Family History in the Bighorns

The Dicksons have a long history in the Bighorn Basin.  

Here is some information I found online about the canal they helped build.

Under the Carey Act of 1894 states were encouraged to sell arable public land cheaply following reclamation. But private reclamation projects required capital, and some were aborted as investors lost faith. Unlike other privately-financed projects, the Sidon Canal was built without a large amount of capital. Emigrants were organized into the Big Horn Colonization Company, an irrigation cooperative which offered company shares in return for labor. Upon arriving in the Basin workers plunged into canal construction, excavating with horse-drawn plows and slip scrapers. Near this point work was blocked by a sandstone boulder known as “Prayer Rock.” According to legend, prayer and divine intervention caused the rock to split, allowing construction to continue and strengthening the emigrant faith in the canal project.

The 37-mile long canal was completed in less than two years. It still transports water from a headgate on the Shoshone River near the Big Horn-Park County line to a land segregation of approximately 20,000 acres. Its successful completion serves as an outstanding example of the cooperative effort and spirit of determination exhibited by Mormon pioneers in the American West.

And now, on to the autobiography of William Henderson Dickson.  Everything from here on is directly from the autobiography unless it's in parenthesis.  I also added the photos and information underneath them.  The photos are full sized so you can click on them and get a closer look.

Called to Colonize
In February of 1900, Apostle Abraham Woodruff came to have a talk with John Dickson about going to the Big Horn Basin to help colonize that part of the country. John said, “yes” he would go. His sons Willie (b.1879) and Henry (b.1881) were in school at this time. They were taking vocational training at the Agricultural College at Logan, Utah. Willie was taking a course in carpentry. The boys were very much surprised when they received a long letter from their father telling them about the intended move. He told them how the Church was sponsoring the whole movement, how we had a chance to get all the land we wanted, and all that was required was to put water on the land, that a colony of Latter Day Saints, under the direction of Apostle Woodruff, would be leaving in April to begin work on a 35 mile canal that would carry enough water to irrigate about 20,000 acres of land. There was an unlimited amount of free range with all the water and more than they could ever use in the Shoshone River. But what appealed so much to the boys was that some of the best hunting and fishing in the world was there.

On the 5th of April, John came with his wagon to take the boys home (from school). The next two weeks was a busy time getting ready to leave Richville. The farm had to be sold, which did not take long. It was a good place, and John offered it at a reasonable price. The first man who came to look at it bought it. On the 20th day of April, the Dickson family left the home where they had lived all their lives. It was not possible for John to go with the rest of the family, as he had to stay and finish settling the sale for the farm and collect for other things that he had sold.

The family went on to Ham's Fork with several other families. Here they were organized into companies, about 10 wagons to the company. The Dickson family was in the second company, with George H. Taggart as captain and John Simmons as chaplain.

The next morning the company left Ham's Fork and traveled about 10 miles and camped, as a storm of a rather severe nature had developed, making it very disagreeable to travel.

Death on the Trail

typical "Sheep Camp" from the turn of the century

The Original "RV"

interior of a restored sheep camp

Avilda Diena, a child of three years, had not been well for a day or two and now she suddenly because very much worse. Avilda had ridden in the sheep camp with her mother where she would be out of the wind and where they could have a fire to keep them warm. The child grew steadily worse until evening when she went into convulsions. About eleven o'clock that night, the little girl passed away while the wind was blowing the snow around the camp. Next morning there was more than a foot of snow on the ground, with drifts all around, some of them as much as four feet deep.

Now Avilda was in real trouble. What should she do out there in the prairie with the other children? Some of the folks said it would be best if she would return with the dead child while the other members of the family would continue on with the company, but Avilda said she would stay with the live ones and let Willie take the dead child back to Richville where he could meet John.

