The History Blazer, January 1996

THE HISTORY BLAZER A'EII'S OF UTAH'S PAST FROJI T H E

Utah State Historical Society 300 Rio Grande Salt Lake City. VT 84101 (801) 533-3300 FAX (801) 533-3303

January 1996 Blazer Contents When the Fabulous Horn Silver Mine Caved In The Cashmere Caper on Utah's Southern Frontier

Ben Holladay, the Stagecoach King, in Utah Emigration Canyon Railroad Served SLC Builders' Needs

The Pioneers' Cost of Living Versus Today's Celebrating the Lunar New Year in Salt Lake's Chinatown Utah's We-Try-Harder City Soren Hanson's 'House That Eggs Built" in Hyrum A Tragedy in Rocky Ridge Canyon near Nephi

Would the New State of Utah Go Metric?

Joaquin Miller and the Danites The Utah Lake Monster Forty-Niners in Salt Lake Valley General Booth Found Salt Lakers Restless

The History of a Pioneer Utah Cottage

THE HISTORY BLAZER '

A'EH'S OF LTTA H 'S PAST FROLII T H E

Utah State Historical Society 300 Rio Grande

Salt Lake Cit!:

r T 84101

(801) 533-3500 FAX (801) 533-3503

When the Fabulous Horn Silver Mine Caved In

THESTORY OF THE HORNSILVERMINE, one of the great producers in Utah and American

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mining history, reads like pulp fiction: Two prospectors casually discover a rich ore body, a bankrupt financier promotes the venture, the boomtown of Frisw becomes one of the wildest mining camps in the West with a murder or two every evening, a tough lawman who shoots on sight begins to clean up the town, after producing millions the huge mine collapses, and Frisco becomes another ghost town.

It all started in September 1875 when prospectors James Ryan and Samuel Hawkes, who were working a galena mine in the San Francisco Mining District of Beaver County, tested a huge outcropping they passed each day. They found a solid ore body and immediately staked a claim to it. The two men decided to sell the claim rather than work it, fearing perhaps that the ore body was not as large as it appeared. By the late 1870s the new owners had extracted 25,000 tons of ore with a high silver content. The town of Frisco had sprouted up near the mine, some 17 miles west of Milford. But developing a mine in that remote area, some 175 miles from the nearest railhead, required more financial muscle than was locally available.

Enter Jay Cooke, the financial genius who had come up with the idea of selling federal bonds to pay for the Civil War. In 1870 he was reportedly the richest man in America and the nation's leading banker. By 1873 he was broke. The Franw-Prussian War and the Panic of 1873 had dealt a fatal blow to his promotion of bonds to construct the Northern Pacific Railroad. Even his mansion near Philadelphia had been taken by creditors. Cooke had never been interested in mining investments, but a friend convinced him to take a look at the Horn Silver Mine in far-off Utah. Following a complicated series of events 'Cooke induced the owners to bond the property to him in consideration of his promise to give them railroad connections. " Cooke did not have a dime to put into the venture, but he still had his genius for organizing and promoting. He was able to convince the mine owners and the LDS church to each provide a quarter of the capital needed. The remaining half was guaranteed by Wall Street financier Jay Gould. Within a few years Cooke was again rich, selling his shares in the Horn for an estimated $1 million. Exit Jay Cooke.

By 1879 the United States Annual Mining Review and Stock Ledger was calling the Horn 'unquestionably the richest silver mine in the world now being worked." Frisw fairly buzzed with activity. Two smelters processed ore from the mine, and the company had developed a number of other needed facilities, including charcoal kilns, an iron reflux mine, a telegraph line to Beaver, and several stores in Frisco. Still, smelting on site was difficult and expensive due to the scarcity of fuel, water, and iron ore. With the completion of the Utah Southern Railroad Extension (more)

to Frisco on June 23, 1880, ore could be shipped to the Francldyn smelter near Murray, Utah, for processing. During its peak years some 150 tons of ore a day were sent to the Salt Lake Valley for smelting. By 1885 the Horn had produced more than $13 million and paid its shareholders $4 million in dividends. Some of its ore averaged 70 to 200 ounces of silver per ton.

The town of Frisco quickly became a center of vice and crime. Like many a boomtown in the West its streets were lined with saloons (21 according to one count), gambling dens, and houses of prostitution. One writer called it "Dodge City, Tombstone, Sodom and Gomorrah all rolled into one," noting that murders occurred so often that city officials contracted to have a wagon pick up the bodies and take them to boothill for burial. Eventually Frisco's reputation had become so tarnished that Marshal Pearson from Pioche, Nevada, was hired to clean up the town.

He allegedly told the lawless elements that he did not intend to make arrests. Instead, he planned to shoot on sight anyone he saw breaking the law. He supposedly killed six outlaws on his first night in town.

Then, on the morning of February 12, 1885, after the night shift had come to the surface, the day crew was told to wait because tremors were shaking the ground, and the Horn had experienced several cave-ins previously. Within minutes a massive cave-in closed the main shaft and collapsed tunnels down to the seventh level, shutting off the richest part of the mine. The cave-in was felt as far away as Milford where some windows were reportedly broken. Rain and snow had recently soaked the ground and added tremendous weight to the supporting timbers in the tunnels below. Additionally, the operators, in their hurry to take wealth from the mine as quickly as possible, had not adequately timbered the maze of tunnels. Fortunately, the cave-in occurred between shifts and no one was killed.

In less than a year the Horn was producing again on a limited scale. By 1891 quarterly dividends averaged $50,000, and the 'Horn was still one of eight leading silver mines in the United States which, collectively, had produced more than half of the nation's total silver production value." The Horn had recovered and continued to produce varying amounts of silver and other metals for a succession of owpers for another six or seven decades. But the cave-in had doomed infamous Frisco, once home to several thousand residents and a thriving place of commerce-some of which was even legal.

Sources: Leonard J. Arrington and Wayne K. Hinton, "The Horn Silver Bonanza" in m e American Wmt: A Reorientation, ed. Gene M. Gressley (Lararnie: University of Wyoming, 1966); Harold 0.Weight, "When the Horn Silver Caved, " Westways, February 1952; George A. Horton, Jr., "An Early History of Milford" (M.S. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1957); George A. Thompson, Some Dream Die: Utah's Ghost Towns and b s t Treuures (Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press, 1982).

THEHISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and b d e d 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 MISTORY BLAZER ,\'Ell's OF ITTAH'S PAST FROM THE

Utah State Historical Society 300 Rio Grande (801) 533-3500

Salt Lake City. VT 8-4101 FAX (801) 333-3303

The Cashmere Caper on Utah's Southern Frontier

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CASHMERE WOOL-lT SEEMED LIKE THE PERFECT BUSINESS INVESTMENT, a Sure thing. A market for luxury items was growing among the well-to-do since Utah Temtory was beginning to prosper financially by the 1870s. With economic growth, Joseph Ellis Johnson reasoned, profits could easily be made with luxury clothing items and he wanted to get into the thick of it. He was an entrepreneur who had done well in the Midwest with a variety of businesses, ranging from ownership of newspapers and mercantiles to a Wild West show, before coming to Utah. Now settled in the St. George area, he was once again on the lookout for a new enterprise. He thrived on the thrill of speculation and new business ventures, so he eagerly responded to the letter he received from a Colonel Furness in Nebraska offering a flock of imported Asian goats for sale. Johnson soon found others, some quite prominent, to invest with him, forming a joint stock company.

Benjamin Johnson, Joseph's brother, joined as a partner with the title of superintendent, which was, he would soon learn, a glorified name for goat herder, since he was made responsible for the goats' welfare. His autobiography tells the story. The goats arrived on the railroad and then were herded to southern Utah's warmer climate and the abundant feed in a canyon that the extended Johnson family owned near Kanab. Johnson Canyon was felt to be the ideal grazing ground for these special, imported 'cashmere" goats.

Benjamin sent his son-in-law and some others to herd the goats south. With the flock was Charles Townsend who had come with the goats on the train and would accompany them to the south. The herd and herders arrived in Springville at dusk, and in the darkness one of the female goats was accidentally left outside the corral. Two men found the stray and thinking she was nothing special, butchered her for mutton. Next morning, a hunt turned up the two thieves who were charged with larceny. This was the first of Johnson's headaches in the cashmere industry.

