and only then, will I turn over the money.” Even under the withering gaze of Porter Rockwell, Brannan was unmoved. It is to Porter’s credit — and in contrast to recent sensationalist “biographies” — that the apostles and their guide left (and Sam Brannan was left breathing and unperforated). The important thing to our story in all this is that Orrin Porter Rockwell had opportunity to look over the gold-fields and assess the situation. He realized that few fortunes were made in the gold-sluices, but that all the travelers to California had to feed their cattle. Upon returning, Porter Rockwell homesteaded a spring, the northernmost spring along the Salt Lake Cutoff which afforded not only water but sufficient meadowland to graze and “recruit” cattle for the long trek around the lake, and across the desert. Porter Spring bears his name to this day.47 It was to Box Elder Creek, three miles north of Porter Spring, that William Davis, James Brooks, and Thomas Pierce came in the Fall of 1850. According to local historian Olive H. Kotter, “Very little was known of the locality of Brigham City in 1850, according to the pioneer, John H. 47 Frederick M. Huchel, “Porter Rockwell in Box Elder County,” Hidden All Around Us (2008), pp. 52 ff. An abridged version was published in the Ogden Standard Examiner. 26 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY Peters. He says that Porter Rockwell, William Davis, and Lyman Wells had done some exploring, and claim to have been the first men to establish themselves in this vicinity—Rockwell at Porter Springs, Davis in Brigham City, and Wells at Willard.”48 According to one account, the three explored the creek from the mouth of Box Elder Canyon west to the marshes, and found what they determined was the best place for a camp. They cached a plow for the spring, and returned to Salt Lake City for the winter.49 In the spring of 1851, the three men returned with their families to Box Elder. According to Fife and Petersen, there was “a sizeable stream of clear flowing water with many trees and shrubs along its banks. There were cottonwood, willow, but most numerous were the Box Elder trees which prompted William Davis to name the canyon Box Elder Canyon, and the stream Box Elder Creek.”50 Thus, the Mormon pioneer settlement of Box Elder County was due to factors other than simple growth of the settlement in Salt Lake City, augmented by a flow of converts to the LDS Church from Europe. It was part of a concerted effort to secure all the settle-able valleys and all the arable land, before the “gentiles” — specifically disgruntled goldseekers whose homes in the eastern states were far away, and directly on the route through Box Elder — came in upon them. 48 Olive H. Kotter, “Brigham City to 1900" in Through the Years (Brigham City: Brigham City Eighth Ward, 1953), p. 8. 49 Veara S. Fife and Chloe N. Petersen, Brigham City, Utah Residents, 1850-1877 (Brigham City: Golden Spike Chapter, Utah Genealogical Association, 1976), p. 4. 50 This is an error, since Jesse C. Little used the name Box Elder Creek in his 1847 journal (see above, page 146 at footnote 461. 27 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS The Second Tier A number of Box Elder County town were settled — and named — during what we might call the “second tier” of Utah colonization. Around the turn of the twentieth century, dams were built, canals dug, irrigation systems constructed, and communities arose on the plains distant from the mountain streams, where land could not be brought under irrigation in pioneer days. It is for that reason that a whole cluster of communities bear the names of LDS Church leaders from the turn-of-the-century period: Fielding (Joseph Fielding Smith), Penrose (Charles W. Penrose), and Thatcher (Moses Thatcher). Howell was named for politician and canalmagnate Joseph Howell. Tremonton, settled in 1903, was settled during this period. Rufus Leigh, the Francophile, claims that Tremonton (which didn’t exist until 1903, remember) was named by the French-Canadians in the 1820s. “The etymology of the word is: tres, “three”; and monton, ‘heap or hill.’ There are three low peaks in the vicinity.”51 In fairness to Leigh, though it is not his favorite, he does admit though not in this detail, that the settlers came in response to advertisements placed in the midwest, by land-developers. The group who came in 1903, tellingly came from the area of Tremont, Illinois.52 Another community — which didn’t last, and didn’t live up to the grand prognostications of its promotors — was Appledale, an expansive development of homes and orchards which failed when the irrigation water leached alkali and salt to the surface, killing the apple trees and crops. It was not until the later organizing of the Corinne Drainage District, under the guiding hand of C. G. Adney, and 51 Rufus Wood Leigh, Five Hundred Utah Place Names (Salt Lake City: Rufus Wood Leigh, 1961), p. 98. 52 Ibid. See also John W. Van Cott, Utah Place Names (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), p. 374. 