Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 32, Number 1, 1964 by Utah Historical Society

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY NUMBER 1

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BOARD OF TRUSTEES j . GRANT IVERSON, Salt Lake City, 1967 President DELLO G. DAYTON, O g d e n , 1965

RICHARD E. GILLIES, Cedar City, 1967

JACK GOODMAN, Salt Lake City, 1965 MRS. A.C. J E N S E N , Sandy, 1967

Vice-President J O E L E. R I C K S , Logan, 1965

EVERETT L. COOLEY, Salt Lake City Secretary

L. GLEN SNARR, Salt Lake City, 1967 LAMONT F. TORONTO, Secretary of State

j . STERLING ANDERSON, Grantsville, 1967

LELAND H . CREER, Salt Lake City, 1965

Ex officio S. LYMAN TYLER, PrOVO, 1 9 6 5

ADMINISTRATION EVERETT L. COOLEY, Director

T. H . JACOBSEN, State Archivist, Archives F. T. J O H N S O N , Records Manager, Archives R. w . INSCORE, Registrar, Military Records T h e U t a h State Historical Society is an organization devoted to the collection, preservation, and publication of U t a h and related history. It was organized by publicspirited Utahns in 1897 for this purpose. In fulfillment of its objectives, the Society publishes the Utah Historical Quarterly, which is distributed to its members with payment of a $5.00 annual membership fee. T h e Society also maintains a specialized research library of books, pamphlets, photographs, periodicals, microfilms, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts. Many of these items have come to the library as gifts. Donations are encouraged, for only through such means can the U t a h State Historical Society live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

J O H N JAMES, J R . , Librarian MARGERY W . WARD, Associate Editor IRIS SCOTT, Business Manager T h e primary purpose of the Quarterly is t h e p u b l i c a t i o n of m a n u s c r i p t s , p h o t o graphs, and documents which relate or give a new interpretation to Utah's unique story. Contributions of writers are solicited for the consideration of the editor. However, the editor assumes no responsibility for the return of manuscripts unaccompanied by return postage. Manuscripts and material for publications should be sent to the editor. The U t a h State Historical Society does not assume responsibility for statements of fact or opinions expressed by contributors. T h e Utah Historical Quarterly is entered as second-class postage, paid at Salt Lake City, U t a h . Copyright 1964, U t a h State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple Street, Salt Lake City, U t a h 84102.

WINTER, 1964

VOLUME 32

NUMBER 1

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY UTAH AFTER

STATEHOOD

BY GEORGE D. CLYDE

A S T A T E IS B O R N BY RICHARD D. POLL

SENTINELS ON THE DESERT: T H E D U G W A Y P R O V I N G G R O U N D (1942-1963) D E S E R E T C H E M I C A L D E P O T (1942-1955) BY LEONARD J. ARRINGTON AND THOMAS G. ALEXANDER T H E T A F T V I C T O R Y I N U T A H IN 1912 BYDON D. WALKER

AND

PILGRIMAGE ON WHEELS BY WILLIAM E. OLIVER

R E V I E W S AND P U B L I C A T I O N S

NEWS AND C O M M E N T S

.87

The Romanesque "Joint" Salt Lake City and County Building, erected in 1894, provided offices for state government Until 1915. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY C. R. SAVAGE

EDITOR ASSOCIATE E D I T O R ART EDITOR

Everett L. Cooley Margery W. Ward .... R o y j . Qlsen

B E R T H R O N G , D O N A L D J., The Cheyennes,

Southern

BY ROBERT G. ATHEARN

G R E E V E R , W I L L I A M S., The Bonanza West: The Story of the Western Mining Rushes, 1848-1900, BY ROBERT V. HINE

BOOKS REVIEWED

D R U R Y , C L I F F O R D M E R R I L L , ED., First White Women Over the Rockies: Diaries, Letters, and Biographical Sketches of the Six Women of the Oregon Mission who made the Overland Journey in 1836 and 1838, BY ANN W. HAFEN

A S H B A U G H , D O N , Nevada's Turbulent Yesterday . . . a Study in Ghost Towns, BY MARION WELLIVER

P E R C E V A L , D O N , A Navajo Sketch

Book,

BY GAELL LINDSTROM

_ 83

M O R G A N , D A L E L., AND H A M M O N D , G E O R G E P., EDS., A Guide to the Manuscript Collections of the Bancroft Library, BY S. LYMAN TYLER

H A N C E , I R M A W A T S O N , AND W A R R , I R E N E , Johnston, Connor and the Mormons: An Outline of Military History in Northern Utah,

BY VIRGIL V. PETERSON

Printed by Alphabet Printing & Typesetting Co., Salt Lake City

UTAH AFTER STATEHOOD B Y GEORGE D. C L Y D E

Sixty-eight years ago today, the first elected officials of the brand new State of U t a h took the oath of office in historic ceremonies in Salt Lake City. Very shortly our distinguished historian and speaker of the day, Professor Richard D. Poll, will tell us something about the U t a h of 1896 and the early days of statehood. For a very few moments, let us take a close look at the U t a h of 1964, as a sort of reverse stage-setting for our journey into the past. At the very beginning let me make it clear that in reviewing the present and comparing it with the past, I a m inviting you to consider the giant strides of progress that have come with time and h u m a n effort. U t a h has h a d 10 governors, some of them of one political party, some of the other. Each administration has had its own particular aims and policies. We are looking today at the sum total of what has occurred over these years and in the course of these many administrations, without any thought of trying to tie the record of progress to a consideration of political philosophy â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which, of course, is a separate and fascinating study in itself but has no place in this observance. O n today's m a p U t a h appears to occupy precisely the same place it did 68 years ago when we first achieved statehood. But the m a p is deceiving. In the purely academic sense of measurement in statute miles, we do occupy the same place which was ours at the close of the nineteenth century. But in the very real sense of daily living, it is something else entirely. Measured by the time of travel, or the time it takes to ship the world's goods from place to place, Utah's geographical position is nothing like what it was 68 years ago. With modern jet air travel one can leave Salt Lake City and in less than 12 hours be in London. Such a trip would have required at least as many days in 1896, but I believe a more striking comparison may be found Governor Clyde of the State of U t a h presented the following remarks at the annual Statehood Day observance, January 6, 1964.

DESERET EVENING NEWS. TRUTH

SATtKDAY. .lAM'AUV

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IMMi. SALT

LAKE CITY,

UTHH K

I'TAIl. OFFICIAL

ANNOUNCEMENT.

U o n n o r Writ Tilrgrapbi KIWI or Mgulpg Ibi Preclainallnn. Aottog Uovtrnor Richard* received lb* following congratulatory print* ulipateb from Governor Well at 8:13: "Frtildiot ilgned proclamation »t • brio mlnnta* put 10 o'clock. Tbroo cheer* for tb* new But*."

Boom lagof Gnn« From CapHel Hill— Blonlir ot YTblillei aid llirni aid Klo-Jog or Belli.

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AMERICAf Mill.

Official Message That Arouses Joyous Enthusiasm in the Hearts of the People. Washington, Jan. 4, 1896.—The President at 10 o'clock this morning signed the Proclamation admitting Utah to Statehood. The Proclamation is a s follows: By the President of the United States of America: A

X»ROCXyA3wi:A.'riOK::

Whereas, the Congress of the United States passed an act which was approved on the sixteenth day of July, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, entitled, "An Act to enable the people of Utah to form a Constitution and State government, and to be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States," which act provided for the election of delegates to a Constitutional Convention, to meet at the

tba H T I I .

LEGISLATURE BROWN'S SHOTGUN SIGNAL.

The Proclamation Issued by President Cleveland.

rmte Court, aollo triinliitlon reial court room aad •lata Hammond p a* provided far by Tba raiull wa* oorad tb* tbr*o tbereby raaJa ol 8upr< ma Court. ,' tba Ave year lero

At 9.1S Ibli morning tb* ninal early morolni airenlty of Kail Templeureal wa* decidedly disturbed awing to lb* ficl that Superintendent B n w n ot lb* Wwlern Uulon Telegraph oompany wa* obeervrd to ruib frantically out of tb* one* armed wltb t o old reliable •botguo, tb* oont.nU of wbloh bilabed forlb ID two raaouodlog r*porli. A • mall boy in tb* D*ar vicinity dived for ID ad]ao*Dt doorway, bit Juvenile brain probably having graip*d tb* idea that a hoKlnpor bank reebary wa* la prrgraaeloa. After the excitement bad lubitded •ounwbat It divniil on tb* rapidly acoumulallng crowd tbat lb* cbl*f Maglurate lu Waiblaglon had ilgned Hi* t*lalebood Proclamation, who •b*w*d their *ppr*oUtlon of lb* fact by giving T*nt to a, cb**r. Tb* o*w* •prcad tik* wildfire and on all ildei tnercbanl* pruceouad to decorate their • lore* and building* wltb national am* blame, bunting and Old Ulory. Mtiara. Uaorg* M. Boolt and Cunniaglen * Co. erected iom* tamporary but afleo ilT* it*am wblatleaenlald* melr rupeelive place* of buiinea*. The t u n and •tnpea war* lining acroai from lb* •ait and w*il towenof the Temple. Toward* noon dioorallon* became apparent upon nearly *v*ry iter* la lb* oily. Among*! tb* D M I imbitleui rank* tb* buutlng dleplay of tba Z. C. M. 1., Hbo* Factory, F. Auerbacu it Bro., Jonea'i bank anil many othare. At ll:S0lb* Battery of tbe >'. Q. U. took it* petition on Capitol bill and proceeded to Ore a aaluta of twenty-ooe guoi accompanied by tb* ringing of belli, blowing el *l*am whlitlu, Including naif a OCIIO b*mbi on lb* K I W I corner which tba junior member* vf the wlabllabui*Dt"lel cO'' wltb ihe raeuit Ibal the coneoaalen wa* f«U (or a long dlitano* about. BUI Blngley wltb nil ehotgun brtg*d* made tblagi lively opaoelle Browning Bra*,'* etare wltb their repeated volley*. Tbla bllarUn* pannemoolum rallied lapreia*, not emitlog lb* email bay aad bia Un born, ler the if ace of a couple of boun er mora.

TBE NEWS QUICKLY SfREAU, Aod Wft Hillt* Vllk Darrrrtal Exproeiloa* af-l'alrlaUc Delight, Tba w*Ioom* tiding* tbat tba PrattOeoUiI praolamatlaa had reeaJved the official ciguatera of tba nalleo'a Cbl*l Xxeoullv* epraad throughout lb*

fflll

B* Callid llMiioa by I

Governor Willi aonfronted by tbi will b* aatombted Inangural procet apeelal aroolamn Btale Letlalalun aenlon at 2 p. m. Iawmakir*,"iiid afteroooi, "will c The eocaalon fo Legislature tojei li on aocounl of part ot the Conil to ox a lime for I

Demonilri 1 feeelal te Ue KIWI IAHJA.H, Utah,

rlogiug, wbntla* prlvita build In fi and a g*n*ral UK toulgbl. In bonor ,

PoIIllei Tb* Kipubllci Stat* LeiUlatur* aod county bulll cauotu tor tba pu pregram to be ear isitlon being if ciala will molt ' quartan In toa fl e'olook tba avtnl Order if F*l low log Is It Monday a- acne attarnuon, lbbu| ebaog** in cat* nouaaaary: 1. Platoon af pa 2. Marahal aad i S. Mlzteeoih Uo band. 4. Geo. 1'enroae 5. MlxieenUi Un 0, Pederaea'e bi 7. Staff of Uie C *. Brigade corol ». Digital Carp; 10. Viral in (anil by Col. Hiory Pa, It. Carriage* Mat* aud T.rriloi i IM7, Ulab Comial I 1). A. aad M. .Socl CepL Nay ler, a* a IS. lietd'a baod IS. Uraod Arm; 14. Indian war ' mlllli*. la. Veuran Bra Id. Detachment ' meat. 17. Mnnialpalal 1*. Bead. It. Kalfbleefl 50. Maaoaaaad 51. A. O. 0. W.

UTAH AFTER STATEHOOD

in the distance which could have been covered in 12 hours when Utah was a new state. Twelve hours fast travel by rail would have taken the traveler, roughly, to the Utah-Nevada border on the way to Los Angeles. But if our traveler were setting out for Vernal or for Moab, for instance, points not on the railroad, 12 hours travel by horse-drawn vehicle would take him something like 50 or 60 miles depending on the condition of the roads. So, stated in other but very real terms, the Salt Lake City of 1896 was as far from Heber City as we are today from London. Vernal was much farther off than Tokyo today, and in the time it would have taken one to go to Kanab, today's traveler could circumnavigate the globe, with stops in various world capitals. At the turn of the century, Utah was already widely known as a mining state. In fact, we ranked among the first five states of the nation in the production of silver, of gold, of lead and zinc — our emergence as a major copper producer did not come until a few years after statehood. A few people realized that beneath the soils of our state lay a vast array of other minerals, but no one would have ventured to predict that in a little more than half a century the value of "other minerals" — others, that is, than the gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc that formed the basis of our early mining output — would be almost 10 times that of the total mineral output of any one of those "boom" years of Utah mining. We knew in those days of the existence of uranium — at least a few of our geologists knew and marked its presence on maps — but we did not know what to do with it. The most wild-eyed dreamer would never have suggested what uranium was going to mean to Utah's economy just 50 years later, and especially what it was going to mean to the course of world history. We had high hopes of petroleum development in those days, but these hopes were to rise and fall into virtually complete abandonment before they would be revived and brought to spectacular reality in another age of scientific progress. Utah had pioneered the modern development of irrigation on this continent and had almost 50 years of proud and productive experience to look back on in 1896. But the great program of water development that we know today was still around the corner. The Reclamation Act of 1902 set in motion the program that today is providing the complex engineering wonders of Flaming Gorge and Glen Canyon dams and the still-to-come fabulous development of central Utah and the rest of the Upper Colorado River development that will change the face of our land for generations to come.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Infant Utah was proud of its skilled craftsmen and of its home industries, but our role as a manufacturing state appeared severely limited by our remoteness â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the difficulties of travel again â&#x20AC;&#x201D; from major markets. Today, we rejoice in the soundly based and steadily growing prosperity of a manufacturing complex that extends from basic heavy industry such as steel production to any number of small specialty items, and covers most of the range in between. Furthermore, the developments in travel and the westward shift of population and market centers have brought us to the threshold of tremendously exciting prospects as a major distribution center for manufactured goods for the entire western half of the nation. A far cry indeed from the days when the development of our abundant natural resources was effectively stifled by our unfavorable position in the transportation network! Utah has grown in numbers over the years and particularly in recent years when so many new favorable factors have come into play. Today we are crowding the one million mark, considerably more than triple our population at statehood. This in itself is a sign of prosperity and progress, but more important than mere numbers is the quality of our people today. Have we upheld the high traditions and preserved the heritage which came to us from those great heroes and heroines who conquered the desert to provide the beautiful homesites which we enjoy today and who established the state whose name we so proudly carry? I think we have. I am proud, as I am sure you are, that Utahns today are known far and wide for some of the rugged pioneer virtues that appear to be becoming obsolete in many places in the world. Utahns generally still believe in giving an honest day's work for a day's pay, and this trait is one of the most powerful attractions we can offer to new industry looking for a place in which to locate. We have preserved the deep interest in education which was a hallmark of our pioneer ancestors, and today Utah leads the entire nation in the percentage of population who graduate from high school, in the percentage of population enrolled in post-high school institutions, and in the mean number of school years completed by all of our adult population. We also lead the nation in the percentage of our total income devoted to education, and we are even now engaged in a special study to determine just how far we may safely go in educational support in relation to our over-all economy.

