Pipe Spring is a series of three springs at the base of the Vermilion Cliffs. Although it is in a lonely corner of Arizona, it shares cultural and historic ties with the Mormon population of Southern Utah. The site is currently administered by the National Park Service as Pipe Spring National Monument.
Early Settlers
The Arizona Strip, the part of Arizona north of the Grand Canyon, was good for raising cattle and other livestock so the Mormons moved onto the land around Pipe Spring. The site was scouted for the Mormons by Jacob Hamblin and his brother, Gunlock Bill Hamblin in 1858. Their party allegedly gave the spring its name when Gunlock Bill shot out the bottom of a meerschaum pipe as a part of an informal marksmanship contest. Although the story sounds like legend, it was recorded as fact by some of the areas first settlers, including A.W. Ivins, who was raised in the area and later became a Mormon bishop.
James Bleak's Annals of the Southern Utah Mission shows that the first rancher at Pipe Spring was Dr. James Whitmore, a former apothecary. Whitmore and his brother in law, Robert McIntyre, purchased the land in 1863. By 1865, the industrious pair had cattle and sheep at the springs as well as grapevines and fruit trees, but their prosperity was short lived. In January 1866, they were killed by a party of Navajo raiders.
Winsor Castle
In 1870, after the Navajo were quiet again, the church took over the old Whitmore ranch and used it as a tithing ranch. In the Mormon West, people had little cash so they often fulfilled their tithing obligation by donating livestock to the church. The animals were kept on large ranches. The church appointed Anson Perry Winsor to manage the church's cattle at Pipe Spring.
Winsor family records, stored at the Brigham Young University Library, portray Winsor as the embodiment of the self-reliant frontiersman. Besides being an accomplished cattleman, Winsor oversaw the construction of a fort at Pipe Spring. The fort was comprised of two long stone buildings with wooden gates at either end enclosing the courtyard. The fort was called Winsor Castle, creating an unlikely homonym.
The Polygamous Underground
Although the fort never came under attack, it still served a purpose. In the 1880s, the Mormon practice of polygamy came to national consciousness and Federal marshals came to Utah to catch polygamists in the act. Isolated Pipe Spring was a wonderful place for polygamist husbands to hide their additional wives from Federal eyes. Though not simultaneously, at least ten polygamous wives lived at Pipe Spring, giving birth to nine children. Mormon families in the area, notably the Woolley family, whose journals and letters are stored at BYU, called the fort an "Adamless Eden."
Dee Woolley's journals describe a drought in the 1880s that, along with overgrazing, brought an end to large scale cattle ranching at Pipe Spring. In 1890, the church disavowed polygamy, ending the need for Winsor Castle to serve as a polygamist hideout. The ranch entered into a long period of decline.
The Park Service Era
In 1921, Winsor Castle's fortunes changed. Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, got stuck in the sand on the road between Zion and Grand Canyon National Parks. He and his party hitched to nearby Pipe Spring where they were taken in by Leonard Heaton, the young caretaker. Impressed by the historic fort, Mather and the Park Service purchased the site and appointed Heaton its first superintendent. Heaton recorded the story of Mather's first visit in the Pipe Spring archives.
Today, Pipe Spring is a small but busy National Monument where its past as a cattle ranch, frontier fort, and polygamist hideout is displayed for any who care to learn about it.
David McNeill - In 2003, Dave McNeill moved to Las Vegas, to begin his Masters work in American History and hopefully meet a showgirl. While at UNLV, Dave ...
