In the spring of 1847 a party of three men, with eleven horses and mules, provisions, emergency equipment, and scriptures, newspapers, and other reading material, descended the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and negotiated their way through the newly established California Trail into what would become, 17 years later, the State of Nevada.

The Leader of the expedition was Samuel ("Sam ) Brannan, titular head of the Mormons in California, who was hoping to intercept the advance company of Mormon pioneers headed for some destination in the Far West.

A native of Maine, Sam Brannan had migrated to Ohio in 1833, when he was only 14, and had enrolled as an apprentice printer. Completing his apprenticeship in 1837, he worked for the next five years in New Orleans, Indianapolis, and in several other places as a journeyman printer.

He converted to the Mormon faith in 1842 at the age of 23, and, like many new converts, was called to be a missionary. He went to New York City, where the church had a need for him, and he succeeded in establishing and equipping a Mormon newspaper, THE PROPHET, and later the NEW YORK MESSENGER. He was also called to preside over all the branches of the Church in the Eastern States. Despite his relative youth, he was a vigorous missionary, an effective leader, and an imaginative editor.

How did Sam Brannan happen to get to the mountains and deserts of Nevada headed from California to Wyoming in the spring of 1847? The Mormons, or, more properly, the Latter-day Saints, whose headquarters were in Nauvoo, on the western edge of Illinois, appeared to be flourishing when Brannan joined them in 1842. But just as religious and social intolerance had caused them to be driven out of Jackson County, Missouri, in 1833, and out of Caldwell County, Missouri, and Ohio in 1838, their enemies were now seeking to drive them out of Illinois.

In 1844 assassins murdered their founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and his brother Hyrum, who had served as his chief assistant. The vast majority of the faithful accepted the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, of which Brigham Young was president, 25 their new leaders, and preparations got underway for a four-fold migration from Illinois to the American Far West.

The main body migrated to the western edge of the Missouri in 1846 and prepared for a overland the following year. A second group from northern Mississippi with the intention of meeting the main group on the trail somewhere west of Independence, Missouri. A third group of vigorous young men, volunteered to form a battalion of soldiers and march from Leavenworth Kansas, to San Diego, California, in support of General Stephen Kearny's Army of the West, conducting a campaign against Mexico.

The fourth group consisted of members of the church in the Eastern States who wished to join the Saints in the migration to the West. They were instructed to rent a ship and, under the supervision of Sam Brannan, sail from New York to the west coast of California. There they would establish a colony and await instructions from Brigham Young after he had had a chance to reconnoiter possible places of settlement in the vast stretches of the West.

BRANNAN, by now 26, chartered the ship Brooklyn, loaded his printing press, office equipment, and other supplies into its hold, and sailed from New York on February 4,1846, with 238 Latter-day Saints. They rounded Cape Horn, of the southernmost point of South America, touched at the Juan Fernandez islands off the coast of Chile, where the fabled Alexander Selkirk (Robinson Crusoe) had lived, then made a brief stop at the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) sailed through the Golden Gate, and finally disembarked  at the village of Yerba Buena (now San Francisco) on July 31, 1846.

Among other things, Sam promptly set up the printing office and put it to work, publishing what he called the CALIFORNIA STAR. Its first issue was off the press January 9, 1847. This was the second newspaper in California and the first in San Francisco.

The Mexican War having gone well for the American army, California was soon occupied by troops of the United States. Among these were the 400 or more soldiers in the Mormon Battalion. Brannan and his followers, who were the first Anglo-American settlers to arrive in California after its capture by the United States, naturally felt a strong kinship with the troops.

Sam, whose followers were about equal to the number of Spanish or Mexican people in Yerba Buena, was instantly community leader. He helped found a school, a flour mill, and other enterprises. Some of the Mormons who had sailed with him were farmers from the New England states.

With Sam's encouragement, they selected a place near the junction of the Stanislaus and San Joaquin rivers and founded a small settlement named New Hope.

Brannan, who remained behind in San Francisco, wrote them letters of counsel and encouragement. For example, here is what he wrote on February 13, 1847: "I hope you will not get discouraged but press onward and trust In God, and that the strong will not be overcome by the faint hearted....Don't be ravenous to make money and get rich, or you might forget God and die. Hang to the truth and your covenant and God will reward you. He knows what Is best...He has the helm.

Discovering a non-Mormon company of emigrants headed for California, Brigham Young took advantage of the opportunity of sending mail, and drafted, on June 6, a letter to Brannan informing him of the status of the migrating company and of his intention to stop over, at least for a year, in the irrigable valleys of the Great Basin. "Our company will not go to the west coast or to your place at present, he wrote; "we have not the means.

This letter was delivered to Brannan at Fort Hall (near present-day Pocatello, Idaho). Unfortunately we do not have a record of Sam's trip, with companions, east from California, across Nevada, up into present-day Idaho, and then across Wyoming,  intercept the Brigham Young company. From Sutter's Fort, California, to Fort Hall required approximately two months. We do know, as Paul Bailey points out, that Sam and his party made the forty-mile crossing of the Truckee Pass in the astonishing time of one day and two hours. Brannan commented on this portion of the journey - east as follows:

"We traveled on foot and drove our animals before us, the snow from twenty to one hundred feet deep. When we arrived though (on the eastern side), not one of us could stand on our feet. The people of California told us we could not cross under two months, there being more snow on the mountains than had ever been known before; but God knows best, and was kind enough to prepare the way before us."

Brannan and his two companions would probably have followed the length of the Humboldt, from the "sink on the west to its origin in northeastern Nevada. They had to cross and re-cross the river, which sometimes was a series of wild cascades, and their path was strewn with a succession of piles of rocks and boulders.

They sometimes encountered ice-cold rivulets that ran out of the mountains across the path, and at other times hot rivulets also that burned the mouths of unsuspecting drinkers. As they entered Nevada, forests of immense trees came down the steep sides of the mountains to the edge of the path. There were strips of the trail that were little more than volcanic beds of java. Occasionally there were meadows where they could rest and recuperate, and perhaps Elder Brannan conducted a small Sunday - service of worship, repeating verses from the Bible and Book of Mormon and urging his brethren to be mindful of their duties to God.

The companions surely met a few Indians and shared with them some of their biscuits and bacon. They knew one had to be careful, and so they slept "with one eye open, one foot out of bed, a rifle in one hand, and a revolver in the other". They may also have encountered a mountain man or two - men with long hair and matted beards, in soiled and ragged clothes, covered with alkali dust. The most forbidding stretch, when there was no water for either team or human, would have been the forty-mile Humboldt Desert. (In the years that followed the Brannan crossing, thousands of over-landers hurried over this desolate region, and it proved to be fatal for thousands of horses, mules and oxen. The eye could see nothing but sand hills without a spear of grass.)

Beyond the desert was the Humboldt Sink, where the water of the Humboldt became so brackish and discolored with the salt and alkali that "it has the color and taste of dirty soap-suds. It is unfit for the use of either animals or human beings, he wrote, "but thousands of both have had to drink it to save life.

Farther east they must have encountered dust storms, sloughs, mountain slopes, slippery river bottoms, huge boulders, and finally Pilot Peak, the aptly named prominence near the Nevada border east of Wells. Close by was bright, clear, cool, and refreshing water.

Early in June, the three men rode into Fort Hall, which was the junction point of all Pacific migration. To the north lay the Oregon Trail; to the south, the road which Sam and assistants had traveled, lay the California Trail. Strangely, before Brannan's trip, the majority of the overlanders headed for Oregon. Sam would later play a principal role in changing that.

They remained several days, during which Brannan told Brigham Young of the dramatic voyage of the Brooklyn, the early experiences in California, and Something of his own experiences on the trail.

In return, Brigham Young and his associates told him of their own experiences, and of affairs at the Winter Quarters they had left behind. The meeting of these two men must have been impressive. Brannan, only 28, was a "deep-chested, broad shouldered, shaggy-headed man with "flashing black eyes. Brigham Young, 46, was also a man of broad shoulders and barrel chest, with shrewd eyes, cautious manner, and generous nature. Both were men of determination and energy and were supremely self-confident. Both were to leave their mark in American history.

Five days after Sam's arrival, 12 soldiers rode into camp; these were the advance guard of the invalided members of the Mormon Battalion who had wintered at Fort Pueblo.. Behind them, on the trail from Pueblo, was the main body of the Battalion detachment, so Brigham Young appointed Sam to go with a Battalion sergeant to intercept the main body and lead them to the Salt Lake Valley and then on to California. There they would be discharged and receive their pay.

While Brigham Young's company plodded its way across the mountains and through the valleys, ending in the valley of the Great Salt Lake on July 24, 1847, Brannan and partner intercepted the Battalion detachment and led them into the Salt Lake Valley six days later. After inspecting Salt Lake Valley, which he regarded as forbidding and desolate, Sam repeated, more emphatically this time, the advantages of California as a place for settlement: wide, navigable rivers; gentle climate; bottomless black soil; plentiful wild life and game; abundant supplies of timber in nearby forests.

But the grizzled leader assured him that God had chosen the Great Basin as a place to raise Saints. The Saints had had enough trouble settling areas which were attractive - areas which other people wanted. Now they would try a place which no one else could possibly want; and the Lord would bless them so that they would succeed and prosper.

In a few days, disappointed in the failure of his people to go farther west to California, but reassured in his leadership of the California Saints, Brannan left with a party of Mormon Battalion leaders on August 9, 1847. He had spent his last day showing the Salt Lake colonists how to construct homes and buildings of adobe, as he had seen done in California. Then he and his Battalion companions went northeast of the Salt Lake Valley to Fort Hall, then from Fort Hall on the California Trail to the Humboldt, to the Sierra, and through the pass into California.

Among the young Latter-Day Saints who were mustered into the Mormon Battalion in Iowa in the summer of 1848 was 18-year old Abner Blackburn. Born in Pennsylvania, Abner bad grown up with Mormons in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. From a very poor family, he had gone to work at the age of nine in Missouri, where he worked for a period on a steamboat, and then served as a western trapper's assistant. When the Latter-day Saints went to Nauvoo, Illinois, he rejoined his family and helped in the construction of homes, public buildings, and the Nauvoo Temple.

When the Saints were driven from Nauvoo in February 1846, Abner drove a team and served as a camp guard. He was wounded by a stray rifle bullet, but, as he reported, "Brigham (Young) and (Heber C.) Kimball were there and prayed me out of danger.

Adventurous and independent, Abner was a "natural to join with his young brethren in the formation of the Battalion which would participate in the campaign against Mexico in the War of 1846. As one of the younger volunteers, Abner enlisted as a private. Accounts of the Battalion during the next few months show that Abner was full of fun, and at least as rowdy as the average eighteen-year-old soldier.

