Cedar City's Iron Mission: Brigham Young's Industrial Gamble
Near Cedar City, Utah
In the early eighteen fifties, Brigham Young sent a group of Mormon settlers to the red-rock country of southern Utah with an unusual assignment: build an iron industry. The territory desperately needed metal for tools, farm equipment, and the machinery of a growing civilization. The colonists arrived near present-day Cedar City, selected a site by Coal Creek in November of eighteen fifty-one, and ten months later fired up a small blast furnace.
It was a brave experiment that repeatedly failed. Floods, severe winters, furnace breakdowns, and crop failures plagued the iron workers, and the foundry closed in eighteen fifty-eight without ever becoming economically viable. Today the Frontier Homestead State Park Museum keeps the story alive through a wagon collection, a replica blast furnace, and the only known remaining artifact from the original foundry, the town's iron bell.
