In early spring 1848, the first group of Holladay settlers began building houses nearby, reportedly with brothers-in-law 29-year-old Aaron F. Farr and 27-year-old William H. Walker erecting the first. Some accounts place that first house in April near the southeast corner of Kentucky Ave. and Holladay Blvd., while others place it on the south side of Spring Creek. The houses formed a close village for mutual help and protection and were rough oblong log cabins with a 3- to 4-ft.-wide stone fireplace on one side of a single room and window and door openings covered with cloth or rawhide. The families then cleared sagebrush and bushes for crops and gardens and sought ways to bring water to their fields, while making no effort to clear the densely wooded north lowlands along Big Cottonwood Creek, then a large stream often impassable in spring. By fall, John D. Holladay's family had harvested 110 bushels of wheat, and a second group of settlers, many of them relatives and friends of the earlier arrivals, had come and built more houses. Rattlesnakes apparently drawn to some log houses helped prompt families to build adobe homes.