Travel, Missions and Industries

Passing of the Boston Party

Keen interest in the Southwest was excited early in 1876 by a series of lectures delivered at New England points by Judge Samuel W. Cozzens, author of "The Marvellous Country." There was formed the American Colonization Company, with Cozzens as president. Two companies of men, of about fifty individuals each, were dispatched from Boston, each man with equipment weighing about thirty pounds. The destination was a fertile valley in northeastern Arizona, a land that had been described eloquently, probably after only casual observation. The end of the Santa Fe railroad was in northern New Mexico. There the first party purchased four wagons and a number of mules from a grading contractor, Pat Shanley, afterward a cattleman in Gila County.

The best story at hand of the Bostonians is from one of them, Horace E. Mann, who for years has been a prospector and miner and who now is a resident of Phoenix. He tells that the journey westward was without particular incident until was reached, about June 15, the actual destination, the valley of the Little Colorado River, on the route of the projected Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. The travelers were astonished to find the country already taken up by a number of companies of Mormon colonists.

In New England the Mormons were considered a blood-thirsty people, eager to slay any Gentile who might happen along. It is not to be intimated that the Bostonians were mollycoddles. They appear to have been above even the average of the time, manly and stalwart enough, but the truth is, as told by Mr. Mann, the expedition did not care either to mingle with the Mormons or to incur danger of probable slaughter. Therefore, the parties hurried along as fast as possible. The same view is indicated in a recent interview with David E. Adams, of one of the Mormon settlements. He told the Historian that he found the Bostonians suspicious and fearful. At that time the Utah people still were living in their wagons. They were breaking ground and were starting upon the construction of dams in the river. The second Boston party passed June 23.

At Sunset Crossing Mann and three of his companions entered upon an adventure assuredly novel in arid Arizona. They constructed a raft of drift cottonwood and thought to lighten the journey by floating down the river. It was found that the stream soon bent toward the northward, away from the wagon trail. Sometimes there were shoals that the raft had to be pushed over and again there were deep whirlpools, around which the raft went merrily a dozen times before the river channel again could be entered. The channel walls grew higher and higher until, finally, the navigators pulled the raft ashore and resumed their journey on foot, finding their wagon in camp at the Canyon Diablo crossing. There, apparently considering themselves safe from massacre, was an encampment of a week or more.

At the Naming of Flagstaff

Mann, his bunkie, George E. Loring (later express agent at Phoenix), a Rhode Islander named Tillinghast and three others formed an advance party westward. This party made camp at a small spring just south of San Francisco Mountains, where Flagstaff is now. Mann remembers the place as Volunteer Springs in Harrigan Valley. While waiting for the main party to come up, the advance guard hunted and explored. Mann remembers traveling up a little valley to the north and northwest to the big LeRoux Springs, below which he found the remains of a burnt cabin and of a stockade corral, possibly occupied in the past as a station on the transcontinental mail route.

With reference to the naming of Flagstaff, Mr. Mann is very definite. He says that, while waiting for the main party, this being late in June, 1876, and merely for occupation, the limbs were cut from a straight pine tree that was growing by itself near the camp. The bark was cut away, leaving the tree a model flagstaff and for this purpose it was used, the flag being one owned by Tillinghast and the only one carried by the expedition. The tree was not cut down. It was left standing upon its own roots. This tale is rather at variance with one that has been of common acceptance in the history of Flagstaff and the date was not the Fourth of July, as has been believed, for Mann is sure that he arrived in Prescott in June. The main section of the first party came a few days later, and was on the ground for a celebration of the centennial Fourth of July that centered around the flagstaff.

Mann also remembers that Major Maynadier, one of the leaders of the expedition, surveyed a townsite for Flagstaff, each of the members of the expedition being allotted a tract. The second party joined the first at Flagstaff. Word had been received that mechanics were needed at Prescott and in the nearby mines, with the large wages of $6 a day, and hence there was eagerness to get along and have a share in the wealth of the land. It remains to be stated that all the men found no difficulty in locating themselves in and around Prescott and that no regret was felt over the failure of the original plan.

