150 Years Of Settlement On The Muddy Celebrated This Week

Moapa Valley Progress

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the first white settlers coming to the Muddy River valley. This article is the beginning in a series of historical articles which will retell some of the events of the early settlement of the Moapa Valley communities.

Mormon pioneers first arrived to settle near the confluence of the Virgin and Muddy Rivers on January 8, 1865. From there, the community of St. Thomas was established, followed later by St. Joseph (present day Logandale), Overton and West Point (present day Moapa).

The following history (in italics) of these events is taken from an excerpt of the book “Zion on the Muddy” written by historian G. Lynn Bowler and published by the LDS Logandale Nevada Stake in 2004.

In the October 1864 Church General Conference, President Brigham Young read the names of 183 families to be called to The Muddy Mission. The call was met with more than a little dread. Early Mormon explorers had declared this desert region to be a lonely, barren waste…

Most thought, “Why the Muddy? Why would anyone want to settle the Muddy?”
…Brigham Young had three very good reasons for settling the Muddy. First, the Civil War had made it necessary to consider the moving of people and materials to (the west) by way of the Colorado River. For this purpose, Call’s Landing had been established in 1864. Those freighting the goods to Salt Lake would need food, feed and supplies. Second, there was the need for cotton. With the Civil War, cotton and other supplies from the South, had been cut off. Cotton could be grown more abundantly in the warm regions of the Muddy River. And third, the Saints felt a strong obligation to (do missionary work) among the Indians….

Although the mission call had come to the 183 families in October, it wasn’t until late December before any of the pioneers were ready to leave their homes and farms in northern Utah. Even then only a handful of people started out in an advance effort.

The group travelled the well-trodden road south to St. George, Utah. There they spent a brief time resting from the travels. Then they pushed on across the vast desert to the Muddy.

They traveled over the mountains to Beaver Creek, where it joins the Virgin River. Then they continued west to what is now Bunkerville; and then on to the confluence of the Virgin River with the Muddy.
Bowler wrote:

On January 8, 1865, Thomas S. Smith, the man Brigham Young called to be the company’s leader, led the first group of 23 pioneers: eighteen men, one woman and four children; into the Muddy Valley. The names of those who were part of that early group were: Thomas S. Smith, Andrew S. Gibbons, Ebenezer Farnes, William Davis, William Harrison, Ellis McGinnes, Charles Seegmiller, William J. Johnson, Heber Hubbard, John Bankhead, Robert Harris, William Harris, Enock Harris, George Jackson, Henry Forely, Henry Nebeker, Christian Mooseman and John Itten. Accompanying the first pioneer group was Thomas’ wife, Amanda Hollingshead, and their three children: Jesse, Richard and Synthia; and George, son of John Bankhead.

This advance party first settled a mile south of the confluence of the Muddy and Virgin Rivers. After exploring the region, they moved their settlement two miles north and established the first town. They named it St. Thomas, after their leader.
George A Thompson, in telling the story of Joseph Stacy Murdock, one of the early settlers sent to the Muddy, wrote:

Those first settlers sent to the Muddy were appalled at what they found. It seemed hopeless to try to build homes in such a forlorn place…
Warren Foote wrote to his wife, ‘The entire country is bare of any kind of vegetation, although beds of prickly pear grow in the sand and there is a giant cactus that grows as high as eight feet. Every thing that grows here has a thorn on it, and there are lizards in abundance.’ Even the Deseret News spokesman for the Church reported, ‘The Muddy is some sort of purgatory, a place of punishment.’

A town was eventually laid out with 85 one-acre housing lots, a like number of two and a half acre vineyard lots, and the same number of five acre farms. Building permanent homes and structures was difficult since the nearest timber was thought to be more than 130 miles away over impassible roads. Without any other building materials, the colonists built houses of adobe and thatched over the roofs with swamp cane and tulles. The floors, like the willow homes of the native Indians, were made of packed clay. The homes were arranged in a “Mormon Fort” style. They were built in two parallel lines, about ten rods apart, running north and south. Those primitive homes became habitable so that families could move into them by April 1, 1865.