Jacob Hamblin

Date Placed: June 4, 2011
Letterbox: Traditional
Carver: GreenJello
Planters: GreenJello and Teancum
Location: 3325 Hamblin Drive, Santa Clara, Washington, Utah
Status: Active

Jacob Hamblin, my third great grand uncle, was a Western pioneer, Mormon missionary, and diplomat to various Native American Tribes of the Southwest and Great Basin. During his life, he helped settle large areas of southern Utah and northern Arizona. Known for the red bandanna he always wore, he helped ease relations between Native Americans and settlers in southwestern Utah and across the region. The native tribes, themselves struggling with drought and heat, appreciated his arrival and obeyed the deals he struck. Hamblin was fluent in many Native American languages, and was known as an upstanding and honest man to both the natives and settlers alike. He was known as a peacekeeper who could settle disputes between Mormon pioneers and Native Americans with understanding and compromise rather than violence.

When devastating floods in 1862 washed away three walls of the Santa Clara fort Hamblin helped build, he and his wife dismantled the one standing wall and built just downriver what today is called the Jacob Hamblin Home. Completed in 1863, the two-story adobe, sandstone and ponderosa pine home is one of the few remaining examples of early pioneer-era home-building.

Free tours of this restored historic home are available daily.

Directions: Stand in the corner of the parking lot (please stay on the pavement) where rock wall meets rock wall. Walk 8 steps south and look down to your left at the wall. The double-decker red rocks on the bottom row hide Jacob.