Chapter 9: First Fruits of the Furnace

The Cedar City pioneers immediately set to work to realize Brigham Young’s expectations. Their first priority was tackling the problem of how best to allocate manpower between public works, like ditch- and fence-building, and initial labor on the iron works. Efforts would also go to finding the best coal sites in the area, seeking the necessary fuel to produce useful iron implements in time for fall conference.

As second counselor in the stake presidency and thus responsible for iron production in Cedar City, Henry Lunt aptly describes in his journal the heightened interest in iron-making. On Thursday, 13 May 1852, he had been in the party escorting Brigham Young back to Parowan. Even though the return trip to Cedar City was almost half a day by wagon, Lunt and his party arrived home in time to hold a meeting. After the newly appointed bishop, Philip Klingensmith, discussed such routine matters as the repair of the water ditches, Lunt “addressed the brethren on being united, and urged them to enclose the field and finish the water ditches as a work to be done preparitory to commencing the Iron business.” Even though he had already been sustained at Parowan as a member of the stake presidency, Lunt asked the Cedar City men for their sustaining vote. He spent the evening of the next day, Friday, “in Council with bro Harrison,” the newly designated superintendent of the iron works, probably outlining necessary steps for iron production.¹

Although Lunt was only 27 years old, his actions show he was serious about his calling as second counselor in the stake presidency and presiding elder in Cedar City. Not only was he eager to call a meeting but he insisted upon punctuality as a part of general discipline. Few settlers had timepieces and the community was so small that a bugle blast could reliably reach everyone. To facilitate the meeting schedule, Lunt arranged for one signal to be given at 10:30 a.m. and one at five minutes to 11:00 a.m. to insure attendance promptly at 11:00. The horn would also sound at 10 minutes to 2:00 p.m. so that 2:00 meetings could begin on time. He neglected, however, to record the effectiveness of these measures.²

On 20 May, Lunt called a group of brethren together in his father-in-law’s house for a council meeting. Attending were Joseph Walker, Thomas Bladen, James Bosnell, George Wood, Philip Klingensmith, Joseph Chatterley, Richard Harrison, Thomas Cartwright, Matthew Carruthers, John Easton and James Whittaker.³ Only Whittaker and Klingensmith did not have iron-making skills but they did have an obvious ecclesiastical function, since Klingensmith was now Cedar City’s bishop and Whittaker one of his counselors. Lunt refers fairly interchangeably to “the council” and “the High Council,” while Richard Harrison records meeting with “the Iron Co. Councell” on the morning of Saturday, 5 June, and with “the High Councell” the same afternoon.⁴ If these were indeed separate groups, as they most probably were, then at least Matthew Carruthers, Joseph Chatterley, Richard Harrison and Henry Lunt belonged to both.

Questions of Priority: Fencing the Big Field

Council meetings held in May 1852 addressed ongoing challenges posed by limited manpower. Henry Lunt never complained that the men were lazy. On the contrary, he acknowledged that they were “very busy”—but with their own spring planting, not with iron-making or the crucial public works. At least 53 men were available, yet on successive days (21 and 22 May), even when their hard-won irrigation system was threatened by spring runoff from Coal Creek, only six, of whom Lunt was one, answered Bishop Klingensmith’s call to repair the water ditch.⁵

Any new irrigation system has inherent problems; here, portions of the Coal Creek ditch traversed sandy terrain. The ditch almost certainly silted up from sand carried along in the stream, a condition that sooner or later raised the water level, forcing water over the top of the bank or through cracks. Having irrigation water at all depended on the strength and effectiveness of the dams on Coal Creek. These, however, were most often small structures, composed of brush, rocks and logs—not the high, solid structures we visualize today. Located at places where the streambed was wide and the banks low, these brushwork dams extended only a short distance into the stream to divert a portion of the water into the water ditches. But high water could easily sweep the dams away. Although they were not difficult to replace, their upkeep demanded constant labor. The five who, with Lunt, answered the bishop’s call to repair the ditch were most probably iron workers who were not raising grain.

Fencing the Big Field provides an even more vivid example of how the settlers were forced to choose between competing priorities, in this case protecting the source of their food supply, critical to survival, versus producing iron, their ultimate goal. On 3 May, Lunt records that he and “Bro Wiley,” duly constituted since 18 April as the Committee for Laying of Public Fencing, went out and “measured off the lots for fenceing the north end of the big field.”⁶ The phrasing of this entry, collated with others that follow, seems to indicate that their intention was to have each Big Field lot owner fence that edge of his land which abutted the field’s outer rim. Thus, everyone would be obligated to help build the fence but no individual would be overwhelmed by the size of the task.

Despite frequent urgings by Brigham Young and his fellow visitors, exhorting the settlers to solve intervening problems rapidly and move forward with iron production, Lunt’s counsel of the 13th about completing the Big Field fence was essentially ignored. Whittaker mentions working on public projects on the 14th and 19th but his brief entries record no other workers.⁷ At the 20 May council meeting, Lunt restated the issue, determined to get the brethren to deal with it “forth with.” The iron business, he said, “was the thing that we were sent down here for to do, and the field has got to be enclosed before we can commence, so that the Crops may be secured according to council.”⁸

On the 25th, still with no progress in sight, Lunt asked Bishop Klingensmith to convene a special meeting that night. Klingensmith agreed. During the meeting, Lunt counseled the people to finish the fence immediately, so the men assigned to the iron works would be free to devote themselves to that task. He was disappointed in the outcome, however, feeling that the “people generally appeared to be selfish and disunited.”⁹ The next day’s observations confirmed his suspicions. Walking through camp, he found the brethren “all very busy, some ploughing, some planting seeds[,] some building houses, and but three putting up fence. I just felt that the devil had had his way long enough over this mission, and I was determined by the help of the Lord to stop it.”¹⁰

