Introduction
Only three years after the first Mormon pioneers arrived in Salt Lake Valley, a number of them were called to establish an iron works in southern Utah. Like their biblical counterparts, these modern Saints would shortly find themselves undergoing a trial of faith in the furnace of their own desert wilderness. They would have to struggle not only to secure food, clothing and shelter but focus simultaneously on founding what Brigham Young hoped would become the leading industrial enterprise of the region.
The venture began in December 1849, when the General Assembly of Deseret (the provisional legislature organized in what is now the state of Utah) authorized sending an expedition south, first to evaluate numerous reports of iron deposits there and then to begin iron production if feasible. Within the month, over the winter of 1849–50, Parley P. Pratt led 50 men on an expedition. His report was favorable and the returning party suggested a settlement on the banks of the stream they named “Center Creek”—the site of present-day Parowan. This location fit well into Brigham Young’s plan to place Mormon settlements on all strategic approaches to the Great Basin.
Apostle George A. Smith, selected to head up the new settlement, solicited volunteers in June 1850, this time to establish an iron works in the unfamiliar wilds of what is now southern Utah. Initially, the struggling settlers in Salt Lake City and surrounding areas demonstrated little interest in volunteering. Church leaders subsequently began issuing, to a predetermined cadre of Saints who appeared to have the needed skills, one-year “callings” to the “Iron County Mission.” It is correct to label this group “missionaries” because they were specifically commissioned by their leaders to found and stabilize an ecclesiastical society in the Great Basin. Nevertheless, their objective was more secular than religious, since they were primarily charged with exploring, surveying, settling and farming as well as manufacturing iron.
The iron missionaries were primarily men with frontier survival skills—many from the British Isles with mining and iron-making experience—totaling approximately 120, many accompanied by wives and children. Traveling almost a month through snow and bitter cold, they arrived at Center Creek on 13 January 1851. Their objective was to determine if the local iron ore could be successfully reduced to pig iron and useful articles made from it.
Although this gritty little group could not know it, the project was doomed from the start—not because they lacked courage or commitment, but because of circumstances they did not understand and could not control. Other than a few experimental items like cast-iron pots, crank shafts, gears, andirons, flat irons and fire grates, nothing of any commercial quality or quantity was ever made. The amount of pig iron produced by the iron works, expressed in tonnage over very short periods of blast furnace operation, impressed many but was, in fact, insignificant. This unique pioneering experiment ended on 8 October 1858, although the assets of the Deseret Iron Company were not liquidated until 20 December 1861, when the remaining holdings were disposed of at public auction.
Little physical evidence remains to suggest that this area was once destined to become the “Pittsburgh of the West.” The Iron Mission State Park houses a few museum artifacts and maintains remnants of pioneer-era buildings. Beyond these, mostly unpublished family histories and brief descriptions in historical reference works only hint at the full story of this adventure in courage.
Initially, the pioneers must have thought that everything necessary for success was at hand. In southern Utah, deposits of iron ore seemed to be everywhere, along with the wood, coal and limestone needed to smelt them. Capable ironmongers from Europe were eager to bring the Iron Mission from dream to reality. Moreover, the entire project was motivated by intense religious zeal that did not stop short of heart-wrenching sacrifice. Why, under these favorable circumstances and after years of tremendous effort and sacrifice, did such a well-planned and much-needed project fail? The story begins with the first Spanish explorers to discover iron ore near present-day Cedar City and traces, before its end, the settlement of an entire region whose history continues to unfold.
