Jacob Hamblin started a ranch and built a house for his family in 1856 overlooking Mountain Meadow soon after the building of the 1855 Leach Cutoff of the Mormon Road, a wagon road that passed from Mountain Meadow to Pinto, through Leach Canyon to Cedar City was built nearby.

These settlers sold food and supplies to drovers of herds using the meadow, and immigrants, and teamsters passing along the wagon road.

At the time of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, the seventeen children who survived, were brought to the town and were cared for there before they were returned to their relatives in Arkansas.

In 1869, Jacob Hamblin received a call from Brigham Young to establish an Indian mission at Fort Kanab and left with his family.

Over the decades since 1847 when the wagon road was established, the 16 mile long, lush spring fed meadow Fremont described was overgrazed by the passing herds, pack and wagon teams, causing increasing floods and consequent erosion, that also lowered the water table and dried up the springs that watered the meadow.