Watershed Camp Teaches Virgin Valley History

By AMY DAVIS

The Progress

The Virgin River has been the life force of the Virgin Valley communities since the late 1800s. It is hard to imagine now, but it took three attempts to tame the river that kept flooding beyond its boundaries and breaking miles of canals that pioneers had built. Those mighty floods, and the harsh elements, proved to be too much to overcome until 1894, when six families from Bunkerville were finally able to rebuild the broken canals and begin a permanent settlement.

A group of children ages 8 to 13 learned all about these undaunted pioneers, and the life that the river provided in the past as well as present, at the Virgin River Watershed Camp on Thursday, July 21. The camp, hosted by the Virgin River Coalition, the Virgin Valley Heritage Museum, and the City of Mesquite, ran from 9 AM to 2PM at the the Jimmy Hughes Campus.

Among other things, children learned about the early settlement of the Virgin Valley, the importance of the river, how to make adobe brick and petroglyphs.

Virgin River Coalition coordinator Jeri Lynn Benell, and Elspeth Kuta, Virgin Valley Heritage Museum Coordinator, worked diligently to make this an exciting experience for the children.
“This is our first Watershed Camp,” said Benell. “Hopefully, this is an event that we can do several times during the year.”

Bennell said that she would love to present a week-long after school program in the Fall where participants could actually go down to the river and explore.
“We want to get the kids excited about the river and about our watershed and to feel some responsibility for taking care of the river,” Benell said

The kids started out the day by learning some history of the Virgin Valley, the Virgin River, and the early settlers. “We wanted to teach the kids about why the settlers came here and why the river was so important,” Bennell said.

In the morning, lessons were also given about the Native Americans and their lifestyle in the valley. Kids were even able to create their own pictographs by painting on rocks.

Later in the afternoon, there were lessons and activities about native plants and animals. There matching games and kids were taught to make animal tracks out of playdough.

Toward the end of the day, the kids were instructed on how to make their own seed balls. Seed balls consist of native seeds mixed with clay and potting soil. They are meant to be placed in bald spots in a yard. As the seed ball breaks down, the seeds plant themselves.

Kuta was able to teach the kids how to make adobe bricks the old fashioned way. She explained the dillema that early settlers faced in finding building materials in the desert valleys with which to build homes and other buildings.
“There were not any trees to cut down and build a house out of,” Kuta taught the children. “So the obvious choice was to make adobe brick homes.”

Kuta stood at the head of a table with kids gathered around with all the tools needed to make adobe bricks.
“The trick is to mix everything together until it looks a little like frosting,” Kuta said.

This elicited some good-natured giggles and comments from the children.
“I have always wanted to do a summer camp with the kids,” explained Kuta. “For the last 7 years I have been trying to figure out how to do this. Jeri Lynn has just been wonderful to work with. We hope to do this yearly so that our program can grow.”

Along with growing the Watershed Summer Camp and hoping that more volunteers will be able to join along in the fun, Kuta also said that this was a great activity to kick off the start of the museum’s monthly activities that had to be put on hold due to COVID.