Swasey Cabin was built in 1921 in the heart of Sinbad Country, by Joseph Swasey. The Cabin was built from Douglas Dir from Eagle Canyon near by. Remnants of the Swasey family farm depict the western heritage. The Swasey family grazed livestock in the area for the later part of the nineteenth century. The cabin served as shelter for members of the Swasey family and other cowboys. There is also what is known as “Joe’s Office” and “The Ice Box” near by.
The Moab Cabin is important to the city of Moab because it is a tangible link with the community’s earlier days, and because the history of the cabin in many ways perfectly reflects the progress of history in many of the major economic and social events that have been important to Southeastern Utah and the American West in the last 100 years. Built by Mormon pioneers, used by cowboys who served the area’s cattle boom, owned by the first clerk of the La Sal Forest which had been created to provide sensible management of the region’s fragile ecology, and home to a succession of humble prospectors who brought about Moab’s Uranium boom, the Moab cabin is an important focus for regional history.
The original owner was Marietta Pierce Stewart, the third plural wife of Randolph Hockaday Stewart, the first bishop of Moab. In 1879 R. H. Stewart and his three families started south from Rich County, Utah in response to a call of the Mormon Church to settle Emery County (which then included the present Grand County, where Moab is located). They were stopped by the fierce winter of 1879-80 in Huntington, Emery County, where Bishop Stewart built three log houses for his families. They stayed there for one year and in the spring of 1881 arrived in Moab, Presumably he once again built three log cabins, although that supposition cannot be verified. At any rate, he acquired all of Block 14, the site of this cabin, from Leonidas L. Crapo, the original homesteader. He and his first counselor in the LDS Church, Orlando W. Warner, deeded this block to Marietta, Bishop Stewart’s third wife.
Marietta’s children inherited the cabin, and in 1910 deeded it to John Jackson, a Wild West, yarn-spinning, old-time cowboy. Local tradition claims that John Jackson (ne Hinton) actually built this cabin in the 1890s of cottonwood logs hauled from the creek that ran through Moab. He was rough and tough and enjoyed a good tale, regardless of its veracity. He was raised in Texas and orphaned at eleven, lived with an uncle for a time and got in several scrapes with other cowboys, Indians, and horse thieves. He claimed that when he left Texas the sheriff and his possee wanted him to stay so bad they chased him all the way to the border, trying to get him to come back. After his hasty exit from Texas, he was forced to change his .name. He then became known as John “Jackson,” although he stayed in Arizona with his brother, Bill Hinton, and the two came to Utah together in 1890. In 1891 Jackson drifted up to Moab, spent a night or two, and did not return until 1893, when he settled there. Locally, he got his start as a cattleman as he “roped wild mavericks in the canyons surrounding the Blue Mountains and sold them for $5 a head. John did a lot of trading and finally had a herd of cattle, which he ran down the river.” Local residents insist that he was more of a rustler in the beginning, a common start for cattlemen in the Old West. He worked for a local cattle company and was allowed to rope mavericks for himself, but at the end of the season he had more cattle than the company did! Jackson himself never discouraged tales about his escapades, although he wound up a wealthy man with money to lend to several of the leading families of Moab. During his days on the range he usually kept his wife and family out with him. On their trips to town they stayed in this cabin and eventually lived there. His first wife, Lillian Webb, bore at least one of her children in this cabin and the family was settled there by 1900.
In April 1910, John Jackson officially acquired title to the property from the children of Marietta Stewart for twenty-five dollars. He didn’t keep the cabin long, selling that part of the lot to John E. Dubois in July for four hundred dollars. Dubois in turn sold it to Henry A. Bergh and Howard W. Balsley in November for four hundred and fifty dollars. Balsley got sole title to the property eleven months later in October, 1911 for six hundred and fifty dollars and has owned it ever since.
Howard W. Balsley, now 92 and the second oldest person in Moab, still owns the cabin and his own experiences give a fascinating glimpse of the process of change in the American West since the early 20th century. By 1908 when Balsley came to Moab, the West had been officially “closed” for almost twenty years. Traditionally, the American West had been a land of wide open spaces, with room for all. The Old Spanish Trail ran through Moab, one of the few points that allowed a relatively easy crossing of the Colorado River. Indian families, Spanish padres, explorers, traders and trappers of various nationalities had passed through the area for centuries. In 1877, the last call of Brigham Young for the settlement of Emery County (which then included Grand County, and Moab) encouraged Mormons to settle there although other residents, mostly bachelor cowboys and traders, were already in residence. The Mormon pioneers initiated a settled order of life which the community had previously lacked and started farming and agriculture on a wide scale (including the cultivation of the famous Stewart peach, bred by the first Mormon Bishop and possible builder of this cabin, Randolph Hockaday Stewart). The main concern any farmer in the desert has always been water. In addition to private effort, irrigation companies organized to raise money back East for the schemes of opening desert land to cultivation. One of these companies originally drew Howard Balsley to Moab.