Alter the Battalion left the army equipment Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, they marched up the Arkansas River and took the "Cimarron Route".

Reaching Santa Fe on October 9, Abner wrote, Colonel (Alexander) Doniphan saluted them with one hundred guns. "We recruited, drew our pay, and had a grand old time in the Montezuma town. There were new kinds of knick-knacks, pinoche, tortillas, chile colorow. After 10 days they left Santa Fe and headed, by way of Albuquerque, for the Rio Grande Valley, which Abner says they found to be "fertile and thickly settled. They saw water ditches running where needed for irrigation, and numerous towns and villages. "Horses, cattle, sheep and goats are raised in large quantities. There they also found "the sweetest onions, which they ate like apples. They bought vegetables with "pins, needles, buttons, and other trinkets.

Then "for some unknown cause many of the soldiers became sick. By the time they reached the vicinity of present-day Las Cruces, New Mexico, the commander, Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, decided to send 55 of these "physically unable soldiers to Pueblo, Colorado, a small Spanish settlement on the eastern slope of the Rockies, where they would hopefully recuperate before heading on to California.

When they left the main body of the Battalion, on November 10, this "sick detachment faced a march of about 500 miles to reach Pueblo. Abner wrote that they suffered from weak teams, meager supplies of food, and general sickness. Several of their comrades died along the way. It was late in the season and in the mountain ranges north of Santa Fe they ran into snow and suffered from cold.

But not all of the trip was unpleasant. They particularly enjoyed going through Taos, where "they raise the finest wheat in the world. Abner also mentions eating a turkey buzzard for dinner, and meeting the notorious Tom Williams who bragged that he had stolen everything "from a hen on her nest to a steamboat engine.

They finally arrived in Pueblo a day or two before Christmas in a pitiable condition. There they hunted to obtain meat to trade to the village residents for vegetables. George Buxton, whose book, "Life in the Far West is a basic source on the West in the early 1840's, visited Pueblo that winter and said the Mormons there (from the Battalion and a group from Mississippi) had erected a row of shanties "built of rough logs of cottonwood laid one above the other, the interstices filled with mud, and rendered impervious to wind or wet.

Buxton wrote: "Most of them were accustomed to the life of woodmen, and were good hunters,...frequently sallying out to the nearest point of the mountains with a wagon, which they would bring back loaded with buffalo, deer, and elk meat. They held prayer meetings, preaching services, and socials. Buxton attended one of these socials. A sermon "preparatory to the physical exercises (dancing) was delivered by a Battalion captain dressed in black topcoat, with a white handkerchief around his neck - "perhaps the most elegant costume seen at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Brannan established a general store near Sutter's Fort in the Sacramento Valley, trumpeted the discovery of gold there in his CALIFORNIA STAR, and, more than any other person, started the gold rush to California.

He also participated in establishing and laying out of the city of Sacramento, developed the health resort of Calistoga, and became California's first millionaire. Having made a fortune in the early growth of California, Brannan then encouraged the settlement and development of western Nevada.

Investing heavily, as he had done in California, he built sawmills, toll roads, a quartz mill, and a smelting works, all in the Comstock Lode region. A venturer, always eager to invest in a new possibility, Sam Brannan finally died in southern California, a pauper, in 1889. But his story of frontier fortitude, of eagerness to build, of willingness to trust God in the eventual outcome, were legacies left by the first Mormon to cross Nevada.

Abner and his Battalion buddies traveled with Brigham Young and company through the Black Hills of Wyoming, past the Sweetwater River, passed Independence Rock - "a huge mass of granite which covers several acres of ground' with "hundreds of names marked on its huge sides. Abner and associates thus arrived in the Salt Lake Valley with or soon after the pioneer company, in July 1847. There he and his colleagues introduced his fellow religionists to the irrigation practices they had observed among the Spanish and Indians in New Mexico and to the making of adobe houses.

Soon it was decided to send a small company overland to San Francisco to get the Battalion pay and to arrange for mustering out all those who had gone to Pueblo and who would now remain in the Salt Lake Valley. Abner, young and vigorous, was one of the five Battalionists chosen to make this journey. They left in the same group with Sam Brannan and his two partners, whose extraordinary accomplishments were sketched in the first article in our series.

Leaving August 9, the combined company of eight (Brannan's three and the Battalion's five) went first to Fort Hall (Pocateilo). then down the Snake to Shoshone Falls (which Abner calls the "Great Falls ), then on the California Trail by way of the Humboldt River. They met up with a federal unit of marines under the command of Commodore Robert F. Stockton headed for Washington, D.C. Commodore Stockton warned them of the Truckee Indians. The Battalion guide, Lou Devon, a Frenchman, reassured them. Wrote Abner, "He new dem injuns and he could slip us ture."

Abner wrote that the Nevada mountains "looked like they had been burnt with some great heat. The rocks would ring like crockery ware with no timber in sight, only willows on the river. The alkali covered the plains....The scenery is not very striking unless one is desirous to be struck. It appeared like some fervent heat had taken the life out of it."

The group eventually arrived at Sutter's Fort, near present-day Sacramento, and worked there while Captain James Brown went on to San Francisco, where he obtained $5,000 in gold doubloons due the Battalion. They started back to Utah with this payload in October in what Abner called "the biggest tom-fool errand that ever was known.

"A whole band of half-broke animals to pack, he wrote, "and drive through a rough mountain country, and hostile Indian tribes. Our pot-gutted horses, he went on, "we packed and unpacked a dozen times a day and then herded them at night.

They had so few provisions that they experienced "an awful goneness in their stomachs all the time. "We were afraid to look behind", Abner wrote, "for fear of being turned into a pillar of salt, like Lot's wife (for) we were no better than she was. We were like a woman with a steamboat engine", Abner wrote. "She admired its ambition but not its judgment."

Nevertheless, they were back with the Saints in the Salt Lake Valley by the middle of November - just 13 weeks after their departure.

Abner spent the next year in the Salt Lake but in 1849 went to California again. The reason is obvious. On January 24, 1848, James Marshall and some of Abner's Battalion buddies working for John Sutter had discovered gold.

News of this discovery came quickly to Salt Lake City because of the continual influx of members of the Battalion from California. Most of the Mormons involved in mining in California were not favorably impressed with their work in the gold fields, so they returned to their church and loved ones in Salt Lake Valley during the summer of 1848. They brought many thousands of dollars worth of gold dust - an attraction to the excitable Abner and a few others. Although Brigham Young counseled against "deserting Zion in favor of the gold fields", Abner and brother Thomas left the Salt Lake Valley early in 1849, bound for California.

They went by way of Carson Valley, and during the period they recuperated there from having crossed the Forty Mile Desert, Abner, always imaginative, decided that gold might be found on the east slope of the Sierra as well as on the west, and rambled through the canyons looking for "color. To his delight and astonishment, he did indeed find indications at which, when he returned to tell his associates, they all grabbed up pans, knives, and kettles, and started out. They "scratched, scraped, and panned until sundown, Abner wrote, and came up with nine or ten dollars worth. But they decided to proceed to California, storing up in their minds for the future the place, which turned out to be the future Gold Canyon of the Comstock period.

In California, Abner reported later, they worked the summer through and earned "a respectable pile of the needful. Upon his brother's urging, however, they returned to the Salt Lake Valley and Abner spent the winter with his uncle Elias Blackburn in Utah Valley.

But Abner wanted to return to Carson Valley and/or California, so with the coming of spring he was ready to return. It was that journey that had a special importance to Nevada history. But let us first say a word about Abner's companion on the 1850 trip, Hampton S. Beatie.

It had been Beatie's intention to go on to California as soon as possible, but his young wife was pregnant and so he stayed the winter in the Salt Lake Valley, and looked after his wife when she gave birth to a son on December 31. He was ready to proceed to California in the spring of 1850.

Beatie, Blackburn, and 13 other Latter-Day Saint men, mostly veterans of the Battalion who had already been in California, formed a party to go to California in the spring of 1850. They joined forces with a group of 65 non-Mormon overlanders under the direction of Captain Joseph DeMont. Beatie served as clerk of the company, Abner was employed as guide. It was the intention of most of the Latter-day Saints to work in the mines for the season and return to their families in Salt Lake City for the winter. Once again they went by way of Fort Hall and the Humboldt.

The seven men went to work and built a "station out of pine logs...fixed for traffic". Beatie later said, "The cabin was a double-logged, one-story house, about 20 by 60 feet, containing two rooms. It had neither roof nor floor. Luckily, it did not rain that season. They did no fencing or planting but did build "a corral to keep stock in. Obviously the residence was considered a temporary one.

Having in mind supplying provisions to the emigrants who came along, Beatie and Blackburn took several teams with them, crossed the Sierra Nevada by way of the Carson Pass, and went to Placerville, on the American River, where they sold three yokes of cattle for "a good price and used the money to purchase provisions. According to Dale Morgan, in his excellent history "The Humboldt: Highroad of the West, the partners heard that snow was fetching $80 a ton in Sacramento. So "they filled their wagons, covered the snow with pine boughs and wagon sheets and killed two birds with one stone hauling down snow and carrying back provisions. They took back with them to Carson Valley flour, dried fruit, bacon, sugar, and coffee.

The provisions soon disposed of, they went again to the California outpost, this time with pack animals, and returned once more with a large supply of goods. These too were quickly sold.

The Blackburn-Beatie trading post came to be referred to as "Mormon Station. It must have been a welcome sight to the famished and exhausted overlanders. Beatie reported that flour sold for $2.80 a pound, fresh beef $1.00, bacon $2.00. "A friend of mine, he said, "went over the mountains and left a yoke of cattle with me, and one day I got a thousand dollars for one of those oxen in the shape of beef.... On another occasion, "a captain of a train of emigrants came along and wanted to buy five hundred pounds of flour at $2.00 a pound, but I refused him, not having sufficient to deal out in such large amounts....For a few loaves of bread I could get a good horse.

Conversations with miners returning from the gold fields persuaded the Blackburns, Beatie, and their friends that they had done better as traders than if they had spent the time digging for gold.

When the emigration slowed down in the fall, the partners sold their log cabin to a person named Moore. Some went on to California. The Black burns, Beatie, and ten Latter-Day Saint returnees from California then left for the Salt Lake Valley. They went by way of Fort Hall, expecting to sell there the horses they had taken in trade at Mormon Station. Before they reached their destination, however, they ran into a party of Vannock Indians, who stole from the most of their mules, horses, and supplies. According to a contemporary report in the DESERET NEWS for November 2, 1850, the only supplies they had left were a little sugar and coffee. Only the providential help of a supply train also headed for Fort Hall enabled them to make it alive to the Salt Lake Valley.

