Relief Society Building
–Photographed 2015 by David Walton
Relief Society Building
This small meeting house of the Bluff Relief Society was the center of
women's activities. Suffrage meetings were held here in the early 1900s, and cultural,
spiritual, health, and home/family improvement lessons were taught. The illustration,
lower right, by Remington W. Lane (1893), included this text: “To-day, approaching
the beautiful village of Bluff, I could scarcely realize the trials and struggles
said to have been endured. We were in a beautiful though quiet country, the features
of the landscape clearly marked by ditches of water.
"…And such quaint houses! almost obscured in blossoming fruit trees, flowers, and
climbing vines; while the dirt-covered roofs, grown over with grass and wild flowers,
are veritable hanging gardens. They are all much alike, these cottages, individual
taste cropping out here and there in a brush-covered veranda, or bed of bright
flowers in the door-yard. Cottonwood, locust, and box-elder trees canopy with
grateful foliage every avenue, and the gutters flow sparkling streams of snow-water,
that dashes over beds of pebbles like native brooks. The settlers did not stop with
the planting of vegetables and a little grain: they at once began a nursery of
fruit and shade trees: ornament and comfort were not forgotten.”
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