A Paiute name and a pioneer beginning
I've been rambling around this end of Washington County for more than forty years, and Toquerville is still the town I send people to when they say they want the real Dixie — the one that existed before the freeway and the Zion crowds. Tucked between the black hills along lower Ash Creek, it's one of the oldest continuously settled spots in the Hurricane Valley, and it wears its age gracefully.
First, that wonderful name. Toquerville is named for Toquer, a Southern Paiute chief whose band lived along Ash Creek long before any wagons rolled in. In Paiute, toquer means "black" — and once you notice the dark lava rock scattered across the surrounding hills and fields, the name makes perfect sense. A Mormon missionary party led by Rufus C. Allen came down from Harmony to visit Toquer's village as early as June 1854, and the friendly relationship that followed is why the settlers later honored the chief by keeping his name on the map.
Permanent settlement came in the spring of 1858, when several families — with Joshua T. Willis serving as branch president — built log cabins near Toquer's village. The town grew fast: from nineteen families in 1859 to forty-one by 1864, swelled by colonists arriving with Brigham Young's Cotton Mission in late 1861. For a while, Toquerville was the cultural and religious heart of this whole corner of southern Utah, and even served as the county seat of the short-lived Rio Virgin County. Not bad for a village of adobe and stone.
Dixie wine and a valley of orchards
Here's the tidbit most visitors never expect: Toquerville was, for a generation, a genuine wine town. The warm winters and abundant spring water made this stretch of "Utah's Dixie" ideal for grapes, and Brigham Young folded the area into what became known as the Dixie Wine Mission — an honest-to-goodness Latter-day Saint effort to produce sacramental wine at home rather than importing it.
The man at the center of it was John C. Naegle, a German immigrant who'd earned a stake gold-panning in California before Brigham Young called him to make wine. Between about 1866 and 1868, Naegle built a substantial two-story sandstone house — roughly 65 by 33 feet, with a shallow hip roof and a full basement — and dug a wine cellar underneath it, fitted with vats, presses, and casks that held some five hundred gallons apiece. His wine was shipped to settlements across the region, and in those cash-poor days it was even accepted as tithing. When the Church stepped back from wine late in the century, the old winery turned to canning figs and processing peaches — a reminder that this was always fruit country first.
And what fruit it was. Toquerville's spring-fed gardens turned out figs, pomegranates, peaches, grapes, and lucerne (the old name for alfalfa — Charles Stapley is generally credited with growing Dixie's first crop of it right here). Local lore holds that figs were so plentiful the going price was fifty cents for all you could carry in your hat. The vineyards are long gone, but the orchard heritage still lingers in the old fruit trees and garden plots you'll pass along the back lanes.
The homes and stonework to look for
What makes Toquerville special today is how much of that pioneer fabric survives. Two properties carry the gold standard — a listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
The John C. Naegle Winery, near the corner of Main and 5th (110 S. Toquer Boulevard), was added to the National Register on February 20, 1980. It's that big coursed-rubble sandstone block with the hip roof — the very building where Dixie wine once fermented in the cellar below. It remains a private residence, so admire the masonry from the road.
A few blocks north stands the John Steele House at 263 N. Toquer Boulevard, listed on the Register on April 7, 1988. Built in 1862 of red adobe on a stone foundation, it's prized as one of only three well-documented "double-parlor" houses in Utah — a symmetrical, formal floorplan that was rare on the frontier. John "Doc" Steele himself was a wonderful pioneer character: an herbal physician and bone-setter who came over from Parowan in 1861 and served as postmaster, justice of the peace, and the town bootmaker.
Beyond those two, the old boulevard is lined with early adobe and stone homes tied to founding families — the Appleton Harmon residence, several houses connected to William A. Bringhurst, and the old Zion Co-op store among them. There's also the surviving rock building that once housed John Nebeker's water-powered mill, plus monuments to Chief Toquer, pioneer Levi Savage, and the Daughters of Utah Pioneers. Keep an eye out for the black lava rock worked into foundations and walls — the same stone that gave the town its name, doing double duty as building material.
Walking and driving the old boulevard today
The historic spine of town is Toquer Boulevard, the shaded north-south street that most folks think of as Main Street. It's an easy, flat stroll of maybe half a mile past the oldest homes, and driving it slowly works just as well if the summer heat is up. Big cottonwoods and the murmur of irrigation ditches make it a genuinely pleasant walk in the cooler hours.
Do remember this is a lived-in neighborhood, not an open-air museum. Nearly every historic home here is private property with people living inside. Enjoy the architecture, read the roadside markers, take your photos from the public sidewalk or road — but don't wander into yards, and give residents their peace. The town has hosted occasional guided heritage walks (the Washington County Historical Society has led free tours), so if you can time a visit to one of those, you'll get inside stories no plaque can offer.
The Washington County Historical Society and the town's own history page are the best places to check for current tour dates and to read up before you go. Half the fun is knowing which quiet adobe box hid a wine cellar, and which held Utah's rare double parlor.
A few local tips
Go early or late. This is the desert, and shade along the boulevard is your friend — mornings and evenings are cooler, prettier, and kinder to photographers. Bring water regardless of the season.
Respect the private-property line. It bears repeating: look, photograph, and move on. A friendly wave to a resident goes a lot further than a camera in their flower bed.
Pair it with a meal or a picnic, because Toquerville itself is small and services are limited — nearby La Verkin and Hurricane have most of the food and fuel. And keep your eyes open for old fruit trees: they're the living remnant of the orchards that once made this town famous.
Nearby — make it a loop
Toquerville sits at the crossroads of some of the Hurricane Valley's best half-day wandering, so build a loop. Head up the rough backroad above town to Toquerville Falls, a surprising desert waterfall spilling over black rock — a high-clearance drive, but a local favorite. Down the hill in La Verkin, Confluence Park offers an easy trail to where Ash Creek and the Virgin River meet, and just beyond it the mineral pools of Pah Tempe Hot Springs have drawn soakers since pioneer days. And to tie the whole pioneer water story together, drive over to Hurricane and walk a stretch of the Hurricane Canal Trail, where you can see the astonishing hand-dug ditch that turned that desert bench green — the same spirit of spring-fed irrigation that made Toquerville's grapes and figs possible in the first place.