Huntington is a town in northwestern Emery County near the mouth of a long canyon that cuts diagonally into the Wasatch Plateau. Huntington Creek was probably named for William, Oliver, and Dimick Huntington, brothers who led exploring parties into the region during the 1850s. The first settlers of European extraction in the area were four stockmen, Leander Lemmon, James McHadden, Bill Gentry, and Alfred Starr, who brought their herds to Huntington Creek in 1875. Of this group, only Lemmon became a permanent resident.

In the fall of 1877, in response to the same "call" from the LDS Church that brought settlers to the other creeks in Castle Valley, a small group from Fairview, Sanpete County, under the leadership of Elias Cox, established a dugout colony on the banks of Huntington Creek and began digging irrigation canals. The colony grew from 126 in 1880 to 738 in 1890 and 1,293 in 1910. A majority of the early settlers came from Sanpete Valley, which by the late 1870s had outgrown its irrigable land, and many belonged to three or four interrelated kinship groups, making for an abundance of cousins in the community.