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Show 64 DIXIE PROJECT, UTAH So significant is this water storage development to this colorful region that I ask your indulgence while I make a brief statement on the history of this land known as Utah's Dixie. The story of the Dixie cotton mission is one of the most fascinating in all the pioneer history of Utah. In its memory, and as a souvenir of the opening of hearings on the Dixie project, I am sending to each of the Members of the Senate one of these miniature bales of cotton. And I am presenting the Members a copy of a publication of the Utah Historical Society, " Utah's Dixie, the Cotton Mission." Most of this material was compiled or written by a distinguished author of Utah's Dixie, Juanita Brooks. Now, let me assure my colleagues of the South that Utah's Dixie is not to have another go at cotton culture. That was tried, with limited success, in the latter part of the last century. The lands to be irrigated by the Dixie project will not grow cotton. What they will do is nourish the area's economy- thus making it a better customer for cotton as well as many other products. Today, the capital of Washington County, St. George, is a tourist oasis on the principal highway which spans mountain and desert between central Utah and southern California. It is the site of the first completed Mormon Temple in Utah, and the location of Dixie College. It accommodates the numerous visitors who come to view the massive scenery of Zion National Park. Before the arrival of the Mormons in 1850, however, only a few white men had ever seen this land. Two of these were the Spanish padres, Father Esealante and Father Dominguez, who were on the Virgin River in October of 1776 on their journey to find a land route from Santa Fe, N. Mex., to Monterey, Calif. When the Mormons came to the West, they intended to establish a settlement in which they could build Zion in peace. They aimed to make their community self- sustaining. They expected to produce all their own necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. With this in mind, Brigham Young planted colonies wherever there was water, and sometimes very little water; he fostered production of food, fiber, and metals; he brought in machinery for all the basic trades. As early as 1850 it was proposed at the general conference of the church in Salt Lake City that a settlement be formed " at the junction of the Rio Virgin and the Santa Clara Creek, where grapes, cotton, figs, raisins, and so forth, can be raised." I digress to say that- 112 years later- the principal works of the Dixie project will be dams built on the Virgin and the Santa Clara Rivers. To continue- it was 1854 before a Washington County pioneer named Jacob Hardy returned from a trip north bringing about a quart of cottonseed tied to his belt, the gift of Sister Nancy Anderson, a Mormon convert from Tennessee. The seed was carefully planted on a small piece of virgin land. It produced beyond belief, and when the first pods exploded into a handful of snowy fluff, they were sent to Brother Brigham and put on display in his Salt Lake City office. Other families were sent to pioneer the land. By 1860, there were in Washington County eight small settlements. In 1861, Brigham Young inspected the region. The outbreak of the Civil War gave impetus to the plan for southern Utah colonization, for with the supply from the Southern States cut off, Utah desperately needed to produce cotton for cloth. Preceding the October semiannual conference of the church in 1861, articles in the Deseret News extolled the possibilities of Utah's Dixie and encouraged all the saints who could to move in that direction. And, at conference, a list of 300 names, all heads of families, was read with the announcement that they had been selected to go south on a " cotton mission." Besides farmers they included blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, and two surveyors, as well as the practitioners of many other trades. The cotton harvest of .1863 produced full bins for the settlements, plus 74,000 pounds that were hauled back to the Mississippi River. ; Bjr 1870; the Washington cotton factory for weaving cotton cloth was the largest west of the Mississippi, and, in 1871, the Rio Virgin Manufacturing Co. was organized With capital stock of $ 100,000. : But the close of the Civil War and the coming of the railroad had changed economic conditions. Utah's Dixie could not compete with the large cottonfields and the mills of the Southern States. Cotton business limped along until 1910. |