Founded, Abandoned, Returned: Panguitch's Three Settlements
Near Panguitch, Utah
When Jens Neilson led fifty-four pioneer families into the Panguitch Valley in March of eighteen sixty-four, they arrived in a landscape that offered both promise and difficulty. The valley was broad and watered by Panguitch Creek and the upper Sevier River. The surrounding plateaus offered timber. The land could be farmed if irrigated. But the winters were severe, the growing season short, and the isolation from other settlements was nearly total.
The settlers built a fort on the ground where the present-day school stands, constructing a perimeter of cabins with pens and corrals for their livestock. They planted crops that spring, but the elevation and the late frosts combined to destroy most of the harvest. When winter came, supplies ran critically low. The food shortage that led to the famous rescue mission over the snowbound mountains was real and desperate.
Before the settlement could establish itself, events to the north intervened. In April of eighteen sixty-five, conflict broke out in Sanpete County, the opening of what became known as the Black Hawk War, the last major armed conflict between Mormon settlers and Native Americans in Utah Territory. Church officials decided the Panguitch settlement was too exposed. The community was ordered to evacuate in eighteen sixty-six. The settlers abandoned their cabins and corrals and returned north. Panguitch stood empty for nearly five years.
The second attempt came in eighteen seventy-one, when Brigham Young called on George W. Sevy to organize a new company and return to the valley. This time, the settlers stayed. They had learned from the first attempt and carried into the valley a harder-won understanding of what survival here required.
