The prime problem of the 1870s was overpopulation. A new generation had grown up and had to find the means of making a living. Some worked in mines, some worked on railroads still under construction, and some migrated to Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming, and Arizona.

In the remaining years of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth century new colonies were founded in a few places that could be irrigated: the Pahvant Valley in central Utah (Delta, 1904); the Ashley Valley of the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah (Vernal, 1878); and the Grand Valley in southeastern Utah (Moab, 1880). But most of these "last pioneers" had to look for a home in surrounding states where land was still available--Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona--or even Alberta, Canada, and northern Chihuahua and Sonora in Mexico. There was no longer the mobilization by ecclesiastical authorities of human, capital, and natural resources for building new communities that had characterized earlier undertakings. The migrations were mostly sporadic--unplanned by any central authority. However, two colonizing corporations organized with ecclesiastical participation were the Iosepa Agricultural and Stock Company, which founded a Hawaiian colony in Skull Valley in 1889; and the Deseret and Salt Lake Agricultural and Manufacturing Canal Company, also established in 1889 to promote settlement in Millard County. The church assisted in these companies financially, held an important block of stock in each, and assured that they would be managed for community purposes.