News of their success at Mormon Station spread, as did Abner Blackburn's confirmation of his earlier discovery of gold in "Gold Canyon. They also predicted a promising future for Carson Valley. Particularly attracted by the potential of the region were John and Enoch Reese, LDS merchants in Salt Lake City who employed Beatie as clerk in their general store. Their conversations with Beatie led to a decision to locate a permanent trading establishment in Nevada.

On April10, 1851, John Reese, Salt Lake City merchant and uncle of Hampton Beatie, left Salt Lake City with an organized group to buy out the rights to "Mormon Station and establish a permanent trading post in Carson Valley.

Their group consisted of 17 men and 13 wagons of provisions. Arriving at their destination on June 1, Reese bought out Moore, to whom Blackburn, Beatie, and associates had sold their trading cabin in the fall of 1850. Reese also gave two sacks of flour to Chief Jim of the Washoe tribe in exchange for the right to use any claim to the land that the Washoe might have.

By 1852 Reese was selling his own garden produce (turnips, potatoes, and melons) and locally-produced grain and hay. The Mormon Station of Blackburn, Beatie, and associates was gradually expanded and converted into Reese's Station - easily the best between Placerville and Salt Lake City.

Reese's 1851 success in selling and exchanging supplies, provisions, and livestock did not rival that of the Blackburn-Beatie enterprise of the previous year. For one thing, there were not nearly so many overland emigrants in 1851. For another thing, several California residents had come into Carson Valley to settle permanently, and they set up rival trading posts, some of them at a place called Rag Town. According to an overland traveler, these consisted of "a few shanties built by putting small posts in the ground to which canvases were nailed. Under these covers they kept hotels, saloons, eating places, and sold groceries and meat products.

From any reasonable point of view, Carson Valley was a distant outpost, whether of Utah or of California. On March 5, 1849, the Mormon settlers in Utah, some 8,000 strong, held a convention to organize a state government to be called the "State of Deseret.  (The word was from the Book of Mormon and meant honeybee, or hive of bees.) The boundaries of their proposed state included present-day Utah, all of Nevada except the southern tip, and parts of present-day California, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado.

Obviously, the proposed state included Carson Valley. The national Congress, however, caught in the conflict between those supporting slavery and those laboring for its extinction, did not grant statehood status to the Mormon settlements. Instead, as part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress created the Territory of Utah, naming it after the Ute Indians (Deseret sounded too much like "desert ). The reduced area included Utah, nearly all of present Nevada, and small portions of present-day Idaho and Wyoming. The new colony at Carson Valley, therefore, was part of Utah Territory. The Mormons were pleased when it was announced that President Millard Fillmore had appointed Brigham Young as governor of "their territory.

The Carson Valley colony was so distant from Salt Lake City, and so small, that it was impractical that Utah Territory should have exerted any control over the region. While the Mormon residents would have willingly extended Utah jurisdiction over western Nevada, the settlers who bad moved in from California did not want to live under what they called "Mormon laws. On November 12, 1851, most of those living in Carson Valley, both Mormons and non-Mormons, met together at Reese's Station to organize a local squatter government. They were concerned with establishing viable police control, regulations over land claims, timber and water rights, and provision for bridges, roads, and schools. The first lawsuit in Nevada is recorded in the record of this early "town hail government.

During the year 1852 the small Mormon contingent in the Valley - those working for John Reese plus a few returnees from California gold fields - was strengthened by the immigration of Israel Mott and his wife, who settled four and one-half miles up from Mormon Station on the overland road. Mrs. Mott was the first permanent non-Indian woman resident of Carson Valley. A blacksmith shop was established late in the year by Henry Van Sickle and his brother. John Reese expanded his facilities and also fenced and plowed a field of 30 acres, which he planted to "wheat, barley, corn and watermelons in one side and mixed things all around. The migration was so heavy in 1852 that he was able to get as much as $1 for a bunch of turnips which sold for only 10 cents in the Salt Lake Valley. Other prices were presumably proportionately high.

While the year 1852 was profitable for most of the residents, the sentiment against Utah control was becoming more pronounced. Thomas S. Williams wrote to Brigham Young on June 24, 1852: "The citizens of this valley (Carson Valley) declare in language too strong to utter that they will no longer be governed or tried by Mormon law. He stated that he and others refused to recognize writs and attachments served by a locally chosen Mormon constable, and concluded: "If there are no legal steps taken to organize this part of the territory, the safety of the inhabitants will always be in danger while sojourning in these parts.

He stated that the Carson Valley residents "will pay no taxes that are levied on them (by Utah Territory) and advise others to hold out in like manner until they get this valley annexed to California.

The Carson Valley residents petitioned the Surveyor General of California to determine if the valley was not in California, but that officer was "reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the valley was "from 12 to 15 miles out of the state of California.

The next year, 1853, some 43 residents - every year there were a few new settlers, both Mormons and non-Mormons - petitioned the California legislature to annex their area to California, for judicial and revenue purposes. The California legislature failed to act on the petition, however, and the squatter government continued to function. Certainly, there was no effective control from Salt-Lake City. Meanwhile, a sawmill was constructed, an additional dry goods store was opened, and there was a more impressive local production of food and feed.

"This is a great country when we get it all fenced in", he wrote. It was a great country unfenced, a rich pasture where cattle "fattened wonderfully" beneath the abrupt wail of the Sierra Nevada. But as to the inhabitants, he was disappointed.

To his friend Joseph Cain of the DESERET NEWS. who had been through the country in 1850, Bishop Woolley wrote: "Whether it has changed much for better or worse since you were here I cannot say, but if for the worse, it must have changed very fast, and if for the better, it must have been very slow. It is the most God-forsaken place that I ever was in, and as to Mormonism, I can't find it here. If the name remains, the Spirit has fled.

An additional problem resulting from the isolated location of Reese's Station and the Carson Valley settlement was the lack of a consistent policy toward the Indians. On the one hand, Mormons had been instructed by Brigham Young that "it is better to feed them than to fight them. The relationships had been reasonably friendly and compatible.

On the other hand, the attitude of many overlanders and Californians was mingled repulsion and fear: "The only good injun' is a dead injun'. The federal Indian Agent, John H. Holeman, a non-Mormon, wrote to Brigham Young in 1853 that the various traders who had set up along the California Trail were following a policy inimical to "the peace and safety of the emigrants and permanent settlers.

"By unkind treatment to the Indians they make them unfriendly toward the emigrants; schisms arise which they take advantage of, and steal, and commit more depredations than the Indians, all of which they manage to have charged to the Indians. Holernan stated that he was told by Indians that the traders advised them to steal from the emigrants; the traders would then market the stolen goods. When Holeman warned the traders about their dangerous policy, they just laughed at him and scoffed at the laws of Utah.  "The whites who infest the country. Holeman concluded, "are far more troublesome than the Indians.

In 1854 the President of the United States, Franklin Pierce, assigned Lt. Col. Edward J. Steptoe to spend the winter of 1854-1855 in Utah Territory to investigate the possibility of constructing a road from Salt Lake City to California.

The first step was to search for a more direct route from Salt Lake to Carson Valley. Col. Steptoe enlisted the support of John Reese and others, and his party was able to shorten and improve the route. Oliver Huntington, a Mormon who was with the group,  was fascinated by Carson Valley and wrote' to the DESERET NEWS: "Its soil and climate is equal to the best of the mountain valleys. Its timber is exhaustless and of superior quality.

This combination of problems and opportunities - the agricultural potential, the known existence of gold and silver, the growing population, and the Indian presence - caused the Mormon Church, in 1855, to make Carson Valley an official mission and to call several dozen Salt Lake families to settle there.

And while this decision was being reached, Brigham Young and his associates determined upon another advantage in establishing a formally organized mission in Carson Valley.

The extensive proselyting system of the Latter-Day Saints, and the favorable response of many to the Mormon message, meant that an average of approximately 3,000 persons per year wended their way by ox team to the Salt Lake Valley. Alter a winter there,  they were sent out to form new settlements and communities in Utah and contiguous states and territories.

Brigham Young now caught a vision of Carson Valley as a halfway collection station for Mormon converts from Europe and the Pacific who were bound for settlements in north-central Utah. The thought was that members in Europe would cross the Atlantic to New Orleans, then go south to what is now Panama, cross by land, and then sail up the coast to San Francisco, then travel overland to Carson Valley, then go on to the Salt Lake Valley. Not many would follow this route, to be sure, but a Carson Valley headquarters ought to remain for the benefit of those who did.

The usefulness of such a way-station had already been shown along another route. In the mid-1850s, St. Louis was serving a similar function in connection with Mormon emigration from the East. As Albert Page has pointed out, Mormon personnel there helped the emigrants who lacked the means to immediately continue on to Utah. They helped find housing and employment, and they conducted church services.

The importance of St. Louis in the Mormon plans is indicated by the fact that a stake (diocese) of the church was organized there in 1855, the only stake existing at that time east of the Rockies. Such a gathering center also had the advantage of providing an opportunity for those who were not enthusiastic about making the final leg of the journey to stay awhile and consider their options.

In 1855, therefore, Brigham Young called Apos tle Orson Hyde, who had directed the Mormon community in St. Louis, to go to Carson Valley and oversee the burgeoning settlement there.

At the same time, Carson Valley was made a stake, the first in present-day Nevada, and the church made a major investment in its human resources by sending some 150 to 200 persons to reinforce the Mormon contingent in the lovely valley. These would institute a firm government over the region, assure friendly relationships with the Indians, and establish a viable way-station.

Carson Valley was to be "a major outpost of

On May 17, 1855, Orson Hyde, apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, prominent Mormon colonizer and newly appointed Probate Judge of Carson County, Utah Territory, left Salt Lake City for Carson Valley. His company included George F. Stiles (also Styles), judge of the Third Federal District Court that included Carson Valley; United States Marshal Joseph L. Heywood; and 36 Mormon colonizers who had been "called to strengthen the number of Mormon residents in Carson Valley.

The assignment of Hyde and his party was to organize the territory, conduct court business, prepare for the establishment of a mission among the Indians, and provide a way station for Mormon emigration headed from Oregon and California to the Salt Lake Valley.

The Carson Valley Mission was part of a larger corps of Latter-day Saint men who were assigned to colonize a number of regions in the Great Basin. (The same church conference which "called this group to Carson Valley, for example, also sent a party of men to colonize Las Vegas Spring in the southern part of Nevada, but more of that in a subsequent article.)

