Unidentified Indian woman and baby about 1897. She is wearing an old style hand woven garment. (Hilda Perkins photo)

Villages and towns established by Mormon pioneers in the 19th Century were typically farming villages settled where: (1) the site was accessible, (2) the climate was suitable for farming, (3) water and wood were abundantly available, and (4) the soil was fertile. But more important than these, was the reasons why settlements were established. It must be remembered that Brigham Young's original intentions in the West were to occupy lands that no one else wanted, so as to minimize any conflict over possession, then to develop a Mormon Commonwealth of sufficient strength to remain indisputably in control of the territory.

It is readily apparent to those acquainted with the geography of southeastern Utah, that the site of Bluff was not easily accessible to any other settlement, that water and wood were both lacking, and that the soil, if not infertile, was at least discouragingly sandy and manifestly dry. It is evident then, that Bluff was not settled merely to establish first claims on a desirable valley. And contrary to popularly published reason, Bluff was not settled to cope with an outlaw population, for by 1879, when the Bluff settlers were already committed to blasting a road through Hole in the Rock, there were only two cattle companies in San Juan, both of which were small, owner operated outfits; two others arrived at approximately the same time as the Mormon explorers. One reason often given for the settlement of Bluff is that the San Juan Mission, to which the settlers had been called, was to function as a peace mission to the Indians or even as a proselyting mission to them. But while history indicates that there is probably some merit to the notion that the settlement was to be a peace making buffer to the Indians, it is important to realize in this regard that all of the statements to that effect were made by the mission's heirs, well after the colony, and an altruistic tradition, were established. There is no record of any first generation Hole in the Rock pioneer ever suggesting that the mission was called to calm an outlaw element, or to pacify or proselyte the Indians. On the other hand, such evidence as exists points to the fact that Bluff came into being primarily to secure the border lands of Utah, and to prevent their occupation by non-Mormons. This is indicated by a letter from Apostle Erastus Snow to President John Taylor, dated November 6, 1879:

(Silas S. Smith) ... needs all the strength he has and more too for the task he has in hand; and less cannot secure the San Juan region in Utah, to say nothing of the region higher up that stream, and its many tributaries in Colorado and New Mexico... (Miller 5).

Furthermore, in 1885 when Francis A. Hammond was called by Church authorities to preside over the San Juan Stake, he saw the community as part of a contest with "our enemies" for possession of the country (Hammond). And about that same time, the church authorities reminded the settlers that they were to maintain all of San Juan County and not Bluff only.

This is very important to the understanding of the history of Bluff: Bluff was not settled in answer to an outlaw problem, for no problem existed when the pioneers arrived; nor was Bluff settled primarily as a mission to the Indians, for no such instructions were issued or practiced by the settling party. Bluff was settled primarily to secure the San Juan area for the Mormon people and the Territory of Utah. For this reason, it is incorrect to say, as many historians do, that Bluff failed; for if Bluff failed to establish itself as a farming village, that failure was only incidental to its mission, and if Bluff failed to establish Mormonism among the Indians, that too was only incidental to its mission. But Bluff was established to gain Mormon control of San Juan County, and in that, as history clearly shows, the settlement succeeded admirably.

In a general sense, Bluff was part of a movement in which Mormondom expanded south and east from the Wasatch front. More particularly, in consideration of the fact that some of its settlers were pioneers who had built homes in New York, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois before coming to Utah, and then had built homes in northern and southwestern Utah before coming to Bluff, the settlement may be viewed as an extension of, and ultimate exercise in, 19th Century Mormon colonizing. For example, Eliza Maria Partridge Lyman joined the Church during its troubled early years, moved west with the exiles, and gave birth to her son, Platte De Alton Lyman, in an encampment near the banks of the Platte River while en route to the Salt Lake Valley. Platte later became one of the leaders of the Hole in the Rock expedition. And Bishop Jens Nielson, his feet frozen and crippled while pulling a handcart toward Zion, helped settle five other Utah towns before being sent to Bluff. Indeed, the heirs of the San Juan Mission not only regarded Bluff as a sort of Mormon cultural island in a sea of gentiles, but to some extent regarded Bluff people as elect among the chosen. Such are the rewards of endurance.

That the settlers suffered is a matter of record. In addition to the anguished ordeal of the trek, the Hole in the Rock pioneers faced another decade of weary poverty and fruitless toil before their efforts began to earn comforts similar to those then being enjoyed by their contemporaries in Salt Lake City or even Parowan. The San Juan country, of which Bluff was typical, was described as "a lot of rocks, a lot of sand, more rocks, more sand, and wind to blow it away." In those early days of isolation in the desert, it was two days' ride to the nearest town, and five or six weeks to the settlements from which they had come; distance imposed a solitude unbroken for weeks at a time. And not only was sheer distance an obstacle, but that distance could only be covered by hard drudgery. It is said that wagon travel over the sandy roads near Bluff was so exhausting to animals that it was like pulling a plow for thirty miles. For the settlers at Bluff, their outpost simply had no comforts. An unnamed pioneer recalls:

Our tents and cabins were clustered together in an open flat. It seemed to me that the glistening sun would burn my eyes out; I was half blinded from always seeing it, the barren cliffs seemed little less than prison walls.