Southern Saints Brought Smallpox

One of the few parties of Southern States Saints known for years in any of the Stakes of Zion joined the poverty-stricken colonists on the Little Colorado in the fall of 1877. Led by Nelson P. Beebe, it numbered about 100 individuals, coming through New Mexico by wagon, with a first stop at Savoia. The immigrants were without means or food and there had to be haste in sending most of them on westward, more wagons being sent from the Little Colorado camps for their conveyance. At Allen's Camp was a burden of sickness, mainly fever sufferers from the unfortunate Obed. To these visitors were added seventy of the "Arkansas Saints," who came October 4. Yet the plucky Allenites not only divided with the strangers their scanty store of bread, but gave a dance in celebration of the addition to the pioneers' strength. The arrivals brought with them a new source of woe. One of their number, Thomas West, had contracted smallpox at Albuquerque and from this case came many prostrations.

Fort Moroni, at LeRoux Spring

One of the most important watering places of northeastern Arizona is LeRoux Spring, seven miles northwest of Flagstaff on the southwestern slope of the San Francisco Mountains. This never-failing spring was a welcome spot to the pioneers who traveled the rocky road along the 35th parallel of latitude. San Francisco Spring (or Old Town Spring) at the present Flagstaff, was much less dependable and at the time of the construction of the Atlantic & Pacific railroad in 1881-2, water often was hauled to Flagstaff from the larger spring, at times sold for $1 a barrel.

The importance of this water supply appears to have been appreciated early by the long-headed directing body of the Mormon Church. Early in 1877, under direction of John W. Young, son and one of the counselors of Brigham Young, from the Little Colorado settlements of St. Joseph and Sunset, was sent an expedition, that included Alma Iverson, John L. Blythe and Jos. W. McMurrin, the last at this writing president of the California Mission of the Church, then a boy of 18.

According to Ammon M. Tenney, this LeRoux spring was known to the people of the Little Colorado settlements as San Francisco spring. Mr. McMurrin personally states his remembrance that the expedition proceeded along the Beale trail to the spring, near which was built a small log cabin, designed to give a degree of title to the water and to the locality, probably also to serve as a shelter for any missionary parties that might travel the road. There is no information that it was used later for any purpose.

The men were instructed to build a cabin at Turkey Tanks, on the road to the Peaks, this cabin to be lined with pine needles and to be used as a storage icehouse, Counselor Young expressing the opinion that there would be times in the summer heat of the Little Colorado Valley when ice would be of the greatest value. The tanks were hardly suitable for this purpose, however, and the icehouse was not built.

Location of the LeRoux spring by the Iverson-Blythe party in 1877 appears to have been sufficient to hold the ground till it was needed, in 1881, by John W. Young, in connection with his railroad work. About sixty graders and tie cutters were camped, mainly in tents, on LeRoux Prairie or Flat, below the spring, according to Mrs. W. J. Murphy, now of Phoenix, a resident of the Prairie for five months of 1881, her husband a contractor on the new railroad. She remembers no cattle, though deer and antelope were abundant.

Stockaded Against the Indians

In the early spring came reports of Indian raids to the eastward. So Young hauled in a number of double-length ties, which he set on end, making a stockade, within which he placed his camp, mainly of tents. Later were brush shelters within, but the great log house, illustrated herein, was not built until afterward. Thereafter was attached the name of Fort Moroni, given by Young, who organized the Moroni Cattle Company. At the time of the coming of the grade to Flagstaff, Young also had a camp in the western end of the present Flagstaff townsite.

Fort Moroni was acquired about 1883 by the Arizona Cattle Company. The large building was used as a mess house. The stockade ties were cut down to fence height and eventually disappeared, used by the cowboys for fuel.