When the goats arrived at Spring Lake, Ben's home, Johnson joined the group. He added a flock of sheep, two of his sons, and a baggage wagon to the entourage and followed with part of his family in a light wagon. In Holden on December 28, 1871, they added another small flock of sheep belonging to a Mr. Holman. Trying to beat the bad weather, they humed on, but everywhere they went the townspeople were curious about the animals, some wanting to join the stock company, others wanting to purchase a pair of goats to start their own business. By the time the group arrived in Beaver, they needed money for expenses, so Johnson finally sold a pair. Then at Cedar City the goats and sheep stampeded through the hills. All but one, a valuable ewe, was rounded up. Rather than lose the whole herd, they left her. Fifteen miles down the road, a wagon caught up with them bearing the truant sheep which had returned to Henry Lunt's place, where they had spent the night. (more)

Then stormy weather hit. They passed down the Black Ridge and stayed overnight with another Johnson brother, Joel. From there the herders worked the flock toward Fort Pierce, but the Virgin River blocked the way. A dangerous crossing was made in the near dark by tying the goats to the wagons; the sheep followed them across. The animals were kept at the fort briefly while Ben went to St. George to acquire 200 common goats to breed with the supposed purebred "cashmeres."

Arriving in sunny Dixie, they still had 100 miles to go before reaching the highlands of Johnson. They stopped occasionally to visit family and friends or do some trading, climbed the Hurricane Hill, passed Moccasin Springs, and then camped, only to be caught in a dreadful storm.

The camp was totally unprotected from the freezing wind, but here the goats decided it was time to give birth. Many of the kids were born and frozen before Johnson and the herders knew what was happening. They gathered the herd in as close as possible and started fires with the only available fuel, weeds and grass. The men heated sand in which they buried the newborn kids for warmth.

Only a few kids lived through the night; even the herders felt more dead than alive.

To save their investment, the men rolled the kids in blankets and moved as fast as possible to Kanab and then on to Johnson, the family settlement in the canyon. William, another brother, and his son Sixtus were waiting to help care for the humans and their flock. Unfortunately, the mother goats disowned their offspring. The orphan kids were fed with bottles after milking the goats. With much care by Ben, family members, and the herders, the orphans were raised through the winter in the belief that the work would pay off in big profits.

For the next few months Ben carefully superintended the flock and then came to several disappointing conclusions. He began to feel they had been defrauded. He wrote to his superiors in the company, but they still were optimistic. Meanwhile, Ben became more convinced that the whole enterprise was a disaster and that the goats were not imported and not even purebred. There was no machinery to work their wool, but then again there was very little wool to work since much of it had become loose and fallen out before it was time to shear.

Ben realized there was no future in the business for him and dropped out, just like all that valuable wool. In early spring he left the flock of goats and sheep with his nephew Sixtus Johnson and returned to Spring Lake. Joseph Johnson and other company officials had the herd taken to St. George. But there the herder let them wander off, and they scattered through the mountains. Those that were recovered were eventually returned to Sixtus, who kept them for several years without ever realizing a profit. When he moved to Arizona the goats drowned while crossing the Colorado River. Thus the dream of a lucrative business in luxurious cashmere was finally washed away in the muddy Colorado.

Sources: Benjamin F. Johnson, My Life's Review, privately printed by the Johnson family in 1992 (the original autobiography is located in the LDS Church Archives); Rufus David Johnson, JEJ Trail to Sundown: Cmsadaga to Cara Grande 1817-1882; 'Ihe Story of a Pioneer, Joseph Ellis Johnson (Salt Lake City, Johnson Family Committee, 1961).

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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Ben Holladay, the Stagecoach King, in Utah

h THE M I D - ~ ~ ~ BEN O S HOLLADAY WAS FAMOUS AS THE COLORFUL OWNER of the largest

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stagecoach line in the world. He had six homes, a stylish wife of American Revolution lineage who helped him collect art and books, daughters married to European counts, and an international playboy son. The other son helped manage his steamship fleet and Nevada silver mines.

Holladay was well liked. Darkly handsome, he enjoyed a good joke and did not mind moderate swearing, but he insisted that his employees be respectful. He employed several thousand drivers, but several times a year he would ride the line coast to coast himself to prove that his stages were punctual and wuld still beat competitors from Atlantic to Pacific.

Probably the key to Holladay's success was his organizing drive. It was said that nothing was too big for him to undertake. The Army and other clients knew a contract with him meant ontime delivery. Yet he loved to gamble, at times playing his way out of a poker game or a financial deal through sheer bluff. The precariousness of the freighting business appealed to him as much as its outlandish profits.

But what was little known was that Holladay's first real successes came through trading with the Mormons, with whom he maintained close business ties throughout his career.

This connection began while he was 18-year-old aide-de-camp to Missouri militia commander Alexander Doniphan, who was sent to disarm a supposed Mormon uprising. Arriving in the Mormon settlements, Doniphan discovered the problem had been misrepresented and refused to fire on the Mormons. His level-headedness probably influenced young Holladay.

When the California gold rush began, the Mormons had already relocated to the Great Basin. Holladay, always the independent thinker, could see there was surer fortune to be gained from freighting than gold digging. That June he arrived in Salt Lake City bearing letters of recommendation from Doniphan and others. He had hauled fifty wagons filled with $70,000in Mexican War surplus from St. Louis, but he needed help getting them over the mountains.

For the next several years Holladay and his partner Theodore Warner joined early Salt Lake merchants Vasquez, Livingston & Kinkead, John and Enoch Reese, Thomas S. Williams, and Elijah Thomas in providing the isolated territory with badly needed eastern products. Then Holladay took his surplus oxen to California where, by holing up in the foothills until San Francisco buyers met his price, he got $500 per head-having paid $6.

The next year Holladay arrived in Utah with $150,000 in goods. His enormous profits came largely from selling war surplus for private goods wholesaled in St. Louis at two to four times the prices commanded in Utah. (more)

Holladay & Warner differed in policies from some gentile merchant houses. They accepted goods when cash was not available, and they did not discount the coin Mormons minted for a time using inferior amounts of gold. After entering the stagecoach business Holladay assisted Mormons with loans and trading considerations-much of the line's grain came from Utah farms.

The relationship was mutually beneficial. Many of Holladay 's superintendents, drivers, and riders were Mormons. And in 1864-65, when his line lost $305,000 in the Indian Wars, President Linwln asked Brigham Young to raise a 90-daycavalry to protect the stages and telegraph. Young responded largely because of Holladay By 1866 Holladay's wife had died and he was tired of the business. He sold the coach line to Wells, Fargo & Company and retired to Portland, Oregon, where he started a hotel, saw mill, and second family.

But in the 1870s he was tempted by a new project. Characteristically, he saw it not just as a railroad line connecting Oregon's Willamette Valley to the transcontinental railroad terminus in California but as a colonizing effort. Holladay obtained land grants from Oregon state and, using foreign capital, sent his ships to Europe to recruit immigrants to homestead the grants.

In 1873 a panic shook the eastern U. S. and European financial markets. Holladay's debts were called in. When the dust settled, he was bankrupt. He sold his remaining assets and sued the federal government for losses accrued while carrying the U.S. mails. When in 1877 he was offered $100,000, he refused it. Holladay died in 1887 at age 68 in what his biographers like to call "relative obscurity." He is remembered in Utah by the affluent Salt Lake Valley suburb bearing his name.

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Sources: J. V. Frederick, Ben Holladay, the Stagecoach King (Glendale, Calif., 1940); Journal History, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, entries for 1849-53; Ellis Lucia, me Saga of Ben Hotladby, Giant of the Old West (New York, 1959).

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

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THE HISTORY BLAZER i\*EIt7S OF [TTAH'S PAST FROAI T H E

Utah State Historical Society 300 Rio G r a n d e

Salt Lake City. VT 84101

(801) 533-3500 FAX (801) 533-3503

Emigration Canyon Railroad Served SLC Builders' Needs

IN THE LATE 1800s A BUILDING BOOM OCCURRED in Salt h k e City. Concrete had not yet

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been developed that was strong enough to be used for building foundations, so granite and sandstone blocks were used instead. Quarries in Little Cottonwood Canyon furnished the granite.

Red and white sandstone came from quarries in Emigration Canyon. Initially, heavy wagons were used for hauling sandstone out of Emigration Canyon into the city. As the demand for stone escalated, this proved a cumbersome mode of freighting.

