History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

318 SETTLEMENT AND OCCUPATION OF THE COUNTRY.
poorest, but near by were a few spots of meadow and
farm land, on which, with irrigation, a fair crop could
be raised. A number of emigrants, principally Welsh
and Scandinavian, joined the party, and two years
later a new site was surveyed 42 under the direction of
Lorenzo Snow. To the town then laid out was afterward
given the name of Brigham City.
A few weeks later a small settlement was formed
about five miles south of this point, and in 1853 was
removed to the present site of Willard City. 43
On Red Creek, about twenty miles north of Cedar
City, a small settlement was formed in the autumn of
1852, named Paragoonah, the Pi-Ede name for Little
Salt Lake. 44 Six miles south of Cedar City, Fort Walker
was built, containing at the close of 1851 only nine
men capable of bearing arms; and on Ash Creek, nineteen
miles farther south, was Fort Harmony, the
southernmost point in the valley occupied by white
men, 45 and where John D. Lee located a rancho in
1852.
42 In blocks of six acres, each lot being half an acre.
43 The first settlers on the old site were Jonathan S. Wells, who built the
first house, and was the first to commence farming, Elisha Mallory, who wn h
his brother Lemuel built the first grist-mill, M. McCreary, Alfred Walton,
and Lyman B. Wells. George W. Ward, in Utah Sketches, MS., 44-5. The
city was named after Willard Richards. Richards' Narr. , MS. , 07.
44 In December, 15 or 20 families had settled there. Deseret News, Dec. 11,
1852. On June 12, 1851, a company with a few wagons started for this point
from Salt Lake City. Utah Early Records, MS., 128.
45 This settlement was 20 miles north of the Rio Virgen. It was thought
that the route to California might be shortened by way of the fort about 35
miles. Deseret News, Dec. 11, 1852. In addition to those mentioned in the
text, a number of small settlements had been made in various parts of the territory.
Farmington, now the county seat of Davis co., and on the line of the
Utah Central railroad, was first settled in 1848 by D. A. Miller and four
others. In 1S49 it was organized as award. Mill Creek, in S. Lake co., was
settled in 1848-9 by John Neff and nine others; Alpine City and Springville,
in Utah co., in 1S50, the former by Isaac Houston with ten others, the latter
by A. Johnson and three comrades. Santaquin, in the same county, was settled
in 1852; abandoned in 1853 on account of Indian raids, and reoccupied
in 1856 by B. F. Johnson and 23 associates. The site of Harrisville, a few
miles north of Ogden, was occupied in the spring of 1850 by Ivin Stewart,
abandoned the same autumn on account of an Indian outbreak, and resettled
in 1S51 by P. G. Taylor and others. In 1SS3 Taylor was bishop of this ward.
Slaterville, in Weber county, was first settled in the fall of 1850 by Alex.
Kellcy, who was soon afterward joined by several families; in 1853—the year
of the Walker war— it was abandoned, the inhabitants taking refuge in Bingham
Fort, but was again occupied in 1S54. South Weber, in the same county.