Taking Joseph Walker with him, he went out to the Big Field and found Richard Harrison, the iron works superintendent, obediently building his assigned section of fence. Walker and Lunt helped him complete it and even worked together putting up a section for Thomas Cartwright. Discovering that 60 more rods of fence were needed and that 200 rods of ditching were still undone, Lunt turned to Harrison and said “go right ahead in the morning at the Iron business and I [will] put up all the fence myself, It is no use putting the thing off any longer.” Harrison objected to this because previous counsel had been given to complete the fencing first and then move on to iron production. But Lunt was adamant. He knew the earlier instructions, he said, but “who is ther at work now at the fence? Scar[c]e any one. . . . The Iron works have got to be started and that right off. . . . I said much more to bro Harrison exhorting him to push the Iron works, which I do not write.”¹¹

Apparently not feeling he could leave the matter, Lunt again called for a general meeting that evening and spoke to the settlers in unmistakable terms:

Brethren the field is not yet Enclosed and there is no one doing Anything at the fence save what has been done by myself and a few others. If we are to wait until that fence is finished, before the Iron works are Commenced, it will be months gone first, I say in the name of the Lord go and Commence in the Iron busniess in the morning, and not let the Sun set again before you have made a start. I will put up the fence myself and take it Altogether in my own hands.¹²

Lunt then turned the meeting over to Harrison to conduct iron business on the spot. Harrison proceeded to make “some arrangements” but not, Lunt noted, “with such a determined spirit” as he would have liked.¹³

Nevertheless, the next day at least 13 of the 30 men assigned to iron work took up that task. Lunt, meanwhile, worked on the fence with only two young men helping him. “My own fence,” he penned in frustration, “has been up more than a month ago.”¹⁴ On the 29th, he finally came up with a solution no one could gainsay. He called Company F together in the center of the Compact Fort and told them their best efforts would not be in a morning’s drill but rather in completing the fence. The cattle were into the crops “in a shameful manner” and there needed to be a “general push” made that day. James Williamson and Alexander Keir, two of the privates in Company F, were totally opposed to Lunt’s counsel and “insulted [him] by saying they just should not do it.” But Lunt persisted. He “gave them a good preach on the importance of obeying council” and, in his capacity as captain of Company F in the Second Battalion in the Nauvoo Legion, “put the whole company under Marshall Law.” Few if any of the settlers were willing to argue with Lunt on such a fundamental point. He had won the day, as his entry shows: “They then went to work at the fence and finished putting it all up by about 4 oclock pm.”¹⁵

Questions of Priority: Planting Grain or Making Iron

Henry Lunt’s journal shows that Stake President J. C. L. Smith was concerned about Brigham Young’s challenge to make timely and significant progress on the iron works. With his first counselor, John Steele, J. C. L. visited Cedar City the week after Young’s departure. Parowan’s bishop, Tarlton Lewis, and brickmaker William Bateman accompanied them. Early Sunday morning, 23 May, Lunt had gone walking with Smith, Steele and Lewis toward the mountains to water the horses. “We Sat down under a Cedar tree and [had] a good deal of most excellent talk.”¹⁶ When Presidents Smith and Steele addressed the congregation at services that morning, they counseled the brethren to cease planting any more grain. Sowing more wheat than the community needed would simply result in more time and manpower being drawn away from iron work at harvest time. The injunction was logical but it was not popular. Even so, during the afternoon meeting, after more exhortations from the leaders, Matthew Carruthers rose to express his feelings, saying that, while he had previously felt uneasy, now he had “good feelings towards all men” and was “on hand all the time for to do any thing that the Authorities might call him to do.”¹⁷

The next morning, Monday the 24th, Smith and Steele returned to Parowan. They were barely out of sight when Matthew Carruthers hooked up a double team and began breaking more land for planting. Henry Lunt was upset and called an emergency meeting of the Cedar City high council that night. When two of the members did not come, he rescheduled for early the next morning.¹⁸

The 8 a.m. meeting was a stormy session, lasting six hours. Lunt garnered the strongest position for himself by opening with prayer and then dealing with Matthew Carruthers. Carruthers defended his plowing as obedience to earlier counsel. He felt “the Council was bounsing upon him too much” and asked to be released. Lunt, however, did not want Carruthers off the high council: he wanted to change his mind and gain his support. To release him for cause could have led to further discipline, even excommunication, and Lunt needed Matthew’s iron-making expertise. Much of the meeting seems to have focused on Carruthers until finally he admitted himself “humbled,” apologized to his brethren and shook hands all around as a sign of fellowship. The men then held a prayer circle, each praying in turn from the oldest to the youngest. Afterward, they conducted unspecified business. Lunt then gave the closing prayer, dismissed the meeting and spent the afternoon in bed, physically and emotionally drained by this direct challenge to his authority.¹⁹

The next few days were those during which Lunt finally solved the problem of the Big Field fence. On the 29th, as soon as the men of Company F set to work raising its final sections, Lunt left for Parowan, perhaps just for a change of scene, but more likely to counsel with J. C. L. Smith. While there, Lunt spoke in church on 30 May on the increasingly important subject of “oneness.” He then met several times with members of the presidency and high council before returning to Cedar City on Monday morning. There he called his own council together for another lengthy session that lasted until midnight. By the next Thursday, 3 June, Lunt felt his “soul and spirits . . . renewed” and spoke much “on makeing Iron and exhorted the brethren to press forward in that department.”²⁰

Despite such appeals to unity, within a month after the grain-planting incident, Matthew Carruthers was again having difficulty “following counsel.” The leaders had decided that the best way to obtain the scrap iron needed for the blast furnace was to ask for donations rather than risk men’s lives sending them out to scavenge iron from discarded equipment along the California Road. This meant taking whatever iron they could spare from wagons and other gear in hopes it would soon be replaced once the iron works got underway. Evidently, Carruthers had two wagons and had promised to donate the metal parts from one of them as well as “a lot of old Iron” he had lying around. However, when Lunt and Harrison went to collect the iron on 29 June, Carruthers refused, saying he didn’t have any to spare because “he thought he should go to the Gt. Salt Lake Valley.”²¹

