Raising stock for the saints
Brothers John, Charles, and William Pulsipher established a small ranching community along Shoal Creek in early 1862. The brothers had been called to the Cotton Mission and were among the first to report in late 1861. As more families began to arrive in St. George the lack of local feed for livestock became a serious concern. Erastus Snow, President of the Cotton Mission, called the Pulsipher brothers and David Chidester to care for the mission livestock. In January 1862 the men left St. George with the stock to search for suitable pastureland in the mountains to the north. By spring they identified Shoal Creek, about 45 miles from St. George as the best land in the area in which to graze the mission herds. They brought their families to join them and by autumn 1862 Zera Pulsipher, father of the Pulsipher brothers, and his wives Mary Ann Brown, Prudence McNara, and Martha Ann Hughes joined them at Shoal Creek. The following year Thomas Sirls Terry, who had married two of Zera Pulsipher’s daughters, also moved his family to the ranching settlement.
Due to the remote location and the nature of ranching, the early settlements on Shoal Creek did not follow the typical village layout and communal pattern that most Cotton Mission settlements did. Instead, it was initially populated mostly by Pulsipher kin scattered along the creek in isolated ranch houses.
By 1862, the Santa Clara Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints included Gunlock, Clover Valley, and Price, Utah. Price was a small settlement on the east side of the Virgin River about 3 miles below St. George near the present day neighborhood of Bloomington.
The bishop of the Santa Clara Ward, Edward Bunker requested Dudley Leavitt to move some of his families, along with others, including one of Bishop Bunker’s wives and her children, to Clover Valley to help the community grow in that area.
In 1965, the dynamics of Shoal Creek changed when localized skirmishes between native people and Latter-day Saint settlers in Central and Southern Utah intensified. Southern Paiute, and Navajo people were upset over the continued encroachment of Anglo settlers on their traditional lands and their concerns about food scarcity as more settlers continued to arrive. Brigham Young sent urgent messages to Central and Southern Utah towns, directing them to create forts and to abandon the smallest settlements as the first skirmishes took place.
Following Young’s direction, Santa Clara ward bishop, Edward Bunker, Sr., instructed ten families living in Clover Valley to relocate and help establish a fort at Shoal Creek in 1866. Clover Valley, located about 30 miles west, was just across the border in Nevada. The immigrants to Shoal Creek included the families of Amos, James, and Jonathan Hunt; Hyrum, Joseph, and James Huntsman; Dudley and Jeremiah Leavitt; Brown B. Crow; and Zadock Parker.
In August 1868 Erastus Snow felt it was safe for the settlers to abandon the fort and he personally travelled to Shoal Creek to oversee the organization of a Latter-day Saint ward and to survey a town site. John Pulsipher suggested they name the new town Hebron after the place where the Old Testament prophet Abraham had resided.
Zerah Pulsipher died in March 1872, leaving his widow, Martha Ann Hughes Pulsipher with five children. She married Dudley Leavitt as his fifth wife. William Haynes Hamblin died May 8, 1872, at Clover Valley, leaving two widows with 17 children. They determined to join Jacob Hamblin and their sister, Priscilla Leavitt Hamblin at Paria, Arizona. Along with these challenges, Indian relations continued to deteriorate which caused the closing of the Cover Valley fort and residents either moved to Hebron or other areas in Southern Utah.
When Elder Terry was on his mission to England, he had converted and baptized a family named Bowler. In addition to teaching them the gospel he had convinced the talented Bowler family that they were needed to bring music and shoemaking to Hebron. The Bowler family arrived in Hebron in 1880. After their arrival they had their ninth child, George Hebron Bowler. With the influx of new families in Hebron it enabled the now established St. George Stake to create the Hebron Ward.
The final discouragement came when torrential rainstorms washed out all the irrigations canals of Hebron. A few families remained in Hebron. Most of the people moved from Hebron to Gunlock and Enterprise, Utah and Panaca, Nevada.
Hebron, today, is a ghost town. It was inhabited from 1862 until 1902. It’s peak population was about 100.