An entertaining sidelight on the settlement of what later generally was known as Fort Valley has been thrown by Earl R. Forrest of Washington, Penn., in early days a cowboy for the Arizona Cattle Company. He writes that the building formed one side of a 100-foot square, with the stockade on the other three sides. In his day, the name of the ranch was changed to Fort Rickerson, in honor of Chas. L. Rickerson, treasurer of the company. Capt. F.B. Bullwinkle, the manager, a former Chief of the Chicago Fire Department, and a lover of fast stock, was killed near Flagstaff, thrown from a stumbling horse while racing for the railroad station. Thereafter the property passed into the possession of the Babbitt Brothers of Flagstaff. The old building was torn down late in 1920.

In August, 1908, the first forest experiment station in the United States was established in Fort Valley.

The great spring is used only for watering cattle, and the spring at
Flagstaff appears to have been lost in the spread of civilization.

LeRoux spring was named for Antoine LeRoux, principal guide of the famous survey expedition of Lieut. A.W. Whipple, along the 35th parallel, in 1853. Incidentally, this is the same LeRoux who was principal guide of the Mormon Battalion.

Mormon Dairy and the Mount Trumbull Mill

Mormon Mountain, Mormon Lake and Mormon Dairy still are known as such, 28 miles southeast of Flagstaff. The Dairy was established in September, 1878, by Lot Smith, in what then was known as Pleasant Valley, in the pines, sixty miles west of Sunset. In that year 48 men and 41 women from Sunset and Brigham City, were at the Dairy, caring for 115 cows and making butter and cheese. Three good log houses had been built.

Seven miles south of Pleasant Valley (which should not be confounded with the Tonto Basin Pleasant Valley of sanguinary repute), was the site of the first sawmill on the Mogollon Plateau, upon which a half-dozen very large plants now operate to furnish lumber to the entire Southwest. This mill, probably antedated in northern Arizona only at Prescott, first was erected, about 1870, at Mount Trumbull, in the Uinkaret Mountains of northwestern Arizona, to cut lumber for the new temple at St. George, Utah, fifty miles to the northward. This mill, in 1876, was given by the Church authorities to the struggling Little Colorado River settlements. Taken down in August by the head sawyer, Warren R. Tenney, it was hauled into Sunset late in September and soon was re-erected by Tenney, and, November 7, put into operation in the pine woods near Mormon Lake, about sixty miles southwest of Sunset, soon turning out 100,000 feet of boards. Its site was named Millville. The mill, after the decline of the first settlements, passed into the possession of W. J. Flake. In the summer of 1882, it was transferred to Pinedale and in 1890 to Pinetop. It now is at Lakeside, where, it is assumed, at least part of the original machinery still is being operated. Its first work at Pinetop was to saw the timbers for a large assembly hall, or pavilion, to be used for the only conference ever held that included all the Arizona Stakes.

Also in the timber country are to be noted Wilford, named in honor of President Wilford Woodruff, and Heber, named for Heber C. Kimball, small settlements fifty miles southwest of St. Joseph, established in 1883 from St. Joseph and other Little Colorado settlements, for stock raising and dry farming. John Bushman is believed to have been the first Mormon resident of the locality. Log houses were built and at Wilford was a schoolhouse, which later was moved to St. Joseph, there used as a dwelling. When a number of the brethren went into Mexican exile, their holdings were "jumped" by outsiders. Wilford has been entirely vacated, but Heber still has residents.

Where Salt Was Secured

Salt for the early settlements of northern Arizona very generally was secured from the salt lake of the Zuni, just east of the New Mexican line, roughly 33 miles from St. Johns. As early as 1865, Sol Barth brought salt on pack mules from this lake to points as far westward as Prescott. In the records of a number of the Little Colorado settlements are found references to where the brethren visited a salt lake and came back with as much as two tons at a load. This lake is of sacred character to the Zuni, which, at certain times of the year send parties of priests and warriors to the lake, 45 miles south of the tribal village. There is elaborate ceremonial before salt is collected. Undoubtedly the lake was known to prehistoric peoples, for salt, probably obtained at this point, has been found in cliff ruins in southern Colorado, 200 miles from the source of supply. The Zuni even had a special goddess, Mawe, genius of the sacred salt lake, or "Salt Mother," to whom offerings were made at the lake. Warren K. Follett, in 1878, told that the lake lies 300 feet lower than the general surface of the country. The salt forms within the water, in layers of from three to four inches thick, and is of remarkable purity.