With the spring the sandstorms came, whistling winds from the southwest, loaded with blinding sand which beat its way to every crack and crevice of the old log huts, making everything gritty. When the storm was over and the sun shone down on the white sand it was blinding to go and look at it and it was dismal to look at the stern grey cliffs with their barren walls (Nielson 7,8).

The Hole-in-the-Rock descent which brought the first company to the San Juan River.
(Mikki Palmer photo)

In contrast to these first generation settlers, who neither claimed altruistic motives for the settlement nor left nostalgic accounts of it, are their heirs, who did both. And it is from the heirs' nostalgic writings that we glimpse the other side of daily life in early Bluff: folks drying peaches in the summer; boys climbing the cliffs or swimming in the river or in water holes along the ditch; Saturday night dances to the music of a fiddle, a guitar, and a harmonica; Utes camped on the river bank near the mouth of Cottonwood Wash; people gathering the fragile and rare cliff flowers in the spring; boys riding out into the sand hills to the west, fetching milk cows home for the evening; buckets of striped candy in the small store in the fort; Aunt Elsie Nielson's hand sewn buckskin baseballs; Brother Walton's bugle calling people to meeting; and the Perkins brothers singing in the calm evenings, their voices harmonizing "Will You Love Me When I Am Old?"

One account, the more interesting because it is written by a gentile visitor and is nostalgic nonetheless, is found in Neil M. Judd's easygoing reminiscence, Men Met Along The Trail:

Bluff City, on the north bank of the San Juan, was settled in 1879 by Mormon pioneers from west-central Utah. The story of their year-long journey and their conquest of the Colorado River gorge has been told repeatedly, and it should be told again. They were church ordered to establish a new colony; there was no turning back. Kumen Jones..., was manager of the community store in the years I knew Bluff City, and a gentler person never lived. The rugged trail up from the Colorado had grown dim, but worn ox shoes and the broken wheels of abandoned wagons provided further reminders of past hardships along the way.

The "Old Swing Tree," under which the original settlers gathered for prayer, succumbed to floods in 1908, but village gardens and green alfalfa fields remained to make Bluff an inviting oasis. Even after half a century I recall with something of nostalgia its sandy streets sheltered by cottonwoods and Lombardy poplars; the warm welcome we found in every pioneer home; the unsung kindnesses of Kumen and Mary Jones, among others; and the bountiful table set by "Aunt Jane" Allen for vigorous young appetites.

 

The Old Swing Tree. When people arrived at Bluff and prior to building the "Bowry," Sunday School was held under this tree. (Wanda Black photo)

Those who never shared a meal prepared by "Aunt Jane" missed an experience not likely to be repeated in this world. Habitually covered by a waist-hung apron, she lived in a two-part log cabin with a sod roof and a "root cellar" close by the kitchen door, Her pies and cakes were superb and generously portioned; her jams, jellies, pickles, and preserves were heaped upon dishes with flaring rims. The marvel is that her household garden could have produced such a variety of fruits and vegetables and that she had the energy to prepare them. Hers was a labor of self-satisfaction, for there certainly was no profit in what she placed before us students, home from canyon trails (Lyman 70 ).

But the persistent story of Bluff is not the story of its settlement, not the story of the hardships endured there, and not the story of wonderful, innocent bygone days. The real story of Bluff is the story of the people who lived there; the story of the Decker family who in one awful holiday season lost five members to sudden disease; the story of Aunt Jody Wood, called and set apart to serve as a doctor, who sometimes heard audible voices guiding her administration; the story of a generation of young men whose mothers wept, as did Charlie Redd's, when they returned home, thin and ragged and bruised from the cattle; the story of John Albert Scorup who, wanting to be a cattleman, started with fortitude and ended as one of Utah's largest ranchers; and finally, the story of Jens Neilson whose capacity for endurance withstood frostbite, Hole in the Rock, and the San Juan wilderness, whose courage faced down armed and angry violent men, and whose wisdom contributed so much to the material and spiritual strength of early Bluff. To these people, the following study is respectfully dedicated.

 

Jane Allan in front of her house. (USHS photo)

II. Historical Sketch

Among the earliest dwellers at Bluff were the Anasazi, who left their marks in the large kiva depression on Cemetery Hill (excavated in 1894 by a Mohammedan, Sadi Mahomet Ta-eber), (Lyman 70) in seventeen room ruin across the river (called "Casa del Echo" by William H. Jackson) (Judd 16), and in a thousand petroglyphs and pottery sherds scattered among hills and cliffs. Later came wandering Navajo and Ute tribesmen who left little record more indelible than their horses' hoof prints. Still later, washing ahead of that overwhelming invasion of which Bluff City was but a minuscule part, Spanish explorers came near, if not into, the San Juan Country. These were followed by fur trappers, adventurers, explorers, a handful of U.S. Government surveyors including John S. Newberry and William H. Jackson, and the 1879 exploration party of the San Juan Mission.

In 1877, at St. George, Utah, Brigham Young and Erastus Snow decided to "plant a colony" somewhere in the four corners region (Miller 9). Delayed by Brigham Young's death that same year, the calls were issued later in 1878, and an exploration party departed the settlements in April, 1879. Their account is written sufficiently elsewhere, most notably in David E. Miller's excellent Hole in the Rock, but of interest here is the fact that after having made bold and arduous passage through the Navajo Reservation to the San Juan River near Montezuma Creek, their explorations of the country revealed a "small body of land on the river some distance below where the camp was located" (Beck 31). Although no special attention was paid to it then, this was probably the future site of Bluff.