Willie arrived at Kemmerer about noon and went to the railroad depot with the dead child. When he went to buy tickets, he found that he would have to go through a lot of red tape, such as securing a doctor's certificate that she had not died of any contagious disease, who she was, and how she came to die out on the prairie. All this was new to Willie; he knew nothing about how to go about getting the information the railroad demanded. He was only a boy in a strange place and the train was due in half an hour.

He knew that he could not get tickets in time to catch that train. He went around behind the depot where he would be out of sight of anyone and asked the Lord to show him what he should do. Then he went back and sat down on a truck that was standing on the platform for quite a long time.

Then he thought he would walk up town and get something to eat. He'd had nothing since the day before. As he was walking up the street, he noticed a sign on one of the windows which read, “James C. Brown Attorney, Notary Public.” He went in and told Mr. Brown his story and asked him if there was anything he could do to help.

Mr. Brown said, “We will find a way to solve this thing.” Then, he asked Willie was he knew about the man who made the coffin. Mr. Brown said, “If you know how he makes his living it might help.” Then Willie remembered that Mr. Passey, the man who made the coffin, had said on the way that he was a coroner, but he didn't think when he left home that he would be working at his trade out there in the desert.

Mr. Brown said, “That is all we need.” He was able to write a statement that a corner had been in charge of the whole thing. Willie was able to take the train to Evanston where he met his father.

(Once Willie was re-united with the group, he was never called Willie again, either Will or Bill.)

Building the Canal

John Dickson was chosen to supervise about 30 men and teams. Will, Henry and Bartlett went to work with scrapers.

bronze model of a scraper with team

using the scraper

Work began each morning at 7:00. Then, one hour for dinner and for the horses to eat their grain then back to work till six. It was decided to pay a man and team four dollars a day for ten hours' work and a single hand two dollars for ten hours work. It was paid in canal stock. The canal stock was valued at $10/share and one share for an acre of land. John Dickson drew three dollars a day for his work as overseers, so the Dickson family was acquiring stock in the canal at the rate of nearly two acres a day. Judging by later standards, those were very low wages; but the canal stock was just as low. Perhaps no other canal of like dimension was ever built in the Bighorn Basic so cheaply.

When the summer was nearly over, no one knew just what land he was going to have as the land had not yet been surveyed and laid out in individual plots. There had been a crew of men working on it all summer and now the time had come to decide who got what piece of land. The description of each piece of land was put in a separate envelope. All those of 40 acres was put in one pile, those of 80 acres in another, and those of 160 in another. They were all placed on a table.

The names of all those who wanted land were called in alphabetical order. When a man's name was called, he stepped forward and drew an envelope from one of the piles and whatever piece of land he drew was his, if and when he had enough stock in the canal to cover it.

The summer was nearly gone and everyone was wondering what he would do when winter came. Very few had any money or anything else to carry them through. (Remember, they were only earning stock that would allow them to purchase land, not money for their work on the canal.) Brother Woodruff called a day of fasting and prayer. They asked the Lord to open the way so that they would be able to get what they would need.

That very day, without advance notice of any kind, Mr. Weeks, the head engineer of the Burlington Railroad came into camp and asked the people if they wold take a contract to built 20 miles of railroad for his company. Of course, that was just what they wanted, and a contract was soon drawn up and signed. The work on the canal was suspended in September and everyone went to work preparing to go to work on the railroad, or getting out timber with which to build houses.

Part of the contract the Mormons had taken on with the railroad was to build a long, deep cut through solid limestone up near Pryor Gap. They had nearly all the work finished except this cut. The railroad company was laying the rails at a rate of a mile a day. They were only about 20 miles away. The contract called for $100 for every day the rail company was help up. So, they sent for John Dickson to come with his men to help finish the cut before the rail crew got there. By working all the men that there was room to work, the cut was finished one day ahead of the rails. The contract for building the railroad was finished in August.

working on the canal

Most everybody in both Cowley and Byron spent the winter of 1901 and 1902 working on the canal. The Dicksons had the part of the canal along the sand hill south of Cowley. By spring the canal was near enough completion so that water was available for most of the land at both Cowley and Byron.