A native of Pennsylvania, Balsley was living in Indianapolis when he and his sister invested heavily in the stock of a western water company, known variously as the Grand Valley Land and Mineral Company or the Valley City Reservoir Company. This irrigation project was designed to impound water from the washes between the towns of Green River and Moab, opening large tracts of land to homesteaders. Several people settled the land while an Indianapolis bank partially financed the project, selling stock to eastern investors such as Howard Balsley. After his first job campaigning for the Republicans in 1908, Balsley decided to go West and see what happened to his investment. “I got out here and found that the secretary-treasurer of the company had been spending the money on horse races instead of putting in a concrete dam as he was supposed to have done. They just had an earthen dam. The first big flood that came along, why, away it went. Anyhow, that’s one investment made and lost I never regretted, otherwise I’d have never been out. It was a means to an end.”
“What made you decide to stay?” “Oh, I just liked the country. These red rocks had quite an attraction for me. It was quite romantic in the old stage days, you know.” The Old West wasn’t quite dead in Moab.
After working hard on a farm and saving his money, Howard Balsley accrued the thirty dollars necessary to take the U.S. Civil Service examination, qualifying him to join the U.S. Forest Service. He became the first permanent clerk of the LaSal National Forest, now part of the Manti-LaSal. He started as a clerk and later served as clerk-ranger from 1909 to 1918, during the tenures of four of the first five supervisors: John Riis, Henry A. Bergh, J.W. Humphrey and Samuel B. Locke.
The creation of the National Forest Service resounds to the credit of President Theodore Roosevelt. The American Forestry Association was founded in 1875 at the urging of Gifford Pinchot, an early conservationist. The government reacted unenthusiastically, but by 1891 Congress authorized the President to create forest reserves; which he did immediately. These reserves underwent several changes of title and control, but by 1905 the Forest Service was in operation under the Department Agriculture, where it remains today. “The LaSal Forest Reserve was established by proclamation on January 25, 1906. The Monticello Forest was established by proclamation on February 6, 1907; and the LaSal and Monticello were consolidated on July 1, 1908. By the time Howard Balsley became forest clerk in 1909, the previous temporary clerk had quit and he was left to do the clerical work of the entire forest, stretching over a wide area in Grand and San Juan Counties in Utah and Mesa and Montrose in Colorado.
Balsley lived in Moab , boarding for a while with the Forest Supervisor, Henry Bergh, and his wife Zena in the house where Balsley now lives. He and Bergh together bought the log cabin, situated on the same block as the present Balsley residence.
After purchasing the cabin, Balsley moved in there for a short while with his friend, Loren L. “Bish” Taylor, who became the second owner and editor of the Moab newspaper, The Times Independent. The two men lived in the cabin only a short time while they built a frame structure directly to the south; it had room for some cupboards and was generally more spacious. (This frame dwelling is now part of the main structure of the “Atomic Motel,” a name undoubtedly coined during the uranium boom of the 1950s.) Balsley’s parents came out for a visit in 1910 and stayed almost a year in the log cabin. His father put a glass window in the front door, apparently the only alteration in the building since its construction.
In 1912 Howard Balsley married Jessie Trout, a local girl whose father, Tom Trout, was one of the wild Texas cowboys to settle in the Moab area. Tom Trout lived in this cabin, too, for three or four years before his death on July 15, 1939. Trout had run cattle in Texas and participated in the big cattle drives to Dodge City, Kansas. He was on the first grand jury in Texas and perhaps thought that made some enemies, for local tradition claims that he was dumped over the Texas state line wrapped in a cowhide. True or not, by 1885 he was in Monticello, Utah, punching cattle. At Christmas 1886, he came to Moab to celebrate (in the hard-drinking, gun-shooting manner of the wild west cowboy) and won ten dollars on the horse race held on Moab’s main street. A local citizen asked if he’d like to buy a town lot. “I just as well invest my money in town lots as anything I know of,” Tom replied. Then he left town, returning in 1888 when the local citizens offered to buy the lot for $1,000 to build a schoolhouse. Impressed by the worthiness of the cause, Trout freely gave them his lot, now the site of the junior high school. He later married Elizabeth Standifird of Moab, became a cattle rancher, county road commissioner, deputy sheriff and miner.
