by Carl E Hayden
Tribune Staff Writer
KANARRAVILLE, Iron County–How does little Kanarraville feel about having been tossed into the limelight through interest in 26 Californians discovered camping in nearby winter-bound Sprint Creek Canyon?
CALM AND COLLECTED.
“They say they were harried by overgrown California,” one of Kanarraville’s 250 residents, who prefers to remain anonymous, said. “They seem tobe doing nothing untoward, and are welcome to our quiet.”
ON U.S. HIGHWAY 91 about 14 miles south of Cedar City, Kanarraville has two small grocery stores and a cafe, spaced out by so much ground as to appear unsociable.
But it isn’t so. Kanarraville bids to be the friendliest village in Utah.
KANARRAVILLE ISN’T light-hearted because it hasn’t had troubles. It has had plenty.
After two false starts, the town was doing pretty well in 1865 when a wind-sand storm buried it. The storm was so severe caskets in the cemetery were exposed.
BILLY THOMPSON AND HIS family lived in a dugout, a small house built into the side of a hill. Neighbors saw that it was completely covered, and, rushing to the rescue, found the occupants had kep from smothering by pushing the metal stove pipe higher as the overlay of sand increased.
EVERYONE THOUGHT THE town would grow to the north, and a school was built on the northern edge; the town went south.
Navajo Indians raided the settlement in 1869, taking all except two horses and a span of hobbled mules.
THE TOWN BURNED in 1868, and the church in 1891.
Eight Kanarraville men died in the Castle Gate mine explosion in 1924.
ODDLY ENOUGH, ALL OF THE men Kanarraville has sent to war — 63 in World War II alone — only one, Elmo Platt, a Marine, lost his life.
Whether Kanarraville was named after Piute chief or after a species of willows found here remains in dispute. Some contend the chief’s name was not Kanarra but Kunnar.
SUN WORSHIPPERS, HIS tribesmen lived in coves between what are now Kanarraville and New Harmony. It is one of these coves that is being occupied by the Californians.
Kanarraville, fully incorporated, owns four pieces of real estate: The spring from which it gets part of its water; the cemetery, a dance hall and a skating rink.