Utah's Dixie facts for kids
Dixie is a nickname for the populated, lower-elevation area of south-central Washington County, the southwest corner of the State of Utah. The area lies in the northeastern Mojave Desert, south of Black Ridge and west of the Hurricane Cliffs. Its winter climate is significantly more mild than the rest of Utah.
Originally settled by Southern Paiutes, the area became part of the United States after the Mexican–American War. In 1854, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints moved to the area to establish Brigham Young's intended Indian mission in the region. After arrival, the settlers began growing cotton and other temperate cash crops in and around Santa Clara, Utah. By 1860, the Paiute population had declined due to disease from and displacement by the new settlers.
Because of the warmer climate, the importance of cotton, and the origin of some early settlers, the area was nicknamed "Dixie,” referencing Dixie, the nickname for the southern states of United States that seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, which lost the American Civil War.
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The Cotton Mission
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 be self-sufficient, it was not. He criticized his fellow Mormon 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...."
Origin
"[The] first groups of settlers [arriving in Spring 1857] – the Adair and Covington Companies – were people from 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 Saints, was a former slave overseer and owned 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 Washington Branch of the LDS Church. .....
Early challenges
"[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.
End of the Cotton Mission
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.
The name "Dixie"
Local residents and others in Utah used “Dixie" to refer to the area. In 1915, St. George Stake Academy officially became Dixie State College. Shortly thereafter, "Dixie" was painted on Sugarloaf, the red rock hill above St. George. “Dixie Rock,” as it became known, previously had been painted with the year of the graduating class and a "D.”
The wider option of Dixie occurred during a period of nostalgic Civil War revisionism, including the Lost Cause of the Confederacy myth. Dixie and the South became idealized "by the many attentions of northern artists to southern mythology, the North's fascination with aristocracy and lost causes, the national appeal of the agrarian myth, and the South's personification of that ideal, to say nothing of the North's persistent use of the South in the manipulation of her own racial mythology."
Dozens of institutions and businesses in the area adopted and used the name "Dixie".
20th century links to the Confederacy at Dixie State College
Links between Utah's Dixie and the Confederacy re-emerged in 1952, when "Dixie Junior College sports teams adopted 'Rebel' as their nickname and the school made its mascot a Confederate soldier in 1956. By 1960, the Confederate flag was flown as a school symbol." These changes were contemporaneous with the University of Nevada Las Vegas’s (UNLV) adoption of the "Rebel" name and mascot, "a cartoon wolf with a Confederate uniform.” They also occurred during the emerging civil rights era, between President Truman's integration of the Armed Services in 1948 and Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
On a "parade float called 'Gone With the Plow', dating from the late 1960s, a man with his skin painted black pushe[d] a plow while a white student, formally dressed with a top hat, [held] what appear to be reins or a whip".
John Jones and Dannelle Larsen-Rife wrote on behalf of the Southern Utah Anti-Discrimination Coalition, listing many Confederacy-related activities at Dixie State College, including “black-face minstrel shows (through October 2012), mock slave auctions (through the early 1990s), Confederate flags (continuing to the present), and numerous other associations to the Confederacy prevalent on this campus (The "Rebel" mascot as recently as 2008, True Rebel Night is ongoing; The Dixie Confederate Yearbook into the 1990s)."
The Salt Lake Tribune recounted photos in Dixie College yearbooks, called The Confederate. "[A]s late as the early 1990s [w]hite students sing in black face, dress as Confederate soldiers, stage slave auctions and affectionately display the Confederate battle standard." The local newspaper The Spectrum reviewed and published excerpts from local newspapers and Dixie College publications that contained Confederate related activities, photographs, and references.
In March 1987 and 1988, the community held a festival called a Secession, presided over by Governor Norman Bangerter in 1987 and Wilford Brimley, the actor and Utah native, in 1988. Events included a grand Southern-style ball presided over by a costumed Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, who also participated in many publicity photos. A 40-foot Confederate flag was hung over St. George Boulevard. Smaller Confederate flags were displayed widely by city, county and school officials in promotional photographs. The Washington County News masthead included the Confederate flag and stated it was published in “St. George, Confederate State of Dixie".
Today
St. George, founded in 1861 when Brigham Young selected 300 families to take over that area and grow cotton, grapes, and other crops, is the largest community in the area. Other communities in Washington County include Ivins, Santa Clara, Hurricane, LaVerkin, and Toquerville. The population is nearly 180,000 in the metropolitan area.
“Dixie” is almost exclusively used to refer to Washington County. However, it sometimes is used to refer to a larger area, including nearby Kane and Iron counties, or even broader southern Utah. The term Payson-Dixon Line implies that everything south of Payson and the Wasatch Front generally is "Dixie."