On October 22, 1879, shortly after the explorers returned, the first major contingent of the San Juan Mission departed the settlements. For whatever reasons, they decided to plunge directly toward their destination instead of following the roads broken by the exploration company. That decision, and its attendant ordeal, became the foundation for the heritage of Bluff, for it led directly to Hole in the Rock. The Hole in the Rock trek became the great gestation for the Mormon colony on the San Juan; it provided the suffering and endurance which united the settlers in an uncommon bond of togetherness; and being so great a price, it became justification in itself for the colony's existence. While the details are best told elsewhere, the ordeal of making roads where there were -- and are -- none, through the hole, up Cottonwood Hill, the slick rocks, Clay Hill, and San Juan Hill, exacted such a toll from the travelers that by the final week some were making less than one mile per day. Bluff City would never have been what it was -- if it had lasted at all -- if it had not been born amid such anguished labor pains.

Although three families of Harrises built a cabin and wintered in Bluff during the winter of 1879-1880, the date normally given for the founding of the town is April 6, 1880. That is the day after seventy men and eighty-five wagons arrived at the sandy river bottoms, too tired, too worn, and too weak to continue the remaining fifteen miles to their destination --- and the day upon which it was formally decided to go no further ( Lyman). A few days later, William Hutchings of Beaver suggested that the new town be called "Bluff City"; the settlers unanimously agreed.

After selecting the townsite, a meeting was held in which two committees were formed: One to begin work on a ditch, and one to lay out the fields and town. There seems to have been no assessment of the country's possibilities; they simply set about building an agrarian village on the assumption that the land would yield to farms and that they would be farmers.

 

The Bayles log house was probably dragged the half a block from the old fort to their allotment. (Mikki Palmer photo)

It was soon learned that there was really less land than they had expected, and despite the fact that there was then land on both sides of the river, they decided to use only that on the north side and to apportion it by lottery; those drawing blank slips would move on up the river. That was alright in theory, but when the blanks were actually drawn and it was time for some folks to move on, no one was willing to go. In fact, Platte D. Lyman notes in his journal that "it is out of the question for us to move any farther at present" (Lyman). After some contention -- which served no doubt, as an outlet for some of the frustrations built up during the trek -- and several futile meetings, it was at last decided to make smaller allotments and allow everyone to stay. Lots were measured twelve rods square, with each family receiving one lot and eight to twenty acres of field, depending on quality.

 

Early photo of work on the Bluff irrigation system. (SJHC photo)

 

Drilling for artesion water about 1897. Water was a continual concern for early pioneers.
(Hilda Perkins photo)

During that first month, most of the settlers built brush huts, used their wagon boxes for bedrooms, and were busy plowing, digging ditch, and planting. When word arrived that the Territorial Legislature had appropriated $5,000.00 to the colony, most expected to be paid for their labors on the road, but no one ever was. On April 26th, the first County Court convened -- County government having been created by an act of the legislature the previous year. Selectmen Platte D. Lyman, Jens Nielsen, and Zechariah B. Decker, with County Clerk, C.E. Walton, appointed L.H. Redd, Jr. as tax assessor and collector. Court was then adjourned for six weeks.

As soon as they had regained sufficient strength, several men returned to the settlement for supplies, while others simply returned. One wagon, returning for supplies, reached Hole in the Rock in one week's time, then found that it required five horses half a hard day to pull it to the top. George Sevy, Hyrum Perkins, and Kumen Jones traveled to Hole in the Rock to meet a shipment of flour, boots, and shoes from the settlements. Jones notes that, "The weather was exceedingly hot and the teams thin in flesh, we necessarily had to make haste slowly" (Jones 25).

By August, 1880, the water had broken out of the ditch -- a regular event still celebrated with much toil by those who try to farm there. Crops were drying up, and the settlers were discouraged. Some moved on. The following month Marion Lyman, with Apostles Erastus Snow, and Brigham Young, Jr., visited Bluff and tried to bolster the people with optimism. Following their advice, the people built and moved into a fort -- a remnant of which still stands, according to Albert R. Lyman, as part of the old Barton Cabin situated across the street east from the county jail in Bluff. (That cabin contains a number of cottonwood logs, the warped contortions of which remain as mute evidence of the timber scarcity so acute that when Roswell Stevens died that first year, he was buried in the wagon box in which he had ridden through the Hole in the Rock.)

Cheering as the visiting brethren may have been, they were unable to make a success of the season's crops. Before winter set in, twenty-one wagons moved out, heading for Colorado to seek sustenance work among the mines and railroads of Colorado. The first year's attempts at farming had been a dismal failure.

During the spring of 1881, the colony experienced its first difficulty with Indians when some Utes drove off a few head of Bluff horses. That spring the Hole in the Rock road was abandoned in favor of Hall's Crossing, and, of keen interest to the farmers at Bluff, William Hyde erected a sixteen foot water wheel which drew 23,000 gallons per hour from the San Juan River near Montezuma Creek. On April 6th, the little town celebrated its first anniversary by holding a morning meeting of speeches and songs, a children's party in the afternoon, and an adult party in the evening.

