Where Did the St. George Name Originate From?

 St. George, Utah, with the Pine Valley Mountains to the north.         Photograph by Liz Arave Hafen

                           

By Lynn Arave 

Who is "Saint George"?
Located in the heart of Utah's Dixie, the city of St. George is one of the fastest-growing communities in the nation. But who is the city named after, and why is "Saint" affixed to this name?
Most historians agree on the same name origination for St. George, Utah, but there is an alternate version out there.
"St. George itself was named in honor of Elder George A. Smith, an early LDS Church apostle and first counselor to President Brigham Young. Although Smith did not participate in the town's settlement, he personally selected most of the company of the pioneers of 1861," Bart C. Anderson, states in the "Utah History Encyclopedia,"
Anderson also states on St. George city's Web site, www.sgcity.org, that Elder Smith was also nicknamed "the potato saint," because he had encouraged early pioneers to eat raw, unpeeled potatoes to "cure a troublesome bout with scurvy."
Andrew Jenson, an early 20th-century historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also believed the name came in honor of Elder Smith.
"From the very beginning, the location was named St. George in honor of Apostle George A. Smith," Jenson wrote in "Encyclopedia History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," published in 1941.
Jenson said St. George was founded in 1861 by missionaries called in the October general conference of that year to settle there with their families. By Dec. 1, 1861, they made a camp a half-mile northeast of where the St. George Temple stands today.
Elder Smith was grandfather to President George Albert Smith, the church's eighth president.

                                               St. George LDS Temple.                   Photo by Liz Arave Hafen


John W. Van Cott, who wrote "Utah Place Names" in 1990, also agrees that St. George was named for Elder George A. Smith. He states that the naming came even before settlers arrived there and called Smith "Father of the South."
"It was half-humorously suggested that if other churches could have Saints, Mormons could, too," Van Cott wrote at the end of his paragraph regarding the naming of St. George.
In fact, the most historically famous "St. George" is a figure in early Christianity, who is considered the "Patron Saint of England," according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
Rufos Wood Leigh, who compiled "Five Hundred Utah Place Names" in 1961, also sides with the Smith origin story.

Utah historian Milton R. Hunter also stated that the town of St. George was named after George A. Smith in his 1940 book, “Brigham Young the Colonizer” (page 82).


However, in a different article included on St. George city's Web site, Anderson stated there is an alternative to the lone St. George origin possibility: Phillip St. George Cooke, a non-Mormon who may have donated a good share of equipment and wagons to Utah's Dixie. Anderson described Cooke as a trusted friend of Brigham Young. Cooke, a U.S. Army officer, also led the Mormon Battalion from New Mexico to California.
St. George is also not be the only Mormon settlement named after a "Saint." There are at least two more:

• St. David, Ariz., located southeast of Tucson, was named in honor of David Patten Kimball. He was the presiding LDS Church authority in the area, from 1881-82.

• According to the "Utah History Encyclopedia," St. Charles, Idaho — located on the northwest side of Bear Lake — was named after Elder Charles C. Rich, a Mormon apostle. He was one of the first early settlers. In 1864 Brigham Young honored Rich by naming Rich County, Utah, and the town of St. Charles, after him.

(-Originally published in the Deseret News by Lynn Arave on July 8, 2007.)

Utah's Lowest/Hottest Place ISN'T St. George!

   The fenceline in the Beaver Dam Wash, marking where Utah ends (right side) and Arizona begins (left side).

                     Lynn Arave stands near where Utah's lowest point likely was in 2006.

        Ravell Call explores the wet (west end) of the Beaver Dam wash, in the State of Arizona.

                  The dirt road in Arizona that leads to the edge of the Beaver Dam Wash.

                     A closeup of where Utah's lowest point likely is, marked by my GPS.

By Lynn Arave

SAINT GEORGE  isn’t the hottest place in Utah, nor is it the lowest elevation place in the Beehive State either.

Having been to Kings Peak, Utah’s highest point 5 times, I decided in June of 2006 to find and document the true lowest elevation spot in Utah (also undoubtedly the hottest spot in the state too.)

Those two superlatives really belong to the Beaver Dam Wash in the extreme southwest corner of the state, at the Utah-Arizona state line. Welcome to Utah's basement, in the Beaver Dam Wash, where an environment exists unlike anywhere else in the Beehive State.

It's the Mojave Desert, where Joshua trees, blackbrush, creosote, yucca and other southern desert plants rule in an ovenlike environment this time of year. Kings Peak is Utah's highest elevation at 13,538 feet above sea level, but at Beaver Dam Wash — 288 air miles away — the elevation dips more than two miles below Kings and is almost 600 feet lower than the city of St. George, located some 23 miles to the northeast.

The majority of sources out there — Internet and books — have Utah's lowest elevation all wrong. Utah's lowest point isn't 2,350 feet above sea level, as is commonly listed by Utah tourist sources.

Nor is it an even 2,000 feet, as some other sources list. Utah's lowest elevation here is "probably" 2,178 feet above sea level. (In contrast, St. George has an average elevation of 2,800 feet and Salt Lake City's Temple Square is 4,327 feet above sea level.) That's according to Mark Milligan, a geologist with the Utah Geological Survey, who found that quadrangle maps show the lowest spot is found in an area bounded by 2,160-foot and 2,180-foot contour lines.

"The border is much closer to the 2,180 contour and thus agrees with an elevation of 2,178 feet," he wrote in an e-mail to the Deseret Morning News. He found that even though the USGS Geographic Names Information also lists Utah's lowest elevation at 2,178 feet, in the same entry it uses the even 2,000-foot number as the state's least elevation, too.

