Iron Mission
Utah is rich in various ores, including coal, copper, molybdenum, iron ore, uranium, and zinc, as well as critical minerals like beryllium and indium.
With the expense of shipping iron from the eastern United States, iron ore and coal were pertinent to the day-to-day self-reliance President and Governor Brigham Young was working toward for the early settlers in Utah Territory. Consequently, Young called about 120 frontiersmen and skilled iron manufacturing tradesmen (primarily from Great Britain) to settle the area around Coal Creek (now called Cedar City) in what became Iron County, Utah. The settlement called Parowan was founded in January 1851 by a group led by George A. Smith. They built a small fort and began farming to support themselves during the iron-manufacturing attempt of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The objective of the Iron Mission was to make crude iron, also known as "pig iron" and then make useful objects from it.
The efforts to mine coal in the canyons east of Cedar City and iron ore in the mountains west of the town inspired the early Iron Mission that proved marginally successful. “The basic ingredients for the blast furnace were present—abundant iron ore, fuel, water, limestone, and sand.”[1] However, there were also a number of major reasons that probably contributed strongly to the project's failure.
- The furnace and allied structures were too close to the banks of Coal Creek. The soil was too spongy to adequately support the weight of the works. Coal Creek flooded frequently, washing away diversion dams and/or inundating the entire operation, which was also too far from the ore body. The fire clay and sandstone used in the furnace lining, bosch, and hearth spauled, bubbled, and liquefied at temperatures lower than required in the smelting process. The power needed for furnace blast and related equipment came from a water wheel, with water supplied by mill races running directly from the stream bed. The water level in the creek fluctuated seasonably and with unpredictable flash floods. A steam engine acquired from Salt Lake City arrived too late to prove its value. Attempts to use both charcoal and coke (made from unsuitable coal), and the occasional use of "raw" coal and wood in the furnace, indicate that the riddle of inadequate and inappropriate fuel was difficult to solve. . . .
- Weather in the area also was unpredictably bad and not conducive to sustained furnace operation. Snow, ice, drought, and grasshoppers had a deleterious effect. Extreme isolation, high marketing costs, and lack of personal and company supplies also impacted the problem. On 8 October 1858 Brigham Young advised Isaac C. Haight, the director of the Deseret Iron Company, to shut the operation down.
Other complications involved the necessary labor, which was hampered by the Utah War, the Mountain Meadows massacre, dissagreements with the Utah Native Americans, pressure from the United States government over polygamy, and the Panic of 1873.
Between 1868 and 1876, the Deseret Iron Company, Union Ironworks, and Great Western Iron and Manufacturing Company made a second attempt and built coke ovens, blast furnaces, and operational buildings for iron manufacturing.
A second furnace was built in 1868 in Old Irontown (Little Pinto) using iron ore deposits found at the southwestern base of Iron Mountain. By 1874, about 400 pounds (180 kg) of "pig iron" was produced, when operations ceased, and then abandoned 10 years later. The colony lasted until 1876.
Old Iron Town, a historic site, still has a fine beehive coking oven among its ruins. The west end of the county also has some historic and current precious metal mining.
