Legend has it that in the early 1860s a group of pioneers was descending the steep cliffs above the present townsite when a strong wind came up; Erastus Snow compared it with a hurricane, and named the place Hurricane Hill. A canal to bring water from the Virgin River to Hurricane Bench took 11 years of hard work to build, beginning in 1893, but it allowed farming in the area for the first time. Settlers founded the town in 1906.