St. George Historical Walking Tour

The Layout of St. George

St. George was born out of what was the “cotton mission” where Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder-day Saints, realized that the looming American Civil War would create a shortage of both cotton and silk. In December 1861, he called 309 families to settle southwest Utah to develop farms for growing cotton, trees for silkworm production and grapes for winemaking.

When the pioneers from northern Utah arrived, they laid out St. George using the “Plat of Zion” which was a common way of laying out other towns in Utah. Residential lots were clustered in the town center and lots were randomly given to settlers that picked out numbers from a hat. As settlers began building homes on their new lots, they needed to follow Young’s request that they be built close to the street in order to facilitate larger backyards where large vegetable gardens could be planted. The new town was very remote and it needed to be as self-sufficient as possible, including the ability to produce as much food as possible.

The blocks in the historic heart of St. George are 528 feet square, with an area of 6.4 acres, and with major streets being 90 feet wide. Each block was originally divided into eight lots. There’s an animated map that shows the city’s tract layout on “The Beginnings of St. George, Utah and its Historic Pioneer Courthouse” video.

Along with the gardens and orchards planted in their backyards, the settlers also had fields that were held in common. These fields consisted of pastures where domesticated animals could graze, pens and corrals for those animals, and barns and granaries, all for managing the livestock. None of these pastures or structures exist today.

Homes were built beginning in 1862 but none of the older homes exist today. The oldest building that is still standing is the Gardener’s Club Hall that sits in Ancestor Square. It was built in 1867 and is one of the stops along the residential walking tour. Most of the buildings you see today were built in the 1870s and 80s as St. George continued growing. One of the key homes built during that time was the winter home of Brigham Young, which is nicely preserved. It includes interior furnishings from that period that you can see on tours that are offered there. Many of the commercial buildings you see today were built after 1900. It is also visited in the residential walking tour.

About the Pioneer Courthouse

St. George became the seat of Washington County in 1863. By then, more and more people were heading south and populating the regions of southern Utah and Nevada, as well as northern Arizona, with very little representation of the law. It became apparent that government offices and a courthouse needed to be built to bring order into what was quite literally the “wild west”.

Construction of the courthouse began in 1866 and was completed in 1870. It has a full basement that served as the county’s jail for 10 years. The first floor housed government offices and the second floor was the courtroom that also served as the city’s community center.

Today, the courthouse serves as a museum and is still used as a community center that holds regular presentations on various topics. All three floors of the courthouse have displays from St. George’s past, along with many historic pictures. For a virtual walkthrough, watch the courthouse video mentioned earlier.