By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

Autumn is a wonderful time of year. As summer rapidly dwindles into Southern Nevada’s only other season — not summer — the days become cooler and the nights are downright refreshing.

In autumn, Jack Frost criss crosses hill and dale in northern climes painting trees with vivid oranges, brilliant reds and incredible yellows. Mother Nature gets busy in Moapa Valley, too, putting the finishing touches on a little artwork of her own – pomegranates.

The red fruit turns radiant in autumn and often actually bursts at the seams with ripeness. This year the Moapa Valley Art Guild’s 16th Annual Pomegranate Arts and Crafts Festival is scheduled for Nov. 4-5.

Local pomegranate growers, canners and entrepreneurs like the Cheryl and Glen Rawson family love the fall. They’re already dashing throughout the valley picking the vivid red fruit to manufacture into pasteurized juices, jellies and syrups.

And as the Rawsons and others make their preserves, believe it or not, they’re doing an important part of preserving a little bit of Moapa Valley history, as well, a part that started with the earliest settlers.

Mormon pioneers began colonizing Southern Nevada and Moapa Valley more than 160 years ago. Tasked with creating a chain of sheltering havens in the wilderness, the settlers erected towns literally out of the sands of the desert.

In Moapa Valley the work was back breaking, hot, dirty and seemingly without end. Canals dug one day would be full of blown sand the next and had to be completely retrenched. In 1864, the lower valley where Overton and Logandale are today was mostly swampland fed by the meandering Muddy River. Mosquito-plagued pioneers were faced with malaria, swarms of grasshoppers and more. But they persevered and managed to at least make friends with Mother Nature, if not tame her.

In 1870, however, faced with an oppressive tax burden levied by the new state of Nevada, which was more than they could handle with bare hands, shovels, picks and plows, the majority of settlers left the valley. Gradually, however, a second wave of people filtered into Moapa Valley and took up where the previous pioneers had left off. They replanted crops, vegetables and orchards of fruit, including, you guessed it, pomegranates.

How do we know? Easy.

Sam Davis, in “A History of Nevada” published in 1918, writes that after 1870, the new settlers discovered the “wonderful fertility of the soil of the region for the production of alfalfa, grains, vegetables and fruits.”

Davis says that while early settlers could only sell surplus crops to others in the valley or to miners in Southern Nevada and Northern Arizona, it wasn’t until 1905 with the construction of a San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad spur that the valley realized an opportunity to really grow and prosper.

“The prospect of a good market for their crops brought new hope to the old settlers and made the valley accessible to seekers after land …” Davis says.

He explains the crops those “old settlers” were growing included cotton, sugar cane, apples, pears, peaches, plums, prunes, cherries, apricots, almonds, nectarines, grapes, peanuts, and, of all things, pomegranates.

Based on Davis’ research, then, we know that pomegranates, native only to Iranian Plateau, came into our little valley with the pioneers who settled here.

With each jar of Alligator Jelly or Bam Jam, then, the Rawsons are really just carrying on a tradition that’s more than 110 years old – only the names have changed.

Cheryl said she and Glen have lived in Moapa Valley for 35 years she’s been making pomegranate jelly for 30 of them. Just like the pioneers (sort of).

“It’s really a family affair,” she said. “We all get together, even the two-year-old, and go out and pick. There may be 30 of us — family and friends – picking at several different spots. Then we run the machine (homemade by Glen) to make the juice that’s turned into the jellies and syrups we sell at the festival.”

It hasn’t been easy. The Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) insists on some onerous fees and regulations that make produciing and selling the pomegranate products at the festival difficult. But like the early settlers, the Rawsons and others have persevered.

When SNHD says everything – juicing, cooking, etc. — is to be done in the community kitchen at the fairgrounds, so that’s what they do.

When you taste one of the Rawsons’ scones smothered with powdered sugar and pomegranate jelly AND pomegranate syrup, thank them for saving a part of our heritage as well as the delicious treat.