On May 5th, Joe Nielson was chased from the horse herd he was tending, and the horses were stolen by the Utes. Fleeing into Bluff, Joe interrupted church service with the news. Immediately, eight or nine of the brethren saddled and rode to the Ute camp in Butler Wash, where they found about 100 Utes with approximately 150 head of horses. After a slight confrontation and some "flourishing of their guns," the Utes allowed the Bluff men to retrieve their stolen horses. Although the, Bluff people were disturbed to learn that the Utes retaliated by slaughtering livestock, they were luckier than they knew; just before chasing Joe Nielson away from the herd, the Utes had robbed a ranch rear the Colorado border, killing three men and burning the buildings. Afterwards, after leading a Colorado posse on a goose chase, these same Utes set up an ambush in which seventeen white men were killed.

This episode marked the beginning of a curious but fragile relationship in which the Bluff City Mormons, if not their stock, were curiously exempted from overt depredations at the hands of the violent Utes. As Charles S. Peterson so succinctly decribes it:

The Mormon right to share in the country was quickly established, and a workable and lasting modus vivendi developed which permitted mutual occupation with a minimum loss of life. While it doubtlessly fell short of satisfying either party, this arrangement consisted of the following essentials: Indians tolerated Mormons in the country, accepted their paternalistic overtures, took advantage of trade opportunities, and limited their own depredations to a heavy, but tolerable tribute in the form of stolen livestock, and with rare exceptions limited their threats to the community to bluster, which resulted in no loss of life. In return the Mormons tolerated and in form at least welcomed the Indians; minimized their effort to involve outside forces to control the Indians; limited their punitive efforts to sorties to reclaim stolen stock; and until the mid-nineties did not seek their expulsion, and then only as specific situations seemed to require. The unexpressed factor in this situation was the most important. For whites, the arrangement led to increasing control of the country and its resources; for Indians, it led to subjugation and poverty (Peterson 59)

One factor in establishing this modus vivendi may be the prophetic promise made by Erastus Snow in a letter to the settlers, wherein he stated that: "....Inasmuch as the Latter Day Saints of the San Juan Mission would live their religion and obey counsel, the Indians who would not be friendly but would steal and persist in their hatred and meanness toward us, that the hand of the Lord would be manifest in their destruction." Fourteen Utes inexplicably died within a few short years of that promise, and it became part of the Bluff tradition that "when an Indian gets mean enough, he'll die." That the Indians were aware of this factor is indicated by the story of Navajo Frank who, after becoming suddenly sick, asked Thales Haskell to write a letter to God asking that his life be spared if he changed his ways.

The rest of the summer passed without notable incident other than the ongoing struggle with the ditch William Hyde's water wheel notwithstanding, 1881 was no more auspicious for farming than 1880 had been. Platte Lyman raised only one ear of green corn that season, everything else having died from lack of water. That year, the Bluff Ward paid $760.00 in tithing, $400.00 of which was in cash, showing how little the farms at Bluff contributed to the livelihood of their owners. Again, existence on the San Juan was made possible only by the exportation of labor to Colorado. Men took their families in a wagon and worked for four or five months until they could fill the wagon with flour. By that fall, most of the faithless were gone and the diehards remaining were asking the Church to release them.

The summer's crop failure was soon followed by grief of a different kind. In October, two thieves stole some Bluff horses and fled with them toward the Colorado River. L.H. Redd, Jr., Hyrum Perkins, and Joseph Lyman rode in pursuit, crossed the river, and by means of an esoteric trail succeeded in flanking an ambuscade and retrieving not only their own horse, but the thieves' outfits as well. But while ferrying the animals back across the river, the outlaws appeared at the top of a cliff and opened fire. During the exchange of shots that followed, Lyman was hit in the left leg just above the knee, and suffered much in traveling back to Bluff before commencing a slow recovery.

 

The healing of Jody Lyman's wound is indicative of conditions in that day: Wounded on October 3, it was eight weeks before he got out of bed. Then he sat in a chair for forty five minutes and returned to bed. At that time, his family was still sitting up with him most nights; his leg was still badly swollen, and twenty pieces of bone and one lead fragment had only that week been removed from the wound. Three months and ten days after the shooting, he ate at a table for the first time, but his family moved the table to his chair. His mother wrote that day in her diary, "He is getting his health better than we thought he could so soon." Four months and one week after being hurt, he went outside for the first time, on crutches and with helpers carrying the weight of his leg. Two weeks later he attended meeting for the first time, and it was not until the following summer that he "commenced again to lead his family prayers." But he couldn't bend his knee and never did regain full use of his leg (Lyman Journals).

In December after the long dry summer and that anxious autumn of 1881, President John Taylor, sent Edward Dalton of Parowan to bolster the settlers' courage with encouraging words and handful of new settlers. After his visit, many of the pioneers were re-baptized in the San Juan River, rededicating themselves to the difficult task at hand and the agonizing standard of living which it required.

Perhaps because of that, the year of 1882 was better. The isolation promised to be mitigated somewhat when Special Mail Agent J.H. Mahoney investigated the possibility of mail service and promised to recommend it. That spring a co-op store and an irrigation company were organized, and on April 29th water reached town after traveling about three miles through the ditch. A setback occurred May 6 when a dam, headgate, and thirty rods of ditch washed out beyond repair, necessitating a fresh start on the ditch. The settlers commenced digging upriver two more miles, and completed five miles of ditch which evidently served through the growing season. In September, Platte Lyman recorded, "the corn crop here is beyond all comparison the best I ever saw anywhere" (Lyman Journals). But despite that, Cottonwood Wash flooded that month, covering some of the crops.