UTAH AFTER STATEHOOD

In a world where spiritual values are tending to become more and more neglected, a world in which our cherished concepts of freedom and the dignity of man are daily threatened by the adherents of godless ideologies in sharp conflict with our own, Utahns of all faiths stand out as people proud of their spiritual heritage. We revere the founders of our nation and the founders of our state for their high moral standards and for their religious devotion as well as for their rugged determination and unflagging industry. We look about us today at a world which is pleasantly inviting, but at the same time frightening in its complexity and in its implications. Travel has been made incredibly fast and comfortable by comparison with any previous standards, but scarcely a day passes that we do not read of some appalling accident that snuffs out human life, sometimes scores or even hundreds at a time. We have unlocked the secret of the atom and released forces almost beyond comprehension; forces that may soon, if wisely used, provide the energy needed to eliminate poverty and want and take men to the moon and to other planets. But these same forces have been put into weapons which, if unwisely used, could literally destroy life on this earth. We enjoy the highest standard of living which man has ever known, but we face the deadly threat of over-emphasized materialism which could destroy us as surely as could the most violent forces of nature or of man's scientific devising. It is most fitting that we should, as we are doing today, look back in our history and pay homage to those who went before us and to whom we owe so much. It is most necessary that we look about us at reality and look ahead to what uncharted paths we soon must travel. Governor George D. Clyde's interest in preserving the history of the State of Utah is shown here when he (center) inspected the records section, Hill Air Force Base, Ogden. UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Let us now re-dedicate ourselves to the simple virtues, to the abiding faith, and to the unflagging determination and unceasing industry of our state's founders and carry these principles forward in today's complex world with the determination that we, with the help of Almighty God, may preserve and enhance the priceless heritage we have received. Let us devoutly hope that those who may look back on us at some future date, as we are looking back today on the founders of our state, may have no cause to be other than proud of our generation and the contribution we have made to the ever growing heritage of this state and this nation.

THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY

Received at Salt Lake, Utah

11:55 a.m. Jan 6-96

Dated Jefferson Iowa 6th To Heber M. Wells, Governor of Utah. As we have been liberated so may we help to liberate the world. Frank J. Cannon

A State is Born BY R I C H A R D D. P O L L

It was January 4, 1896. In Cuba a revolution against Spain was being suppressed with ruthless brutality. In South Africa the Boers had just smashed the Jameson raid. In the Near East the Turks were massacring Armenians by the tens of thousands. In London, Washington, and Venezuela the air was full of Secretary of State Richard Olney's assertion that "the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is l a w . . . . " In Victoria, Colorado, nine miners were entombed. In Gillette, Wyoming, an alleged cattle rustler was shot by a sheriff. In Eureka, Utah, a claim jumper was reported, and at the Colorado state line 11 tons of illegally slaughtered Utah venison were impounded. Before the Salt Lake City courts was a lurid adultery case, involving a prominent businessman, an attractive secretary, and a janitor with a private eye. But the headline story in Utah's capital was this: At 9 : 1 3 this morning the usual early m o r n i n g serenity of East T e m p l e street was decidedly disturbed owing to the fact t h a t Superintendent Brown of the Western U n i o n Telegraph company was observed to rush frantically out of the office armed with an old reliable shotgun, the contents of which belched forth in two resounding reports. A small boy in the near vicinity dived for an adjacent doorway, his juvenile brain probably having grasped the idea that a holdup or bank robbery was in progress. After the excitement h a d subsided somewhat it d a w n e d on the rapidly accumulating crowd that the Chief Magistrate in Washington h a d signed the Statehood Proclamation, who showed their appreciation of the fact by giving vent to a cheer. T h e news spread like wild-fire a n d on all sides merchants proceeded to decorate their stores a n d buildings with national emblems, bunting and Old Glory. Messrs. George M . Scott and C u n n i n g h a m Dr. Poll, professor of history and political science, Brigham Young University, delivered the annual Statehood Day address, based on this article, J a n u a r y 6, 1964, at the State Capitol. Primary sources for the day-to-day events described in this article are the files of the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News (Salt Lake City) for late 1895 and early 1896; such news items will not usually be given citations. For the political and economic situation at the time of Utah's admission to the Union, B. H . Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (6 vols., Salt Lake City, 1930), V I , 21-346, and Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, 1958), 351-412, are particularly helpful.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY & Co. erected some t e m p o r a r y b u t effective steam whistles outside their respective places of business. T h e stars a n d stripes were strung across from the east a n d west towers of t h e T e m p l e . 1

So did Salt Lake City herald the tidings that ended almost a halfcentury of fretful waiting and made Utah the newest of the United States. From the Bear River to the Virgin, from Brigham City to Bluff, a quarter of a million citizens forgot the distinctions between Democrat and Republican, Mormon and Gentile in the bright prospect of self-government. Forgotten were the unsuccessful statehood applications of 1849, 1856, 1862, 1867, 1872, 1882, and 1887. Forgotten â&#x20AC;&#x201D; at least for the moment â&#x20AC;&#x201D; were the Utah War, the laws against polygamy, the battles between the Liberal and People's parties, the Utah Commission, and the harrowing years of the "Underground." "The P'orty-fifth Star Shines Resplendent," headlined the Salt Lake Tribune, and faces pink and beaming on that crisp midwinter morning testified "Amen!" Once the deadlock between the determination of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be different and the non-Mormon insistence that some differences are impermissible had been broken by the Woodruff Manifesto in 1890,2 matters had moved steadily toward that happy day. The local political organizations disbanded, and Mormons, who still comprised almost 90 per cent of the territorial population, found that Gentile office-seekers were easier to vote for when they bore national party labels. The million dollars worth of L.D.S. Church property escheated to the federal government under the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 and earmarked for public education was returned, somewhat shrunken in value; while the establishment of a territorial system of free schools soon drew thousands of students away from the competitive denominational academies. Utah residents began to be appointed to prominent territorial positions, including the election-supervising Utah Commission, and on July 16, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed the Utah Enabling Act which set in motion the state-making machinery. The Constitutional Convention brought 59 Republicans and 48 Democrats to the county civil court room of the brand-new Salt Lake "Joint Building" (City and County Building) for deliberations which extended from March 4 to May 8, 1895. The delegates were predominantly Mor1 Deseret News, J a n u a r y 4, 1896. T h e Tribune, J a n u a r y 5, 1896, claimed that the first 45star flag was raised over its building by Benjamin Midgley at 9 : 1 5 a.m. 2 O n September 25, 1890, L.D.S. President Wilford Woodruff announced the cessation of plural marriages, a n act which is frequently interpreted as signaling a general accommodation of Mormon Church policies to the norms of late nineteenth century America. Cf. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 380-412.

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UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The members of the Constitutional Convention of 1895, with the president, John Henry Smith, in the center of the group, and the site of the convention, the Salt Lake City and County Building, at the bottom of the page.

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

mon, and Apostle John Henry Smith was elected president.3 But their spirit was non-sectarian and largely non-partisan, and the document which they produced was distinctive in only a few respects. The longest discussion concerned woman suffrage, which had existed in Utah from 1870 to 1887 and which the draft constitution proposed to restore. Democrat Brigham H. Roberts spoke so eloquently in opposition that an unsuccessful effort was made to move one session to the Salt Lake Theatre to accommodate the crowds wishing to hear him. Both parties had promised votes for women in their 1894 platforms, and the suffrage article was adopted handily, 75 to 14.4 As required by the Enabling Act, the Utah Constitution contained an ordinance, irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of Utah, separating church and state and banning plural marriages. Twenty-seven counties were identified, Daggett and Duchesne being still part of Uintah and Wasatch respectively. State salaries were fixed with a $2,000 top for executive officers and $3,000 for judges, the state debt was limited to $200,000 after existing territorial debts should be paid, and an eight-mill ceiling was placed on property taxes for state purposes. The frugality of pioneer Utah was one thing which did not change with the Woodruff Manifesto.5 More than 80 per cent of the 49,717 registered voters made their way to the polls on Tuesday, November 5, 1895, to give overwhelming approval to the constitution and to select officers for the nascent state. Contests were close, but the Republicans won every state-wide race and a commanding majority of seats in the legislature. Heber M. Wells won the governorship; he was the son of that redoubtable Daniel H. Wells who was a counselor to Brigham Young, the commander of the Nauvoo Legion during its Utah existence, and in the Tribune's language, "the Father of 3 Stanley S. Ivins, "A Constitution for U t a h , " Utah Historical Quarterly, X X V (April, 1957), 100. Twenty-three of the 28 non-Mormon delegates were Republicans; 43 of the 79 L.D.S. delegates were Democrats. Roberts, Comprehensive History, V I , 323, gives the party division as 60 to 47. 4 An effort to permit women to vote in the election to ratify the constitution was blocked by the U t a h Territorial Supreme Court. Deseret News, August 31, 1895. Among the congratulatory telegrams when statehood finally became a reality was one to Emmeline B. Wells, president of the Equal Suffrage Association of U t a h , from Susan B. Anthony: ' A l l rejoice with you and welcome U t a h into suffrage union as well as Statehood." Ibid., J a n u a r y 6, 1896. 5 T h e intent of the constitution was that plural marriages should be prohibited but that existing polygamous households should not be interfered with, and this policy was applied when the constitution became operative. Roberts, Comprehensive History, V I , 321â&#x20AC;&#x201D;29. Convention minutes and the text of the constitution are in Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention Assembled at Salt Lake City on the Fourth Day of March, 1895, to Adopt A Constitution for the State of Utah (2 vols., Salt Lake City, 1898) ; and Ivins, "Constitution for U t a h , " U.H.Q., X X V , 100â&#x20AC;&#x201D;16, is an excellent synopsis.

A STATE IS BORN

Republicanism in Utah." 6 Clarence E. Allen, a non-Mormon attorney, shaded B. H. Roberts for Congress in the only competition whose outcome may have been affected by the presence on the ballot of a Populist slate of candidates. The University of Utah could claim a victory over Brigham Young University in that John R. Park bested Karl G. Maeser for state superintendent of public instruction.7 The election returns being certified by the Utah Commission on December 5 and the constitution being delivered to the President on December 16 by a delegation headed by Territorial Governor Caleb W. West and Territorial Delegate Frank J. Cannon, it remained only for the Chief Executive to issue the official proclamation of statehood. Utahns hoped that the event might be marked by a public ceremony in Washington, and West, Cannon, Junius F. Wells, and Congressman-elect Allen were on hand for the purpose. But Cleveland, possibly piqued by the outcome of the Utah election, chose to treat the proclamation as a routine executive document, signing it in the privacy of his office at 10:03 A.M., eastern time, and then permitting his secretary to pass the pen to the delegation which had just arrived, breathless, in the antechamber. 8 The language of the proclamation was, in fact, routine, outlining the steps which had been taken and declaring that the terms and conditions prescribed by the Congress of the United States to entitle the State of Utah to admission into the Union, have been duly complied with, and that the creation of said state and its admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original states is now accomplished.9

The nation-wide reception of the event appears also to have been restrained. The Washington Evening Star expressed a common reaction when it editorially reviewed the "Mormon Question" and then concluded: "There is a general feeling of gratification that Utah is now at long last a 6 January 7, 1896. T h e Tribune carried a series of biographical sketches, illustrated with line drawings, of all the elected state officials, in its issues of J a n u a r y 7, 13, 20, 27, February 3, 10, 17, 24, and M a r c h 3, 1896. 7 The vote was 31,305 in favor of the constitution and 7,687 against. Totals for governor were Wells, 20,833, J o h n T. Caine ( D ) , 18,512, Henry W. Lawrence ( P ) , 2,051; for Congress, Allen, 20,563, Roberts ( D ) , 19,666, James Hogan ( P ) , 1,150. Senators were to be elected by the legislature, where Republicans won the House, 31 to 14, and the Senate, 12 to 6. Other state officers elected were Secretary of State James T. H a m m o n d , Auditor Morgan Richards, Jr., Attorney General A. C. Bishop, and Treasurer James C h i p m a n ; all but Bishop were Mormons. Charles S. Zane, James A. Miner, and George W. Bartch, all Gentiles, were elected to the U t a h State Supreme C o u r t ; by lot Zane later received the three-year term and designation as chief justice, while Miner and Bartch received five- and seven-year terms, respectively, as associate justices. Deseret News, December 5, 1895, and January 4, 1896. Incidentally, Zane had been from 1861 to 1869 the law partner of William H . Herndon, Lincoln's law partner and later biographer. Tribune, January 7, 1896. 8 Tribune, January 5, 1896. T h e pen was later presented to Governor Wells. 9 Deseret News, January 4, 1896, gives the proclamation in a three-column spread.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

member on equal terms with other sister States and that the struggle and contest of long years past is over."10 If the depression- and winter-ridden nation was calm, the new state was not. It was Saturday, and impromptu parades, patriotic meetings, and general hilarity prevailed in every town and village â&#x20AC;&#x201D; except in Monroe, which was mourning the death of a prominent citizen just back from a mission and had postponed its merrymaking. While committees under the general direction of the three, state party chairmen, Republican George M. Cannon, Democrat O. W. Powers, and Populist R. A. Hasbrouck, put finishing touches on plans for Monday's formal inaugural activities, people in northern Utah weighed the Union Pacific's offer of a round-trip ticket at a one-way price for those wishing to attend the ceremonies. Henry Dixey's performance in "The Lottery of Love" drew only a fair crowd to the Salt Lake Theatre, but after the performance a small fire on the roof of the venerable structure finished off the day with a touch of excitement. Sunday's quiet in the capital city was punctuated by scores of sermons which rejoiced in the opportunities of a new year and a new era. Five Seventh Day Adventists were baptized in the Sanitarium sulphur pool, and four Mormon ladies returning from a funeral were injured when their hack ran away on North Temple. During the evening a streetcar conductor named Brigham W. Young was waylaid, knocked unconscious, and robbed while walking to report that his car was disabled. According to the Tribune, "No arrests were made for violating the Sunday liquor law, and as the officers were on the outlook for offenders, it is presumed the saloon men were all good boys. . . ." 11 State legislators and other prominent people from around the state gathered at the Cullen, Walker, Templeton, Knutsford, and Grand Pacific hotels, while visitors of lesser means or humbler aspirations moved in with relatives to await the morrow. Inauguration Day, January 6, dawned cold and clear, to the tooting of whistles, the tolling of bells, and the clanging of trolleys carrying participants and spectators to the parade which was the first main event. Robert T. Burton, who 38 years before had led cavalry of the Nauvoo Legion against Johnston's Army, was the parade marshal, and the 16th United States Infantry, troops and band from Fort Douglas, marched amicably behind him in the long procession from South Temple down West Temple to First South, east to State, south to Fourth South, west to East Temple (which was beginning to be spoken of as Main Street), and back to Tem10 11

Quoted in Tribune, January 5, 1896. January 6, 1896.

