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Show Sugar House Sermonettes by E. Cecil McGavin This is the twenty-second in a series of articles on the early day history of Sugar House. The series Is presented nnder the sponsorship of Sugar House Camp, Sons of Utah Pioneers. While the pioneers were experimenting ex-perimenting with the problem of refining beet sugar, there was much excitement in Provo about "manna-sugar," as it was called at the time. In the autumn au-tumn of 1855, the cotton wood trees near Utah lake seemed to be the harbingers of "sweet"' news. There appeared appear-ed on their leaves a white saccharine sac-charine substance, which the . pioneers called "honey dew," or "manna-sugar." At a time when sugar was selling at $1 a pound, the settlers set-tlers in Provo looked to the cottonwoods as a source of manna from heaven. Many families went into the river bottoms and established temporary tem-porary camps for the collection collec-tion of nectar and the manufacture manu-facture of sugar. Limbs and branches were carefully cut from the trees. and then submerged in barrels of water. After the nectar was washed from the leaves, the solution was poured into large kettles and boiled until much of the water was released in steam. The remaining product was a sweet, brown substance. In a few days they obtained about 4000 pounds of "manna-sugar." "manna-sugar." One tenth of the crop was taken to the tithing office in Salt Lake, most of which was distributed among the workmen work-men on Temple Block. A note of thanks for the gift was published in "The Deseret News," with the hope that its manufacture might be successful. success-ful. It was so seldom that the nectar appeared in large quantities quan-tities that it was never a reliable re-liable or profitable source of sugar. |
