Food has always been at the foundation of community, but in early Southern Utah, what appeared on the table told a larger story, one of survival, adaptation, and eventually, abundance.
The first settlers quickly discovered that determination alone could not make the desert produce. In Grafton, as in other settlements throughout the Cotton Mission, the first year brought a hard lesson: too much cotton had been planted and not enough food. Cash crops might fulfill the mission they had been sent south to accomplish, but they could not fill an empty stomach.
Early meals reflected that reality. One pioneer remembered his family living primarily on cornbread soaked in water, molasses, and ginger, while wheat bread was a luxury reserved for Sundays. In Pinto, settlers dug roots and gathered honeydew from willow leaves. Meat and dairy could be scarce as livestock herds were still being established, and winter meals relied heavily on foods that could be stored, including dried fruit, molasses, and cane-seed bread.
Slowly, however, Southern Utah's tables began to change.
Settlers established dairies in places like Hebron and Pinto, producing butter and cheese. Pigs and chickens multiplied. Orchards and vineyards took root. By 1867, Rockville's abundance even inspired a poem published in the newspaper:
“Peaches grow with sunny days,
Like maidens’ cheeks when blushes raise;
And pears and plums the branches bend,
And clustering grapes from the vine distend.”
Vineyards also served another purpose. Grapes were grown in communities including Toquerville to produce sacramental wine. With the Virgin River frequently running muddy, wine became a familiar part of life in several Dixie settlements, and local histories occasionally suggest that sampling it extended beyond strictly sacramental purposes.
Perhaps nothing demonstrates how far Southern Utah's food culture had come better than stake conference in St. George. Twice each year, families arrived from communities across the region, including settlements in Nevada and Arizona. St. George residents opened their homes, sometimes accommodating twenty friends and relatives at once.
Preparations took days. One account describes corn simmering alongside baked beans, bottled fruit, and rice pudding. Friday's preparations alone called for 25 pies and three or four varieties of cake, baked and stored in screened pastry cupboards with deep shelves holding pies three rows deep.
Within a few generations, a place where settlers had once struggled simply to feed themselves had learned how to feed a crowd.
Perhaps the most fitting monument to that transformation wasn't a building at all. Forty years after the tiny settlement of Duncan's Retreat had been abandoned, fruit trees planted by its settlers remained alive. In 1929, when little remained beyond fragments of old foundations, three pear trees were reportedly still bearing fruit, one of which is featured in the photograph shown here.
Even in places where the people were long gone, what they planted continued to provide, a living testament to the pioneer hope that, with enough work and perseverance, they really could make the desert “blossom as the rose.”