A steam railroad up the canyon would have been expensive and created a fire hazard as well. But electric freighting was proving feasible in other parts of Utah and the country. A group of promoters led by Brigham Young's grandson, LeGrand Young, hit upon the latter. The Emigration Canyon Railroad was incorporated in 1907. Within a year the 14-mile line was in operation. Its city terminus and yards were located near the western end of the present University of Utah stadium parking lot. Its route passed by Mount Olivet Cemetery, Sunnyside Avenue, the Wagner Brewery near the mouth of the canyon, and up what is now Highway U-65 to the Killyon's Canyon turnoff, with a spur to the quarries. Where the upper canyon was too steep, switchbacks were cut so that the grade seldom exceeded 6 percent, except the final mile to Pinecrest.

The line's flatbed freight cars were probably made-over trolley cars. Fifty of these miniature, four-wheeled cars hauled sandstone from the quamies to the yards near Fifth South and University Street where they were unloaded and the stone taken by wagon to various building sites.

Two box cab motors pulled the cars, powered by an electric transformer built far up the canyon.

Soon recreationers, who could reach the western Emigration terminus by city trolley, began asking for rides to Pinecrest Lodge in Killyon's Canyon. So in 1909 two elegant, motored passenger cars with trailers were added to the system. Three years later several more such cars were added. All were open-air; the line could not run in winter anyway. According to Ira L. Swett, "summer cottages began springing up all through the canyon." The route was surely scenic.

The rails crossed and recrossed Emigration Creek some 16 times, and Point Lookout at about 7,000 feet gave passengers a view of the valley below.

The little Emigration Canyon excursion and freighting line was short-lived. Within a decade concrete had supplanted building stone as the preferred foundation material, and the line's passenger revenues were not enough to justify continued operation. At the start of World War I the system was dismantled. The passenger cars were sent to Tacoma, where they transported workers

to the shipyards. The rail, spikes, and steel from the freight cars were donated to war manufacturing. Company officials divided the remaining property-"four battered old shovels."

Now all that can be seen of the line is an occasional stretch of railbed used by hikers and mountain bikers, and the upper station, now part of the new Pinecrest Bed & Breakfast Inn. Sources: Ira L. Swett, Interurbans of Utah (Los Angeles, 1954); Stephen L. Carr and Robert W.Edwards, Utah Ghost Raib (Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1986).

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

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THE HISTORY BLAZER .iYEIITSOF ITTAH 'S PAST FRO'II THE

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Salt Lake C i t ~ VT . 84101 (801) 533-3500 FAX (801) 533-3503

The Pioneers' Cost of Living Versus Today's

SOMETIMES IT IS TEMPTING TO LoOK ON THE VICTORIAN ERA in America as a golden age, forgetting that pioneers in Utah struggled for food, shelter, and the amenities of life just as we do.

Occasionally, an entry in a 19th-century diary or a letter reveals the actual dollar amounts of their struggle. Because here and there a pioneer noted his income for the week or how much she had paid for 100 pounds of flour, we are able to compare their wst of living with ours.

In 1849, $2.50 per day (or 31 cents per hour) was the minimum wage a Utah employer could pay and still keep the respect of the community; Brigharn Young recommended $5.00. At the $2.50 rate a pioneer man working Monday through Saturday wuld earn $15 in a week.

Of course, many were not paid in dollars at all but in wheat, wm, rice, produce, or "store dollars" (certificates of trade). If a housewife wanted to buy manufactured goods she was just as likely to barter for them, using a straw hat she had braided or bushels of her husband's wheat and potatoes instead of cash.

In 1996 common Utah labor wages begin at $4.25 per hour or $170 per week. Thus an 1849 laborer earned less than one-tenth today's earnings-numerically. But how much did he or she earn in "real" dollars or buying power?

Diaries indicate that many items common in today's households were also staples in early Utah homes: milk, eggs, wheat flour, beef, potatoes, sugar, butter, and cheese. Nonfood items frequently mentioned in pioneer records include shoes or moccasins, framing lumber, and stove wood sold by the cord.

In 1849 milk sold at 10 cents a quart. During the early years of settlement eggs could not be bought at all because those not consumed by the producer's family were used for setting to hatch more chickens. Flour sold at $2 per hundred pounds, beef at 10 cents a pound, and potatoes for $1 per bushel (about 60 pounds). Sugar wuld be bought for 50 cents a pound, butter 20 cents, and cheese 25 cents. A pair of Salt Lake City store-bought moccasins wst $1 in 1849. Framing lumber sold for $5 per 100 board feet, and a wrd of stove wood cost $10.

Estimating consumption by a pioneer family of five, one concludes they spent $20.15 per week on basic food and heating and cooking fuel. That represented 37 percent of their income.

In 1996 a quart of milk wsts 75 cents in Salt Lake City. Flour sells at $12 pr 100 pounds (although most Utahns no longer buy it in quantity), hamburger $1-69 per pound, and potatoes $10.12 per bushel (nor do most of us buy potatoes by the bushel, although perhaps we should).

Sugar sells at approximately 20 cents a pound, butter $1.80, and cheese $2.00. (more)

If we are lucky a pair of adult or larger child's shoes cost us $30; modestly averaged, we spend about $6 per week on footwear. Although the price of framing lumber has ballooned to about $25 per hundred narrow-width board feet, many people still consume considerable quantities in a year to finish basement rooms, build tool and garden sheds, and pursue miscellaneous wood crafts; so we will assume one 2 x 4 per week.

Since few of us use stoves and fireplaces as primary heating and cooking appliances (when we do, a cord of wood costs $85 delivered), we will substitute for this item a high-end Mountain Fuel bill averaging $12.50 per week.

Assuming we eat the same foods in similar amounts as a pioneer family, we spend about $67.92 per week on staples. A worker earning minimum wage gets $170 per week. Thus 40 percent of this-about the same chunk as a pioneer spent-goes to basic survival.

Pioneer consumption patterns differed from ours in at least two major ways. Even those living in the city grew much of their produce and kept a milk cow plus a pig or two. In addition, they often built their own homes, avoiding mortgage payments.

Still, judging solely by percentage of income spent on food and fuel, the 1990s stack up pretty well. If we have higher housing, transportation, tax, and education costs, the frontier life involved poorer health care, Indian wars, few recreational opportunities, and no buffer from starvation. It seems to all balance out. '

Source: Brigham D. Madsen, Gold Rush Sojourners in Great Salt Lake City, 1849 and 1850 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983). Madsen cites diaries and letters of many Utah pioneers and forty-niners.

THE HISTORY 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 MISTORY BLAZER *l'EI\'S OF LTTAH'S PAST FROAf T H E

Utah State Historical Societv 300 Rio Grande (801) 533-3500

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Celebrating the Lunar New Year in Salt Lake's Chinatown

&WHEN A CHINESE HOST INVITES YOU TO TAKE A SEAT at his table, you in a sense become a member of the family.. .,"according to a report in the Deseret Evening News of February 8, 1902. The full-page, illustrated article noted that hundreds of 'prominent" Salt Lakers would visit Chinatown during the New Year celebrations, and those who conducted themselves as gentlemen might be fortunate enough to 'obtain access to the interior of the Chinese dwellings and 'joss' house parties." The newspaper estimated the population of Salt Lake's Chinatown at some 400, most of whom were men. The ethnic enclave was centered in Plum Alley, a north-south running street between Main and State streets and First and Second South, and included nearby Commercial Street. Here the Chinese lived in tenement-like structures among their dry goods stores, restaurants, and noodle parlors. Fortunately for historians, some Chinese were willing to admit reporters and photographers into their homes. Despite the use of racial epithets typical of that era (e.g ., 'slant-eyed sons of the Flowery Kingdom ") , these accounts provide valuable information about Utah 's Chinese not available elsewhere.

Key figures in the 1902 Chinese New Year celebrations were Chin Quan Chan (usually referred to by the newspaper as Chin Chin), the "mayor" of Chinatown and a prosperous merchant, and 'deputy mayor" Dave Hing, a well-educated man who spoke English fluently, served as a interpreter, and represented his fellow Chinese in diplomatic matters. The newspaper would track the activities of Mayor Chin for at least another decade.

New Year's was a time of forgiveness, caring for the poor, visiting friends, and celebrating. The News described the elaborate feasts that would be found in many homes, with the richest members of the community offering their guests 'deep sea fish from China which retails for $10 a pound, " oysters, snails, and clams, as well as the more common roast pork and chicken. Having fdled themselves with the delicacies of the season most Chinese would then visit the Joss House located above Ah Woo's store for prayers. Music from Chinese stringed instruments and the smell of burning incense would fill the air, as would the almost continuous popping of firecrackers.

