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Show Early Days in Milford This is the first of a series of articles describing the Early Days of Milford. Mrs. Harvey A. Dean, a member of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, who has spent countless hours compiling for that organization a history of Milford and of the various pioneer families, fam-ilies, has made available to The News a copy of her records, and each week, until the entire en-tire history has been published, a portion of it will appear. The News wishes to thank Mrs. Dean, the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, and other contributors, for making this material available to our readers. When you compare life in Milford Mil-ford today with the description given by some of its oldest residents, resi-dents, we are filled with wonder at the development that has taken place here in the life's span of these individuals. John W. Myers, now 86 years of age, who for many years was a freighter through Southern Utah and Eastern Nevada, remembers how this section of the country looked, he says, "before the town of Milford was ever even thought of." He remembers that this townsite looked like a barren wasteland, where nothing grew but sagebrush and greasewood. Through the strip of meadow grassland to the ast of Milford there once flowed the Beaver River, but in those days the meadow grass grew tall and thick and from the time he was 9 years old until he was 13, he and his brother came from Minersville to Yellow Banks, two miles north of Milford, where they cut wild hay with a scythe and hauled it back to Minersville with an ox team. The mining industry was the chief reason for the settlement of Milford. The Horn Silver mine of Frisco contributed to most of the building-up of Milford. Others that contributed materially to the industry of the early days of this community were the Moscow, the Hickory, Harrington-Hickory, Red Warrior and Hoosier Boy. The Lincoln, Cave and Creole mines of the East range helped. The Pioche nd Dftlamor mining districts of Nevada contributed a great deal, shipping their ores and receiving their supplies through Milford. When news spread of the railroad rail-road being built to Milford, more settlers came. Good grazing land brought cattle and sheep owners to Milford and vicinity. HOW MILFORD WAS NAMED Freighters bringing ore from the Lincoln, Cave and Creole mines in the East range of mountains had to ford the Beaver river to reach the mill. One ford was at Ilorse-ihoe Ilorse-ihoe Bend, two miles south of town near the present Bill Baker ranch, and the other was cast of Yellow Banks, about two miles north of town. Freighters traveling travel-ing laboriously with their heavy wagonloads of ore drawn by oxen or mules, day after day in dust to tho hubs, through scorching desert heat, in rain or snow, often chilled to the bone by the icy winds, forded ford-ed the river to reach the mill. "The mill ford" gradually wus shortened to "Milford," and when the settlement became a community, communi-ty, it was known as Milford. (Next week Milford's "charter group," the first families to settle here.) |