Legendary Mormon curse blamed for Washoe disasters

RENO -- Once upon a time, Nevada was Utah.

Territorial Gov. Brigham Young presided over the Utah Territory, lands stretching west from Salt Lake City, across the Great Basin to Carson Valley.

The largest Mormon settlement was in Franktown, just west of Washoe Lake. More than 100 families journeyed there in the summer of 1856 at Young's request. The goal: organize a government at the territory's western border.

The Mormons, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, built log houses, surveyed borders and cultivated agriculture about three years before the discovery of silver on the Comstock.

They also built a sawmill, which became the focal point of a legendary curse levied by Mormon Elder Orson Hyde upon the people of Washoe 150 years ago this week.

Floods, earthquakes, the fierce Washoe Zephyr winds and fires -- including the Washoe Drive Fire last month -- have ripped through the valleys south of Reno for the past 150 years, often resurrecting the ghost of Hyde's curse.

"It's one of the top legends in Nevada history," former Nevada State Archivist Guy Rocha said. "There's no doubt about that."

On Jan. 27, 1862, Hyde wrote a letter "To the People of Carson and Washoe Valleys" demanding $20,000 in compensation for the sawmill he had left in 1856 to return to Salt Lake City. The majority of the Mormons followed in 1857 after Young rallied his flock for what he believed could be military conflict with federal troops sent to investigate polygamy in the territory.

Two Washoe settlers, Jacob Rose and R.D. Sides, occupied the sawmill from 1857 to 1862.

The tone of Hyde's letter was more ominous biblical prophecy than legal complaint:

"... if you shall think best to repudiate our demand or any part of it, all right," Hyde warned, "... but the said R.D. Sides and Jacob Rose shall be living and dying advertisements of God's displeasure ... and this demand of ours, remaining uncanceled, shall be to the people of Carson and Washoe Valleys as was the ark of God among the Philistines. You shall be visited of the Lord of Hosts with thunder and with earthquakes and with floods, with pestilence and with famine until your names are not known amongst men, for you have rejected the authority of God ... and given yourselves up to serve the god of this world; to rioting in debauchery, in abominations, drunkenness and corruption. You have chuckled and gloried in taking the property of the Mormons, and withholding from them the benefits thereof. ... If perchance, however, there should be an honest man amongst you, I would advise him to leave; but let him not go to California for safety, for he will not find it there."

Rose had advanced "one span of small, indifferent mules, an old worn-out harness, and an old wagon" for the mill, according to Hyde. Rose never paid Hyde's $20,000 request.

Nineteen years after Hyde's letter, in 1881, a flood rushed through Franktown. The newly built dam overflowed, and more than $20,000 in property washed away with it, according to estimates from the Reno Evening Gazette at the time. The Mormons' mill was leveled -- and Hyde's curse gained a following.

"They were talking about Orson Hyde's curse after that because that is one of the things he mentioned," said Phillip Earl, former author of the Reno Gazette-Journal's "This Was Nevada" historical column that ran from 1975 to 1999.

Orson Hyde almost died getting rods and machinery to build the sawmill he so fervently sought compensation for.

In the fall of 1855, Hyde and fellow Mormon Willis Lewis obtained the machinery in California. On the journey home, Lewis retreated to California after a severe snowstorm. He was never seen again. Hyde pushed on, suffering frost bite on his feet but eventually finding an encampment of Washoe Indians who nursed him to health. He walked on crutches for months, but he survived.

Even before the near-death experience, Hyde expressed severe displeasure with the progression of the Washoe settlement. He wrote to Brigham Young, "There are many Mormons here, but I fear not Saints. ... This has been the darkest and least desirable mission, and the most dull and discouraging prospects that ever presented themselves some."

Hyde, an original member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dedicated his life to the church. He had traveled to England, Germany, Constantinople and Israel as one of the first Mormon ambassadors.

Hyde journeyed to Carson County in 1855 as the probate judge and worked with surveyors to settle border issues between Utah Territory and California.

Hyde resigned his post and returned to Salt Lake City on Nov. 5, 1856, just as the mill was completed. He died in 1877.

Every year, William Rowley includes excerpts from Hyde's letter in his Nevada History survey course at the University of Nevada, Reno.

"I think it is of interest and has entertainment value," said Rowley, who has taught Nevada history at UNR since the 1970s. "It gives an idea of the antipathy between the Gentiles (non-Mormons) and Mormon people of the time."

But Rowley isn't sure about its authenticity. Rowley said the letter was popularized by Myron Angel's "History of Nevada" in 1881, a source he said was "fairly reliable."

True or false, the curse has a following. It's resurfaced dozens of times during the past 150 years, mostly in newspaper articles, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly issues, term papers and Rowley's history class.

The Franktown flood wasn't the only natural disaster in the region. In 1983, a flood devastated much of Ophir, Franktown's neighbor to the north.

"(The curse has) persisted over time and sustained in fact," Rocha said. "But it's taken on legendary proportion. Every time something happens, people say it's Orson Hyde's curse."