A single-story rectangular log structure. The walls are of rough-hewn logs with mud chinking, unevenly notched at the corners The flat roof is made of parallel logs covered with branches and mud, sporting a final layer of growing plants.
Finally, the cabin is significant because of its ties to Howard Balsley and his career in uranium. Commencing in 1913 while he was still in the employ of the Forest Service, Howard Balsley helped pioneer the development of the Uranium industry in the west. Later, during the uranium boom of the fifties, the cabin was again home to a succession of hopeful prospectors.
U.P.T.L.A. Marker #41 says: This cabin, built about 1841 by Miles Goodyear, as far as known the first permanent house built in Utah, stood near the junction of the Ogden and Weber Rivers. In 1848 it was sold to Captain James Brown of the Mormon Battalion with a Spanish land grant covering all of Weber County. It was preserved by Minerva Stone Shaw and by her presented to the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, Weber County Chapter, who placed it on its present site.
D.U.P. Marker #484 says: Miles Morris Goodyear built this cabin on the lower Weber River as a way station and trading post. The cabin, along with other buildings became Fort Buenaventura meaning good venture. It was the first permanent settlement in the Utah Territory. Miles Goodyear (1817-1849) had traveled as far as Fort Hall in 1836 with Dr. Marcus Whitman’s party of Methodist Missionaries. Goodyear was a trapper, prospector and trader. His Indian wife Pomona was the daughter of Ute chief Peet-teet-neet. The couple had two children, William Miles and Mary Eliza.
Mormon Battalion Captain James Brown and Mary Black Brown bought Fort Buenaventura and all of Weber County for $1,950 in gold. Mary Brown made the cabin home for her family and made 1,000 pounds of cheese during the first year.
The Browns sold the cabin to Amos P. and Minerva Leontine Jones Stone. The Stone family lived in the cabin for a time, eventually using it as a blacksmith shop. A daughter, Minerva Pease Stone Shaw, in 1926 presented the cabin to Weber County Daughters of Utah Pioneers for preservation. It has been moved seven times, ultimately being placed at this site. In 1994 it was disassembled for preservation of the logs and reassembled in 1995 at this location to benefit posterity.
The Ogden City Landmarks Commission plaque says: Miles Goodyear came west as a venturesome young man with the Whitman- Spaulding Expedition of 1836. He married a daughter of the Ute Chief, Pe-teet-neet, and located his stockade and cabin on the Weber River. This post became a stop-over and replenishment station for California-bound emigrants. Goodyear called his place Fort Buenaventura.
The cabin was built of sawed cottonwood logs in 1845 by Goodyear. Its dimensions are 14’4″x17’9″. The original floors were dirt. As the foundation logs sat on the ground, they rotted away and have been replaced. In addition, some of the lumber in the door and the windows was sawed after 1847.
Originally located on the Weber River two miles above the Ogden River confluence, the cabin has been moved several times. In 1928 it was donated to the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers.
The cabin was added to the National Historic Register (#71000866) on February 24, 1971.
The earliest permanent white settlers in Utah were trappers and traders. In the Miles Goodyear cabin the story is told of the transition from trap- per and trader to settler. Goodyear came west as a venturesome young man with the Whitman-Spaulding Expedition of 1836. At Fort Hall on the Snake River in present-day Idaho, he left the party to become a mountain man.” In time he married a daughter of the Ute Chief, Pe-teet-neet, and located his stockade and cabin on the Weber River. This post became a stop-over and replenishment station for California-bound emigrants. Goodyear called his place Fort Buenaventura.
Goodyear combined his trapping ventures with trading as far afield as California. On July 10, 1847, he met the advance party of the first Mormon emigrants at Bear Lake bottoms, where he talked with O. P. Rockwell, George A. Smith, Erastus Snow, and Norton Jacobs.
The new emigrants soon became interested in Goodyear’s holdings. James Brown saw them in August, 1847. After returning from California with Mormon Battalion payrolls, Brown pursued this interest and was per- mitted to negotiate with Goodyear who sold his properties for $1,950.00. The original claim included about 225 square miles, nearby all of present Weber County.
Brown moved in by March, 1848. The site became known as Brown’s Fort, Brown’s Settlement and, subsequently, Brownsville. The name Ogden was be- stowed officially in 1851.
