Dixie Cotton Mission
Concurrent with the advent of the Civil War, Brigham Young determine to establish a Cotton Mission in southwest Utah. During the Church’s General Conference in October 1861, President Young announced the calling of 309 families to relocate to the Cotton Mission in the Virgin River Basin.
MUDDY MISSION
In the October 1864 General Conference of the Church, missionaries were called to strengthen the southern Utah Mission and especially to settle on the Muddy River. At the same conference, Anson Call was called to establish a landing on the Colorado River.
On January 9, 1865, the first of the missionaries arrived at the Muddy River. Brigham Young had called Thomas S. Smith of Davis County to preside. The party consisted of 11 men and 3 women. Within a matter of days after the first party arrived, additional families came and the colony soon numbered 45 families.
SHOAL CREEK, Clover Valley & Hebron
Brothers John, Charles, and William Pulsipher established a small ranching community along Shoal Creek in early 1862. Erastus Snow, president of the Cotton Mission, called the Pulsipher brothers and David Chidester to care for the mission livestock. In 1865, the dynamics of Shoal Creek changed when localized skirmishes between native people and Latter-day Saint settlers in central and southern Utah intensified. Following Young’s direction, Santa Clara Ward Bishop Edward Bunker Sr. instructed 10 families living in Clover Valley to relocate and help establish a fort at Shoal Creek in 1866. This fort eventually became the start of Hebron.
Panaca
On May 6, 1864, Francis and Jane Lee arrived with their large family and a nephew, Samuel F. Lee, and his family, at the site of Panaca where they diverted water from a warm spring to their nearby camp. The following year, 1865, Church Apostle Erastus Snow sent several additional families to strengthen the new settlement.