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Show PART I - 1847 to 1896 CHAPTER I PIONEER WATER ADMINISTRATION, 1847 THROUGH 1865 Beginning the Process The first years of Mormon settlement saw the development of what may be called a pioneer pattern of water administration. Mormon pioneers arrived with few economic resources other than their own potential for hard work and their resolve to establish an independent commonwealth. In this circumstance successful colonization depended directly upon a collective effort to develop and administer water resources for the common good. Water management was introduced in July of 1847 as an essential element of pioneering. During the next five years, water resource use remained under the close direct administration of the church. Throughout the next sixty years, new colonizing groups settled a succession of out- of- the- way spots. In each case these people reverted temporarily to the practices of pioneer water administration as the spread of settlement ran beyond the institutions of political government and the market economy. Each time the new settlers relived many of the elements of the first pioneer experience. A trek was made. Hard- pressed pioneers arrived. With few means, faced by the needs of survival and with little immediate concern for speculative development or market production, generations of pioneers repeated the process of cooperative development as they claimed, diverted, and applied water to their fields. The experiences of successive colonies ingrained habits of mutual responsibility and cooperative effort in the Utah character that have influenced the administration of water ever since. 1 All subsequent water management developments have been superimposed upon the foundation established by pioneer water users. Adapting to an Arid Environment; Cooperation and Common Ownership The most immediate concern of Utah's first pioneers, when they arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley in July of 1847, was to begin the process of farming. Food had to be provided if they were to survive. Drouth and isolation were facts of the environment; integrity of the group and self- sufficiency ( because of the desire for an independent commonwealth) were desired goals. George Lofstrom Strebel, " Irrigation as a Factor in Western History, 1847- 1890" ( Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1965), pp 162- 171. Also see Charles S.. Peterson, Take up Your Mission; Mormon Colonizing Along the Little Colorado River 1870- 1900 ( Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973), pp 176- 191; Leonard J. Arlington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons ( Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976), pp 41- 78. For general treatments see Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History, ( East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1970), pp 121- 146; and Joel E. Ricks, Forms and Methods of Early Mormon Settlement in Utah and the Surrounding Region 1847 to 1877, ( Logan Utah: Utah State University Press, 1964), pp 41- 104. |