The History Blazer, June 1995

;\'EII'S OF UTAH'S PAST FROi\l THE

Lrtah State Historical Societ~

Salt Lake Cits. I'T 84101

300 Rio Grande

(801) 333-3500

FAX (801) 533-3303

January 1995 Blazer Contents The Nation's First Statewide Clean Town Contest

Early Baseball in Utah Had a Monnon-Gentile Twist Woman Suffrage Dominated Politics in Utah The Salt Lake City Street Railroad Strike of 1890 Utah's Own John Gilbert Thrilled Silent Movie Fans The Telephone Comes to Utah

The "Impossible" Humcane Canal Took 11 Years to Complete Chief Ouray Hoped to Achieve Peace with White People When the Din of Sheep Shearing Rocked the Desert A Wedding Song Connects Utah with 16th-Century Spain The Scofield Mine Disaster in 1900 Was Utah's Worst

19th-Century Utah Women Spun Yarn and Also Dug Ditches "Uncle Nick" Wilson's Adventures Filled a Book!

Dixie Fruit Finds a Market The Pony Express Added a Colorful Chapter in Utah History Convict Labor Helped to Build Utah's Roads The Beginnings of the University of Utah A Boxcar Filled with Dynamite Explodes near the City

The 1918-19 Flu Epidemic Reached Remote Areas of Utah

A Utahn, George Sutherland, Served on the U.S. Supreme Court

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June 1995 Blazer Contents Since 1849 Pioneer Day Has Grown into a Major Celebration Emma Lucy Gates Bowen Started Her Own Opera Company Wizards, Bags of Salt, and Flying Disks Advertised Utah Businesses Danger Cave near Wendover Provided Clues to Ancient Utah Dwellers The Japanese Agricultural Colony at Keetley, Wasatch County Farmers Brought Their Produce to Open Markets in Salt Lake City

Marva Hanchett Was 'The Nurse' to Many Southern Utahns The Spanish Trail Cut a Roundabout Path through Utah A Taste for Strawberries Led Patrick Coughlin to His Death Building Enterprise Reservoir Required Vision and Commitment Tony Lazzeri Hit Home Runs at a Record Pace for the Salt Lake Bees Juvenile Delinquency Posed Problems for Utahns a Century Ago Businesswoman Fanny Brooks Helped Establish the Jewish Community in Utah After Many Boom and Bust Cycles Moab Just Keeps Pedaling Floods Are Part of Wasatch Front's Weather History Agronomist John W. Carlson Researched Alfalfa Seed in the Uinta Basin This Radical Salt Lake Native Was Interred in the Kremlin Wall A Bingham High Coed Rose to the Post of U.S. Treasurer The Colorful Streetcar Era Lasted Almost 70 Years

The Ute Trek to South Dakota in 1906 Ended in Disappointment

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Since 1849 Pioneer Day Has Grown into a Major Celebration

ONJULY 22, 1847, THE FIRST MORMONPIONEERWAGONS

rolled into Salt Lake Valley. By the f011owing day the religious colonizers were camped near present-day 400 South and State streets and had already started plowing the earth in preparation for planting crops. Brigham Young and the rest of the first company of Mormons arrived on July 24, thus ending their long journey from Nauvoo, Illinois. The weary travelers immediately began establishing a permanent home in the Great Basin and under Young's leadership commenced one of the greatest colonizing efforts in the history of the American West. The first anniversary of the pioneers' arrival in the valley went unheralded; but, beginning in 1849 and continuing to the present, it has been marked with a variety of festivities, including the Days of '47 parade (one of the nation's largest) in downtown Salt Lake City, a popular rodeo, and other events. Even before the 24th took on such grand proportions residents in towns across the state gathered to remember Utah's pioneers and celebrate the colonizers' arrival in the temtory .

In 1849 the first known 'Pioneer Dayn celebration took place in the Salt Lake Valley.

Nine rounds of artillery fire, accompanied by music from a martial band, awakened the valley's inhabitants. In the early morning hours two carriages carried both brass and martial bands through the city streets playing lively music. The two bands returned to the bowery on present-day Temple Square by 7 A.M. where a large American flag measuring 65 feet in length was hoisted to the top of the Liberty Pole. The nation's banner was then saluted with the firing of guns and "spirit stirring" band music. The rest of the day was filled with speeches by Brigham Young and other leaders, a parade, and more music.

As settlements began to dot remote regions of present-day Utah, colonizers continued 24th of July celebrations in the new towns. In St. George, for example, the holiday typically involved a parade through the streets featuring both civic and church dignitaries as well as a special place of honor for the original pioneers of 1847. Charles L. Walker, a St. George resident, recalled that in 1867, following the parade, townsfolk gathered at the public bowery "where music, songs, recitations, speeches, toasts and feasting were the order of the day."

In other years St. George residents joined with people from various southern Utah towns and journeyed to the cool mountain village of Pine Valley to escape the intense summer heat.

Pioneer Day in 1865 is one example. That year many St. George residents began the 35-mile trek to Pine Valley on the 22nd or 23rd of July so they could be on hand when the celebration began.

Once at Pine Valley, the colonizers gathered in a large grove of pine trees outside the village (more)

where the festivities started with an early morning devotional service. Later, some of the men laid

a temporary dance floor. The crowd danced until 5 P.M.when they were temporarily interrupted by a program that included speeches, songs, and recitations. Dancing then resumed for the rest of the evening. Festivities did not end on the 24th, however. The following morning speeches by Mormon leaders started out the second day of entertainment. Dancing then occupied most of the southern Utah -residentsthroughout the day and well into the night.

Other towns in the south enjoyed similar celebrations. In Bicknell the Pioneer Day entertainment often included outdoor sports such as baseball and horseshoes, horse racing and pulling matches, and even some small-scale betting. In Panguitch, residents from the early days made a week-long event of the holiday; they packed their covered wagons with food and supplies and celebrated with games, dances, and other social activities at Panguitch Lake.

No matter the location, it seems 19thcentury Pioneer Day activities were largely the same.

Many such events persist to the present and continue to give Utahns an opportunity to celebrate the state's colofi1 heritage. sources: Journal History of the Church, July 24, 1849, LDS Church Archives; Andrew Karl Larson, "I War Called To Dixie," the Virgin R i w Basin: Unique Experiences in Mormon Pioneering (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1961), pp. 466, 472-73; Anne Snow, ed., Rainbow Views: A History of Wayne Counry (Springville: Art City Publishing Company, 1953), p. 234. Betsy Topham, ed., A Memory Bank for Paragonah, 1851-1990 (Provo: ~ o ~ u n iPtreyss, 1990), p. 390.

niE HISTORYBLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500. '

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The Nation's First Statewide Clean Town Contest

IN 1914 UTAH

REPORTEDLY EARNED THE DISTINCTION of

conducting the first statewide clean town contest ever held in the United States. The Utah Development League and the State Board of Health jointly promoted the contest in an effort to improve sanitary conditions throughout the state. Rules and scoring procedures were made available early in the year and the response proved enthusiastic. A total of fifty-three towns entered.

From Tremonton and Garland in the north to Washington and St. George in the south, civic-minded residents, generally under the direction of local commercial clubs, began efforts to beautify their yards and gardens as well as to improve public services and facilities. In Manti townsfolk removed a reported 300 loads of stones from city streets in a single day. In Hurricane a general committee from various civic groups supervised the work and effectively divided the different tasks into weekly projects. The committee set apart the first week for cleaning and beautifying streets and sidewalks. Week two involved work on lawns, flower gardens, and yards; and the following week townsfolk improved their corrals and outhouses.

Similar efforts prevailed throughout the state until the August deadline marked the end of all clean-up efforts. In that month the Board of Health grouped the various communities into six classifications based upon population. The board then sent its team of judges to score each of the competing towns. The judges' identities as well as the date of their inspections were kept secret so that no town would have an unfair advantage. The chief judge was James H. Wallis, a former dairy and food commissioner of Idaho, whom the state hired specifically to supervise the contest.

Points were awarded in thirteen different areas such as sewage disposal, garbage collection, water supply, control of flies, vacant lots, and condition of streets, parks, and alleys.

After judges tallied their scores Manti was announced as the cleanest town in Utah. It scored 82.5 points out of the possible 100. Humcane was second at 78, Ogden third with 73, and Lehi came in fourth with 71.7 points. Ogden and Salt Lake City were the only two cities in the Class A population category; the former beat the state capital by only three points. In other classes, Brigham City, Lehi, Manti, Farmington, and Hurricane were all winners. In Hunicane, the townsfolk were justifiably proud of their accomplishment; and when their prize, a beautiful white drinking fountain, arrived it was given a prominent spot on the town square.

The Developn~entLeague and the State Board of Health labeled the contest a success and felt the general improvement in local sanitary conditions was well worth the effort. News of the contest even reached other states, many of which wrote to Utah for suggestions on holding their own clean-town contests.

THEHISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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Early Baseball in Utah Had a Mormon-Gentile Twist

Tm U

in Utah N after the ~ Civil War. ~ Probably inspired by the Cincinnati Red Stockings' exhibition tour, which passed through Corinne in 1869, the first recorded baseball games in Utah were played in October 1869 between the Eureka Base Ball Club and a Fort Douglas team. Corinne, the "Gentile Capital," organized the Corinne Base Ball Club (C.B.B.C.)in the winter of 1869-70.

Baseball became a part of the Mormon-Gentile rivalry when the C.B.B.C.announced that it would play Box Elder on July 4, 1870, for "the Territorial championship." Salt Lake City's best club, the Eurekas or Enneas, immediately challenged Corinne, which dropped the proposed Box Elder contest in favor of the Enneas. Corinne took the first game at home on July 4 (or "Gentile Dayw)but dropped the second on Pioneer Day (the 1870s "Mormon Dayw),celebrated that year on Monday, July 25, in Salt Lake City. The Corinnes took the rubber game in neutral Ogden and claimed the championship. Although the Corinne papers hyped the first game as a Gentile triumph, they dropped the acrimonious religious invective, probably because Corinne had brought in a number of 'ringers," including several Mormons, while the Enneas had several non-Mormons.

Although baseball interest in Salt Lake City faded in the early 1870s, the Corinnes briefly thrived. Corinne claimed its second territorial title in 1871, but they failed to drum up games against teams in other territories. The town's interest in baseball faded thereafter, replaced by a variety of sports, including rowing, croquet, and lacrosse.

Baseball revived in Salt Lake City, however, and by 1877 at least 17 teams competed in the capital. In July 1877 the Deserets, Salt Lake's best team, faced the Cheyenne Red Stockings, the first series that a Salt Lake City club had played against a team outside of the territory. Deseret took the first game 3-2 on July 23, prompting much local self-congratulation over the low score and the quality of play. Perhaps five thousand spectators, 25 percent of the city's population, saw the teams tie on July 24; on the 25th, the Utahns took the final game, 17-11.

Jubilation over the Deseret victory was tainted by allegations of bribery and complaints that the name sounded too "Mormon" for its Gentile supporters. The controversy caused some Mormon players to quit the Deserets and join the new Red Stockings club, resulting in two clubs, one entirely Gentile (the Deserets) and the other (the Red Stockings) nearly all Mormon. The teams gained enthusiastic followings from the respective elements in the community, and the Deserets took the first series between them. In 1878 the two teams renewed their rivalry, with the Red Stockings taking the series before large, noisy crowds. Other western teams came to Salt Lake, ~ PASTIME" ~ WAS EAGERLY ~ ADOPTED ~

(more)

and the local papers closely followed games. By 1879, however, th :- local teams were dominated by 'outsiders," some of whom were professionals, and the game never regained its intense partisan following.

Sources: Larry R. Gerlach, "The Best in the West? Corinne, Utah's First Baseball Champions," and Kenneth L. Cannon 11, "Deserets, Red Stockings, and Out-of-Towners: Baseball Comes of Age in Salt Lake City, 1877-79," Utuh Historical Quarterly 52 (spring 1984).

THEHISTORY BLUER is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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Emma Lucy Gates Bowen Started Her Own Opera Company

FROM 1909 UNTn. ABOUT 1930 ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR and critically acclaimed opera singers in the world was Utah's Lucy Gates. She gained her training and her first professional experience in ~ermany,but when World War I cut short her European career she returned to star in American opera houses. With her brother she formed a company that performed grand opera throughout the Intermountain West.

Emma Lucy Gates was born in St. George, Utah, on November 5, 1880. Her father, Jacob Gates, was one of the original colonizers sent to the region by Brigham Young. Her mother, Susa Young Gates, a daughter of Brigham Young, carved a niche for herself in Utah history as a suffragist and editor. Both parents were musical; Susa led the local choir and helped found the music department at Brigham Young Academy. Lucy's first public performance came while her father was serving an LDS mission in Hawaii. The six-year-old girl sang 'Aloha Oe" before Queen Liliuokalani while accompanying herself on a ukulele. Years later she would record the same song in English and Hawaiian.

Returning to Utah,young Lucy received early training in piano and violin. At the age of 13 she won first prize for piano against much older competitors at a Welsh Eisteddfod competition in the Salt Lake Tabernacle before a capacity audience. At 18 she convinced her parents to allow her to accompany her brother-in-law John A. Widtsoe and his wife Leah to Germany where Lucy planned to study piano.

Upon hearing her sing, her piano instructor advised her that her musical career lay in voice. Her grandmother, Lucy B. Young, accompanied her to the Berlin Royal Conservatory of Music where she began study under Professor Adolphe Schulze. He apparently favored louder voices and advised the young woman that her career lay in teaching rather than performing; she left his tutelage and became a student of Blanche Corelli's. Madame Corelli carefully built up Lucy's voice over a period of months, and her career was well started; years later, Emma returned to Madame Corelli after straining her voice, and the teacher helped to restore it.

After years of study and travel between Europe and the United States, Lucy Gates (the name she used professionally) made her debut as Anchen in Der Freischuetz at the Royal Opera House in Berlin. After two years in minor roles there, Lucy requested a transfer to His Majesty's Royal Opera House in Kassel, where she began to sing leading coloratura roles. She performed throughout Europe over the next two years in a variety of demanding roles and received both popular and critical acclaim. In 1914 the outbreak of World War I kept her from returning to Kassel and ended her European career. (more)

Operatic roles were scarce and difficult to obtain in the United States, but Lucy persevered, creating opportunities when none existed. In May 1915 she and her brother B. Cecil Gates formed the Lucy Gates Grand Opera Company in Salt Lake City. Lucy wore many hats over the years, serving as general m&ager, stage manager, director of lighting, collector of scenery, procurer of costumes and bookings, and transport agent, as well as the leading singer. Her brother rehearsed the chorus and conducted the performances. The company performed seven grand operas over the next twelve years, including La Traviata, Faust, Romeo and Juliet, and Camen, in Salt Lake City and other Utah cities.

During the regular concert season, from 1915 until her semi-retirement in 1930, Lucy sang leading roles in many of the nation's opera houses. She also recorded extensively for Columbia Gramaphone. Although she never performed at the Metropolitan Opera, considered the pinnacle for American singers, at least one major New York critic considered her an outstanding talent. The New York Post's Henry Finck called Lucy ". . . the equal of the greatest prima donnas this country has produced, . ." Lucy engaged in a sometimes heated rivalry with Italian star soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, whom.Lucy replaced a number of times in performances; Finck and others wrote that Gates was the superior singer.

Lucy Gates was a life-long devout Mormon and always returned to Utah between concert seasons. In 1915 she married Albert E. Bowen and helped raise his sons by a previous marriage.

Her final public performance came at a testimonial concert for her in October 1948 at which she sang part of her favorite role, Violetta in La Traviata. Utah's "First Lady of Music" died on April 30, 1951, in Salt Lake City. She left extensive collections of music to the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.

.

See biographical clipping file in Utah State Historical Society Library; Raye Price, "Utah's Leading Ladies of the Arts," Utah Historical Q ~ ~ ~ r t e(Winter rly 1970); John Louis Cory, "Emma Lucy Gates (Bowen), Soprano: Her .

Accomglishments in Opera and Concert," (M. A. thesis, Brigham Young University Music Department, 1956).

THEHISTORYBWER is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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Wizards, Bags of Salt, and Flying Disks Advertised Utah Businesses As SUT L= C ~ BECAME Y MORE INDUSTRIALIZEDduring the early 20th century, local businesses and organizations like the Manufacturers' Association of Utah and the Salt Lake Chamber of commerce developed creative ways to promote economic growth in the city.

During the 1910s the Manufacturer's Association of Utah created a fictional character called the 'Wizard of the Wasatch" to encourage public support for Utah industry. The Wizard, named Hatu-ma-i ('I am Utah" spelled backwards) or Mr. Rer-ut-ca-fu-nam ('Manufacturer" spelled backwards), appeared in parades and local performances. The summer of 1914 was the year of Hatu-ma-i's greatest popularity. During business week at the end of August, local f m s sponsored an electrical parade and other events. Hatu-ma-i led the parade and then performed in several skits during the carnival the next day. In the skits, Mr. Rer-ut-ca-fu-nam told the audience: 'I help Utah's women, men and boys, 1 20,000 I employ, I If you would always loyal be I You'd help yourself as well as me." Another character, Miss Utah, explained that Mr. Rer-utca-fu-nam 'is the wizard because his magic wand has touched the cities and caused them to hum with business." After a rodeo, automobile floral parade, and costume ball, Salt Lake Wizard Week fmally ended with a dramatic performance of Hat-u-mai and Sirrah (Queen of the Oquirrhs) returning on horseback to their mountain home.