Milligan believes 2,178 is as close an estimate to the low elevation as is possible. Since the Beaver Dam Wash is an area prone to flooding, its elevation can change. "Of course, it is possible erosion may have recently lowered this portion of the wash,"

Milligan reported in his e-mail. "The precipitation that caused the 2005 flooding in St. George presumably caused flooding in the Beaver Dam Wash. "I have not been there recently enough to remember what the bottom of the wash looks like in that area. So I would not even dare an educated guess as to whether to expect much erosion there from such floods." Elaine York, West Desert regional director for the Utah Field Office of the Nature Conservancy, said the 2005 flooding did damage the Lytle Ranch facilities in the Beaver Dam Wash, about six miles north. (The ranch is now owned and operated by Brigham Young University.)

 She suspects the lowest elevation could have dipped slightly from erosion last year. "Beaver Dam Wash is a Mojave Desert eco-region," she said. It's also an area famous for bird-watching, and a portion of the Beaver Dam Wash is under study as a possible wilderness area. 

Mark Eubank, KSL's former chief meteorologist, believes Utah's lowest spot is also usually its hottest most days. "In general, the lower the elevation, the hotter the temperature," Eubank said. "That is why Death Valley is the hottest place in North America — elevation near 200 feet below sea level. "There are no official temperature readings from Beaver Dam Wash, but I feel certain it averages hotter there than in St. George."

Eubank said Mesquite, Nev., to the southwest of Beaver Dam Wash, runs 2 to 5 degrees hotter than St. George most days. Chris Gibson, meteorologist with the Salt Lake Office of the National Weather Service, agrees. "It probably is the hottest place in Utah," he said. Gibson said temperatures generally drop 5.5 degrees Celsius for every 1,000 feet of altitude descended. On a hot, still day, he believes Utah's lowest point would be a couple of degrees warmer than St. George.

Despite the hot temperatures in the Beaver Dam Wash, it isn't totally waterless. York said some perennial springs keep year-round water there, even though at times the water is underground slightly. Utah's lowest point ranks fourth among the 50 states in height. Only Colorado (3,320 feet), Wyoming (3,099) and New Mexico (2,840) have higher "low" spot points. (Montana rates fifth-place with an 1,800-foot low point.) Twenty-one of the states have sea level as their lowest point. There's also increasing interest in "bagging" the lowest points in all 50 states and a Web site for America's Basement,americasroof.com/lowest.shtml, highlights the possibilities.

• During a June 5 and 6 visit to Utah's lowest point, my GPS initially measured 2,176 in one of the lowest washes, where Utah's lowest point surely is. A few dozen feet away in another small wash eastward, it measured 2,174 feet and fluctuated, dropping to as low as 2,154. (GPS devices do not claim absolute accuracy on elevation measured.)

If you still need a more exact idea of where Utah's lowest point is, it is almost straight north up the Beaver Dam Wash, 15 miles north of Littlefield, Ariz., which I-15 en route to Mesquite/Las Vegas passes through. Two Deseret Morning News colleagues and I found the Beaver Dam Wash to be a much larger region than imagined — with the wash being the lowest point in the area with a width of up to a half-mile at times. We also found a trek here to be no walk in the park. Loose sand and gravel, marshes and thick brush make walking difficult, and the all-terrain vehicle tracks we saw at times may represent the smartest and easiest way to visit.

Temperatures on an unusually warm June 6 here were likely more than 100 degrees at 10 a.m. One thermometer measured 112 degrees! Thus, this is a much more comfortable place to visit in winter, early spring or late fall. Cattle roam the area, and a fairly new and well-maintained barbed-wire fence separates Utah from Arizona — even here — meaning Utah's lowest spot is in the lowest of several dips along the north side of that fence.

• Utah has six corner monuments marking the corners of its borders. The southwest corner monument is almost due west of Utah's lowest point — about 2.5 miles away. However, the topography of a steep hillside on the west slope of the Beaver Dam Wash means making a trip there on the same day is difficult.

• To visit Utah's lowest point, you will need a truck or four-wheel drive vehicle, unless you want to walk an extra six miles along dirt roads in the desert. The road is not suitable for cars because of several dips that exceed a regular car's clearance. To get there, drive to Littlefield, Ariz., on I-15 and take Exit 8; go north on the old highway that leads to Shivwits and back into Utah; go past the Beaver Dam, Ariz., community (elevation 1,860 feet) and cross the Utah-Arizona stateline.

 Then look for a dirt road that heads left (west), 0.8 mile past the state line. Follow this road southwest and then straight south for almost five miles into the Beaver Dam Wash. You will cross two cattle guards and see several "Mormon pioneer trail" signs posted along the way. Ignore any side roads and always head due west. Park near some large overhead power lines in a loose gravel area, near the perennial water of the Beaver Dam Wash. Be sure to carry plenty of drinking water and do not hike in the afternoon on hot days. Starting elevation here is about 2,076. Walk northward, carefully picking your route, about two miles, to a barbed-wire fence you can't miss. Cross the fence and find the lowest point from there.

(The above ground steam water disappears just before the fence line.) Retrace your steps to avoid having to bushwack and knowing the power lines to the south highlight your starting point.

Note that at least one unusually wet year in Southern Utah after 2006, may have already lowered the lowest spot in Utah’s part of the Beaver Dam wash since this report’s 2006 visit.

Lowest elevation (2,178 feet) from 2006 trip to Beaver Dam Wash becomes official Utah superlative, as seen in a display at the University of Utah's Natural History Museum.

Lynn Arave points to lowest elevation he measured in 2006 in a display at the University of Utah's Natural History Museum.

-Lynn Arave, Ravell Call and Ray Boren visited the Beaver Dam Wash and Utah's lowest point on June 5 and 6, 2006.

-(Originally presented in a Deseret News article on Sept. 3, 2006, by Lynn Arave.)