On October 24th, 1882, Mr. Mahoney's recommendation took effect and the first mail service arrived in Bluff, to be received with "much rejoicing" by the citizens. In November, ten wagons full of new settlers arrived from Cedar City, and about that time reports began circulating to the effect that a copper mine fifty miles to the southwest had just sold for a quarter of a million dollars. Earlier that year an "oil prospector" E.L. Goodridge, had taken a boat from Bluff to Lee's Ferry, discovering an oil seep near Mexican Hat.

By January, 1883, when apostles Brigham Young, Jr., and Heber J. Grant visited looking for a polygamy hideout, there were approximately fifty families in Bluff, in addition to a constant passage of miners and prospectors en route to "...extensive mines of gold, silver, copper, iron, and coal....recently discovered sixty miles southwest of (here)" (Deseret News)... But if Bluff, as the outfitting point, prospered in 1883, it was not due to the corn crop, for that spring there had been so much trouble with the ditch that some people planted as late as July 14. With the hot and dry summer, very little grew (Lyman).

Unrelated, but soon to be of equal importance, was the arrival of the Carlisles. Officially the "Kansas and New Mexico Land and Cattle Company," but under the management of Harold and Edmund Carlisle, the company purchased half of Spud Hudon's holding near Bluff Mountain and moved 7,000 head of cattle onto the range, becoming almost instantly the largest and most powerful economic force in the area. The time would soon arrive when Bluff City and the Carlisles would lock horns for control of the country.

But that year, the aspiring farmers of Bluff had more immediate concerns at hand . The crop failure was to them satisfactory evidence that their agricultural efforts were d oomed to failure, but rather than seek alternatives or imitate the successful cattlemen in the country, their proposed solution was simply to move away. In October, San Juan Stake President Platte D. Lyman, was in Salt Lake City reporting conditions to President Taylor and the Council of Twelve, who he found to be "somewhat divided with regard to the continuing of the mission under the unfavorable circumstances which have so far attended it" (Lyman Journals).When Jens Nielson returned from the settlement in December, he bore a letter from Erastus Snow releasing those who wished to go, but implying strongly that they, and Platte Lyman in particular, were destitute of faith. Soon afterwards, indicative of a renewed resolution to make the agrarian model succeed, people began moving out of the fort onto their lots, and tax on the ditch was raised to $69.00 per acre..

The next year, 1894, was a critical year for the San Juan Mission and Bluff. It was a year in which the river proved fairly conclusively that farming was not a wise endeavor on the San Juan, and in which the authorities of the Mormon Church ultimately solidified their determination to maintain the mission at all costs. In January, Platte Lyman received a letter from Marion Lyman informing him that the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve had taken no action regarding Bluff, but while some felt it was important to remain, others, including President John Taylor, did not wish to require men to stay in any place where they were unhappy. Then in March, the river rose seven feet above its normal level, ruining much of the ditch, and covering many crops and farmyards with up to two feet of mud. In addition, flooding in Cottonwood Wash deviated from its course and left ten inches of "stinking mud" on the dirt floors in the fort, and eighteen inches of "worthless white sand" on some of the "best claims" (Lyman Journals).

Another flood came down Cottonwood Wash in April, and by May the people "almost unanimously signed a letter to President Taylor setting forth some of the obstacles they have to contend with ... and asking to be released." Ironically, at the same time Platte D. Lyman noted that "our range is better than ever before since we lived here. Stock are doing well, but money is very scarce and times are dull." Evidently the compulsion to farm obscured opportunity, for rather than turning to the promising range for a livelihood, most of the people merely waited for the Church to release them so they could move away. While they waited, another flood raised the river about two feet higher than it had been even in March. This flood washed away several homes and Hyde's waterwheel at Montezuma Creek, and left two feet of sediment in the homes at Bluff. In addition to that discouragement, the settlers also experienced fear and insecurity at this time, when a shootout between some cowboys and the Ute Indians led to the fight at Soldier's Crossing, in which the Utes ambushed a troop of Cavalry, killing two of their number.

Word finally arrived from Salt Lake when Bishop Jens Nielson received a copy of a letter from the First Presidency to Apostles Brigham Young, Jr., and Marion Lyman. The First Presidency urged all who would stay to remain and build up the place; they also recommended that Platte Lyman be released from the position of Stake President. Bishop Nielson also received a letter from Apostle Joseph F. Smith which indicated that he and Erastus Snow would be coming to make a person evaluation, and which promised, "you have struggled for four years and you shall be blessed if you go away, but those of you who stay will be blessed even more abundantly."

When the brethren came, they reiterated their promises that endurance would earn the settlers great blessings. It was at this time that Joseph F. Smith instructed the people that they were to hold the mission because of its location relative to the Ute and Navajo people. The settlers were reproved for their carelessness, and told they could have raised better crops if they had tried. Platte D. Lyman was released as stake president, and the little colony was left under the leadership of Bishop Jens Neilsen.