In 1940 the Chamber of Commerce tried a different technique to encourage business in Utah. The Salt Lake Tdbune announced on February 4, 1940, that the Chamber of Commerce hoped to promote more than 150 business conventions in the city that year. To convince national businesses that Salt Lake City was the best place to hold a convention, the organization sent 1,000 souvenir bags of salt to various corporations. "Salt from the Great Salt Lake" was written in small black letters on each bag. Tied to the bag was a note that read: 'Salt Away for the Convention in Salt Lake City." Though tedious, the advertising effort did help to encourage conventions in the city.

Ten years later the Chamber of Commerce took a more direct approach to advertising. On April 19 and 20, 1950, thousands of pink and yellow paper disks, representing cash coupons, were launched from an airplane circling the city. The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News advertised days in advance that each pink slip would be worth $5 in sales value if taken to the Retail Merchants' Bureau on the days of the event. The coupons amounted to $1,500 in merchandise. On the morning of April 19 a blue plane roared through the air to scatter disks throughout the city.

According the Salt Lake Tribune, some 2,500 disks were launched on both Wednesday and (more)

Thursday. Though the plane mainly targeted downtown shopping areas, some disks drifted onto unintended locations. During recess and lunch period at the Lafayette School on North Temple and Stac streets, several disks floated onto the playground, much to the enjoyment of the children.

A group of young boys perched on the top of a downtown building caught eight to ten pink disks that had fallen from the sky. When they took them to the Retail Merchants' Bureau, however, they.could not exchange them for money. The boys had been fooled by a prankster who had dropped counterfeit disks from a plane over Second South and Main. Many enthusiasts had fallen for the trick. The Salt Tn'bune identified one man who had lunged for a forged disk he saw on a glass company truck. He broke two panes of glass in the back of the truck before he seized the worthless piece of paper!

Though the style of advertising changed with each new era, business owners remained creative about how to appeal to the general population of Salt Lake City.

See Salr Lake Tribune February 4, 1940, April 19-20, 1950; Payroll Builder, September 1914, pp. 26-28; Utah Sfate Historical Society Nausletter, vol. 24, no. 3 (1974), p. 1

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Woman Suffrage Dominated Politics in Utah

THEDEBATE OVER WOMAN SUFFRAGE DOMINATED POLITICSin Utah throughout the 1890s.

Though the issue was raging throughout the United States, Utah's historic background created unique concerns and attitudes towards the debate.

Unlike other states and territories, Utah had legalized woman suffrage with temtorial legislation in 1870. When Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, however, voting rights for women were abolished along with plural marriages. Utah women took action to reclaim the franchise. In 1889 they founded the Woman Suffrage Association of Utah.

Keeping in touch with the leaders of the LDS church, the new organization enjoyed widespread support from Mormons throughout the temtory. In September 1894 the Womn's Exponent, an unofficial organ of the LDS Relief Society, published figures showing that 19 Utah counties had suffrage organizations. Both the Republican and Democratic conventions of that year strongly endorsed universal suffrage as part of their electoral goals. It seemed that with such strong support on all sides woman suffrage would inevitably succeed in Utah.

Then, during the Utah Constitutional Convention that began in March 1895, some delegates in both the Democratic and Republican parties began to argue against including woman suffrage in the new state's Constitution. Brigham H. Roberts, a Democrat from Davis County, was one of the most vocal contenders. He asserted that woman suffrage would make Utah a "freak state" in the eyes of the majority of states that opposed the franchise for women. Such a perception, he believed, would endanger Utah's chance for statehood. Another argument put forth against woman suffrage held that if women entered the political arena they would be dragged from their 'high pinnacles" of virtue and purity by the process.

Amid these doubts, Emmeline B. Wells, president of the LDS Relief Society and of the Woman Suffrage Association of Utah as well, continued to remind politicians that Utah had seen no such negative effects from the seventeen years of universal suffrage women had already enjoyed in the temtory.

Woman suffrage was undoubtedly the hottest topic at the Constitutional Convention and among its supporters and antagonists out on the street. Tension between the two camps intensifd.

During one such clash, non-Mormon women united in the Opera House to rally against suffrage.

Mormon suffragettes reportedly infiltrated the meeting to prevent a unanimous vote.

Despite the efforts of those opposed to woman suffrage, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention passed it by more than a two-thirds majority. During the November 5 , 1895, election some 80 percent of Utah's voters-still all male-approved the new Constitution. Utah had indeed (more)

chosen to remain one of the few places in the nation to accept universal suffrage. Fear that such a situation would ruin Utah's chance for statehood were unfoundd. Two months later, on January 4, 1896,Utah became the 45th state of the United States.

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Danger Cave near Wendover Provided Clues to Ancient Utah Dwellers

SOME11,000 YEARS AGO MEMBERS OF THE GREATBASINDESERT CULTUREleft behind fascinating evidence of their existence at a site known as Danger Cave, less than two miles east of Wendover, Utah. ~enownedUniversity of Utah archaeologist Jesse D. Jennings first explored the cave in 1949 and over the next several years directed extensive excavations there. He published his findings in 1957 in Memoirs of the Socie~ for American Archaeology, No. 14, and simultaneously in Univemity of Utah Anthropological Papers, No. 27. His report broke new ground by suggesting that there had been a very ancient, uniform way of life blanketing the dry steppes of the western United States for several thousand years. Jennings's Danger Cave findings aroused both criticism and support, but after the initial fervor abated they gained widespread acceptance and became one of many hallmarks in his long and illustrious career.

Jennings was born July 7, 1909, in Oklahoma City to Daniel Wellman and Grace Cruce Jennings. Raised in financially difficult times, he grew accustomed to making do. After receiving a bachelor's degree from a small Baptist college in New Mexico, he arrived at the University of Chicago in 1929 and worked his way through school as a construction worker, busboy, hospital orderly, campus policeman, and archaeological field worker. Upon receiving his doctoral degree in anthropology he worked at several sites in the Southeast and in Guatemala. Then in 1948 he accepted a position as a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah and, with his wife Jane Chase, moved to Salt Lake City.

The anthropology department at the U. was just newly created and with the addition of Jennings had a total faculty of four. He brought enthusiasm and ingenuity to his new position, and in his first year planned and conducted a self-sufficient field school. He selected two caves on the west side of the Great Salt Lake and in the summer of 1949 established a camp just east of Wendover. Jennings and his students excavated Jukebox and Raven caves, which proved only moderately successful in terms of research. They also took cursory samples at Danger Cave, which, in subsequent years, produced a trove of archeological clues to Utah's past.

Despite the challenging working conditions at the cave, which included blinding and choking dust, Jennings and his crew persevered until they finished excavating in 1955. The extremely dry cave had created an ideal storage condition that preserved a variety of fascinating artifacts from beetle wings to textiles and human coprolites. They also found leather scraps, pieces of string, nets of twine, coarse fabric, basket fragments, and bone and wood tools such as knives, weapons, and millstones. Amazingly, the excavation also yielded identifiable fragments of 68 plant species that still grow today within ten miles of the cave as well as the bones of many species of animals. In an effort to date the variety of inhabitants that had used the cave (more)

over its expansive history Jennings sent samples from every major stratum to Chicago for Carbon14 dating. The age of the oldest material-over 11,000 years-surprised even Jennings and exceeded in age all but"a few of the excavated sites in North America.

The data collected from the cave led Jennings to startling new conclusions about a previously unknown, ancient Desert Culture in the western U.S. Evidence from Danger Cave suggested that this desert population was sparse, with small social units of extended families numbering no more than 25 to 30 people. The quest for food in cyclic wanderings required most of the energy of these kinship groups. They harvested pine nuts and small seeds, roasted their meats, and utilized caves and overhangs for shelter. According to Jennings, life in this primitive culture was 'directly and continuously focused on sheer survival." 'In such situations," he wrote, 'there is little leisure, and almost no certainty about the morrow. No long-term building projects, no complicated rituals, no extensive amassing of personal property nor any long range plans can be undertaken in such circumstances." Despite its uncertainty the Desert Culture persisted for thousands of years and eventually became the basis for other early Utah cultures such as that of the Fremont.

In addition to his Danger Cave research, Jennings continued his work at the U. where he gained a reputation as a challenging and popular professor. He also conducted other extensive research in the Great Basin, Southwest, and Pacific. One of his notable accomplishments has became a popular site to visit for Utah school children. He lobbied persistently for a number of years and eventually won support to build-virtually from scratch-the award-winning Utah Museum of Natural. History. He has received a plethora of teaching and research awards as well as written a number of books and articles, including the college text Prehistory of Nonh America, now in its third edition. He retired as a Distinguished Professor from the U. in 1980 and moved to Oregon where he continues teaching and research as an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon. Jennings is current1y writing a major synthesis of Great Basin prehistory.

See Jesse D. Jennings, Danger Cove, University of Utah Anthropological Papers, No. 27 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1957); Jesse D. Jennings, Accidental Archaeologist: Memoirs of Jcsse D. Jennings (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994).

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The Salt Lake City Street Railroad Strike of 1890

ORGANIZED LABOR SUFFERED MANY SETBACKS IN THE LATE 19th century. Workers in the 'unskilled" or 'semiskilledn trades found it particularly difficult to gain workplace rights. In September 1890 the streetcar men of Salt Lake City learned a hard lesson in the realities of worker/management relations.

Streetcars were a new phenomenon in Salt Lake City; the first electric cars had appear& in 1889. The motormen and conductors of the Salt Lake City Railway Company formed themselves into a Street Car Men's Union in July of 1890 and joined the Utah Federation of Trades and Labor Council.

The streetcar men objected to a company policy that required them to clean their cars at the end of their shifts. They argued that the company also required them to present a neat appearance, which necessitated the purchase of good suits of clothes at their own expense, and that cleaning up ruined those clothes. A union committee proposed that the company hire other workers to perform the cleaning, but the company rejected that idea and also refused to recognize the union. On September 17, 1890, about 130 men went on strike.

For their part, company officials said that the union had misrepresented itself; that the union was originally to be 'only a benevolent affairn; that the men were paid more than streetcar workers in other cities; that the cleaning could easily be done in half an hour; and, most important, that the company would not allow its employees to dictate the terms of work. The company refused to negotiate and would not recognize the Utah Federation of Trades' representatives.

The company immediately began hiring and training new men, some of whom were operating streetcars as early as the morning of September 18, the day after the strike began. The strikers made some attempts to block the cars at the comer of Main Street and First South, denouncing the new men as "scabsn; but the presence of policemen helped prevent any violence.

The union had some support; the Federation of Trades sponsored a 'grand labor demonstration" with parades, signs, and bands. Other unions drafted resolutions of support, boycotted the streetcars, and contributed money.

A. W. McCune, company president, moved quickly to solve his labor problems, and within five days a largely new crew had been hired and nearly all of the streetcars were running. McCune argued that the strikers "have the right to withdraw from our service. The company has an equal right to employ others to take their place . . . the real object was to compel from us a formal recognition of this labor order and its demands; and only the good God knows where it would stop if it was once begun." (more)

Despite a petition signed by many prominent citizens urging arbitration, the company stood firm. The union was broken within a week; some men renouncsd their demands and were rehired, while others had to find other work. R. G. Sleater, president of the Utah Federation of Trades and Labor Council, maintained that the lesson of this strike was not to allow unskilled laborers in the council. Although the streetcar men would be offered 'moral support," the council would limit its membership to skilled workers in the future.

Sources: Salt Luke Tribune, Salt Lake Herald, Deseret Evenirlg News, and the Utah Iabor Archives, Mamott Library, Special Collections, University of Utah.

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he Japanese Agricultural Colony at Keetley, Wasatch County Tm STORY OF THE JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS during World War 11 at Topaz, Millard County, and elsewhere is generally well known. A lesser-known story is that of Keetley Farms, an agricultural colony of 'voluntarily" relocated Japanese Americans situated roughly halfway between Park City and Heber City.

The move to Keetley took place against a background of widespread anti-Japanese sentiment after the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941. Thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry found themselves the object of suspicion and hatred. The immediate concern of other Americans was the possibility of sabotage, but California especially had a long history of prejudice against Japanese immigrants. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066 authorizing the removal of 110,000 Japanese, U.S. citizens and aliens, from the West Coast to the interior in February 1942. The military authorities in California, headed by Lt. Gen. J.L. DeWitt, did not initially have the resources to move the Japanese, so for a brief time DeWitt encouraged voluntary relocation. Although some 10,000 Japanese indicated their desire to move voluntarily, less than 5,000 were able to do so; the rest could not leave their homes so quickly. Many encountered hostility during their exodus from the coast and had no chance of employment at the end of their journey.

A prosperous Oakland produce dealer named Fred Isamu Wada, whose wife Masako was from Ogden, decided to visit Utah to investigate possible areas for relocation for himself and other California Japanese. Duchesne County authorities attempted to attract the Japanese as agricultural laborers, but Wada decided that eastern Utah was too remote. Instead, he struck a bargain with Keetley mayor George Fisher, leasing land from him in exchange for a promise to bring Japanese to the area as farm labor.

Local reaction to the move was initially hostile. Although Utah residents were not as overtly anti-Japanese as Californians, few wanted Japanese living among them. The Park City newspaper, the Park Record, noted that the attacks on Hawaii and the Philippines had been meticulously planned, and that "all these dress rehearsals were supplemented by the most vicious and long-ranged fifth column activities that this war has yet seen." Fisher allayed local suspicions in an interview published in the Park Record three weeks later by swearing to the newcomers' loyalty and noting that the move had not cost Americans anything: "All evacuees brought to Utah

by Mr. Fisher are American citizens, some of them second generation. According to Mr. Fisher, (more)

they came to Utah with no expense to state or federal governments, paying all travel expenses and freight charges on farm machinery themselves."

On March 26 Wada and a number of other families left Oakland for Utah. (Wada, incidentally, would lose all of his property in California). They left just in time; on March 30 General DeWitt “froze" the movement of all persons of Japanese ancestry in preparation for their forced relocation. Those coming to Keetley would, at any rate, have at least a greater measure of M o m than the internees. Wada established from the start that the community would be a cooperative, nonprofit venture, growing food for the American war effort.

When the snow melted on the Keetley property the new farmers were disappointed at the poor quality of the land. 'Hell," Fred Wada later told an interviewer, 'we had to move 50 tons of rocks to clear 150 acres to farm." Still, they went to work, repairing buildings, planting a large truck garden, and raising chickens, pigs, and goats. Eventually, the Keetley farmers would herd beef cattle and raise dairy wws as well. Once the farm was established, maintaining it was left to wives and children while many of the men worked as laborers in sugar beet fields and on surrounding farms.

Local hostility toward the Japanese manifested itself early in two incidents of dynamite throwing, fortunately with no injuries. Wada met with representatives of local trade unions in April 1942 to assure them that the Japanese were loyal American citizens and to tell them, 'We are here to produce foodstuffs for victory." Relations quickly improved; many of the Japanese children attended school, either at Park City or Heber City, and the Keetley colonists adopted some American activities, including baseball. Several of them had relatives serving in the U.S. Army.

The Keetley residents maintained close ties to the internees at Topaz; they made frequent visits there, and some internees furloughed to perform agricultural work came through Keetley.

At the war's end, about two-thirds of the Keetley residents returned to their homes in California after the last harvest. The others remained in Utah, scattering to a number of different communities. Fred Isamu Wada moved his family to the Los Angeles area where he prospered in the produce business for many years. As for Keetley, its destiny was to be covered by the rising waters of the Central Utah Project's Jordanelle Dam a half-century later.

See Park Record and Wasatch Wave (Heber City) MarchIApril 1942; Sandra C. Taylor, "Japanese Americans and Keetley Farms: Utah's Relocation Colony," Urah Historical Quarterly 54 (Fall 1986); Marilyn Curtis White, "Keecley, Utah: The Birth and Death of a Small Town," Utah Historical Quarterly 62 (Summer 1994).

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Utah's Own John Gilbert Thrilled Silent Movie Fans

THESILENT FILM ERA

1920s featured a number of dashing, romantic leading men.

The most famous of these was Rudolph Valentino whose performance in The Shcik assured him screen immortality and a vast female audience. Valentino's chief rival was Utah-born John Gilbert, and after Valentino's death in 1926, Gilbert reigned unchallenged as Hollywood's romantic idol.

The addition of sound to motion pictures doomed the silent films, however, and with them Gilbert's career.

John Gilbert was born in Logan, Utah, on July 10, 1897. His mother, Ida Apperly, was a well known local beauty who (to her family's horror) had joined a travelling acting company when it passed through Logan. Ida returned to her family in Logan to give birth to John Cecil Pringle, named after his father, an actor in the company. When she later married actor Walter B. Gilbert, young John took his last name.

John Gilbert worked at a number of odd jobs before joining a stock company in Washington state at age seventeen. In 1915 he got his first movie role as an extra in a production by Thomas H. Ince. Gilbert played a number of small roles over the next few years while also working as a director, cutter, prop man, and set carpenter in the infant film industry. In 1918 he married for the first time and served a short stint in the Army.

Gilbert's career began to take off in 1924 when he signed a contract with Metro-GoldwynMayer. M-G-M's "boy genius," Irving Thalberg, cast Gilbert in a series of big-budget pictures with the studio's major female stars. Films such as His Hour (1924), 77ze Merry Widow (1925), and Lo Boheme (1926) established Gilbert as a leading man. His suave, dark good looks appealed greatly to women, while his biggest hit, the war picture The Big Parode (1925), gave him action credentials as well. Gilbert's three pictures with Greta Garbo were highly successful, helped by rumors of their off-screen romance.

Gilbert remained at the top of this competitive industry for four years, signing a contract in 1929 that reportedly paid him $10,000 a week for seven films. The sound era, however, proved to be.his downfall. Gilbert's first "talkie," His Glorious Night, was greeted with derisive laughter.