Only the cabin remains of Goodyear’s Fort Buenaventura. But through it, this important transitional part of American and Utah history can be told.
About 1000 ft. west of this spot is the site of the first cabin built in this valley in the summer of 1877 by Abraham Powell. This marker erected by Explorer Troop #284 Nov. 1936 – Wm Campbell, SM.
Vincent Paul Anella Troop 296 Eagle Scout Project
Reestablished marker recognizing the first cabin built in Price by Abraham Powell in 1877. Original marker was at 600 South Carbon Avenue.
This cabin, believed to be the oldest on Price Townsite, was built by Leander Clifford in 1884. The Daughters of the Utah Pioneers purchased the home in 1928 and moved it to the Price Tabernacle site where it was used as an historical relics hall. It was moved to this site approximately 1936.
This historic marker is located in Pioneer Park in Price, Utah and was dedicated by the Utah Outpost Mountain Charlie Chapter No. 1850 of E Clampus Vitus on July 26, 1980.
This cabin, believed to be one of the oldest in Castle Valley, was built on Gordon Creek by Albert Grames in the early 1880’s. It was moved to Price in the year 1900 and used as a Grames family residence until 1964. Albert Grames, in addition to being one of the first settlers in Castle Valley, was also the first mail carrier and worked in many public service capacities including sexton. The cabin was restored on this site by Utah Outpost in 1985.
This historic marker is located in Pioneer Park in Price, Utah and was dedicated by the Utah Outpost Mountain Charlie Chapter No. 1850 of E Clampus Vitus on August 3, 1985.
After sitting 161 years on its original building site, the Joseph “Cap” Hill cabin was moved to Layton Commons Park in 2017. This cabin is one of the oldest pioneer buildings in Davis County. It was built by Joseph Hill Sr. and his family between 1851 and 1854 and has been in the possession of the Hill family for over five generations.
Joseph “Cap” and Edith Ann Hill
Born in Gloucestershire, England, Joseph and his wife Edith Ann Marsden Hill, joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and immigrated to America in the 1840s with their three children – John C., Joseph Jr. and Alice Ann. They lived in Nauvoo, Illinois for a time and then moved to Utah Territory in September 1850. After arriving in Salt Lake City, the Hill’s move to the Kay’s Ward (later Kaysville) settlement to establish a permanent home. During this exodus across the plains, Joseph served as a captain of 10 wagons, under the direction of Mathew Caldwell, a captain of 50. For the rest of his life, Joseph would be remembered as “Cap” or “Captain” by his many friends and neighbors.
Joseph Sr. and his family worked hard to build a new homestead in what is now West Layton, on the west side of Angel Street. Once the cabin was built, the family established a farm where they raised hay, grain crops and cattle. In the late 1850s, Joseph Sr., hoping to seek his fortune in the gold fields, moved his family briefly to Sacramento, California; however, they returned to Utah in 1862. While passing through Carson City, Nevada, Edith Ann was critically injured in a wagon accident and died on July 4, 1862. After burying his wife, Joseph Sr. returned to Kay’s Ward and took up residence once again in the cabin he had built. He lived there until his death on august 21, 1889; and he was buried in the Kaysville City Cemetery. Following his death, the cabin was used for a variety of purposes until it fell into disrepair.
Eventually, the cabin passed into the possession of Joseph Sr.’s 2nd great-granddaughter, Odessa Webster Hill Harris and her husband Robert Jay Harris. The couple restored the cabin to its current condition in 1990. In 2000, the Harris’ built a beautiful home on the Hill property next to the cabin and cared and looked after the property until their passing in 2017. After their deaths, the cabin was moved to its current location where it serves as a reminder to Layton citizens as well as to all visitors who see it of those who came before us.
The Joseph Hill Family Cabin, built sometime between 1851 and 1858, is a one-story single-pen log cabin, located at 2133 W. 1000 South in Layton, Davis County, Utah. After a period of vacancy and deterioration, the cabin was rehabilitated around 1990 when it was raised and placed on a concrete pad. The rehabilitation included replacement logs from a derelict barn on site, re-chinking, replacement windows and interior casings, gable trim, an interior brick chimney, drop ceiling, and a new roof with wood shingles. Despite these modifications in some materials and workmanship, the Hill Family Cabin retains its historic integrity in terms of location, design, feeling and association of a pioneer-era log cabin. Although the immediate setting of the cabin has been compromised by the landscaped yard, the wider setting is still rural as much of the original farmstead remains agricultural. A new home built on the 1.53-acre property in 2000 is non-contributing. There is also an associated historic outhouse near the log cabin, but the outhouse has been modified and moved, and is therefore considered non-contributing. The Joseph Hill Family Cabin is one of four extant log cabins in the Layton area and the only example that still retains its domestic appearance. The cabin is a contributing resource in its Layton neighborhood.
