The Pleasant Valley War was a feud between two ranching families on the Arizona frontier: The Grahams and the Tewksburys. About three decades before Arizona became a U.S. state, Gila County–and the rest of the territory–was being overrun by American cowboys. They had their own vendettas, loyalties, and codes for living. In 1882 Samuel Graham, his wife Jane, and their five children were invited to Pleasant Valley by their friend Edwin Tewksbury. The Grahams were Irish immigrants who lived in Oklahoma before they ventured west to try ranching. The head of the Tewksbury family, James, had been a miner in San Francisco before establishing a settlement in Arizona with his family. He got married and he and his wife also had five children. The first signs of bad blood between the families began to show about two years later.  There were several incidents that have been claimed as the catalyst for the war, but each of them stemmed from organized theft–which had been rampant in the area long before cattle had. In the early days, when the Grahams and Tewksburys were on friendly terms, they shared a common enemy: the Stinsons. It was primarily the Tewksburys who they had it out for, and the Grahams made the first crack in the glass when they entered a shady contract with the Stinsons. Arrangements were made for the Grahams to be paid in cattle in exchange for spreading false claims about the Tewksburys. The feud escalated through acts of revenge until nobody in the territory was safe to claim neutrality. Baseless accusations turned to gunfights, cold-blooded murder, and organized theft.  In an essentially lawless land with little order, few natural resources, and no shortage of desperation, it was not uncommon for ranchers to wake up and find that their cattle had been stolen. As the population grew Pleasant Valley became increasingly treacherous and unwelcoming. G.W. Shute, the District Attorney of Gila County, warned, “Strangers entering the Pleasant Valley disappeared completely. Horse thieves infested the whole of the country. A cattleman or farmer, when he turned his horses upon the range, never knew whether or not he would see them again.” In one case, the Daggs brothers–who were in cahoots with the Grahams–drove a herd of sheep, belonging to the Tewksburys, off a cliff.  The Grahams instigated and perpetrated so many of these heinous acts that they were labeled “thieves” and untrustworthy by the Tewksburys, but this didn’t stop them from gaining some powerful allies. James Houck, deputy sheriff of a nearby county, as well as many popular cattle suppliers of the territory sided with the Graham family. The Tewksbury sons, who were half-Native American, were called a variety of racist slurs by their enemies. At one point there was a fifty-dollar reward offered to anyone who would bring in a “Tewksbury Scalp.” There would be no peace or goodwill to end the war. One of the last and most brutal events of this fateful vendetta took place on Tewksbury Ranch in 1887. The Grahams and some of their associates murdered John Tewkbsury and one of his sons. Their bodies were guarded outside by their killers, so that their bodies would be mutilated before a proper burial. Of this twisted act, Jim Tewksbury stated, “No damned man can kill a brother of mine and stand guard over him for the hogs to eat him, and live within a mile and a half of me.” By the time it was all over, every member of the Graham family and their faction had been killed.

