Heritage Home & Pioneer Corner

The home of Ira E. and Marion Hinton Bradshaw, built in 1906-08, was the first permanent home built in Hurricane. This plain carpenters’ Victorian eclectic style house, with a cross-wing, stone foundation, and cellar, became an early center of community life in the valley. During the first and second years of settlement, it hosted socials, dances, church meetings, the first Christmas program, and the first school for the new community, where approximately 20 pupils were taught by one teacher and each child supplied a chair and desk, mostly made from packing boxes. The house later served as the first hotel, known as the Bradshaw Hotel or Traveler’s Home, and also as a boardinghouse for teachers. The Bradshaws, primarily farmers like most early settlers, became prominent citizens and businessmen of Southern Utah. As their children grew up, they helped support the family by hauling wood from the mountains, drying fruit, making molasses, and selling or trading for flour, cheese, and other commodities unavailable locally. A 50-gallon wooden barrel under a tree by the back door held water brought from a nearby irrigation ditch or from the Virgin River, a mile away. The lot behind the house was planted with fruit trees and berry vines, and a well-kept garden produced vegetables and melons, while a corral and barn held milk cows, hogs, chickens, and work horses. Ira E. Bradshaw served as a Mormon missionary to the Northern States in 1893 and 1894, leaving behind his wife and five children and traveling for two years without purse or script. He had served as a trustee on the Virgin City School Board for 20 years before moving his family to Hurricane, where he was one of the eleven families who came in the first year. While others lived in tents, granaries, and temporary shelters, he began work on this house. From 1901 to 1907 he served as president of the Hurricane Canal Company and supervised completion of the canal, whose water made settlement of the desert valley possible. The Bradshaws were remembered as a typical Mormon family known for honesty, dependability, hard work, and quiet faith, and Ira E. and Marion Hinton Bradshaw were later buried in the Hurricane Cemetery.

Hurricane, Utah · United States