the end of cotton before 1900 to 1950 meant the unique low-lying desert surrounded by high red cliffs and black lava bluffs, bisected by the Virgin River that gave life to people, livestock, fields, and pastures. Utah's Dixie was so distant from the Wasatch Front, where most of Utah's population lives, and from the state capital in Salt Lake City that it was a separate existence. Utah's Dixie had no geographic ties with most of Arizona, only that near-wilderness of the Arizona Strip, north of the Grand Canyon. And while the Virgin Valley area of Nevada had close relations, the historically religious residents of Southwestern Utah did not feel connected to Las Vegas. The area was not connected to much, physically or culturally. Roads were rough and rugged until the 1950s and Interstate 15 was only completed in 1973. Air service from St. George began in the late 1950s. Television service came about the same time. The community was small. St. George only had 5,130 inhabitants in 1960 and 11,350 in 1980. It did not wield much political influence, but it was advanced by exemplary state legislators from the area, such as Orval Hafen. 20th century links to the Confederacy at Dixie State College Links between southern Utah's Dixie and the Confederacy re-emerged in 1952, when "Dixie Junior College sports teams adopted 'Rebel' as their nickname and the school made its mascot a Confederate soldier in 1956. By 1960, the Confederate flag was flown as a school symbol." This was about the time the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) adopted its "Rebel" name and mascot, "a cartoon wolf with a Confederate uniform". This was also in a time when civil rights issues were emerging, between President Truman's integration of the Armed Services in 1948 and Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. On a "parade float called 'Gone With the Plow', dating from the late 1960s, a man with his skin painted black pushe[d] a plow while a white student, formally dressed with a top hat, [held] what appear to be reins or a whip". John Jones and Dannelle Larsen-Rife wrote on behalf of the Southern Utah Anti-Discrimination Coalition, listing many Confederacy-related activities at the College: "black-face minstrel shows (through October 2012), mock slave auctions (through the early 1990s), Confederate flags (continuing to the present), and numerous other associations to the Confederacy prevalent on this campus (The "Rebel" mascot