The actor's delivery seemed stilted and unnatural, and his voice sounded high and weak. Gilbert's friends and supporters blamed the primitive recording equipment, but after another failure the studio offered to buy out his contract. The proud Gilbert insisted that M-G-M fulfill the letter of their deal, so five more movies were released to critical and popular indifference.

Gilbert's career was not completely over. In 1933, supposedly at Garbo's insistence, the studio signed him to co-star in Queen Cltristina. He received good reviews for his portrayal of an alcoholic in 771e Caprair~Hate1 rl7e Sea (1934), but no further film offers resulted. Gilbert died of a heart attack at his home in Beverly Hills in 1936 at the age of 38.

OF THE

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Farmers Brought Their Produce to Open Markets in Salt Lake City

DURING AN AGE WITHOUT SUPERMARKETS AND PACKAGED GOODS, f m e r s in Davis and Salt Lake counties came to Salt Lake City to sell their produce in an open market. The first city et located at the site of today's City and County Building. In market was at ~ a ~ m & kSquare, addition to being a camping ground for immigrants, the area was a general marketplace where farmers sold hay, livestock, and produce. Eveline Brooks Auerbach, daughter of early Jewish residents of Salt Lake City, remembered the lively atmosphere at Haymarket Square when she and her family camped at the site in the 1850s. Farmers would sell produce from their wagons on street corners. City residents often complained about the trash on the streets when the merchants left in the evenings.

To control the situation, stalls were built along "Market Row" (the north side of First South between West Temple and Richards Street) in the 1890s. Farmers paid a monthly rental fee for daily use of the stalls. Merchants arrived early in the morning to secure the best location.

Robert Moss, a Bountiful resident, remembered going to the market with his brother George to sell the family crops. The two boys would load the wagon for market in the evenings. In order to get a good position on Market Row they would start for Salt Lake City as early as 2 A.M. When they got a stall, Robert and George would take their horses to a feed yard and sleep in the wagon.

Early in the morning they would walk up and down the supply line to learn the prices of the day.

The boys would listen to buyers and sellers talking to determine the best price at which their own produce would sell. Potatoes, onions, root vegetables, melons, corn, asparagus, rhubarb, and fruit were the main foods sold at Market Row. Robert remembered the market as a place where competition ran high, as every farmer wanted to sell the most produce.

Despite the success of Market Row, complaints caused city officials to take action. The rising popularity of the market made it increasingly crowded with buyers and sellers. By 1900 both sides of First South were filled with merchants. Property owners objected to the all-night noise and litter in the area. On one occasion the congested marketplace delayed the city Fire Department from reaching a burning home. In response to the problem, the city prohibited farmers from selling on the streets in 1910.

The Browning-Eccles business interests took advantage of the situation by building a market yard at 200 West and 200 South. Farmers had to pay a high monthly fee to do business in the lot.

When the farmers reviewed their options, some decided not to accept the Browning-Eccles offer.

Instead, they made a deal with the operator of a feed yard near Market Row, to allow them to use his land in exchange for 25 cents per wagon a day. To curb competition, farmers (more)

stood in front of the Eccles Market encouraging merchants to go to the feed yard-later called the Continental Market-to sell their produce. Although they succeeded in defeating their competitors, the farmers running Continental Market failed to manage the business effectively. They tried to introduce a barter syskm in which growers could pay stall fees with such commodities as flour, seed, and coal. Utah's economy was well beyond the barter stage, and however well-intentioned, the approach failed to provide the necessary funds to maintain the market. At the end of 1910 the managers were $21,000 in debt. In addition, the city Health Department threatened to place a restraining order on the Continental Market because of its unsanitary conditions.

Faced with initial failure, the f m e r s decided to take a new approach to managing a market in Salt Lake City. In 1911 they organized the Salt Lake Market Gardeners' and Fruit Growers' Association. At one of its first meetings the group decided to appeal to the city for a new market location. Finally, after persistent effort, the City Council agreed to allow farmers to form a market street if they could secure the approval of all the property owners in the area. This privilege would be taken away, however, if the council heard any complaints from owners about conditions in the streets.

The association chose 200 West and South Temple as the location of the new market street.

To avoid problems the group established rules that the f m e r s had to follow if they were to conduct business in the area. One rule specified that each merchant had to clean his stall area before leaving in the evening. Growers also had to leave a roadway at the center of the street to allow for through traffic. The area was called the Growers' Exchange and became a thriving marketplace in the heart of the city.

As Salt Lake City's population continued to grow this small market street could not accommodate the growing demand for produce. In 1919 the association changed its name to the Growers' Market Company and invested in a larger market complex by purchasing a city block near 400 South and West Temple for $95,000. The area soon became the site of the Utah Growers' Market. In 1928 construction was completed to include 150 stalls and two covered platforms. A drawing was held every April for farmers to secure the location of their stalls. Rules were posted at the front gate to keep the market orderly and well maintained. Perhaps because to previous problems, rule number 14 read, "No rowdyism will be allowed, such as throwing of vegetables, using obscene language, swearing, etc." The Utah Growers' Market continued to thrive into the 1950s as an important economic center for growers and buyers alike.

See David F. Smith, me Grower's Ma*

Company (1954); Bazil Young Daniel, "A Fanner's Market for Salt Lake City" (Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1963); Bess Snow, me Grower's Market Company (1934).

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The Telephone Comes to Utah

THEINTRODUCTION OF THE TELEPHONE IN Utah moved at a very rapid pace. Within a decade nearly every major city was equipped with a telephone exchange system. The number of customers grew yearly as more learned about the new technological wonder. By the turn of the century the telephone was a frequent, if not yet common, means of communication.

Due to the energy and enthusiasm of a local merchant, A. M. Munser, Ogden was the first Utah city to introduce the telephone. Early in 1879 Munser installed a private line from his store to his warehouse in Ogden. Gradually, other wealthy businessmen followed suit. Then, in March, L. E. Holden, an influential mine owner, installed a telephone line from his office in downtown Salt Lake City to the Deseret National Bank six blocks away. News reporters and curious residents gathered in HoldenS office to hear the first words ever uttered over a telephone in the city. One reporter explained with amazement that HoldenP voice was heard on the other line as distinctly as if he were conversing in the room. All seemed to be amazed by Alexander Graham Bell$ "talking instrument. " As more residents acquired private telephone lines a new system was required to manage the calls. On March 1, 1880, Munser purchased a license from the National Bell Telephone Company to operate a telephone exchange in Ogden. The Ogden Telephone Exchange Company opened on September 8 to serve 24 lines and 30 phones. The first Ogden phone directory, published a month later, contained the names of 56 subscribers. Ogden was moving far ahead of other Utah cities in the race for telephone service.

It took nearly a yea. before Salt Lake City followed Ogden's lead. An exchange license had been purchased in March 1880 but not acted upon. It required a transfer of ownership in December before the Salt Lake Exchange could be opened in April 1881 under the name of A. J. Paterson 6r Company.

Soon Salt Lakers were consumed with preparations for telephone service. The first telephone wires were strung along housetops. This soon proved inconvenient. Because of the wide streets and large blocks characteristic of the city, telephone lines were run down the center of the street. Wires were strung to the top of poles that reached as high as 60 feet. Such changes were necessary as an increasing number of Salt Lake residents purchased telephones. Beginning with only a dozen telephone owners, the city had more than 1,200 subscribers by 1900. The first decade of the 20th century showed even greater growth, and by 1910 telephone subscriptions had increased to 13,048. Both business and social life in Salt Lake were being transformed by the telephone system. (more)

Gradually, cities and towns throughout Utah acquired telephone service. Following Salt Lake City by a few days, Park City became the third town to own an exchange system. Logan was connected to the Ogden Exchange in 1883, and Provo gained a telephone license from the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company of Salt Lake in the same year. Rural areas and smaller towns took longer to receive this modem convenience. Not until 1947 was telephone service installed in Monroe, Utah.

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Marva Hanchett Was 'The Nurse' to Many Southern Utahns

WELLINTO THE 2 0 I ' ~CENTURY SOPHISTICATED MEDICAL FACILITIES Were largely unheard

/-"

of in most rural areas of Utah.The small town of Annabella in Sevier County was no exception.

Consequently, in 1924 when Dr. R. Garn Clark, the local physician, diagnosed two-year old Sheldon Christensen with double pneumonia, taking him to a hospital was not an option. Instead, his mother, Maud, and sister, Marva, soothingly applied mustard plasters and administered cooling sponge baths. When the boy's condition did not improve, the doctor recommended operating. The unusual events of that day affected Marva and solidified her desire to be a professional nurse. She spent most of her life ensuring that many southern Utahns received adequate health care.

Marva was born December 3, 1908, to Peter and Maud Christensen and at a young age demonstrated an interest in health-related matters. When her family contracted smallpox in 1919 Marva asked the doctor about the disease and helpfully brought liquids to ill family members and applied medicine to their pox. She reacted similarly when her brother lay ill with pneumonia several years later. Unfortunately, he had developed empyema, a condition causing the accumulation of pus between the two coverings of his lungs. Dr. Clark said he would have to cut a small section of rib and insert a soft rubber tube in order to drain the pus. In preparation for this procedure Marva and her mother scrubbed the walls, floor, and windows of the parlor with Lysol solution and removed all the furniture except two tables. On the appointed day Dr. Clark amved, accompanied by "Nurse Amanda," a large, stem woman dressed in white who sometimes helped deliver babies. Only Sheldon's mother was allowed to remain in the room during the operation, so Marva and her father went outside and watched with great curiosity through the window. When Dr. Clark picked up a very small saw and started to work "Nurse Amanda" fainted into a starched white heap on the floor. She managed to crawl into the kitchen where she stayed, "being sick" for the remainder of the successful operation. For Idyear-old Marva the experience demonstrated the importance of properly trained nurses, and from that moment on she determined to become a professional nurse.

After graduating from high school Marva anxiously awaited her eighteenth birthday in anticipation of entering nursing school. Finally, on January 4, 1927, she began classes at ihe Salt Lake General Hospital School of Nursing. The first six months of training involved a full day of classes and demonstrations, accompanied by heavy assignments each night. Those who survived received their caps and, in addition to continuing classes, spent grueling 8-hour shifts in one of the hospital wards. Marva was assigned a stint in the Red Isolation ward containing patients with communicable diseases. An epidemic of spinal meningitis had hit Utah, and Marva became involved in endless spinal punctures to relieve the build up of fluid on the brain and spinal cord. (more)

Exhausted from her time in Red Isolation, Marva caught pneumonia and returned to Sevier County to rest. Her parents, frightened by her weight loss and pale, tired countenance, tried to persuade her to stay home.

Undeterred, Marva recuperated for a couple of months and then returned to Salt Lake to complete her training. At school the demanding pace continued; in addition to her studies, Marva was assigned hospital work six and a half days a week. She persevered, nonetheless, and after three challenging years received her diploma in 1930. Before long she retumed to Sevier County to apply her new skills. There was still no regular hospital in the region, and Mama became the only registered nurse available for service. The doctors in the area eagerly called upon her for assistance. In her frst real case she assisted with the amputation of Gotfried Bmgger's gangrenous leg. Later, Marva helped the old gentlemen get accustomed to his crutches, and on several occasions thereafter he visited her in gratitude for her cheerful aid.

Marva continued her work in the region, helping with home baby deliveries, home health care, and emergencies. Many of her patients lived in financial despair due to the Great Depression, and many times her pay was only a loaf of bread, a bucket of honey, or nothing. After a year in rural Utah she moved to California where she found employment in a large private hospital in Los Angeles. She became supervisor of the maternity ward and managed to save a little money from her regular pay.

In 1933 Mama returned to southern Utah and shortly thereafter married Myron Hanchett.

In January 1934 she established the first regular public health program in Sevier County, complete with clinics, school nursing, home nursing, and other programs. Even after becoming a mother she arranged her time to allow for continuing work in health care. When Dr. Dan W. Manning built the Sevier Valley Hospital in Richfield she became nursing supervisor. She spent nearly ten years in her position; one year, during World War 11, she was the only registered nurse in the county.

She worked her regular shift and remained on call for emergencies and surgery 24 hours a day. In response to the nursing shortage, she trained several nurses' aides and even recruited registered nurses to move to southern Utah.

Marva's outstanding work eventually gained recognition, and in November 1957 the state director of public health nursing appointed her supervisor of the eight-county area of Beaver, Garfield, Millard, Sanpete, Juab, Piute, Wayne, and Sevier counties. In this new position she directed a preventive disease program, health education, a home visiting service, a school nursing service, and several clinical services, including heart, orthopedic, mental health, and pediatrics.

For her tireless service the Utah Public Health Association honored her with a lifetime membership shortly before her retirement in January 1979.

Even after she officially quit work Marva was still respectfully known as "The Nurse" to many southern Utahns. She died in Richfield on April 20, 1995.

See Patricia H. Sorenson, "The Nurse: Mama Christensen Hanchett of Sevier County." Utah Historical Quarterly 45 (Spring 1977): 165-72; Deseret News, ApriI 21,1995.

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The "Impossible" Hurricane Canal Took 11 Years to Complete

ON AUGUST6, 1904, nvE OR SIX WAGONLOADS

of people gathered on the Hurricane Bench to witness a dirty stream of water pour life onto the desert soil of southwestern Utah. The event marked the culmination of eleven years of tedious manual labor by some of the remnants of Brigham Young's Cotton Mission colonizers (these were members of the Mormon church whom Young sent to southern Utah to grow cotton). Beginning in the early 1860s these religious settlers inhabited tiny plots of land along the upper Virgin River Basin. They relied upon the river for daily sustenance, yet it often betrayed them with angry tantrums that left their dams, ditches, and crops in chaos. Many colonizers relocated in search of better conditions. Those who remained also sought ways to improve their lives. In 1893 nearly a hundred men from the basin communities met to incorporate the Humcane Canal Company in the hope of bringing water to the desirable lands of the Humcane Bench.

Two previous surveys deemed the project impossible, and even the surveyor hired to map the ditch was pessimistic. He foresaw the immense amount of labor and money the canal would require and did not believe the impoverished settlers could finish it. Nevertheless, stockholders soon began construction of the nearly seven-mile-long canal. Workers laboriously hefted food, tools, bedding, and an anvil to the dam site at the bottom of a narrow gorge. The canal clung to the steep hillsides and ledges of the Hurricane Hill, making horses and plows impossible tools.

Instead, the shovel, pick, crowbar, wheelbarrow, and hand-driven drill carved the ditch out of the canyon wall. At times the workers had to hang men down from ledges to reach the ditch, but rock blasting proved even more challenging. Thomas Isom remembered picking dynamite out of 'many a hole which had misfired." He explained, "We had to do this, dangerous as it was; we could not afford to lose a single stick."

Work continued slowly, only progressing significantly during the winter when men and older boys could leave their farms in care of their families. As labor on the canal continued unrewarded many became discouraged and sold or forfeited their stock. By 1901 the canal company had expended nearly $50,000 in labor; those still involved were not willing to waste such efforts. Although their previous requests for help had been rejected, the canal board again turned to the Mormon church for rescue. In 1902 the board assigned James Jepson to travel to Salt Lake City and meet with Mormon President Joseph F. Smith. The meeting proved fruitful, as the church agreed to purchase $5,000 stock in the company. With this boost workers came scurrying back to the project and pushed the canal to completion.

(more)

In 1906 the first residents of Hurricane arrived. Over the next two decades a near flood of settlers poured onto the bench eager to partake of the new land and economic opportunities the canal made possible.

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Chief Ouray Hoped to Achieve Peace with White People

THEWESTERN UTEBANDS ORIGINALLY OCCUPIED about 23.5 million acres or around 45 percent of the present state of Utah. By the 1870s, however, Utah's Utes were confined to less than 10 percent of that area, slightly over 2 million acres on the Uintah Reservation. The Ute lands grew to over 4 million acres in 1880 when the federal government removed the White River and Uncompahgre bands from Colorado and created the Ouray Reservation in Utah. Although Ouray, the prominent chief for whom the new reservation was named, died before the forced relocation, he had spent his life negotiating with government officials and trying to assure a peaceful existence for his people.

The exact date of Ouray's birth is unknown, but most authorities believe he was born in 1833 in Taos, New Mexico. He spent most of his youth working for Mexican sheepherders and fighting against rival Sioux and Kiowas. He learned Spanish, English, and several Indian languages that became very useful to him in later treaty negotiations. After the death of his first wife, Ouray married Chipeta, a beautiful Uncompahgre Ute toward whom he always showed deep devotion.

In 1863 Ouray helped to negotiate a treaty with the federal government in which the Utes ceded all lands east of the Continental Divide. In 1868 he traveled to Washington, D.C., to represent his people and was appointed "head chief of the Utes" by the government. Ouray and his wife made several visits to the nation's capital and on one occasion met President Ulysses S. Grant.

Ouray always attempted to secure the best possible conditions for his people while still remaining friendly to the whites. Nevertheless, each additional negotiation brought increasing losses of land for the Indians, and some resented Ouray's friendship with the whites and the special favors he received from them. Disgruntled Utes made various attempts on Ouray's life, but he survived and maintained his conciliatory attitude.

With the discovery of gold in Colorado and the resulting influx of miners, Indian-white relations deteriorated. Finally, in the spring of 1878, Nathan Meeker, an Indian agent, triggered a series of events that led to the relocation of Ouray's people to Utah. The White River Utes had become infuriated over Meeker's attempt to force them to farm. Meeker called in federal troops, but the Indians succeeded in killing him and seven other whites and took several women as captives. When the government appealed to Ouray for help, the influential chief intervened and secured the release of the hostages and even welcomed them into his home while the situation was defused. (more)

Repercussions from this incident were devastating for the Indians. In 1880 Ouray traveled for the last time to Washington where he signed a treaty providing for the removal of the White River Utes as well as his own Uncompahgre band from Colorado to the Uintah and newly created Ouray reservations in Utah. Shortly after his return from Washington, Ouray died and was buried in southern Colorado. His wife, Chipeta, moved to Utah with her people and died in poverty and exile in 1924 on the reservation named for her husband.

