As you drive the streets of Mesquite, the names of the early settlers and pioneers are evident. Who were these people?
The Pulsiphers came to Mesquite in the 1890s, and the street by the Oasis carries their name. Then it was a dirt track leading to their adobe home. The Pulsiphers grew cotton, sugar cane, and wheat. To supplement their income, they would lure wild horses into a side-canyon (or pocket) in the narrows. One time, they captured 18 horses and a baby mule.
Leavitt Lane, intersecting Pulsipher Street in back of the Casablanca Casino, was named after the large Leavitt family who were dairymen. Hafen Street, an extension of Sandhill, honors a mining family. The Hardys were known for their musical ability.
Bunkerville was coined by Brigham Young. Young commissioned Edward Bunker, Sr. to start a settlement south of Mesquit Flats.
Bertha Howe, the first nurse in the area, was on call 24/7 for 30 years caring and curing the ailments of the people in town. She helped stock the first hospital. She and her husband lived in the back of the old hospital (now the museum).
The only source of water, the Virgin River, probably was not named by the Spaniards to honor the Virgin Mary. Instead, Jedediah Smith, the explorer and trader, dubbed it the Adams River after the President in the 1820s. In the 1840s, when John Fremont was mapping the area, he renamed it the Rio Virgenes, after a member of the Smith Party who was injured on the river. Whatever the case, the river and the mountains are now called The Virgins. By the way, the Virgin RIver should have been called the "Muddy River" as all the water had to be filtered in cisterns in order to drink it.
Mesquit Flats, the original moniker of our town, was derived from the tree found here. When the post office came, they decided that Mesquite was better. It was a common practice to rename a town, if "they" considered the name was too long, not euphonious, or was spelled strangely.
When you see these street and place names, you have an idea of who came before us and how they lived at the turn of the last century.
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