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The storied explorer John C. Fremont and his traveling companions initially documented their foray onto the Great Salt Lake with incredible optimism. While paddling arduously in their small rubber craft in 1843, they observed that, “Several large islands raised their high rocky heads out of the waves; but whether or not they were timbered, was still left to our imagination…”. When they explored one of the aforementioned “high rocky heads,”  they found  an island populated with sagebrush, bunch grass, and a surprising lack of fresh water. After a day or two, Fremont dubbed his discovery “Disappointment Island.” While surveying the Great Salt Lake for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1850, Captain Howard Stansbury, perhaps to Fremont’s chagrin, changed the name of the formerly disappointing island to Fremont Island. Stansbury noted that the plentiful bunch grass and brackish water would be perfect for livestock. In 1859, Daniel and Henry Miller demonstrated their agreement by moving flocks of sheep and some cattle to the island, which the locals then recognized as “Miller Island.” Seymour Miller, the grandson of Daniel and Henry, recorded some of his experiences as a de facto ranch hand for the family ranching business on Fremont Island. They kept 2,000 sheep on the island and ferried themselves and their stock back and forth on the Lady of the Lake, a boat designed by Jacob Miller, Seymour’s cousin. Keeping the sheep on a relatively small island (4.60 sq. mi.) led the Millers to conclude that they did not need a full-time herder on the island. Instead, they let the sheep run wild for most of the year, confident in the confines of the island. The sheep quickly went feral and became “wild as a deer.” This provided the Millers with some market advantage because “The meat of this flock tasted more like venison than mutton and would always bring a fancy price on the market when ordinary mutton could hardly be sold.” Unfortunately, during shearing and lambing seasons, these wild qualities caused numerous problems for the island herders. They would sometimes go a full day or two during round ups without successfully driving a single sheep into the shearing pens. During one especially eventful drive, Seymour and his companions cornered some sheep on a peninsular part of the island and “Rather than be caught, several of them took off into the lake. The last I saw of them they were still going.” Unfortunately for the Millers, their ranching operation did not last past 1885, when local lawyer Uriah Wenner took an interest in living on the island and began legal procedures to oust them and their flocks. The Millers were forced to move their herds to the mainland, where they continually lost woolies due to the sheep’s feral nature that befuddled conventional herders. In his memoir, Seymour concluded that “we never got a dollar out of them.” After Wenner and his wife died, possession of the island changed hands without remarkable business or improvement until 2003. For a few years, Fremont Island underwent a small stint as a hunting ground for exotic livestock and then changed ownership until it landed in the hands of the State of Utah.

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In the beginning of the 20th century, Utah became one of the largest domestic American producers of sugar through sugar beet farming. The industry extended into neighboring states as well. The workers who planted and harvested those beets were mainly migrant Mexican and Mexican-American laborers. Migrant Hispanic laborers were also heavily involved with sheep herding and harvesting onions, potatoes, tomatoes, apples, cherries, pears, raspberries, and apricots. They made the backbone of the agricultural and meat industries in the state then and today, Latino workers (mainly of Mexican descent) continue to be vital to these industries. The history of Hispanic migrant labor in Utah demonstrates both their importance and their vulnerability that has persisted since the start of the 1900s.

Mexican migrant workers became integral to the economy of Utah starting in the early 20th century with the sugar industry, where many of the workers were concentrated in Garland, Utah. In 1918, reports from the Salt Lake Tribune detailed conditions of workers such as lack of running water, stoves, and toilets. Hispanic families nonetheless invested in the community by assisting in the construction of schools in Garland. Additionally, the wives of Hispanic families often worked for families nearby, further contributing to the economy’s function. Many of these migrant workers eventually left due to the lack of economic mobility and low wages, although others at the time incorrectly surmised that the workers’ departure was due to an inability to assimilate their Mexican-Catholic culture into the anglo-Mormon communities.

Poor conditions and treatment was a trend for migrant workers throughout the state. Accordingly, workers did not highly regard Utah. In the 1950s, Utah began an intense effort to attract more migrant workers. At the same time, the state created strict systems that would require those migrant workers to return to their country when the harvest was over. Despite these efforts to draw more workers to the state, many migrant workers did not return to Utah for a second harvest in response to continually poor conditions including lack of education opportunities for their children, poor housing situations, and no health care services. During that same decade, the Mexican Consulate in Salt Lake City officially reported that violations of the housing codes, unfair wages, and labor abuses were being experienced by migrant workers throughout Utah. In 1957 the state created the “Annual Worker Plan” to oversee migrant labor in Utah and prevent bad treatment. New regulations by the state also lessened the number of children being employed in the fields, a practice that had been prevalent since the 1920s. Hispanic groups formed other programs on behalf of migrant laborers. In 1969, due to internal lobbying by Hispanics in Utah and nationwide labor movements, the Utah government started an official program called the Utah Migrant Council on behalf of migrant laborers of all races and ethnicities.

Despite these efforts, Utah continues to struggle with attracting enough migrant workers. In 1986 a research team found that disease and illness were most prevalent among migrant workers in Utah. They face low birth weight, high rates of infant mortality, tuberculosis, and measles. In 2010, the Utah Migrant and Seasonal Farm Worker Coalition estimated that workers entering the state earned an annual income of $7,500 per year. Migrant workers constitute the most vulnerable population within the state—the middle men between economic prosperity and economic disparity for Utah and who have little opportunity for educational, economic, or social advancements in the state.

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