Some of the Salt Lake Chinese planned to travel to Evanston, Wyoming, to join the Chinese community there for more celebrating.

The following year the News reported, 'Next month will see the advent of Chinese New Year's, but there will be sadness in Chinatown.. .and.. .one familiar figure whose hospitality and kindness to his white visitors is unbounded" would be missing, for Mayor Chin had received news of the death of his wife who, with the couple's two children, had returned to China (more)

for an extended visit. Chin was leaving at once to bring his children back to Salt Lake where they were born. T& article provided additional information about Chin. He had come to Salt Lake from Ogden many years earlier and established what was now the largest store in Chinatown. Because of his long residence in the city many countrymen sought his advice in settling disputes or solving problems. On New Year's, especially, the newspaper continued, 'Chin is in all his glory. He it is who heads the contributions for the purchase of fire works, and none entertains so royally as does he. During the week or ten days' celebration, hundreds of people, well known residents of Salt Lake, visit his place nightly and are treated to wine, fruit, candy and nuts, while he relates to them stories of his native country and endeavors to explain the mysteries of their religious rites. And to say that he will be missed by the crowds of merry makers who will throng Plum Alley this year, is only stating the case mildly. The sympathy of scores of friends goes out to him...."

Chin eventually made his way back to Salt Lake City and resumed his business affairs and influence in the community. But it was not easy. A 1907 newspaper report stated that Chin's enemies had cast suspicion upon him with U.S. immigration officials, and he had to engage in a long legal battle to confirm his eligibility to remain in this country with his family. Chin subsequently remarried and had several more children. A News reporter spent a half-hour with Chin and his 'happy family sipping Oolong tea under the cooling breeze of an up-to-date electric fan" in their flat overlooking Plum Alley. Also on hand were two other women, Mrs. Chung Gung, a native of California and wife of a local restaurant owner. She was well-educated, spoke excellent English, and had written articles for California magazines. The other woman, Mrs. Chin Willie, was the wife of a local interpreter for government. In addition to describing the Chin household and its guests, the reporter noted other Plum Alley residents and some of the activity of the city's Chinese outside of their enclave: "Scattered about the city are the laundries and in the suburbs are the Chinese gardens, the finest in the county." Chinese restaurants and stores had spread onto State Street, and owners of such establishments were the most prosperous Chinese.

By 1912 Chin Quan Chan, "for two-score years recognized as mayor of Salt Lake's Chinatown," was telling reporters that he was ready to close his Salt Lake store and take his family to Hong Kong where he had already established a business. There, he said, 'his children will have the advantage of a good English education as well as proper tutelage in their native tongue." Perhaps Chin had seen into the future and realized that Plum Alley's days were numbered. By 1940 the remaining few residents of the tumble-down buildings would be forced to move, but the colorful days of Chinatown and its New Year's excitement really ended when Mayor Chin left for Hong Kong.

See Deseret Evening News, February 8, 1902, J a n w 3, 1903, July 13, 1907, June 25, 1912.

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 MISTORY BLAZER A'EI1'S OF LTTAH 'S PAST FR O i I THE

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Utah's We-Try-Harder City

WEST VUEY CITYHAS A HISTORY AND POPULATION second only to that of its big sister, Salt Lake, yet only recently has it wme into its own.

Incorporated in 1980, West Valley was an amalgamation of Granger, Hunter, and Redwood/Chesterfield. Of these communities, Granger was the oldest. Joseph Harker crossed "over Jordan" at about 3300 South only a year after Mormon pioneers first poured into the noah and east valley.

For two decades the west side attracted little further interest. It seemed best suited for grazing because it had no year-round flowing streams and much of the soil was tainted by alkali and other mineral deposits.

However, eventually east-side farmland became scarce. New homesteaders, as hungry for acreage as the first pioneers, began to spill west. Those who ventured far beyond the Jordan dug wells, piped the few natural springs, or hauled river water in wagon barrels. Lack of drinking and imgation water continued to thwart major settlement, although three major canals built in the 1870s allowed the establishment of Hunter six miles west of the river.

But conditions were not easy. The life-giving canal waters eventually caused salts and minerals to leach to the surface. Many f m e r s watched their wheat and alfalfa, windbreaks and orchards turn brown and die. Runoff from waterlogged land formed several alkali lakes and flooded low-lying farms.

Farmers drained the lakes and revised their irrigation techniques, but agriculture west of the Jordan remained a precarious endeavor. Most farmers worked two jobs. Over his lifetime Willard Jones, for example, taught school, sold insurance, edited a newspaper, sewed as road supervisor, and worked as a copper mill mechanic in addition to farming. And lack of water hindered growth.

In 1900 Granger/Hunter claimed only 1.3 percent of Salt Lake County's population.

Land speculators made notable efforts to change this. In 1889 the El Dorado Subdivision was laid out between 2100/2700 South and 4800/5600 West. For a time it boasted eighteen families and a post office, train stop, mercantile, tannery, and schoolhouse. But the wells went brackish and the topsoil proved alkali-heavy. By 1895 El Dorado was deserted.

In 1914 the Kimball & Richards Company focused development around the 2100 South railway depot between the Jordan River and Redwood Road. They called it Chesterfield and succeeded in selling most of the lots. But the 1920 recession killed the fledgling project.

Around World War I, Salt Lake County improved its roads to accommodate increasing numbers of automobiles. The first Granger street to be paved was 3500 South. And in 1914 the (more)

interurban Orem Line between Salt Lake and Payson built a branch through Granger to Magna.

Now GrangerIHunter students had transportation to Cypress High School, and west-side farmers enjoyed greater access to sugar beet and other markets.

During the Great Depression another attempt was made to develop the Chesterfield/Redwood area. County Welfare funds helped 110 families purchase lots and build houses there.

But unemployed homeowners lacked the ability to expand on this fragile start. A 1940 graduate student found that half of the houses had two rooms at best and lacked central heat and bathtub.

Twenty-three dwellings consisted of only one room and a dugout, tent, or chicken coop.

A post-World War I1 population boom promised new life to the west valley. 'Just as in the 1870s,all that was needed to spur accelerated growth was a water system," observes one historian.

Land developers spearheaded formation of the GrangerIHunter Water Improvement District three years before Salt Lake County's Water Consemancy District was created. The same men persuaded lenders to finance infrastructure for several key subdivisions.

In 1952 the district wntmcted to buy surplus water out of the newly wmpleted Deer Creek Reservoir. In 1953 voters approved a water system bond, and in twelve months the population grew more than in the previous one hundred years.

In the 1960s and 1970s, west-siders' concern about how their communities were developing set the stage for the merger of Granger, Hunter, and Redwood into an independent, second-class city under the state constitution. With new zoning laws, master planning, and responsive leaders, West Valley has become a first-class city in spirit.

Source: Michael J. G o d and the West Valley City Civic Committee, Let's Do It: West Valley City's m c i a l Early History (West Valley City, 1993).

THEHISTORY BLAZERis 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.

960107 (BB)

Soren Hanson's "House That Eggs Built" in Hyrum

B E G ~ABOUT G 1880 THE ECONOMY OF CACHEVALLEY began to evolve from its pioneer subsistence roots to a commercial economy with highly specialized private enterprises. A leading figure in this transition was Hyrum businessman Soren Hanson. Born in Hyrum on May 2, 1863, he had become the largest egg dealer in the Intermountain West by the turn of the century.

In 1897, for example, he sold 120,000 dozen eggs. Cache Valley and southern Idaho consumed a quarter of this output, and the rest was taken by wagon to Corinne or Ogden for shipment throughout Utah and the surrounding states. That same year he also shipped a large amount of grain and 100 rail cars of cattle to markets outside of Utah.

Hanson was also active in local politics, serving as postmaster of Hyrum in the 1890s, as a city councilman from 1898 to 1902, and as mayor during 1906-8. The imposing 2'15-story Queen Anne home he built at 166 West Main in Hyrum during 1905-7 reflected not only his business and political success but also the economic power of the lowly egg.

According to his son's account, Hanson began his egg business in the late 1880s. By 1895 it had grown to the point that Hanson needed a modem storage plant to replace the crude cellar he had been using. While traveling in the East he visited several egg storage facilities and upon his return hired Hyrum Hokenson to build a two-story, 50 x 120 foot egg house. Here incoming eggs were processed, including candling to determine which eggs were suitable for storage. The two cold storage rooms could hold about 4,000 cases of eggs. Each room contained two huge ice tanks, 5 feet in diameter and 32 feet high. In the winter Hanson harvested ice from a large pond a mile north of his establishment and stored the sawed cakes of ice in an ice house next to the egg building. An unpleasant chore remembered by Hanson's son was leading a horse to operate the icehouse elevator past the "rotten egg hole" which often "stunk to high heaven" when the children forgot to cover the discarded eggs with a thick layer of dirt.