A STATE IS BORN

pie Square. Those were the days of marching organizations, and behind the state officials in their horse-drawn vehicles came, among others, U t a h National Guard units, Held's Band, the veterans of the G r a n d Army of the Republic, firemen in black helmets and red shirts pulling an old-fashioned h a n d pumper, Knights of Pythias, Masons, O d d Fellows, the Ancient O r d e r of United Workers, Scandinavian societies, members of the Germ a n Turn Verein performing on parallel bars on a float, and lastly "citizens on foot, horseback and in carriages." 1 2 Estimates placed the throng in and around the tabernacle at 15,000 when Acting Territorial Governor Charles C. Richards called the inaugural exercises to order shortly after noon. T h e crowd h a d earlier invaded the reserved seat section, and many cardholders were compelled to stand during the two-hour proceedings. T h e vast dome of the tabernacle was adorned with a 132 feet by 78 feet American flag, m a d e by the Z C M I overall factory out of 1,296 yards of bunting and so heavy that it required eight men to carry it; through the cut-out shape of the forty-fifth star, five "32-candlepower" electric lights beamed down on the congregation. 13 12 Deseret News, J a n u a r y 6, 1896. Reed Smoot, not yet Mormon apostle or United States Senator, was one of Burton's aides.

The Salt Lake Tabernacle decorated for the Statehood Day celebration. The dimensions of the American flag in the dome of the tabernacle are a matter of controversy. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Between the great pipes of the organ had been constructed an American eagle and below it the dates "1847-1896" and the word "Utah"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;"a magnificent electrical creation." A chorus of a thousand children, each with a small flag, was prepared to express its patriotic sentiments in the national anthem, "America" and a number specially written for the occasion by its director, Evan Stephens. Because of the ill health of the 89-year-old Mormon President, Wilford Woodruff, his invocation was read by his first counselor, former Territorial Delegate George Q. Cannon. Present on the stand, Woodruff later confided to his journal: "I feel to thank God that I have lived to see Utah admitted into the family of states. It is an event that we have looked forward to for a generation." " The honor of reading the statehood proclamation fell to Joseph L. Rawlins, the territorial delegate who had helped to guide the Enabling Act through Congress; he now presented the pen with which Cleveland had signed that act to Governor Wells. Then, as National Guard artillery boomed a 45-round salute from the capitol site a mile to the north, Chief Justice Charles S. Zane administered the oath to the state officials and the youthful choir sang Stephens' "Utah, We Love Thee." The inaugural address of the handsome, 36-year-old Wells combined the conventional felicitations with an extensive and informative review of Utah's long struggle for statehood. A survey of economic resources and potential, appeals for silver legislation and a railroad from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, and a word of congratulation to the enfranchised ladies brought him to his peroration: In the great firmament of nations, the United States is the constellation most beautiful, most sublime. Down the stream of time, through all ages and ages, may Utah be one of the brightest stars in that glorious constellation.15

With the benediction by the Reverend T. C. Iliff, the crowd scattered to its holiday diversions while the members of the legislature made their way to the "Joint Building" for a special session.16 Republican strategy 13 " U t a h and H e r Neighbor States Receive Statehood," Heartthrobs of the West, II (1940), Newspaper reports described the flag as 150 feet by 75 feet and "the largest ever made." DesNews, January 6, 1896. T h e Tabernacle had just been renovated, with electric lights replacing lights and electric motors supplanting water power motors on the organ. Tribune, September 1895. 14 Matthias Foss Cowley, Wilford Woodruff Fourth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, History of His Life and Labors, as Recorded in His Daily Journals (Salt Lake City, 1901), 591. lo T h e text of the address is in Deseret News, January 6, 1896, and Tribune, January 7, 1896. 10 Projects to secure congressional financing for a state capitol having failed, nothing had been done to build on the site at the head of State Street which had been contributed by the city in

92. eret gas 28,

A STATE IS BORN

called for holding the first regular session the same evening, presumably to install the officers of the two houses before the Inaugural Ball. But the Democrats balked, and the two-thirds vote necessary to force the issue failed by one vote in the Senate because George Sutherland, later congressman, senator, and associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, was reportedly too ill to attend. 17 So the House of Representatives, "influenced by the pangs of hunger," adjourned; the Senate grudgingly followed, and the business of legislating for the new state was postponed until Tuesday. 18 While parties and programs were held in many communities, Salt Lake City, whose center was within a day's carriage drive for half of the state's population and within an hour's train ride for most of that half, was the social Mecca on the evening of Inauguration Day. At the Grand Opera House a capacity crowd paid 25^ to 50^ to witness a drama of contemporary life, " T h e Silver Lining"; the Lyceum attracted an overflow, at prices from 15^ to 35^, to see Harry Corson Clarke clown in " M y Awful Dad." T h e dressing rooms at the Salt Lake Theatre were dark, the orchestra seats were covered with a spring floor which was level with the stage, and tickets were 50^ and 75^ to watch and $ 1.00 to dance at the Inaugural Ball. Guests of honor, of course, were admitted free.19 T h e ball was something to remember. "Nothing ever attempted in Utah in the way of electric displays has approached this superb illuminative triumph," was the Deseret News judgment of the multi-colored moving and flashing rendition of " U t a h " 1888, and the new government was without proper housing. While the legislature, the supreme court, and Attorney General Bishop found space in the year-old City and County Building, the governor and most of the other executive officers moved temporarily into the Women's Industrial Christian Home, a facility built in 1886 by the federal government to house destitute polygamous wives and their children. Demand for such a haven failing to develop, the building had been taken over by the Utah Commission; later it passed into private hands and today it is the Ambassador Club. In 1897 the state made a contract under which the executive departments also moved into the City and County Building; this arrangement was renewed until the State Capitol was completed in 1916. Everett L. Cooley, "Utah's Capitols," The Valley of the Great Salt Lake (rev. ed., Salt Lake City, 1963), 77; Roberts, Comprehensive History, V I , 184-86; State of U t a h , Governor, Message of His Excellency Governor Heber M. Wells to the First Session of the State Legislature of Utah. Delivered January 8, 1896 (Salt Lake City, 1896), 7; Message . . . to the Second Session . . . Delivered January 12, 1897 (Salt Lake City, n . d . ) , 4 - 5 . 17 The Tribune, January 7, 1896, slyly noted that Sutherland had been seen visiting with friends at the Cullen Hotel earlier in the day. 18 When the legislature met on January 7, George M. Cannon, a son of Salt Lake L.D.S. Stake President Angus M. Cannon, was elected president of the Senate and Presley Denny, a nonMormon from Beaver County, was chosen speaker of the House. 19 The Salt Lake Theatre had been the multi-purpose center of social activity since its opening in 1862. T h e Grand Opera House, on Second South between State and Second East, had been dispensing stock company drama since its opening on Christmas Eve, 1894. The Lyceum, a shortlived stock company theatre on Second South between Main and First West, was a converted livery stable. John S. Lindsay, The Mormons and the Theatre; or the History of Theatricals in Utah; with Reminiscences and Comments, Humorous and Critical (Salt Lake City, 1905), 169â&#x20AC;&#x201D;72.

U T A H STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Salt Lake City about the time Utah achieved statehood. Looking east up First South Street, the Salt Lake Theatre is to the left. St. Mark's School is beyond the theatre, and City Hall is across the street from the school, in the right of the photograph.

which adorned the proscenium arch, beneath which a 20-piece band, under the direction of Anton Pedersen, performed a promenade concert while celebrities and ordinary citizens filled the galleries and loges. At 9:30 Governor Wells escorted his mother to the gubernatorial box and then, his wife on his arm, led the gala assembly in the inaugural grand march, for which Professor Pedersen had written special music. So stylish an array of ladies' gowns had not been seen before in Utah. A varied program of lancers, waltzes, quadrilles, two-steps, a minuet, a schottische, a varsouvienne, a polka, and something called a Wentworth, followed, and one presumes that it was a tired but happy company which left the theatre after midnight to the farewell strains of "Virginia Skedaddle" and "Home Sweet Home." 2 0 O n this same Monday evening, in Murray, a m a n was run over by a horse-drawn sleigh. T h e two occupants of the vehicle were arrested for drunken driving. Truly it was as the Deseret News said: "Inaugural Day has been celebrated as no other in the history of Utah." 2 1 Still, there had been many days â&#x20AC;&#x201D; almost 50 years full of days â&#x20AC;&#x201D; since the pioneer leader h a d said, "This is the right place. . . ." And the 20 " U t a h and Her Neighbor States Receive Statehood," Heartthrobs, News, January 6, 1896; Tribune, January 7, 1896. 21 January 6 and 9, 1896.

I I , 9 3 - 9 4 ; Deseret

A STATE IS BORN

meaning of that special day in 1896 is not perceived if it is seen only in terms of the ceremonial donning of new political garments. That memorable day was a bridge from pioneering yesterdays to promising tomorrows ; it was a doorway through which the people of Utah moved to amalgamation in the life of America; it was a road sign reading: "This way into the Twentieth Century." How was it with Utah on that historic day in January, 68 years ago? How far had she come, and where was she going? Her people â&#x20AC;&#x201D;who were they, and what were they up to? What should be said in reply to the telegraphic question posed that day: "While on the Summit how looketh the Promised Land?" 22 On joining the Union, Utah was already more populous than five of her sister states. Of her people, 8 out of 10 were American-born and nearly 9 out of 10 were Latter-day Saints. Apart from approximately 3,000 Indians, mostly on reservations, the 571 Negroes and 768 Chinese counted in the 1895 territorial census were the largest racial minorities. Perhaps 2,000 polygamous families remained, but a considerable number of single men in the mining communities produced a small male preponderance in the total population of 247,324.23 Few of Utah's citizens lived in cities, although the inaugural festivities demonstrated that the capital's 50,000 people enjoyed many of the amenities of urban life. A maze of power and telephone lines in the downtown area; a university and eight academies; a limited distribution of natural and manufactured gas; 68 miles of street railway; three daily newspapers; three theatres and two businessmen's clubs; a just-finished gravity sewage system with seven miles of mains; and a three-year-old fun spot, Saltair, perched on piles in Great Salt Lake, were further evidences of the march of progress. But progress marched on unpaved streets if it moved very far from the heart of town.24 Twenty-seven years as a railroad center had brought Ogden 15,000 inhabitants, 10 miles of street railway, two academies, one of the first hydro-electric projects in the United States (nearing completion), and 22

Spencer Clawson, New York City, to Governor Wells. Deseret News, J a n u a r y 4, 1896. Territory of U t a h , Governor, Report of the Governor of the Territory of Utah to the Secretary of the Interior. Salt Lake City, September 24, 1895 (Salt Lake City, 1895), 3. In addition to the daily newspapers, valuable descriptive sources are this report of Governor West and the 1896 and 1897 messages of Governor Wells, cited in footnote 16. T h e 32-page issue of the Tribune, J a n u a r y 1, 1896, is rich in economic and social data. See also "Measures of Economic Changes in U t a h , 1847â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1947," Utah Economic and Business Review, V I I (December, 1947), passim; University of U t a h , Bureau of Economic and Business Research, Statistical Review of Utah's Economy (Salt Lake City, 1960) ; Noble Warrum, ed., Utah Since Statehood, Historical and Biographical (4 vols., Chicago, 1919), I, passim. 23

24 Dale L. Morgan, " T h e Changing Face of Salt Lake City," Valley of the Great Salt 2 4 - 2 7 ; A. R. Mortensen, " M a i n Street: Salt Lake City," ibid., 8 9 - 9 4 .

Lake,

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

some of the most eventful Saturday nights to be found outside the mining camps. Provo, with only 400 students in its Brigham Young Academy and the Geneva steel plant not even dreamed of, was a quiet county seat with 6,000 people; its street railway was only six miles long, but it was steam powered. Logan, with 5,000 inhabitants, was beginning to orient its life around its eight-year-old land-grant college. As for the rest, the towns of U t a h were either unpaved and unexciting farming centers, whose chief buildings revealed the industriousness and occasionally the artistic imagination of the pioneers, or unpaved and uninhibited mining camps, which might be gone tomorrow but were notoriously here today. Farming and mining were the main businesses of the new state, and neither was doing well as 1896 began. T h e 30-year decline in prices which brought Populism to the farm belt had one more year to go, and the Panic of 1893 had added mining distress to agricultural depression. Property values aggregated approximately $100 million in the state, but if absenteeowned railroads and mines were deducted, the accumulation of a halfcentury's effort averaged out at less than $300 per capita and at least half of that was in real estate. 25 For U t a h the affluent society was still two world wars in the future. Approximately one-third of Utah's employed population was engaged in agriculture. 26 All but 2,232 of the 19,916 farms were declared by Governor Wells to be free from encumbrances, but with wheat 46^, corn 58^, potatoes 32^, and apples 40^ per bushel; sugar beets and lucerne about $4.00 per ton; wool 7 l/a (t per p o u n d ; and sheep $ 1.50 per head, few mortgages were being lifted during the winter of 1895-96. 2T T h e New Year edition of the Tribune estimated that the value of all farm crops had declined by almost one-third between 1890 and 1894, and there had been little recovery since. These facts bear significantly on Utah's performance in the 1896 presidential election, which will be considered. 2 " Estimates based on Report of the Governor of the Territory . . . , 4, and "Economic Changes in U t a h , 1847-1947," U.E.B.R.,\ll, 36. 2G Leonard J. Arrington, The Changing Economic Structure of the Mountain West, 1850— 1960 (Logan, 1963), 4 3 - 4 4 . O n the basis of tables in the Arrington study it is estimated that the economically employed population of U t a h in 1895—1896 was approximately 75,000 and that the occupational distribution was approximately in these percentages: Agriculture 32.3 T r a d e and finance 10.1 Mining 6.8 Domestic 8.5 Manufacturing 11.2 Professional 4.6 Building trades 6.5 Public service 1.4 Transportation and communication 6.6 Laborers 12.0 Approximately 13 per cent were engaged in export activities (earning dollars outside the state), compared with 21 per cent for the Mountain States as a group. Ibid., 31—32, 43—44, 5 3 - 5 5 , and passim. 27 William E. Smythe, " U t a h as a n Industrial Object Lesson," Atlantic Monthly, L X X V I I I (November, 1896), 6 1 6 ; Report of the Governor of the Territory . . . , 5—18.

