Pipe Springs National Monument

Leaving Page, I had 2 days before needing to arrive at the next gathering at Echo Bay, Lake Mead, NV. So on the way I stopped for a visit at Pipe Springs National Monument. Pipe Springs was settled by the Indians long before the white man arrived. As a natural source of water in the desert, it was of course a place where people would make their homes. But the mormons created a settlement there in the 1860s. They built their main building over top of the spring and they called in Winsor Castle. It was a tithing ranch. Mormans in St. George would tithe cattle and labor to build the ranch, seeds for the gardens, and Winsor Castle would raise the cattle, milk the cattle, make butter and cheese, raise food from the garden, then send most of it back to St. George to feed the laborers building the temple. It was also the first telegraph station built in Utah. They would train young girls, some as young as 16, to man the telegraph station. But by the late 1800s they had overgrazed the land and the ranch was let go.

Here is a picture of Winsor Castle today.

Here is a picture of Winsor Castle in the 1870s.