When Hanson began his business local farmers were still bartering with retail merchants, and eggs were often the medium of exchange. Farmers brought their eggs to merchants all over Cache Valley, and Hanson took them off of the merchants' hands. He paid cash-sometimes as little as 8 cents a dozen-and then resold them for many times that amount. The Hanson boys often took a team and wagon to towns like Paradise, Millville, and Wellsville to collect the eggs that storekeepers there had accumulated. In the early days Hanson hauled the eggs by wagon to the mining camps of Montana. Later the eggs were shipped by rail to places like Butte, Rock Springs, and Winnemucca. Hanson got the names of businesses in these towns from Dunn & Bradstreet's credit listings and then sent postcards to them with his current egg quotations. (more)

Hanson's egg empire extended beyond the Cache Valley. He also bought and stored them in the Midwest. Qne year, his son recalled, Hanson stored several carloads of eggs at the Beatrice Creamery Company plant in Nebraska. Within three weeks he had resold them at a profit of some $20,000. With that bankroll he fulfilled a promise to his wife to build her a lovely home. The 'house that eggs built" cost an estimated $30,000-a small fortune at that time and an appropriate reward for years of log-cabin living.

A late example of the Victorian Queen Anne style in Utah, the asymmetrical brick home has a stone foundation and wood trim. Gable bays project from a central mass, and a circular tower on the southeast corner-which culminates in a 20-foot peak-has three wrap-around windows. Twelve columns support a wrap-around front porch. One of the home's three chimneys is unusually ornate with a canring of a half-nude female figure. Leaded glass, carved oak, beveled mirrors, a 7-foot-wide hallway, and a delicate wrought-iron balustrade are some of the home's outstanding features. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

See "Egg Businessw in Earle W. Allen, Bessie Brown, and Lila Eliason, Home in the HilLs of Bridger Land: Zhe History of Hyrum fiom 1860 to 1969 (Hyrum:City of Hyrum, 1969); National Register Nomination Form for the Soren Hanson House, Hyrum, by John McCormick and Diana Johnson in Preservation Office, Utah Division of State History, Salt Lake City.

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

960108 (MBM)

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THE MISTORY BLAZER AYE H'S OF LrTAH 'S PAST FROAII THE

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A Tragedy in Rocky Ridge Canyon near Nephi

THEYHAD HOPED THESE WOULD BE HAPPY DAYS. Af'ter years on an isolated sheep ranch near Salt Creek Canyon, the Charles H. Price family had moved into their new brick house in the small central Utah town of Nephi. Now they could visit family members and friends more often.

The church and cultural activities that Martha Kendall Price had so longed for were readily available. But before they got settled into their new home these hopes were marred by typhoid fever-and something worse. Charles Price was one of four people in Nephi afflicted with that frontier disease spread by contaminated food and drink. For several days he had been unable to oversee his sheep ranching business. High fever and intestinal distress disturbed his sleep. One night in late September 1895 he sat up in bed and cried, 'They've killed, they've killed my Louis!"

Louis Price, friendly idyear-old son of Charles and Martha, described as one of the town's best and quietest boys, had been very helpful during his father's illness. When told that Ike Cartwright, the herder in charge of the Price flock up Salt Creek Canyon, desperately needed supplies, Louis made plans to deliver them. On the morning of Friday, September 27, 1895, he packed a mule with necessities and headed up Salt Creek Canyon. He was to meet Cartwright in his camp at the head of Rocky Ridge Canyon, resupply him, and help him move the sheep.

On Saturday the ailing Charles Price felt sure that something was wrong. When Charles's father noted that Louis was late coming home, Charles replied, 'I have no Louis. He will never come home alive." Later that day Ike Cartwright reported that Louis had not arrived at camp and that his food supply had run out. Hungry and womed, Cartwright had set out to look for the boy.

Unsuccessful, he had come to town to find out what had happened. A search party was assembled, and on Sunday morning Cartwright found Louis's body in a cramped position 50 feet below the trail in a large area of burned grass and brush. Sixty yards away a mule with one pack on his back stood peacefully browsing in unburned underbrush. On the trail above sat a second neatly piled pack on top of which lay Louis's .44-caliber revolver with one empty chamber.

City Marshal Goldsbrough, acting coroner T. L. Foote, and a hastily assembled coroner's jury casually surveyed the situation and quickly arrived at a decision: A pack had come loose on the mule, and Louis had dismounted to tighten it. When he was on the underside of the mule cinching a smp, the mule rolled on him and sent the boy careening through the brush down the steep hillside.

As he rolled downhill a branch pierced his stomach. Seriously wounded, he started a fire to attract the attention of herders in the canyon. The fire burned out of control, trapping Louis and igniting his clothing. As he tried to crawl away he was badly burned, collapsed, and died. (more)

As Louis's body was being prepared for burial, a homfying discovery was made. The hole in his stomach had not been made by a branch but by a bullet. A doctor was immediately summoned, and he found that a .44-caliber ball had entered the boy's back where the suspenders crossed, shearing one of them, and exited just below and to the right of the navel. On Monday, September 30, the coroner's jury reconvened and found that Louis had been murdered and that the fire had probably been lit to destroy evidence. Further examination of the murder scene revealed that two and perhaps three people had been there before the authorities reached it.

The prime suspect was one Niels Jacobson, a squatter in Salt Creek Canyon who had recently been involved in a quarrel with the Price family. The tracks of his three-shoed horse were found near the murder scene and traced to his hut. Jacobson had visited the Price home soon after Louis's body had been returned to Nephi, and Charles Price had immediately ordered him to leave.

When Jacobson was arrested Monday night there was talk of a lynching, but his guilt was not apparent and the officers swore to protect him. On Tuesday, October 1, Jacobson appeared before the coroner's jury and established his innocence. On the day of the murder he and a man named Smith had worked together from morning until evening for the Okeys who had a ranch farther up Salt Creek Canyon. They had seen Louis at noon on the day of his death but had parted friends.

Louis's funeral was also held that Tuesday and was one of the largest that had been held in Nephi.

Poems to his memory were printed in the local paper. His family was prostrate with grief.

The authorities continued to search for the murderer. Some townspeople suspected a mysterious Mexican who had been seen around the sheep camp. Others thought it was an accident caused by the stray bullet of a hunter who was afraid to tell of the incident. Over the years some people in Nephi began to suspect that the murderer was Ike Cartwright, the herder who had found the body. He was such a violent man that even his animals grew to fear him. His wife also received her share of abuse. He once became violently angry with her because he was not satisfied with some pancakes she made. In a fit of rage he threw a bowl at her with such force that the wound required a doctor's attention. Ike was sentenced to a hundred days in the county jail. Twelve years later the long-suffering Mary Cartwright left her husband and moved in with her daughter in Payson. In the early morning of August 30, 1922, Ike entered his daughter's home through a back window and crept into the room where his wife, daughter, and grandchildren were sleeping. He hit his daughter over the head with the pistol, shot his wife in the head, and turned the gun on himself while his grandchildren watched. Ike and his estranged wife both died. In Ike's coat pocket was a note telling where he had hidden his money. The terse note ended with these words: 'I love you all too much."

If Ike Car~rightalso killed Louis Price, as some people suspected, he took that secret with him, and the murder remains to this day unsolved.

Sources: Salr Lake Tribune, September 30, October 1, and October 2, 1895; Salt Lake Herald, October 1, 1895; E d n g Dispatch [Provo] October 3, 1895; 'History of Martha Kendall Pricen by Geneva Price Tolley; and 'History of Isaac Cartwrightn by Stanley Cartwright Wilson.

THEHISTORY B w w 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.

960109 (RC)

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Would the New State of Utah Go Metric?