The Joseph Hill Family Cabin sits on roughly rectangular property of 1.53-acres, a combination of two descriptions into one legal parcel. The cabin is located at the southeast corner of the property in the backyard of the non-contributing house, built in 2000, facing north to 1000 South. The new house was built where a one-story red brick Victorian-era cottage was located before it was destroyed by fire in the 1970s. The property is mostly lawn with pasture on the three adjoining sides. There is one mature elm tree located north of the cabin. This tree is the only remnant of the copse that surrounded the cabin prior to the rehabilitation. There are newer trees with decorative boulder plantings scattered in the backyard. A non-contributing gazebo structure is in one of the plantings. Just south of the cabin in one of the plantings is a wood outhouse. Although historic and associated with the cabin, the outhouse was recently moved and does not retain sufficient integrity to be contributing. There is also new gazebo west of the cabin.
The West Layton neighborhood at the intersection of 2200 West and 1000 South retains a rural feeling despite recent construction activity in the area. There are newer homes on either side of the cabin property, but there is pasture between. A new barn sits southwest of the log cabin on a separate legal parcel. There are onion fields to the north of 1000 South. To the south is undeveloped open pasture, further south and west are marshes at the edge of the Great Salt Lake. The path of the abandoned Bluff Road is visible in aerial photographs in the vicinity of the Joseph Hill Family Cabin.
The Joseph Hill Family Cabin in Layton, Utah, is locally significant under Criterion A, in three distinct areas: Exploration/Settlement, Commerce, Transportation, and Ethnic Heritage. The log cabin built by the Hill family is a rare extant example from the early settlement of the area formerly known as West Layton. The exact date of construction is unknown. In local histories, the construction of the cabin has been attributed to either Joseph Hill Sr. upon his arrival in 1851 or his son, Joseph Hill Jr., prior to his marriage in 1858. Both families are considered important early settlers of the Big Field area of West Layton. The Hill cabin was never moved from the family farmstead along the Bluff Road contributing to the cabin’s significance in the areas of Commerce and Transportation. Bluff Road was the preferred route for California-bound gold seekers leaving Salt Lake City to travel around the north end of the Great Salt Lake. The Hill family raised cattle on the flats below the bluff and sold beef and other commodities to the travelers. The family also represents the small minority of Mormon settlers who were lured to California by the promise of gold and silver. Joseph Hill Sr.’s extended family left Layton in 1860 and returned in 1862 after an unsuccessful and tragic journey, which resulted in the death of his wife, Ann Edith Marston Hill. After their return, Joseph Hill Jr. built a red brick house for his wife, Ellen Sheen Hill, and family. During that time Joseph Sr. may have lived in the cabin behind the brick house. The Hill Cabin is the only extant log cabin in Utah that is linked to the Bluff Road and it is the only known cabin in Layton to have continued a residential use into the twentieth century.
The Hill Cabin is also the only documented building in Davis County to be associated with the Japanese soaking tub practice (known as ofuro), which gives the building significance in the area of Ethnic Heritage. The continued maintenance of the log cabin as a residence likely contributed to its easy conversion to a bathhouse/dressing room in the 1940s and 1950s for one of the many Japanese families that rented farms in West Layton. Beginning in the 1920s and continuing into the 1950s, several Japanese families moved to Davis County to become farmers. Because the immigrants were discouraged from owning land, the immigrants share-cropped or rented the farms of older residents. Despite modifications that occurred during a circa 1990 rehabilitation, the building retains many of the characteristics that it had during an exceptional long period of significance that represents a century of productive use. The Joseph Hill Family Cabin is a contributing resource in its West Layton neighborhood.