The Hopi secured salt from a ledge in the Grand Canyon, below the mouth of the Little Colorado, about eighty miles northwest of their villages. At the point of mining, sacrifices were made before shrines of a goddess of salt and a god of war. The place has had description by Dr. Geo. Wharton James, whose knowledge of the gorge is most comprehensive.

On the upper Verde and in Tonto Creek Valley are salt deposits, though very impure. Upper Salt River has a small deposit of very good sodium chloride, which was mined mainly for the mills of Globe, in the seventies. The Verde deposit now is being mined for shipment to paper mills of its sodium sulphate. Reference elsewhere is made to the salt mines of the Virgin River Valley.

[Illustration: GRAND FALLS ON THE LITTLE COLORADO RIVER]

[Illustration: ORIGINAL FORT MORONI WITH ITS STOCKADE]

[Illustration: FORT MORONI IN LATER YEARS]

The Mission Post of Moen Copie

One of the most interesting early locations of the Mormon Church in Arizona was that of Moen Copie, about 75 miles southeast of Lee's Ferry. The name is a Hopi one, signifying "running water" or "many springs." The soil is alkaline, but it is a place where Indians had raised crops for generations. The presiding spirit of the locality was Tuba, the Oraibi chief, who had been taken by Jacob Hamblin to Utah, there to learn something of the white man's civilization.

Joseph Fish wrote that at an early date Moen Copie was selected as a missionary post by Jacob Hamblin and Andrew S. Gibbons and that in 1871 and 1872, John L. Blythe and family were at that point.

Permanent settlement on Moen Copie Creek was made December 4, 1875, by a party headed by Jas. S. Brown. There was establishment of winter quarters, centering in a stone house 40x20 feet, with walls twenty inches thick. The house was on the edge of a cliff, with two rows of log houses forming three sides of a square.

Indians Who Knew Whose Ox Was Gored

The Author is pleased to present here a tale of Indian craft, delightfully told him by Mrs. Elvira Martineau (Benj. S.) Johnson, who, in 1876, accompanied her husband to Moen Copie, where he had been sent as a missionary. July 4 the women had just prepared a holiday feast when Indians were seen approaching. The men were summoned from the fields below the cliff. Leading the Indians was a Navajo, Peicon, who, addressing Brown as a brother chieftain, thrust forward his young son, dramatically stating that the lad had killed three cows owned at the settlement of Sunset and offering him for any punishment the whites might see fit to inflict, even though it be death. Brown mildly suggested that the Sunset people should be seen, but that he was sure that all they would ask would be the value of the animals. During the protracted argument a party of accompanying Utes came into the discussion, threatening individuals with their bows and arrows. The Navajos were fed and then was developed the truth. It was that the men of Sunset had killed three Indian cattle and the wily chief had been trying to get Brown to fix a drastic penalty upon his own people. Brown went with the Navajos to Sunset, there to learn that the half-starved colonists had killed three range animals, assumed to have been ownerless. The matter then was adjusted with little trouble and to the full satisfaction of the redskins.

In September, 1878, Erastus Snow visited Moen Copie, where the inhabitants comprised nine families, with especial mention of Andrew S. Gibbons, of the party of John W. Young and of Tuba. There had been a prosperous season in a farming way.

This visit is notable from the fact that on the 17th, Snow and others proceeded about two miles west of north and at Musha Springs located a townsite, afterward named Tuba City. Tuba City was visited in 1900 by Andrew Jenson, who found twenty families resident, with one family at the old Moen Copie mission and three families at Moen Abi, seven miles to the southwest.