The settlers than faced a dilemma: they were admonished to stay put, but their preferred means of livelihood had, despite the Apostolic comments, been proven to be untenable. The ditch that was so vital to their agricultural success fixed their attention by its hypnotic demands until they gave little thought to any other means of working the country. Ironically, their persistent efforts to farm contributed to the unsuitability of farming near their settlement:

With the conversion of brushland and reed swamps into agricultural land and the extension of grazing on river bluffs, the San Juan, which once maintained a well defined course, became a destructive agent, cutting deeply into its bands, changing its channel, and spreading its mud-laden waters over farms and pasture lands (Gregory 114).

Because of this self destructive relationship, Gregory records that by 1884, only 700 acres remained out of an initial twenty miles of farmland. Although his estimated twenty miles is doubtlessly an exaggeration, the point is still valid: the settlers simply had no alternative but to turn away from farming. Yet they still didn't see it.

Meanwhile, even as the last fertile farms were being flooded into oblivion, Bluff was being endangered by other threats. The burgeoning LC and Carlisle companies to the northeast, large Navajo sheep herds to the southwest, and an increasing influx of range seekers from Colorado and Texas were beginning to crowd the ranges of 1884. The Carlisles, for example, after starting with 7,000 head of cattle, had in one short year readied nearly 11,000 head for market (Peterson 87). The ranges to their north were already occupied by the large Nutter and Pittsburgh Companies, and the range to their south was occupied by the LC. The only ranges even tentatively available in the fall of 1884 were those to the north and west of Bluff, which were only tenuously occupied by Bluff's small herds. In addition, two large herds of New Mexican sheep were driven in to graze on the benches near Bluff in the winter of 1884-5. The farms were already effectively gone and by then the ranges were being seriously threatened.

The records are largely mute regarding the spring and summer of 1885, but it is probable that the people of Bluff, under the indomitable will of Jens Nielson, continued to wear away at the ditch, and that their labors rewarded them as before with nothing. It is also probable with farming such a disaster, and with the increasing pressure on their ranges, that they were beginning to awaken with alarm to the very real possibility of losing their ranges and their last chance for survival in the country. That the Carlisles were very much awake to the impending struggle for range is indicated by the fact that they, and their employees, entered claims to thousands of acres of desert land that year in addition to fencing large portions of the home ranch.

But the most significant event in the history of Bluff that year was the call issued to Francis Hammond by the First Presidency of the Church, to preside over the San Juan Stake. Leaving his home in Huntsville, Utah in October, 1885, he arrived in Bluff just before Christmas. It is enlightening to note that while en route to Bluff, as soon as he entered the Stake boundaries at Moab, he began looking for town sites and evaluating the ranges he passed through. In a very real sense, Bluff's transition to a livestock economy and its success in obtaining control of the country is traceable to the day Francis Hammond arrived in Bluff. Charles Peterson says it well:

 

That the Mormons did not withdraw entirely (from the San Juan) was due in large measure to a shift in emphasis from the farm village to cooperative livestock production and to the person of Francis A. Hammond, who ... was instrumental in putting together a policy implementing this shift (Peterson 92).

 

Ox teams and cattle moving through Bluff. Old Blue Saloon in the background. (Janet Blake photo)

How immediately and decisively Hammond put his policy into effect, can be noted from his activities during his first two months in San Juan (Hammond):

1. Estimating there were already 100,000 head of cattle in the county (less than 2,000 of which belonged to Bluff people) he claimed the available ranges for Bluff.

2. At Stake Conference held in Bluff, he spoke to the Saints on political matters in San Juan.

3. He organized the Bluff Pool, to begin a cooperative stock enterprise.

4. He purchased a ranch in Mancos, Colorado, to be used to finance building of a ditch onto White Mesa. (His purpose here was to occupy the range lands that the Lacy Cattle Co. (LC) intended to use.)

5. He assigned range riders from the Bluff Pool to patrol the eastern border of White Mesa to prevent LC cattle from occupying it.

6. He had the Bluff Pool petition the Territorial Legislature to tax all stock coming into Utah from Colorado.

7. He moved his cattle onto Cottonwood, to occupy it and to prevent other herds from moving onto Elk Mountain.

8. He dispatched L.H. Redd, Jr., and Kumen Jones to remove 5,000 Navajo sheep from the Comb Wash range, north of the San Juan River.

9. He wrote letters to Mormon acquaintances asking them to come immediately and "help stock up the ranges."

For a complete and more detailed discussion of the cattle industry in San Juan, and Hammond's influence in it, see Charles S. Peterson's excellent volume Look to the Mountains.

During 1886, Hammond continued to direct Bluff into a stock economy, but his efforts were largely defensive. When George Brooks, of the LC Ranch, came to him to inquire about the Elk Mountain, Hammond expressed concern in his diary, "for we need that range very much." Two days later he wrote to an acquaintance in Utah to "come immediately and help stock up the range." Other cattlemen, from Durango and Denver, were also discouraged from taking too much interest in the Elk Mountain, and returned to Colorado with stories that the Mormons and Indians were combining to keep people away from it. Hammond's response was to advise some of the Bluff men to file claims on the mountain.

In April, grief visited the LC Ranch as well as Bluff. Bill Ball, the LC foreman, was shot and killed from ambush, while riding with some Bluff men in pursuit of two horse thieves. The event was more tragic for the fact that Ball had not only shared his food and lodging with the two, but had also refused to use weapons on them in the belief that he could reason with them.

