No one knows for sure how St. George got its name, according to the city's Web site, www.sgcity.org.
However, local "St. George naturalist" Bart Anderson says on the site that historians have two theories.
The first regards George A. Smith, a first cousin to LDS Church President Brigham Young. Anderson writes that Smith earned the nickname "The Potato Saint" when he urged the early pioneers to eat raw, unpeeled potatoes to cure a bout with scurvy. The early settlers were cured. Thus the name, St. George.
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The other theory involves Phillip St. George Cooke, a friend of Young. "Legend has it that Cooke donated a good share of equipment and wagons for the southern settlement of 'Dixie,'" Anderson writes.