Utah's Dixie
Dixie is a nickname for the populated, lower-elevation area of south-central Washington County, the southwest corner of the State of Utah, bordering nearby Arizona to the south, and Nevada to the west.
Originally settled by Southern Paiutes, the area became part of the United States after the Mexican–American War, in the subsequent Mexican Cession of 1849 of lands in the old Southwest.
[1] After arrival, the settlers led by Jacob Hamblin in Santa Clara, began growing cotton and other temperate cash crops in and around the town.
[2][3] Because of the warmer climate, the importance of cotton crops grown in the region, and the Southern origin of some early settlers, the area was nicknamed Utah's "Dixie”.
He criticized his fellow Latter-day Saints as "quite negligent in raising cotton and flax.” His emphatic command was: "And let our brethren who have the means, bring on cotton and woolen machinery, that we may be enabled to manufacture our own goods, so fast as we shall be able to supply ourselves with the raw material...."[4] "[The] first groups of settlers [arriving in Spring 1857] – the Adair and Covington Companies – were from further east in the southern states, mainly from Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee.
The fact that cotton would grow there, as well as tobacco and other semi-tropical plants such as the South, produced made it easy for the name to stick.
[14] There were regular food shortages, including "the 'starving time' when many people were reduced to eating pigweed, alfalfa, and carrot top greens in lieu of a more substantial diet".
[19] Shortly thereafter, "Dixie" was painted on Sugarloaf, the nearby prominent red rock hill above the county seat town of St. George.
[23] Links between southwest Utah's Dixie region and the old southern Confederacy re-emerged in 1952, when then-Dixie Junior College athletics teams adopted 'Rebel' as their nickname and the school made its mascot as a Confederate Army soldier in 1956.
"[23] These changes were contemporaneous with the nearby University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) across the state line to the west similar adoption of the "Rebel" character name, mascot and other symbols, like "a cartoon wolf with a Confederate uniform.”[24] They also occurred during the emerging intensifying simultaneously of the nation-wide civil rights movement in the 1950s, 1960s and extending into the 1970s, against racial differences and discrimination/ segregation in the post-World War II era, between 33rd U.S. President Harry S. Truman and his then controversial executive decision to racial integration and gradual elimination of segregation and discrimination in all the military branches of the United States Armed Forces in 1947 and the subsequent later landmark Brown v. Board of Education famous legal case with the unanimous decision by the United States Supreme Court in the federal national capital city of Washington, D.C., issued in May 1954, outlawing future racial segregation in the nation's public schools.
[26] John Jones and Dannelle Larsen-Rife wrote on behalf of the Southern Utah Anti-Discrimination Coalition, listing many Confederacy-related activities at Dixie State College, including “black-face minstrel shows (through October 2012), mock slave auctions (through the early 1990s),[27] Confederate flags (continuing to the present), and numerous other associations to the Confederacy prevalent on this campus (The "Rebel" mascot as recently as 2008, "True Rebel Night" is ongoing; The Dixie Confederate yearbook into the 1990s).
[31] Events included a grand Southern-style ball presided over by a costumed Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, who also participated in many publicity photos.
[37] In July 2015, following the Charleston, South Carolina, shootings at a downtown prominent Black / African American church by Dylann Roof, Dannelle Larsen-Rife again editorialized for renaming Dixie State University.
[40] In 2020, in the wake of the incident of the murder of George Floyd by city police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the extensive nation-wide subsequent protests, the issue again returned to the forefront of public attention.
While the primary purpose for that session was to approve redistricting maps following the 2020 U.S. Decennial Census, The name change bill for Dixie State was also included on topics to be raised and discussed by Utah legislators that term.
"[48] A substantial number of citizens gathered at the St. George City offices July 2, 2020 to advocate for retaining the "Dixie" names.
For some, it only requires explanation; for others, who are not from this area, it has offensive connotations.... Our hospital name should be strong, clear and make everyone we serve feel safe and welcome.
"[53] St. George, founded in 1861, largest town and current county seat of Washington County, Utah[54] when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) patriarch / church president and territorial governor Brigham Young (1801-1877), selected 300 families to take over that southern area of the old federal Utah Territory (1850-1896), and grow cotton, grapes, and other crops, is the largest community in the area.
[54]: 3 Other communities in surrounding Washington County of the southwestern corner of Utah, include Ivins, Santa Clara, Hurricane, La Verkin, and Toquerville.
However, it sometimes is used to refer to a larger region, including nearby Kane (to the east), and Iron (to the north) adjacent counties, or an even broader definition of across southern Utah.
It was the longtime traditional borderline between slave and free states in the 19th century before the American Civil War (1861-1865), The term implies that everything south of the town of Payson and the Wasatch Front range of mountains generally is considered "Dixie".
