With
the coming of spring 1879, all the wives returned, and other settlers
came too, among them Andrew and Hyrum Nelson and John C. Lemon, who
soon decided to settle back on the higher ground, thus becoming Ferron's
first settlers. Because of the many rocks, making a ditch and clearing
the land was a tremendous task. But they persevered, finally preparing
forty acres which they sowed to grain. What a tragedy when grasshoppers
mowed it down when it was about a foot high.
Other
calamities occurred: the following winter was severe and many of the
livestock froze or starved to death. And hunger among the people was
not unknown. When there was no flour or wheat, they subsisted on potatoes;
they even tried prickly pears.
Space
is much too limited to delineate all the struggles that these heroic
people underwent in subduing the barren wastes of Castle Valley. Theirs
was not an isolated story; settlers in many areas of Utah experienced
the same conditions, and met them with the same heroism. Lillian Nelson,
in her article on Ferron in the Daughters of Utah Pioneers' book, Castle
Valley, has put it most aptly in her beginning paragraph: "Today, Ferron
with its modern homes, its lawns and tree-lined streets, is an oasis
in the desert. Perhaps our pioneers had a vision of such a beautiful
place; but this is doubtful. It is only necessary to travel a few miles
in any direction to find the kind of country that greeted the first
comers."
Bibliography:
Daughters of Utah Pioneers, An Enduring Legacy, - Vol. I-XII (12). Salt
Lake City, UT: Utah Printing Company, 1978.