A Woolen Factory in the Wilds

Primarily the Tuba settlement was a missionary effort, with the intention of taking the Gospel into the very center of the Navajo and Hopi country. Agriculture flourished a all times, with an abundant supply of water for irrigation. But there was an attempt at industry and one which would appear to have had the very best chance of success. The Navajo and Hopi alike are owners of immense numbers of sheep. The wool in early days almost entirely was utilized by the Indians in the making of blankets, this on rude hand looms, where the product was turned out with a maximum of labor and of time. John W. Young, elsewhere referred to in connection with the establishment of Fort Moroni and with the building of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad, thought he saw an opportunity to benefit the Indians and the Church, and probably himself, so at Tuba City, in the spring of 1879, he commenced erection of a woolen factory, with interior dimensions 90x70 feet. The plant was finished in November, with 192 spindles in use. In the spring of 1880 was a report in the Deseret News that the manufacture of yarns had commenced and that the machinery was running like a charm. Looms for the cloth-making were reported on the way. Just how labor was secured is not known, but it is probable that Indians were utilized to as large an extent as possible. There is no available record concerning the length of time this mill was operated. It is understood, however, that the Indians soon lost interest in it and failed to bring in wool. Possibly the labor supply was not ample and possibly the distance to the Utah settlements was too great and the journey too rough to secure profit. At any event, the factory closed without revolutionizing the Navajo and Hopi woolen industry. In 1900 was written that the factory "has most literally been carried away by Indians, travelers and others." Old Chief Tuba took particular pride in watching over the remains of the factory, but after his death the ruination of the building was made complete. Some of the machinery was taken to St. Johns.

Lot Smith and His End

In general the Saints at Tuba appear to have lived at peace with their Indian neighbors, save in 1892 when Lot Smith was killed. The simple tale of the tragedy is in a Church record that follows:

"On Monday, June 20, 1892, some Indians at Tuba City turned their sheep into Lot Smith's pasture. Brother Smith went out to drive the sheep away, and while thus engaged he got into a quarrel with the Indians and commenced shooting their sheep. In retaliation the Indians commenced firing upon Lot Smith's cows and finally directed their fire against Lot Smith himself, shooting him through the body. Though mortally wounded, he rode home, a distance of about two miles, and lived about six hours, when he expired. It is stated on good authority that the Indians were very sorry, as Smith always had been a friend to them."

The Author here might be permitted to make reference to the impression generally held in the Southwest that Lot Smith was a "killer," a man of violence, who died as he had lived. Close study of his record fails to bear out this view. Undoubtedly it started in Utah after his return from Mormon Battalion service, when he became a member of the Mormon militia that harassed Johnston's army in the passes east of the Salt Lake Valley. There is solemn Church assurance that not a life was taken in this foray, though many wagons were burned in an attempt, October 3, 1857, to delay the march of the troops. Smith (who in no wise was related to the family of the Prophet Joseph) became a leader in the Deseret defense forces, but there is belief that in all his life he shed no blood, unless it was in connection with a battle with the Utes near Provo, in February, 1850. In this fight were used brass cannon, probably those that had been bought at Sutter's Fort by returning Mormon Battalion members. According to a friendly biographer, "There never was a man who held the life and liberty of man more sacred than did Lot Smith." Ten years after his death there was re-interment of his remains at Farmington, Utah.

Moen Copie Reverts to the Indians

In 1900 Moen Copie ward embraced 21 families and about 150 souls. There had been an extension of the Navajo reservation westward and the Indians, though friendly, had been advised to crowd the Mormons out, on the ground that the country in reality belonged to the aborigines. There was no title to the land, which had not been surveyed and which was held only by squatter rights. There had been some success in a missionary way, but conditions arose which made it appear best that the land be vacated to the Indians. There was much negotiation and at the end there was payment by the government of $45,000, this divided among the whites according to the value of their improvements and acreage.

