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Show CHAPTER H ESTABLISHING LOCAL CONTROL: TERRITORIAL AND LOCAL INSTITUnONS, 1852 THROUGH 1865 Pioneer practices of water utilization continued in many of the outlying ( and/ or newly settled) areas of Utah until the time of statehood. Central church authorities continued to influence the pattern of water development by directing church members to colonize new areas and by participating in the site selection process for new settlements. Local church and community leaders then had to determine the kinds of water projects to be attempted and develop systems of supervision and distribution to allocate the water. Users organized mutual irrigation companies to manage water cooperatively on hundreds of local streams with their common interest in a workable water system binding them together. 1 Response to the Arid Environment Throughout this period ( 1852- 1865), Utahns continued to learn about the restrictions an arid environment placed upon possible uses of water. By a process of experimentation both social and technological adaptations evolved. False steps were many. There were grand designs for water in Utah. The most visionary of these called for a vast system of canals and river traffic to link the territory with the rest of the nation, thereby allowing potential settlers to travel much of the overland distance to Utah by barge. Internally, Brigham Young and other church leaders actively promoted the concept of water transportation by a canal that would join Utah and Salt Lake valleys commercially and provide a heavy- duty lading system to move granite stone from quarries in Cottonwood Canyon to the temple site. 2 The more grandiose of these designs were the result of transplanting to an arid environment a people whose values and practices had evolved in a humid climate. The full implications of the changes that scanty water resources imposed were not immediately apparent to the early settlers or their leaders. It took years of experience and study for outlooks and habits acquired in humid homelands to be fully replaced by a total comprehension of the restrictions of the arid environment. 3 Through trial and error, Utah's people learned the limits of their environment. Particularly important were the legal and social regulations that evolved. Prior rights, full development, community interest, cooperation, distribution according to law, and beneficial use were novel terms that took on specific meanings as time passed. From them new social and legal Wells A. Hutchins, Mutual Irrigation Companies in California and Utah ( Washington D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1937), p 15. The colonization policy of the Mormons involved the establishment of many small communities throughout the State, generally separated from each other by miles of desert or mountain range and therefore largely self- contained. The major activities of these communities were on a highly cooperative basis. Irrigation was and always has been one of their major activities; it is one of the few original industries remaining essentially cooperative and giving no indication of receding from that principle. The actual form of the cooperative irrigation enterprise has changed from time to time, but not its substance. 2 Leonard J. Arlington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter- day Saints 1830- 1900 ( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), pp 112. Leonard J. Arlington and Dean L. May, " A Different Mode of Life," Agricultural History, Volume XLK Number 1 ( January 1975), P 11- |