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The Spanish Trail Cut a Roundabout Path through Utah

THESPANBHTRAIL, A MAJOR TRADE ROUTE between Santa Fe and h

Angeles, has entered western lore as the scene of historic events and as a route for famous explorers. A large section of the trail curves north to pass through central and southern Utah before bending south again and passing out of the state. The trail has been traveled by ancient and modem peoples and has witnessed slave trading, emigrant parties, Indian massacres, and superhighway construction.

The Spanish Trail measures 1,120 miles long and passes through New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California. The seemingly roundabout path resulted from human and natural obstacles; sometimes hostile Apache, Navajo, and Mojave Indians discouraged EuroAmericans from taking the direct southern route; and the deep, often impassable canyon country of the Colorado Plateau necessitated a detour far to the north. Archaeological evidence indicates that many stretches of the trail were well known to prehistoric Native Americans, including Archaic and Fremont peoples. The heyday of the trail, however, lasted from 1829 to 1848 when Santa Fe traders used the route to bring goods to and from California. John C. Fremont, who traveled much of the trail in the 1840s, assumed that the route had been laid out by the Spanish and so named it for them; many sources refer to it as the Old Spanish Trail.

The trail enters Utah from the east near the present-day town of Ucolo, about 15 miles east of Monticello, and continues roughly northwesterly to about the town of Green River, Emery County. Just northwest of Moab the trail crosses the Colorado River at a spot where low water reveals an island. Continuing up steep-walled Moab Canyon, the trail eventually crosses desert and wash region until it crosses the Green River, again via a low-water island. Orson Pratt, who traveled the route in 1848 and kept an detailed diary, noted that his party was forced to swim their animals and raft their goods at both crossings. The trail then skirts the northern edge of the San Rafael Swell, until reaching its northernmost point in the Black Hills in present Emery County, then bends to the southwest as it crosses the Great Basin on its way to Los Angeles. In 1853 Capt.

John Gunnison and a surveying party traveled part of the route before turning north along the Sevier River. On October 26, 1853, Gunnison and a number of others were killed by Indians.

John Wesley Powell named a butte, valley, and Green River crossing for Gunnison when he passed through the region in 1871. Eventually the route climbs Holt Canyon, crosses the infamous Mountain Meadows, and enters the Virgin River Basin and Arizona. Much of the route in southwestern Utah has been obliterated by Interstate 70.

The New Mexicans carried woolen goods-rugs, blankets, and other woven products-along the trail to California where they traded them for horses and mules that in turn were driven back (more) S

to New Mexico for sale. Along the route traders sometimes swapped animals for Paiute slaves or stole children outright from the relatively weak tribes. The slave trade peaked in the 1830s and 1840s, with Chief Walkara's Ute bands playing a major role in capturing and trading slaves who brought good prices iii California.

The arrival of Mormon pioneers in the late 1840s gradually displaced the natives and disrupted the slave trade. The Mormons eventually turned the western part of the Spanish Trail into a wagon route, bringing pioneers down the Mormon Comdor to California.

The trail has received much historical and scholarly attention. Cedar City's William R. Palmer founded the Spanish Trail Association, which seeks to recover the sometimes obscured path and its history. Two Utah historians, the late C. Gregory Crampton and Steven K. Madsen, believe they have reconstructed the entire route of the famous trail.

See L. R. Bailey, Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1966); C. Gregory Crampton and Steven K. Madsen, In Search of the Spanish Trail: Sanm Fe to Los Angela, 1829-1848 (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publishing, 1994).

THE HISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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A Taste for Strawberries Led Patrick Coughlin to His Death

ONJULY 24,

1895, PATRICK COUGHLINSTOLE A CUP OF STRAWBERRIES h m a street merchant in Salt Lake City. When the 23-year old man saw that he was being chased by the Salt Lake police, he becamefrightened and ran. The incident began a lengthy chase that ended in the death of two police officers and Rich County's first execution by firing squad.

At first, Coughlin managed to escape from the police without much difficulty. He stole a horse and rode to the home of a friend, Fred George, who lived on the south side of the city.

After some persuasion, Coughlin convinced George to accompany him on his escape. The two hid in Emigration Canyon for several days without being found.

Trouble came, however, when Sheriff Harrington of Park City heard about the theft and immediately joined the search. He was well acquainted with Coughlin's criminal history. A Park City resident for many years, Coughlin had gained a reputation in the area as a petty thief. He had spent time in jail for horse stealing and various juvenile crimes. When Harrington learned that Salt Lake police were searching for the strawberry thief he joined them, determined to settle the problem of Patrick Coughlin once and for all.

It took Harrington three days to find the men. After spending several days near the city George and Coughlin had traveled north to a sheep camp in Crandall Canyon. Harrington followed the trail and met the men on July 27 at the Emigration Divide near the border of Morgan County.

When he approached them, Coughlin recognized the sheriff and shot at him. After an exchange of gunfire, the miscreants managed to escape. They retreated to Wanship in Summit County where the acquired 300 rounds of ammunition. Then they rode northward to Coalville, up Echo Canyon, and then into Wasatch Flats. That night the two men hid in Palmer shack, a small cabin near Clear Creek.

When Coughlin awoke and looked out the window the next morning, he saw men surrounding the cabin. The posse open fired. While Coughlin shot back, George lay on the floor and reloaded the rifles. One of Coughlin's shots mortally wounded officer N. E. Dawes of Evanston.

Constable Parry Stagg of Echo was apparently killed in the crossfire by a fellow posse member.

While several officers hurried to the nearby town of Evanston for help, Coughlin and George emerged from the shack. After apologizing to the dying officer Dawes, the outlaws took the revolvers and ammunition from the dying men and rode away.

Meanwhile, a group of Evanston citizens converged on the Palmer shack. Thinking Coughlin and George were still there, they riddled the shack with nearly 500 rounds of lead. But

(more)

the two men had escaped hours before and were on their way to Ogden Canyon. After the killing of the two officers, the search for the fugitives intensified. Bands of armed citizens searched the countryside for any trace of the two men. Reports came in from Ogden, Kaysville, and Fmington of seeing two rough-looking young men. On August 3 Fred George and Patrick Coughlin were finally apprehended at the Third Term Inn in Grantsville, Tooele County. The hotel owner had identified the men and reported them to the police the night before. When the men awoke in the morning they were surrounded by the posse. Coughlin shouted, 'Don't shoot! This is the first time we've had a chance to surrender like men without being shot down like dogs." As if in consent, the armed men put down their weapons and handcuffed the criminals.

The trials of George and Coughlin were held in Randolph. George, considered the more respectable of the two, was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of horse stealing and murder. He was released several years later for good behavior. The trial of Patrick Coughlin resulted in the most serious sentence possible. Although attorneys A. B. Hayes and T. D. Johnson argued that Coughlin had acted in self-defense and had been unjustly treated, they failed to convince the judge of the defendant's innocence. On October 26, 1895, Coughlin was found guilty of murder and sentenced to-death. He elected to die by firing squad.

On December 14 Coughlin spent his final night in the Randolph jail with his mother.

Though he cried out in the night for morphine to calm his nerves, when morning came he seemed surprisingly cheerful. He sang and whistled as he taken to the execution site at Sage Hollow, about two miles from Woodruff. A crowd had already gathered at the place when the prisoner arrived.

Coughlin said little during the last minutes of his life. He seemed to wince only once-when Dr. Edgar Lee,the Randolph physician, taped a paper target over his heart.

The execution on December 15, 1895, ended the life of a thief whose fate was determined by an unfortunate series of events that also left two lawmen dead. Patrick Coughlin had been pursued by police, shot at, imprisoned, and finally executed-all for a cup of strawberries.

See Mildred Thomson, cornp., Rich Memories-Some Happenings in Rich Countyfiom 1863 to 1960 (Springville, 1962); Steven L. Thomson, Jane D. Digemess, and Mar Jean S. Thomson, Randolph-A Look Back (Randolph, 1981); Deserm News, December 15, 1895.

THEHISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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When the Din of Sheep Shearing Rocked the Desert

EACH SPRING IN THE EARLY DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

the peaceful red rock desert of southwestern Utah was startled awake by an almost deafening din of commotion. Five miles east of Humcane the Goulds' sheep shearing pens came alive with a confusion of activity.

The noise of sheep bleating, dogs barking, wranglers shouting, clippers whirling, and machinery clanking combined to create what some claim was the busiest shearing center in the West, if not the world.

Beginning in 1910 southern Utah sheepmen opened the corrals that soon attracted herds from the entire region including Cedar City, Panguitch, Kanab, Kanarra, and Long Valley. The highly mechanized shearing shed efficiently processed the sheep at eighteen shearing stations. The clipped wool was flung onto conveyor belts and carried to a loft where wool "stompers" tossed it into huge wool bags hanging through holes in the floor. These men jumped into the bags and stomped on the fleece to compact it. The bags were then sewn shut with heavy twine and loaded onto freight wagons for the long trip to the railroad at Lund, near Cedar City.

The operation proved an economic boon to many southern Utah residents. The corrals employed some thirty-five laborers and sheared around 3,000 head of sheep a day. The fastest shearer could by himself clip a reported 250-300 sheep in one day. A number of men also found work hauling the wool to the railroad. Residents of Toquerville, La Verkin, Hurricane, Virgin, Springdale, and Rockville welcomed such employment in the spring when money was scarce and many needed jobs. In 1914 the 131,000 sheep sheared at the pen produced 1,048,000 pounds of wool. This put into the hands of local freighters $10,480, besides creating a market for hay and other products and giving merchants and hotels lively trade.

Not all, however, benefited from the shearing pens. Cattle ranchers complained that the sheep were trampling the feed and overgrazing the land. One year James W. Imlay of Hurricane lost 800 ewes to a mysterious poisoning, and in 1913 the shearing pens at the Goulds' ranch were totally destroyed by a fire that many believed was maliciously set. Regardless, the pens were quickly rebuilt and 110,000 sheep were sheared that year.

In 1927 sheep and cattlemen held a convention in St. George to try and reconcile their differences. Their intent was to divide the range land that both sides relied upon for subsistence; but each side wanted more than the other would give, and the convention ended without an agreement.

Despite the opposition, shearing at the Goulds' corral continued until it again burned in 1931. The operation reopened in 1932 but never reached the levels of output once achieved. The Great Depression dropped wool prices drastically low. Then, the advent of portable shearing machines sealed the pens' fate, and they eventually closed in the early 1940s.

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A Wedding Song Connects Utah with 16th-century Spain

THEROLE OF SPANISHEXPLORERS IN UTAHHISTORY is widely recognized, especially the legendary journey of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition through much of the present state in 1776. But Utah's cultural ties with Spain extend 200 years earlier than the epic trek led by two Catholic priests. It all has to do with weddings.

A decade ago two University of Utah professors-William H. Gonzalez and Genaro M. Padilla-traced the roots of the Hispanic community in Monticello, Utah, and made some fascinating discoveries. They found that most of the Spanish-surnamed families living in Monticello had migrated from small villages in New Mexico beginning about the turn of the century. By 1920 Monticello had a substantial Hispanic community rich in traditions.

Weddings, baptisms, and funerals all followed age-old customs. And of these, weddings provided the most unusual historical detail. After the marriage ceremony in St. Joseph's Catholic Church (built in 1935 in Monticello), the wedding party moved to the home of the bride's parents in a formal procession accompanied by music on the violin and the guitar. A special dinner was served, followed by an evening of dancing. As musical tastes changed over the years, newlyweds and their guests moved away from the waltzes and polkas popular in the early 20th century to the latest rock tunes. Even so, a traditional wedding march with intricate formations was usually one of the dances and a traditional wedding song-the entrega dc novios-was sung by one of the musicians about midway through the evening. Its words reinforced the community's support of the bridal pair and the solemnity of their marriage vows. This is a translation of one of many verses: 'What do the candles signify/when they are about to be li,ghted?/They signify the one union/which will last forever. " Unique to New Mexican Hispanics, the entrega de novios was adapted from the 16thcentury wedding coplas of Spain. In all of the Spanish-speaking world, according to Juan B. Rael, there is nothing like the entrega sung in a handful of New Mexican villages. Migrating families brought this tradition to Monticello, and it moved on with some of them to places like Price and Salt Lake City.

For more information on the intriguing enrrega and other Hispanic traditions see William H. Gonzales and Genaro M. Padilla, 'Monticello, the Hispanic Cultural Gateway to Utah," Utah HLFtorical Qriarrerb 52 (winter 1984): 9-28.

THEHISTORY BLAZER is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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Building Enterprise Reservoir Required Vision and Commitment

FORORSON W. HWSMAN,

A

PIONEER OF THE SHOALCREEKregion of southwestern

Utah, a long anticipated event finally occurred in September 1893. On the 1 lth and 12th of that month a large group of men met in the west basement of the St. Gwrge Tabernacle to organize the Enterprise Reservoir and Canal Company. Building a reservoir in the northwest comer of Washington County was Huntsman's idea. He had spent much time during the year in an apparently fruitless struggle to rally support for this venture. His perseverance finally paid off; the fact that a company was actually organized and people were finally taking action was a welcome relief. He wrote: "I do not think I will preach reservoir anymore but will rest now all of my days. . I believe it [the company] will prove to be a great blessing to many people." In the long run Huntsman's foresight proved accurate. 'Many peoplen did take advantage of the new land the Enterprise Reservoir made available. Meanwhile, there were sixteen years of tedious manual labor and a seemingly endless series of obstacles to overcome before Huntsman's ambitious dream became a reality.

Huntsman was a long-time resident of Hebron, a tiny ranching community in Washington County. Over the years the town had been plagued with water problems. Its long canal dried up, its flume fell into disrepair, and its residents complacently failed to find a solution. Instead, they hauled water to town in barrels and buckets. Unable to provide for his family under these circumstances, Huntsman left Hebron on three different occasions but each time was drawn back.

On his final return in 1892 he started looking beyond salvaging Hebron and instead envisioned building a new and better town, one with a reservoir nearby to eliminate water scarcity for good.

He had noticed on occasion a narrow spot along the creek at Little Pine Valley, about three miles south of Hebron. It seemed a natural site for a dam and reservoir.

In confident anticipation that the reservoir would be built, Huntsman had a town site surveyed at the mouth of Shoal Creek in 1892. He named the new town Enterprise because he believed the venture "was a great enterprise for such a few poor people to undertake." Shortly after organizing, the company's original fifteen stockholders set to work constructing the dam in Little Pine Valley. The county surveyor, Isaac Macfarlane, projected that the 80-foot high dam would hold over 145,000 gallons of water and make over 5,400 acres of land irrigable. The dam, to be built of stone masonry, would measure 20 feet wide at the bottom and narrow to 8 feet at the top. A sloping bank, 160 feet wide at the bottom, would reinforce the structure. The estimated cost of the dam and an eight-mile canal was over $31,000.

Exuberant workers completed more than 20 feet of the masonry work the first year of construction but added only three feet in 1894. By the following year, company records indicate (more)

. .

that work was "going on slowly" and in reality had virtually stopped. The economically depressed settlers had begun their ambitions venture in the midst of one of the nation's worst depressions.

Farm prices and income were at a 30-year low, and most Enterprise stockholders were forced to seek employment in nearby mines across the Nevada border. Of necessity, work on the -dam slowed dramatically.

Other problems also hampered progress on the reservoir. In the spring of 1901 a violent flood roared down Shoal Creek, washing away 10 feet of the masonry portion of the dam and causing an estimated $3,000 loss. Some who had moved to Enterprise in anticipation of water for their new farmlands became discouraged and moved elsewhere. By 1909, after failing to gain support from a variety of prominent business people, the company faced financial ruin. At that point a Mormon apostle and former resident of St. George, Anthony, W. Ivins, came to the . rescue. He invested $7,500 cash in the project, for which he accepted 1,000 shares of stock in the tottering company.

With this infusion of.money the workers rushed the dam to completion. On October 30, 1909, the tenacious men, women, and children who had invested several years of their lives in the project gathered on and around the dam to see the capstone cemented into place and to celebrate their victory. Ivins and other dignitaries delivered speeches to the crowd. A picnic followed by lively dancing that lasted well into the night completed the day's festivities.

Initially, Enterprise enjoyed a prosperous few decades of growth, making it the third most populous community in Washington County by the 1950s. The reservoir provided water for thousands of acres of grain, potatoes, and alfalfa and offered a relatively comfortable existence for Enterprise townsfolk. In the ensuing years, however, growth in the tiny town has not kept pace with the explosive expansion experienced by much of the rest of Washington County (the 1990 federal census lists the town's population at 936). Regardless, Enterprise residents hold no illusions of grandeur; they are justifiably content with the comfortable comer of the world they have carved out of the desert and beautified.

Sources: Enterprise Reservoir and Canal Company Minutes, Company Office, Enterprise Utah; Orson W. Huntsmau, diary, typescript in Special Collections, Lee Library, Brigham Young University; Orson W. Huntsman, A Brief History of Shoal Creek, Hebron, and Entequrisefiorn 1862 to 1922 (St. George: Dixie College History Department, 1929); Nell Murbarger, "A Great Enterprise," Salt Lake Tribune, August 17, 1952.

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The Scofield Mine Disaster in 1900 Was Utah's Worst

h THE EARLY MORNING OF MAY1,

1900, several hundred miners of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company of Carbon County left their homes in the town of Scofield to begin another day of work in the mines. Some were looking fonvard to the evening celebrations at Odd Fellows Hall where festivities would be held in honor of Admiral Dewey's 1898 defeat of the Spanish navy in the battle of Manila. Little did they know that the events of the day would culminate not in lively celebrations but in the death of 200 miners. It was the worst mine disaster in America to that time.