A STATE IS BORN

Reminiscent of the pioneer quest for self-sufficiency are 40,000 pounds of cotton and almost 3,000 gallons of wine produced in the Virgin River country in 1895 and 10,000 pounds of silk cocoons reported a year later. Recalling another dream, which failed in the 1850's but was now becoming a reality under L.D.S. Church sponsorship, are the 40,000 tons of beets processed by the Utah Sugar Company in the year before statehood. Although dry farming had begun in the 1870's, 89 per cent of the 467,162 cultivated acres (1894) was irrigated by methods largely developed in the founding generation. And although the church was moving toward the abolition of tithing in kind, some produce still moved into the market through the tithing offices and script-using cooperatives like the cotton factory at Washington and the Provo Woolen Mills.28 Mormon Utah's bumper crop was children, and the declining support capability of agriculture was beginning to produce that export of young manpower which would characterize the first four decades of the twentieth century.29 The state of mining in Utah can be inferred from Governor Wells' appeal for silver legislation and the endorsement of bimetallism by both Republican and Democratic platforms in the pre-statehood election. At approximately 65^ per ounce, Utah's mines had produced only $4,854,300 in silver in 1895, and that largely from a few spectacular enterprises like the Centennial-Eureka and Bullion-Beck in the Tintic District and the Silver King and almost-exhausted Ontario at Park City. The total value of nonferrous metal production for the year was $8,464,500, down almost $4 million from 1890. Gold discoveries in the Camp Floyd District of the Oquirrh Mountains and the resulting rush which led boomers to speak of a "New Johannesburg" when they incorporated Mercur two weeks before Inauguration Day did not disguise the facts that many mines were closed in 1895 and 1896 and that extensive unemployment was avoided largely because of the disposition of miners to move on when jobs disappeared.30 Too insubstantial yet to cast a shadow, the mining undertaking with the greatest long-run potential was going on at Bingham. While the operating mines there were still concentrating largely on the precious metals and the townspeople were rebuilding from a series of disastrous fires, "Colonel" Enos A. Wall and Samuel Newhouse were piecing together the claims which would become the foundation for Utah's greatest single productive 28 Tribune, January 1, 1896; Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 384-86, 4 0 9 ; Report of the Governor of the Territory . . . , 6. 29 Leonard J. Arrington, " T h e Industrial Structure of the Mountain West, 1850-1950," Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Western Economic Association at Seattle, Washington, August 24-25,1961 (Salt Lake City, 1962), 22. 30 Tribune, January 1, 1896; Statistical Review of Utah's Economy, 122-23.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

enterprise, the Bingham copper mine. 31 Except for Carbon County and Emery County coal, Great Salt Lake salt, and a very limited production of Gilsonite, sulphur, and building materials, the other nonmetallic minerals which would eventually justify Lincoln's description of U t a h as "the nation's treasure house" were either undiscovered or unappreciated. 3 2 T h e railroad network in January, 1896, was substantially what it had become in 1880 with the completion of the U t a h Southern Railroad extension to Milford and Frisco and the H o r n Silver Mine. T h e Union Pacific now owned 543, the Denver and Rio Grande 485, and the Central Pacific 157 of Utah's 1,225 miles of standard-gauge road; 150 miles of narrowgauge track wound into the mines. Local stage lines still served parts of the state, and a gun battle between a sheriff's posse and two young horse thieves in City Creek Canyon in August, 1895, was additional evidence that the frontier h a d not yet fully passed. Telephone poles had started sprouting in 1879, and communities from Logan to Eureka were linked together by the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company, but there were yet no rural phones. Western Union, which joined U t a h with the two coasts, would wait four more years before buying the Deseret Telegraph Company, the locally-built enterprise which had spread the warning through southern U t a h when the United States marshals were coming during the days of the "Underground." Salt Lake City h a d enjoyed houseto-house mail delivery for a decade, but such novelties as airmail and zip codes were hardly in the science fiction.33 Other sectors of the U t a h economy did not escape the impact of the nation-wide depression. O n the contrary, h a r d times accelerated certain profoundly significant changes in the quality and direction of Utah's business enterprises. Like agriculture during the territorial period, industry, with the exception of mining and transcontinental transportation, h a d been largely in M o r m o n hands and devoted to the self-sufficiency of what Arrington has aptly titled " T h e Great Basin Kingdom." T h e larger cooperative projects, like iron, sugar, and cotton, had fallen short of expectations, and most of the local manufacturing was in shops employing only a few hands. T h e 880 industrial concerns reported in 1894 h a d an average capital in31

Leonard J. Arrington and Gary B. Hansen, "The Richest Hole on Earth," A History of the Copper Mine (Logan, 1963), 7-28. 32 Miles P. Romney, " U t a h Cinderella Minerals: T h e Nonmetallics," U.H.Q., X X X I (Summer, 1963), 2 2 0 - 3 4 ; Thomas G. Alexander, "From D e a r t h to Deluge: U t a h ' s Coal Industry," ibid., 2 3 5 - 4 1 . Bingham

33 Report of the Governor of the Territory . . . , 2 1 ; Morgan, "Changing Face of Salt Lake City," Valley of the Great Salt Lake, 2 5 ; Wain Sutton, ed., Utah: A Centennial History (3 vols., New York, 1949), I I , 981-86, 998.

A S T A T E IS B O R N

vestment of about $6,000, product value averaging approximately $8,000, and a total employment of 5,054 people; the Provo Woolen Mills, with 150 employees, was the largest remaining example of pioneer industry.34 Unlike agriculture, industry was reflecting the revolution in economic policy taking place in the L.D.S. Church as that organization struggled out from under a great burden of debt accumulated during the EdmundsTucker period and came to terms with late nineteenth century American capitalism. The concern for the material development of the region remained, but the isolationist goals and communitarian methods largely disappeared. Numbers of existing church concerns, like the Salt Lake Street Railroad Company, Salt Lake City Gas Company, and Provo Woolen Mills, were sold or secularized. And the new church-supported projects recruited outside capital and functioned in conventional, even conservative, business fashion. The Utah Sugar and Inland Crystal Salt companies, 34

Report of the Governor of the Territory

. . . , 19; Tribune,

January 1, 1896.

Transportation in Salt Lake City near the turn of the century consisted primarily of horse-drawn vehicles. Numerous utility, telephone, and telegraph poles lined the streets. The scene shown is Second South and Main streets. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

i 1

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

the hydro-electric development on the Weber River and the electric and gas utilities in northern Utah, the Saltair resort and the railroad serving it were all products of this expedient reinterpretation of the strictures against mingling Zion and Babylon. In the new State of Utah, laissez faire was a non-sectarian slogan, with non-sectarian reservations for the protective tariff, of course.35 At the counters and in the counting houses of Salt Lake and Ogden some of the earliest overtures toward Mormon-Gentile peace had been made, and by 1896 the chambers of commerce and the 40 Utah banks had replaced the Schools of the Prophet and Zion's Board of Trade as centers of business planning. Like the manufactories, most commercial establishments were small; the 1,974 stores reported in 1894 employed 5,023 people and had an average capital investment of over $7,000 and average sales of $17,000.36 Many Mormon-owned stores throughout the state still called themselves "Co-ops" and did much of their purchasing through ZCMI Wholesale, but the secularizing process already referred to in industry was also taking place in trade. The reincorporation of Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution as a million-dollar corporation on September 30, 1895, is a notable example. Originally founded in 1868 as the cornerstone for a self-contained Mormon commercial structure, it had been considerably more profitable than its industrial counterparts; on an initial investment of $220,000, not all cash, and sales of $76,352,686, it had generated $1,990,943.55 in cash dividends and $414,944.77 in stock dividends in 25 years. In 1891 it had discontinued tithing its earnings and opened stock ownership to non-Mormons, and the new company functioned substantially as its Gentile competitors in the merchandise field.37 How business functioned, and how Utahns lived in the 1890's, can be discovered from the advertisements in the daily and weekly newspapers. They reveal a variety of goods and services now long forgotten and a level of prices almost beyond belief. "Brain Workers pronounce Vin Mariani the Ideal Tonic, Unequaled by Anything in Fortifying, Strengthening and Refreshing Body and Brain," was the commercial for an all-purpose patent medicine. "Manhood Re3 " Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 389-412, and by the same author, "Objectives of Mormon Economic Policy," Western Humanities Review, X (Spring, 1956), 180â&#x20AC;&#x201D;85. T h e church disposed of its interests in many of these enterprises after 1900. 36 Report of the Governor of the Territory . . . , 19â&#x20AC;&#x201D;20; Warrum, Utah Since Statehood, I, 308, adds an American Fork bank to the governor's total of 39. 37 Smythe, " U t a h as an Industrial Object Lesson," A.M., L X X V I I I , 6 1 0 - 1 4 ; Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 385â&#x20AC;&#x201D;86.

U T A H STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

South Temple Street in the early 1900's when it was a splitlevel, unpaved road with utility poles in the center of the street.

stored," was the guarantee of Cupidene, one of many virility potions; "Indapo, the Great Hindoo Remedy," was another. For those who preferred to see a medical practitioner, Dr. C. W. Higgins promised: "All classes of fits cured. Tapeworm removed with head or no pay." Dentist J. B. Keysor daily advertised: "Good set of teeth — $5.00. Better set — $8.00. Best set, no better made no matter what you pay — $ 10.00." "All O u r Underwear at One-Third Off" must have drawn crowds to Siegel Clothing Company, where the finest full length union suits in "Switz Conde" cost $2.75 but "natural mixtures" could be had for $.60. Auerbach's was clearing ladies' tailor-made suits at $3.85, footwarmers at $.50 a pair, children's shoes at $1.00 a pair, and ostrich feather boas from $1.75 to $10.00. Lipman, Nadel and Son offered "Your choice of any suit or overcoat in the store at only $10.00," while Z C M I was featuring the Charter Oak ranges and stoves in which were baked many of the pies and cakes that our grandmothers used to make. There were no supermarkets, and

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

the corner grocers usually relied on handbills rather than newspapers to call attention to their 10^ beefsteak, 15^ butter, and assorted penny candy.38 It should be remembered, however, that those were the days when $2.00 was a good day's wages, and the youngsters in a workingman's family did not always have pennies to spend on luxuries. Unlike their parents, children could go to school without tuition, the free school system having been established on a territory-wide basis in 1890. Almost 90 per cent of the 74,551 school-age children attended at some time in 1895, and the pattern of available education was changing rapidly from year to year. The non-Mormon denominational elementary and secondary schools, which had numbered more than 50 and rendered invaluable service in upgrading the quality of the territorial educational effort, were now suspending operations, leaving only a handful of secondary schools and colleges like Rowland Hall, St. Mary's of the Wasatch, and Wasatch Academy to carry on in the twentieth century.39 The Mormon academies at Provo, Logan, Ephraim, Vernal, Ogden, Castle Dale, and Salt Lake City were, on the other hand, vigorously expanding in secondary education and the normal course training of teachers, fields in which they matched public school enrollment until the first World War. The big growth, however, was in public elementary schools, where nearly 60,000 children were enrolled and almost 35,000 were in average daily attendance. Superintendent John R. Park would shortly call for the consolidation of districts and a far greater financial outlay than the $500,000 which had been the annual educational outlay during the depression years.40 Most aspirants for university degrees and professional training still left Utah, but in Salt Lake City, Logan, and Provo, institutions of higher education were taking shape. The University of Utah, started with high hopes in 1850 as the University of Deseret, was still largely concerned with secondary and normal courses and adult education, and it had not yet begun to move from its buildings at First North and Second West to Fort Douglas. But 500 students were now in attendance, the 1895 graduation exercises had seen nine baccalaureate degrees awarded, and President 3S All advertisements are from the Deseret News and Tribune, December, 1895, and January, 1896. From M e r c u r a "Colonel Argus" complained at "the hotel proprietor raking in a big silver half dollar for a plate of corned beef and cabbage, a cup of coffee and a 'pat' of boarding house butter strong enough to stalk over the hills unaided." Deseret News, December 30, 1895. 39 Westminster College was established u n d e r Presbyterian auspices in 1897. 40 M . Lynn Bennion, " T h e Origin, Growth and Extension of the Educational Program of the M o r m o n Church in U t a h " (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, 1936), 120-60A; Report of the Governor of the Territory . . . , 15; "Economic Changes in U t a h , 1847-1947," U.E.B.R., V I I , 6 2 - 6 6 , which notes that school expenditures for 1896 were $899,282. L.D.S. academies were established at Beaver, Coalville, Hinckley, and St. George between 1898 and 1914, a n d all of the academies in U t a h except the one which became Brigham Young University in 1903 were closed or transferred to the state by 1933.

A STATE IS BORN

James E. Talmage and faculty, whose names now identify many campus facilities, were trying to build a university on an annual budget of $35,000. 41 T h e faculty and 400 students of the Agricultural College of Utah, at Logan, might have complained at their $22,000 appropriation in 1896 if they had not also received a federal grant of $25,000, which raised their total budget from the level of the Reform School in Ogden and the School for Deaf, Dumb, and Blind almost to a par with the Insane Asylum in Provo, whose $50,000 appropriation the first statehood year was the largest to any public institution. T h e Asylum augmented its income by boarding "idiots and morons" at $4.00 per week. Governor Wells' first message to the legislature, incidentally, raised the possibility of closing the Reform School since recent experience had shown that only one out of four of its inmates was rehabilitated. Instead the institution was relocated and named the State Industrial School a year later, and the institution for the deaf, dumb, and blind was moved from Salt Lake into the abandoned quarters in Ogden. 42 If the churches were giving up some of their economic and political activities and transferring many of their educational functions to the state, they were by no means inactive. Most of the major Christian communions were represented in the church notices in the Salt Lake papers, and St. Mark's and Holy Cross hospitals were already important examples of the testimony of the deed. T h a t Mormon-watching was still a mission of some of the Gentile ministry h a d been apparent in the recent election and would become even more conspicuous when B. H . Roberts finally won a congressional election two years later. But the effort to rescue the Saints from their religious "delusions" had lost its thrust, and the new policy of peaceful coexistence was symbolized by the prayers which opened and closed the inauguration ceremonies. For the L.D.S. Church, the traumatic consequences of the ordeal of the 1880's were yet more apparent than the new interests and emphases which would prevail in the twentieth century. Charges that the Mormon Church still controlled politics and that plural marriage had not really been abandoned had frequently to be denied, and the effort to define and enforce policy in these matters produced some stresses within the leader41 Message of His Excellency Governor Heber M. Wells . . . 1896, 9 - 1 1 . A State Bar Association had been organized in 1894 and a State Medical Society in 1895, but the University of U t a h offered only pre-professional training in these fields. Warrum, Utah Since Statehood, I, 691, 705. 42 Message of His Excellency Governor Heber M. Wells . . . 1896, 11-15. T h e Asylum, with 235 patients at the beginning of 1896, was more a custodial than a treatment facility. T h e State Prison was performing another type of custodial function for 189 inmates on a $30,000 budget. Warrum, Utah Since Statehood, I, 194.

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

ship and laiety. Efforts to carry on missionary, temple-building, educational, and business-promotion activities in the face of depression-shrunk tithes and rising debts contributed to an institutional cautiousness in matters financial which persisted through two generations. Priesthood and auxiliary programs had changed little in recent years, though the monthly fast day would be moved from the first Thursday to the first Sunday in 1896, and "Nickel Sunday" was shifted from September to October in 1895, the thirtieth year of Mormon Sunday Schools. Twenty-five of the 37 L.D.S. stakes were in Utah; the 48 wards in the Salt Lake Valley were all in the Salt Lake Stake, over which Angus M. Cannon had presided for 20 years. Plans for observing the sesqui-centennial of the coming of the pioneers included the construction of a monument to Brigham Young, for which $11,914.23 had been raised by popular subscription before Inauguration Day. The unveiling of the monument at the corner of South Temple and Main would be a highlight of the 1897 celebration and, in a symbolic way, an affirmation that the era of pioneer Mormonism was at an end.43 In the realm of Utah politics, to which this "look from the Summit into the Promised Land" now turns in conclusion, the problems of transition from the pioneer era were particularly apparent. For it was one thing to dissolve the People's and Liberal parties and quite another to impliment the constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state to the general satisfaction. Because the Republican party had sponsored the anti-Mormon legislation of the territorial period and had given considerable support to the Utah Liberals, the widespread assumption had been that most Mormons had Democratic leanings. So strong had been the belief in this predisposition that in the early 1890's L.D.S. Church authorities had actually urged some of the Saints to change their political allegiance. At stake conferences apostles had asked for volunteers to the Republican cause, and key individuals had been "called" to join that party.44 Ironically, as soon as the Republican party stopped assailing the Mormons, a number of factors began to move Utah toward the G.O.P. column. With the gradual abandonment of the idea of a self-sufficient communitarian society, the economic and social philosophy of Mormonism moved appreciably toward political conservatism. The Mormon Church and 43 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 4 0 0 - 3 ; Roberts, Comprehensive History, V I , 3 2 9 - 5 3 ; Deseret News, J a n u a r y 4 and 7, 1896. 44 Richard D . Poll, " T h e Political Reconstruction of U t a h Territory, 1866-1890," Pacific Historical Review, X X V I I (May, 1958), 125.

