The Mormons claimed
all of the water in the South Fork as well as three-fourths of it from
the North Fork, and they learned from lawyers that the Carlisles had
very little legal title to any of it. Since more water was available
on the South Fork, the men there raised an initial crop of wheat, oats,
and potatoes, and they experimented with both irrigation and dry-farming
agriculture. In the spring of 1888 the settlers returned and undertook
the construction of a town that was known as both North Montezuma and
Hammond until it took the name Monticello in honor of Thomas Jefferson's
estate.
To bolster this
new colony, Hammond called twenty additional men from Moab, Bluff, and
Mancos, Colorado. Together they fenced 320 acres, established crude
homes from wagon boxes and tents, and started the arduous task of hauling
wood from the mountains. Private homes and a meetinghouse arose from
the sagebrush flats, while the irrigation ditch, built by the newly
incorporated Blue Mountain Irrigation Company, snaked its way across
the flats to water the crops.
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