Leo and Tessie Reber were married in May 1918. They were the fourth family to move to Ivins in May 1922 with two daughters. There are quite a few journal entries from Leo and Tessie so most of this article will be in their words. Leo wrote, “The building of our home on the two lots was a very interesting and exciting experience. Money was very hard to come by, so it was necessary to do as much of the work as possible myself, which included hauling gravel from the creek bed at Santa Clara, rocks for the footings in the foundation from the lava bed east of town, making the adobes for the walls, lumber was hauled from Mt. Trumbull and Cedar City.  All of the hauling was done with a team of horses and wagon, which proved to be quite a long process, as the roads were through a very sandy formation part of the way, therefore, a limited amount was all that could be loaded and required a great deal of energy from the horses. Many times it was necessary to shovel the loose sand away from in front of the wheels, and help start the wagon by lifting forward on the spokes of the wheel. I used to feel extremely sorry for the horses, as they worked so hard to get through the sandy places, and I would get off and walk, to lighten the load. Well, it was a joyful day when we moved our belongings to the new town of Ivins. The first year proved encouraging, we were all humble and worked together. My greatest problem was that our forty-acres of farming land was at the end of the South canal. The soil was very sandy in places where this canal passed through, and of course the water picked it up and carried it down to the end of the ditch where our farm was located. Whenever my turn came to irrigate, it was necessary to have someone watch the ditch, and even then the water carried so much sand that it filled up the furrows.  The soil was quite productive, and at one time I harvested eighteen large loads of hay and then sixteen in the first and second crops, but from then on it dried up, and finally I abandoned the farming there and dropped the water stock without getting a cent for it as it was too expensive to pay taxes on and no one wanted it." Tessie wrote, "We really pioneered there, as there was nothing but sagebrush. No electricity and no running water. So we dipped our barrels from the ditch. Sometimes the cattle would get into it before we could get it dipped. Boy! We didn't have very good water! We lived this way for about eight years, then we got electricity and the water piped. We had no stores in Ivins. People borrowed the necessities of life from each other.  We bought the first refrigerator in Ivins, after we finally got electricity after all those years it was a miracle to have ice, jello, ice cream, and cold milk to drink.  

 

Our struggles were hard and we soon became discouraged. It seemed like everything we did didn't turn out. We didn't have enough water and everything hit a hardpan.  The roots couldn't grow down beneath the hard earth. We had trees that were bearing beautiful fruit and in a few years they died. We had a vineyard about half an acre of seedless and concord grapes, which were beautiful for two or three years and then, they died. The wind blew so hard at one time that it cut in and took a fourth of our roof off and blew it into the neighbor's lot, and the barn was blown down.  One Sunday we had been to Santa Clara for church and on our way home we met Clawson Frei coming on horse and he said, 'Boy, you've got some troubles!' 

 

And I said, 'What's the matter now!' He said, 'Part of your roof has fallen off.' I said, 'Oh, Clawson Frei, quit your lying.' He said, 'Do you wanna bet?' And sure enough, when we got home, what a mess! Leo had made the house of red adobes. The rain had rained down on the adobes and trickled red down the walls and on to our beautiful new rag carpet. Our lamp was on the dresser broken. The chimney was broken and mud was all over the floor. Little half-grown chickens were laying around in the yard, some of them dead and some unconscious. The leaves were stripped off our corn we had such beautiful corn patches and that was all stripped. So we packed up and stayed with Leo's mother that night. After we had lived there for eighteen and one-half years we decided to move back to Santa Clara."

Written by Cherise Ence Spencer   December 2022, Vol. 22 Issue 12  Ivins Newletter