Later that year, in an apparent response to a community-wide interest in the livestock business, bankers from Durango visited Bluff to negotiate loans, and offered any capital necessary. It was undoubtedly as a result of these negotiations that the Bluff Pool purchased Daniel and McAllister's 6,000 head of sheep which had arrived two years earlier, and sent George A. Adams to Parowan with $3,000.00 to purchase more cattle. By that fall, the Pool had 2,000 head of cattle, most of which were placed on the Elk Mountain to "secure" it. (Hammond's audacity may be realized by noting that only the year before, he had estimated there were 100,000 cattle in San Juan County.) In December, another 1,000 head were added to the Pool by Platte Lyman and others who were responding to Hammond's invitation to "stock up the range."

In February of 1887, Hammond was informed that the Lacy Company was bringing 9,000 head of cattle to the ranges near Bluff. He notes in his diary that there were already three or four thousand head on those ranges, beside 40,000 sheep. "We appear to be overrun with stock," he wrote, but despite the relative puniness of the Bluff Pool, Hammond went on the offensive. He called settlers to occupy the accesses to Elk Mountain at Indian Valley (Indian Creek), Moki Crossing on the Colorado, and the heads of Butler and Cottonwood Washes. He instructed Thales Haskell and John Allen, who were called to Cottonwood, to encourage the Utes to take up residence nearby as added strength. He called others to settle on North Montezuma (Monticello), to find the corners the Carlisle claims, and to take the water out of the north Montezuma drainage. Other settlements were directed at the LC Ranch; settlers were sent to Verdure to take over the water, and the proposed settlement on White Mesa waited only for the funds with which to build a ditch.

In April, the Pool lost 5,000 head of its 6,000 sheep when they crowded into a stream and bogged in quicksand. At the same time, Joshua Stevens reported from the settlement in Indian Valley that 1,000 head of cattle were approaching toward Elk Mountain from the northeast, and that the Pool should hurry to get there first.

In May, the Carlisles ordered the settlers out of north Montezuma, but after Hammond's attorney advised him to stay, the settler's were instructed to hold their ground. It is not clear what transpired in a discussion between Hammond and Edmund Carlisle, but a month later the Carlisles were issuing threats to the little village, and for some time both sides carried weapons.

Tragedy struck in June, Amasa Barton was shot by Navajos at Rincon. Indicative of the curious relationship between the Bluff settlers and the various Indians, is the fact that Poke and Posey, two Utes, stood by and watched as the two Navajo culprits committed the crime, then Poke stopped them from doing further harm to Barton's wife while Posey rode swiftly into Bluff for help(The Salt Lake Tribune). Although help quickly returned, there was nothing they could do. After lying unconscious for nine days, Barton died.
Posey. Taken in Bluff about 1904. (Steve Lacy photo)

In the meantime, an angry contingent of Navajos rode into Bluff. There they were confronted by Kumen Jones and Jens Nielson, who told them that soldiers did all the fighting for Bluff, but that if the Navajos were willing, the people of Bluff would much rather butcher a beef and sit down and eat together and be friends. The courageous words worked so effectively that the people of Bluff never again had trouble with the Navajo.

Nevertheless, Francis Hammond shortly thereafter visited the Commanding Officer at Fort Lewis, Colorado, to complain about the Navajo threats. While he was there a cowboy arrived from Utah, reporting that one of the LC cowboys, during an argument over the ownership of a horse, had been shot by a Ute and a general fight had broken out. Three cowboys and six Indians had been killed in the skirmish. Two troops of Calvary and one company of infantry were sent to the LC Ranch from Fort Lewis, and two more troops of Cavalry came from Fort Douglas, Utah. In addition, because the Barton affair was still fresh and unsettled, one company of infantry was sent to Bluff from Fort Lewis, and two troops of Cavalry came from Fort Wingate, New Mexico. It is likely that these soldiers, who were posted in San Juan through September, may have prevented any serious conflicts between the big ranchers and the settlers on North Montezuma and Verdure, and thus contributed, unwittingly, to the Mormon cause.

By September of 1887, the contest between the Bluff Pool and the large ranches had fairly well resolved itself into a legal battle. Because the Carlisles' British citizenship limited the number of claims for which they were eligible to file, many of their employees had filed claims in their behalf; and Francis Hammond had succeeded in purchasing some of these claims from the cowboys who had filed them. When the county court convened that month, Edmund Carlisle was present to request a date on which he could present his case (that evening he and Hammond ate together at Jens Nielson's home in Bluff; but later, when he failed to show up at the hearing, the selectmen awarded the claims to the Mormons (Hammond Journals).

The pressure on the ranges continued into 1888. Sometime after Amasa Barton's death and the subsequent abandonment of Rincon the year before, a Mr. Ghaleger had imposed a herd of 1,000 Texas longhorns on the area, occupying the empty Barton building for his headquarters and part of the Elk Mountain for his winter ranges. But the Bluff Pool met this threat by the simple expedient of purchasing the herd -- a move indicative of the confidence their bankers were developing -- and the herd became the basis for much of the wild cow lore with which the country is replete (Peterson 99).

Another development in 1888, which shows just how livestock oriented the town had become in three years, was the purchase of a herd of sheep by the Bluff Relief Society.