A S T A T E IS B O R N

many of its prominent men were interested in such enterprises as wool, sugar, and non-ferrous mining, which sought the tariff protection that Republican administrations were most likely to provide. Railroad and banking connections produced similar tendencies. T h e Panic of 1893, the tariff cuts in the Wilson-Gorman Act, and the adamant opposition of President Cleveland to legislation for the depressed silver industry were enough to offset the pro-Mormon measures of his administration, and Republican Frank J. Cannon won the territorial delegate's seat in the 1894 election. 45

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

First governor of the State of Utah, Heber M. Wells (in high-top hat), and a visiting dignitary in front of the George Y. Wallace home in Federal Heights.

So it was that in the 1895 election of state officers the charge of Mormon Church meddling in politics came not from the Republicans but from the Democrats. T h e fact that both of President Woodruff's vigorous counselors were undeniably Republican in sentiments, if "independent" in label, offered irresistible temptation to Democrats whose hopes for victory had been dampened by their minority status in the Constitutional Convention. George Q. Cannon had been the only territorial delegate to identify himself with the Republican side in the House of Representatives 45

Ibid., 124-26.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

in the pre-Manifesto years; his son was now a prominent contender for a Senate seat, and he himself was also mentioned as a possible senator despite public denials of interest. Second Counselor Joseph F. Smith invited the raising of the church-state question by indirectly suggesting in a special L.D.S. priesthood meeting on October 7 that two of the general officers of the church, Roberts, the Democratic candidate for Congress, and Moses Thatcher, a Democratic candidate-designate for the Senate, h a d violated church rules by seeking those offices without consultation with their ecclesiastical superiors. It is impossible to determine what effect the ensuing editorial and oratorical controversy had on the election; Woodruff issued a denial of intent to control anyone's politics, and the Republicans swept the election as has been noted. 46 All of the elected officials appear to have entered on their duties with genuine resolve to avoid conflicts over religion. T h e first state legislature was predominantly Mormon, the margin being better than three to one in the 45-member House of Representatives and slightly less than two to one in the 18-member Senate. 47 But organizing followed party rather than sectarian lines, and the election of United States senators by joint vote of the two houses followed the tacit understanding which each party had reached during the previous year's political activity. Mormon Frank J. Cannon was one Republican choice and Arthur Brown, a non-Mormon attorney of Salt Lake City, was the other. T h e same unwritten rule gave U t a h one Mormon and one Gentile senator until the Seventeenth Amendment established popular election for that office in 1913. 48 T h a t the new government h a d new business is reflected in the first Senate Joint Resolution, which memorialized Congress to remonetize silver, the first House Joint Memorial, which asked Congress to annex the Arizona strip to Utah, and the first gubernatorial budget message, which placed expenditures for 1896 at $394,302.58 and anticipated that the stilldepressed economy would produce $404,230.00 in revenues. 49 If further evidence is needed that U t a h politics at least temporarily tabled local differences in the face of pressing state and regional needs, it may be found 46 Roberts, Comprehensive History, V I , 330-36. In April, 1896, the conference of the L.D.S. Church adopted a "political rule" under which all general authorities were obligated to secure the permission of the church leadership before seeking any public office which would "interfere with the proper and complete discharge of" ecclesiastical responsibilities. Roberts, a member of the First Council of Seventy, accepted this rule and was subsequently authorized to make his ill-starred race for Congress. Thatcher declined to accept the rule and was dropped from the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. Ibid.

" Tribune sketches; see footnote 6. 48 Roberts, Comprehensive History, V I , 3 3 8 - 4 1 . 49 State of U t a h , Legislature, Senate Journal, 1896, 5 4 ; House Journal,

1896, 89, 292-94.

A S T A T E IS B O R N

in Senator Cannon's fiery speech in the 1896 G.O.P. national convention, announcing the walk-out of the silver Republicans, and in the fact that 83 per cent of Utah's votes in the following presidential election went for William Jennings Bryan and his silver slogan, " 16 to 1." January 4, 1896, was more than the birthday of a state. It was the wedding of Utah and the nation. From the bride's point of view there was one disappointing detail â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the ring should have been made of silver.

Greeting to young U t a h from over the Sea. Papeete, Tahiti, Society Islands, M a r c h 11, 1896 Governor H e b e r M . Wells. God bless the new State of U t a h a n d its first chief Standard Bearer. M a y the young governor of the infant state be equal to his task a n d profit by the example and precept of his late illustrious father â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the hardy pioneer and the staunch defender of truth and innocence. M a y his son likewise in the dignity of his present high a n d responsible position as U t a h ' s chief executive make a record that for purity of purpose, justice and right, may never be ecclipsed by any subsequent governor. And as the n a m e of George Washington is honored above all the other historical names which now constitute the long list of "Presidents of the U n i t e d States," so may the n a m e of Heber M . Wells at the head of the future long list of "Governors of the State of U t a h " always be entitled to special mention a n d honor, when our great grandchildren shall peruse the closing pages of U t a h ' s Nineteenth Century history, and commit to memory the names and deeds of those illustrious ones w h o first led the vanguard of a p u r e and Christian civilization in to the "Vallies of the M o u n t a i n s , " and strove for its maintenance in the midst of great difficulties for nearly fifty years, when at last freedom and relief in the shape of statehood came to the sons and daughters of those same famous pioneers, who themselves, at least most of them, were called to the great beyond before the boom was obtained. Your friend, A n d r e w Jenson

SENTINELS ON THE DESERT: , The Dugway Proving Ground (1942-1963)

and Deseret Chemical Depot (1942-1955) BY L E O N A R D J . A R R I N G T O N AND T H O M A S G. A L E X A N D E R

W h e n it b e c a m e a p p a r e n t early in World W a r I I that the enemy (Germany, Italy, and J a p a n ) possessed a capability for chemical warfare, the W a r Department began planning for expansion of its capacity for chemical warfare defense. T h e Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, situated in a well-populated area, could offer little room for further development with housing tracts pressing on its boundaries and other defense industries sapping the local labor market. T h e Chemical Warfare Service needed a location with elbow room; and from a study m a d e by the Federal Grazing Service, the government knew that the desert area in western U t a h offered advantages of climate, altitude, and space for expansion which it could not find in other locations. 1 U n d e r a grant from the U t a h State University Research Council, Leonard J. Arrington, professor of economics at U t a h State University, is directing a study of the history and economics of government defense installations in U t a h . A graduate of U.S.U., Thomas Alexander is now a candidate for the doctorate in history at the University of California, Berkeley. 1 "History of Dugway Proving G r o u n d " (typescript, D u g w a y ) , 1. This history was furnished the writers by Colonel David Armitage on September 12, 1961. Unless otherwise noted, the information in this article is based upon this nine-page typescript history; a paper furnished by Colonel Armitage to the writers entitled, "Statistics: Dugway Proving Ground, U t a h " ; interviews with Captain Max Newman, Dugway public information officer ( 1 9 5 9 - 1 9 6 2 ) , and Wayne Haddock, of the Dugway Controller's Office, in August 1961; and letters from Lieutenant Lawrence D. Doff, information officer ( 1 9 6 2 ) , to Professor Arrington, dated August 14, 15, 19, 1963.

After reconnoitering the area for several days early in 1942, Major John R. Burns, of the United States Army, selected a large, arid tract of land partly in the Great Salt Lake Desert about 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The site lay bounded on the northeast by the Onaqui Mountains, on the southeast by the Dugway Range, and on the west by the desDugway cantonment area located in a desolate valley in western Utah. UNITED STATES ARMY

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U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

ert. It was ideally isolated for the type of classified and toxic tests which the Chemical Warfare Service planned to conduct. A local anecdote portrays Granite Peak (7,100 feet), one of the prominent landmarks on the reservation, as a site used by several very successful moonshiners during the Prohibition Era. T h e operators of distilleries could see dust trails on all four sides of the Peak for 20 to 30 miles in any direction. Prior to the "roaring twenties," Dugway h a d served the early pioneers for more legitimate activities. T h e Dugway Mountains got their name from the serpentine trenches or "dugways" which early emigrants used to transport their wagons over the passes. T h e Pony Express later used Simpson Springs, located about 45 miles west of St. John, as a way station. During New Deal days, Simpson Springs served as a Civilian Conservation Corps c a m p ; and the old Lincoln Highway threaded its way through the reservation. With the construction of Highway 40, 30 miles to the north, however, the Dugway area was again preempted by the jackrabbits, coyotes, and deer which h a d inhabited it in historic times. C O N S T R U C T I O N OF T H E B A S E

O n January 14, 1942, immediately after Major Burns submitted his report, the chief of the Chemical Warfare Service requested the acquisition of a tract of 126,720 acres. O n February 6, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the order transferring land from the public domain to the Chemical Warfare Service. In April, after construction had begun, he transferred an additional 138,180 acres. While most of the land, including later withdrawals, had come from the public domain, the government also purchased land from the H a t c h Brothers and the State of Utah. Today Dugway controls about 850,000 acres of land, with an additional area of approximately 300,000 acres adjacent to the installation available for certain operations. T h e Proving Ground now encompasses an area larger than the State of Rhode Island. Despite several difficulties which h a d to be overcome, construction went ahead at a feverish pace. Major Burns, who was assigned as Dugway's first commander, established preliminary headquarters in the C C C c a m p at Simpson Springs. Until April 30, the only contact with the outside world consisted of radio communication with Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City. Because of the desert sand dunes and high winds, the contractors h a d to spread two inches of gravel over 130,000 yards of ground. Later, 300 acres of grass were planted, and picket fences were erected in staggered patterns to stop wind erosion. Unfortunately, the wind proved too strong for the grass to take root. By April 1, the roads had been com-

SENTINELS ON THE DESERT

pleted and the construction of buildings begun in Dog Area, about 10 miles west of the present administration area. And by mid-May these wooden barracks were well on the way to completion. After starting the original construction, the Chemical Warfare Service began a series of expansion projects which continued through the second World War. The first of these, a toxic gas yard with magazines for explosives, was originally planned as a yard of 180 by 400 feet, but by the summer of 1944 the area had expanded to 100 acres. The base expanded its warehouse facilities also; and by the end of World War II, the installation had a total of 49,060 square feet of warehouse space. Though the CWS planned target locations at the same time as the cantonment area, these were not begun until July 1942. As with the gas yard, the target area, originally only five-miles square, grew as the mission of the installation expanded until it included 10 smaller target areas for various special tests. In a canyon on Granite Mountain, a special target area was designated for the study of cloud behavior under various conditions. One of these ranges was used in the development of one of the nation's most effective weapons during World War II â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the 4.2-inch chemical mortar. Work had to start early on such essential facilities as laboratories and a machine shop. By August 1942, laboratories for chemical, physical, and photographic experiments and processes had been completed. Fortunately, the CWS found a fully-equipped machine shop in Salt Lake City which it bought and shipped to the base in June of 1942. After the machine shop was installed, the Proving Ground began the construction of its own mensuration instruments and the designing of its own machines. At first, "merely clearing a little sagebrush" sufficed for an airstrip; but after the first winter, wind and water erosion undermined this temporary expedient. As an airport was necessary to conduct some operations, the post built a 5,200-foot runway in February 1943 which it extended to 7,200 feet in September. Later, a decontamination yard and a turnabout were added to the landing surface; and in 1944, a 54-foot control tower reached toward the sky. The airport is known today as Michael Army Airfield. In this dusty, arid section, one of the base's major problems was the supply of water. At first, the base used a 30,000-gallon water storage tank; but as the installation grew, the water storage capacity was expanded to 298,000 gallons by May 1945. Originally, three miles of pipelines were designated as a sewage system to accommodate 1,500 persons, but by August of 1944 the system proved inadequate. In early 1945 the post con-

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

structed a primary treatment plant with sludge beds capable of treating sewage for 2,000 persons. Dugway met the same expansion problems with both its electric power supply and its operations headquarters. It originally used a 20-kilowatt generator. T h e n in September 1943 it replaced this with two 300-kilowatt generators, and in 1944 an additional 148-kilowatt generator was acquired. In July of 1944, a newly constructed operations headquarters made possible centralized planning and coordination of tests and personnel. T h e center contained offices, a technical library, a printing room, a vault for classified material, a briefing room, and drafting rooms. Considering the distance from civilian facilities and the danger of accident from the toxic chemicals used at the installation, Dugway found it necessary to have extensive medical facilities available. Original plans called for an infirmary, which was later expanded to a 25-bed ward. Early in 1943, the post constructed a 75-bed ward with nurses' quarters, mess halls, enlisted men's barracks, and a medical research building. T h e entire facility was built as an integrated unit with covered walks and a central heating system connecting all buildings. ACTIVITIES D U R I N G WORLD W A R I I

After preliminary construction had been completed, Dugway began the large-scale testing and evaluation of chemical munitions. During the second World War, the base's duties consisted primarily of tests with toxic agents, flame throwers, and chemical spray systems. Besides these chemical projects, the post performed biological research consisting of veterinary experiments and other biological warfare activities. In addition to carrying on these research projects during the war, in mid-1945 the installation converted four C C C barracks and a lavatory building into a 150m a n prisoner-of-war barracks. Some of the most important experiments during the war included the development of incendiary and flame-throwing weapons. It was at Dugway that the incendiary bombs, which were used with telling effect by the Air Force against enemy centers of production, were first dropped experimentally on simulated German- and Japanese-type buildings in the middle of the desert. For this purpose, Dugway constructed a village consisting of 24 Japanese and six German full-scale dwellings and a bomb shelter capable of withstanding 500-pound bombs. T h e flame throwers and fuel thickeners used in the Pacific Theater were also tested at Dugway, as were toxic chemical munitions and protective equipment that could have been effectively used in either theater of operations. T o develop flame throwers

SENTINELS ON THE DESERT

for shooting around corners, the post constructed Japanese redoubts in the mountains, simulating the caves used on the Pacific atolls. Through similar experiments Dugway perfected the M-2 and M-4 chemical mortars, which were fired with great success in all theaters of war. Immediately following the war, the Army began to phase the installation out. O n January 16, 1947, the Secretary of W a r established the Western Chemical Center which consolidated the operations of Deseret Chemical Depot and Dugway Proving Ground. Shortly thereafter, the government deactivated Dugway until the outbreak of the Korean War. T H E DESERET CHEMICAL DEPOT

Meanwhile, in July 1942, the Army had commenced construction in Rush Valley, about 20 miles south of Tooele, of a depot so secret that U t a h citizens knew nothing of the purpose of the base beyond the fact that it was to serve as a storage depot. Even the size, number, and nature of the buildings on this 4,100-acre installation were kept secret. It was not until its dedication, on July 11, 1943, that Utahns learned that the Deseret Chemical Depot was designed for the storage and shipment of all types of chemical warfare material, especially poisonous gases, chemicals, and chemically-filled ammunition. Since the Deseret Chemical Depot was the only one of its kind in the nation, the arid climate and isolation from centers of population were primary factors in determining its location. T h e excellence of transportation facilities to points throughout the West was also an important consideration." T h e construction proved to be one of the most difficult Utah projects of the World War I I period. As soon as work crews broke ground, the wind seemed to lift the sand and dust as if gravity had no effect. Brigadier General Ralph Talbot, Jr., of the Quartermaster Corps, on an inspection tour of the Depot late in November 1942 found that less than 1,000 of the 4,000 men employed during the preceding four months still remained on the job. Following a particularly severe dust storm, 200 men quit in one day. T h e cost of the original plant was in excess of $15 million. As with the Dugway Proving Ground, the Deseret Chemical Depot lay so far from other villages and towns that the Army was forced to construct a complete new town. Accommodations were built for 1,000 people â&#x20AC;&#x201D; dormitories to house 600 persons and 154 three-, four-, and five-room 2 Salt Lake Tribune, December 1, 1942, April 2, 5, July 12, August 30, October 30, 1943, March 30, July 12, 1944; J. R. Mahoney, "Wartime Economic Changes and Postwar Industrial Readjustment in U t a h , " in After Victory: Report of Cooperative Planning Program for Utah and the Wasatch Front (Salt Lake City, 1943), 77.

