With the coming of spring 1879, all the wives returned, and other settlers came too, among them Andrew and Hyrum Nelson and John C. Lemon, who soon decided to settle back on the higher ground, thus becoming Ferron's first settlers. Because of the many rocks, making a ditch and clearing the land was a tremendous task. But they persevered, finally preparing forty acres which they sowed to grain. What a tragedy when grasshoppers mowed it down when it was about a foot high.

Other calamities occurred: the following winter was severe and many of the livestock froze or starved to death. And hunger among the people was not unknown. When there was no flour or wheat, they subsisted on potatoes; they even tried prickly pears.

Space is much too limited to delineate all the struggles that these heroic people underwent in subduing the barren wastes of Castle Valley. Theirs was not an isolated story; settlers in many areas of Utah experienced the same conditions, and met them with the same heroism. Lillian Nelson, in her article on Ferron in the Daughters of Utah Pioneers' book, Castle Valley, has put it most aptly in her beginning paragraph: "Today, Ferron with its modern homes, its lawns and tree-lined streets, is an oasis in the desert. Perhaps our pioneers had a vision of such a beautiful place; but this is doubtful. It is only necessary to travel a few miles in any direction to find the kind of country that greeted the first comers."

Bibliography: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, An Enduring Legacy, - Vol. I-XII (12). Salt Lake City, UT: Utah Printing Company, 1978.