By May Hunter, For Iron County Today
In 1897, the Utah State Legislature selected Cedar City to be home to a new normal school, where teachers were trained for the southern part of the state. Residents celebrated, and classes began in the city’s social hall that fall.
Utah’s Attorney General was not happy about the Legislature’s decision, citing the inadequate size of the building being used for the normal school. He felt the school was unfit and told the Cedar City community they would have to build a sizable building by the end of summer—or the school would be moved elsewhere. This was announced just after Christmas, and city leaders knew they needed a large amount of lumber immediately if they had any chance of meeting the deadline.
With no building materials on hand, the city urgently organized a winter expedition to get timber from the Heber C. Jensen Sawmill on Cedar Mountain.
This is an incredible story of determined men and women sacrificing and risking everything to establish the Branch Normal School (now Southern Utah University). In 1898, they faced the heroic task of constructing the state-required, three-story brick building.
The people of Cedar City began this project in the depths of a record-cold, snowy winter, with only eight months to complete the building—or lose the school. Their commitment to education and to their community is one of the most inspiring stories in the founding of any institution of higher education.
Jensen Sawmill was located east of Brian Head and Cedar Breaks National Monument. On January 5, 1898, a group of men—the first of many townspeople—set out to face the bitter mountain winter. They left Cedar City for the sawmill, 35 miles away (near present-day Brian Head). Their mission was to cut the logs needed to build the new school.
That expedition, and those that followed, worked in temperatures as low as 40 degrees below zero. To protect their legs from the biting winds, they tied gunny sacks around their waists and legs. The first group, caught in a record snowstorm, attempted to return to Cedar City and had to wade through snowdrifts sometimes 15 feet high and 100 yards long.
An old sorrel horse is credited with saving the expedition—walking into the drifts, pushing and straining against the snow, throwing himself into the banks again and again until they gave way. Then he would pause to rest, sitting on his haunches like a dog before getting up to continue.
The mountain workers were divided into teams: some cut logs, some sawed, some planed logs into lumber, and others hauled the lumber from the mill. It took two and a half days to get one load down from the mountaintop to Cedar City.
When heavy snow made it impossible to get food to the workers, they survived on dried peaches. From January through July, they kept at their labor.
When September 1898 arrived, the building was complete. It still stands today at the end of the Founders’ Walkway. Its interior has been remodeled many times, but the exterior walls remain original. The first building was literally torn from icy crags and shaped by the hands of more than 100 men and women.
The Cedar City community met its greatest test, and the University was given a heritage unmatched by any other educational institution in the United States. The preservation of the school was achieved by people who would never attend it—indeed, many never had the opportunity to attend any school at all.
They were hardy, rough-spoken, courageous men and women—the kind of people without whom the frontiers of the West could never have been conquered.
The University stands as an act of heroism and sacrifice for education, unique in American history.
The building of Old Main would not have been possible without the Jensen Sawmill, which planed and cut the logs into lumber suitable for the project.
Old Main, the University’s first building, stands as an inspirational legacy of fortitude, determination, and community triumph!