WHENTHE FORTY-FIFTH STAR TOOK lTS PLACE on the blue field of the nation's flag 100 years ago the most important fact for national political observers was that the new state would send a Republican delegation to Washington. To ordinary Utahns statehood meant many things, including the end of territorial status and the chance to make laws and regulations reflective of local conditions and desires. Most saw in statehood the possibility of great new things. One visionary group, the Utah Metric Society, hoped for nothing less than the institution of a 'common and a common-sense system" of measurement and the end of 'the semi-barbarous contrivances of the middle ages. " George Q. Coray, secretary of the Utah Metric Society, set forth the aims of the group in an eight-page pamphlet. The goal was to convince delegates to the 1895 Utah Constitutional Convention to adopt the metric system as the legal standard for the new state. Coray, a University of Utah professor, began his career in education in 1892 as the school's librarian, serving in that position until 1906. He was also the registrar during 1895-97 and while fulfilling these duties 'developed the Department of Economics and Sociology, teaching those subjects for the first time at the University." When Economics became a separate department in 1917, Coray retained leadership of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology until his retirement in 1926. He was known as a careful scholar and 'a strong personality.. .[of] unflinching courage.. .[who could] command the respect even of those who differed from him."

'The most important instrument in all business, public and private, is the system upon which the qualities of matter described as distance, volume, weight and value are defined," Coray wrote. On the threshold of statehood, Utah had a unique opportunity to establish the metric system as its standard and thereby initiate a great social reform. Coray outlined the history of measurement systems, noting that the United States had abandoned early on the cumbersome system of English winage for the decimal system and that leaders like Washington and Adams had campaigned for uniform weights and measures. He discussed the international convention in Paris that had concluded its work in 1875 with formal approval of the metric system. Great Britain and the United States opted to legalize use of the metric system without abandoning the old "barbarous" system. Colleges and universities in America were quick to adopt metrics in their scientific courses, but, Coray noted, 'the merchants, manufacturers and tradesmen.. .[chose to] follow the dictates of custom." Unwilling to assume the risk of adopting metric measurements individually, American businesses continued under the old system. They were unlikely to change until required by law to do so. The aim of the UMS was to require metric measurements in Utah commerce. (more)

Coray then highlighted some of the absurdities of the old system with its 'woeful lack of uniformity mong the states." A bushel of rye, for example, was expected to weigh 56 pounds avoirdupois in most states, but in California it weighed 54 pounds and in Louisiana 32 pounds.

Oats were even more variable. In Maryland a bushel of oats weighed in at 26 pounds, while the states of Pennsylvania, Maine, and New Hampshire required a bushel of oats to weigh 30 pounds and Montana opted for 35 and Nebraska 34.

Some of the leading public figures in Utah advocated the adoption of metric measurement.

Coray quoted some of their remarks. Heber J. Grant said he was 'emphatically in favor of the metric system for the State of Utah. To oppose it would be like opposing the substitution of stenography and typewriting for the ancient long hand." Officials of ZCMI and Auerbach's department stores likewise endorsed metrics despite the temporary inconvenience of converting to it. Businessman J. E. Dooly's reply was short and to the point: 'Put me down for anything that will rid us of our relic of barbarism. " Clearly, he was not a man to dole out his approval by the firkin, hogshead, or troy ounce. Judges, lawyers, and educators joined in urging Utah to go metric. The University of Utah faculty issued a resolution stating that 'the Constitution of the State of Utah should require that the metric system of weights and measures be taught in all the public schools of the State, and that the said system be made the legal system in a l l public business."

C. C. Goodwin, one of the men listed in Coray's pamphlet as an advocate of the metric system, presented the Utah Metric Society' s proposition to his fellow delegates at the Constitutional Convention, noting that it was "backed by some very accomplished scholars." The effort to establish the metric system had mixed success. The Committee on Manufactures and Commerce did not recommend imposing the system on business, but Article X, section 11, originally stated: 'The Metric System shall be taught in the public schools of the State." Decades later this article was repealed. It had seldom been heeded anyway Coray believed that the metric system could not be introduced piecemeal in the state's or the nation's commerce, and, indeed, outside of the science laboratory or the physics classroom, the metric system was not very visible in Utah during the first century of statehood. But world markets and the ascendancy of technology have gradually made even those most reluctant to abandon fett and inches, ounces and pounds, aware of the convenience of decimal measurement. Most food packaging, for example, now lists metric weight as well as avoirdupois. Gasoline pumps and cookbooks may be the last strongholds of the old system that Coray and others called 'barbarous."

See George Q. Coray, A Questionfor the Peopk: Shall the Metric System be

Made the Legal Standard of the State of Utah? (Salt Lake City, c. 1895); Oflcial Report of the Proceedings and Debares of the Convention to Adopt a Constitutionfor the State of Utah,2 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1898); Ralph V. Chamberlin, The University of Utah=A History of Its First Hundred Years, 1850-1950 (Salt Lake City: University of Utnb Press, 1960).

...

THEHISTORYBLAZER is produd 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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IZ'S OF L'TAH'S PAST FROAI T H E

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Joaquin Miller and the Danites

TODAY'S STUDEN HAS NEVER HEARD OF JOAQUIN WR. But early in this century almost every schoolchild in America could recite by heart lines from his poem 'Columbus" : The words leapt like a leaping sword: "Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!"

In the 1870s British critics compared Miller to Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe. Some saw in his lush rhymes the most vigorous narrative poetry America had yet produced.

Perhaps his diction now seems overdone, his characters shallow, his moralizing and sentimentality cloying. But it is hard not to admire how he charmed London society with his long flowing hair, sombrero, bearskin cape, and hip boots. And if not the western mythmaker, he must be reckoned one of the most influential.

American critics did not admire Miller's idealized image of the West. Not until he followed his six poetry books with a novel and subsequent play, Danites of the High Sierras, did they begin to notice him. Danites was performed extensively on both sides of the Atlantic. Miller had joined the ranks of many notable Victorian authors-including Mayne Reid and later Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle-who boosted their careers using the Mormon theme.

Most often they wrote about the Danites-a secret band that, for several months in 1838, tried to avenge terrorist acts against Mormons in three Missouri counties. In a twist of justice, Sarnpson Avard was arrested for Danite activities but avoided prosecution by implicating Mormon leaders who had little if anything to do with the Danites.

Given the brief truth it seems strange that stories of a Mormon secret band should have become one of the most durable myths of the West. In perpetuating this myth, Zane Grey in Riders of the Purple Sage and later writer Louis L'Amour only followed a tradition thoroughly entrenched by Joaquin Miller and others.

But Miller differed from most of the mythmakers in that he had authentic knowledge of the Mormons. In 1852 the 15-year-old Joaquin (then known by his birth name, Cincinnatus) and his family had traveled the Oregon Trail. Along the way he encountered real Mormon ferrymen as well as anti-Mormon tales of Danites.

In the 1860s he was befriended by Ina Coolbrith, a patron of the so-called San Francisco school of writers that included Bret Harte and Charles Wanen Stoddard. Ina (Josephina Smith) Coolbrith was a niece of Joseph Smith. While not raised as a Mormon, Ina kept in contact with her cousin, Joseph F. Smith, who became the Mormon church's president. Her natural interest in Mormonism was likely shared with Miller. (more)

Thus, Miller's awareness of the Danite myth was modified by some cognizance of historical fact. A passage in his Danite novel shows this ambivalence: 'The prophet of God.. .had been slain.

Unlike the Christians, [the Danites] proposed to slay in revenge. I fancy you might trace this on till you came to the awful tragedy of Mountain Meadows. Putting the two tragedies together, side by side, and passing them on to the impartial judgement of some pagan, I am not certain that he would not pronounce in favor of the Mormon." A harmless over-coloring of the facts. But in the 1880s, with Congress confiscating church properties and incarcerating members, Mormons did not relish any mention of Danites.

Yet as Americans they loved Joaquin Miller. And in 1889 Miller visited Salt Lake City and considerably upgraded his opinion of them. Afterward he wrote his impressions for the New York Independent. Upon publication of his Danite novel, he said, Congress had sent for him and "required him to say to a committee what he would do to suppress 'Mormonism.'" He had replied, "Don't give them bullets, give them books." Now that he had actually visited Utah he had more than just tolerant things to say: "Salt Lake City is building right along.. ."; 'It is the longhaired man and the short-haired woman who wants to lecture on 'Mormons and Mormonism'. ..they that don't know a single thing about the people and their work, who don't like them"; "Let these same people first plant a tree, a single tree among them all, where these people have planted thousands and tens of thousands in the desert, and then the land may listen to them with a little patience. " The Mormons quickly forgave the old bard. The Deseret News commented: "The kindly heart of the poet leaps out here and there with pleasing prominence, and perhaps the genial old gentleman feels a little twinge of remorse.. .at having done injustice to the Mormon people in his play of the 'Danites,' he being the author of that unjustifiably dramatic production."

