Twelve Mormon Homes : Twelve Mormon homes visited in succession on a journey through Utah to Arizona.

Twelve Mormon Homes, page 053

had come to CHICKEN CREEK, where there was a large pool, fed by springs. The stream rushing out from it cut its way round the side of a hill, leaping down several feet between banks fringed with long stalactites of ice. The sun pierced through the clouds and sparkled on the water; little Mabel and my boys, leaving the carriages, rushed over the hilly ridge, wild with delight. We took the opportunity, one and all, to warm ourselves by a stroll, while the horses were being watered. Chicken Creek figures as the scene of, a great Danite massacre. I expected the subject would be alluded to on our walk, but it was not .30 Then we began to climb the ascent which separates the Juab from the Sevier Valley, and from the summit looked back over the now sunlit plain, with Nebo still towering over all the other mountains on the horizon. Then, down one long, slow descent after another, we came to the Sevier River and halted at the crossing. The Sevier has no outlet; it sinks in the sands of the desert, not very far to the west of where we were. To the east- ward it flows through the San Pete country, where the Mor- mons, under Joseph A. Young, are organizing new settlements. There being no facilities for irrigation, the Mormons have made no settlement at the Sevier crossing, although there is "OMrs. Kane mav have confused Chicken Creek with the Mountain Meadows Massacre site. However, there were two Mormons killed at Chicken Creek on October 7, 1858. They were Josiah Call and Samuel Brown of Fillmore. The ac- cepted story is that they were killed by Indians, although there were no witnesses to the murder. See Deseret News, November 3, 1858. See also Josiah F. Gibbs, "Black Hawk's Last Raid-466," Utah Historical Quarterly 4 (1931): 107-8. Chicken Creek was abandoned as a settlement in the 1850s and in 1868 LaVan (Levan) took its place as a Mormon community in southeast Juab County. McCune, History of Juab County, p. 153. 53