Parowan City Hall is located at 405 North Main Street, Parowan, UT 84761.
Phone: 435‑477‑3622.
Parowan [1], southern Utah's first settlement and county seat of Iron County was settled on January 13, 1851, one year after nearby iron ore deposits had been discovered and less than 3-1/2 years after Mormon pioneers arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake,approximately 230 miles to the north. LDS Apostle George A. Smith was in charge of theI ron Mission that established Parowan. Many subsequent settlements in southern Utah were established by residents of Parowan.
Parowan as described in 1941 [2]
Parowan, Iron County seat and center of a sheep and cattle area, stands green and fresh in a hot, windy valley. Houses range from primitive pink adobe structures to modern firebrick houses, their colors cooled by the blue shadows of trees.
The Iron County Mission to Parowan and Center City was the first great Mormon colonizing expedition in Utah. Led by George A. Smith, it left Fort Provo in December, 1850, and consisted of 119 men, 310 women over 14 years of age, and 18 children under fourteen. "I hope our ears will not be saluted," he admonished his followers, "with any profanity, swearing or blasphemous words, or taking the name of the Lord in vain ... We are going to build up the Kingdom of God." The 129 wagons contained, besides the colonists, pioneer armament, saddles, "lights of Glass," carpenter and blacksmith tools, various kinds of seeds, "pitt saws," plows, "syths and cradles," mill irons, cats, dogs and chickens. Milk cows, beef cattle, oxen, mules and horses served as draft animals. The Parowan site, Smith found, had "red sandy soil covered with bunch grass, sage and rabbit brush and grease wood ... My wicky-up is a very important establishment composed of brush, a few slabs and 3 wagons." The colony was reinforced by later settlers, including Dr. Priddy Meeks, who came "to help strengthen the place against Indians—very doubtful neighbors" who were "very saucy and turbulent especially among the women. One Indian struck John D. Lee's wife over the head and cut a gash of some three or four inches long and we had to war it over."
It was the business of the Parowan colonists to put in crops, so that following immigrants could open up the coal and iron deposits. Cedar City was the second settlement made. Two colonies so close together, at such a distance from Salt Lake City, stifled each other's growth after the iron manufacturing enterprise failed. Jules Remy, who passed through Parowan in 1855, found it "nothing more than a poor stragglin village, built of wood and adobes of red earth."