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

houses. T o provide for other phases of life, the government constructed theaters, shops, stores, laundries, and cafes. T h e government-owned facility was virtually a self-contained community. Estimates of the exact number of persons employed at the base are hard to come by, but there were perhaps 700 to 1,000 guards, laborers, machinists, auto mechanics, painters, truck drivers, storekeepers, nurses, typists, and stenographers employed at the base during most of World W a r I I . Workers could either live in the Depot village or commute from other cities. Following the war, the Depot remained a military chemicals storage facility with a staff for maintenance and inspection. T H E KOREAN W A R

Both the Deseret Chemical Depot and the Dugway Proving Ground were reactivated in the summer of 1950, and work was resumed on many activities which had been commenced during World W a r I I . At the Deseret Chemical Depot more than $4.2 million worth of new construction took place, including 150 housing units, 76 apartments, and 32 warehouses. 3 After the end of the Korean War, in M a r c h 1954, the Depot cut back its operations and reduced the number of personnel. Deeming it uneconomical to operate the Depot as a separate facility, the Army placed the Depot under the jurisdiction of the Tooele Ordnance Depot (now Tooele Army Depot) where it has remained since July 1, 1955, under the name Deseret Depot Activity. T h e far more important Dugway Proving Ground served the nation's cause during the Korean W a r by a stepped-up program of testing material and equipment for the Research and Development C o m m a n d of the Army Chemical Corps (formerly the Chemical Warfare Service). New weapon systems developed included flame throwers, smoke generators, and flame bombs. I n addition to these combat weapons, Dugway began tests in micrometeorology which have since been expanded. In this project a system was developed to determine the toxic quality of the air up to 100 feet and the movement of air currents over relatively small areas. 4 As the Korean W a r continued into 1952, the United States saw the need for the development of new and more efficient chemical, bacteriological, and radiological systems (usually referred to as C B R ) . T o this end, Dugway was granted funds to begin construction of new dwellings and 3

Tribune, July 8, September 5, October 28, 1951. Standard Examiner ( O g d e n ) , August 3, 1958; Deseret News (Salt Lake City), April 7, 1960. M a n y of the newspaper articles cited here are found in the "Dugway Scrapbook," a file kept by the public information officer at Dugway. 4

SENTINELS ON T H E DESERT

administration buildings in the present administration area known as Easy Area. Prior to this time, the base administration h a d been centered at Dog Area about 10 miles from the main gate. By J u n e of 1952 construction h a d begun, and residents began moving to Easy Area in December. Additional new housing was completed in 1953, 1956, and 1959; and the last project of 50 Capehart housing units cost $700,000. In 1960 the government began the renovating and remodeling of 500 housing units at a cost of $1.6 million, and in July 1963, construction began on 33 duplex units on the west side of Easy Area. 5 With the reactivation and expansion of the installation, the government realized that Dugway would, for the foreseeable future, be home to the employees and their families. T o m a k e Dugway as much like a normal town as possible, the government expanded the existing facilities. O n e of the major problems was the isolation of the installation. In an attempt to alleviate this condition, the government constructed a shopping center, two schools, several c h u r c h e s , A field telemetering station, one of many specialized pieces of equipment at Dugway Proving Ground. UNITED STATES ARMY

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facilities, including a ninehole golf course, over half of which was donated by private citizens. At present, Easy Area resembles a small town, with television a n t e n n a s s p r o u t i n g from comfortable housing units and housewives in toreador pants rushing in and out of the shopping center. 0 Nothing demonstrates that these Dugwayites feel themselves to be p e r m a nent residents as much as a n i n c i d e n t w h i c h took place in 1960. Because the civilian employees lived on Â° Deseret News, A u g u s t 1 2, 1 9 5 9 ; Tribune, n . d . , ca. A u g u s t 1960, "Dugway Scrapbook." 0 Deseret News, September 28, 1959.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

a government reservation, about 1,800 otherwise eligible electors had been barred from voting by Tooele County. One of the citizens, John Rothfels, brought suit against the county for himself and other voters to force the registrar to allow them to register. In September of 1960, the U t a h State Supreme Court in a three to two decision ordered the county to permit Dugwayites to vote. 7 Unquestionably, these engineers, scientists, and technicians have made a fine addition to U t a h society. T E S T I N G ACTIVITIES I N R E C E N T Y E A R S

Since the beginning of expansion following the start of the Korean War, Dugway employees have performed a number of essential services for the United States defense effort. I n addition to toxic gas tests, meteorological tests, and bacteriological tests, activities were expanded to include ecological systems surveys, radiation tests, off-base services, and a chemical-bacteriological-radiological orientation course. O n e of the off-base services consisted of environment test divisions staffed with 15 to 20 men at sites as far away as Fort Greely, Alaska; Thule, Greenland; and Fort Clayton, Canal Zone. 8 T h e ecological systems survey, a project of international interest, includes biological inventories of various areas and the study of diseases of animals. T h e project has attempted to learn the relations of various animals to vegetation, animal disease pathways, and the control of diseases. T o carry out this project, Dugway boasts a large wildlife colonization laboratory. At present, there are about 10,000 native animals, including 4,000 rodents of nearly every species and a coyote named Susie who howls every time the phone rings. In August of 1959, the government granted the University of U t a h $244,000 to test diseases of ticks, rodents, fleas, carnivores, and arthropods under the supervision of the U.S. Public Health Service. 9 By 1963, in response to statements of Soviet military leaders, the United States Army Chemical Corps h a d developed a capability to deal effectively with a possible enemy chemical or biological attack. T h e public statement of Marshal Zhukov, Soviet Minister of Defense, in 1956, that "the next military conflict would be characterized by the massive use of rocket forces, thermonuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons," 10 gave impetus to an increased developmental program for C & B 7

Ibid., J u n e 9, September 1, 1960. Ibid., August 6, 1960. 8 Ibid., August 3, 1959; Speech by Captain M a x Newman to the Town and Gown Society, Logan, U t a h , May 4, 1961. 10 Current Digest of the Soviet Press, V I I I (April 18, 1956), 11. 8

SENTINELS ON THE DESERT

defense. This increased program, in turn, resulted in an acceleration of testing activities at Dugway. Among the biological systems rated by the Soviets as having potential application in combat were those built around such naturally occurring organisms as those which cause anthrax, bubonic plague, tularemia, and various encephalitic diseases. Demonstrations at Dugway were conducted on rabbits, dogs, cats, goats, and other animals which revealed how potent the newly appearing chemical and biological agents were, and effective steps were taken to improve defenses. Protective clothing and equipment, decontamination techniques, neutralization solutions, and detection instruments were subjected to stepped-up evaluation tests at the Proving Ground. Employees clothed to work with toxic materials look like something out of Jules Verne with protective outfits completely covering their bodies and heads. In July 1961 a group of Dugway stalwarts tested a type of protective "skivvies" called Hycar Absorbent Protective Underwear. These items have been designed to give optimum protection against radiation, vapors, dusts, and aerosols. T o disseminate the knowledge learned in these projects, Dugway provides safety support for test operations for the Armed Forces Special Weapons Projects wherever needed. 11 Russian literature also revealed that work in the chemical agent field had advanced to the point where nerve (anti-cholenesterase) agents offered distinct advantages. Gas systems of two types had been developed. T h e first category included those which attack the nervous system, and the second type were known as psychochemicals. An example of the first, known as GB, worked like a super-insecticide. It could be disseminated through aerosol sprays, and was so lethal that a drop the size of a pencil dot could kill a m a n in 15 minutes. T h e psychochemicals, which have been developed since 1955, are not lethal, but do their damage by changing the personality of those who come in contact with them. In one test at Dugway, a cat subjected to a psychochemical fled in terror from a mouse which researchers h a d introduced into its cage. 12 Dugway has tested and evaluated defenses against both types of gas. T h e advent of the nuclear age and the possibilities of the use of radioactive materials in warfare also influenced Dugway's growing mission, and facilities were constructed for the safe handling, storing, and using of such materials. As a side line, tests on radioactive preservation of food and effects of ionizing radiation on mice were also carried out. 13 11

Tribune, July 29, 1961, J a n u a r y 17, 1962. Norman Cousins, " T h e T r u t h About CBR Warfare," Family Weekly, November 6, 1960. 13 Deseret News, August 6, 1960; Standard Examiner, August 3, 1958.

UNITED STATES ARMY

Field demonstration of the U.S. Army CBR Weapons Orientation Course. Press representatives were guest observers.

I n October 1958 the United States Army CBR Weapons Orientation Course was established at Dugway to brief key military and civilian members of the defense establishment of CBR operations, plans, and techniques. T h e three and one-half day orientation, which includes a field demonstration for its high-ranking students, has graduated over 2,500 of the nation's key military planners, including over 100 general officers and civilian members of the federal government. 14 Because operations at Dugway and other installations working on CBR defense have been so restricted, the public has been relatively uninformed on the CBR systems and their potential use and danger. An informed citizenry is essential in the event of a war in which CBR weapons are used, and Dugway has tried, particularly since 1960, to educate the public through a program of public information releases, public speeches, and educational displays. O n occasion, newsmen have been invited to witness tests and report them to the public. Dugway today is a far cry from the wooden barracks originally built in Dog Area. In 1963 the installation had about 600 buildings and was valued at about $50 million. I n that year Dugway h a d a payroll of approximately $12 million and purchased approximately $4 million worth of supplies annually, a sizeable portion of which came from U t a h sources. T h e installation h a d a work force of nearly 3,000 military and civilian personnel. With almost 4,000 residents, Dugway was the second largest city in Tooele County and the fourteenth largest in the state. THE

FUTURE

Given Dugway's isolation, the base is ideal for the test and evaluation of materiel and equipment vital to the nation's defense from enemy chemi14

Deseret News and Tribune, October 15, 1959.

SENTINELS ON T H E DESERT

cal and biological attack. Both the University of Utah and Utah State University are at present working on projects in conjunction with Dugway, and in the future Dugway should continue to draw top talent and research money to the state.15 Dugway's contribution to Utah's economic development has differed from that of such supply and repair depots as Tooele Army Depot and Utah Army Depot. Though research of the type in which Dugway has engaged is costly and has pumped millions of dollars into Utah's economy each year, Dugway's main contribution appears not to have been in this realm. Since before the Great Depression of the 1930's Utah has been a net exporter of scientific, engineering, technical, and other highly educated talent. By undertaking projects where basic scientific research is required, as in the meteorological, ecological, chemical, and microbiological projects, Dugway has attracted talented men and women to work not only on assignments at the installation, but to engage in related research at Utah institutions of higher learning. The voting episode partly demonstrated that these men and women are politically and intellectually alert and are desirous of contributing to their local communities. If in the future Utah could, either through private or governmental expansion, continue to hold and attract these high-calibre people, its future economic, cultural, and political growth would be enhanced.

Deseret News, August 3, 1959, February 3, 1962.

BY D O N D. W A L K E R

William

Howard

Taft on his presidential

The TAFT VICTORY in Utah in 1912 tour speaks to the people of Midvale,

Utah.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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TAFT VICTORY IN UTAH

T H E CONVENTION P H A S E

In the Wilson landslide of 1912, two states, more than 1,800 miles apart but side-by-side in the roll call of states, went for William H o w a r d Taft. Vermont kept unbroken a Republican tradition going back to 1856, and Utah, though less traditionally in the ranks of the G.O.P., kept faith with the incumbent President. 1 Vermont's four electoral votes went to Taft with 37.27 per cent of the total count and a plurality of 1,235 over Theodore Roosevelt. Wilson ran a wreak third with 24.44 per cent of the votes. Utah's four electoral votes went Republican with 37.418 per cent of the ballots, Taft polling 5,434 more than Wilson. Roosevelt trailed with 21.534 per cent. There was another interesting, though minor, difference. In Vermont Eugene V. Debs pulled an insignificant 928 votes; in U t a h he rolled u p an impressive Socialist count of 8,999. Apparently voters in Vermont were more interested in prohibition than in socialism as Eugene W. Chaffin won 1,154 followers, 2 226 more than Debs. In voting for Taft, U t a h became an isolated Republican stronghold surrounded by the Democratic mountain states of the West. Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado all voted for Wilson, with three of these states, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado, approaching the Democratic candidate's national percentage. In two of these states, Arizona and Nevada, Taft ran fourth, not merely behind Wilson and Roosevelt, but behind Debs as well. 3 Dr. Walker is associate professor of English and director of the Program in American Studies, University of U t a h . This article is the first portion of a larger study of the elections in 1912. 1 U t a h in her first year of statehood voted for Bryan but voted Republican in 1900, 1904, and 1908. 2 Total votes and pluralities are meaningful here because the populations of Vermont and U t a h were similar. T h e census of 1910 showed Vermont with 355,956 and U t a h with 373,351. However, in the election of 1912 fewer than 18 per cent of the Vermonters went to the polls while about 30 per cent of the Utahns voted. Vermont consistently showed a strong Republican plurality, rising to a peak in 1896, the very year that U t a h voted Democratic. (However, all state officers, Utah's first, were Republicans.) Vermont that year voted for gold while U t a h voted for silver. 3 M u c h has been written to explain the national victory of Wilson. One "official" Democratic view found Wilson's strength "primarily in the fact that he had as his opponents two sick parties at each other's throats." William F. McCombs, Making Woodrow Wilson President (New York, 1921), 246. However, historians have agreed that Wilson was elected because he stood for progressive reform. If Taft and conservatism were the losers, progressivism was the winner. Harold Underwood Faulkner, The Quest for Social Justice, 1898-1914 (New York, 1931), 108; Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters (Garden City, 1931), I I I , 4 1 1 ; John Dos Passos, Mr. Wilson's War (Garden City, 1962), 71. Part of the evidence here lies not just in the strength of Wilson but also in the showing of Debs, who nearly doubled his popular vote of 1908. Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton, 1947), 525. T o make the U t a h election even more of an anomaly, much of Debs' increase came from the Far West. H. Wayne Morgan, Eugene V. Debs, Socialist for President (Syracuse, 1962), 139. As will be seen, Utah's Democratic leaders hoped until the last to share the great national victory. A few days before the election, Josephus Daniels, after a conference with Wilson, announced that Wilson would carry every state except eight. I n spite of the fact that he declined to name the eight states, the newspapers guessed. T h e chairman of the U t a h State Democratic Committee telegraphed to Daniels: " W h a t in the hell do you mean by conceding U t a h to the Republicans?" Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era, Years of Peace, 1910-1917 (Chapel Hill, 1946), 88.