Of significance to the struggle for control, was the decision in 1888, rendered by the Territorial Water Commission on behalf of the Carlisles, who had appealed the county court's earlier ruling. The Commission issued an injunction forbidding the new little town of Monticello, on north Montezuma, to use water from the creek. After much litigation, the town was allowed to have half of the disputed water. But despite the well behaved demeanor of the Carlisles themselves, cattle killings, threats, and intimidation continued to be heaped on the settles by the cowhands. Very little of a serious nature occurred, however, and by the end of 1888, the Bluff Pool, if still outnumbered, was a large part of a new reality in San Juan.

By 1890, the Bluff Pool was firmly in control of its ranges, and the Bluff settlement was firmly established on a livestock economic base. The effectiveness of changing from a farm village orientation to a livestock cooperative, and the swiftness with which that change brought prosperity, is shown by contrasting the Bluff City of 1886 to the Bluff City of 1892: In 1886 the settlers were still living in crude cottonwood log huts with dirt roofs; they had simply been unable, while trying to farm, to earn more than barely enough to feed themselves, and when in 1886, Francis Hammond came and built a stone house with board floors and a shingle roof, it was the pride of his family and the envy of the town. But by 1892, thanks to Hammond's leadership, not only were there several substantial rock homes with shingle roofs, but the people of Bluff were hiring labor to build three large public buildings -- a stone church, a stone school, and a large stone co-op building.

The livestock industry continued to dominate San Juan through the 1890's, but was by no means the only game in town. In 1892, a fellow named Bill Williams is said to have reported that rich placer gravel was strewn all along the San Juan Canyon, and before long forty or fifty gold seekers were passing through each day. The "boom" continued through the winter, when some of the seekers, turning to more sure methods, were employed to build the new church, school, and co-op store, in addition to a number of the fine homes that were built then. Accounts relate that approximately 2,000 men passed through Bluff that year, most of whom, as one observer noted, were "destitute and disgruntled" (Lyman).

In 1893 it became popular for a while to collect relics and mummies from the multitude of ruins in the country. Platte Lyman writes that "....(we) have spent some time digging for relics in the old ruins and cliff dwellings which abound everywhere in this country, and have made a very good collection of mummies, skulls, stone and bone implements, and a great variety of other articles including corn, cotton, beans, squash seed, pottery and basketwork. All of which we have loaned to the World's Fair for the season" (Platte D. Lyman Journals 1893). There is no doubt a direct connection between the artifacts referred to here, the World's Fair, and a curious Islamic, relic hunter archaeologist named Sadi Mahomet Ta-ever, who dug in the kiva on Cemetery Hill in 1894 (Lyman 70). The artifacts were later sold to the Desert Museum in Salt Lake City.

But all this does not mean that the ditch was entirely forgotten or that those persistent souls in Bluff didn't continue year after year to encourage crops on the river bottoms. At least as late as 1895, the people were still rip-rapping the river and coercing halting irrigation ditches. That year is remembered as the year of the sugar cane, when boilers were set up in the 107 degree streets in front of John Allan's house, and molasses accumulated in everyone's home.

The climate, of no less concern to the stockman than the farmer, became a bewildering thing to the little town; in 1894 "it rained for a solid month," but in 1896 no water flowed in the San Juan during the irrigating season, and the river could be crossed "dry shod" -- 1898 and 1899 were said to be even drier.

 

Bluff bishopric, Kumen Jones, Bishop Jens Nielson and Lemuel Redd. (Mikki Palmer photo)

By the mid-nineties, the cattle business was changing too. Range crowding,a slumping livestock market, and the drought, accomplished what even the redoubtable Francis Hammond could not do: in 1896 both LC and Carlisle cattle finally left the country, taking between them somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 cattle. At about the same time, the Bluff Pool was becoming more individualistic. The co-op sheep herd was sold in 1895, at the urging of Jens Nielson, to private individuals. (Principally to L.H. Redd, Jr., and Hanson Bayles, who were promised by Nielson that it would be profitable; they soon became the two most wealthy men in the stake, and L.H's son Charley, from that beginning became one of the wealthiest men in the country.) Final dissolution of the Pool came in 1898 when it was sold to the Scorup brothers.

Bluff had come of age in the nineties: by 1896 the old log school house had been torn down and the "new hygiene" was being taught the ladies. In 1898 Bluff boasted a "fine orchestra', and in 1899 the new town held its first old folks party -- awarding badges to those present, who no doubt laughed about the good old days building the road at Hole in the Rock or digging ditch by the river.

 

Bluff Music Society: Back Row L-R: Hanna B. Hammond, Mary B. Larson, Lillie D. Wood, Hattie R. Barton, Arthur Wood, Kumen Jones, Evelyn L. Bayles, Mary L. Reeve. Front Row L-R: Emma Bayles, Stanley Jones, Frank Barton, Corey Perkins, Mary Ann B. Perkins. (Mikki Palmer photo)

By 1905 Bluff was going downhill. Platte Lyman and Francis Hammond were dead, and Jens Nielson was an old man who would die within a year. Some of the settlers had already moved to Grayson, the long anticipated town on White Mesa, and many more would follow before Grayson became Blanding in 1915. The sturdy co-op building would be destroyed by fire within fifteen years, and the magnificent chapel and splendid school would both be faded, cracked, broken and gone by the 1970's. Remaining would be a handful of the fine old homes, a remnant of the fort, and the cemetery on the hill. The lights were going out in the windows and the cattle were drifting to the hills.

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San Juan High School

 

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