Apostle Hyde and his party arrived at Reese's Station on June 15, having been almost exactly a month on the trail. Along the way, the 50 year-old Hyde wrote regular reports to Brigham Young, governor of Utah Territory and president of the LDS Church, about the country he traveled through. Hyde was impressed with the ability of the territory to support livestock:

"The very best mountain grass waves In rich abundance all around us. There is plenty rot all the Stock that ever did travel or ever will on this Western route. The water Is as abundant as anyone could wish, and as pure and clear as the crystal itself. The finest speckled trout abound In all the Streams. We saw them, caught them, and ate them, and we know they are good... It I, a cold country, (but) most admirably calculated for stock growing..."

Upon reaching Carson Valley, Hyde reported that John and Enoch Reese had a "most splendid mill and ranch. "The labor that has been done by them is immense. Their crops generally look well. However, grasshoppers are very destructive on Wheat and vegetables, especially on late wheat. The harvest will be only middling on the insects." Hyde goes on. "This Is a beautiful valley... There are also many valleys In this vicinity rich and fertile sufficient to make a state or an empire.

As for the people, Hyde reported that they were anxious for an organization of some kind. "They are much divided In their views and feelings. Some are willing to come under Utah, others claim that they live In California, while some want a distinct territorial government. This country has been neglected quite long enough If Utah wishes to hold It. It is a great and valuable country?"

Hyde's first task in Carson Valley was to arrange survey, in order to any question about the location of the region in Utah Territory. For that purpose, he and Judge Stiles went on to Sacramento, California, to induce California to determine its legal boundary. The survey was made by three men from the California's surveyor's office and three men from the Carson Valley Mormon community - Christopher Merkeley, Seth Dustin, and George W. Hancock.

When a survey completed on September 7 showed that Carson Valley was in Utah, Hyde immediately called for an election. Eleven men were elected, including James Fain as sheriff; Dr. Charles Daggett (a non-Mormon) as prosecuting attorney; and a number of men as justices of the peace and selectmen (commissioners). They chose Genoa (Reese's Station had been renamed Genoa, after the birthplace of Columbus) as the county seat. After that election, there was no need for residents of Carson Valley to travel to Salt Lake City or California for business of a legal nature.

In the meantime, Hyde held a number of meetings with the residents to discuss the organization and management of the community. There were meetings with local Indians to determine their friendliness and receptivity to missionary work. Parties were sent out to explore other possible settlement sites: the Walker's River Valley, 50 miles east of Carson; the Washoe and Truckee valleys to the north; and Ruby Valley, about halfway between Salt Lake City and Carson Valley.

With the basic work of organizing and holding court completed early in September, Judge Stiles and Marshal Heywood left Carson to return to Salt Lake City. Hyde remained to complete other leadership tasks. Stiles and Heywood reported to Brigham Young, upon their arrival in October, that "all was peaceful in Carson Valley. They took word from Hyde that he wanted his wife, Mary Ann, to be sent to Carson to stay with him.

Hyde also reported that the possibility of establishing an agricultural mission among the Pah-Utah Indians (Paiutes) was promising. Now that the harvest and most other tasks in the valley were completed, he was advising most of the Mormon colonists who had come with him to return to the Salt Lake Valley for the winter, with instructions that they should return in the early spring with their families and supplies, prepared for permanent settlement. They were to bring ox teams, cows, tools, seeds, and other equipment and supplies.

Within a week of Hyde's letter, Brigham Young had arranged for James Townsend to take Mary Ann Hyde to Carson, wrote Hyde to organize a territorial militia unit in Carson Valley, and granted permission for the colonists who had gone with Hyde in May to return to Salt Lake City for the winter. They left on November 18, and arrived in Salt Lake Valley after exactly one month on the road. They earned a letter from Hyde which reported on affairs in the valley and declared,

"There are many Mormons here, but I fear not Saints...The people...feel their sufficiency and must be governed for the present with a gentle hand, If governed at all.

With a gradual accretion of California miners in Carson Valley, there was considerable interest in mining, particularly among the non-Mormon residents. There was particular interest in working in Gold Canyon, where Abner Blackburn had found "show of gold in 1851.

During the winter of 1855-1856, while Hyde and a small group of Mormons and other residents remained in Carson Valley, some of the residents signed a petition to Congress to remove their valley from the jurisdiction of Utah and attach it to the state of California. At the same time, another group, primarily Mormon, signed a counter-petition urging Congress to leave the region under Utah control. Considering the divided state of opinion, Hyde recommended to Brigham Young that he should call additional colonizers in the spring of 1856 to assure a predominance of Utah thinking.

As he was expected to do, Hyde attempted to collect the county and territorial taxes, and in the process attempted to cross the Sierra Nevada on December 15. He was accompanied part of the way by a young man named Willis. As told by Albert Page, their first attempt was unsuccessful because, after leaving Willis, Hyde encountered deep snow and had to return.

A second effort was made on December 20 with equal lack of success. This time Hyde was caught in a severe snowstorm which forced him to make camp and later attempt a return to Carson Valley. Only with heroic effort and after spending several nights in the snow was he able to limp back to Genoa. His feet were badly frozen; after appropriate treatment by Dr. Daggett he was able to save his feet, but he lost a little toe. His ordeal had caused him to lose 50 pounds. Hyde's partner, Willis, was not that fortunate. After they split up he became lost and perished in the snow with his animals.

Hyde's next report to Brigham Young included the following: "My feelings are to get away from here as soon I can, where my light and talent will not be under a bushel or roiled up Inn napkin...The Lord is good and gracious and his mercy endureth forever. Thanks to His name for my deliverence - from the horrors of the mountain storms."

He then recommended the non-Mormon prose eating attorney, Charles D. Daggett - the doctor who had treated him -to take his place as probate judge. Hyde was released to return the following spring but did not take advantage of the opportunity and decided to remain longer. He felt very strongly that the Mormons should "hold the country. We should settle up this country with good Saints who have salt In themselves.

Specifically, he said, Brigham Young should send a good school teacher, a cabinetmaker with tools, and persons acquainted with gristmills and sawmills. "The people here are like the main timbers In a building - no pins, braces, girts, and joints, he wrote.

All new colonists, he emphasized, should bring their animals, so as to build up the herds of stock, for the area was well suited to stock raising. When Brigham Young accepted his suggestion to send a considerable force of settlers in the spring of 1856, Hyde volunteered to remain until fall. This way he could help settle the colony and reduce many of their problems as the result of his experience with them during the preceding year.

"lf this country (Carson Valley) is to be taken, It should be laid hold of with a firm, determinate, and permanent grasp,...and there should be no time lost In doing It."

Expecting a large immigration from Salt Lake Valley in the spring of 1856, the residents planted extensive crops of wheat, barley, potatoes, and other vegetables. At the same time, Hyde wrote Latter-day Saints in California asking them to help support the colony by donating a sawmill and other facilities.

Because of the regular mail service between Placerville and Carson Valley provided by John A. "Snow Shoe Thompson, the latter settlement was in closer touch with California than with Salt Lake City, and there were regular articles about Carson Valley in the Western Standard, a California Mormon newspaper edited by George Q. Cannon.  But little help came from California.

Hyde was indefatigable in securing land, water, and timber rights for the prospective settlers. "Lame and crippled as I am", he wrote in April," I have climbed over some of our highest mountains, part of the time on a mule and part of the time on hands and knees, exploring the country and seeing If I could find a place to dig out a little cash if we should get Into a pinch."

On April 6, 1856, at the general conference of the church held in Salt Lake City, 257 "missionaries were called by Brigham Young, nearly all of whom A cot to Carson Valley that spring. Among these were butchers, tanners, shoemakers, weavers, brick makers, bricklayers, and other "mechanics and artisans. Most of them were in Genoa and the surrounding area by the end of June. There, Judge Hyde directed their settlement in the Washoe and Truckee Valleys, as well as in Carson Valley. Heavily equipped, and bringing Runny cattle and other livestock, most of them were on the trail six weeks.

Hyde had surveyed the Washoe Valley land and laid out a city in acre-and-a-quarter lots, which were on sale for $10 per lot, and he was in the process of building a sawmill from parts brought from California by the faithful missionary James Townsend. Hyde's advice to the new settlers was as follows: "Labor hard, settle up, mind your own business, be slow of speech, and live your religion. Fear God and work righteousness. One family of these 1856 settlers, Mary Jane and Sylvester Phippens, were disappointed in their new home. "Imagine a city with only three houses in It, no streets, tall pine trees, and a great high mountain to look right straight up top....I would rather have one acre of land In Salt Lake City than the whole of Carson Valley....But the Lord remembers us. A number of the new settlers purchased ranches from the "old settlers and thus acquired a start.

Judge Hyde's gristmill and sawmill gave a boost to the local economy, but all was not sweetness and light. "Many of the brethren are dissatisfied and act childish...Some think they want their bread and butter all spread for them, and because It I, not, some murmur and want to go back to Salt Lake. We can raise all we need here In a little time. It is great for grass, water, and timber right at our doors....I think they will get over their homesickness by and by....I shall do the best I know how to make them honor and live their religion, for that is everything to me.

Life in the valley was not pleasant for all. Mary Jane Phippen did not like the swearing of the Gentiles. "It sounds quite awful to me to hear men calling on God to damn their souls. Perhaps If God would take a few of them at their words, the others might possibly have more fear and respect for His holy name. The house she lived in, she wrote on August 26, was "a nice cool one made of pine slabs. It is almost too cool for these cold nights...I am visited by company that I do not like very well-one snake, one toad, one scorpion, one lizard and plenty of flies."

Others wrote more poetically of the "rich verdure of indigenous grasses and clover ; the "clear, pure, and cold water of the Carson River; and the "gigantic cottonwood trees, all so large and old that they seem like a patriarchal race destined to oblivion when the present shall have departed.

The Washoe Valley settlement where Hyde had his home and sawmill, and where the Phlppens lived, soon had its first birth, a child of the Richard Bentleys named Frank. The new settlement was therefore named Franktown after this first baby.

On September 28, Orson Hyde held the first conference of the church in Carson Valley, at which sermons were delivered on such subjects as swearing, prayer, keeping away from grog shops, and the respectful treatment of non-Mormons.

The Carson Valley Stake was organized, with William Price as president; Chester Loveland, president of the High Council; Richard Bentley, stake bishop. Branches were established at Carson Valley, Eagle Valley, and Washoe Valley. Home teachers were appointed for each of these branches, as well as the full quota of 12 men for the stake high council. The church was now fully organized.

