Utah's Dixie

Dixie is a nickname for a region in southwestern Utah, particularly south-central Washington County. The area lies in the northeastern Mojave Desert, south of Black Ridge and west of the Hurricane Cliffs. Its winter climate is significantly milder than the rest of Utah.

The region is nicknamed "Dixie" after the original Dixie region in the southeastern United States, due to the warmer climate, the importance of cotton, and the Southern origins of some early settlers. Use of the term "Dixie" to describe this Utah region has been controversial due to associations with the Civil War, the Confederacy, and chattel slavery.

Originally settled by Southern Paiutes, the area became part of the United States after the Mexican–American War, in the subsequent Mexican Cession of 1849 of lands in the old Southwest. The following year, portions of it were organized by the United States Congress and approved by the U.S. president as the new federal Utah Territory. In 1854, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) moved to the area from the Great Salt Lake region to establish church president and territorial governor Brigham Young's intended Indian mission in the region. After arrival, the settlers led by Jacob Hamblin in Santa Clara, began growing cotton and other temperate cash crops in and around the town. By 1860, the Paiute native population had declined due to disease and gradual displacement by the new white settlers.

The area was first referred to as the "Cotton Mission", in response to Brigham Young's 14th General Epistle issued in October 1856. Although he determined that the Great Basin region surrounding the Great Salt Lake and extending to the west and south be self-sufficient, but it was not at first. He criticized his fellow Latter-day Saints as "quite negligent in raising cotton and flax." His emphatic command was: "And let our brethren who have the means, bring on cotton and woolen machinery, that we may be enabled to manufacture our own goods, so fast as we shall be able to supply ourselves with the raw material...."

"[The] first groups of settlers [arriving in Spring 1857] – the Adair and Covington Companies – were from further east in the southern states, mainly from Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee." While there is no indication that slavery was practiced in Utah's cotton farming, Robert Dockery Covington, the leader of the second company of Latter-day Saints, was a former slave overseer and was listed in earlier U.S. Decennial Census records as owning eight slaves per the 1840 Census, which made "farming a very profitable occupation." It is unknown whether Covington had grown cotton or supervised slaves who grew cotton. A contemporary said: "He was a strong Rebel sympathizer and rejoiced whenever he heard of a Southern victory." Covington was the first president of the LDS Church's Washington Branch. Covington's first counselor was Alexander Washington Collins, who the contemporary said was a former slave driver known to publicly and humorously tell horrific stories of whippings and rapes of his slaves.

Andrew Larson's landmark history of the area in 1992 states that it was already referred to as "Dixie" by 1857: {{blockquote|Already the settled area of the Virgin Valley was being called Utah's "Dixie". The fact that cotton would grow there, as well as tobacco and other semi-tropical plants such as the South, produced made it easy for the name to stick. The fact that the settlers at Washington were bona fide Southerners who were steeped in the lore of cotton culture—many of them, at least—clinched the title. Dixie it became, and Dixie it remained. ... The name "Dixie" is one of those distinctive things about this part of Utah ... It is a proud title. |Andrew Larson|I Was Called to Dixie (p. 185)

"[T]he harsh environment, the intense heat of summer, the continual toil, and the ravages of malaria . . . led some of the settlers to desert the place at the end of the first season." In the fall of 1858, it was reported "that of approximately 400 acres planted to cotton only 130 acres could be counted a success". Cultivation of cotton and food crops depended on irrigation, which was a collective activity. There were regular food shortages, including "the 'starving time' when many people were reduced to eating pigweed, alfalfa, and carrot top greens in lieu of a more substantial diet". The area's culture included a shared religion, shared suffering and success, and even a collective economy for a time.

The Cotton Mission did not work as well as Young had hoped. Yields in the test fields were not as high as expected, and growing cotton never gained economic viability, although a cotton mill was built and used for a few years in the Town of Washington. "[C]onsistent operation of the Factory" ended in 1897.