1881 - St. Thomas

St. Thomas was laid out in 1864, in obedience to the instructions of Brigham Young, and a Mormon colony was established there. It was then expected that commerce and emigration would move toward the navigable waters of the Colorado, and St. Thomas was intended as one of the various settlements that were to connect Salt Lake City with that river. Its colonists consisted of seventy-five families from northern Utah, under the leadership of Thomas Smith. The town is situated on a small eminence at the mouth of a mountain gorge near Muddy River, and its altitude is 800 feet. Surrounding it are dry mesas and sandstone hills. At the period of its greatest prosperity, in 1867, it contained 500 inhabitants. Its streets and irrigation ditches are shaded by 20,000 Cottonwood trees. Overton is seven miles northwest of St. Thomas, St. Joseph is eleven miles northwest, Junctionville is twenty-five miles southward, and thirty-five miles to the northward is Bunkerville. Fuel consists of mesquit and drift-wood, and is gathered on the bottom-lands of the Virgen and Muddy.

The cemetery is not inclosed. The prevalent diseases are ague and malarious complaints of a mild type. Only four families now live at St. Thomas, the original population having been withdrawn to Utah. A livery stable, blacksmith shop, butcher shop, store, post-office and stopping-place for travelers represent all existing business activity. The buildings are adobe. The water supply is obtained from Muddy River, which contains two thousand inches, and is claimed by the first settlers, by priority right. The nearest railroad station is Milford, Utah, 260 miles distant. Freight is teamed from that point at a cost of eighty dollars per ton. The principal supplies are obtained from Salt Lake City and St. George, Utah, and from Pioche, Nevada. An adobe school house, 12x14 feet in size, accommodates twenty-five or thirty pupils. The taxable property of the township is valued at $10,000; aggregate length of streets, five miles; agricultural operations in the vicinity are confined to farming and stock-raising on a small scale. The only murder on record is that of George Reed, a teamster, who was fatally shot with a needle gun, in 1872, by a man known by the sobriquet of "Green River." Nothing was done about it.

On August 9, 1872, a flood occurred which inflicted considerable damage.

Extracted, 2021 Aug 25 by Norma Hass, from History of Nevada, published in 1881, page 492.