Lunt’s entry on 5 August shows a further clash with Carruthers. At a Thursday fast-day meeting, Lunt invited the men to speak freely about any concerns they might want to express. Carruthers, he records, “spoke at considerable length . . . finding fault with me and several other brethren.” At a meeting held that afternoon, Lunt responded for an hour and a half and reported that Carruthers appeared reconciled.²² The following Saturday, 7 August, Carruthers traveled by buggy with Lunt, Harrison, Chatterley and John Easton to Parowan where all of them spoke at a Sunday meeting.²³

Later that month, a group of California-bound travelers camped near the Compact Fort. They mingled freely with the iron workers and even joined their religious services. Their glowing anticipation of life in California was evidently too tempting to Carruthers and he decided to join them. On 3 September, he arranged to trade his house, a 20-acre field, some building lumber and a potato patch to Henry Lunt for two yoke of oxen. Two days later, however, Carruthers decided not to leave. He asked Lunt to cancel the deal, which Lunt readily did.²⁴

This incident marks the uncertainty Carruthers felt about staying in the community. Yet in the fall, when the non-profit pioneer iron works was sold to its successor organization, the for-profit Deseret Iron Company, Matthew was one of 15 men who accepted the offer to buy into the new venture.²⁵ He even helped Henry Lunt “in auditing the Iron works books” at the time of this transition.²⁶ Furthermore, when Lunt went to Salt Lake City in March 1853 to attend general conference, he designated Carruthers to preside in his absence.²⁷

The minutes of the Deseret Iron Company show that in May 1853 Matthew Carruthers was one of five men chosen as a special council to help the over-burdened J. C. L. Smith with the iron works. Erastus Snow even delegated Carruthers to take over whenever J. C. L. was unavailable.²⁸ Carruthers remained an active member of the stake high council as late as 9 June 1853.²⁹ On 18 July, Lunt’s regular diary entries end, having mentioned Carruthers only five more times.³⁰ George Bowering’s journal, which covers the weeks that follow, only mentions him in the entry for 16 August.³¹ John Chatterley’s reminiscences provide circumstantial evidence that Carruthers finally left southern Utah and returned to Scotland to find more profitable employment.³²

Sustaining the Effort

The 1852 Iron Works Account Book reveals that Lunt’s bid to get iron-making preparations underway that May yielded some positive results. From December 1851 to the end of April 1852, only 69 man-days had been recorded, but May alone totaled 101. Work increased dramatically through the summer—June totaled 382 man-days; July, 404; August, 293; and September, 214—but this level of work came to a sudden halt after September; October records show no work, with November totaling only 11.5 hours. These figures reflect only hours of labor performed, not the amount credited to each man for the use of his oxen, horses, tools or wagons.³³ Because this account book often summarizes labor covering two- to three-week periods (months, in some cases), implying at least one earlier, more-detailed source, other daybooks containing work tallies may still exist, merely awaiting rediscovery.

Even though the account book gives 16 December 1851 as the first date of iron-related work, Lunt, in his journal, appears to date it much later—Thursday, 27 May 1852. This may be the date on which arrangements for the actual furnace construction began. It is the day, noted earlier, on which “some 13 out of about 30” men, responding to Lunt’s urgings and Harrison’s somewhat less determined “arrangements,” “Commenced in the Iron business, some prepairing for the Furnace, and some exploring for Coal.”³⁴ On Friday, 4 June, Lunt himself “worked on the Iron works, Hawling rock and digging out a place for Furnace.” This second reference to furnace work increases the likelihood that preliminary excavations had already been made that winter. Preparing the site required extensive labor. On 10 June, a “very warm day” according to Lunt, he labored “at diging out foundation for the machinery for the Blast furnace. . . . Very much fatiegued in the evening through the arduous duties of the day.” On 7 July, a month later, he was still “hawling Rock for the bottom of the furnace.”³⁵

Journal references and local artifacts confirm the site as near the intersection of 400 North and 100 East in modern Cedar City. An 80-foot easterly extension of 400 North from 100 East to the streambed of Coal Creek (surveyed as a street but never completed for lack of a bridge at the creek) was set apart by the Cedar City Corporation on 10 February 1975 as a historic location. It now appears on the Utah Historic Register. In cooperation with the Daughters of Utah Pioneers and as part of the annual observance of Cedar City’s anniversary of settlement (see sidebar 9-2), the Cedar City Birthday Committee dedicated, on 11 November 1978, a 20-ton ore sample hauled to the site by Utah International, Inc., a mining company from the Iron Springs area. York Jones—company superintendent and descendant of both Henry Lunt and Thomas Jones, another iron missionary—supervised the ore transfer.

The historic site measures about 80 by 100 feet but the original site contained as many as 1,200 acres.³⁶ On it were the furnaces and associated machinery, as well as areas to prepare the limestone, coke, coal and charcoal needed for the operations. What is thought to be part of an iron-plated dam plate was unearthed near the south boundary of this site, indicating that the actual furnace was nearby. Samples of slag, coke, iron ore and limestone are still visible on the surface.

According to the reports of local residents, supported by circumstantial evidence, the first furnace was probably on the east side of Coal Creek, directly across from the present intersection of 100 East and 400 North. Hunter Grimshaw of Enoch, the small town six miles north of Cedar City, claims to have seen the foundation of a furnace and charcoal pits in that area when he worked for a Mr. Webster as a boy. Mr. Webster told him that what he saw were the remains of the first pioneer blast furnace. Grimshaw also remembered watering his horse in what he thought was a sluice ditch.³⁷ At the 1978 dedication of the memorial marker on the west bank of Coal Creek, an older woman remarked that the first furnace was located on the east bank, not the west. Such a site for the original furnace makes sense, as the iron workers could have walked there from the Compact Fort near the Knoll without having to cross Coal Creek, which would have been difficult in a flood.