See Benjamin S. Lawson, Joaquin M i l k (Boise: Boise State University Press, 1980); "A Poet's Impressions," Deseret Evening News, December 19, 1889.

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 Utah Lake Monster

DURING THE EARLY DAYS IN UTAHVALLEY the muffled Call of 'Walk-la-100-100" must have sent a chill through any Shinob-fearing Ute warrior near Utah Lake or Provo River, and it likely haunted the dreams of many sleeping Indian children. It was the call of the Water Babies or Pawapicts that they believed inhabited these waters. Various Indian tales explain how these beings came into existence. One relates how they were the result of a wrestling match between a stout man named Pahahpooch and Wildcat. The man had never lost a match when he challenged Wildcat, but the cat threw him into the middle of a body of water and said, 'You will stay in the water all the time now and people will call you Water Indian." Lonely, Water Indian began to lure others into the water to keep him company, and they in turn went in search of others. These tales may have been an attempt to explain what happened to Indian people who drowned.

The Water Indians or Water Babies were variously described as being the size of man's hand, as large as a three- or four-year-old child, or the size and form of an alluring woman. Most accounts agree that the Water Beings had long black hair and cried like babies. Sometimes they were seen lying on rocks in the Provo River drying their long hair. Indians claimed that the water would mysteriously begin to rise, getting closer to an intruder, and if he did not rapidly leave the water would envelop him and take him down.

When the first white settlers arrived the Native Americans told them of the Water Babies and of their reluctance to swim in Utah Lake. They claimed that near Pelican Point an Indian had been swallowed whole by what must have been a Water Baby. Many of the newcomers came from England and Denmark and were familiar with stories of dragons and kraken, or sea monsters. They may not have believed in Water Babies who swallowed people or carried them off, but some apparently found it less difficult to believe in the equally chilling and dramatic water monsters.

An August 1868 report that a monster had been sighted in Bear Lake caused the people of Utah Valley to reflect upon some strange things seen in Utah Lake. Isaac Fox reported that while hunting near the north end of the lake in 1864 he had heard a noise and gone into the water to investigate. To his surprise he saw a 25- or 30-foot-long snakelike animal with dark, piercing eyes and a head like a greyhound's. The animal followed him toward shore until it was within 35 feet of overtaking him. It then turned, joined another of its breed, and swam straight across the lake faster than a man could run. Canute Peterson's son saw a similar creature in the same area the next year.

In 1866 a white man and an Indian cutting hay on the north shore of the lake heard splashing, went into the rushes to look, and were startled to see a deep yellow animal with black spots. It too had a head like a greyhound's and wicked looking black eyes. Its forked red tongue (more)

continually darted in an out. The two man ran toward shore.

Although many in Utah Valley believed these stories, there were skeptics. Peter Madsen, a fisherman and one such unbeliever, tried to calm the people by explaining that something looking like a monster may have been what he called a "hell diverw-probably an American coot. It had short wings with very few feathers and did not fly well. When startled it would run across the top of the water flapping its wings and leaving a wake behind it. This could give the appearance of a serpent dashing along. He added that in his 14 years on Utah Lake he had never seen the monster.

Stories of monster sightings remained in circulation, but interest waned until 1870 when some commercial fishermen from Springville brought talk of the creature back into everyday conversation. They had found the upper portion of the skull of a large animal. The teeth were missing, but a five-inch section of tusk protruded from the rear section of the jaw. This strange find was judged by some to be a remnant of the Utah Lake Monster. The next spring Goshen's LDS bishop, William Price, was traveling home from Salt Lake via a road on the west side of Utah Lake when he and two other men reportedly saw the monster. They claimed that its snakelike Wfootlong body stood several feet out of the water and resembled a section of stove pipe.

By 1880 people were 'apt to discredit and laugh at the stories concerning the monster," but its heyday was not quite over. The most detailed report was soon to be made. In June 1880 two boys, Willie Roberts and George Scott, were a fair distance out in the lake when they noticed something that looked like a dog or a beaver swimming toward them. They did not pay much attention until they heard a lionlike roar. The strange animal occasionally raised itself out of the water and showed its four legs which were about as long as a man's arm. The head appeared to be two or three feet long and the mouth, which looked like an alligator's, about 18 inches wide. The frightened boys swam to shore as quickly as they could, the strange creature following them and making "savage gestures." The two friends hurried home to tell their parents. Their terror-stricken manner convinced their parents that the boys had seen a monster or something equally frightful.

Two weeks later the letter of a disbeliever, D. T. LeBaron, was printed in a Salt Lake newspaper. He stated that he had been on the lake hundreds of times in 25 years and had never seen a monster. He said that the reflections in the water sometimes magnified objects, making it possible for a floating rush the diameter of a man's finger to look from a distance like a mammoth log. No articles appeared in the paper to debunk his statement. Stories of a monster seem not to have surfaced in the press again until 1921 when an American Fork fisherman reported seeing a strange sea animal near Goshen. He tried unsuccessfully to catch it for a special exhibition on July 4.

Robert Walker wrote to the American Fork paper stating that the creature was nothing more than a black otter. Some had been seen near the sugar factory pond.

For some 70 years now nothing further has been reported on the monster. However, future water skiers may want to keep a sharp watch for the missing kraken.

Sources: Norma Denver et al., Stories of Our Ancestors (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1974); Deseret Evening News, August 27, September 2, October 30, 1868, September 9, 1870, May 3 1, 1871, June 25, 1880; Row Enquirer, June 9, 1880; American Fork Citizen, July 2, 16, 1921.

THE HISTORYBLAZER 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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Forty-Niners in Salt Lake Valley

h THE WINTER OF 1848 WORD SPREAD through the eastern States that gold had been discovered in California's Sierra Nevada. The following spring over 25,000 fortune hunters headed west. This number increased the next summer to 50,000. In 1851 it fell to 5,000 when more realistic reports stated that 19 out of 20 miners were lucky to cover expenses much less strike it rich.

As the forty-niners crossed the Rockies, one-third of them, after reaching Fort Bridger in southwestern Wyoming, detoured from the main trail through southern Idaho and across northern Nevada. Instead, they took the Mormon Trail southwest to Great Salt Lake City. Those who chose this route usually had a compelling reason-illness, dwindling supplies, exhausted livestock--and looked upon the Mormon capital as an oasis.

Meanwhile, the city had troubles of its own. It was only two years old, and its 6,000-plus residents had suffered two disastrous harvests in a row because of drought, frost, and cricket infestation. With no buffer between themselves and starvation, they needed all the wheat they wuld grow for their own families and immigrant converts expected that fall from Europe. As a result, Mormon leaders were not eager for a horde of gold-seekers to invade their kingdom. And why should they? Most losses that the forty-niners suffered on the trail came not through poverty and persecution but greed and poor planning.

Thus what happened between Mormons and goldrushers during the summers of 1849 and 1850 is a credit to both groups. Far from being turned away, 'the emigrants," as the Mormons called them, and their animals were welcomed, fed, housed, nursed if they had cholera or mountain fever, preached to, and-some of them-converted. And most of the journals that eventually found their way into historical archives reveal that, for their part, the goldrushers appreciated this hospitality and revised their previous prejudices against the sect.

What led to this happy obfuscation of the maxim, 'What can go wrong, will go wrong"?

Probably several factors.

First, many forty-niners had already encountered Mormons at ferry and trading stations on the Platte and Green rivers and had found them to be fair and helpful. No doubt these were the emigrants who tended to discount rumors of Mormon hostility in selecting the Salt Lake City route.

Second, both groups needed each other. The emigrants had to recruit or trade their animals for fresh mules and oxen. Some replaced heavy wagons and goods with lighter pack outfits. A fair number of travelers showed early symptoms of scurvy and hungered for greens and other (more)

produce-items the crickets had left alone.

Mormons needed iron to repair their own wagons and farm implements and were desperate for some consumer goods, especially fabric, coffee, and tea. As Utahn Joseph Hovey wrote, 'Truly do I rejoice in my God for his goodness for just as we are all most out of bread they [emigrants] have come and oblige to sell there flower.. .and a little of all their provisions an Clothing it is in the right time for we as a people are very destitytute.. " Third, the impromptu trading between local and goldrusher proved amicable, further defusing mistrust between the two groups. Although accounts of Mormons gouging miners and soldiers persist even today, the journals indicate that an ovenvhelming majority of forty-niners were satisfied with their treatment by the Mormons.

