Erastus Snow’s Cotton Mission Prophecy of Provision and Blossoming (1861–62)

When Apostle Erastus Snow was called to lead the Cotton Mission in 1861, he spoke to discouraged settlers that the otherwise “barren, parched, and sun‑scorched waste” could become a fruitful garden and place of beauty if they stayed and worked. During the “starving times” of the early Cotton Mission, Erastus Snow gave a specific promise to Charles Lowell Walker — as recorded by Walker’s daughter, Zaidee Walker Miles — that if Charles stayed in the Southern Utah desert and remained faithful to his calling, he and his family would “never want for bread.” Zaidee Walker Miles, in her family history, testified that despite frequent crop failures, floods, the “destructive ferocity” of the Virgin River, and extreme poverty in St. George, this promise was miraculously fulfilled: the Walker family never went hungry because food arrived from unexpected sources or their meager supplies were sustained. The community more broadly viewed the eventual success of orchards and vineyards in the region and the construction of the St. George Temple as a literal fulfillment of Erastus Snow’s prophetic promise that the desert would blossom.