Little is known about the original furnace but it was probably quite small, perhaps 20 feet tall. Thomas Bladen, first furnace master, made what is thought by many to be a model of this furnace, now in the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum in Cedar City (see illus. 9-1). The model measures some 8½ inches square at base by 16 inches tall. Ultimately, several blast furnaces were built or reconstructed and the model could be of one of these. Furnace design depended on the amount and type of ore smelted and the type of fuel used. A furnace fueled by stone coal was designed differently from one fueled by charcoal or coke. Lunt’s determined search for stone coal implies the first furnace was designed with that fuel in mind.

Cutting a Road to the Coal Mines

Before operations at the iron works could begin, a road to access the coal deposits had to be constructed. On 18 May 1852, High Councilman James A. Little arrived from Parowan to begin building this road up Coal Creek “Kanyon.” On 18 June, three of the men who had gone up the canyon the day before reported finding a vein of coal “about one mile nearer than what was discovered before.”³⁸ The find may or may not have affected original road layout. In any event, on 21 June, more volunteers came from Parowan to work on the road.

Whittaker gives the next day, Tuesday, 22 June, as the starting date, which may be an implicit reference to the original design having been altered to take advantage of the nearer coal bed: “James and several others commenced making a road in the Kanyon.” Lunt must have been one of the group because his own entry on that day says that he “laboured at working the road up the Kanyon.” Interestingly, while Whittaker mentions only several men helping this day, Lunt’s entry reads “About 30 hands were at work.”³⁹

Similar entries continue for the rest of the week, Lunt “labouring in the Kanyon” from 23 to 25 June and “on the iron works” on the 26th, a Saturday.⁴⁰ The following days brought a succession of iron-related tasks, including the hours of rock-hauling on 7 July previously mentioned.⁴¹ On the 16th, both Whittaker and Lunt refer to road work. Whittaker merely mentions that James Jr. was up the canyon but Lunt elaborates on the same day that he himself “went up the Kanyon with 9 men to finish working the road up to the Coal.” The day did not turn out as expected, as already noted in chapter 7, because a fierce summer storm hit the hills and rushed down to the settlement, flooding houses and cellars 12 inches deep in some places. Lunt appears to have been temporarily stranded at the work site. His comments on the experience are entirely in character:

Thanks be to God for such a delightful shower, on this dry and thirsty land. Slept all night up in the Kanyon under some brush, The ground being very whet I did not have a very comfortable night lodging.⁴²

Almost-daily cloudbursts continued through much of the summer. On 20 July—Henry Lunt’s 28th birthday—“tremendeous storms” in the mountains

rose the Creek 3 feet all at once, bringing down with a tremendeous rush a great quantity of logs, and rubbish and mud, for about one hour. . . . The two dams that were in the creek for taking the water to the field and Fort were both entirely swept away, and an immence quantity of wood drifted up the mouth of the ditches.⁴³

Lunt makes an unusual comment about road-building on Tuesday, 10 August: a “number of the brethren went up the Kanyon to make a Rail road down from the Coal.”⁴⁴ It is not certain what he meant here, since, obviously, no steel rails existed nor metal wheels to run on them. Almost certainly, they were casting about for alternatives to a conventional road, since repeated storms had played havoc with their work in the canyon. One alternative, unlikely but not impossible, is a puncheon road. Puncheons were large, straight logs hewn on one side only. They could be laid down one after another in a flattened roadbed, resulting in a surface at least somewhat easier to travel over than rocks and mud. Puncheons could certainly qualify as “rails” of a kind, but such roads were very labor-intensive and the road gradient may have been too steep to make the option practical. Nevertheless, it is a possibility worth considering.

In September, Lunt made the last of these road references. On Saturday the 18th, he “went up the Kanyon with bro Harrison and bro. Smith to cut some logs for the Iron works,” an entry which might refer to cutting puncheon logs but which probably referred to logs for the iron works outbuildings. On the following Monday, his reference is more specific: “Went up the Kanyon to work a road up the Mountain to sleigh the coal down.” If he meant the word literally, it might be further evidence for the use of puncheons, as sleighs or sleds could be pulled more easily over a flat wooden surface than over dirt and rock. His last two entries clearly show that, however the road was built, its creation was no easy task. On Tuesday, 21 September, Lunt “rose early, and laboured very hard at working a road up the mountain.” And on the day after, he “Laboured for some 3 hours on working the road up the mountain, then packed 5 bags of coal down the mountain, and drove a load to the Iron works. Felt very much tired and fatiegued in the Evening.”⁴⁵

Regional Coal Deposits

The settlers had known about the coal deposits at Coal Creek for almost a year. In May 1851, Peter Shirts and a few others, trying to trace the path of a lump of coal found at The Cottonwoods (the cluster of mature trees still standing north of the Cedar City airport), discovered two veins that had been exposed by a landslide about four miles up the canyon. Apparently, no serious attempts were made to evaluate the deposits until 28 March 1852, Henry Lunt recording on that date eight men examined them.⁴⁶ The general locations of the deposits and their related mines are shown on illustration 9-2, based on James Martineau’s 1881 map of Coal Creek Canyon mines.

Numerous outcroppings of coal can be seen near Milt’s Stage Stop, a local restaurant and well-known landmark approximately five miles up Coal Creek Canyon, just east of the confluence of Coal Creek and Right Hand Canyon. Many of the deposits are visible from State Highway 14, which runs up Coal Creek Canyon. According to Otto Fife, whose father took him to visit the area as a child, the outcroppings mark the location of the first mine worked by the iron missionaries. For ease of discussion here, we have called it Mine No. 1 and marked it as (1) on illustration 9-2.