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Why did Utah so strikingly deviate from the national political pattern and from the political leanings of her sister states? Here indeed was an anomaly, an oddity to irritate and tease the puzzled historian. In the perspective of national development the oddity has seemed small indeed, and oddities, unlike wars, may not rightly seem to claim the historian's full power of search and understanding. Nevertheless, something of importance may be kerneled in even so tiny an historical nut. Let us see. I The story begins in May of that election year when both Democrats and Republicans met to choose their delegates to the national conventions. "Showing unusual strength in numbers and enthusiasm," 4 the Democrats convened on May 14 in the Salt Lake Theatre. Upwards of 400 delegates represented all Utah counties but three.5 Observed the proDemocratic Provo Herald, "Men came from far and near and brought their wives and sisters to listen to the deliberations of that eloquent body." Some of the enthusiasm was no doubt traditional, the worked-up steam of renewed party fellowship, but some fresh hope came also from the brighter prospects for victory. The Republicans were fighting among themselves. In his keynote speech, Judge S. R. Thurman, chairman of the state committee, turned on his best convention satire: When rogues fall out, honest people get their just dues. Roosevelt, the highest authority, says Taft is not fit to serve as president. Taft, a next highest authority, says that Roosevelt is not fit to serve as president, and I believe both of them. . . . Roosevelt went to Africa to kill elephants, and he is proving himself to be the greatest elephant slayer of the age. Here in the United States he is killing more elephants than have ever existed in the jungles of Africa since the foundations of the world were laid.6

The platform, adopted without a dissenting vote,7 reaffirmed a "belief in the principles of progressive democracy." It favored a graduated income tax; popular election of U.S. senators; a direct primary law, initiative, referendum, and recall legislation; a corrupt practices act; and some provision for employers' liability. Two of the most important resolutions were on tariff and the kind of candidate to be nominated at Baltimore. "We favor a revision of the tariff downward," agreed the delegates, "in 4 Deseret News (Salt Lake C i t y ) , May 14, 1912. I n anticipation of the convention, the Provo Herald had reported on May 13 that party leaders from all sections of the state were "hurrying to Zion to attend the most enthusiastic convention ever held in the history of the state. . . . Every fellow that ever thought he was a Democrat will be there to toot his horn of democracy. . . ." 5 Kane, Rich, and Wayne were the counties not represented. Salt Lake Tribune, May 15, 1912. T h e Deseret News of May 14 said every county except two. 6 Tribune, May 15, 1912. 7 Ibid.

TAFT V I C T O R Y IN U T A H

William R. Wallace (1865-1957) was an outstanding authority on Utah water development, helped organize and held interests in Utah Oil Refining Company, and was an active Democrat.

harmony with the policy of the Democratic party." And "we demand that our representatives to the Baltimore convention support progressive candidates and all progressive measures." Even before the convention got underway, some delegates had decided on their progressive candidate, but the Wilson movement at first "met with opposition in all quarters." 8 When L. R. Martineau tried to get an indication of preferUTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY ence from the convention, his motion was tabled "with promptitude and a Democratic yell."9 The delegation, with William R. Wallace as national committeeman, was left uninstructed. Nevertheless, Wilson had won a Utah following. "It is safe to say," reported the Tribune, "that two-thirds of the delegation's numbers are Wilson men. . . . One thing is certain, and that is that no other than a progressive Democrat need expect support from the Utah delegation."10 The convention day had ended with the high enthusiasm of its beginning. It was, said the Herald, "the greatest day in the history of Utah Democracy since the pioneers of the Jeffersonian days held the reins of power." 11 Political attention turned the following day to Provo, where the Republicans gathered in the Opera House. Here a more dramatic fight was expected. "The sentiment of the Republicans of the state," Senator Reed Smoot had written a few days earlier, ". . . is for President Taft, and if so, they [the delegates] should not hesitate a moment to instruct for him, no matter if every other state in the union went back on him." 12 Yet State Chairman C. E. Loose, absent because of the death of a son, was known * Deseret News, May 14, 1912. Tribune, May 15, 1912. 10 Ibid. 11 Herald, May 15, 1912. 12 Tribune, May 13, 1912. 9

UTAH HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

to be for Roosevelt, and others as well were believed to favor the Roughrider. On May 13, the Provo Herald reported: T h e Roosevelt boosters here say that three weeks ago you could hardly find a supporter of the ex-President, now the woods are full of them bobbing up everywhere and all enthusiastic for Teddy. This is accounted for in the fact t h a t the press of the state has been telling the people t h a t there was no Roosevelt sentiment in U t a h , but T e d d y enthusiasm has broken out and [is] spreading rapidly to the utter consternation of the stan-patters [sic], and everything points to "something doing" at the convention Wednesday. 1 3

As the convention opened, many of the delegates were to be seen wearing "T.R." buttons.14 Taft sentiment soon showed itself. Delegate Carl Hopkins called attention to the fact that no picture of the President was in the convention hall. When H. L. Cummings, substituting for Loose, ruled Hopkins out of order, two-thirds of the delegates "stood up and yelled for Taft, throwing their hats in the air and waving their handkerchiefs. Their cheers resounded throughout the hall and could be heard for a block in all directions from the convention hall. 'Get his picture!' they called, and then cheer after cheer split the air." 15 When the noise subsided, the chair quickly sent a delegation to get a picture, and the image of Taft soon reigned on the stage. Cummings himself, it should be noted, was no Roosevelt man. As he presented Carl A. Badger, the keynoter, he said: "I hope the Republicans in this state will not be led astray and seek after false gods, but will follow in the footsteps of those illustrious leaders, Lincoln, Grant and McKinley, and last but not least, William Howard Taft." Here an uproar of applause lasted two minutes. "Let us send those delegates," Cummings went on, "to use every honorable means to secure the nomination of that fearless leader and eminent statesman, William Howard Taft." Again there was long and loud applause.16 If the Democrats liked the label progressive, the Republicans liked it too. "From Hamilton and Washington to Taft," said Badger, "the Republican party can fairly and honestly lay claim to the title of being the 13 The press of the state was not as silent about Roosevelt as this report claims. The Ogden Evening Standard had been openly for Roosevelt. O n May 11, it had editorialized: " T h e Standard has found the Tribune to be the most uncompromising Taft advocate in U t a h , while this paper is recognized as the most persistent supporter of Roosevelt in the intermountain country." u Tribune, May 16, 1912. 15 Deseret News, May 15, 1912. 18 Tribune, May 16, 1912.

TAFT VICTORY IN UTAH

progressive political party of our nation." T o Taft "we owe in great degree our present era of peace, good will, friendship and progress in U t a h . " Furthermore, with nothing to gain, said Badger, the President has espoused the cause of Senator Smoot, saying "he would take the stump, if necessary, in behalf of the assailed U t a h senator." And one other argument no doubt h a d persuasive power. Taft, Badger emphasized, had upheld "that great mainstay of national prosperity, the protective tariff." 17 T h e adopted platform likewise put its blessing upon both tariff and Taft. In its longest and most poetic plank, the resolution committee said: "Without it [the protective tariff] the profitable cultivation of the sugar beet and the manufacture of sugar from the beet root would cease, the flocks would be swept from our hills and plains, our low grade lead and silver mines would be closed and other kindred pursuits would disappear from the industrial life of U t a h . " Taft the committee praised "as an advocate of peace, as a friend of the people, as an honest administrator of the law, as a dignified, able and conscientious president and, above all, as a true friend of U t a h and her interests." " W e pledge," the resolution concluded, "the delegates . . . to use all honorable means to secure his nomination." 1 8 This last resolution was not accepted, however, without a minor but lively fight. For meanwhile the insurgents had been hard at work. Medil McCormick, of Chicago, and Everard Bierer, Jr., of Salt Lake, had opened Roosevelt headquarters and had begun active campaigning. About 50 delegates had visited the headquarters while the convention was in session.19 T h e n the fight for Roosevelt came to a head on the floor of the convention as John E. Bagley, of Weber, obviously skeptical of attaching the insurgents' own favorite label to Taft, introduced an amendment asking simply that delegates be instructed for the candidate who, in their judgment, would best bring "four years of progressive Republican administration." T h e rebellion, however, was soon put down. After E. C. Ashton, of Davis County, had spoken the reasons against instruction, the resolution to instruct was adopted viva voce, the preponderance, observed the Tribune, being more than two to one. 20 If this was the high point of drama, after one more touch of the Rooseveltian subplot, the comic relief soon followed. There was first the problem of Colonel Loose. " I would like to have Mr. Loose nominated as 17

Deseret News, May 15, 1912. Tribune, M a y 16, 1912. 19 Deseret News, May 15, 1912. Bierer was secretary of the Roosevelt Club of U t a h . 20 Tribune, May 16, 1912. 18

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

a delegate to Chicago," Senator Smoot had written before the convention. "I am not afraid of Mr. Loose's judgment. I know what he thinks of Mr. Roosevelt, but I know that he will take into consideration the political situation in the state, and I trust that he will be nominated." 21 On the first ballot, however, Loose fell short of enough votes, the delegates believing he would not accept under instructions for Taft. But this "misunderstanding" being removed, he was elected on the second ballot â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no doubt to the later regret of the Taft faithful. The comedy arose when Mayor William Glasmann, of Ogden, led the "cow counties" to victory over Salt Lake County. Apparently the Salt Lakers were a squabbling bunch. When their inner quarrel, as the Tribune put it, "had grown almost intolerable in the convention hall," they adjourned to the back alley at the side of the Opera House. Meanwhile, the "cow counties" inside were "making hay." Their own slate was carried when the voting began again. Although both Sanpete and Sevier counties were represented, Salt Lake County had no delegate to the national convention.22 Depending on political point of view, major Utah papers offered different judgments. The Democratic Herald noted the Republican fractiousness. "During the recent State convention . . . there was more of the old time 'dog eat dog' than we have seen for several years. Men who were neighbors and friends at home arose and shook their fists at each other and threatened all manner of violence." The pro-Roosevelt Evening Standard felt that the "Federal Bunch" had run a steam roller over the T. R. faithful. "The convention as a whole represented nothing more than machine politics, back of which are two or three men." 24 In apparent impartiality, the Deseret News concluded: "Utah will be well represented in both national conventions." ' The scene could now change to Chicago and Baltimore. II Traveling "in style," as the Tribune put it, the Republican delegation reached Chicago on June 16 and established themselves at the Hotel Lexington. They were joined by Colonel Loose, who as national committeeman had been in Chicago some 10 days, and Senators Reed Smoot 21

Ibid., M a y 13, 1912. Tribune, May 16, 1912. T h e four "alfalfa" favorites, as the Evening Standard called them, were Loose, of U t a h County; James M. Peterson, of Sevier; Jacob Johnson, of Sanpete; and Charles R. Hollingsworth, of Weber. Standard, May 16, 1912. 23 Herald, M a y 17, 1912. 24 Evening Standard, May 16, 1912. "Federal Bunch" was a local term for the group of federal office-holders gathered around Smoot. 25 Deseret News, May 16, 1912. 22

TAFT VICTORY IN UTAH

and George Sutherland and Representative Joseph Howell, who arrived from Washington. In surprise and amusement, they found themselves already claimed by the Roosevelt camp, which that day had issued a bulletin declaring the whole Utah delegation for the former President. Governor Spry, however, quickly put the false claim to rest by asserting that Taft would receive every one of Utah's eight votes.26 Among the workers at the Roosevelt headquarters was Everard Bierer, but the mistake in Utah's Republican allegiance probably stemmed from the fact that in committee decisions Colonel Loose had been consistently voting with the Roosevelt forces.27 It is surprising, therefore, that in the delegation caucus the next day Loose was re-elected unanimously a member of the national committee. The colonel pledged to vote for Taft on the first ballot, though not on any succeeding ballot. He said also that he would resign if Taft were nominated, but that he would nevertheless campaign for the President.28 In a gesture of impartiality, the delegation attended a Roosevelt meeting, deciding after hearing T. R.'s speech that he would bolt and form a third party. The first important show of strength came the next day in the vote for chairman. Once again Loose broke ranks to vote for Francis E. McGovern.29 However, the colonel had by then concluded that his choice could not be nominated, but that Taft would lose backing also, with a dark horse ultimately the nominee. Smoot and Sutherland did not agree, both seeing Taft stronger than Roosevelt, strong enough to win on the first ballot. Meanwhile, Sutherland was helping to write the very important plank on tariff.30 Back home in Utah, as the citizens read the bulletin boards and their daily papers, interest mounted. Said the Tribune: "Salt Lake City thronged the bulletin boards, and displayed the greatest political anxiety of the year thus far." And followers of this paper could not mistake where it stood. In an editorial understatement, the Tribune said, "The Tribune is not supporting Col. Roosevelt hard enough for any one to notice it." 31 26

Tribune, June 17, 1912. Ibid., June 2 1 , 1912. 28 Ibid., J u n e 18, 1912. 29 In the contest between Francis E. McGovern and Elihu Root, Roosevelt himself had come to favor McGovern. Although Root had been the member of his Cabinet whom Roosevelt admired most, T. R. by 1912 had concluded that Root was "not a Progressive." Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1931), 5 6 1 - 6 2 ; letter to William Rockhill Nelson, May 28, 1912, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, 1951), V I I , 550. "McGovern is a fine fellow. O u r choice of him would emphasize, as nothing else would, the fact that we wish all Progressives to stand together." Letter to Joseph Moore Dixon, May 25, 1912, ibid., V I I , 548. 30 Tribune, J u n e 19, 1912. 31 Ibid., J u n e 14, 1912. 21

UTAH HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

The report of the committee on credentials was presented on June 19, with a consequent seating of a good many Taft delegates. Senator Smoot had prepared to speak in its defense, but when a sudden and long demonstration broke out, the oratory was cut short to move up the vote. "Convention Spared a Speech by Smoot," said the Tribune in its typical antiSmoot phrasing. Again Colonel Loose voted "nay." 32 When the Roosevelt bolt developed, the Utahns naturally remained firm. Loose insisted he would not follow, that he would vote for Taft on the first ballot. However, such pledges did not make peace within the delegation. The Taft seven insisted that Loose was disobeying instructions. Advisor E. H. Callister asked Loose to resign not only as committeeman but also as delegate.33 Meanwhile, if the Utah Republicans had been mistakenly taken for insurgents before their arrival, they were now playing important roles in the Taft maneuvering. Little Hawaii was wavering, pulled between the Rooseveltian persuasiveness of Hiram Johnson and the Taft enthusiasm of Reed Smoot. During the week, Prince Kalianiaole bolted "back and forth like a balky mule," as the Tribune put it. By the weekend, however, Smoot had won the prince's doubtful pledge.34 After so dramatic a build-up, the climax was flat indeed. With the villain gone, the political play became a mere formality. Taft won without genuine opposition. All eight of Utah's votes were in the Taft column, but it was L. N. Stohl, an alternate, not Loose, who had voted that eighth ballot. The Utah colonel, like the national colonel, had after all bolted.35 With the Taft victory, naturally the Tribune was pleased, but the vigor of its editorials lay more in the blasting of Roosevelt than in the praising of Taft. "Col. Roosevelt's attitude throughout has been that of a brawler and disturber," it said on June 23. "He insisted upon having everyUTAH :STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Tribune, June 20, 1912. Ibid., June 21, 1912. Ibid., June 22, 1912. Ibid., June 23, 1912.

