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Show . ' . ' ' . " . . " -. , ' . ' s ' ' v , ' ',' ' '...,, . . 1 - . "':-- rH - v. I" f ' ' ""' '" ;Ki- n "it '"' , ' fc L:r -".rSS3r -I-'l Histoiry Of Iron County Brigham Young organized an expedition ex-pedition to explore the area which is now southern Utah. They were to locate suitable lands for settlement, inventory natural resources and generally determine what the territory terri-tory had to offer. Among their findings find-ings was a deposit of iron ore west of what is now Cedar City. On January 13, 1851 George A. Smith, with a party of 30 to 35 families, fam-ilies, located the town of Parowan. This community became the county seat of Iron County and was established estab-lished to provide agriculture products pro-ducts and provisions for those to be employed at the Cedar Iron Works. Cedar City was originally known as Coal Creek because the creek nearby passed through coal beds. It was finally named Cedar City, however, because of the abundance of cedar (Juniper) trees in the vicinity. It was settled in the au-cumn au-cumn of 1851 by 35 of Parowan's English, Scotch and Welsh emigrants emi-grants who were skilled in the mining min-ing and smelting of ores. As settlers opened other sections to agriculture, agricul-ture, small farming communities were established. Coal and Iron deposits were opened open-ed in close proximity to each other and 2,500 pounds of iron were produced pro-duced during the first year of development. de-velopment. This was the first iron refined west of the Mississippi River. Riv-er. At that time metal products were very scarce and high priced. But lack of economical transportation transporta-tion to large markets and insufficient insuffi-cient technical know-how eventually eventual-ly doomed early smelting efforts to failure. The settlers turned to other oth-er occupations such as stock raising, rais-ing, dairying and farming which 1 proved to be profitable and contributed con-tributed greatly to growth and stability sta-bility of the fc i-ea. College of Southern Utah was established es-tablished in Cedar City in 1897. A new era for Iron County began in 1923 when the Union Pacific Railroad Rail-road ran a branch line from Lund to Cedar City. As a result of this development, agriculture and livestock live-stock activity increased and tourist travel and Iron ore moved forward as major industries. Ore mining has increased in importance since World War II when the Geneva Steel Plant was constructed at Pro-vo, Pro-vo, Utah. Aerial View of Cedar City |