About Piute County
Historical Background
Originally, the Piute County region was possibly inhabited by cliff dwellers. However, the only inhabitants discovered by the first white men to enter the County area were the Piute or Pah Ute Indians. Denis Julian was one of the first white men to pass through the Piute County area. Julian's name, along with the date 1836, can be found scratched on rocks within the county boundaries. In the late 1850's and early 1860's a fe w a dventurous men, searching for new places to settle, wandered into the Piute County region where they found grasses suitable for grazing stock. In March 1864, Circleville was settled by a group of Mormon colonist from Ephriam and Sanpete County . Junction, the present county seat, was settled in the same year.
The original spelling of the Indian name was PAIUTE but the "A" was dropped. Before the Mormon settlers came they had learned to raise wheat, melons, amaranth and indigo. To water these crops they built crude irrigation ditches leading from the small streams. They occupied mostly small places where the land was flat. During the warm months they needed little shelter but in winter they built wickiups. They wore little clothing, children wore none, except in the cold months when they wore rabbit skins for covering, and at times the men wore leggings. Moccasins were known but seldom worn. The women wore basketry hats to protect them from pitch while gathering pinion nuts. They made basketry hats, burden baskets, seed beaters, winnowing and parching trays, flat trays, water jugs or ollas, and bowls.
The Paiutes were a peaceful people; weapons were used almost exclusively for hunting and food gathering. Besides the bo w a nd arrow, they used a club and flint knife. Rodent hooks were used in helping to dig small animals from their holes; they were long sticks with a slightly forked end.
Fire was made by use of a stick drill twirled between the palms of the hands while an assistant held some bark tinder in which to catch the spark.
Indian writings are hard to find now because of the wind and weather covering and erasing them but they have been found, along with arrow heads, in many parts of the County both north, south, east and west. They are especially to be found around Circleville and in Kingston Canyon where there are still Indian Caves , along highway 62.
There were three different expeditions through Piute County . The Old Spanish Trial became the established route of the Spanish slave trader, before 1830. These slave traders terrorized the Paiutes by stealing their children and taking them to California to be sold as slaves, sometimes they would take the women also. The second expedition was sent out in the fall of 1849 by Brigham Young, President of the L.D.S. Church . He selected fifty men to go into southern Utah and explore the country for settlement, with Parley P. Pratt as President, David Fullmer and W.W. Philips as councilmen and John Brown as Captain.
The third expedition was the party of Colonel John C. Fremont, a party without a guide. They left Westport (now Kansas City ) in late September 1853. From a point near the town of Green River , Utah , present Emery County , the explorers then proceeded southwestwardly through Wayne County , exploring carefully the valleys and streams of this noted wonderland. They crossed the mountains into Circle Valley, Piute County and thence proceeded southward to a point near the modem town of Panguitch, near Bear Valley, where they turned westward across the mountains into Parowan. They had a very rough time getting over the mountain. It was February 8, 1954 , when the 400 Mormon citizens of Parowan, welcomed and gave relief to Fremont 's party, who had been for forty-eight hours without food of any kind. From Parowan Fremont followed the Old Spanish Trail to Southern California .
Our Mining Heritage
Between 1868 and 1959 Piute County produced approximately 240,000 ounces of gold. The gold came mostly from the lode mines in the Tushar Range in the western part of the county. Placer gold was originally discovered in Piute County in Pine Gulch Creek south of Marysvale in 1868, but placer gold has not been significant in Piute County. Mining was once a booming industry in Piute County. Gold, Silver, and other valuable metals brought prospectors and miners to the area from the 1860s through the early 1900s. Some of the mining camps like Bullion, Webster, and Alunite became large communities in their heyday.