I have not been doing much with my blog
for quite some time but I must get back at it because I have many
stories to tell and many stories that need to be told. I have made a
plan that I will try to get one new story each month---and more if I
can.
Brigham Young asked a group of people
from the Cedar City, Parowan, Paragonah areas in Southwest Utah to
settle the four corners area in Southeast Utah. They left the Cedar
City, Parowan, Paragonah areas in 1879. It was a harrowing ordeal.
If any of you would like to know the whole story you can read Gerald
Lund’s book “The Undaunted.” It comes in hard cover and paper
back and I can tell you it is a “nail biter” all the way through.
The book is classified as fiction because Mr. Lund adds some
fictional characters but he tells the complete and true story. Those
pioneers first settled in the Bluff and Montezuma Creek area but
there was not enough room for the number of settlers who were there
so, eventually most of them went north up to the White Mesa to
settle. They named their town Grayson which was later changed to
Blanding, Utah. The name change is a whole story of its own and I
may get around to that at a later time.
The Blue Mountains are a few miles
north of Blanding. The north side of the mountains generally gets a
pretty good snowfall but the south side generally does not so there
was never much runoff. (The town of Monticello was on the north side
of the mountain range and they seemed to have an adequate supply of
water.) In the spring there was some runoff into ditches through
Blanding but not anywhere nearly enough. One of those ditches was
across the street west of our Elementary School. At recess and at
lunchtime we would often play “follow the leader” and we would go
across the street and jump back and forth across the ditch. Some
places were narrow and some were wide. We tackled both. At least
the leader did so the rest of us had to follow. I do not recall
anyone ever falling into the ditch so I guess we were pretty good
jumpers.
We also had three small reservoirs
north of town where water was stored for domestic use but the three
reservoirs were not adequate for the needs of the people. No one
ever wasted water. There, simply, was not enough water anyway, so to
waste it would have been idiotic. The water in the ditches was for
irrigation purposes. People had alfalfa fields and other crops
requiring water as well as their livestock and, of course, the
people.
The water in the reservoirs ran into
the pipes that supplied water to the town. We didn’t have any
purification facilities or filters so we got what was in the
reservoirs---tadpoles, dirt, other critters, dirt, smelly things,
etc. Yep folks, I’m telling you, it was always a party trying to
guess what would come out of the tap next. One day a small frog came
out of the tap. My mother would do her best to filter the water.
She would take several layers of white cloth about six inches square
and put it over the spigot. I wish I could draw you a picture of our
kitchen tap. It didn’t look like the new, wonderful faucets of
today. Anyway, she would gather up the corners of the square of
white fabric and then gather up what was between the corners and tie
it onto the tap with twine (string). That made it so the tadpoles
and other little critters and the mud didn’t get into the water we
used for cooking, laundry, etc. Sometimes the water was so dirty
(muddy) that the first time the clean layers of cloth was tied onto
the tap and the water was turned on, the clean white cloth would be
brown. I’m talking “muddy” brown. Actually, those “filters”
worked pretty well to keep all the dirt and other particles out of
the water so we could use the water for cooking, washing dishes,
cleaning, bathing, laundry etc., because that was all we had.
Fortunately, we did not have to drink it. I will tell you where we
got our drinking water later in this story.
In the winter we didn’t have quite so
many problems with ‘critters’ in the water but my mother always
had her own ‘filter’ on the tap, just in case.
I remember one summer when our water
smelled horribly vile. I’m talking “putrid.” Even if you were
not in the kitchen when the tap was turned on, you knew the tap had
been turned on because you could smell it in the next room. I heard
that when one of the reservoirs was drained, a dead horse was at the
bottom. I do not know that for a certainty but I didn’t doubt it.
Why else would the water smell so badly?