But there were problems with the "old settlers who did not respect the Mormons and their way of doing things. While there had been much agitation among these people, who wanted to be under California law instead of what they called "Mormon law, they finally decided to form a vigilante group to enforce their own desires. W.W. Drummond, a visiting federal judge not liked by either Mormons or non-Mormons, had ruled in July favoring John Reese in a suit against Richard D. Sides, a non-Mormon. for a debt of $1,010. Reese got a judgment against Sides which authorized the sheriff to sell his ranch and other properties so Reese could get his money. The sale was advertised, but when the sheriff and posse arrived. Sides had rallied enough citizens from the Carson area to oppose the sheriff. The sale was postponed on two different occasions, each time because a vigilante group prevented the sheriff from conducting the sale. Hyde counseled the Mormons to remain calm, to avoid a confrontation with the vigilantes, and to go. about their business.

Reese was never able to collect his debt. Not content with the "victory, the vigilantes threatened to lynch the Utah assessor and tax collector unless he paid back any taxes he may have collected. Hyde was patient and peace loving, but he wrote Brigham Young: "We intend to do our duty and meet whatever emergency that may arise like men. They the vigilantes say that they Intend to run our mill when It Is done. But they will have a warm time of It if they do...There Is now no chance for us but victory or death; and in the name of the Lord, we are resolved to stand our ground and do our best.

Brigham Young's response to Hyde's suggestion that conflict was inevitable was that Hyde and all the Mormons should leave the region rather than fight. "Do not carry things to far. It Is not all worth the sacrifice of any good man. We have plenty of good locations where we can live in peace, and if the brethren cannot live there and maintain the laws without contention, let them all sell out and - come away...if western Utah Is desirable, and one that Is coveted by them the Gentiles, they will not let you nor us rest In peace until they drive our people there from. This our experience teaches us. Wherefore, let them have It and let the brethren do the best they can In selling their claims and - abandon the settlements to those who want them worse than we do. Let California enjoy her two or three precincts over there If they wish to, but don't you fight about It. If truth, forbearance, and genial Influence of good society cannot maintain good order and supremacy of the laws, we shall not endeavor to sustain them at the distant point by force."

Actually, Hyde had overstated the situation. The scale of local conflict never developed to the point that would necessitate removal or abandonment. For the time being, however, the "old settlers from California, determined not to be ruled by Utah, invited the assessor and collector from El Dorado County, California, to come to Carson - Valley, assess their property, and receive their tax monies.

They declared they would live only under California law. Hyde's response was that the valley was worth saving, that more Mormon settlers were needed, and that Brigham Young must send additional men. "Devils will reign, he wrote Brigham Young, "unless we get in so thick that there is no chance for them.

But the mail was delivered with a two-month delay. Brigham Young did not receive letters in time to take effective action even if he had wished to do so. The president wrote Hyde a letter, which the latter received in November 1856, authorizing him to appoint a replacement and return to the Salt Lake Valley.

Elder Hyde hurriedly made an agreement to lease his sawmill, which he valued at $10,000, to Jacob Rose. Rose paid an installment of one span of small mules, an old worn out harness, two yokes of oxen, and an old wagon which Hyde used to convey himself to Salt Lake City. Although Hyde - tried in every way to collect further on the mill, the local "regulators would not permit further satisfaction. Chester Loveland, president of the stake high council, was chosen to replace him.

Elder Hyde never again returned to Carson Valley, eventually settled in Spring City, Utah, and - served as principal ecclesiastical officer in the Sanpete and Sevier valleys of central Utah.

On Sunday, June 16, 1844, a gang of determined Illinoisans, headed by James Charles, a constable of Hancock County, went to the house of Chester Loveland, a Latter-day Saint who lived four miles southeast of Warsaw, Illinois. The group ordered Loveland, a captain in the state militia, to call out his company of Volunteers to join a posse to go to Nauvoo, Illinois, to arrest the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, and the City Council. Loveland refused to do so. The next day the posse returned, with an order, they said, from the governor. But Loveland was ( certain the order was a forgery and once more refused to go. The posse then reported this refusal to Colonel Levi Williams of the Carthage Greys, a division of the militia from a nearby town.

Insisting that the truculent captain must be "dealt with, Williams appointed a committee of 12 to lynch, tar, and feather Loveland. The committee went that evening, arriving about midnight. Loveland had been warned of their approach and kept watch. When he saw that they were provided with tar buckets, bags of feathers, and a bundle of rope, in addition to firearms, he blew out his light and placed himself in a position to defend the locked door and window.

The committee went around the house several times, tried his door, rapped, called him by name, and consulted together. Finally, their courage failed them and they left, yelling to him, if there, to leave the country immediately. A few days later, on June 27, this committee and the rest of the posse broke into the jail at Carthage, Illinois, where Joseph Smith and his brother were Incarcerated, and murdered them. Chester Loveland was among those who saw the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum Smith as they were carried out of the jail.

This same Chester Loveland joined with the Latter-day Saints moving west to the Great Basin RI 1850, settled in Bountiful, and was one of the 250 Persons called by Brigham Young in April 1855 to assist in the colonization of Western Utah-now Western Nevada. It was this seasoned frontiersman and dedicated Christian who replaced Orson Hyde and William Price as spiritual and temporal leader Of the Saints in Nevada.

The Mormons in Carson and adjacent valleys were becoming adjusted to the situation in Christopher Layton, 1821-1898, prominent rancher in Carson County 1855-57. Western Utah and were beginning to feel that they were fortunate to be there. Moreover, the refusal of Elder Hyde to enforce the sheriff's sale of the Sides ranch had given his (Side's) Gentile supporters the feeling that the Mormons were not adamant-that they understood the feelings of the Californiaphiles. Their attitude became friendly and sympathetic. Loveland wrote Brigham Young, in February 1857: "In regard to the difficulty that existed between us as a people and the old settlers of Carson County, I am pleased to say (It) has died a natural death. Things are of such a nature, he wrote, that "there does not appear to he anything to prevent us from building up a permanent stake In this country, and carrying out the designs the servants of the Lord had In view at the time we were called to settle here."

To continue this spirit of amiability, Loveland advised the Saints not to go to Gold Canyon to work, allowing the California miners undisputed claim to that area. Loveland and his associates organized the country into four school districts, later enlarged to five, to promote better education. During December (1856) they cooperatively built a schoolhouse at Franktown, involving perhaps 300 hours of labor. Some 25 students attended classes taught by Leonard Wines. The Saints were instructed to live their religion and to mind their own business. The old settlers began to see the Mormons, not as a threat, but as responsible and industrious colonizers. 

The Mormon community at Franktown, where Loveland lived, was particularly close and well managed. "Wassail (for Washoe) valley seems more like home in the Salt Lake Valley than any other (place) in the West, wrote Richard Bentley. "We are all of one faith, and we all have as our principal object the building up of the Kingdom of God on the earth. 

Brigham Young's instructions to the little community were simple: "Be wise and prudent In your movements.. . Seek unto the Lord for wisdom and he will guide you aright". In a special meeting held by Loveland, each of the colonists expressed his willingness and desire to remain in the valley and fulfill their mission. "The spirit of union prevails among us and the people with whom we are surrounded," Loveland reported to Brigham Young.

At the time of the April 1857 annual stake conference, the Mormon membership was reported as follows: Carson Valley Branch, 116 members, of whom 5 were high priests, and 31, seventies and elders. Washoe Branch, 111 members, of whom 12 were high priests, and 10, seventies and elders. Eagle Valley Branch, 60 members, of whom 4 were high priests, and 7, seventies and elders. The members included William Jennings, a butcher and meat dealer whose enterprise is suggested by the fact that he later became Utah's first millionaire and was a principal organizer of Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI), still Utah's largest mercantile establishment; Chester Loveland, who later became the first mayor of Brigham City, Utah, and a colonel in the Utah Territorial Militia; Christopher Layton, founder of Layton, Utah and of Layton, Arizona; and Abraham Hunsaker, a prime colonizer in northern Utah who was one of the best stockmen in the territory.  

In Carson he purchased what he called "the best farm in Carson County owned by a man named Lucky Bill, and planted and harvested a variety of crops, especially wheat and barley, on the 90 acres of cultivated land. He enclosed a garden and set out shade trees, fruit trees, and shrubbery. Living at a distance from other colonists, he held religious services in his own home. His wife taught the children in school, and he conducted baptismal services for his children and some Indian children.

Hunsaker and his family milked 30 cows and produced six large kegs of butter which his soil Allen then transported to Murphy's Diggings, in California, and traded for groceries and clothing. Hunsaker reported in April 1857: "We are living on the best farm to raise all kinds of produce I ever owned." Nevertheless, he continued to long to be "with the Saints...Although we are living in the best place to make money that I ever lived in, that is no encouragement to me to stay here (permanently), although l am some tired of moving; but as we were sent here to live I am determined to stay until called home or have the liberty to come home."

There was a buoyant feeling in Carson and adjoining valleys in the summer of 1857-a feeling that the colony was going to be successful, both economically and politically. There were gold discoveries in Gold Canyon and along the Walker River; a road was being constructed between Carson Valley and Placerville; and Carson Valley WU rendering an obvious service to Mormon emigrants traveling from California to the Salt Lake Valley.

In the midst of this beehive of activity, on September 5, 1857, came instructions that spelled the immediate end of the Mormon colony. Chester Loveland had arisen in time for a 6 a.m. breakfast When he heard a knock at his front door. When he opened it, there stood Peter W. Conover, Oliver B. Huntington, and Samuel Dalton bringing an express message from Brigham Young. Urged on by the president, they had made the journey to Franktown in 18 days, although in moving so rapidly they almost died of thirst and starvation. What was the message they brought? Utah, they informed Loveland, was being invaded by the United States Army. The Saints in the Salt Lake Valley needed manpower and weapons of defense. Would the Western Utah community return immediately and bring all the guns and bullets they could buy? 

Let us pause for a moment to consider the predicament. Some former federally appointed officials In Utah reported to President James Buchanan that the Mormons would not recognize, them that they had burned federal court records, and that they were "in a state of substantial rebellion against federal sovereignty. Without investigation of these charges (which we know were untrue), without even notifying the governor of the territory; dispatched to the territory 2,500 troops and as many teamsters, blacksmiths, suppliers, and other hangers-on; and instructed General William S. Harney (later Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston) to enforce federal law in the territory.

This, then, was the message now delivered to Chester Loveland: "There Is an army of from 2,500 to 3,500 men enroute for this territory, besides some 1,200 teamsters and 700 wagons with ox teams loaded with supplies, 400 mules and horse teams loaded with personal effects, and 7,000 beef cattle. We have concluded that It is wisdom that you should dispose of your property as well as you can. Make no noise about your business, but let all things be done quietly and in order. 