Even most winter Mormons" recorded positive impressions of their experience. These were goldrushers who did not go on to California the season they arrived but wintered in Salt Lake. They numbered several hundred in 1849, a thousand in 1850. However, three of the most negative accounts, which were later published and helped to solidify national opinion against Mormonism, originated from this group. It seems the longer an outsider remained in Mormon country, the greater his risk of running afoul of the unfamiliar legal system, sometimes inflammatory rhetoric, and strange family customs. Yet most were like house guests overstaying their welcome-eventually they left to good feeling on both sides.

What were the long-term fruits of this encounter between cultures? It established future travel patterns to the Pacific; when the transcontinental railroad was laid out, engineers chose the Salt Lake route. It fixed national attention on the Mormon kingdom, for good or bad. And it made Salt Lake City a base for later mercantile and exploration efforts.

..

See Brigham D. Madsen, Gold Rush Sojourners in Great Salt Lake City, 1849 and 1850 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983).

THEHISTORY BLAZERis produced by the Utah State Historical Society and h d e d in part by a grant fiom the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information abut the Historical Society telephone 533-3500.

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General Booth Found Salt Lakers Restless

GENERAL WILLIAMBOOTH, FOUNDER OF THE SALVATION ARMY, was not one to mince words. When he visited Salt Lake City in December 1894 he rebuked the large audience gathered in the Tabernacle to hear his solutions for the social ills of the time. It was, he said, 'the most restless audience I have ever spoken before in my whole experience." And his experience was considerable. The venerable leader was an indefatigable traveler, organizer, and speaker who had seen his religious ministry spread from its roots in the slums of England to the European continent, the United States, and India by the time of his appearance in Utah.

Booth arrived on the Denver & Rio Grande early in the afternoon of December 13, 1894.

Following an informal reception at the depot, he and his staff proceeded to the First Methodist Church where the General was scheduled to meet clergy from all denominations in the city and local officials. Posters announcing Booth's speech at 7:30 P.M. in the Tabernacle had been placed around town by Staff Captain James Thomas of Stockton, California, whose district included Utah.

Thomas had been in the city for several days arranging for Booth's visit.

Born in Nottingham, England, on April 10, 1829, Booth grew up in impoverished circumstances. At age 15 he experienced a religious conversion that led him to become a revivalist preacher. His ministry quickly focused on society's outcasts and his unshakable conviction that even the fallen woman and the drunkard might be redeemed if society cared enough to offer them a helping hand. His 1890 publication, Zn Darkest England and the Way Out (the subject of his Salt Lake City address), proposed a 10-point remedy for poverty and vice that included work colonies, rescue homes, a poor man's bank, and legal aid. Despite ridicule and opposition, Booth gradually won recognition for his genius in creating programs to help the suffering and needy. He impressed King Edward VII who insisted that Booth be officially invited to his coronation ceremony in 1902.

Eventually, local officials in England and the United States began to welcome the Salvation Army in their cities because Booth's organization seemed willing to tackle some of the most difficult social problems of the day.

Officials in Utah were no less eager to welcome Booth on his first visit to the western U. S. and to hear his plan for addressing society's ills. The Salvation Army was already organized in Salt Lake City, and an 1892-93directory lists a Salvation Army Barracks at 133 West First South.

By 1900 the city would boast a Workingmen's Hotel sponsored by the Salvation Army. Plans were afoot to extend the Army's work beyond Salt Lake City in response to 'demands" received from several Utah towns. (more)

Thousands came to the Tabernacle to hear Booth talk about his work in the slums. On the podium with the 65-year-old leader were the Rev. T. C. Iliff of the Methodist church, Mayor Robert N. Baskin, and several aides, including Captain Ed Taylor, a 'singing specialist. " The General painted a vivid picture of life in the slums, of ''fallen girls" and drunkards, asserting that to help society's outcasts one must not focus at first on their sins. The Salvation Army was dedicated to helping individuals regardless of their circumstances.

Booth's stay in the city was short. He left for Oakland on the midnight train. He made a distinct impression on his audience in the Tabernacle, and his brief visit in Utah made an impression on him as well. He apparently forgot the "restless" behavior he had criticized. When questioned later about his American tour, Booth commented on the warm welcome he had received everywhere, adding: "And nowhere was I received with greater respect than in Salt Lake City by the Mormons." He found them no different from most other people except in their 'secular prosperity. " England, he said, 'wuld take a lesson from the Mormons in the matter of colonization. Get hold of the men who have some fitness for the business, and give them seed to sow and implements with which to cultivate the land, as well as a horse; and let them pay you back again what you have expended on them. That is the principle of the Mormons."

Sources: Salt Lake Tribune, December 13, 14, 1894; Harold Begbie, Zhe Life of General William Booth, the Founder of the Salvation Anny, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1920).

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 History of a Pioneer Utah Cottage SIGHTSEERS WONDER ABOUT THE HISTORIES OF OLD BRICK and adobe houses scattered across rural Utah. Six blocks west of Main Street in Fountain Green sits a small stucco cottage on 1.05 acres. Local lore says that it was built for a widow on the order of Brigham Young. Whether or not this is true, the house probably dates to 1876.

The fist owner was 25-year-old Thomas Wakefield from llinois who in 1869 married 18year-old Maria Johnson, daughter of Fountain Green's founder. They probably dwelt in a log cabin while accumulating funds for a new house. The town's burgeoning population included many Danish immigrants, several of whom probably did the construction work-hence the cottage's Danish vernacular architecture.

For most of its life the house consisted of only a living room, kitchen, and attic bedroom-less than 600 square feet, not counting the stone-walled cellar beneath the kitchen. But this was sufficient for a small pioneer family. The adobe came from a local brickyard. With walls one foot thick, the house stayed cool in summer and above freezing in winter, even before stoking the cookstove. Windows were oriented to the valley's prevailing winds so that a pleasant breeze kept the attic livable on hot August days.

Five Wakefeld children were born here. They probably helped build the wood barn-much larger than the house itself-which stood for many years in the middle of the lot, surrounded by sheds, coops, and barnyard.

In about 1881 the Wakefields were 'called" with other local Mormon couples to colonize the next valley east. Their last four children were born in Huntington, Emery County, where the family has remained ever since.

It is not known who used the house from 1881 to 1891. But in 1892 Per and Elling Aageson arrived in Fountain Green by invitation of Hans Olson, the Mormon missionary who had baptized them in Langare, Denmark. Their older son had immigrated to Utah several years earlier, herding sheep to pay passage for his parents and two siblings.

Per and his sons hauled a log cabin from the edge of town to a corner of the same block as the little adobe cottage. The Aagesons found Utah rather disappointing, though. It was hard to make a living, local boys seemed rough mannered, and son Carl found the school very poor. They also felt that new immigrants were treated as second-class citizens. But Elling remained a staunch Momon through her final illness of 1896, and Carl would later oversee many improvements to the town during his two terms as mayor. (more)

Tiny and very pretty, daughter Sophie was courted by another Scandinavian immigrant, Edward Gunderson. In the same year her mother died, they were married. Soon Sophie and Edward bought the adobe house and its acre. Five children were born. The family had barely begun to prosper when Edward and two infants died, perhaps in one of the typhoid epidemics spread by the town's wooden-trough culinary water system. Sophie lived as a widow for two decades before 'removing" with two grown children to Salt Lake County. Another son stayed five more years and then followed them.

Perhaps Elmer L. Holman and his wife Zelda Jacobson rented the house before buying it in 1930. A prime wool supplier, Fountain Green had become 'the richest little city in the West." But it was the depression, and Elmer was merely a 35-year-old sheepherder who one year worked all season only to be told that there was no money to pay him. While wealthy residents fitted their spacious brick homes with indoor plumbing and telephones, the adobe cottage went without a bathroom and hot water. However, it was electrified and the exterior s t u d to protect the adobe.

Six Holman children were raised in this house and that of their grandmother a block away.

They were all grown when, in 1956, Zelda died suddenly from a brain tumor. Elmer lived until 1963. The house was then sold to an out-of-towner who had married a Fountain Green girl.

During the 1960s and 70s these owners used the cottage as a hunting cabin during the pheasant, deer, and elk seasons. They kept the house in vintage condition. But after their younger son was killed in Vietnam, they used it less and less, finally selling it in 1991. The current owners, eager to preserve even a simple vestige of pioneer architecture, added a wing but have othenvise left the old house as is.

Sources: Abstract of Townsites, Sanpete County, Utah State Archives; Record of Members, Fountain Green Ward, 1860-1908, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, microfilm; Fountain Green Cemetery records; interviews with longtime Fountain Green residents.

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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