28 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY the laying of an extensive system of drainage tiles, that the area became productive farm land. Until those years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, land which could be profitably used for agriculture was land which could be irrigated from the mountain streams coming down the canyons. The supply of that water was largely dependent upon snowmelt. Once the mountain snow had melted, and the streams had stopped flowing, the supply of water to the fields and orchards was lost, and the maturing of the crops dependent upon the vicissitudes of the climate in any given year. Land out in the valleys, far from the mountain streams, though fertile, was unusable due to a lack of water. The fertility of the land out in the unirrigated valley could be gauged, generally, by the size of the sagebrush which covered the valleys; the larger the sagebrush, the more potentially productive the land tended to be. One of the epic tales of Utah history — and one which has not been brought together as it should be, though the individual stories are found in local histories — is the odyssey of the attempts at building dams across Utah’s major streams and rivers. The story of the many attempts to keep an irrigation dam on the Virgin River above St. George has become a local legend. In our present context, the major tributary of Great Salt Lake — Bear River, which flows some 350 miles from its headwaters in the Uinta Mountains of north-eastern Utah, north into Wyoming, west into Idaho, north and east back into Wyoming, north and west again into Idaho, making a sharp turn south around Soda Point (the Portneuf lava flow turned the Bear River south, and out of its original course through the Portneuf narrows and into the Snake and then the Columbia River, where its waters debouched into the Pacific Ocean at Astoria, Oregon) and south, filling a large portion of the Great Basin with prehistoric Lake Bonneville — is the major waterway running through Box Elder County. 29 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS The first irrigation dam of note in Box Elder was the great cofferdam built across the Bear River at the mouth of the gorge, as part of the Bothwell project, and built by William Garland. The cofferdam was built in 1889-1890. By 1891, the dam was well underway, and the East Side Canal had been built as far as Collinston. Then the capital gave out, due to the landbuying of Kansas City financiers Samuel Jarvis and Roland Conklin.53 Gale Welling says that “After the original funds for the construction had run out, the bondholders advanced more money to complete the canals to a point of usefulness.”54 He notes that “The funds were used on the West Side Canal and on the Corinne Canal, and probably the Central Canal.”55 Water was turned into the canal in the spring of 1892, just in time for the Great Panic. Gale Welling explains that “Water rights for only about 14,000 acres were sold during the first two years, and many of the farmers used the water without making payment. In 1894 the canal was reorganized under the name of Bear River Irrigation and Ogden Water Works Company.”56 This company still intended to extend the East Side Canal south to Ogden. It was this company, with W. H. Rowe as president, and $125,000 of new capital from the bondholders, which constructed the Roweville section of the canal.57 53 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), pp. 72-73. 54 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 75. 55 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 75. 56 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 75 57 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 75. 30 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY The canal system and the cofferdam were marvels of engineering and construction in those years just before the turn of the century. According to Gale Welling, The Bear River Land, Orchard and Beet Sugar Company brochure stated that “the Bear River Canal was awarded the first prize at the World’s Columbian Exposition as a canal system, and it attracted attention of engineers from every part of the world.”58 According to the brochure itself, the canal system . . .is by far the best and most complete system for irrigation in the United States. It heads in the Bear River Canyon in Cache County, Utah. A dam across the river eighteen feet high, two hundred and seventy-five feet wide and one hundred feet thick, with a splendidly constructed set of steel head-gates prepares the entrance to the Canals. There are two branches of the Canal starting from the dam, viz.: The East Side Canal and the West Side Canal. The west Side Canal was constructed purposely for the irrigation of the land belonging to the Bear River Land, Orchard and Beet Sugar Company and other lands in the Bear River Valley and lying on the West side of Bear River. The East Side Canal is not completed yet, but it was contemplated to furnish water on all the land lying on the East side of Bea River from Collinston Station to Brigham City and thence on to Ogden, a distance of fifty miles on an air line.”59 The brochure goes on to describe the canals: “Both East Side and West Side Canals are models of workmanship, 58 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 77. 59 Bear River Land, Orchard and Beet Sugar Company, of Utah brochure. Photocopy of original in possession of the author. The brochure is not paginated. The author is grateful to Eugene Bigler for providing the original brochure. 