Without question, nearly every Mormon in the region made immediate preparations to leave. President Loveland had been intending to join a Salt Lake-bound party of emigrants so he could attend the October general conference of the church. He had $5,000 in tithing money which he planned to deliver to church headquarters. This he turned over to Conover and told him to use it in buying powder, lead, and caps. He then called the Washoe citizens to a meeting at the Franktown schoolhouse at 9 a.m. and gave appropriate instructions. He then drove to Eagle Valley where, at 2 p.m., he gave the same message. Finally he rode to Genoa and by 10 p.m. was reporting the same news to members in Carson Valley.

From citizens in these three gatherings he collected $12,000 in gold, which was given to Bob Walker, who was instructed to depart immediately for San Francisco to buy guns and ammunition there. The shipment was delivered by boat to Stockton, and from there freighted by wagon to Carson Valley and then taken on to Salt Lake Valley. The Carson missionaries tried to make the best deal they could for their property, packed their wagons, and were ready to leave for Salt Lake City within two weeks. The company, which consisted of approximately 450 persons, both emigrants and colonists, and 200 wagons, was captained by Chester Loveland  and was divided into divisions of which William H. Smith and John Lytle were captains. 

Conover was captain of the guard. They started for the Salt Lake Valley on September 26. All had arrived in the Salt Lake Valley by November 3. having spent roughly five weeks on the trail. Six babies were born on the way, and three children had died during the passage. 

The Mormon Mission to Carson Valley was ended. While Utah Territory continued to be responsible for Carson County for another four years, its influence there was never as great as during the years 1855-1857. The Utah War had sounded the death knell for this promising outlying community of Latter-day Saints.

In the April 1855 general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 300 missionaries were called to settle various portions of the American West. The largest proportion of these went to Carson and adjacent valleys in what was then Western Utah, now Western Nevada. But 30 were appointed to establish an Indian mission at Las Vegas, a large spring in what is now Southern Nevada. 

This location was along the route from the Salt Lake Valley to Southern California, and would have the added advantage of furnishing a way station for travelers between those two places. But the primary purpose was to establish friendly relations with the Indians of the region and to teach them some of the arts of agriculture. The choice of personnel and their work can best be understood by giving particular attention to one of them: George Washington Bean.

George Washington Bean was born in 1831 in Adams County, Illinois. In 1841, when George was 10 years old, his parents were converted to Mormonism, and George was baptized shortly after. Four years later, when he was only 14, George was ordained a Seventy, an office which involved both administrative and preaching assignments. This ordination of one so young suggests that George - Bean was very mature for his age; Seventies were not usually ordained until in their twenties and thirties. His maturity is also suggested by the fact that George carried a man's load in the ordinary business of life: he managed the family farm while his father was ill, and he drove "an outfit during the Mormon Exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, in February 1846.

When the trek to the Great Basin was made in 1847, George now 16, joined the Jedediah M. Grant company of 100 wagons and was given full responsibility for a family and team of four oxen.

Just how seriously George took his responsibility was evidenced by a court-martialing experience along the trail, near Fort Laramie, Wyoming. Captain Grant, after warning the drivers one evening that they must meet the suggested time of arising and departure, provided an incentive by declaring that the first one in line the next morning could lead the company. George was up and ready and in front place. Another person, 10 years George's senior, and an important person in his own mind, did not like this "young whippersnapper taking the place which he had wanted to occupy, - so he took his revenge out on the boy's oxen. He lashed away at them to get them out of the way so he could occupy first place. George replied, "You can beat me if you like, but not my oxen.  When the senior whipped them again, George "cracked him over the head with the butt of his ox-whip, cutting a gash and causing some blood to flow. 

The older teamster registered a complaint and insisted that the company conduct a court-martial. Judges were the captains of tens in the fifty of which George and the complainer were part. The older person refused to wash his bloody face until the court-martial was convened, so that the bloodstains would stand as accusers of the boy's "un-Christian like conduct. The testimony at the trial all seemed to be directed against the young teamster who had dared to strike his fellow traveler. 

But before sentence was pronounced (a common punishment was to tie a rebellious person behind a wagon for a day or two), Captain Grant asked permission to say a few words. He stated: "Our teams are our salvation on this journey. I feel to honor the lad who fought in defense of his team. The other man should be punished for laziness rather than getting approval for taking out his vengeance for being late on the boy's oxen. Thus commended instead of punished, George was particularly grateful to Jedediah Grant for his willingness to speak up for him. 

Once in the Salt Lake Valley, George, during the winter of 1847-1848, located a farm for his family in the Mill Creek area, plowed it, and by spring planted corn and garden stuffs.

George then volunteered to join a company assigned to return on the trail to the Missouri Valley to pick up persons who, due to age or handicap, would not be able to conduct their own teams to the Salt Lake Valley. He took four yoke of cattle and a wagon and provisions to last until he reached the Missouri settlements. He picked up his own family and others and returned to the Salt Lake Valley in the fall of 1848. 

Thanks to his winter and springtime labors, the Bean family was well provided during the ensuing winter.

George's experiences along the trail and in the Salt Lake Valley had caused him to become acquainted with a number of Indians, and he expressed a desire to become better acquainted with them. When, in 1849, Brigham Young called 30 persons to locate a colony on Utah Lake, near present-day Provo, Utah, George Bean was included in the group. 

Since this was an established Indian fishing area, most of the 30 were persons who, Brigham Young felt, could successfully get along with the "Timpanodes which was the name of these Indians. The 30 built a fort ("Fort Utah ), built a schoolhouse in which George, now 18, taught as assistant teacher, surveyed a town, constructed a gristmill, and dug irrigation ditches to land that Could be farmed.

Each spring, according to Bean's journals, fish moved from Utah Lake up the Provo River to Spawn. "Indeed, wrote Bean, "so great was the number of Pah-gar' (suckers) and At-um-Pah-gar' (speckled trout) passing continuously upstream that often the river would be full from bank to bank as thick as they could swim for hours and sometimes for days together. Indians would come from a wide region, he reported, and feast from morning to night for many days. During these days of festivity, they engaged in sports as well-horseracing, foot racing, wrestling, gambling, and trading. Bean, as he expressed it, "lost no time idle myself, and I enjoyed their games and learned much of their, language and made friends. The Timpanodes, wrote Bean, were "strong and fearless".

However friendly the collaboration, the Mormons were also prepared for defense. Occasionally their stock was stolen, and occasionally they were told by the natives that they must leave. They erected on top of the fort a bastion on which they placed a Six Pounder Iron Cannon, which hopefully would intimidate any attackers. On September 1, 1849, after George had returned from work in the fields, he was asked by a military superior to help him fire the cannon. In the process of "ramming a cartridge and powder home with their hickory rod, the cannon exploded. Bean and his lieutenant were thrown thirty feet away on the ground. The lieutenant was killed outright and Bean was "taken up dying, terribly mangled, but still breathing, with my left hand gone. He was given careful treatment by his associates; one of them amputated his arm to just below the elbow, and he was carried home to a bed, where he remained for 40 days. Eventually a doctor was dispatched to treat him, and, among other things, the doctor removed, by probing, some 200 hickory ramrod slivers.

About three weeks after the accident, the First Presidency of the Church, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards, journeyed to Fort Utah, entered Bean's cabin, and gave him a blessing. According to Bean, Brigham Young grabbed his right hand and asked, "George,.do you want to live? "Yes, replied Bean, "if I can do any good. Brigham Young then declared: "Then you shall live. Until that moment, Bean wrote, he had remained blind from the explosion. But now he saw the glorious light and began to get better. 

As he was recuperating, Bean also says that he had many visits from friendly Indians who sympathized with his sufferings. He became especially friendly with Sanpitch, a brother of the noted Ute Chief Walker, who taught him the Indian language more completely. "It was a blessing in disguise, Bean wrote, "to get this training to clinch the Indian language gift I had received. Other Indians who visited and taught him and remained lifelong friends were "Washear or Squash, and Peteetneet. Each of the three was  or became, chief of his tribe; each, on separate occasions, later saved Bean from being killed by "outlaw Indians. 

Because of the  loss of his hand, Bean was given positions that were suited to his condition. He was elected City Recorder and Court Recorder in Provo, assessor and collector and assistant surveyor of Utah County, and clerk of the LDS ward in Provo. He also served as Brigham Young's clerk and Indian interpreter during several tours in Southern Utah, and continued to teach school. He also served as Deputy U.S. Marshal, and appears to have been the first deputy appointed in Utah. 

As deputy, his primary responsibility was to serve as a liaison with various Indian groups. One person who observed Bean in these relationships with Indians reported that the Indians called him "Poorests, or Purretz, and said of him: "He talks straight. Meantime, he married Elizabeth Baum.

In the April conference call of 1855, George Bean was included among the 30 who were assigned to establish an Indian Mission at Las Vegas. Since Bean was both Indian interpreter and clerk, his diary is the basic source on the mission. It is Mormon custom to "set apart" persons for their missions, meaning to have an ecclesiastical official place hands on his head and, by proper authority, appoint him to a work and pray to God that he may fulfill it honorably. Bean's blessing, given by Mormon apostle Wilford Woodruff, blessed him that he would "be an instrument in the Lord's hands of doing great good in Israel, particularly "among the Lamanites (Indians). 

Returning to Provo after learning of his call and being "set apart, Bean reported his mission call to his wife, who, according to his journal, "assured me she would take good care of things in my absence and had faith all would be well with us. At the time they had a baby girl who was eight months old. Bean had 10 days in which to prepare for his mission. He bought a bin full of wheat, some land, some cows, and left sufficient cash with his wife so that she would be provided for during his absence.

As the group was about to depart, Bean was offered $100 a month to be guide and interpreter for a U.S. Army unit going from Salt Lake City to Fort Yuma, Arizona. He turned over his ox team and wagon to a brother missionary and took advantage of that opportunity of earning some cash. The remainder of his 29 associates traveled in a separate party. Bean joined them at Cedar City in southern Utah.

Designated president and leader of the missionary unit was William Bringhurst. The 30 men reached their destination on June 15, 1855, after a journey of 450 miles. As they neared their objective they became thoroughly acquainted with the Muddy River, a river 28 miles in length which was fed by the Meadow Valley River originating in Lincoln County, and which flowed south into the Virgin River, which in turn emptied into the Colorado. 

On the Muddy, Bean wrote, "many hundreds of Indians were then living in a savage state. By this he meant that there had been frequent killings of straggling white travelers. "It was almost a daily - occurrence that some depredation was committed. 

The principal group of Indians in the area were called Moapats or Muddys. According to the record, the missionaries held several meetings with the natives, "teaching them good principles and to some extent repentance and baptism. Later, as a - subsequent chapter will mention, several Mormon settlements were built on the Muddy where cotton, - sugar cane, corn, and grapes were grown.