As you may have guessed, water was a
concern for everyone in town. Finally, it was decided that a tunnel
needed to be drilled through the mountain so Blanding could access
some of the water from the north side of the mountain. The project
was begun but the county and the towns didn’t have enough money to
just do the entire project at once. It took several years to
complete the tunnel. The project started from both sides. I believe
Monticello people worked from the north end and I know Blanding
people worked from the south end. My dad worked in the tunnel
several summers. (As I recall, in one of my blogs I told you that
one time my dad took me with him when he went to work at the tunnel.
I stayed with him for several days. I had to stay at the camp alone
while he went to work but I was okay. If I find I have not told you
that story, I will do so at a later time.)
Finally, the tunnel was completed. I
do not remember the year but I was still living at home so it must
have happened in the mid 1940’s. I often think of the amazing
engineers who plotted the tunnel through the mountain. When the
workers broke through, the tunnel was completely open except for one
inch. Although water is rarely ever in abundance in Utah (Utah being
the second driest state in the U.S.) at least we had more water and
it was good water. Bigger storage reservoirs were dug and things
changed.
We generally had enough water to keep the garden watered. Even so, we still carried our bath water, the rinse water from the laundry, etc., out to water plants. My mother still “filtered” the water coming from the tap but it took longer to get dirty.
We generally had enough water to keep the garden watered. Even so, we still carried our bath water, the rinse water from the laundry, etc., out to water plants. My mother still “filtered” the water coming from the tap but it took longer to get dirty.
Now, I will tell you about the water we
drank in the summertime when I was young. There was a spring at the
edge of West Water Canyon. The water ran all the time and it was
good, cool water. (It may have frozen over in the winter. I was
never there in the winter because the tap water was okay during the
winter.) The spring was probably about half mile from our home. We
would take gallon jugs and our canvas water bags and fill them about
three times each week. I don’t know how many of you are
acquainted with canvas water bags but they are wonderful. We would
get them really wet and then fill them with water. When we got home,
we’d hang them outside in a mostly shady area and the breeze kept
the water in those bags amazingly cool. The water was pure, clean
and delicious. Occasionally, none of the family members who were
older than my brother, George, and I, were available to go to West
Water so George and I would pull his little, red wagon and go get
water. We almost always accompanied whoever went to West Water and
we had learned what to do, so it was no big deal when just the two of
us went. Besides, it was always a lot of fun to go. With the
combination of the ice in Daddy’s icehouse and the cool, West Water
water, we did not suffer for lack of something to drink. And, it
tasted SO GOOD! I assume the entire town depended on the West Water
spring for their drinking water.
In spite of all the water problems we
all survived and thrived. I never heard of anyone getting sick from
the foul water we all had to endure. I can tell you, the people in
Blanding surely knew how to conserve water and did conserve water.
People had lawns, flowers, shrubs, trees and gardens. It was a
wonderful place in which to live and grow.
We all really appreciated the tunnel
and in spite of having extra, good water, I don’t believe I ever
saw anyone watering the street, or letting the water run for hours,
or wasting water in any way.
Our garden had to have water and the
orchard had to be watered. My dad would dig a ditch around each tree
in the orchard then he would let the water run slowly into the ditch.
When the ditch was full of water (because it had run in slowly) the
ground was soaked deeply and thoroughly. Then my dad would move the
hose to another tree and fill in the ditch around the first tree so
the wetness would not evaporate quickly. Sometimes it was hard for
him to be there all the time because of his jobs so we all tried to
help out. Our orchard always produced enough apples so mom could
bottle apple sauce and he'd fill his fruit cellar with apples and
pears. We had enough apples to share with the Navajos who came
begging from time to time, and to give to friends throughout the
winter and for our own needs. It was nice to be able to bite into a
nice crisp apple in the middle of the winter and not have to buy it
at the store. (I don't remember the stores in Blanding having apples
for sale.) Daddy would dig a new ditch in the gardens, water them
slowly and deeply and then cover up the ditches to conserve the
wetness. That meant he had to dig ditches every time we watered.
What a job. I think my dad was the hardest working man I've ever
known.
