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History of Castle Valley, Utah
Taken from the Daughters of Utah Pioneers (Links Added)
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Above and below this historic spot for great distances, the Green River tumbles down a giant stairway of wild cataracts that lie deep in the bottoms of impenetrable canyons. It is a quiet spot where the river runs deep and broad —a plateau that forms a natural pass for travel from east to west and vice versa. It was here that Spaniards from New Mexico crossed on their trading missions to California, creating the famous Spanish Trail. After leaving the river they travelled westward to the Ferron area, then turned southwestward to Salina Canyon and on to California. Upon consulting a map, it is easy to see that they would have crossed the headwaters of the San Raphael River, which refreshed them through this span of their journey. These same streams —Huntington, Cottonwood and Ferron creeks —sustained the first LDS settlements in Castle Valley.

Although a missionary party en route to Moab painstakingly made its way over the trail in 1855, and three men —Dimmick, William and Oliver Huntington —explored the area during the 1850s, serious colonization did not begin until much later, and then it started as a sporadic movement of stock herders who brought their herds here when feed was scarce in Sanpete, Sevier and other settled valleys.

In the spring of 1875 four stockmen, Leander Lemmon, James McHadden, Bill Gentry and Alfred Starr, brought horses over the mountain from Sanpete through Huntington Canyon into what is now Huntington, and McHadden and Lemmon, intrigued by the area, decided to homestead 320 acres and were soon working on an irrigation ditch. These two men are given the credit as being the first settlers in the valley, but perhaps the honor should be divided four ways, for all four men built dugouts and stayed through the winter of 1875-1876. Lemmon built a log cabin on his homestead the following year, and soon herds of sheep and cattle were brought in.


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