Part 23 (1/2)
The first Mormon marriage in the Salt River Valley was at Lehi, that of Daniel P. Jones and Mary E. Merrill, August 26, 1877. The first birth was of their son. The first permanent separate house, of adobe, at Lehi, was built by Thomas Biggs, in the spring of 1878. There was a public school as early as 1878, taught by Miss Zula Pomeroy. In 1880 an adobe schoolhouse was built at a cost of $142, the ground donated by Henry C.
Rogers, with David Kimball its main supporter. The following year was built a much better schoolhouse.
The settlement has a townsite of six blocks, each 26 rods square, with streets four rods wide, surveyed in November, 1880, by Henry C. Rogers.
Lehi was badly damaged February 19, 1891, when Salt River reached a height never known before or since. The stream flooded the lower parts of Phoenix and inundated a large part of the farming land at Lehi. A second flood, a few days later, was three feet higher than the first. Five Lehi Indians were drowned and several hundred of them lost their possessions.
Chapter Nineteen
The Planting of Mesa
Transformation of a Desert Plain
Though by no means with exclusive population of the faith, Mesa, sixteen miles east of Phoenix and in the Salt River Valley, today includes the largest organization of the Saints within Arizona and is the center of one of the most prosperous Stakes of the Church. It is beautifully located on a broad tableland, from which its Spanish name is derived, and is the center of one of the richest of farming communities. In general, the soil is of the best, without alkali, and its products cover almost anything that can be grown in the temperate or semi-tropic zones.
At all times since its settlement, Mesa has prospered, but its prosperity has been especially notable since the development, a few years ago, of the Pima long-staple cotton. Nearly every landowner, and Mesa is a settlement of landowners, has prospered through this industry, though it has been affected by the post-war depression. The region is one of comfortable, s.p.a.cious homes and of well-tilled farms, with less acreage to each holding than known elsewhere in the valley.
Mesa is second only to Phoenix in size and importance within Maricopa County. There are fine business blocks and all evidences of mercantile activity. The farming area is being extended immensely. The community was one of the first to enter the a.s.sociation that secured storage of water at Roosevelt. Thereafter, to the southward came extension of the farming area by means of pumping, this continuing nearly to the Gila River, out upon the Pima reservation. Now there is further extension eastward, and the great plain that stretches as far as Florence is being settled by population very generally tributary to Mesa. It would be idle to speculate upon the future of the city, but its tributary farming country is fully as great as that which surrounds Phoenix.
Mesa was founded by Latter-day Saints from Bear Lake County, Idaho, and Salt Lake County, Utah. The former left Paris, Idaho, September 14, 1877, were joined at Salt Lake City by the others and traveled the entire distance by wagon, using the Lee's Ferry route, and coming over the forested country to Camp Verde.
The immigrants included, with their families, Chas. I. Robson, Charles Crismon (of the San Bernardino colony) of Salt Lake, Geo. W. Sirrine (of the Brooklyn s.h.i.+p party), Francis M. Pomeroy (a '47 pioneer), John H.
Pomeroy, Warren L. Sirrine, Elijah Pomeroy, Parley P. Sirrine, all of Paris, Idaho, Wm. M. Newell, Wm. M. Schwartz, Job H. Smith, Jesse D.
Hobson and J.H. Blair of Salt Lake. Altogether were 83 individuals.
The valley of the Verde proved a pleasant one, after the cold and hards.h.i.+p known on the plateau, though Christmas was spent in a snowstorm.
Both humanity and the horses needed rest. So camp was made at Beaver Head, a few miles from the river, while a scouting party went farther to spy out the land. This party, which went by wagon, included Robson, F.
M. Pomeroy, Charles Crismon and G.W. Sirrine.
The scouts, within a few days, had covered about 125 miles that lay between Beaver Head and Camp Utah. Their New Year dinner was taken with Jones, who extended them all welcome. It was proposed that the newcomers settle upon land adjoining that of the first party, but there was a likelihood of crowding in the relatively narrow river valley, and there were attractive possibilities lying along the remains of an ancient ca.n.a.l shown them by Jones.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ORIGINAL LEHI LOCATORS 1--Daniel W. Jones 2--Philemon C. Merrill 3--Thomas Biggs 4--Henry C. Rogers]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FOUNDERS OF MESA: Charles Crismon, Francis M. Pomeroy, George W. Sirrine]
Legal appropriation of the head of this old water way was made and Crismon was left behind, with a couple of the Camp Utah men as helpers, to start work on the new irrigation project. Incidentally, Crismon made location of land near the heading and thus separated his interests from those of the main party. Later, he started a water-power grist mill on the Grand ca.n.a.l, east of Phoenix. He had rights to a large share in the ca.n.a.l, as well as to lands on the mesa. These he later sold.
Robson, Pomeroy and Sirrine returned to the Verde Valley, to pilot the rested travelers southward. The journey was by way of the rocky Black Canyon road, with difficulty encountered in descending the steep Arastra Creek pa.s.s. Fording Salt River at Hayden's Ferry, Camp Utah was reached February 14, 1878. The journey had been a slow one, for cattle had to be driven.
A few days were spent at Camp Utah and then the new arrivals moved upstream five miles, where tents were pitched on a pleasant flat, a couple of miles below the ca.n.a.l heading. There had been conclusion to settle upon the tableland to the southwest. Pomeroy and Sirrine made a rough, though sufficient, survey with straight-edge and spirit level, along what then was named the ”Montezuma Ca.n.a.l,” eleven miles to a point where a townsite was selected.
Use of a Prehistoric Ca.n.a.l
Nothing short of Providential was considered the finding of the ca.n.a.l, dug by a prehistoric people into the edge of the mesa, which it gradually surmounted. This ca.n.a.l, in all probability, had been cut more than 1000 years before. It could be traced from the river for twenty miles, maintaining an even gradient, possibly as good as could have been laid out with a modern level, and with a number of laterals that spread over a country about as extensively cultivated as at present. A lateral served the Lehi section and other ditches conducted water to the southwest, past the famous ancient city of Los Muertos (later explored by Frank H.
Cus.h.i.+ng) and then around the southeastern foothills of the Salt River Mountains to points not far distant from the Gila River. The main ca.n.a.l cut through the tableland for two miles, with a top width of even fifty feet and a depth of twelve feet, chopped out in places, with stone axes, through a difficult formation of hardpan, ”caliche.” The old ca.n.a.l was cleaned out for the necessities of the pioneers, at a cost of about $48,000, including the head, and afterward was enlarged. At the time, there was an estimate that its utilization saved at least $20,000 in cost of excavation. There were 123 miles of these ancient ca.n.a.ls.