A coal bed underlies the entire area and it is still easy today to see outcroppings of various depths. In Coal Creek Canyon, the vein is usually between three and four feet thick, pitching to the southeast. At Milt’s Stage Stop, coal is visible on both sides of the canyon, although south deposits (the Right Hand Canyon area) are less visible than those on the north. After the Iron Mission era, all the deposits were worked extensively, but it appears the iron missionaries worked only a few of the sites. As early as 7 February 1852, the Deseret News reported that the Coal Creek iron workers

made their experiments with wood coal [charcoal], because of the difficulty in getting the stone coal, it being situated on a high mountain, or up a deep rocky gorge thereof, some four or six miles, so far as discovered, and that it will cost several thousand dollars to make a good road to it.⁴⁷

Andrew L. Neff, quoting a somewhat later report to the territorial legislature (6 January 1860, by the Committee on Agriculture, Roads and Manufacturing), also pointed out the difficulty of reaching the mine:

The first coal veins opened in the Territory were on Coal Creek, in the county of Iron, about seven miles from the mouth of the canyon, which was at first considered almost impassable. About fifteen thousand dollars have been expended to make a passable road to the coal. For one mile near the vein, the road is so steep, it requires a good team to haul up a heavy wagon. The vein has been worked several hundred feet, is about four and a half feet thick, and dips slightly to the southeast.⁴⁸

To improve access to the coal, the territorial legislature appropriated $2,000 on 27 December 1852 “for the working of a road to the Coal Beds in Iron County.”⁴⁹ This may have been an effort to ease the burden of road-building on the weary settlers that summer. Erastus Snow had instructions from Governor Brigham Young to carry out the winter improvements. This authority was delegated to James A. Little and Philip Klingensmith, who immediately began searching for new veins of coal. Two months later a new road had been constructed to the identified sites and coal had been mined and hauled down to the furnace. The total cost of the road amounted to $6,000.⁵⁰ On 5 January 1853, the legislature appropriated another $3,000 for more general use, “to advance the Iron interests, in Iron County.”⁵¹ The sidebar which follows identifies several of the Coal Creek Canyon landmarks and their comparative distances to the furnace site, suggesting relative lengths of road needed to bring the coal down to the iron works.

Illustration 9-3 shows the “high mountain” north of Milt’s Stage Stop, with the coal vein clearly visible at the left of the photograph, marked by the (C). Apparently, the pioneers never worked this face of the vein; however, traces of the old road leading to Mine No. 1, marked by the dotted line ending in (1), can still be seen. The final sections of this road were extremely steep and rough, requiring double-teaming either with ox- or horse-drawn vehicles. Despite its near-inaccessibility, the area shows evidence of extensive mining. Steel rails protruding from the entrance to Mine No. 1 prove it was worked late in the nineteenth century and beyond, when such technology was available. A rock slide has long since covered the mine’s entrance but the ends of the rails are still visible, as are other artifacts of early mining activity.

The Maple Canyon Mines

The most intense mining in the Coal Creek drainage area occurred at Maple Canyon. The Maple Canyon stream is the first to enter Coal Creek from the north, about half a mile east of Milt’s Stage Stop. Mining here centered in two areas.

The first is on the west bank about half a mile upstream from Maple Canyon Bridge and is known as the Walker Mine, marked by a (2) on illustration 9-2 and shown as just off-camera to the right of illustration 9-3. The Walker Mine is marked by two abandoned tailing dumps, one of which is believed to date from pioneer times. The most easily noticed tailings lie only a few yards north of the entrance to the mine, on the canyon floor. Even after more than 140 years, this tailing dump is quite extensive, although the mine entrance is now obscured. A curious pile of rock work is still partly visible near the upper end of the dump. This tumbled heap may have been part of the August 1853 rock breastwork constructed during the Walker War by Colonel William H. Kimball’s military detachment.⁵²

The second mine in Maple Canyon, marked (3) on illustration 9-2, is identified as the “Lunt Mine” because Henry Lunt’s son, Henry Jr., assisted James Martineau with Martineau’s 1881 survey and later became involved in mining operations at this site.⁵³ The mine is located on the east bank of Coal Creek. According to old mining claim books in the Iron County Recorder’s Office, Henry Jr. claimed title to this land in 1880, two decades after the demise of the pioneer iron works.⁵⁴

The Lunt Mine is scarcely 200 yards from modern State Highway 14, northeast of Maple Canyon Bridge. Small bits of coke found at the base of the hill in the trees near the bridge prove that coal was coked near the mine. Partially melted brick from the flue can still be found. A wooden loading dock was still visible in 1986. A small section of rock work, like that found at the Walker Mine, was also built at the Lunt Mine.

The Right Hand Canyon Mine

The coal used to fuel furnace runs during 1855–57 apparently came from Right Hand Canyon. The Deseret Iron Company “Journal” (see chapter 13) contains the first and only reference to this location; its wording implies the building of a road to bring the coal down to the blast furnace. The entry for 7 September 1855 records that Watkin Rees, John P. Smith, William Smith, Thomas Thorley, John Adams, John Gerber and George Wood were credited “for working on road in Right Hand Canyon” from two to eight days.⁵⁵

Notation (4) on illustration 9-2 indicates the location of this Right Hand Canyon Mine, now called the Leyson Mine, claimed by Basset G. Leyson on 9 December 1878.⁵⁶ According to Lou Webster, who operated coal mines in the area until the 1970s, the old road to this mine was an ox road probably built by pioneer coal miners. Like the trail to Mine No. 1, the last stage of this road was extremely steep and would have required double-teaming. Webster believed Leyson’s to be the first mine in Right Hand Canyon. If this is true, Leyson must have taken over the Deseret Iron Company’s workings there after the company failed. Coal was also coked at this mine with the same type of brick flue used at the Lunt Mine.