After this interlude the party drove the valley, 55 miles long by 30 miles wide. The springs were - about 25 yards long and about 10 wide, "boiling up most beautifully. The stream coming from the springs was about three feet wide and about 15 inches deep, with "a tolerable swift current. The water, according to John Steele, another missionary, was "a refreshing beverage for those who may travel with slow ox trains for the space of thirty-six hours. "None can realize how good a thing a blessing is, he wrote, "except those who are deprived of it.

The missionaries started immediately to clear off the land and to plant crops, "but the heat was terrible. "The Indians were very shy at first, - Bean reported, "but good kind treatment won them over. Many of them worked with the colonists, - helping to clear off willows and brush. "We planted corn about the first week in July, and had a good crop, Bean wrote; "also some fine squashes and melons and garden truck. The Indians also helped the missionaries to make adobes, carry bricks to the - mason, and especially to herd the stock. Many of them joined the Church. "They herded emigrants' teams as they stopped on their way to California. They irrigated our land and assisted in making - adobes and in construction of a fourteen foot wall around a space of one hundred and fifty feet square, - which constituted our Mission Fort.

In addition to building the adobe fort and planting crops, the missionaries sent teams out to explore the country. They discovered transparent ledges of crystal salt, found a lead mine in the mountain range 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas and extracted 60 tons of lead, and made the acquaintance of all the Indian tribes and bands. Bean was assigned to visit each of the Indian tribes or bands in the region. These included the Pahgahts or Colorado Piedes, the Moapats or Muddys, the Pahruchats or Rio Virgins, the Panominch or western Piedes, the Quoeech or Diggers, and the Iats or Mohaves. Bean regarded the latter as the superior group. Located about eight miles south of Las Vegas, the Iats raised cotton, grain, and other - agricultural products. Bean estimated that there were 1,000 Indians within a radius of 60 miles of - Las Vegas.

Following typical patriotic American tradition, the missionary-colonists took a day out to celebrate the Fourth of July. "At the dawn of the day, wrote John Steele, "the blacksmith's anvil answered for a cannon, and made a volley of musketry that gave the sleeping natives to know that something was up. Next was to hoist the Stars and Stripes which, by the by, we had to manufacture. I went to work, took a piece of cloth, tore it in strips, got some red flannel, tore it in strips, took some blue and made stars, and by the assistance of Brothers Foster and Hulet, I had a very nice little flag ready for flying by 2 o'clock in the afternoon, while others were preparing a mast. As we had no Umber, we got a mesquite stump, a false wagon tongue, and a tall willow, and made a pole 30 feet high, shook out our flag at the sound of the guns, gave three cheers, and retired to the bowery. After many spirited speeches, songs, and toasts, we were dismissed by prayer. 

In September of 1855, after they had been at Las Vegas three months, a cadre of missionaries went across the desert to San Bernardino, California, to take oxen and cows to sell. The group returned in six weeks with a large number of "wild mares and mules. The next few weeks the colonists were preoccupied with breaking them to ride and pull. Every evening Bean conducted a "school for Indian language "with the remainder of his fellow missionaries. Mail from home - Provo and Salt Lake Valley - came once a month via tithing office messenger. Bean reports how strange it was that he and some of his colleagues took a bath in the Springs, four miles above the fort, on January 1, 1856, showing the mildness of the climate and Warmth of the water. Not a flake of snow fell during the winter of 1855-1856, he reported. 

On a rotation basis, the missionaries were permitted to spend three months of each year with their wives and families. Bean's term came near the end of February 1856 and his instructions were to report (to Brigham Young) the good country we were in and ask for more settlers. After a few days of travel they reached Parowan, Utah. There, the two feet deep. Bean reached home March 25, and returned to Las Vegas Mission on June 1.

Leaving in September 1856, each member of the group drove a wagon loaded with a ton of lead pulled by four mule teams. One can imagine Bean's struggle handling the four teams across desert and up and down mountains with his one hand, for 450 miles to the Salt Lake Valley. Added to this struggle, he was severely kicked by one of the mules while he was on the Virgin River. So "it was a very hard trip for me.

Successfully reaching the Salt Lake Valley, they explained fully the problems of the colony to Brigham Young. "The President asked many questions", wrote Bean, and was disappointed that "the spirit of the Mission was broken. After much deliberation and thought, the Solomonic leader finally decided to release all the brethren from the mission.

By the end of 1856 most of the Indian missionaries had left Las Vegas. (The lead missionaries remained another year, returning, most of them, with the approach of the Utah Expedition in 1857-1858.) They left two legacies - a legacy of basic friendship with the Indians of the region, and huge piles of silver slag, left over from their attempts to extract lead. The 60 tons of lead they had delivered in Salt Lake City was used to make paint, tools, and bullets. (And with the impossibility of separating out all the silver, this led to the legend that the Mormons used silver bullets.)

The mine was occupied three years later by a group which developed it into the famous Potosi silver mine. Some persons have estimated that as much as $50 million in silver was extracted from that location.

Bean returned to his Provo home late in 1856, continued to serve his church and community, served as a judge and legislator, was a member of an LDS stake presidency and patriarch, and died in 1897. He left a large family of intelligent and industrious children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, some of whom contribute today to the civic and economic betterment of Nevada. Above all, Bean was proudest of having taken the message of "Pace and Brotherhood" to the Native Americans of southeastern Nevada.

The oldest permanent Mormon settlement in A Nevada is at Panaca, in Meadow Valley, Lincoln County. Located about 35 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, Panaca is approximately 15 miles southeast of Pioche and 90 miles northwest of St. George, Utah. 

Although a fine book about Meadow Valley was prepared as a part of its centennial in 1964, additional information has been found in the written records preserved in the LDS Church Archives in Salt Lake City. Panaca has interest not only because of its priority among existing Mormon communities in Nevada, but also because it is the ancestral home of the recent prophet and president of the Latter-day Saints, Harold B. Lee.

President Lee's father was born in Panaca, and his grandfather and great-grandfather were the leaders of the original Mormon settlers. Thus, President Lee was the first product of Nevada, so to speak, who reached the highest position in LDS leadership.

Let us begin with the Lee family-the original settlers of Panaca. They are descended from William Lee, born in Carrickfergus, Ireland, who came to America in the early 18th century, lived in North and South Carolina, and fought in the Revolutionary War. One of his sons was Samuel Lee, father of seven, who left his native North Carolina to go to the California gold fields.

After they worked there three years, the leader of the Cotton Mission, Erastus Snow, suggested that the Lees go to Meadow Valley to occupy land which might prove to be a valuable addition to the Southern Utah economy. As Juanita Brooks, a Nevada native, has shown in the Nevada Historical Society's quarterly, Meadow Valley had been explored and settled in 1858 when the Mormons were contemplating leaving the Salt Lake Valley with the invasion of federal troops, but it was abandoned after a short occupation. Now the plan was to occupy it permanently.

At the time, this part of Nevada was still part of Utah Territory. Francis Lee and his family: his son Samuel Marion Lee and family; a nephew Samuel F. Lee and four or five of his unmarried Sons, a daughter, and an Indian girl, arrived on the Site of Panaca on May 6,1864. They were 17 souls in all, with five wagons, livestock, sheep, swine, and other domestic animals and poultry.

At the time, Francis Lee was 53 and his son Samuel Marion Lee was 24.

The colonists dug irrigation ditches, built fences, constructed adobe homes and barns, planted crops and orchards, and grazed their livestock in a community herd. They built a schoolhouse which doubled as a ward meetinghouse. They suffered occasionally from Indian depredations. At one point in 1866 they were so fearful of Indian invasion that they contemplated leaving. According to a story that keeps cropping up in the sources, they would have abandoned Panaca except for the courage of Francis Lee's wife, Jane, who said they had been called to Panaca and there they should stay; even if nobody else was going to stay, she was!

A more important threat to their peace of mind was the opening of mines in the vicinity of Panaca. Earlier in 1862, Abraham Lincoln had been sufficiently doubtful of the loyalty of the Latter-day Saints that he had called a group of 750 California and Nevada Union volunteers to establish Camp Douglas on the east bench overlooking Salt Lake City. Many of these volunteers were former prospectors from Nevada and California.

Also interested in mining was the colonel in charge, Patrick Connor. Connor did not like the Mormons and sought to solve the "Mormon problem, as he called it, by generating a rush of miners to the Mormon-dominated areas in the West.

The miners, he hoped, would come in such numbers as to diminish the threat which the organized Latter-day Saints posed to other westerners. To accomplish this purpose Connor gave his troops extended leave to prospect throughout the territory, kept them on the military payroll during these explorations, and paid other prospecting costs as well. Upon the discovery of ores, he organized mining districts, encouraged the exploitation of ore bodies, and trumpeted each new discovery to an eager world through his camp newspaper, The Union Vedette.

Some of Connor's troops discovered important bodies of ore in Bingham Canyon and Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah. They were also instrumental in uncovering mineral bodies at several places in eastern Nevada, including some near Panaca. The town of Bullionville was established in 1869, after exploration in 1863 and 1864 proved fruitful. Indirectly, Pioche was also a product of the explorations of some of these men.

The movement of miners and servicing enterprises to Bullionville in the late 1860s caused tension at Panaca. The miners provided a lucrative market for Panaca's agricultural and lumber products. But the miners, not always sober, sometimes appeared at dances, insisted on dating Mormon girls, and in the eyes of Panaca elders posed a threat to the moral purity and solidarity of the Mormon community.

To add to the problems, Congress transferred portions of western Utah to the State of Nevada in 1864 and in 1866. Certain interests unfriendly to the Mormon presence, particularly non-Mormon merchants and one or two local officials, later insisted that the Mormons pay taxes in Nevada, even though for years they had already paid taxes in Utah under the assumption they were in Utah Territory.

The back taxes do not seem large by present standards, and the Lincoln County and Nevada territorial officials may have been willing to negotiate. Interested primarily in current taxes, they ultimately failed to obtain legal approval for a plan requiring payment of taxes before 1870 when the boundary line was clearly established. Nevertheless, the Mormons regarded the tax assessments as the opening salvo in a campaign against them.

Considering that there were non-Mormon majorities in every county where they were located, the Mormons felt they would be driven out of Nevada as they had been driven out of other settlements earlier in their history. Many did leave Nevada. "Here we go again, they seemed to be saying.

But the Lees and a majority of the Panaca settlers stayed. They earned a good income servicing the miners in Pioche and Bullionville. In St. George, Erastus Snow, aware that Panaca was a key outpost for marketing the products of Mormon farmers and craftsmen in the whole area, passed word that they ought to hold on to Meadow Valley. And hold on they did. Mormons are still there raising crops, grazing cattle, and rearing fine families.

