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.
By Scott Buehler, Toquerville local
Updated September 2026
The short answer
Toquerville's wine mission was this town's chapter of a church directed effort, through the 1860s, to grow grapes and make wine in Utah's Dixie, and Toquerville turned out to be one of its most productive settlements. Brigham Young called a German vintner named John C. Naegle here by name to build a winery and teach the settlers the craft, and the two story sandstone house he raised between 1866 and 1868, its basement built as a wine cellar and distillery, still stands on the old townsite as the last real survivor of that whole industry.
For a generation the benches above Ash Creek were planted in vineyards and orchards alongside the cotton and cane. The church stopped using wine in its sacrament late in the century, the vines came out, and the trade faded, but the pioneer core it left behind, deep irrigated lots and stone and adobe homes under the black volcanic hills, is exactly what you are looking at when you buy on the historic townsite today.
The founding
Six families, an oasis, and a name from the Paiute.
Six Mormon families settled Toquerville in 1858 along Ash Creek, in country a Paiute band led by Chief Toquer already knew well, and they named the new settlement in his honor. It grew fast for a pioneer outpost, from 19 families in 1859 to 41 by 1864, and became the cultural and religious center of this stretch of what settlers then called Utah's Dixie.
Travelers arriving here described something close to an oasis. Figs, pomegranates, peaches, grapes and alfalfa grew in irrigated ground where the surrounding desert offered none of it. Cotton, cane, grapes and fruit were the town's main industries, and Toquerville built the first cotton gin mill in Utah, a real piece of territorial industry for a settlement this size.
What set the town apart from most of its Cotton Mission neighbors was wine. Brigham Young called a 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
Why a pioneer town made wine
A vintner, called here by name.
The reason a Mormon town made wine at all was a practical one. The church used wine in its sacrament in those years, and Brigham Young wanted it produced inside the territory rather than freighted in. Wine was also a cash crop, one of the few this hot, remote country could ship out at a profit. Both aims rode along with the 1861 Cotton Mission that sent hundreds of families into Utah's Dixie to grow cotton, cane and fruit, and the winemaking piece of it became known as the Dixie Wine Mission.
Young called John C. Naegle, a German immigrant who had made a small fortune panning gold in California before coming to Utah, and sent him to Toquerville specifically to run a winery and teach the settlers the process. By 1866 roughly a third of the ground under cultivation here had gone to orchards and vineyards, planted across the benches above the creek, and at its height the operation is said to have turned out a few thousand gallons a year, one anchor of a wine belt that ran from here down to Santa Clara.
Naegle built to last. His winery and home was a two story sandstone building, roughly 65 by 33 feet, with a shallow hip roof and a full basement dug and finished as the wine cellar and distillery. He raised it between 1866 and 1868 in coursed rubble stone with dressed lintels and quoins, and it is that cool, dark basement under thick walls that did the real work of the trade.
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.
How it ended, and what remains
A quiet street, under black volcanic hills.
The trade did not last a lifetime. When the church stopped using wine in its sacrament late in the nineteenth century, the main reason for the industry went with it, the vineyards came out over the years that followed, and the winery building was put to other work, first canning figs and later processing peaches. By most accounts the Naegle Winery house is now the only real physical survivor of a regional wine industry that flourished briefly through the late 1860s and 1870s and then all but disappeared, and it went onto the National Register of Historic Places on February 20, 1980.
The 1858 townsite along Toquerville Boulevard and Ash Creek still carries the pattern the settlers laid out: pioneer era homes on deep, irrigated lots, the old orchard and vineyard character of the benches, and the winery house itself, all of it under the black volcanic hills that give the town its backdrop. With the Toquerville Parkway now carrying most of the through traffic out on the west bench, this old core is quieter than it has been in years, which is worth knowing if you are weighing a home here.
If you want the fuller version, the Washington County Historical Society has periodically run a free guided walk through the town's history, in more depth than a single drive down the boulevard can give you. It is worth checking for a current schedule before you come.
A wine trade 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 to keep quiet.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
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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 February 20, 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 newer development runs 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.
Or call me: (435) 357-4345or send me a message
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