Henry Lunt frequently expressed concern in his journal over “stone coal,” indicating that the pioneers were not satisfied with the coal from the north side of the canyon. The term stone coal, interpreted by some to mean anthracite, may be misleading, as anthracite is not found in this area. Eastern iron works used raw anthracite that did not have to be coked. Lunt may have been hoping to find anthracite, but more likely he was hoping for large lumps of bituminous coal, which the pioneers found by driving their tunnels further into the mountain. The experienced coal miners working there would certainly have recognized the difference between anthracite and bituminous coal. Had any of these pioneer mines contained pure anthracite, many iron-making problems would have been solved: anthracite could have been used as blast furnace fuel, thus bypassing the exhausting step of turning coal into coke.

Although the furnace was masonry, outbuildings for the machinery to run it were built of timber. Peter Shirts and French convert Peter Filanque had discovered reserves of timber earlier. An exploratory party led by Philip Klingensmith confirmed the find on 20 May 1852, Lunt recording that “Excellent pine Timber and poles” could easily be reached if a “road could be made in half a day with Ten men.”⁵⁷

Progress at the Iron Works, Summer 1852

On Monday, 7 June, Lunt called a meeting in the center of the fort to consider a plan to expedite iron production. Those who preferred iron work would be assigned exclusively to that task and those who liked farming could tend to the fields. Sixteen men chose the iron business, some “digging out a place fore the wheel to blow the blast furnace” and some going “for Timber from the Kanyon.”⁵⁸ Lunt himself chose iron work, on 9 June “hawling fire clay”; on 10 June, as previously noted, “diging out foundation for the machinery for the Blast furnace”; and on 11 June digging fire clay.⁵⁹ The following Monday and Tuesday, he again “laboured on the Iron works.” The next day, traveling to Parowan on personal business, he brought back lumber to be used at the works.⁶⁰

Despite Lunt’s recommendation for a strict segregation of iron-making and farming, the iron workers had to maintain gardens and some crops or they could not have survived. In the midst of the entries just cited, for instance, Lunt makes note of an intrusive problem. On 11 June, after digging for fire clay, he

made an Examination of the water ditches in the Evening found them in a very bad condition, no water could be got on the upper side of the field. Thought it wisdom to turn out on the morrow and fix the ditches so that the crops could be watered.

The next day’s entry confirms that “All hands worked on the water ditches.”⁶¹ Deed books in the Iron County Recorder’s office show this constant blending of critical tasks in the many references to city building lots, garden lots and farm acreage in possession of men whose primary task at this time was iron-making. Though farmers did little physical labor at the iron works, they contributed in-kind support. Not infrequently, all able-bodied men had to work in common, most usually on the irrigation system.

At the height of the summer’s work on the canyon road, dissension arose at the iron works. On 25 June, furnace mason Richard Varley went up the canyon to bring Lunt back to the Compact Fort because several men had complained about Superintendent Harrison. They requested a meeting with Lunt, Bishop Klingensmith and John Easton to air their concerns. Lunt agreed to see them early the next morning at the blacksmith’s shop. There he delivered a lecture on fulfilling one’s duty and not finding fault with “another man’s work.”⁶²

How much Richard Harrison knew about furnace design, construction and operation is unknown, although his former profession of iron moulder was apparently the reason Brigham Young appointed him superintendent of the works. Most of the iron men had been through the English apprenticeship system and therefore had quite narrow specialties. Some iron workers may have openly challenged Richard Harrison’s instructions on furnace building. Although we do not know the nature of the problem, it was serious enough that both Lunt and Bishop Klingensmith were needed to calm the troubled waters.

In his next journal entry, 27 June, Lunt mentions having written a letter to the Deseret News, as did Richard Harrison. Both letters emphasized progress at the iron works. Henry Lunt boasted that the settlement had been busily making firebrick for the furnace, cutting timber for the waterwheel, fashioning iron parts for the machinery and finishing a road to the coal. “The distance from the Iron Works to the coal is supposed to be about 8 miles,” he wrote, noting the road builders were within one mile of the much-needed fuel.⁶³

Richard Harrison’s letter, also written 27 June 1852, went to Brigham Young directly. The waterwheel was almost assembled, he declared. The firebricks were of the best quality clay and would be ready for use shortly. According to Harrison, the road up the canyon extended to within two miles of the coal and discoveries of new coal reserves were expected within the week. Praising the men under his supervision, he claimed:

The work already accomplished on the iron works has been done by about half the men whose names were recorded as iron men. Those that are with me go at it determinately. Some 6 or 8 or more have been working steadily at the work ever since the field was inclosed, and others have worked as circumstances would alow them. I believe from the spirit of energy and determination manifested by the brethren engaged with me that we shall be able in four or five weeks to give an account of our stewardships satisfactorily according to your wish and desire.⁶⁴

On 1 July, J. C. L. Smith and his first counselor John Steele (see illus. 9-4) met with second counselor Henry Lunt. It is important to note how often the three men visited each other. Even though Parowan was 20 miles away, the iron works was so important that Smith and Steele came to Cedar City eight times from May to November 1852, while Henry Lunt traveled to Parowan 11 times in the same period, both to consult with them and to grind wheat and bring back lumber. Apparently, meetings of the stake presidency, the high council and the combined group that acted as a board of directors for the iron works met on alternating Sundays at Parowan and Cedar City. They also sometimes met on the first Thursday of each month, set aside for fasting and prayer and observed as a day of rest.