Particularly pertinacious were the Lees, and Samuel Maricn Lee became an important Panaca leader. Born in Illinois before the Mormon exodus, he was 24 and already married when he and his family moved from Tooele to Panaca in 1864. Hs wife, Margaret McMurrin, had come to America with her parents from Scotland when she was seven. The McMurrins, like the Lees, settled in Tooele, where the two families became neighbors. Once settled in Panaca, Samuel raised crops, herded livestock, hauled ore, and freighted goods from southern Utah communities to Bulionville, Pioche, DeLamar, and other mining communities in Nevada. Margaret was a fruitful wife and bore 11 children, but each one of them died shortly after birth. Then, upon the birth of their 12th child, Margaret herself died. This last baby, Samuel, survived and became the father of Harold Bingbam Lee, president of the Mormon church in 1972-1973.

Economically, Panaca went through three .Ld stages. The first stage, from 1864 to 1868, involved the organization of task forces to lay the foundations of community life. The population built up to about 300 persons. During the second stage. from 1869 to 1880, the community functioned as a funnel to supply the mines, mills, and smelters and their workers in Bullionville and Pioche. The population rose to about 500. In 1871, the year most Mormons pulled out of Nevada, the population dropped back to about 300.

The third stage, from 1881 and on, marked a decline in economic opportunity as the mines, mills. and smelters in Bullionville and Pioche closed. The population remained stabilized at around 300 persons.

During the second period, the Mormon response to the "outsiders, as they referred to the miners and their associates, took two directions, both protective.

The first was the organization of a central cooperative for dealing in business matters with the non-Mormon ("Gentile ) community. The second was the formation of a tight community organization to protect the members-young and old-from contamination with what they regarded as the ways - of Babylon.

The Panaca Cooperative Store-more accurately, the Panaca City Branch of Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution - was organized in March 1869 as a community general store, intended to supply goods not only to its own supporting members but to the mining communities as well.

The store had several unique elements, in order to be eligible for membership in the cooperative. Persons had to "be of good moral character and have paid their tithing. Ten percent of the stores net profits prior to any declaration of dividends were also paid as tithing. All dividends were paid in merchandise, thus conserving cash for purchases outside the community. The seal of the Coop, with beehive and bees in the center, bore the inscription, "Holiness to the Lord".

The booming region required merchandise and produce from a wide area. Soon after establishing the Panaca cooperative, its president wrote to all - bishops of wards and presidents of Mormon cooperative stores in Utah south of Salt Lake City, asking - them to freight grain, flour, and other produce directly to Panaca. The Panaca Co-op would then act as agent, selling the produce to the mining regions on a commission basis of 5 to 10 percent.

In addition to this commission business, the Co-op purchased large quantities of goods from the Zion Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) Wholesale department store in Salt Lake City, let Contracts out to freight them to Panaca at 6 cents a pound, and resold the goods at 20 percent (later 15 percent) above cost and freightage.

The Panaca Co-op was an instant success, remarkably so, considering the size of the capital Stock. During the first year, sales amounted to $13,048, with profits after tithing of $2,100-40 percent of the paid-in capital stock of $5,250.

Despite paying out all the profits-after tithing as a dividend, they built an adobe brick storehouse 20 by 32 feet, with a rock cellar 10 feet high underneath. Their earnings enabled them to build the store without borrowing from capital simply by giving capital stock to those who supplied the materials and did the work.

Later they permitted workers to be paid in merchandise if they preferred. They also added a blacksmith shop, slaughterhouse, butcher shop, and hide and wool business to their enterprise, and built a bathhouse next to their warm springs so that people might bathe without contaminating their drinking water.

During the 1871-72 fiscal year, they purchased $80,753 worth of goods, earned $11,226 after tithing, and distributed a dividend of more than 100 percent on a capital of slightly over $10,000. If we add their beef and related enterprises, their sales were well in excess of $100,000 per year. This meant profits of $30 per year for every man, woman and child in Panaca! They reported a cash balance of $1,173, probably more cash than in all of southern Utah at the time.

The peak of the Co-op's business was in 1872. The peak of the mining business at Bullionville and Pioche was also in that year. Pioche may have had a population as high as 6,000, and Bullionville, perhaps 500.

During the next year the Panaca Coop purchased $46,442 in goods and earned a profit after tithing of only $4,408. They declared a dividend of 17 percent. At the end of that year they had only $284 in cash. Things were going downhill, so they reduced capital stock by selling the blacksmith shop in 1874 and the slaughterhouse and corral in 1875. No dividends were declared in either year. In 1875 their assets were only $3,842 more than liabilities. But they continued to operate as late as 1886, although very little business was done after 1882. The records suggest that when they incorporated under Nevada law as the Panaca Mercantile Company in 1878, they were no longer a church or community cooperative, but a corporation acting as a private business.

By 1880 there were only 800 people in Pioche, with an estimated 600 in 1881. Two mills in Bullionville moved in 1877, and the third closed in 1880, leaving the town deserted. Meanwhile Panaca continued with its 300 people, and is credited by a contemporary report as having a larger percentage of children than any other town in Nevada. It had a fine schoolhouse accommodating 120 pupils, and an average attendance of 60.

Solution to these problems included admonition, vigilant policing, the organization of young people's societies, and the establishment of evening schools, lyceums, and libraries. Above all, the teachers "took up a labor with family heads and rowdy boys and tried to bring them to their senses and to repentance, including occasional public confession.

Such concerns, plus the tax matter already mentioned, caused Panacans in January 1871 to talk seriously of puffing up stakes. Their bishop James Henrie told the group that he had learned from Bishop Meltair Hatch of Eagle Valley (just north of Meadow Valley) that Brigham Young had told him (Bishop Hatch) that if they remained in Nevada they would have trouble.

The Saints should go together in a body to the Sevier or Upper Kanab in Southern Utah, he said, and there make a strong settlement. "As for moving, said Bishop Henrie, "I shall not mourn over it . . . As for the little property I own, it is nothing. The Lord blessed us with it, and he is able to do so again... We have got many children here. I am satisfied there is a better place to raise them than under the influence surrounding-these mines. The president of the teachers quorum, Lake Syphus, then added: "My feelings are to get away as quick as possible. When we cling unto cedar fences and adobes we are not worth much. A number did go. They went partly because they understood this was the counsel of Brigham Young. But Apostle Erastus Snow, a strong and independent spirit, had his own inspiration on this matter. That inspiration told him that the Mormons should retain their hold on Meadow Valley. So he sent word that those who wished to leave might do so, but he wished a viable group to remain in Panaca. Apostle Snow said, "If you will live your religion, you can stay here as well as any other place. Be active in doing your duty, and be wary of those who come here to stay a short time to get a little money and then leave. If they are our friends, invite them to be with us. If you do this it will be all right".

As might be expected, a strong force in Panaca was the organization of the women, the Relief Society. An average of some 42 women attended its regular weekly meetings. They too talked about what to do to counter evil influences. They also went about doing good on their own. They made quilts, knitted, crocheted, and sewed - all for the poor. They raised straw and braided hats to give to the young people- so they would not get their brains baked and would have room for their inventive faculties to grow.

They made rag carpets for the meetinghouse-schoolhouse. They bought shares in the cooperative, donated to temples and hospitals in Utah, and helped out their Indian sisters in Nevada. They held parties for persons called on missions and for those returning. They made burial clothes for the dead and aprons for the living, whitewashed their homes. did the gardening and much of the irrigating, and picked, washed, and corded wool to make mattresses and men's suits.

They drew water, fed calves, and milked cows. They delivered their own babies, made cheeses, and introduced music and art into their homes. It is not an exaggeration to say that the determination and stamina of Panaca's women was an important factor in its economic success, and in its more important success as a producer of fine children.

Nevada history, particularly in the 1860s and 1870s, has tended to emphasize the wild and woolly, rough and roaring mining districts. These are colorful, and perhaps appeal to some of our repressed fascinations. But social and economic development requires food, livestock feed, clothing, shelter, and tools-supplies which are usually provided by family-oriented agricultural societies.

In a real sense, Mormon farmers and teamsters in southern Utah and in such places as Meadow Valley contributed much to the success of Nevada's mineral enterprises. If the Mormons of Panaca did not always appreciate the more free-wheeling residents of mining towns, they did demonstrate that Latter-day Saints could get along with non-Mormon neighbors.

Nevadans, both Mormons and non-Mormons, are continuing to build on that pattern of cooperation and mutual interest.

In 1864 things looked dismal for the United States of America. The War Between the States, which had killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, seemed to be at a stalemate. The South had conducted brilliant campaigns, but could not seem to gain the advantage. The North was superior in the materials of war, but could not win a decisive victory. The conflict seemed never-ending.

The Civil War had forced Mormon leaders in Salt Lake City to broaden their options. It was expensive and sometimes impossible to arrange for railroad transportation of immigrants and materials from eastern ports and cities to the Missouri. Railroads, quite understandably, gave priority to war business.

Partly because of the war, the Great Plains Indians posed a greater threat to the accustomed wagon trains headed west to Utah from the Missouri Valley. The exigencies of war had slowed down-almost stopped-the construction of the transcontinental railroad which had been authorized by the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. There was no indication that the freighting situation would be improved within the foreseeable future.

Faced with these circumstances, Brigham Young and his associates decided to encourage the importation of goods and immigrants via the Colorado River. As early as 1857-1858 the United States Army had demonstrated that the river was navigable under certain conditions when the test ship, The Explorer, reached Black Canyon (later site of Hoover Dam). Now the Mormons decided they would attempt the same thing on a regular basis. They would build a warehouse and trading post on a suitable Colorado River landing, enter into an agreement with a San Francisco firm to freight goods by steamer up the Colorado to the landing, construct a road from the landing to St. George, Utah, and employ teamsters to haul the goods to Salt Lake City.

To stimulate development of the region between the Colorado landing and St. George (mostly now in southeastern Nevada), Mormon officials called companies of Latter-day Saints to settle habitable valleys in the region. The entire enterprise was a speculation, but the inland Mormon community of some 60,000 persons could not be allowed to drift into a hopeless situation.

The first step in the new plan was choosing a leader. A trusted frontiersman, Anson Call, was named to take charge of building the landing and warehouse. A native of Vermont, Call had joined the Mormons in 1834, migrated to Utah in 1848, and was appointed bishop of Bountiful, Utah, the next year. An experienced colonizer, he was captain of the first 50 wagons in the caravan which left the Salt Lake Valley in