Customer Reviews

A Trial Furnace : Southern Utah's Iron Mission (Studies in Latter-day Saint History)

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This is a first rate paperback history of the first anglo settlements in Iron County, Utah, covering the ten-year period following initial settlement from early 1851 through 1861. Impeccably researched and documented, this volume details the initial settlements that became Parowan and Cedar City. The core chapters detail the various attempts to establish an iron industry, including details of the furnaces built and the causes of the project's eventual demise. One chapter is devoted to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which is generally accurate given information available as of date of publication. (Unfortunately, date of publication is not given. (2001?)

The book has good maps and photographs to help the reader follow the story. Eleven appendixes provide valuable supplemental material, although Appendix 2 includes census data of questionable accuracy. e.g. The entire Ebenezer Brown family is listed, although only Ebenezer and his wife Phebe (spelled Phoebe) participated in the mission.

A complete bibliography and index are provided

After reading this book several years ago, I have turned to it a number of times to clarify information that seems to have been ignored until this book was published. For example, the incredible Phebe Draper Brown, who was in the middle of all Mormon history from Kirtland to Missouri, Nauvoo, Winter Quarters, the Mormon Battalion in winning the war with Mexico (which added the whole West to the United States), the discovery of Gold at Sutters Fort, Settling the Salt Lake Valley, and donating land to Build Draper Fort and church; she is now shown to have participated in the Iron Mission, an industrial effort refine iron ore in Southern Utah.

This book is well written and shows the kinds of efforts being made by the Mormon Pioneers to build an advanced civilization, which is what really made the newly acquired West a secure and vast addition to the United States.