| OCR Text |
Show DIXIE PROJECT, UTAH 3 used the Old Spanish Trail in 1843 and 1844; Father Escalante in 1776; and Jedediah Strong Smith in the early 1800' s passed that way in his expedition. The gold seekers from the East used it as a thoroughfare in their trek to the gold fields of California. Brigham Young, the great colonizer, recognized the advantages of settling this area, and certainly paramount among these advantages was the opportunity for the Mormons to become a self- sufficient people. Brigham Young was convinced that the climate and fertile soil made possible the growing of cotton, figs, sugarcane, tobacco, and other semitropical agricultural products; and even raising silkworms, making their own cloth, and becoming a highly self- sufficient community. One of the first settlements of any significance in Dixie was the Indian mission on the Santa Clara River hear the present city of Santa Clara. The mission was established in the winter of 1854 by some of the hardiest of the Mormon missionary settlers. In a few years, the settlement showed great promise. In early accounts of a visit to the area by Brigham Young and other church leaders, records show that the settlement consisted of some 80 houses, and approximately 250 acres under cultivation, with flourishing orchards of apples, peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, figs, grapes, and a promising crop of cotton. There were even cooperative farming arrangements with the Indians. But in the winter of 1862 came the rains and a flash flood of the Santa Clara, like a " thief at night," to completely wipe out the settlement with its crops, orchards, and homes. These courageous people stayed on to rebuild their farms and orchards, suffering from food shortages, sickness, disease, and other setbacks. History tells us that just 2 years later this same Santa Clara River that overflowed its banks and wiped them out, dried up in midseason, leaving the crops and orchards to burn up in the heat of the summer sun. In the meantime, Brigham Young had determined that the settlement in Dixie had not grown and flourished as it should, and during a church conference in Salt Lake City he called over 300 men on a mission to Dixie to grow cotton and develop the area. Nearly 250 of those called responded and left their homes and farms in the Salt Lake Valley and journeyed to Dixie to start all over again. Most of these people settled in St. George, which is now a thriving community in Dixie, and is today the county seat of Washington County. One of the first, and certainly one of the most important, problems of these people was getting water from the Virgin and Santa Clara Rivers onto the land to quench the thirst of their crops and orchards. And just as important as securing water was the problem of controlling the rivers so that they would not again be wiped out by floods. A review of the history of this area will reveal that these people endured great hardship over extended periods of time. They built dams on the Virgin and Santa Clara Rivers, only to have them washed out by the raging torrents, sometimes twice in 1 year. They dug canals and tunnels, only to have them filled with mud and debris. They suffered droughts, but these sturdy people faced the hardships and resolved their problems the best they could. The only certainty in their lives was uncertainty itself. They had good years and bad years, and these ups and downs were expressed in a song written by Charles L. Walker, which he called " St. George and the Drag- On," which they |
