The Delta Adventure

Downtown Delta, Utah around 1920

The early 1900s brought a new town to Utah. Unlike most Utah towns, Delta was founded not by the Latter-Day Saints but rather by a group of businessmen looking to promote the unique agricultural advantages of the region. They began to heavily promote the area with brochures and newspaper ads in Utah and throughout the Midwest. One brochure from the Delta Land and Water Company promised the good life: “Farmers who drove out onto their land in prairie schooners two years ago are today living in modest houses, their stock well covered. While around them fields of rye, wheat, alfalfa, barley and oats are waving a promise of a third crop that will put money in the bank for every man who has properly farmed!”

By 1919, the Commercial Club of Delta, with significant donations from the Sevier River Land and Water Company and the Delta Beet Sugar Corporation, continued the ambitious advertising campaign. As one reporter reported in the Millard County Chronicle in November of 1919, “Such a campaign…has never been reached before in this country; that it will bring results is beyond dispute.”

Word of the land rush in Delta certainly reached Parowan and seemed to generate significant excitement. The Parowan Times reports that by November of 1919, several local families were contemplating a move to Delta, and sugar beets seemed to be a big draw. As the holidays approached, Mahonri Decker purchased 80 acres in Delta, saying it was "the coming section of Utah.” He immediately started building a new home and prepared to relocate his family.

The Decker home in Delta

By early March of 1920, the house was completed, and the Decker family had made the 125-mile move. The new home was a 5-room affair in town, with a full lot and a bathroom. While Mahonri’s three oldest children had married and started their own families, he and Harriet took the remaining eight children with them, ranging in age from Earl, at 20, to baby Homer, just six months old. Florence was eight at the time and hated to move to Delta. Among other things, she missed her sister Gertrude terribly. Gertrude married Ancil Adams just prior to the Delta move. Florence had wonderful memories of the “lovely east bedroom with the lavender flowers in the wallpaper” that they shared in the family home back in Parowan. A few years previous to the move, Mahonri had built a spacious frame house with two stained glass windows and broad verandas overlooking the lawn and fruit trees. Harriet, in particular, loved the home, and it must have been difficult to leave it behind. Fae reports that Harriet often wept bitterly, “but always in her room.”

While family history offers little detail of the time in Delta, the first few months apparently passed agreeably. Fae reports that the family bought a new car, and Mahonri seems to have continued his singing. In July the Millard County Chronicle mentions a prize-winning quartet that included a Mr. Decker. In August, things began to fall apart. Homer died on August 2nd, either from diarrhea or convulsions, and the family buried him in Delta, apparently still intending to remain in the area. Steven Decker says the bank foreclosed on the land. It seems that those who sold Mahonri the land sold it with a prior lien attached. Mahonri could not afford to pay the lien, so he had to give up the land, sell his home, and return to Parowan. Woodrow reported that his father went to Delta with $25,000 and returned with only $1200. The family was back in Parowan before September 8, 1920.

Fae, Blanche, and Florence 1920

For the family, the return to Parowan was devastating. Instead of the fine home they had left, the family relocated to an old 4-room home that they bought from Harriet's sister Anna. Gone were the new car, as well as the family fortune and reputation. Fae reports that Mahonri was a broken man. He was never quite able to get his finances in order after that, despite working quite a variety of jobs. Fae also indicates that Homer's death dealt a blow to Harriet from which she never quite recovered. The girls themselves remember the time as painful, although they seemed to move back into school and social life with relative ease.

Mahonri reported to the Parowan Times that the family returned to Parowan for Harriet's health. To an extent that was a face-saving excuse. Still, Harriet's health was indeed failing. As one small benefit of the time in Delta, she had gained a more correct diagnosis of her condition. After thinking for some time that she suffered from a poisoned goiter, she now dealt with the reality of tuberculosis.

Notes
1. “The Delta Project: Utah’s Successful Carey Act Project,” Roger Walker, page 8.
2. Millard County Chronicle 1919-11-20
3. A newspaper account from Delta indicates that 80 acres were sold to Joseph Decker of Parowan during the same time that MM was in Delta buying the same amount of land. I'm not sure if there's a connection there.
4. I would love to know more about the land transaction: whether Joseph (I assume that is Joseph Oscar Decker, MM's brother) was involved, who sold the land, how the error was discovered, whether the house in Delta ever sold, etc.
5. Steve Decker’s report on Mahonri Moriancumer Decker from the 1999 Decker family reunion.