At 10:28 a.m. the No. 4 mine shaft unexpectedly exploded. Though the sound of the blast was heard in the nearby town, many residents thought at first that it came from fireworks set off early in celebration of Dewey Day. Those working closer to the mine were more wary of the noise. Mine superintendent T. J. Parmley quickly organized a rescue team to assess the damage.

What the relief crew saw as they approached the No. 4 mine was homfying. John Wilson, a miner who had been standing at the opening of the mine at the time of the blast, had been blown 820 f e t and was lying against a tree. It took nearly twenty minutes to clear away the debris that blocked the entrance to the mine. Time was crucial for those trapped inside. When the crew was finally able to enter the mine, they found that some men were still alive but quickly suffocating from the deadly gases left by the explosion. Miners in the No. 1 mining shaft, connected through tunnels to the No. 4, were also dying from the toxic fumes.

During the next two days the towns of Clear Creek and Scofield began the sad process of caring for the dead and wounded. Once dragged from the mining shafts, dead bodies were taken to the company boarding house where they were cleaned and dressed for burial. Then they were taken to the schoolhouse where mothers and wives anxiously waited to claim them.

The Pleasant Valley Coal Company provided the necessary materials to properly bury the dead. Coffins were shipped in from Salt Lake City and Denver. William Sharp, company manager, cane from Salt Lake with several doctors to offer assistance to those who were still alive.

On May 5 two large funerals were held in Scofield, a Lutheran service for the 61 Finns killed in the accident and an LDS service directed by several General Authorities of the church.

Services were also held in other towns throughout the state. Crowds of people waited at the Salt Lake train station for the bodies of loved ones to arrive for burial.

The Scofield mine disaster left a deep scar in the community and in Carbon County.

Although many felt that the mine operators had failed to implement proper safety procedures, state officials cleared them of blame and the Pleasant Valley Coal Company continued operating until (more)

1923. Since then, Scofield has become a ghost town. Several miles from the ruins of the town signs of a great explosion can still be found at the opening of the old No. 4 mine.

For more information see AIIan Kent Powell, Ihe Next Time We Strike Labor in Utah's Coal Fie& (L~gan:Utah State University Press, 1985).

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Tony Lazzeri Hit Home Runs at a Record Pace for the Salt Lake Bees

h 1925 A YOUNG SHORTSTOP FOR THE SALTLAICE BEEShad a dream season, batting 3 5 5 with 60 home runs. Tony Lazzeri had unofficially broken New York Yankees' great Babe Ruth's current home a n recoid of 59 in a season (Ruth hit 60 home runs two years later in 1927). The feat brought fame to "Our Tone," as the Salt Lake papers called him, and fortune to him and the Bees' owner. Lazzeri went on to major league greatness, but the Bees left town after the 1925 season.

Anthony Michael Lazzeri (the spelling is highly varied; throughout his great 1925 season he was 'LaZerre" to the Salt Lake press) was born in San Francisco, California, on December 6, 1903. He learned his baseball on the playgrounds of the Bay Area, much as another ItalianAmerican star, Joe DiMaggio, would a decade or so later. Lazzeri was playing sandlot ball in the Oakland area in the spring of 1922 when Tim Harrington, a scout for the Salt Lake Bees of the Pacific Coast League, recognized his potential. Harrington's boss, Bees president and owner H. W. 'Bill" Lane, signed the young infielder to a contract for the princely sum of $100. Lazzeri was originally sent to Peoria of the "Three-Eye" League for the 1922 and 1923 seasons and then moved to the Lincoln, Nebraska, Western League team for 1924, all the while still under contract to Salt Lake City. In 1925 Lane brought Lazzeri to Utah, and his star began to rise.

The Bees spent much of the long season in a tight race with the San Francisco Seals for first place. Although Salt Lake City faded down the stretch, Lazzeri was a bright spot. The shortstop served notice early that he would strive to break the Pacific Coast League's single season record for home runs, then standing at 43, set in 1923 by Salt Lake's Paul Strand. Lazzeri had a tomd summer, and the majors took notice. On July 29 the Bees' "Murderer's Row" had a field day, pounding the Sacramento Senators 23 to 11. Lazzeri hit for the cycle (home run, triple, double, and single) in front of New York Yankee scouts Joe Connery and Paul Kritchell. Lane had earlier assured the Salt Lake fans that he had no intention of selling Lazzeri's contract: 'He is going to gamble that the brilliant young Bee shortstop will be the greatest infield sensation in the minors next season and then sell him for about 75,000 bemes and six or seven ballplayers" (Deseret News, July 10, 1925). Lazzeri helped to seal the deal and change Lane's mind with another homer on July 30, followed by two more on July 31.

On August 3 the deal was publicly announced. Lane had sold Tony Lazzeri to the New York Yankees, reportedly for $50,000 and five ball players to be named later. The papers claimed .that Lane wuld name the players that he wanted and that for each one that the Yankees refused to send he would receive $15,000; if the big league club failed to provide a player at all, Lane would (more)

I

receive $125,000 for each man he was short. Although these terms are doubtful (Babe Ruth's sale price from the Red Sox to the Yankees, the highest ever to date, had been $125,000), the transaction was the biggest yet made in Pacific Coast League history. The Deseret News noted that Lane, a former prospector, had found in the shortstop "The Richest Nugget Bee Owner Ever Picked Up."

Lazzeri went on to smash Strand's record on September 12 and then hit three more homers on the 13th. By the end of the season on October 19, 1925, the "behemuth [sic] of bust" had swatted 60 home runs, breaking Ruth's record in the "manly art of home run hitting" (although the Pacific Coast League season was longer). The team, however, faded badly, ending up in second, 12% games behind the Seals. Lane moved the Bees west to Hollywood at the end of the season.

Lazzeri went on to Ruth's own Yankees where he joined another young sensation named Lou Gehrig. Ruth, Gehrig, Iazzeri, Earle Combs, and Bob Meusel formed a potent 'Murderers' Row" lineup for the Yankees in the late 1920s and 1930s. Lazzeri played for the Bronx Bombers through the 1937 season, helping them to five World Series titles in seven attempts. His finest year came in 1929 when he batted -354 with 193 hits, 37 doubles, 11 triples, 18 home runs, and 106 RBIs. From 1927 through 1930 he batted well over .300.Laueri played for the Chicago Cubs in 1938 and then split time between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants in his final season in 1939. In 14 years "Poosh 'Em Upn Lazzeri (the nickname's origins are uncertain) averaged .292, with 178 home runs, playing mostly second base and shortstop. He died at his home in San Francisco on August 6, 1946, at the age of 42, apparently of a heart attack.

See l'he Baseball Encyclopedia, 8th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1990); D w e t Evening News,July-October 1925; Salt Lake Tribune, August 8, 1946.

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19th-Century Utah Women Spun Yarn and Also Dug Ditches

IN 1870, 13.3 PERCENT OF AMERICANWOMEN OVER AGE TEN were working outside of the home. By the end of the nineteenth century, largely due to expanding businesses, this figure climbed to nearly 20 percent of American women. Over the same period Utah's female work force grew from 4 percent to 13.5 percent but remained well below the national average. Regardless, these numbers do not come close to suggesting the significant and integral role Utah women played in taming the harsh western frontier and in building the Beehive State.

Utah's pioneer women not only oversaw domestic chores but also shared in farm and field work. Missions and church assignments frequently took Mormon husbands and fathers away from home, leaving women to manage the household and farm. In Deseret, Millard County, Christina Oleson Warnick described her dizzying list of tasks that included digging irrigation ditches, plowing, planting and fertilizing the land, shearing the sheep, cutting hay for the cows, and spinning yam and weaving cloth. Other women's workloads were similar; some supplemented the family income with sewing, laundering, or other home-based employment. Understandably, in Utah's urban areas the percentage of women working outside the home was higher than for the temtory as a whole. Jobs held by Salt Lake City female workers in 1870 included shoe shop keeper, nurse, and hotel steward, but the large majority worked as domestic servants.

Utah women also engaged in a variety of other activities and organizations, including lecture societies, woman suffrage, the temperance movement, and a plethora of women's auxiliaries and clubs. In 1875 the Catholic Sisters of the Holy Cross opened St. Mary's Academy of Utah and that same year began a small hospital for sick and injured miners. Similarly, Mormon women opened the Deseret Hospital in 1882; it was almost entirely managed and staffed by female directors and doctors. In addition, LDS Relief Society women energetically became involved in a number of enterprises designed to help care for the state's poor. They not only donated money, food, and materials but managed business operations such as silk raising and grain storage.

As the nineteenth century wore on, employment opportunities for women expanded. In 1872 two Utah women, Phoebe W. Couzins and Georgie Snow, were admitted to the Utah Bar; others traveled east and earned medical degrees. One Provo woman worked as a miner in 1900, and many women became telegraph operators, school teachers, nurses, and milliners. Still, by the turn of the century most Utah women remained primarily occupied as homemakers. Regardless of their title, however, it seems clear that Utah women were active in charity groups and other avocations that provided opportunities'to develop their skills and participate in civic campaigns for change. In general Utah's women embodied a spirited force that shaped nineteenth-century Utah.

For additional information see Michael Vinson, "From Housework to Office Clerk: Utah's Working Women, 1 870- 1900, Utah Hisroricd Qunrrcrly 53 (fall 1985): 326-35.

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Juvenile Delinquency Posed Problems for Utahns a Century Ago

UTAHNS HAVE LONGED STRUGGLED WITH THE QUESTION OF HOW TO most effectively respond to and prevent juvenile delinquency. Rowdy teenagers were a menace to Salt Lake residents during the m l y years of the city's development. During a church meeting on May 14, 1868, a custodian of the Mormon Tabernacle complained of "indecent words being written on the walls and the backs of seats being very much cut up." The Deseret News recorded on March 2, 1870, that Martin Lenzi had seen teenagers tearing up foot bridges and ripping off mail boxes and throwing them over the fence. Several days later the News reported a similar complaint from Thomas Jones, who said that a group of boys broke people's windows while they were attending church on Sunday.

In the 1870s youth groups became more defined with their own names and objectives. The Deseret News recorded on December 10, 1873, that the "Bummers Brigade" and 'Whittlers' Squad" had cut a street lamppost in two at the Exchange Buildings comer. On December 17 an article reported that a group of teenagers called the "Squirter's Squad" spent their time squirting tobacco juice on goods put out for sale along the streets of the city.

Before 1889 youths who committed crimes were prosecuted as adults in district courts.

According to law, all children were liable for punishment, regardless of age. But judges treated each case individually. While some delinquents were let off without trial or punishment, others were sentenced to harsh treatment in local prisons. Problems with punishment led to the develop ment of a separate institution for juvenile delinquents. In 1888 the Reform School bill was passed by the legislature through the initiative of James Moyle, Salt Lake City attorney. The measure provided for a reform school in which juveniles could develop new skills and change their previous habits.

Efforts to organize the school began shortly after the bill was passed. In May 1888 a committee investigated fifteen schools throughout the nation to determine which model would be best for Utah. The group reported that they preferred the schools that had "no walls, no heavy frowning buildings with barred windows" but Unite pleasant homes, surrounded with lawns, gardens, trees, where a boy is held more by a sense of honor than by bolts and bars." They decided to build the reform school under this model.

The Utah Temtorial Reform School was officially opened in Ogden on October 31, 1889.

Resident halls were located on the top two floors of the building. During the first ten years, girls and boys lived in the same dormitories. Daily activities, however, were divided according to gender. Boys learned practical skills such as shoe repair, printing, carpentry, typing, and (more)

...

barbering. They also tended a garden in the seven acres of land surrounding the school. Girls spent most of their time in cooking, housekeeping, sewing, hygiene, music, and drama classes. Boys and girls came together on the weekends for dances and entertainment. For daily recreation children participated in baskethll and baseball games, boxing, a school band, and theatrical performances.

Discipline was a matter of concern for the school. Even though it was based on the concept of positive support and encouragement, some disciplinary measures were deemed necessary to keep children in line. Among the most severe punishments were solitary confinement, whippings, and the use of handcuffs and chains. Children were often deprived of meals and privileges when they openly disobeyed school authorities.

The school faced a setback on June 24, 1891, when a fire destroyed most of the building.

Though the first and second floors were saved, both resident halls were destroyed. The Ogden Military Academy offered the school several vacant buildings until restoration was completed. But the school's emergency housing soon became permanent. In 1896 the school moved into the site of the old Ogden Military Academy and, with the coming of statehood, officially became the Utah State Industrial School.

The school continued in operation until the early 1970s when government officials decided that overcrowding and a lack of adequate facilities made the institution unsuccessfid in creating a positive change in the lives of delinquent youths. Though it ended with the stamp of inefficiency and failure, the initid creation of a school for troublemaking youth marked the beginning of a new approach to the problem of juvenile delinquency in Utah.

See Davis Bitton, "Zion's Rowdies: Growing up on the Momon Frontier," Utah Historical Quarterly 50 (1982); Martha Sonntag Bradley, "Reclamation of Young Citizens: Reform of Utah's Juvenile Legal System, 1888-1910," 51 (1983); Milton Hunter, Beneath Ben Lomond's Peak (Weber County, 1944); Mary Louise Storey, "The Care and Treatment of Delinquent Girls from Salt Lake at the Utah State Industrial School" (Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1931).

THE HISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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Businesswoman Famy Brooks Helped Establish the Jewish Community in Utah

h THE FIRST JEWISH FAMILY TO SETTLiE IN PIONEER UTAH,Isabella and J

U ~Brooks S and their children had a lot of adjustments to make when they arrived in Salt Lake City in 1864. But the initial awkwardness soon wore away as the Brooks family became accepted members of the Salt Lake community. Isabella, commonly called Fanny, was largely responsible for her family's growing prominence in the city. Outspoken and energetic, she ran a boarding house and millinery shop and added a personal touch to her customer service.

Like many immigrants, Fanny had left her home in Germany to find wealth and adventure in America. In 1853, when Julius Brooks returned to his native village after a trip to the United States, his stories of life abroad impressed many of the villagers-most of all 15-year-old Fanny.

Determined to accompany him on his next voyage, Fanny approached Julius and eventually won his hand in marriage. The newlyweds boarded a ship to New York City that same year. Fanny later told her children that she entertained the immigrants on the boat with French and German folksongs that she played on her guitar.

During the next ten years Julius and Fanny traveled throughout the United States. Hearing of business opportunities in the West, they joined a 14-wagon train leaving Illinois on its way to Utah in 1854. On arrival in Salt Lake City, the Brookses stayed with other immigrant parties at Haymarket Square. Their initial stay in Utah was short. After several months the Brookses moved on to California and opened a store in Marysville. Always on the move, the family left after a year and eied new business ventures in San Francisco, Portland, Boise, and small towns along the way.

By the time they returned to Salt Lake City they had a family of four children and many stories about life on the road. Tired and travel-worn, they decided to set up a permanent residence in downtown Salt Lake City.

The small adobe house at Third South and Main Street where the Brookses lived was one of the noisiest spots in town. The home was sandwiched between the stables of the Pony Express Company and a gambling saloon. But they quickly adjusted to the unusual environment. Fanny made breakfast for the bull-whackers from a nearby camp. The children became involved in neighborhood activities and even attended an LDS Sunday School until the fust Jewish synagogue was built in 1875. Eveline, the oldest daughter, recalled playing j ump-rope with Brigham Young's children.

As the family settled into the community, Fanny decided to establish a boarding house.

Julius expanded the dining room to seat up to forty people at a time. The business was successful but soon became threatened by political events in the city. In 1868 Brigham Young announced an

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anti-gentile edict in which he forbade Mormons from doing business with non-Mormons. Mormon merchants were advised to place an all-seeing-eye sign with the legend "Holiness to the Lord" above their store entrance to indicate their religious affiliation. Non-Mormon merchants quickly began to sell out and leave town.

Angry and unwilling to just pack up and leave, Fanny Brooks demanded a personal interview with Brigham Young. When they met she expressed her concern about leaving a city where she had devoted so much time and effort to its betterment. In response, Young explained that some of the non-Mormon merchants had come to Salt Lake with the aim of running the town.

He realized that Fanny and her family were an exception to the rule and promised that she could continue to board Mormon customers in her home. From that day on, the church leader remained friendly with the Brookses and supportive of their Jewish faith. As a symbol of his good will he offered to donate land for a Jewish cemetery in 1869.

Encouraged by the success of the boarding house, Fanny decided to open a millinery shop.

Julius purchased the merchandise for the store, and Fanny managed the accounts and ran the store.

Julius h i Hiram Parson as a clerk because he knew that his family of seven children was very poor. Fanny adopted an attitude of service. She treated customers well because she knew that personal attention would encourage them to come back. Her daughter Eveline recounted a story that demonstrates her mother's professional approach. On one occasion, a lady fussed around the store, unable to find a suitable hat. Julius responded to her by saying, "My dear lady, if I had hats to make ugly ladies look pretty, I would be a millionaire and live in New York." The woman was insulted and about to leave the store when Fanny returned from an errand. She assured the customer that her husband had not been serious and then sold her three hats with the promise that she looked lovely in each.

The Brookses did well with the millinery business. According to Eveline, by the end of the second year the family had earned $40,000 from the shop. In 1879 Julius constructed an elegant European-style shopping mall called the Brooks Arcade. Julius and Fanny spent most of their later years traveling in Europe and visiting relatives and friends. In 1885 Julius died in San Remo, Italy.