In this wise the Mormon settlement of Tuba City was vacated in February, 1903, the inhabitants moving to other parts of Arizona and to Utah and Idaho. A large reservation school has been established on the Wash, many Indians there being instructed in the arts of the white man, while government farmers are utilizing the waters of the stream and of the springs in the cultivation of a considerable acreage. A feature of this school is that fuel is secured, at very slight cost, from coal measures nearby.

Woodruff and Its Water Troubles

Closely following settlement of the ephemeral lower Little Colorado towns came the founding of Woodruff, about 25 miles upstream from St. Joseph and about twelve miles above the present Holbrook. It is still a prosperous town and community, though its history has been one in which disaster has come repeatedly through the washing away of the dam which supplies its main canal with water from the Little Colorado and Silver Creek.

In the locality the Mormons were antedated by Luther Martin and Felix Scott. The section was scouted in December, 1876, by Joseph H. Richards, Lewis P. Garden, James Thurman and Peter O. Peterson, from Allen's Camp, and they participated in starting a ditch from the river. There appeared to have been no indication of occupancy when, in March, 1877, Ammon M. Tenney passed through the valley and determined it a good place for location. In the following month, however, Cardon and two sons, and Wm. A. Walker came upon the ground, with other families, followed, three weeks later, by Nathan C. Tenney, father of Ammon M., with two sons, John T. and Samuel, Hans Gulbrandsen and Charles Riggs. For about a year the settlement was known simply as Tenney's Camp. L. H. Hatch was appointed to take charge in February, 1878. About that time the name of Woodruff was adopted, in honor of President Wilford Woodruff, this suggestion made by John W. Young. The first settlement was in a rock and adobe fort, forming a half square. There was a common dining room as, for a while, there was adherence to the system of the United Order. It is told that all save two of the settlers participated and there is memorandum of how three sisters were detailed weekly for cooking, with girls as assistants.

In February, 1882, was survey of the present townsite, on which John Reidhead built the first house. This townsite was purchased from the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company, in May, 1889, for $8 an acre. At first it had not been appreciated that the town had not been built upon government land.

The history of Woodruff has in it much of disastrous incident through the frequent breaking of the river dams. In May, 1880, the dam had to be cut by the settlers themselves, in order to permit the water to flow down to St. Joseph, where there was priority of appropriation. At several times, the Church organization helped in the repair or building of the many dams, after the settlers had spent everything they had and had reached the point of despair. At suggestion of Jesse N. Smith in 1884, all the brethren in the Stake were called upon to donate one day each of labor on the Woodruff dam. Up to 1890, the dam had been washed out seven times and even now there is trouble in its maintenance.

Of passing interest is the fact that President Wilford Woodruff, after whom the settlement was named, was a visitor to Woodruff on at least two occasions, in 1879, and in 1887, when an exile from Utah. He was at Moen Copie when there came news, which later proved erroneous, that pursuers had crossed at Lee's Ferry. Then, guided by Richard Gibbons, he rode westward, making a stop of a few days at Fort Moroni.

Holbrook Once Was Horsehead Crossing

Holbrook, on the Little Colorado, county seat of Navajo County, shipping point on the Santa Fe railroad system for practically all of Navajo and Apache Counties, had Mormon inception, under its present name, that of an Atlantic and Pacific railroad locating engineer, F.A. Holbrook. The christening is said to have been done in 1881 by John W. Young, then a grading contractor, applied to a location two miles east of the present townsite. Young there had a store at his headquarters. Later the railroad authorities established the town on its present location.

The settlement, since the first coming of English-speaking folk, had been known as Horsehead Crossing. For years before the railroad came, a roadside station was kept at the Crossing by a Mexican, Berardo, whose name was differently spelled by almost every traveler who wrote of him. One of the tales is from E.C. Bunch, who came as a young member of the Arkansas immigration in 1876, and who later became one of the leaders in Arizona education. He tells, in referring appreciatively to Mexican hospitality, that "Berrando's" sign, painted by an American, read, "If you have the money, you can eat." But the owner, feeling the misery coldheartedness might create, wrote below, "No got a money, eat anyway." Berardo loaned the colonists some cows, whose milk was most welcome.