be milled and processed into flour and cereal for the people and feed for animals. Once the mill was built, the early settlers had a place to market their crops and turn them into usable products. Many of the surrounding communities came to Richville to take advantage of the gristmill. It was much easier to travel from Coalville and other places in Summit County to Richville than to go down the canyons into Salt Lake and other communities along the Wasatch Front. During the summer of 1868, swarms of grasshoppers destroyed every green thing that grew in the Valley. Fortunately for the people, however, a construction contract had been signed by President Brigham Young with the Union Pacific Railroad on 21 May 1868 to grade, tunnel, and bridge the Weber River for the Union Pacific Railroad. This work was to be done from the head of Echo Canyon through Weber Canyon to the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Subcontractors under Brigham Young each employed men and were then allotted so many miles of track to complete. These contractors included John Taylor, Charles S. Peterson, S. W. Richards, Isaac Groo, and William H. Hickenlooper.11 The work was to be completed by 1 November 1868. The people of the Valley were happy for the work. Priesthood leaders organized the workers to the advantage of the struggling communities. Richard Fry, T. R. G. Welch, Wyman Parker, and Philemon C. Merrill managed the contracts. These leaders urged all to participate. The proceeds helped pay debts and replace the crops destroyed by the grasshoppers. The use of railroad ties made from wood hauled out of Hardscrabble Canyon with ox teams, also helped the Valley economically. Employment by the companies doing the work was limited to Church members. There was to be no swearing, no work on Sunday, no drinking, and each man was to pay his tithing on what he earned. In some cases the profits on the contracts were used by the communities to build meetinghouses. The various wards and branches formed themselves into working companies. This competition promoted speed and excellency in work. Leaders of the Church visited the railroad gangs made up of Mormon men and exhorted them to keep the commandments. George A Smith, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve in company with A. Milton Musser, traveled to Morgan in July 1868 where he preached to about one hundred men at Mountain Green. Most of these men were those employed by Elder John Taylor, also a member of the Twelve, to work on the railroad through the lower end of the Valley.12 In October 1868, the preliminary organization of Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institute (ZCMI) was approved by the leadership of the Church, and by 1870 no settlement, including Morgan, was without a cooperative retailing establishment. At first the mercantile business in Morgan had stock of $1,300. When William Eddington put in his stock of goods, the capital swelled to about $5,000. The new business at first was located in South