Thursday, August 20, 2009

Town #19: HURRICANE est. 1906

Isn't it a little strange to have a town named after a tropical storm out here in the desert? The story goes that, in the 1860s, Erastus Snow was leading a team of surveyors in the area when he had the top of his buggy blown off in a gust wind. His comment, "Well, that was a Hurricane. We'll name this Hurricane Hill.", stuck to the place. For some reason the residents of Hurricane like to pronounce the town name "Her-ah-Kun". That always throws me off. The town wasn't established until 1906 because that is when it was finally figured out how to bring water up from the Virgin River to the plateau that Hurricane sits on. Like so many other towns around Utah, water was a major issue. Once it had water, though, Hurricane's farms were able to produce quite the crops, I guess, because it earned the nickname "The Fruit Basket of Southern Utah".

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