Fanny continued to run her millinery shop in Salt Lake City. As her health deteriorated, however, she made more frequent trips to her home town of Wiesbaden, Germany. She died there on August 21, 1901, leaving behind a unique legacy as a skilled and determined businesswoman and an active Jewish citizen in the early history of Salt Lake City. Both Julius and Fanny Brooks are buried in the Jewish section of the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

See Annegret S. Ogden, ed., Frontier Reminiscences of Eveline Brooks Auerbach (Berkeley: Friends of the Bancroft Library, University of California, 1994); Jack Goodman, "Jews in Zion," in Helen 2. Papanikolas, ed. lhe Peopler of Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society,l976); Leon L. Watters, The Pioneer Jews of Utah (New York, 1952).

THEHISTORYBLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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I THE HISTORYBLAZER I

,\E1\5OF mAH'S PAST FROAI TI! E

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"Uncle Nick" Wilson's Adventures Filled a Book!

ELUAH NICHOLAS "UNCLE NICK"WILSONLED-A COLORFUL LIFE encompassing many of the major events and themes of western history. He helped to pioneer Utah, lived among the Shoshones as an adopted son, rode with the Pony Express, fought Indians, robbers, and rustlers, and founded a town in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. His vivid stories enthralled his guests, SO he told of his life in a book first published in 1910. After his death a revised edition was published in New York-me W i t e Indian Boy: Xhe Story of Uncle Nick Among the Shoshones.

Nick Wilson wrote that he was born in Illinois in 1842 and migrated with his family to Grantsville, Utah, in 1850. Grantsville, Tooele County, was frequently troubled with raids by the local Gosiute Indians, and Wilson remembered having to seek shelter in the settlement's fort on many occasions. Wilson' s father, however, befriended the Gosiute elder Tabby whose friendship would help young Nick during his Pony Express tour.

Nick learned to speak the Gosiute language during long hours spent guarding his family's sheep in company with an Indian boy named Pantsuk. After Pantsuk died, the lonely Nick was befriended by a group of Shoshones who promised the boy a fine pinto pony if he joined them.

Nick was willing, so in August 1856 he rode off with the Shoshones.

Nick spent roughly the next two years with the Indians, traveling with them in Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming as they made seasonal migrations to their hunting grounds. Nick was adopted by the Shoshone chief Washakie as his brother and was called Yugaik-"the criern-because he could imitate Indian babies. The boy became devoted to his Indian mother and often helped her with her chores. This behavior, and indeed Nick's very presence in the tribe, caused some problems: He was taunted by Indian boys for doing "women's work," and the elders worried that the whites would attack the tribe to retrieve the lost boy. Eventually, the tribe decided that Nick must return to his family, despite his desire to remain with Washakie and his mother.

Because of his expertise in riding and breaking horses, Nick was hired as a Pony Express rider in the fall of 1860. He experienced a number of close shaves during bad weather and with Indians and once received a nearly fatal arrow wound two inches above his left eye. In his book Nick differentiates between "good Indians," like Washakie and his mother, and those who were "a treacherous and revengeful people," like Pocatello and those who attacked the Pony Express.

When the brief Pony Express era ended, Nick found work as an Overland Stage driver and a freighter in Utah and Nevada. In the 1860s he moved to Idaho, earning a living as a fur trapper, sometimes in partnership with Indians. He drove a wagon over treacherous Teton Pass in 1888, settling in the Jackson Hole area and founding the town of Wilson which still bears his name. (more)

"Uncle Nick" became a favorite local personality, and his boyhood friend Washakie often visited him. "Uncle Nickn died in Wilson on December 26, 1915.

For more information see 7he White Indiart Boy: ?he Story of Uncle Nick among the Shoshones (1919), revised and edited by Howard R. Driggs; and Kate B. Carter, Utah and the Pony Express (1960).

THEHISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more infomation about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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After Many Boom and Bust Cycles Moab Just Keeps Pedaling

L m so M

OTHER WESTERN TOWNS, MOAB,UTAH,has experienced prosperous times

followed by harder times. The various boom and bust cycles in and around the town have involved mineral products, agricultural products, and recreation. The town's up-and-down economic history has reflected national and international events and concerns from the Cold War to the fitness craze.

The townsite, originally settled by Mormons in 1855, was abandoned after fierce resistance from local Indians. In 1876 the area was resettled and became a relatively prosperous, though tiny, agricultural community. The fvst real local boom involved the discovery of small amounts of gold in the nearby La Sal Mountains in the 1890s. Although these deposits did not prove substantial, other 'riches" helped make Moab noteworthy. By the 1910s well-established local orchards were benefitting from the region's 325 days of sunshine, producing prize-winning apples, grapes, pears, and peaches. In 1910 J. P. Miller's orchard produced an Alberta peach 12 inches in diameter, weighing 13.5 ounces.

At the same time, another local product was contributing its share to Moab's economy.

Small quantities of uranium ore were in demand as dye material for the European ceramics industry. In the early decades of the 20th century radium was in demand for its phosphorescent qualities as well as its alleged medical benefits. Uranium's real boom (and bust), however, would have to wait until the 1950s. Meanwhile, the discovery of oil and natural gas deposits led to the sinking of numerous wells throughout the 1920s, sparking another minor local boom.

The dawn of the nuclear age and the Cold War tensions that developed in the late 1940s and 1950s brought thousands to Moab in the biggest boom to date. The arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union created a great demand for uranium, which the Moab region possessed in abundance. When the Atomic Energy Commission began seeking large quantities and guaranteed a base price, prospectors descended on the Grand County seat. Moab's population increased from 1,275 in 1950 to 4,682 by 1960. The population boom put acute stmin on the town's services and drove prices higher. By the early 1960s, however, the demand had eased, and the uranium boom faded.

Other products helped to pick up the slack. In 1957 three more oil fields were opened, sparking a minor oil boom that lasted into the mid-1960s. By that time potash had proved to be a valuable commodity. The deposits, just northwest of town, were believed to be the largest in the world. An enormous potash processing plant was built in 1963.

All of these industries, as well as farming and ranching, continue to contribute in varying degrees to the region's economy. The latest boom, which began in the 1960s,gained strength in (more)

the 1980s and continues today. The tourism business is much older than that, of course; Grand County has been touting the area's climate and natural beauty since the earliest years of the century. The establishment of Arches National Monument in 1929 brought some visitors, but Arches remained a relatively obscure destination (although Edward Abbey's Desen Solitaire increased its appeal). In 1964 Canyonlands National Park was established with Moab serving as its northern gateway. When Arches was upgraded to national park status tourism boomed, and Moab was perfectly situated to benefit from it.

Adventure sports also diversified the town's economy. River running, which began as a tourist activity in the 1950s, had achieved wide appeal by the 1970s, and the town boasted numerous outfitters. Perhaps the greatest boost came from the experimentations of a small group of bicycle enthusiasts in Marin County, California. These daredevils found that oversized tires, stiffened frames, upright handlebars, and heavy-duty componentry produced bicycles that could handle the steep, twisting, rocky trails of their local Mount Tamalpais. As the mountain biking craze spread, Moab residents discovered that their region offered very different but equally challenging and delightful terrain. "Slickrock"-apparently named by teamsters whose shod horses slipped on its surface-proved to be an ideal surface for the new bicycles, and riders laid out trails throughout the region. The most famous, the 'Slickrock Trail, " is a "strenuous, technically exacting ten mile loop" about two and a half miles outside of Moab. Slickrock and other trails now attract thousands of bikers. Moab's population stood at 5,333 in 1980; although the 1990 census recorded a drop to 3,971, tourism and recreation, the booms of the 1990s, seem to be sending Moab's economy back on the upswing.

See Grand Memories (Grand County,

Utah: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1972); John W. Van Cott, Utah Place Names (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990); F. A. Barnes and Tom Kuehne, Canyon Country Mountain Biking (Moab: Canyon Country Publications, 1988).

THEHISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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C

Dixie Fruit Finds a Market

SOUTHERN UTAH'SEARLY SETTLERS FACED a variety of challenges. In addition to the harsh desert climate, poor roads made it difficult for farmers to reach northern markets with their cash crops. In one small town Frank Barber, an enterprising fruit grower, confidently tackled this impediment. Although his aspirations were not realized to their fullest, he succeeded in creating a statewide reputation for Dixie fruit.

Barber moved to Hurricane, Utah, in 1907, shortly after the town's founding, and was soon chosen as vice-president of the Commercial Club. He immediately became interested in attracting a railroad to Hurricane in order to reach northern fruit markets. To accomplish this he first had to create a demand for Dixie fruit. At a meeting of the Commercial Club in 1912 Barber announced his intention to ship 1,000 cases of peaches to Salt Lake City. The biggest obstacle to the venture was the sixty-mile wagon trip to the nearest railroad at Lund, Utah. Some were skeptical that the fruit would arrive at market in good enough condition to sell, but Barber was ready to try.

His first shipment consisted of twenty-three cases of peaches and seven cases of apples. He wrapped each fruit individually and placed it in a crate. He then arranged the precious cargo in a dead-x wagon filled with straw about eighteen inches deep. Barber recalied his feelings when he finally made it to the Salt Lake marketplace: 'It would just fill your heart with joy when I took the lids off from those boxes; those great big red peaches just shone there and they started to grab them and grab them and grab them." "My peaches arrived in better condition than most of the California fruit shipped . . . in refrigerator cars," Barber added.

News of the Hurricane fruit even made the Salt Lake City papers. The Tribune and Deserel News both noted that the entire shipment was sold before noon at $2.00 and $2.50 per box ($1 to $1.25 higher than boxes from California). The newspapers interviewed Barber who used this opportunity to campaign for the extension of steel rails to Hurricane. He stated, 'All we want in the Dixie country is a railroad to eliminate the sixty-mile haul by wagon. . . . Give us an even break with the fruit growers of California and we will run them out of the Salt Lake market in one season. " Steel rails never did stretch to Hurricane, and Dixie fruit failed to run its California competition out of Utah. Nonetheless, Barber did create a significant reputation for Dixie fruit and by the 1915 coming of the 'auto truck" was able to ship larger quantities throughout the state more effectively. In 1918 the Commercial Club, in cooperation with other southern Utah clubs and produce companies, signed an agreement with William Rust who ran a wholesale fruit house in Cedar City. That year Rust reported handled nearly 80 tons of Dixie fruit.

I

THEHISTORYB M E R is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a g m t from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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Floods Are Part of Wasatch Front's Weather History

THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF ITS SETTLEMENT, the Wasatch Front has been hit by devastating stoms and floods from time to time. In September 1864, for example, a cloudburst over City Creek Canyon sent rainwater rushing into Salt Lake City. According to the Deseret Nms, a stream running down North Temple Street was large enough "to navigate a steamboat."

Boats became a necessary means of travel in some parts of the city during a heavy storm on May 28, 1896. When puddles in west Salt Lake quickly developed into small lakes, some farmers had to use rafts to reach their cattle and livestock.

In the 20th century, the summer of 1930 brought heavy rain to several communities along the Wasatch Front. On July 10 a cloudburst blocked the Salt Lake-Ogden highway with piles of rocks and debris. The streams in Emigration, Red Butte, and Parleys canyons reached flood levels, damaging homes and cabins near the creeks. Rainy weather continued into August. On the llth, mud and rocks flowed down two gulches, burying farmland in Centerville and damaging or destroying homes and farms. On the 12th so much mud and rock gushed out of Snowslide Canyon near Provo that it created a dam on the river that backed up water onto the highway and railroad tracks. On the 13th more devastating rain hit Utah, damaging homes and property in Magna, Farmington, Elberta, and other cities in central and southern Utah. Gov. George Dern asked for $35,000 in federal flood relief. Davis County was the most hard-hit by flooding. Years of cattle grazing on the steep mountainside made towns such as Centerville and Bountiful particularly vulnerable to erosion and rapid runoff. Flood damage in 1930 brought federal aid to Davis County where the Civilian Conservation Corps built contour trenches and terraces along the mountainside to prevent further erosion. Residents had only to wait for the next heavy runoff to determine the success of the preventive effort.

On August 19, 1945, the Salt Lake Valley experienced flooding that produced dramatic, even macabre, devastation. A downpour began at 10:25 P.M.and continued into the night. Streams in City Creek and Dry canyons overflowed and water cascaded down the Avenues area of Salt Lake City. The flood carried with it iron fences, logs, and large boulders. Passing by the cemetery, the torrent ripped open graves, exposing coffins and even some bodies, and toppling tombstones. Water flooded many homes on the Avenues and destroyed valuable equipment and nearly $1,000,000 worth of beer stamps in the State Capitol. The flood water rushed down State Street, tearing up pavement and moving parked cars. Farther west, two-inch hailstones shattered windows and dented roofs. The storm wreaked havoc at the Salt Lake Airport. Three planes were blown over a seven-foot fence, some 50 fabric-covered aircraft were badly damaged, and hundreds (more)

of hangar windows were broken. Salt Lake residents awoke the next moming to find many broken branches in their yards and many trees and plants stripped of their leaves. Remarkably, damage was small in Davis County. ..

Efforts to improve watersheds there in the 1930s had proved their wofth.

In response to the flood of 1945 Salt Lake City considered using Davis County's model for its own flood prevention plan. Though efforts were made to trench hillsides and take other preventive measures, they were not extensive enough to combat the effects of the record-breaking winter snowpack of 1951-52. High temperatures during April 25-29 of that year caused snow to melt early in the Wasatch. On April 27 a headline in the Deseret News read 'Dozens of Homes Vacated in Salt Lake." Meanwhile, the Jordan River overflowed, covering some 50 westside blocks with up to six feet of water and forcing almost 400 families to leave their homes. By this time, hundreds of residents were helping to sandbag what newspapers called the '13th South River." Nearly 100 city blocks were affected by flood waters. Traffic was closed in many parts of the city. When flooding continued into May, Gov. J. Bracken Lee appealed to the federal government for help with the claim that Utah faced one of "the worst floods in recorded history."

President Truman agreed to send $250,000 in federal aid to support relief efforts. Part of Salt Lake City continued to be flooded until mid-August. In Utah County farmland west of Provo was covered with water, and the overflowing Spanish Fork River and Hobble Creek did widespread damage. In midsummer more flooding came to Salt Lake City. Torrential rains that began just before 10 P.M.on July 30 sent walls of debris-filled water down Parleys, Emigration, and Red Butte canyons onto the eastern part of the city, causing widespread property damage and creating small lakes at 17th South and 16th East and at 13th South and Main streets.

The flooding in 1952 was not paralleled until 1983, when a wet winter and suddenly hot spring caused mountain snows to quickly melt and rush into the city at a disastrous rate. Within a week Salt Lake was a disaster area. Community volunteers and city officials worked to build bridges across the 'State Street River" and place sandbags along major streets. One participant even caught a trout in the rushing waters in front of the downtown ZCMI Center. The damage caused by flooding made Utah eligible for federal disaster relief throughout the summer of 1983.

Utahns cannot predict when the next major flood will strike along the Wasatch Front, but history shows that storms and flood damage are not new to the region. Settlers along the Wasatch, and indeed throughout the state, have battled floods since the beginning of Utah's recorded history.

See George Lee Swenson, "Residential Flooding Problems in Bench Areas of Salt Lake City" (Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1968); L. M. Winsor, Utah 's Flood Problem (1933).

THEHISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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The Pony Express Added a Colorful Chapter to Utah History

ONEOF THE MOST COLORFUL,

IF BRIEF, CHAPTERS IN WESTERN HISTORY was the Pony

Express, which camed the Overland Mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to San Francisco, California, from April 1860 until October 1861. Utah Territory occupied a central position along the route, and many Utahns played a role as trailblazers, riders, agents, and station managers.

Mail sexvice from East to West had presented a problem for decades, since the settled areas of the Midwest and California were separated by a vast stretch of sparse white settlement, sometimes hostile native inhabitants, treacherous weather, and in hospitable terrain. George Chorpenning and Absalom Woodward were awarded the first Overland Mail contract between Sacramento and Salt Lake City in 1851. Since their riders often delivered the mail by mule, wags dubbed this service the "jackass mail." Plagued by Indian attacks (including the massacre of Woodward and his party) and financial troubles, Chorpenning had his contract annulled in 1860.

The Utah W& of 1857-58 led indirectly to the establishment of the Pony Express. The freighting firm of Russell, Majors, & Waddell held the contract to supply three million pounds of material to Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston's army. During the course of that strange conflict the company suffered major losses of equipment and livestock from Mormon militia attacks and harsh weather. William H. Russell failed to get the War Department to reimburse his firm for claimed losses of nearly half a million dollars. In order to save his company Russell proposed to launch a high-speed mail service across the "Central Route" between Missouri and California, expecting that the government would reward the firm with a lucrative subsidy.

Russell spent about $100,000 to launch the new service, which required hundreds of horses, riders, stations, station managers, and support services such as feed and blacksmithing. A. B. Miller, a company representative in Salt Lake City, advertised for 200 horses; some of those he obtained were mustangs captured near Kimball's Junction and on Antelope Island. The greatest need, though, was for riders. The company called for young, light, brave, sober, God-fearing boys and men to carry the mail in grueling relays of 75 to 100 miles at a time at a full gallop across some of the West's most brutal terrain. Many Utahns served as express riders, including Mormon pioneer and Nauvoo Legion major Howard Egan, who had helped blaze much of the original Central Overland Trail, and his sons Howard Ranson Egan and Richard Erastus Egan.

