An important colony in southern Utah was at Parowan. This settlement served the dual purpose of providing a half-way station between southern California and the Salt Lake Valley and of producing agricultural products to support an iron enterprise. Near present-day Cedar City, the exploring party had found a mountain with iron ore, and close to it thousands of acres of cedar which could be used as fuel. Following a "call" in July 1850, a company of 167 persons was constituted in December and sent, complete with equipment and supplies, to Parowan to plant crops and prepare to work with the pioneer iron mission established at Cedar City later in the year. Ultimately, the colony was the nucleus of a dozen settlements made in the region in the early 1850s.

All told, ninety settlements were founded in what is now Utah during the first ten years after the entry into the Salt Lake Valley in July 1847, from Wellsville and Mendon in the north to Washington and Santa Clara in the south. The founding dates of communities settled in these years which eventually became important population centers are Salt Lake City (1847), Bountiful (1847), Ogden (1848), West Jordan (1848), Kaysville (1849), Provo (1849), Manti (1849), Tooele (1849), Parowan (1851), Brigham City (1851), Nephi (1851), Fillmore (1851), Cedar City (1851), Beaver (1856), Wellsville (1856), and Washington (1856).