The history Toquerville
Settled 1858, and Utah's own wine country for a generation
The Wine Mission, Toquerville's own founding story.
Six families, a Paiute leader's name, an oasis of figs and grapes in the desert, and a winery Brigham Young ordered up by name. Here is the 1858 founding and what survives of it today, the Naegle Winery house included.
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Six families, an oasis, and a winery Brigham Young ordered.
Six Mormon families settled Toquerville in 1858 along Ash Creek, in country a Paiute band led by Chief Toquer already knew well, and named the new settlement in his honor. The town grew fast for a pioneer outpost, from 19 families in 1859 to 41 by 1864, and it became the cultural and religious center of this stretch of what was then called Utah's Dixie.
Early visitors described arriving at Toquerville the way a traveler might describe an oasis in a desert: figs, pomegranates, peaches, grapes and alfalfa growing in irrigated ground where the surrounding country offered none of it. The town's principal industries were cotton, cane, grapes and fruit, and it built the first cotton gin mill in Utah, a genuinely significant piece of territorial industry for a settlement this size.
What set Toquerville apart from most Cotton Mission towns was wine. Brigham Young called a specific vintner here, by name, to build an industry the rest of Utah's Dixie never quite matched.
Toquerville's founding, at a glance
1858
settled, named for Chief Toquer
19 to 41
families, 1859 to 1864
1866 to 1868
the Naegle Winery house built
1980
NRHP listing, 20 February
The Dixie Wine Mission
A vintner, called here by name.
Brigham Young called John C. Naegle, a German immigrant who had made a small fortune panning for gold in California before settling in Utah's Dixie, to establish and operate a winery in Toquerville and to personally teach the settlers the process. This was the Dixie Wine Mission, an offshoot of the broader 1861 Cotton Mission that sent settlers throughout this region to grow cotton, cane and fruit for the territory.
Naegle built a substantial two story sandstone building, roughly 65 by 33 feet with a full basement and a shallow hip roof, between 1866 and 1868, using coursed rubble walls and dressed stone details. The wine produced there served a sacramental purpose for the church, used in its own religious practice, until wine was discontinued from that use in the late 19th century, at which point the building's purpose shifted, first to canning figs and later to processing peaches.
The Naegle Winery house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 20 February 1980, and it stands today as, by most accounts, the only real physical survivor of an entire regional wine industry that flourished briefly through the late 1860s and 1870s and then largely disappeared.
The Naegle Winery house is private property. Like most of the historic townsite, the winery building is privately owned. View it respectfully from the street rather than approaching it as a public museum site.
What survives today
A quiet street, under black volcanic hills.
The 1858 townsite blocks along Toquerville Boulevard and Ash Creek still carry the pattern the original settlers laid out: pioneer era homes, deep irrigated lots, and the Naegle Winery house itself, all sitting under the black volcanic hills that give the town its distinctive backdrop. With the new Toquerville Parkway now carrying most of the through traffic on the west bench, this old core is quieter than it has been in years.
The Washington County Historical Society has periodically hosted a free guided tour of Toquerville, walking through the town's history in more depth than a single visit could cover alone. Checking for a current tour schedule is worth doing for anyone who wants the fuller version of this story.
A wine industry that once ran through this whole stretch of Utah's Dixie is down to one building still standing. It happens to be here, quietly, on a street the new parkway was built specifically to keep quiet.
Keep reading
More of Toquerville on The Local.
Things to do
The top 7, ranked
Seven picks, ranked, from the rough road to the falls to the new lake filling nearby.
Read the guideThe waterfall
Toquerville Falls
A real waterfall on La Verkin Creek, and the rough road that filters out the wrong vehicle.
Read the guideThe new lake
Chief Toquer Reservoir
A new 3,725 acre foot reservoir, and the honest word on when it actually opens.
Read the guideThe interchange
Anderson Junction
The I-15 interchange and the new parkway carrying Toquerville's fastest growth in 165 years.
Read the guideMoving here
The Parkway Decade
Two markets under one city name, and how to tell which one you are buying into.
Read the guideThe companion
Toquerville, from a local
The waterfall, the new lake, the wine mission history, and the whole honest story in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
The history, answered.
In 1858, when six Mormon families settled along Ash Creek in country a Paiute band led by Chief Toquer already knew well. The settlement was named in his honor, and it grew from 19 families in 1859 to 41 by 1864.
A two story sandstone building John C. Naegle built between 1866 and 1868 at Brigham Young's direction, part of the Dixie Wine Mission. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, dated 20 February 1980, and is likely the only real survivor of an entire regional wine industry.
The wine served a sacramental purpose in the church's own religious practice at the time. Young called master vintner John C. Naegle specifically to Toquerville to build the winery and teach the settlers the process, part of the broader Dixie Wine Mission tied to the 1861 Cotton Mission.
No. It is private property, part of the historic townsite along Toquerville Boulevard, and should be viewed respectfully from the street rather than approached as a public site.
Figs, pomegranates, peaches, and lucerne, or alfalfa, alongside cotton and cane, which were the town's principal industries. Early visitors described the irrigated settlement as an oasis in an otherwise harsh desert landscape.
Yes. The town built the first cotton gin mill in Utah, a significant piece of territorial industry that reflects the town's role as a genuine agricultural and manufacturing center in this region during the 1860s.
The Washington County Historical Society has periodically hosted a free guided tour of Toquerville covering its history in depth. Check for a current schedule if you want a more thorough version of this story than a self guided walk provides.
From Chief Toquer, a Paiute leader whose band lived along lower Ash Creek when the six founding families arrived in 1858. The settlers named the new town in his honor rather than after a place or a settler's own surname.
No. The historic townsite sits along Toquerville Boulevard and Ash Creek, the original 1858 core. The new growth, including SunRiver Firelight and the Anderson Junction commercial node, is developing along the separate Toquerville Parkway on the town's west bench, covered on this companion's own page.
A pioneer core the growth corridor has quietly protected rather than replaced.
Homes along the historic townsite carry a different character and a different set of considerations than the newer construction along the parkway. I can walk you through what buying in either one actually involves.