From Genoa to the Carson Mission

From Genoa to the Carson Mission

    In August 1850, Amasa Lyman and 30 Mormon men passed through Carson Valley on their return to Salt Lake City from California and confirmed its desirability.       

    By 1851, John Reese from Salt Lake City had established a trading post in Carson Valley, about a mile away from the Abner Blackburn trading post. He and his partners quickly cleared an acre of ground and built a stockade around the plot. Inside the stockade, a 30-by-50-foot log hotel and store were built. They began planting crops to sell the following season. Within a year it was a full- fledged commercial operation that many emigrants mentioned in their journals as Mormon Station. Seventeen men worked for Reese, cutting timber, building log houses, a blacksmith shop, with fenced acreage for wheat, barley, corn, watermelons, and turnips (Davies, Mormon Gold).

    Establishing a full-fledged trading post attracted a number of people, both Mormon and non-Mormon alike. By 1851, the residents established a squatter’s government to maintain some regulation concerning the amount of land a resident could hold. A heated discussion about the boundary line of California and the Utah Territory arose in the new community. The non-Mormon residents maintained Carson Valley was in California and refused to send their taxes into Salt Lake. The Mormons, including Brigham Young, maintained the area belonged to the Utah Territory. By 1855, the Utah legislature passed an act creating Carson County. Brigham Young sent an impressive entourage to organize the county government seat.

    Orson Hyde, a probate judge, was sent to Carson Valley to be the spiritual leader of the community. He was also to fulfill the mandates of the Salt Lake legislature. Along with Orson Hyde, Governor Young sent Marshal Joseph L. Heywood and U.S. District Judge Styles. These astute men were assigned to meet with officials from the state of California and establish the proper boundary between the state of California and the Utah Territory.

To assure the county would remain in the Utah Territory, Governor Young made a major investment of human resources by sending 257 people to establish their homes in the Carson Valley. In the spring general conference of the church, Brigham Young called these families to establish a firm government over the region. Indeed, when Carson Valley held an election, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the “Mormon ticket” rather than what was called, “the Human Ticket.” Nine of the twelve offices established by the election were held by Mormons.

    At that point, one of the purposes of the new community was met, but there were other important reasons Brigham sent folks to settle a mission. He planned to establish a midway station between the Utah settlements and the Pacific coast. Carson Valley was to be a major outpost of Zion.

    Orson constructed a saw mill in Washoe Valley to prepare for the families coming from Salt Lake. He spent $10,000 on its construction including materials donated from members of the church in California. The mill would provide families with lumber for flooring, finish for their houses, and fence for their land. It later became the subject source for the famous “Orson Hyde Curse.”

    Hyde was unfaltering in his zeal to accomplish all of his given mandates. He conducted surveys and secured water, land, and timber rights for settlers moving into the area. He had a bridge built on the Carson River as well as a road cut into Carson Canyon. When the surveys showed Carson Valley was located inside the territory of Utah, Orson changed the name of Mormon Station to that of Genoa. The area reminded him of Genoa, Italy, Columbus’s birthplace. He established other communities in surrounding valleys. He mapped out Franktown in five-acre lots with the same intention of establishing the area as that of Salt Lake City, with broad streets. In a report given by Orson, he concluded, “This is a beautiful valley. . . . There are so many valleys in this vicinity rich and fertile sufficient to make a state or an empire” (Arrington, Mormons in Nevada). There was an enthusiastic feeling in these valleys—a feeling that the colony was going to be successful, both economically and politically.

    “On September 28, 1856, Orson Hyde held the first conference of the Church in Carson Valley. Sermons were delivered on such subjects as swearing, prayer, keeping away from grog shops and the respectful treatment of non-Mormons. Elder Hyde’s advice to the new settlers was as follows: ‘Labor hard, settle up, mind your own business, be slow of speech, and live your religion. Fear God and work righteousness.’ (Arrington, Mormons in Nevada).

    At the time of the annual stake conference, the Mormon membership was reported to be as follows:

Carson Valley Branch, 116 members, of whom 5 were high priests and 31 seventies and elders:

Washoe Branch, 111 members, of whom 12 were high priests and 10 were seventies and elders:

Eagle Valley Branch, 60 members, of whom 4 were high priests and 7 seventies and elders. (Arrington, Mormons in Nevada)

As presiding elder of the local church, Orson organized the church members into a stake. “William Price was president; Chester Loveland, president of the high council, and Richard Bentley, stake bishop. Home teachers were appointed for each of these branches, as well as the full quota of twelve men for the stake high council” (Hatch, “History of Christopher Layton,”)

The members included some prominent men in Utah history. William Jennings, a butcher and meat dealer whose entrepreneurial spirit is evidenced by the fact that he later became Utah’s first millionaire and was a principal organizer of Z.C.M.I.; Chester Loveland, who later became the first mayor of Brigham City; Christopher Layton, founder of Layton, Utah and of Layton, Arizona; Meltier Hatch, a prominent colonizer in southern Utah and eastern Nevada and whom Hatch, Utah is named after; and Abraham Hunsaker, a prime colonizer in northern Utah, who was one of the best stockmen in the territory. Many of the men were also veterans of the Mormon Battalion.” (Arrington, Mormons in Nevada) 

    When the saints from Salt Lake arrived, they dissembled to spread out among the small settlements in Eagle Valley (Carson City), Washoe Valley, Jack and Pleasant Valleys, and Franktown.

    Currently, several Carson Mission immigrants of 1854, are remembered by their posterity who live within the same broad scope encompassed by the old Carson Mission .