On 6 July, Lunt wrote that he labored on the iron works, sawing with a whip saw and digging out the millrace.⁶⁵ Usually, a millrace was the ditch or canal bringing water to a wheel; a tailrace was the ditch carrying water away from it. The waterwheel was placed some ways away from the main streambed of Coal Creek. At this time, it was an undershot wheel, the water flowing beneath it. In the winter of 1852–53, it was replaced by an overshot wheel, the water cresting against and over the top, turning the wheel in the opposite direction from that caused by an undershot flow.⁶⁶

On 8 July, Lunt wrote that “every thing seems to go on more prosperous, since the Iron works have been commenced.” The crops were doing well; even the water ditches did not wash out as often. “It shows,” he concluded, “that when saints do what they were sent to do the Lord prospers them, and the labour of their hands.”⁶⁷ On the other hand, Lunt continued to be disturbed by any sign of contention among the iron workers. When further “difficulties” required a second meeting at the blacksmith’s shop to talk about unspecified disagreements for two hours on 10 July, Lunt felt compelled to preach in church the next day from the epistles of Paul and James about being united in love and slow to anger.⁶⁸ On Monday he traveled to Parowan “to do some business.” Since he had a “long council” with the other presidency members, J. C. L. Smith and John Steele, they probably discussed the difficulty of bringing complete harmony to the settlements.⁶⁹

On 23 July, 10 carriages of settlers from Cedar City headed to Parowan to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Saints’ arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, 24 July 1847. A Parowan contingent came from town to escort their neighbors in with a formal procession, first saluting them with three cheers. The visitors responded by hoisting homemade flags bearing the motto “Holiness to the Lord” and the emblems of a beehive and a sheaf of wheat. Arriving at the center of the fort, the procession marched around the Liberty Pole to more cheers and the guests were then assigned hosts for their stay in Parowan. An assembly in the council house concluded with dancing until midnight.⁷⁰

The celebration on 24 July began at 5 a.m. with an artillery salute. The battalion paraded on Artillery Square and everyone joined a procession to the church for oratory and songs, including an original composition by John Steele for the “Iron Mongers” of Iron County. Lunt recorded that John D. Lee “killed a fat sheep for the dinner” and the “rich bounties of the valley filled the table.” After dinner the company met again at the church and “dancing Commenced in which the Ladies Participated largely.” The festivities concluded with the song “Mountain Standard” and five cheers of “Hosannah to God and the Lamb for ever.”⁷¹

Back at work, Lunt’s entries of 27–28 July indicate that labor at the iron works extended beyond furnace construction. Workers also stockpiled materials for the first furnace run. They hauled iron from West Mountain, for instance, some eight to 10 miles to the west. They must have had some doubts, however, about the ore they planned to use. As early as 14 July, Lunt recorded that he, Matthew Carruthers and James Williamson made a trip to the known ore deposits, looked around for better quality, finally loaded up their wagon with what was available and then returned. The iron workers had begun stockpiling coal on 17 July. On the 28th, Lunt mentions a “slide” that may have been a loading chute from which the coal could be loaded onto wagons.⁷²

Apparently, concerns raised by iron workers at the end of June had not been resolved. On Sunday, 1 August, J. C. L. Smith, John Steele and Henry Lunt met with the iron workers. That night Lunt wrote: “The brethren were invited to speak as they felt and a good many spoke, and exhibited a spirit of jaring and contention.”⁷³ This is one of few recorded instances when ordinary members were asked to express themselves about iron-making; the fact that negative feelings had been building up and were so promptly expressed probably explains why such forums rarely occurred.

After Smith and Steele returned to Parowan, where Smith would leave on 8 August for a trip to Salt Lake City, Lunt met with some of his council members to consider who should be nominated for political office in the next day’s election. Lunt proposed James Easton for Justice of the Peace, William Bateman for Constable, Alexander Keir for Pound Keeper, James Bulloch and Edward Williams as Fence Viewers and Richard Harrison, James Bosnell and George Wood as School Trustees.⁷⁴ At the time, territorial elections were held the second week of August, rather than in November. Because no two-party system yet operated, those in authority proposed candidates for civic duties. It would be more than a year before Cedar City would have its first mayor and city government. In the meantime, Henry Lunt was responsible for these jobs, along with his ecclesiastical duties, but received assistance from others in their various official roles.

Iron for Conference: The First Fruits of the Furnace

As the harvest season neared, work on both iron and farming tasks intensified. On 13 August, Lunt hauled five loads of adobe brick to the iron works with a diligent Indian assistant who often came to help.⁷⁵ The five loads were probably for the furnace stack, which Lunt described on 7 July as having a rock foundation. Evidently, the iron workers were dissatisfied with the coal being stockpiled at the furnace site. Although mined at different locations up Coal Creek “Kanyon,” the coal itself was all from the same formation and generally of the same quality. Unfortunately, it was not the ideal anthracite they had hoped for.

From mid-August to 8 September, nearly everyone concentrated on the harvest. Presumably, blacksmith Thomas Cartwright (see illus. 9-5) continued his labors at the furnace site, a task so important that others harvested his wheat. In September, with general conference as the target date for iron production, the tempo shifted back to iron-making.

With this change in community focus came increasing frustrations. On Wednesday, 8 September, Lunt noted, “It seems with great difficulty that Harrison can get any of the men to work under him[.] Bro Harrison has almost entirely lost the confidence of the Saints[.]”⁷⁶ Some were disturbed over an innocent pig-roast party hosted by Peter Shirts at Shirts Creek, which Harrison had attended. This harvest celebration was not well received by those who were not invited. On Sunday, 12 September, Lunt preached yet again on unity, affirming that “5 men united, are better than 50 disunited.”⁷⁷ On the same day, Elijah Elmer arrived from Salt Lake City with news that James Lewis and Chapman Duncan had been called on missions to China; Robert Owens, at Parowan, also received his call to an unspecified mission overseas.⁷⁸

On 9 September, Lunt went to Parowan to mill wheat and pick up lumber. On Sunday evening, 12 September, frustrated by the ongoing lack of harmony, he rode to Parowan again, seeking counsel from the other members of the stake presidency and high council.⁷⁹ He does not identify what he wanted to know but apparently felt satisfied with their response. The news that some much-needed dry goods had been freighted to Salt Lake City by Kinkead & Company, the first big merchandisers in the territory, must have helped raise community spirits a little with the hope that some of the goods would make their way south.