31 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS showing the energy and pluck of the capitalists in putting money into them, and the daring and skill of the contractors in completing a work of such magnitude, as they are blasted out of the solid rock for two and a half miles on each side of the river, with between two and three thousand feet of tunnels, beautiful masonry, head-gates of steel and spillways for the safety of the Canal.”60 The brochure goes on to note that “In the construction of the dam and the first six miles of the Canal fifty-two car loads of giant powder and five hundred car loads of cement were used, and at one time seven thousand men were employed more than a year on the work.”61 It goes on to state rather grandiosely that “The finished Canal of ninety miles, supplemented by sixty miles of laterals or side canals, now form a perfect system of water supply to the fertile valley lands. The carrying capacity of the Canal is sufficient to carry ample water during the irrigation season, and which will be almost twice the amount per acre irrigated than any other canal system in America gives.”62 In a grand flourish of marketing verbosity, the brochure trumpets that In the matter of water supply the Canal System surpasses all similar enterprises. Bear River is fed by the perpetual snows of the mountains. The streams are sufficient to irrigate ten times the number of acres covered by the Canal System. Such is the altitude of the mountain peaks from whose shows the Canal is fed that the greatest flow of water does not come until summer, a time when it is most valuable to the irrigator. Springs may fail and small mountain streams may run dry, but from fields of perpetual 60 Bear River Land, Orchard and Beet Sugar Company, of Utah brochure. 61 Bear River Land, Orchard and Beet Sugar Company, of Utah brochure. 62 Bear River Land, Orchard and Beet Sugar Company, of Utah brochure. 32 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY ice and snow the great Bear River and Canal from it are as certain as the recurring seasons.” 63 As impressive a construction feat as the canal system was the great cofferdam itself, which was built to replace “The temporary makeshifts which were a marked feature of the earlier irrigation works . . . .”64 An engineering survey and analysis, undertaken apparently in preparation for the building of the great concrete dam and power plant in the 1920s, noted that “The project is . . . one of the most costly and ambitious enterprises ever undertaken.”65 It was constructed well, and to endure. According to Dr. A. C. True, “No recent work has more strongly marked the tendency toward greater durability and firmness than the works of this Canal. The headgates are of iron and rubble masonry; the wastegates and regulating gates all have iron frames. The largest flume on the canal has an iron truss support, and a smaller flume is built of iron — the first, it is believed, to be built in the Unites States.”66 Swendsen and McGonagle describe the 1889 dam as “an 63 Bear River Land, Orchard and Beet Sugar Company, of Utah brochure. Typographical errors have been corrected. 64 Warren G. Swendsen and G. F. McGonagle, “Retrospective Appraisal of the Bear River Canal System as of and when Acquired by the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, July 18th, 1907,” typescript, p. 16. 65 Warren G. Swendsen and G. F. McGonagle, “Retrospective Appraisal of the Bear River Canal System as of and when Acquired by the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, July 18th, 1907,” typescript, p. 16. On page 20, they note that “This canal traverses the steep quartzite and limestone canyon walls a distance of about two miles, and through this section frequent tunnels, rubble and concrete-retaining, or cut-off walls exist, thus making this portion of the system unusually costly.” 66 A. C. True, Bulletin No. 249, U. S. Department of Agriculture, quoted in Warren G. Swendsen and G. F. McGonagle, “Retrospective Appraisal of the Bear River Canal System as of and when Acquired by the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, July 18th, 1907,” typescript, p. 17. 33 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS overflow type, timber crib, rock filled structure, originally 17½ feet high, 38 feet wide at the base and 375 feet long between abutments.”67 The Wheelon Collapsible Dam was engineered by J. C. Wheelon, hired as engineer for the project. His ingenious Collapsible Dam was issued a patent by the United States Patent Office.68 Built between 1899 and 1901, by one hundred thirty-five men, the system of collapsible sections was built atop the old cofferdam, to raise the level of the reservoir, and impound more water. According to John Holmgren, Mr. Wheelon’s “foresight secured for the people of the Bear River Valley one of the best and most secure water rights in the United States when he secured the . . . guarantee and arranged to protect the water users in preference to the land owners adjacent to the Bear Lake”69 which was turned into an impoundment reservoir to regulate annual flow of Bear River. In the pivotal year of 1901, in the spring, the canal system was purchased by the Utah Sugar Company (which in 1907 became the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company), for a reported $300,000. The Utah Sugar Company was one of the major factors in the settlement of the larger valley of the Bear River. The canals coming from the dam provided irrigation to the virgin sagebrush land. The fertile, irrigated land provided farms for the raising of sugar beets. Sugar factories sprang up in Brigham City and in Garland. A number of Japanese agriculturalists came from their Pacific island homes to Box 67 Warren G. Swendsen and G. F. McGonagle, “Retrospective Appraisal of the Bear River Canal System as of and when Acquired by the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, July 18th, 1907,” typescript, p. 17. 