The riders and station managers endured many hardships, including a Paiute uprising that disrupted service for a month. Express rider Elijah "Nick" Wilson of Grantsville, Utah, was nearly killed by an arrow to the head near Spring Valley Station in Nevada. The Pony Express generally provided excellent service, covering the 1,966-mile one-way distance in ten days or less. It was ( ~ore) n

always financially troubled, however; some of Russell's shady dealings came to light, and he was forced to resign. The company, operating in the red as much as $1,000a day, lost its contract to a competitor. The real threat, however, was technological. In October 186 1 the Pacific Telegraph was completed at Salt Lake City, and messages could be relayed almost instantaneously. The Pony Express became obsolete overnight.

THEHISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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Agronomist John W. Carlson Researched Alfalfa Seed in the Uinta Basin

F o m m WORLD ~ WARI THE USE OF ALSALFA

//

throughout the United States and Canada increased dramatically and in turn created an urgent demand for seed. In response, John W. Carlson headed Utah's fust authentic experimental work in alfalfa seed production. Spanning more than forty years, Carlson's pioneering research was accepted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his ideas used in several states to boost output. Ironically, Utah, where Carlson made his breakthroughs, failed to implement his recommendations and by the early 1960s had become dependent upon outside sources for its seed.

John was the first of twin boys born to Anna Lundstrom and John August Carlson in Logan on May 11,1891. In 1919 he enrolled in the Utah State Agricultural College at Logan where he centered his studies on forage crops and received a bachelor's degree in agronomy in June 1922.

Shortly thereafter he married h a Sorensen and the newlyweds made their first home in a thirdfloor apartment above the Plant Industry Building on the USAC campus. It was a convenient location for John's graduate studies in agricultural research focusing on the alfalfa seed.

His research at USAC made Carlson the perfect candidate in 1925 to head a new experimental farm in the Uinta Basin. The basin's climate made it one of relatively few areas in the United States adapted to growing alfalfa seed, but accurate information on proper methods of producing the seed was scarce. In an effort to meet this need, as well as profit from the national rise in demand for alfalfa, the State Legislature had appropriated $8,000 for the creation of the Uintah Basin Alfalfa Seed Experimental Farm. Officials from the Utah Agriculturd Experiment Station selected a 40-acre tract of land near Fort Duchesne as the site for the new farm and chose Cartson as superintendent. He commenced research in late March 1926 and centered his attention on the effects of harmful insects on the alfalfa seed. Known enemies of alfalfa at the time included the weevil, aphis, chalcis fly, and, in some cases, grasshoppers; however, Carlson's work in the basin, along with that at the Experiment Station, identified a new threat-the lygus bug.

Carlson continued his research on harmful insects upon entering the University of Wisconsin as a doctoral student in agronomy in 1935. He finished his studies there in 1938, concluding in his dissertation that "Lygus bugs are . . regarded as an important cause of the major alfalfa seedcrop failures in Utah. " Before long, researchers began using insecticides such as DDT to combat the lygus, and by the 1950s chemicals were in widespread use. Spraying proved effective against the insects; seed yields doubled the first year after the use of DDT.Unfortunately, by that time Utah farmers, due to fluctuating yields, had largely abandoned alfalfa seed as a primary crop, and even when (more)

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FOR FORAGE

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spraying stabilized output they failed to return to it in any significant number.

Despite the increased production, Carlson's findings began to meet with opposition. His main detractors were Gs colleagues at the USDA Legume Seed Research Laboratory in Logan.

Five federal researchers, mostly entomologists whom Carlson referred to as 'the bee men, " contended that low alfalfa seed production resulted not from lygus but from the insecticide used to kill the bugs. The "bee men" believed the chemicals were significantly decreasing the bee population, making it more difficult for the alfalfa blossoms to be fertilized. Carlson felt strongly otherwise, and even after he retired from the USDA in 1962 the controversy continued.

To validate his research Carlson independently planted alfalfa on 10 acres of his own land.

He systematically determined the best times to apply insecticide by obtaining lygus population counts and spraying when the count was high. The results were convincing. In 1972 Carlson harvested 614 pounds per acre of clean alfalfa seed from his land, which had been regularly sprayed for lygus. That same year the state reached its estimated highest yield ever: only 320 pounds per acre. Carlson's methodology certainly proved effective, and even though never widely used in Utah it was central to the increase in alfalfa seed production in other states.

See Virginia C. Parker, "Diamonds in the Dust: John W. Carlson's Alfalfa Seed Research," Utah Historical QuurterZy 46 @dl1978): 397-414.

O R BLAZER Y is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

THE ~

'

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Convict Labor Helped to Build Utah's Roads

THEUSE OF CONVICT LABOR

HAS BEEN A

WELL-ESTABLISHED PART OF America's pmal

institutions for centuries. Whether doing forced labor on one of the infamous "chain-gangs," working to pick up litter along Utah's highways, or serving as volunteer forest fire fighters in some of the West's most deadly and destructive fires, prison inmates have performed a wide variety of services for the community. Their work has been praised, ignored, and sometimes criticized.

In Utah, the new state constitution drafted in 1895 made unlawful the contracting of convict labor and its use outside prison grounds except for public works. In 1909, thirteen years after Utah became a state, the legislature passed a law allowing the use of convict labor on public road work by prisoners whose terms were less than ten years.

Two years later the legislature removed the ten-year limit and added the incentive that efficient and well-behaved workers could reduce their sentences by 10 days for every 30 days worked. Prisoners seemed to appreciate this opportunity.

These laws coincided with a major road-building program in Utah,and Governor Williarn Spry saw the unpaid work of prisoners as essential in making Utah's road system second to none.

The first project on which Utah prisoners worked was a stretch of road between Willard, Box Elder County, on the north to Hot Springs, near the Davis County line, on the south. A fiveacre camp surrounded by barbed wire was established. Each of the 52 convicts allowed to work on the project promised the warden that he would work hard and not try to escape. Still, guards were posted at regular intervals, probably as much to keep the curious citizens out as to keep the prisoners in. Four men did try to escape and one succeeded.

Convict labor on the Willard experiment amounted to 6,503 man-days worked. With wages at $2.25 a day for regular laborers, the state saved $14,63 1.75 by using the convicts.

Not all Utahns thought the use of convict labor a good idea. At a rally held in Liberty Park on July 2, 1911, more than 500 dissenters listened as speakers argued that the use of convict labor took potential jobs away from the unemployed. Responding to such criticism later, Governor Spry denied that the use of convict labor took jobs from other workers; rather, since the convicts received no wages, only a reduction in their sentences, their work was a bonus on top of the state funds already appropriated for road construction.

Convict labor was used to construct roads in Utah until after 1920 but ceased before the end of the 1920s. On one project, prisoners left a monument of thanks to Governor Simon (more)

Bamberger for allowing them to engage in road construction and reduce their sentences. The monument can still be seen just off Highway 191 near the Carbon-Duchesne county line.

;

For more information on the use of convict labor see Virgil Caleb Pierce, "Utah's First Convict Labor Camp," Utah Historical Quurterly 42 (summer 1974): 245-57.

THEHISTORY BLAZER is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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The Beginnings of the University of Utah ~ E THERMORMONS ARRIVED IN UTAH,a Board of Regents was organized by Brigham Young to establish a university. With a growing demand for children's education, Young and others felt that a university was needed to train men and women as elementary schoolteachers. The Board of Regents began the task by plotting the land for a large campus. Since funds were not available to begin construction, the board used the little money it had to build a stone wall around the university lands. In the meantime, plans were made to build a smaller building, later called the 13th Ward Schoolhouse, that would serve as the university until the larger campus was completed.

But the board did not want to wait for the construction of the schoolhouse to begin university courses. Without an official building, the University of Deseret opened on November 11, 1850, at the home of a local resident, Mrs. John Pack. The Pack home remained the tentative campus of the University of Deseret for the entire first quarter. Dr. Cyrus Collins, the only professor, taught courses mainly in the sciences. The school was open to men only and cost $8.00 for the quarter.

Constantly on the move, the university opened its second quarter in a new location, the Council House on the southwest comer of Main and South Temple. A second professor, W. W. Phelps, was added to the faculty and the school admitted women. Then, when the 13th Ward Schoolhouse was finished in the fall of 1851, the campus was moved to this new building. About this time the university began to offer more resources and opportunities to students. New scientific instruments and books were acquired from local donors or imported from the East. The school offered students the possibility of receiving a teacher's certificate. A third professor, Orson Pratt, was hired to teach astronomy, mathematics, and algebra.

Though the school seemed to be improving with each session, the University of Deseret was suddenly closed after its third quarter. Times had become increasingly difficult for the Mormon community in 1852. Crop failures and drought created greater concern for food and survival than education. This, along with the assumption that the university could now sustain itself, led the legislature to discontinue its annual $5,000 grant to operate the institution. Repeated demands for funding were ignored. Not until 1868 did the university reopen at the Council House location.

Times were different in Utah during the late 1860s. With the coming of the railroad, Utah's relative isolation ended. Increased non-Mormon immigration boosted the economy and renewed the energy and need for a university. In 1868 the school's Commercial Department resumed operation in the lower rooms of the Council House. Then in 1869 the university took a major step forward when Dr. John Rockey Park, who had been operating a school in Draper, was hired as principal (more)

(later called president). He assembled a faculty of some dozen professors to teach such diverse subjects as phonography, natural history, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, music, and drawing.

Increasing numbers of students made most classes crowded and oversized.

The evident need for expansion encouraged the board to establish the Timpanogos branch of the University of Deseret in Provo. Opened in 1870, it was the only institution of higher learning in Utah County until 1877 when it was replaced by the Brigham Young Academy, forerunner of Brigham Young University.

Meanwhile, construction of the main campus of the University of Deseret was made possible by improved economic conditions. By 1884 the University Hall was finally completed on Union Square, site of present West High School. Eight years later, in 1892, the Legislative Assembly changed the school's name to the University of Utah. It was soon to have a new location as well.

In 1894 Congress deeded 60 acres of Fort Douglas land on the city's east bench for the university campus. The first students registered for classes at the new location in October 1900.

The momentous event culminated 50 years of struggle and determination to establish a permanent campus for the state's first university.

THEHISTORY BLAZER is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utall Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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This Radical Salt Lake Native Was Interred in the Kremlin Wall

A NATIVE OF SALTLAKEC ~ YWILLIAM , D. 'BIG BILL"HAYWOOD,became the leader of the Industrial Workers of the World, one of the most famous (and infamous) labor organizations in American history. At the time of his 1917 arrest, the New York Times called him "the most hated

and feared figus in America. " Born in Salt Lake City on February 4, 1869, Haywood spent part of his youth in the mining camp of Ophir, Tooele County, where his stepfather had found work. He received some of his formal education there and also claimed to have worked in the mine alongside his stepfather at age nine. He was still a boy when he lost his right eye in an accident while carving wood. He allegedly witnessed gunfights in Ophir's streets and saw vigilantes lynching lawbreakers. 'I accepted it all as a natural part of life," he wrote in his autobiography. He was briefly indentured by his uncle to a farmer and then worked at such odd jobs as a boy of thirteen could find back in Salt Lake City. In 1884 he went to Nevada to learn the skills of hard-rock mining. His experiences in mining and the Haymarket Riot of 1886 impressed Haywood with the need for labor to organize.

Haywood drifted between jobs for the next few years, mining copper in Bingham and reportedly fanning, surveying, cowboying, and selling real estate. In Idaho he was exposed to the Western Federation of Miners. The WFM was affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, which represented conservative, 'bread and butter" craft unionism. The WFM broke away from the AFL to pursue a more radical stance based on industrial unionism.

'Big Bill" rose rapidly within the WFM, becoming secretary-treasurer in 1901 and proving himself an able administrator and a tireless organizer. A wave of strikes in Colorado in 1903 proved disastrous, as the state government and local business employed militia and detectives to crush the strikes and the WFM locals. Haywood decided that the world's workers needed 'One Big Union," an idea that he pushed at a June 1905 labor convention. The Industrial Workers of the World was born.

Shortly thereafter, Haywood was implicated in the bombing murder of the former Idaho governor, Frank Steunenberg, by an IWW member. He spent over a year in jail before Clarence Darrow, his famed attorney, secured his acquittal. Meanwhile, the WFM had become too moderate for Haywood, who became active in the Socialist Party of America. By 1911 he was back with the IWW.The union supported strikes at the Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile mills in 1912 and the Paterson, New Jersey, silk factories in 1913. The IWW achieved most of its success, however, from 1915 to 1917 when its membership jumped from 30,000 to more than 100,000, mostly (more)

western miners and timber workers. Much of the credit for the IWW's success in those years has been credited to Haywood's leadership skills and the fiery oratory he used to arouse workers. The IWW was heavily influenced by European syndicalist ideas that called for direct action against capital and the e v e n w control of the means of production by workers.

The IWW's strong stand against involvement in World War I created more problems for the organization. Some IWW leaders counselled that men should fight the 'class war" in the U.S. rather than the 'imperialist war" in Europe. The Justice Department eventually charged over 100 IWW defendants with crimes, including interfering with the war effort and counselling resistance to the draft. A jury took less than one hour to find all the defendants guilty on all charges.

Haywood was sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison. On May 1, 1919, unknown persons delivered bombs to the Salt Lake City offices of Frank K. Nebeker, the prosecuting attorney in the case, and dozens of others across the country; nearly all of the bombs were intercepted, and only two people were injured.

Haywood was in and out of jail over the next few years. The IWW was practically crushed, and many of his personal friends and associates were dead. In March 1921 he jumped bail and fled to the Soviet Union, which greeted him as a hero. Before long, however, Haywood was lonely, bored, and often ill. On May 18, 1928, he died in Moscow and was given an elaborate state funeral. One half of his ashes were interred in the wall of the Kremlin, while the rest were buried, as he had requested, next to the Haymarket martyrs memorial in Chicago.

See Melvyn Dubofsky, '!Big Bill" Haywood (New Yo*, 1987); Andrew Hunt, "Beyond the Spotlight: The Red Scare in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 6 1 (1993).

THE HSTORYBLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant fiom the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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A Bingham High Coed Rose to the Post of U.S. Treasurer

h 1953, SHORTLY AFTER TAKING OFFICE AS TREASURER of the United States, IVYBaker Priest was asked by President Eisenhower how she was enjoying her new job. She responded, "I'm enjoying it immensely, Mr. President . . . but at the moment I'm just so overwhelmed to be here I never expected to get anywhere near the White House. '" Eisenhower's face broke into a familiar grin, "'I h o w just how you feel,' he said. 'Neither did I.'" During her eight years as treasurer Priest dined with queens and princes, cabinet members and ambassadors, captains of industry and leaders of world thought, but through it all she never lost sight of her humble beginnings as the daughter of a poor Utah miner growing up in Bingham. On one occasion Priest was seated next to Norman Vincent Peale at a Washington, D.C., luncheon. The famous minister turned to her and said: "Mrs. Priest, the people I have known in this world who have achieved things have all overcome some great handicap to reach their goal. I hope you won't mind my asking you . what was yours?'" Without hesitation she responded, "'Poverty. '" "'And now you are in charge of all that money, '" Peale said and laughed heartily.

Ivy Baker Priest was born September 7, 1905, in Kimberly, Piute County, to Clara Femley and Orange D. Baker. Her father worked as a gold miner near Kimberly, but when the gold vein played out he moved his young family to Coalville. Following a boiler explosion there in 1912 the Baker family again moved, this time settling at Bingham Canyon where Orange obtained work in the copper mine.

Life in Bingham proved challenging. Ivy's father seemed strangely accident prone and was frequently unable to work due to injury. In an effort to meet the family's financial needs Ivy's mother opened a boarding house for miners, which boosted the family income but also brought 20 to 30 miners tramping through the Baker house each day. The mess their muddy shoes created led, in a roundabout way, to Ivy's life-long, influential political career.

During spring runoff or when it rained hard the dirt streets and sidewalks of Bingham turned into a sloshing, muddy mess. The hungry miners were forced to track through the mire on their way to and from the Baker house and always left muddy floors behind as reminders of their presence. Ivy's mother, frustrated by perpetually filthy floors, began agitating for street improvements. She quickly found a sympathetic ear in Dr. Straupp, the family physician. He was dissatisfied with the way the Democratic incumbents were running Bingham and decided to run as a Republican for mayor. Clara promised him her full support if he committed to put down wooden sidewalks in Bingham once elected. Straupp agreed and Clara became the doctor's number one supporter. She rounded up a solid following among the foreign-born residents and even helped (more)

...

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many to register as voters, an effort that often included establishing their citizenship. Ivy took an active interest in this campaign and became the "official errand runner" for her mother. When election time came Ivy spent the entire day at the polls, her "heart skipping with the excitement of it all." When the votes were finally tallied Clara Baker's influence had paid off. Dr. Straupp had won the election, and Ivy "felt as elated as a kingmaker" and soon determined that a career in politics would be "the ultimate in glorious achievement."

After active involvement in Bingham High School student leadership and extracurricular activities, Ivy began her public political weer in 1932 as a delegate to the GOP state convention.

Following her marriage in 1935 to Roy F. Priest, a wholesale furniture salesman, she remained active in politics. Even the birth of three children did not deter her. Beginning in 1944 she served for several years as Utah's Republican National Committeewoman and in 1950 ran unsuccessfuly against incumbent Congresswoman Reva Beck Bosone. During Eisenhower's campaign for president Priest took charge of the women's division of the Republican National Committee and was credited with the successful drive to get out the women's vote, which totaled 52 percent of Eisenhower's victory margin.

Following her influential work in his campaign, Eisenhower personally called Priest and asked her to take over as treasurer of the United States, succeeding Truman appointee Georgia Neese Clark, the first woman to hold the post. Naturally, she accepted, but in a Deseret News interview she remarked how "ovexwhelmed" she felt by her appointment and commented 'I can't get over the idea of seeing my signature on every United States bill."

