City of Rocks Historic Resources Study

The whole intention of those trains was to get an early start, as soon as the grass greened up, and then get through the West as fast as possible. The Mormons were an exception, a special breed headed for sanctuary in the heart of the desert, a people with a uniquely cohesive social order and a theocratic discipline that made them better able to survive. [142]

Forty years after the wagon trains first rolled west, the City of Rocks had become a place of settlement as well as a place of transit. It was home to Mormon families that expanded the cordon of Mormon influence beyond the central cultural and political core of the Salt Lake Basin/Wasatch Range, to a Mormon "domain" that ultimately encompassed all of Utah and much of northern Arizona and southern Idaho. [143] Mormon President Brigham Young had not favored the Snake River plain, believing that "the farther north we go the less good characteristics are connected with the valleys." [144] Young feared the cold winters but most importantly, he feared the good grass — already claimed by Gentile cattle barons and certain to attract even more. Thus, in contrast to the church-directed expansion to Arizona and the Utah hinterlands, settlement of southern Idaho between Fort Hall and the Utah border was not a Church-directed exodus, but rather a search by the Mormon faithful for land and livelihood. [145] Thomas Edwards arrived first, working briefly as a cattlehand on the Sweetzer Brothers' Raft River Ranch and on the E.Y. Ranch; with tales of adequate water, abundant grass, abundant land, and winters less harsh than Brigham Young had feared, Edwards enticed Henry R. Cahoon, Myron B. Durfee, William Jones, and their families to the area. Thomas King and family followed soon afterwards; King had viewed the land as a teenager and was familiar with its virtues. (Long-time Almo resident Etta Taylor would later term King's visit "the first known date of Almo.") [146] Charles Ward, informed of the area by friend William Jones, was similarly "pleased with the area's possibilities as a stock country." Mr. Ward "in turn persuaded Mr. John O. Lowe and David Ward . . . [and] Mrs. Lowe persuaded Robert Wake" to join the burgeoning community of Mormons along the banks of Almo, Grape, and Edwards creeks. [147]

A similar exodus, of friends and family, north from Utah, occurred throughout southern Idaho; by 1870, an estimated 3,000 Mormons were reported to live in a roughly defined area south of Fort Hall, Idaho, and north of Utah's Box Elder County. [148] This settlement was concentrated in the lowlands "along the streams and almost every important spring." [149]

The first General Land Office surveys show only limited development within the immediate boundaries of what is now the City of Rocks National Reserve. [150] In his 1878 survey of the east half of Township 15S 24E, Allen Thompson noted only an unnamed road along the general route of the California Trail. He described the southern township as "gently rolling" with "second-rate [soil], good grass and scattered sage" while reserving the accolade "agricultural land" for the north half of the township near Circle Creek — land soon claimed by the city's first homestead resident, George Lunsford. [151] Subsequent project-area surveys dated 1884, 1886, and 1892 note the "old California Road," roads over Lyman Pass "to Oakley," "from [the Emery] Canyon road to Junction Valley," and "to timber," as well as scattered corrals and scattered buildings, their placement without exception dictated by the presence of water. [152]

Formal claim to the best of the public domain — along the water courses in the flat lands east of the City of Rocks — quickly followed the survey crews. By the mid-1880s, presumed-cultivable and irrigable land had been claimed under the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Desert Land Act of 1877. [153]

In 1862, Congress passed a land act that "breathed the spirit of the West, with its optimism, its courage, its generosity and its willingness to do hard work." The Homestead Act of 1862 promised 160 acres of public land to those heads of families, 21-years of age and older, who were, or who intended to become, American citizens. Only surveyed agricultural lands were available under the Act; however, throughout the unsurveyed West, including southeastern Idaho, farmers "squatted" on their intended farm, filing legal papers on the heels of the survey crews. Within six months of paying their $10 filing fee, settlers were required to live on the land; thenceforth, they were required to inhabit the site, in a cabin no smaller than 12' x 16', for at least seven months of every year; the remaining five months could be spent off the land — and often were, as men and women returned to lower elevations, schools, and wage labor. After a minimum of five years of seasonal habitation (and a maximum of seven) and upon proof of cultivation, the United States of America conveyed legal title to the homesteader. [154]

Arid western lands, void of timber and uncultivable without irrigation, could also be claimed under the Desert Land Act of 1877, amended in 1891. The 1877 act allowed claims of 640 reasonably-compact arid acres, at a cost of .25 per acre at the time of filing, and $1 per acre three years later, at the time of final proof when, ostensibly, the land had been reclaimed. In practice, and in large part due to the "well-nigh impossib[ility]" of irrigating such large tracts, few claims were ever patented. General Land Office Commissioner McFarland "complained that the lands were being held for grazing without settlement and without costing more than the original 25 cents an acre paid when the application was made." [155] In 1891, Congress amended the act, requiring that detailed plans for irrigation systems be submitted and that $1 per acre be spent in each of the first three years of development. This labor and money could be shared by communal ditch associations but could not be undertaken on behalf of others — whether corporate or individual. [156]

Of the numerous Desert Land Act claims filed on land encompassed within what is now the City of Rocks National Reserve, all but two were abandoned or relinquished. [157] The remainder most likely provided spring and summer pasture for the herds of those settled outside the city, in the Almo and Elba basins. Within these basins, mostly Mormon settlers cultivated land patented under both the Homestead and the Desert Land acts; they irrigated this land through the communal ditch systems that remain the Mormons' most remarkable contribution to the western landscape. One hundred and thirty years after the Saints' arrival, land in the Raft River Valley has been leveled, cleared of willows and sagebrush, and planted in alfalfa, grain, potatoes and beets. The creek and river beds run dry, drained by the orderly system of ditch networks.