This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Sometimes I can't help thinking about Murray, once the migratory home site of the Paiute, Shoshone and other native peoples, which evolved into a Mormon hamlet formerly known as South Cottonwood. Settled primarily by Latter-day Saints from Mississippi, it is rife with history.

In the spring of 1848, pioneer residents Nathan Tanner and John Bills dug irrigation ditches ­ still in service today — designed to convert grasslands into fields of harvest, according to Faces of Murray, a 2003 centennial edition edited by Michael S. Pemberton and Mary Ann Kirk.

The African-American slave Green Flake, owned by James Madison Flake, was another recruit to the settlement. Loaned to work as a teamster during Brigham Young's 1847 westward trek, the 19-year-old also cleared trails with Orson Pratt's advance party. Once in South Cottonwood, he moved onto the land and built his owner's home.

By October 1849, the slave owner, his family and the Mississippi Company completed their journey and the agricultural borough began to take shape. His widow later gifted Green Flake to the LDS Church as a tithing offering. After two years, Green was granted freedom and given land in nearby Union.

During the next decade, the settlement's hub moved westward toward State Street. Its population — and fame — grew.

Utah folklore calls Simpson David Huffacker the "Johnny Appleseed" of Cottonwood. Carrying a pocketful of seeds across the plains in 1847, he may have developed the area's first apple orchard on his 240-acre farm.

James Winchester ran cattle, cultivated land and was among the territory's first to hold a homestead patent. Winchester's animal husbandry was legendary. His wife, Elisabeth, raising 10 children, never hesitated to hitch horse to buggy and visit the ill.

By 1860, the Pony Express opened Station No. 9 near South State Street, where the Overland Telegraph system was nearing completion.

Meantime, the Atwood brothers, resurrecting their brick trade from Philadelphia, fired up their kilns. Murray's first brick home and four subsequent smelters were constructed with their bricks.

On the home front, Lucy Bullock took care of her family, farmed the land and was a midwife to many. In a letter to her sister-in-law in Scotland, Janet (Brown) McMillan wrote, "If I don't make soap, I don't get any to wash with. If I don't make candles, we get no light."

Dugouts were in demand. Reuben Miller's family lived in an abandoned one. But his threshing machine, credited with bringing alfalfa into the area, was a steppingstone. Miller built an equipment business offering mowers, reapers and horse rakes. He opened a freight company. In 1862, he helped draft the Constitution of the State of Deseret.

Swiss-born Christian and Magdalena Berger left a comfortable home in Bern to live in a dugout for two years before acquiring more property for their children. (Later, one son, Gottlieb, would be elected mayor and see Murray through the Great Depression.)

When ore was discovered in Park City and Little Cottonwood Canyon in 1869, agriculture gave way to industry. In 1870, the Woodhill Brothers' smelter opened, producing the state's first silver bars.

By 1872, Germania Separating and Refining Work was operating on land purchased from Berger, who built 20 unpainted, unplumbed two-room houses and a recreation hall for smelter workers in nearby "Bergertown."

In 1899, the American Smelting and Refining Co. bought Germania and other such smelters. In 1902, the Murray smelter opened and sparked the city's economy, efficiency and image.

Erekson's General Merchandise, Gillen Bros. Livery and Feed, Gilbert's General Store, Utah Whip and Martin's Emporium were busy exchanges. Milk dairies and taverns flourished.

Murray's cultural and religious communities blossomed with Scandinavian, Yugoslavian, Italian, Japanese and Greek laborers, farmers, families, suffragists and liberals. In 1903, the city incorporated.

Oral historian Eileen Hallet Stone may be reached at ehswriter@aol.com.