“Walter and Martha Empey Hafen was the fourteenth family to move to Ivins, moving there on their wedding day January 20, 1928.”  Martha says this of her wedding day. “Walter and I were married in Grandma Empey’s home, by Bishop Vivian J Frei of Santa Clara.  That night we went up to Ivins.  We invited the entire crowd from St. George over for a chicken supper that night.  Right in the middle of the chicken supper, LaZell Stucki and June Gubler and a bunch from Santa Clara came.  They brought their guitar and June and the others sang.  When we went in to go to bed, our bed was full of table salt.”  

 

Martha states that “All the water we had, came down irrigation ditches and ran past houses.” “Everybody had to keep their cows in corrals until nearly nine every morning.  Everybody had to clean cow chips out of the ditch every morning.  Then they would run water down the ditch for an hour.  We dipped water from the ditch.  We put our drinking water in barrels and put gunny sacks around it.”  They did not have power in Ivins so they used kerosene lamps.  To keep food, “we had a wooden cooler with shelves and gunny sack around it.  We put a pan of water on top.  We put strips of overalls in the pan and water would drip down and keep the gunny sacks wet and cool.”  Walter and Martha had ten children, Jennie, Gerald, Alden, Ray, Eva, LeOra’, Lloyd, Merlyn, Dale, and Terry.  The first six were born in Ivins.

Exerts from "History of The Santa Clara Bench - Ivins Our Home Beneath The Red Mountain. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Emma Fife for graciously permitting us to utilize her invaluable book, expertise, and remarkable talents!