History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

600 POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND INSTITUTIONAL.
In 1857 other missionaries joined the party, together
with a number of families from Salt Lake City, and
in May of this year a settlement was formed, to which
was given the name of Washington.
In October 1861 three hundred of the saints, under
the direction of Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow, were
ordered to proceed to this district, and build a city, to
be named St George, near the junction of the Virgin
and Santa Clara rivers in Washington county. In January
1862 a site was selected and surveyed, the city incorporated,
75 though yet unbuilt, and the people took
possession of their lots. Before doing so it was decided
by unanimous vote that the first building erected should
be a social hall, to be used for educational and other purposes.
76
In September Brigham visited the settlers,
and advised them to build, as soon as possible, a substantial,
commodious, and well-finished meeting-house, or
tabernacle, large enough to seat at least two thousand
persons, and one that would be an ornament to their
city and a credit to their enterprise. The foundation
stones were laid on the 1st of June, 1873, the prophet's
birthday, and the building completed eight years later,
at a cost of $110,000. Before its settlement, the valley
of St George presented a barren appearance, its
surface being strongly impregnated with mineral salts,
even the bottom-lands of the Virgin and Santa Clara
showing large strips of alkaline soil. Its climate was
mild, and, with irrigation, crops of many kinds could
be raised; but water was scarce, an artesian well sunk
in 1862, at a cost of $5,000, being abandoned as a failure,
after attaining a depth of more than two hundred
feet. 77
Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the city be-
75 By act approved Jan. 17, 1862. See Utah Acts Leqisl. (ed. 1866), pp.
166-7. It was named St George after Pres. Geo. A. Smith. Richards' Utah
Misc., MS., 4.
7G The foundation stone was laid March 22, 1862, and when completed, at
a cost of more than $6,000, it was named St George Hall. James G. Bleak, in
Utah Sketches, MS., 73-4.
77 The people farmed on the joint enclosure system, the first enclosed field,
named the St George, being irrigated by the 'Virgin ditch,' the cost of which
between Dec. 1861 and Aug. 1S66 was $26,611.59. Id., 76.