Lunt’s journal entries at this time mark a crescendo of efforts to meet the deadline of producing an iron sample, as Brigham Young hoped, in time for general conference. On 25 September, Lunt called a meeting in the schoolhouse and preached “on the subject of us making Iron by Conference.” Because the time left was so short, he “made arrangements for working on Sunday.” This willingness to labor on the Sabbath indicates both the seriousness of Lunt’s commitment and the pressure of the deadline.⁸⁰

On Sunday, 26 September, Lunt was awakened at 2:00 a.m. by Richard Harrison, just in from Parowan, with news that J. C. L. Smith had returned there from Salt Lake City with unsettling orders from Brigham Young. Harrison, the superintendent, and Thomas Bladen, the chief engineer, were summoned to Salt Lake City by Brigham himself. Furthermore, three Apostles—Erastus Snow, John Taylor and Franklin D. Richards—would shortly be coming south with a party of new workers to take over the iron operations. Obviously, leaders in Salt Lake City were concerned that the project had not yet produced iron.

On 29 September 1852, the iron workers began charging the furnace. About noon they “put on the Blast,” Lunt’s phrase for the process iron technicians describe as “blowing in” the furnace. Although Lunt records no details about the charge, a review of this first furnace run, prefacing the Deseret Iron Company minute book, reports that the fuel was “stone coal coked, and dry pitch pine wood in the raw state.”⁸¹ Rhoda Matheson Wood and Belle Armstrong’s account of this historic event provides a colorful, if undocumented, description:

The whole group were excited. During the day the furnace was loaded and at evening time fired. Everyone was assembled around a huge bonfire; a service with prayer invoking God’s blessing upon their efforts. Short talks reviewing their struggles, and prophesying their future, if success attended them, accompanied by the creaking and groaning of the heavy wooden water wheel, combined to make this night a time to be long remembered. As dawn began to break Robert Adams carefully arranged a sand box, then took a long rod and knocked out the clay plug, to let a stream of fiery metal pour out. Emotions had to find relief. Shouts of “Hosannah!” broke from tired, sleepy throats.⁸²

Descendants of iron missionaries sometimes claim their ancestors produced the first iron made west of the Mississippi. Henry Lunt appears not to have made such a claim, probably because he knew it wasn’t true. The blast furnace at Maramec Spring near St. James, Missouri (some 75 miles southwest of St. Louis), had already been in production for almost 25 years and had probably supplied the iron for wagons that carried the Mormons across the plains. Many of the pioneer iron workers passed through St. Louis on their way to departure points for the west; it is thus almost certain that they knew about or at least had heard of Maramec.

Henry Lunt’s reaction on 30 September to the Iron Mission’s first run was ambivalent. While giving the achievement its due, he had to admit the quality of the pig iron was disappointing:

Tap[p]ed the furnace about Six oclock a.m. The Metal run out and we all gave three hearty cheers. When the Mettle was cold, on examination it was not found to be so good as might be wished and also of a very peculiar appearance. This was attributed to so much sulpher being in the Stone Coal.⁸³

The sense of anticlimax is strong. After almost superhuman efforts for the greater part of a year, they had produced only one bar of mediocre-grade pig iron. That same day, Lunt (always the realist) asked blacksmith Thomas Cartwright to stay and help with operations in Cedar City. Cartwright, however, disregarded Lunt’s counsel and left the next day for Salt Lake City to attend October general conference with Richard Harrison, Thomas Bladen, Philip Klingensmith and George Wood. Their departure gave the settlers much to ponder.

Henry Lunt did not record the questions that must have plagued him after this unprecedented but disappointing trial run. The people were, to some extent, still in rags, without shoes and short of food. How could they survive a winter that had already come early to the settlements? Would Brigham Young really understand how hard they had worked or would he scorn their foot-long bar of pig iron? Why had the president not asked Henry Lunt to come north with Harrison and Bladen to report on the status of iron-making? Did Brigham Young hold Lunt personally responsible for the lack of progress? Suddenly, the iron missionaries faced the likelihood of major changes. Their control of the iron works must have seemed in doubt. For the moment, however, they could do little but wait for Apostles Snow and Richards to arrive after conference, bringing the expected message from Brigham Young.

Sidebar 9-1: Distances from Coal Creek Landmarks to Furnace Site

*It is not possible to say what the pioneers considered to be the canyon mouth. The distance given is measured from the widest part of the canyon as it opens up just east of the city park.

Sidebar 9-2: Iron Industry Memorials

A memorial plaque describes the site and shows a painting of the iron works by R. D. Adams, descendent of furnace master David Barkley Adams. The plaque reads:

Deseret Iron Works

This monument marks the spot where on September 30, 1852, the first iron was manufactured west of the Mississippi River by the Mormon Iron Missionaries sent here by Brigham Young.

This 5½ ton ore body was obtained from the Iron deposits used by the Iron Workers located about seven miles west of Cedar City in the Three Peaks area; it is about 61% Fe. The smaller specimens are some that were actually hauled by horse-drawn vehicles to this site and were found during excavations. The Blast Furnace, Foundry, Pattern Shop, Coke and Charcoal Ovens, Waterwheel and Offices of the early Pioneer Iron Works were located North, South and East of this monument.

The technology of using coke was brought by these early iron workers directly from England where the use of charcoal had been out-lawed and which was a relatively new idea, especially in American iron manufacturing. In spite of floods, which inundated the Iron Works, the undependable water source, and other natural and man-made difficulties, considerable iron was produced here until 1858, making the iron industry one of the leading factors in the economy of the Utah territory.

Dedicated November 11, 1978 (Cedar City’s 127th Birthday)

The accompanying Utah State Historic Site marker reads:

Pioneer Iron Works Blast Furnace

To satisfy an urgent need for manufactured iron products, a small group of English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish and American pioneers answered a call from Brigham Young to become “Iron Missionaries” to settle Iron County and to make iron. They arrived in Parowan on January 13, 1851 and produced the first iron west of the Mississippi on September 30, 1852 on this site. Due to economics, social, environmental and technical problems, the Iron Works was closed down in October 1858.

Division of State History S-89

[original dictation and punctuation retained from both markers]