Shortly after arriving in Washington Priest submitted her signature to the Treasury to be used in printing all U.S. bills. To ensure that her name was legible and in her best hand she wrote it 30 times and sent all 30 to the Treasury. They chose the first one she had written. Back in Utah Priest became quite a celebrity, especially in Bountiful where she had been living. Bountiful businessmen and the South Davis Chamber of Commerce secured a special shipment of the first dollar bills printed with Priest's name and distributed them to local businesses to give customers as change in the Bountiful, Centerville, and North Salt Lake areas. In addition, a Salt Loke Tribune editorial commented that "all Utahns will read with pride and pleasure the signature 'Ivy Baker Priest' on their paper money. " After her eight years in national office Priest continued her political career in California where she successNly ran for state treasurer in 1966 and again in 1970, becoming the first woman elected to a statewide office there and serving alongside Gov. Ronald Reagan.

Priest's illustrious political career ended June 23, 1975, when she died of cancer. Such dignitaries as Dr. William Banowsky, president of Pepperdine University, Ronald Reagan, and Art Linkletter, attended her funeral. '

See Ivy Baker Priest, Green Grows Iy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958); biographical clipping files, Utah State Historical Society Library; Beehive History 17.

HISTORYBLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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THE HISTORY BLAZER ,j7~11's OF LTAH'S PAST FROM THE

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A Boxcar Filled with Dynamite Explodes near the City

ONTHE MORNING OF MAY13, 1910, Charles Bums noticed smoke coming from a distant boxcar on the Oregon Short Line railroad near his home in the northwest section of Salt Lake City. On second glance he determined that the boxcar was filled with dynamite and would surely explode. Taking no chances, he immediately set out to notify officials.

Soon trains heading for Salt Lake City on all Oregon Short Line and Salt Lake and Ogden rails were halted. The fire department quickly erected a road barricade, ensuring that no one could pass into the area where the boxcar was expected to blow up.

In anticipation of the explosion some residents rushed to areas where they could see the action and still be far away from the danger. Men and women gathered on the foothills to watch the burning boxcar on the Oregon Short Line siding.

At 12:20 p.m. the boxcar exploded near Beck's Hot Springs northwest of the city. Several men running from the blast half a mile away were knocked to the ground. According to newspapers, pieces of the boxcar were hurled into the air for a mile. Flying wood and metal severed some telephone and electric wires, and the surrounding buildings suffered an immediate power outage.

The event caused a fright in the McComick Building in downtown Salt Lake City when the elevator lost power and dropped an entire floor. The blast also caused windows to break in nearby homes and buildings.

When all seemed safe and quieted, residents came down from the hills and regarded the damage. Where the boxcar had been was a gaping hole measuring 15 feet deep and 40 by 30 feet wide. Many wondered who or what had ignited the boxcar, but no one could come up with a definite answer. Some blamed the event on a spark from a passing Oregon Short Line train or on a passenger or employee of the line, while others suggested that the heat of the sun had caused the fire. In the end, the cause seemed less important than the fact that little harm had been done.

Thanks to the early warnings of Charles Bums, the town had mobilized to prevent any deaths or injuries. Rather than causing tragedy and tears the event offered a few hours of excitement and a splendid fireworks show to Salt Lake City residents in the spring of 1910.

THEHISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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The 1918-19 Flu Epidemic Reached Remote Areas of Utah

As UTAHNSJOINED THE REST OF THE NATION in cheering the end of World War 1 and the defeat of "Kaiser Bill," another enemy, an extremely contagious flu virus, unleashed a worldwide epidemic. First loosed in the United States in spring 1918, it soon engulfed the world and proved deadlier than the war. Globally the disease killed as many as 20 million people. In Utah over 40,000 people contracted the disease and of them over 1,700 died. It affected everyone from the Ute Indians on the Uintah Reservation to city folk to those living in small farming towns such as Hurricane and La Verkin in Washington County.

In Hurricane, school, church, and show halls all closed and everyone wore gauze masks. In fact, resident Alice Stratton recalled, "anyone caught on the streets without one was subject to arrest." Stratton's mother kept a simmering pan of Lysol water on the back of the kitchen stove in which the masks were disinfected, and nearby a stack of fresh clean shields waited for anyone who ventured "downtown." The quarantine was long and lonely, and despite all their precautions Stratton's family still caught the flu. The ill lay strewn over the living room floor where they auld be near the fire and their mother could constantly administer water, soup, mustard plasters, and a cool hand on hot foreheads. During this time of death most people kept to themselves for fear of being infected, and even Santa Claus that year did not dare venture into homes. Instead, he stopped at every gate in town in a Model T Ford, distributing stockings filled with candied PopcornThose who were well helped others. Some men in Hurricane and La Verkin chopped wood, fed and milked cows, and tended to other outside chores for their sick neighbors. Some women, like Ruth May Fox in northern Utah, even went into contaminated homes to bathe, clean, feed, and otherwise minister to the ailing. Fox recalled, "I offered my services as a volunteer nurse during the 1918 influenza epidemic, when people were dying and everybody was afraid to go help them. I cared for seven families, and although untrained, I worked hard."

The flu epidemic eventually subsided, and life without gauze masks returned to Utah. Even so, the persistent virus made occasional unwelcome visits. For example, in March 1922 the Hurricane town board again quarantined residents due to the flu's reappearance. For the most part, however, the feared disease never returned in the same lethal proportions as 1918-19.

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The Colorful Streetcar Era Lasted Almost 70 Years

THOUGH THB DAYS OF TROLLEY CARS ARE GONE IN SALT LAKECEY, there Was a time

T--

when the brightly colored electric trains were the most popular means of transportation in the city.

Aside from a few clashes between competing companies, the trolley car business was a smooth ride.

The first streetcars to be introduced to Salt Lake City were pulled by mules. On July 2, 1872, Brigham Young established the Salt Lake Railroad Company to run muledrawn streetcars throughout the city. With the development of electric streetcars a decade later, the company investigated this new transportation system, and on August 16, 1889, the first electric streetcar was seen on the streets of the Utah capital.

The immediate popularity of the streetcar caused intense competition between rival transportation companies during the first years of its operation. The city was divided into small sections in which various companies operated their own trolleys. Competing companies included the Salt Lake Railway Company, the East Bench Street Railway, Popperton Place, the Salt Lake Rapid Transit, and the Fort Douglas Rapid Transit. Unable to profit as small businesses, the streetcar companies eventually merged with either the Salt Lake Railroad Company or the Salt Lake Rapid Transit Company. With only two streetcar companies in the city, rivalry and competition increased. One story tells of an attempt by the Salt Lake Railroad Co. to stall the business of their rivals by hiring 150 men to tear up the track that Rapid Transit workers were laying miles ahead. Unfortunately, passengers were often caught in the middle of company rivalries. Another account describes a clash of wills when a car from each company met on the tracks head on. Since the two companies refused to collaborate on schedules and track usage, such a situation was bound to occur. The drivers of both cars refused to budge. Passengers had to leave the trolleys and walk home!

Rivalry finally ended when the companies merged into the Utah Light and Railway Company in 1904. No longer facing competition, the company was able to expand trolley car coverage throughout the city. E. H. Harriman, the railroad magnate, poured millions of dollars into transforming the streetcar system. In 1908 he converted the former territorial fairgrounds into a carbarn for trolleys. The ten-acre plot of land contained five trolley bays that housed a maximum of 144 double-truck streetcars. The building was specially constructed to preserve the trolleys while they were stored overnight. Tracks were laid on pit bases with depressed troughs in order to decrease moisture. The ceiling was especially high (33 feet) to maintain constant air flow in the building. For immediate use in the event of fire, a 97-foot-high water tower containing 50,000 gallons of reserve water was built outside the carbarns. It had another use as well; the height of (more)

the tower provided enough pressure to power an indoor sprinkling system used to clean the trolleys while they were stored in the carbarns at night.

As the years progressed, new kinds of trolleys were introduced to Salt Lake City. The streetcars used every day for public transportation had a distinct look. A steel cowcatcher in the front, fold-down wooden steps, and brightly painted yellow and red paneling characterized the Salt Lake City streetcar. Other trolleys had more specialized uses. The Utah Light and Railway Company produced the snow plow, street sweeper, and hearse trolley models. In 1928 Salt Lake City was the first community in the nation to operate a trackless electric trolley system. The new streetcars were attached by a long arm to electric power lines above the cars.

The introduction of the first gasoline bus in Salt Lake City marked the end of the trolley cars. The buses were less confined to the city center and were able to reach more people in suburban areas. The cheaper price of gasoline and improved highways made automobiles and buses the preferred means of transportation. In 1941 the last trolley took a final ceremonial run down the streets of the city with a wreath and black ribbon attached to the front. Spectators watched as old "Def"' Evans, 50-year streetcar veteran, drove his trolley into the carbarn for the last time. The wartime shortage of gasoline put electric-run trolleys back into service for a brief period during World War 11, but by 1945 the trolleys were once again forced to retire.

In 1970 the remaining trolleys and huge carbarn were transformed into today's Trolley Square shopping mall. The trolleys have been converted into restaurants, flower shops, and a cashier's office. Some trolleys now see use as tour buses. Others are displayed in museums. The restored trolleys seen in the city today are nostalgic reminders of a passing era in the history of Salt Lake City.

See Roy Nulph, 'Utah Light and Traction in Salt Lake City," m e Western Railroad, vo1.46, no. 509, August 1983; "Utah Light and Traction Company: History of Origin and Development," mimeographed report prepared for the

Federal Power Commission, order dated May 11, 1937, copy in Utah State Historical Society Library.

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A Utahn, George Sutherland, Served on the U.S. Supreme Court ON SEPTEMBER5, 1922, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT'SONLY UTAHNto date was appointed and confirmed without discussion. George Sutherland was born of British parents in Buckinghamshire, England, on March 25, 1862. That same year, his father joined the Mormon church, and soon the family immigrated to Utah Territory, settling in Springville. Before long, however, the elder Sutherland renounced his new faith, and young George was raised as a non-Mormon. The family left Utah for several years but eventually returned to take up permanent residence.

The need to earn his own support forced George from school at age twelve. He found work as a clerk in a clothing store in Salt Lake City. A few odd jobs later, in 1879, he was able to return to the classroom. He enrolled in the newly established Brigham Young Academy in Provo.

There he came under the influence of Karl G. Maeser, the academy's president, whom Sutherland always acknowledged as having had a decisive effect on his life.

Sutherland's experience at the academy was followed by a brief period of intensive study at the University of Michigan Law School. In March 1883 he was licensed to practice law in Michigan, but a Provo classmate, Rosamond Lee, attracted him back to Utah and they were soon married. Sutherland then went into partnership with his father, opening Sutherland and Son law practice in Provo. As a young attorney George defended many persons indicted under federal antipolygamy laws and earned the respect of his Mormon neighbors.

Politically, however, Sutherland joined Utah's Liberal party and campaigned for the end of polygamy. He ran as the Liberal candidate for mayor of Provo in 1890 but was soundly defeated.

Following Wilford Woodruff s 1890 Manifesto ending the Mormon church's open support of polygamy, Sutherland felt that the Liberal party had lost its usefulness. He promptly declared himself a Republican and was influential in organizing the GOP in Utah. His political career blossomed. In 1900 he was elected to a term as Utah's congressman, and in 1905 he returned to Washington as a U.S.senator. He won reelection to the Senate in 1911.

In 1917 William H. King defeated Sutherland in his bid for a third-term in the Senate, but Sutherland remained in Washington, D.C., where he opened a law office. Elected president of the American Bar Association in the fall of 1916, he led the ABA's support for the war effort and also continued his forthright defense of individual rights.

His service in Washington brought him into contact with influential politicians, including Warren G. Harding who, upon becoming president, chose Sutherland to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. During Sutherland's sixteen years as a justice he remained faithful to his beliefs in individual rights and freedom from government control. Particularly challenging to those beliefs was Franklin D. Roosevelt's barrage of New Deal legislation. Sutherland became one of the 'nine (more)

old men of the court" who complicated the course of the New Deal and led to Roosevelt's failed court-packing scheme.

Sutherland announced his retirement in 1938 and died four years later on July 18, 1942.

One year prior to his death, his alma mater, Brigham Young University, awarded him an honorary degree. At the ceremony Sutherland offered these words of wisdom that his life personified: "Character to be good must be . . . so firmly fixed in the conscience, and indeed in the body itself, as to insure unhesitating rejection of an impulse to do wrong."

For additional information see Joel Francis Paschal, Mr. Justice Sutherlaid A Man against the State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951).

THEHISTORYBLAZERis produced by the Utah Shte Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

THE HISTORY BLAZER hTEtt'SOF UTAH'S PAST FROM THE

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The Ute Trek to South Dakota in 1906 Ended in Disappointment TIIEMAY 26, 1906, VERNALEXPRESS SPREAD THE ALARM: "Many of the residents of Uintah county may not be aware of the fact, but it is nevertheless true, that Indian trouble of gigantic proportion is brewing ."A band of White River Utes from the Uintah and Ouray Resewation, numbering between 300 and 700, was on the move north. The Express continued: 'They informed the settlers that they are going to one of the northern reservations where a great gathering of all the Indians in the west has been arranged for, to council over their supposed grievances. They express freely their determination to fight rather than retum."

Over the next several months the Vernal newspaper reported on the Indians' progress until they arrived at a Sioux reservation near Fort Meade, South Dakota. Dispatches reprinted from Wyoming newspapers indicated that white residents feared potential Indian atrocities and depredations. Agent Hall of the Fort Duchesne Indian Agency was traveling with the Utes, trying to convince them to return to Utah, while federal troops were sent to escort them to South Dakota.

The Utes' odyssey had deep historical roots. The traditional temtory of the Ute-speaking peoples had encompassed a vast area, from Colorado's Front Range to the Great Salt Lake Desert and from northern Colorado to northern New Mexico. Historically, the Utes had traded peacefully with Spaniards, Mexicans, and isolated traders, but the pressure of large-scale white settlement in the mid-19th century soon constricted their independence and led to conflict. President Abraham .

Lincoln established the entire Uinta Basin as a Ute reservation in 1861. Most of the Uintah band of Utes from central Utah had been forced onto the reservation by 1864. When the White River Utes (Yampas) of Colorado rose up and killed Indian Agent Nathan Meeker and several others, they were moved onto the Uintah Reservation in 1881, along with the unoffending Uncompahgre band of Colorado Utes.

The White River Utes refused to adjust to their new surroundings, sometimes returning to Colorado to hunt, which white settlers there called "poaching. " Uintah agency officials complained that the White River Utes laughed at the Uintahs for farming, calling it "women's work." White Americans generally expected and desired Indians to settle down, abandon their traditional hunting culture, and become farmers like themselves. When the natives resisted, whites ridiculed them: 'He F e d Cap] had a good farm up the river from Myton, but he didn't like it . If it had been groaning under its burden of ripening grain and fruit and if the fat cattle had been roaming over broad and luxuriant pastures he would have felt the same way. He and work didn't agree."

When coal, oil, and gilsonite were discovered or suspected on Ute land, whites pressured (more)

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the govemment to open the reservation to exploration and settlement. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 established the principle of alloting individual tracts of land to Indians while opening the remainder to possible sale or commercial exploitation. White settlers began encroaching on Ute land in the 1880s and 1890s; in 1905 Indians began receiving allotments, and the reservation was opened to white settlement.

The Utes bitterly protested, arguing that the reservation could not be opened without their permission and that they had received poor land allotments. Red Cap and other White River leaders decided to seek the help of the Sioux, who had expressed friendship for the Utes in decades past. In 1906 Red Cap and his followers were apparently seeking an alliance with the Sioux or hoped that they could settle on the Sioux reservation.

The Utes quickly discovered that the Sioux, suffering their own hardships, could not or would not help them. The Sioux were surprised and dismayed at the Ute influx and would not even let them pasture their ponies free. The federal government, anxious to avoid war but determined to control the Utes,arranged employment for the tribe. Officials complained that the Utes refused to accept jobs on the Santa Fe Railroad, arguing that it would mean abandoning their ponies. In J a n q 1908 the discouraged Utes wrote to Fort Duchesne, asking to return to the Uintah Rese~ation.The govemment supplied wagons, horses, and mules, and by October most had returned. The V e d Express summarized the episode in the colorful, but racist, language typical of the era's journalism: 'We had pictured a fusillade of shot mingled with the wild war-whoop of the desperate redskin at bay as the gallant blueshirted cavalryman beats in the noble redman's crust with the butt of a six-shooter as the windup of the sullen hegira of renegade Utes from the Uintah . The Ute simply snuffed some cocaine, dreamed he was on the happy hunting reservation. ground and crawled through a hole in the fence. He did not know where he was going, but he was on his way . . a man with shoulder-straps rode up to them and said, 'Hey, youse wanter git back where youse come from. Fresh beef and heap baccy.' The red man grunted joyously. He had gotten the very plunder for which he was stalling. . . ."

The returning Utes attempted to make the best of their situation. The tribe eventually gained some recompense for their losses, a $32 million settlement in the United States Indian Court of Claims in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, whites were convinced that they had transformed the "worthless" former Uintah Reservation lands: "The only energy needed for a spectacular tranformation was the white man with his brawny muscle and strong heart, and he came as has been his wont since civilization first diffused its glorious light in the east. He came and in one hand he carried the olive branch and in the other, peace. But the red man would have none of it . . . But despite that and all other obstacles the white man has succeeded. He has brought light out of chaos. He has made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before."

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See Vernal Express, May 1906-October1908;Floyd A. O'Neil, "The Reluctant Suzerainty: The Uintah and Oumy Reservation," Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (1971); Floyd A. O'Neil, "An Anguished Odyssey: The Flight of the Utes, 1906-1908," Utah Historical Quarierly 36 ( 1 968).

THEHISTORYBLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and funded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.