The history of Layton begins with the history of Kaysville, Utah. In the winter of 1847-1848, just a few months after the arrival of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon Church) to the Salt Lake Valley, Hector C. Haight kept a herd of cattle in the area, and in April 1850, William Kay and Edward Phillips raised wheat near what became known as Kay’s Creek. They were later joined by several families. By 1853, the population of Kaysville, which included present-day Layton, was 417. Among the settlers who came in 1850 was the family of Joseph and Ann Hill. Joseph Hill Sr. was born in 1806 in Sandhurst, Gloucester, England. His wife, Ann Edith Marston, was born in 1808 in Norton, Gloucester, England.34 They were married in 1828 and had three children, John Calvert (born 1835), Joseph Jr. (1837) and Alice Ann Marston (1839). The family immigrated to the United States before 1850. Joseph Hill Sr. was designated a captain over a team of immigrants while crossing the plains and was known as Captain or “Cap” Hill for the rest of his life. The family was living in a log cabin on “the salt flats near or on the dividing line between Kaysville and Layton” by time of the 1850 census enumeration. This area was known as the “Big Field.” A hand-drawn map of the early settlement places the Joseph Hill Sr. home north of Kay’s Creek in the northwest quarter of Section 31, Township 4 North, Range 1 West.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Joseph Hill Sr. did not file for a homestead patent for his land. The first recorded claim to the land was when his son, Joseph Hill Jr., obtained a deed for 159 acres in the west half of Section 31 from the Union Pacific Railroad Company in July 1880. While the exact location of the first home of Joseph Sr. and Ann Hill is unknown, historic records agree that by the time of his marriage, Joseph Hill Jr. lived in a log cabin at the present-day intersection of 1000 South and 2200 West, although neither street existed prior to the 1880s. Joseph Hill Jr. married Ellen Sheen on December 28, 1858. Ellen Sheen Hill was born in 1837 in Berrow, England. She came to Utah in a handcart company in 1856 and settled in west Kaysville with her family. Joseph Jr. and Ellen Hill had two sons and five daughters. They lived in the log cabin until they were able to build a red brick house that faced north to a lane along the north line of Section 31 (today’s 1000 South). The 1870 and 1880 census enumerations show that after Ann Hill’s death in 1862, Joseph Sr. lived next to Joseph Jr. and Ellen. The juxtaposition combined with the Victorian-style windows added to the cabin suggest that Joseph Sr. may have lived in the log cabin on the property until his death in 1889.
By the 1880s, residents of the Layton area wanted to separate from Kaysville, which had been in incorporated in 1868. They questioned Kaysville’s authority to tax their property without providing municipal services. The Layton Ward of the LDS Church, named for early settler Christopher Layton, was established in 1889. The West Layton Ward of the LDS Church was organized in 1895, one year after a court case was decided in favor of the residents. Layton became an independent unincorporated area in 1902 and an incorporated town in 1920. By the time of incorporation, roads along the section lines (e.g. 2200 West) were created to connect to Gentile Street, the main east-west road to the Layton’s growing commercial district and the railroads.
Only a tiny fraction of the thousands of log cabins built by Mormon pioneers exist today. Of the twenty-seven log cabins built before the coming of the railroad that appear in the Utah SHPO’s database of historic resources, seventeen have been moved to museums or city parks for display. For example, the circa 1865 Levi Roberts cabin originally built on Kay’s Creek was moved to This is the Place State Park on the east bench of Salt Lake City in 1977. The Layton area is current represented by only four extant log cabins: the Hill cabin, the Higgs cabin on Fort Lane in East Layton, the Webster cabin on Angel Street (moved 500 feet), and the Kay cabin (moved to Syracuse). More importantly the Hill Cabin is the only surviving cabin that sits on its original farmstead and was associated with the emigrant trail along Bluff Road.
Orin Porter Rockwell was born on June 28, 1813 in Belcher, Hampshire county, Massachusetts to Orin Rockwell and Sarah Witt Rockwell. Known as the “Destroying Angel” he was bodyguard to the prophet Joseph Smith and later to Brigham Young. Porter had a ranch west of Cherry Creek, known as Rockwell’s Ranch. It is from this ranch that we obtained the cabin. Porter was said to have lived in the cabin south of the ranch house hear a big pond and lots of water. During winter, blocks of ice were cut from the pond and stored in an ice house, built with thick walls filled with sawdust for use in the summer months. Porter had a nice orchard and grew cantaloupe and watermelons. Rumor has it that at night he would walk around the cabin and orchard talking to himself. Some say he talked to ‘ghosts’. Orin Porter Rockwell died on June 9, 1878 in Salt Lake City of natural causes and was buried in a Salt Lake City cemetery.
Built by Christian Christensen in the 1870’s and occupied by the Bailey family since 1897, it was located at 200 North and 100 West in Ephraim and is now on display in the Pioneer Park.
