A mere 167 years before the golf courses and the soccer fields, before Costco and Texas Roadhouse and Marriott Springhill Suites and, heaven knows, before In-N-Out Burger backed up cars to the freeway, back when a second home was your horse, when central heating was a big fire, 38 thirsty families, husband and wives, rolled down the ridge from Fort Harmony to the banks of the Virgin River to grow cotton.
Just a few short years earlier, before they converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and joined the pioneer exodus to Utah, they’d lived in the Southern states growing cotton.
Now, precisely because of their familiarity with cotton, they’d been hand-picked by Brigham Young to come to the hottest, most unappealing corner of the unsettled territory to see what they could manage. It was the spring of 1857 when they stopped their wagons at the place they would name Washington City.
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