68 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), pp. 84-85. 69 Lydia Walker Forsgren, ed., History of Box Elder County (Brigham City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1937), p. 330. 34 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY Elder County to raise vegetables on the newly-available irrigable land. According to Gale Welling, “Shortly after Utah Sugar Co. took possession on May 1, 1901, of the Coffer Dam and Canal system, they conceived the idea of utilizing the water diverted from the Bear River during the off-irrigation season for electric power.”70 Though, ultimately, the East Side Canal did not reach Ogden, the Bear River canyon project continued to extend its arms toward Utah’s second-largest city. Mr. Welling notes that “A contract for this power was obtained by Utah Sugar Co. to supply it to Utah Light and Railway Co. at Ogden.”71 Construction of a hydroelectric power generating plant was begun some distance below the cofferdam. The work was directed by Utah Light and Railway Company engineer R. F. Haywood and J. C. Wheelon, who was now in the employ of the Utah Sugar Company.72 According to Gale Welling, “The power plant and the community was named Wheelon” in his honor.73 The power plant “was built on the east bank of the Bear River. The first unit of this plant had a capacity of abut 2700 horsepower and supplied power to the new Utah Sugar Co. factory at Garland as well as to Utah Light and Railway Co. at Ogden over a 44,000 volt transmission pole line.”74 Mr. Welling continues, “In about 70 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 85. 71 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 85. 72 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 85. 73 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 85. 74 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 85. 35 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS 1904-5 the second part of the building was added on and in creased the capacity to about 3,700 H.P. In about 1906-7 the third part of the plant was built and increased the capacity to about 5,400 H.P. In 1912 the fourth part was added onto it, an the total capacity was about 9,500 H.P.”75 In 1907, the Utah Sugar Company became the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. In 1914, the year Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo and the First World War began, the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company and the Utah Light and Railway Company sold “the power plant, water rights, dam and waterways to the Wheelon plant, and transmission and distribution lines” to the Utah Power and Light Company.”76 Utah Power & Light was the successor to the Telluride Power Company. The story of the Telluride Power Company is one of the most interesting stories having to do with the development of the American West. The story of the Telluride Power Company is, really, the story of two men — two brothers: Lucien Lucius Nunn and his brother Paul. Lucien was the entrepreneur and Paul was the engineer. After building their groundbreaking alternating current hydroelectric power plant at Ames, Colorado, the Nunn brothers built a massive power plant at Niagara Falls, and then turned their eyes westward from Colorado to Utah. The Ames power plant had supplied power to hoist motors for the Gold King mine, near Telluride, Colorado. The success of the Ames Power Plant quickly got the attention of other mines and other potential users of electrical power. Before long, the Nunn brothers cast about for other opportunities in electrical power generation and transmission. L. L. purchased the Hercules Power Plant in Logan Canyon, 75 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 86. 76 Gale Welling, Fielding: The People and the Events that Affected their Lives (Fielding: Gale Welling, n.d.), p. 86. 36 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY Utah and began rebuilding the plant while beginning to build the Nunns plant on the Provo River to the south. Then, the Nunn interests turned their interests to the largest source of hydroelectric power in the Intermountain West, the Bear River. The Bear River Project was a grand and expansive endeavor. L. L. “acquired from the federal government the right to use Their Lake, one of our largest inland lakes, as a reservoir, and built the important plant at Grace on Bear River, in Idaho. . .”77 The Grace plant was finished in 1907. Lucien Nunn purchased land and obtained permissions to divert the Bear River into Bear Lake, on the border of Utah and Idaho, transforming the lake into a reservoir. At the north end of the lake, a canal was dredged, and pumps installed to take water out of the lake and back into the riverbed to suit the needs of power generation. Telluride Power Company’s Bear River Project, largely after the Nunns were forced out and the takeover by Utah Power & Light Company, eventually added power plants at Soda Point near Soda Springs, Idaho, and Oneida in the Oneida Narrows. Using the effluent from the Grace Plant, the company constructed the Cove plant. The final hydroelectric plant on the Bear River Project was in the canyon of the Bear River between Cache and Box Elder counties. The imposing concrete Cutler Dam replaced the old cofferdam and the collapsible dam. Just below the dam, at Wheelon — a company village — dam and power-plant workers lived in small but neat homes. With the completion of Cutler Dam in 1925 (the year before the death of L. L. Nunn), the Bear River Project was complete. 77 Stephen A. Bailey, L. L. Nunn: A Memoir (Ithaca, New York: Telluride Association, 1933), p. 72. 37 THE FRITHUREX MONOGRAPHS Thus, the building of the old cofferdam in Bear River Canyon, augmented by Wheelon’s collapsible dam addition, and replaced by the Cutler Dam in 1925, and particularly the important water rights obtained by Mr. Wheelon, made possible the settling of vast tracts of land in the Bear River Valley, and not only the farming of sugar beets and other crops, but the building of communities made possible by the canals and the irrigation of a significant part of eastern Box Elder County. Thus, to the First Tier pioneer settlements of Porter Spring (1849), Brigham City (1851), North Willow Creek/Willard (1851), Three Mile Creek/Perry (1867), Call’s Fort/Harper Ward (1854), Honeyville (1861), Deweyville (1864) and those of that pioneer period, were added — as a result of the building of the dams and canals — the Second Tier of settlements in Box Elder County: Fielding (named for LDS president Joseph Fielding Smith), Penrose (named for President Smith’s counselor Charles W. Penrose), Thatcher (named for apostle Moses Thatcher). Howell (named for politician and canal-magnate Joseph Howell), Bothwell (John R. Bothwell was president of the Bothwell Canal company), Tremonton (named by settlers come from Tremont, Illinois) Wheelon (named, of course, for J. C. Wheelon), and Cutler Dam, named for John Christopher Cutler (1846 – 1928) the Governor of Utah, from 1905 to 1909. The names of Brigham City (Brigham Young), Willard (Willard Richards, Brigham Young’s counselor in the First Presidency), Snowville (Lorenzo Snow, “founder” of Brigham City), Mantua (Lorenzo Snow was born in Mantua, Ohio), Portage (Mantua, Ohio, was located in Portage County), denote those early settlements as First Tier settlements. All owe their first settlement to the mother-colony of Brigham City (originally named Box Elder, for Box Elder Creek, which flows through the city). The great first cause of that settlement was the Gold Rush of 1849, which, really, provided the site for the town, where the Salt Lake Cutoff 38 SETTLEMENT OF BOX ELDER COUNTY crossed the alluvial fan on which the city is built. The other First Tier settlements hived off from that first town, under Lorenzo Snow’s directing hand. The names of the Second Tier settlements — chiefly officials of the dam and canal companies, and leaders of the LDS Church who had succeeded Brigham Young, Willard Richards, and Lorenzo Snow: Joseph F. Smith, Charles W. Penrose, and Moses Thatcher — betoken their settlement in the 1890s and early 1900s. From the Gold Rush of 1849-1851, to the harnessing of Bear River a half-century later, two significant waves of community settlement mark the development of Box Elder County, Utah. October 13, 2016 Note: The book Hidden All Around Us, by Frederick M. Huchel, as well as Box Elder County: A History (Author’s original text edition) when it becomes available, can be purchased at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Ripliancum Copyright © 2016 Frederick M. Huchel The Frithurex Athenæum The Frithurex Press Frithurex LLC 39 The Author Frederick M. Huchel was destined to be an historian. He was born in Brigham City the summer Utahns were celebrating the centennial of the arrival of the Mormon Pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley. He was acquainted with a number of Brigham City’s older generation, people who had been born before the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869, just twenty-eight miles west of Brigham City. He grew up in the oldest house standing in Brigham City, built before the Move South in 1858, by one of the pioneers of the United Order coöperative. His grandfather and great grandfather, on his Brigham City side, came from Denmark. His Brigham City grandmother was born in Brigham City, of parents who came from Wales. He is the quintessential Brigham City pioneer descendent. At age seventeen, he was the youngest member in the Sons of Utah Pioneers, and, dressed in his Mormon Battalion uniform, carried the national banner at the head of the 24th of July Pioneer Day Parade in Salt Lake City. He was also, at that time, curator of the Railroad Village Museum in Corinne. He drove the last spike at the centennial Golden Spike celebration at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1969. In his twenties, he became director of the Brigham City Museum-Gallery, while studying history along with his biology major at Brigham Young University. He was selected to author the statehood centennial volume A History of Box Elder County. He has written and lectured on Utah history in various parts of the state. He has authored a number of books and articles. He is listed in The Dictionary of Utah Art and Who’s Who in the West, the prestigious Who’s Who in America, and the Millennium Edition of Who’s Who in the World. He and his wife, Cherie, live not far from Brigham City. 40