Reed Smoot (1862-1941) had interests in banking and many other commercial and industrial enterprises, was a prominent Republican, a U.S. senator from 1903-1933, and a Mormon apostle.

]

31*

TAFT VICTORY IN UTAH

Charles E. Loose (1853-1929) was successfulin the fields of mining and banking, was a state senator, and was active in the Republican party.

thing his own way, he was in favor of himself, first, last, and all the time, with no consideration whatever for the Republican "The re-nomination of President party. Taft," it added the following day, " . . . will, we fully believe, prove entirely satisfactory to the Republican party as a mass. The uproar created by the dictatorial Roosevelt raid upon the convention will soon subside, and although Roosevelt will probably be able to retain about him a body of shouters, these will have but little effect upon the country at UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY large." 37 Some of the Utah delegates were equally rough on the Roughrider. Judge Jacob Johnson, on his return to Utah, called Roosevelt the biggest fourflusher he had ever seen. "If the colonel does form a new party," he told a Tribune reporter, "it will be composed of a few disgruntled Republicans and Democrats and a great many anarchists and socialists."38 Meanwhile, at Baltimore the Democrats were getting set for a more drawn-out battle. The Utah delegation, traveling in the "regal style" of an electric-lighted Pullman,39 had reached Chicago on June 20, where they were the guests of the Republicans from Utah and Idaho. The 16man delegation, each with one-half vote, stood 13 for Woodrow Wilson, three for Champ Clark,40 with William Jennings Bryan the second choice of all.41 The Clark promoters in Baltimore at once got off to a bad start with the Utahns. On their map showing preferences across the nation, the Utah spot was occupied by a portrait of their contender. "This," reported 3G

Tribune, June 23, 1912. Ibid., June 24, 1912. 38 Ibid., June 28, 1912. 39 Ibid., June 7, 1912. 10 Ibid., J u n e 2 1 , 1912. 41 William Jennings Bryan, three times the unsuccessful candidate of the Democrats, was still the titular head of the party, but a number of new Democratic leaders were now ready to challenge Bryan's domination. Among these, besides Governor Wilson, of New Jersey, were Governor Judson Harmon, of Ohio, and Representative C h a m p Clark, of Missouri. After long service in Congress â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he was first elected to the House in 1892 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Clark had become speaker in 1911. 37

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

the Tribune, "has occasioned considerable adverse criticism by the Utah delegates." 42 A new poll showed six votes for Wilson, one for Clark, and one for Harmon. Then in the first matter pending before the convention the Utah delegates revealed their divided sympathies. In prominent favor for the temporary chairmanship was Alton B. Parker, who had carried the Democratic colors into defeat against Roosevelt in 1904. However, to the Bryan forces Parker represented the reactionary element of the party. Wilson agreed. The first Utah caucus, with national committeeman William R. Wallace not voting, showed five for Parker, seven opposed. When the national committee selected Parker, Nebeker, of Utah, voted with the Bryan men for Ollie M. James. Next day, when the issue reached the floor of the convention and after Bryan had nominated Senator Kern, of Indiana, and Kern had withdrawn his own name and nominated Bryan, four Utah votes went to Parker, four to Bryan. Like other political observers, the Utahns regarded Parker's victory as "a hard blow to Wilson."43 Repercussions from home soon followed. Supporting Parker seemed a violation of the state convention pledge to "support progressive candidates and measures only." S. R. Thurman and C. C. Richards reminded the delegation, in a telegram, that the convention had been "uncompromisingly progressive."44 Then in the last big scene before the struggle of nominees began, the Utah delegation split again. On Bryan's move to throw out Belmont and Ryan, nine Utah Democrats said "yea," while seven voted "nay." 45 Though telegrams arrived urging a vote for Wilson, the delegation kept its balanced and waiting impartiality by refusing to participate in a Wilson parade.46 Wilson sentiment, however, showed up strongly in the first of the famous 46 ballots for the presidential candidate. The delegation voted six for Wilson, one and one-half for Clark, and one-half for Harmon. On the 42

Tribune, J u n e 25, 1912. Ibid., J u n e 26, 1912. "Ibid., June 21, 1912. 4u August Belmont, the banker, was a T a m m a n y delegate from New York. Thomas Fortune Ryan, the utilities magnate, was a delegate from Virginia. Together they powerfully represented the conservative, moneyed side of the party, a side with which Bryan vigorously differed. Bryan's resolution "opposed . . . the nomination of any candidate who is the representative of or under obligation to J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas F. Ryan, August Belmont, or any other member of the privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class." A second clause demanded the withdrawal of Belmont and Ryan as delegates. 40 Tribune, J u n e 28, 1912. I t should be noted, however, that although some Utahns were impartial about the candidates, some were not so impartial about women. I n the suffrage parade on J u n e 28, three pretty girls carried a banner reading: " W o m e n Have Voted Since 1896 in U t a h . " They were followed by a floral chariot labeled " U t a h , " drawn by four white horses and prettily occupied by two more girls in R o m a n costume, their shields emblazoned with the coat of arms of U t a h . 43

TAFT VICTORY IN UTAH

next ballot, John Dern, the Harmon follower, switched to Wilson.47 But for 43 counts the three Clark votes from Utah remained firm.48 Meanwhile, Bryan, like Roosevelt, had for many good Democrats become the villain. A member of the Utah delegation received a telegram, purportedly from Jesse Knight and J. W. N. Whitecotton of Utah County, saying: "Nominate any good Democrat before marplot Bryan." 49 The Tribune applied its editorial rhetoric to Bryan as it had to Roosevelt.50 With Wilson's nomination at long last a fact, the Utah Democrats were highly pleased. In a matter of hours more than a thousand of them gathered between First and Second South on Main Street in what the Deseret News called a "jollification." Led by a 24-piece band and accompanied by banners and exploding red fire torches, the Wilson parade marched to the Brigham Young Monument, then back again.51 The first explosions of oratory were enthusiastic too. Brigham H. Roberts declared: "I take it that this is to be a campaign in which an appeal will be made to the reason of men. If there has been a struggle at the Baltimore convention it has been to find out whether or not the man nominated should have the dollar mark on him. The man who was nominated today, if elected, will be answerable to the people and not to Wall Street." Uncle Jesse Knight took the occasion to correct the report of his telegram. "I never sent or signed such a telegram," he said, "and I never saw or heard of it until I saw it in the paper this morning.... I don't even know what marplot means, but it sounds bad and I admire Bryan, instead of believing him to be bad." 52 The Tribune, however, struck a quieter, Republican note. "Mr. Wilson," it observed, "is really an untried experiment, a man who has never been put to the proof.... We consider... that the nomination of Mr. Wilson is as favorable a one for President Taft as the Democrats could have made." 53 Meanwhile, as everyone knows, T. R. had not slipped into quiet defeat and retirement. When a bull moose bolts, he bolts with vigor and the sure knowledge that less than a mile away is another convention hall filled now with the faithful. An hour after Taft had been renominated, T. R. had become the candidate of a new party. Utah's Everard Bierer, Jr., was 47

Tribune, J u n e 28, 1912. Ibid., July 2, 1912. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., July 3, 1912. 51 Deseret News, July 3, 1912. 52 Tribune, July 3, 1912. 53 Ibid. 48

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

on the committee to confer with him.54 Of the Utah delegation that had voted for Taft, Roosevelt was later to remark that they "helped to steal from the people the right of nomination, which is the people's." On June 25 the Tribune editorialized: "The emblem of the new party, the red bandana handkerchief, serves so clearly to identify the movement with anarchy, that the conclusion cannot be escaped that anarchy is the true aim and basis of the new movement." In spite of the Tribune's conclusion, however, the progressives were making some progress in Utah. On July 3 a large and enthusiastic group set up a provisional organization and started a campaign fund.56 Four days later, the call came for a convention in Chicago on August 5. Colonel Loose signed for Utah,57 and in Utah T. R.'s supporters announced plans for a state convention to choose delegates. The Tribune reported some talk of nominating Loose for governor but implied that this might be awkward and difficult since Loose was an admirer of Spry, and Governor Spry, as everyone knew, was solidly for Taft.58 Clearly, in this period of post-convention waiting and confusion, the local Bull Moosers were at a disadvantage. Although they had a national candidate representing great energy and continuing popularity, the first concentration of that energy had been spent in Chicago. Unless Roosevelt could hope to win on a third party ticket, there was no chance to build for a greater climax. The followers of Wilson could hope for a strong swell of progressive insurgency, but the Taft admirers must have felt as comfortably solid as their hero looked. No amount of campaign talk, they must have told themselves, could prove T. R.'s claim that their decision at Chicago had been "rascality" 59 instead of the exercise of high political wisdom. Still, whatever one's doubts or satisfactions, the lines of history went on. Taft, Wilson, Roosevelt â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or Debs? The battle for Utah had now begun.

Ibid., J u n e 23, 1912. As quoted by the Tribune, September 14, 1912. 56 Ibid., July 4, 1912. '''Ibid., July 8, 1912. â&#x201E;˘ Ibid., July 11, 1912. 59 Roosevelt as quoted by Tribune, September 14, 1912. 35

PILGRIMAGE O N WHEELS BY W I L L I A M E . OLIVER

NEVADA STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT

Lincoln

Highway

outside the ghost town of Hamilton,

Nevada.

Forty-one years ago one Sunday afternoon, in Salt Lake City, I clambered into an old Packard Roadster beside its driver, Robert E. Knowlden.1 He let in the clutch, and we headed west across Nevada bound for San Francisco and the fall semester at the University of California. We were two young college students out for adventure and an inexpensive trip to the Pacific Coast. Our route was the historic Lincoln Highway, America's first transcontinental automobile road. In 1919 a young, unknown officer named Dwight D. Eisenhower rode over this same highway from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to the Golden Gate as part of the first U.S. Army truck convoy to cross the continent. In 1920, at the height of Mr. Oliver, former U t a h n now residing in Los Angeles, California, is retired from the post of drama critic on the Los Angeles Herald-Express and is self-employed as a writer. I n the year 1922, M r . Oliver changed his family name from Onions. 1 M r . Knowlden, practicing attorney in Vallejo, California, is a native U t a h n .

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

summer travel, hardly more than 20 cars a day were passing over this new route through Salt Lake City. Thus, when we drove over it in 1921, we seemed to be the only automobile on the road, except for one old prospector we saw bumping over the Nevada desert in a battered Model-T Ford. The Lincoln Highway in those days, over much of its route, was little more than a jagged scar cutting through desert salt flats, barren valleys, and mountain passes; the road ran by dying communities, ghost towns, lonely dry farms, and decaying roadside settlements. The only clue that the ruts in the sagebrush and washes were a highway was the handsome red, white, and blue Lincoln Highway markers that guided us west. After 10 days of hard driving, detours, and tire and engine troubles, often spending the night out in the desert, we arrived in San Francisco, where the Lincoln Highway ended in Lincoln Park. I kept a descriptive diary during that nearly 1,000-mile trip and in June of this year, 1962, 41 years later, decided to drive again from Salt Lake City to San Francisco over as much of the same route as was humanly possible. The Lincoln Highway has long since disappeared. It was doomed in 1925, along with more than 250 other "name routes," when the numbering system was adopted for national and state highways. The Lincoln Highway markers have gone, and in their place are the business-like signs of U.S. Highway 50. When I made the drive this year, more than time stood between me and the sense of frontier life I felt in 1921. The old wandering dirt road has become a fine concrete highway that got me from Salt Lake City to the Golden Gate in two short, easy driving days. The speed of such modern travel insulates one from history, from the country, and from the aromatic green of the old watering places. The choking alkali dust of the desert and the rain-rutted gashes in the sagebrush plains over which in years gone by the Indians, Mormons, overland wagon trains, forty-niners, and Pony Express riders traveled on a dim track that wavered over bone-dry valleys and around the shoulders of sun-baked mountain ranges are unknown to the traveler of today. Hardly a bird's song is now heard over the rushing sound of the modern automobile. The eye scarcely has time for the blur of a coyote slipping away into the desert gray. In the old days his desolate cry could be heard at night in the dusk outside your roadside camp. The only signs of desert wildlife today are the corpses on the highway of hares, birds, and other small creatures that have become the victims of an out-speeded ecology. With the vanished feeling of the past has also gone most of the sense of the old frontier. In some places only the ghosts of the ghost towns re-

PILGRIMAGE ON WHEELS

main. M a n y historic places our old Packard chugged through in 1921 have disappeared completely. From the new highway are seen only a few tumbled heaps of brick, the scar of a mining excavation still livid on the mountainside, or an indistinct outline of a right-of-way where ore trains once rattled through the lonely valleys. T h e names of some towns and settlements have disappeared from the maps. From other towns almost every beam and brick have been hauled away. Even the wooden rails and headstones in pioneer grave yards have been looted, leaving forgotten mounds to be obliterated by the ubiquitous sagebrush. In August 1921, the salt flats on Lincoln Highway west of Salt Lake City were impassable for our car. T o reach Ely, Nevada, we drove south through Provo and Fillmore to Kanosh, where we struck into the desert for Milford. From here we drove over the state line and reached the Lincoln Highway north of Baker. Just west of Milford in 1921, the ruins of a once fabulously rich mining town called Frisco lay beside the highway. Today all that can be seen is an historical marker. Newhouse, a few miles farther west, was a large town with blocks of well-built miners' family homes when I went through 41 years ago. It is now abandoned, except for a general store which caters to passing travelers or occasional ranchhands. Outside of the bustling town of Ely are Riepetown and Kimberly, in the old days booming mining settlements. Practically nothing is left of Kimberly but bare, empty paved streets lying directly in the path of the excavating machines of the copper mining operation centered at Ruth. In Riepetown, once the home of a lusty group of gambling, drinking, and dancing halls, the only sign of life I could find was a sedate oldtimer who came out of the dim recesses of his general store to sell me a dust-covered package of cookies. T h e town of Hamilton, which in 1868 was the center of a community of 15,000 miners working properties valued at $70 million, has virtually disappeared. U p to a few years ago, the ruins of its famous Withington Hotel still proudly stood two stories high with a roofless front wall of gaping arches and empty windows. Today that ruin has eroded down to piles of broken masonry and sandstone blocks. Not a sign of life remains in Hamilton. All that stirs in the wind blowing off the looted mountain are wisps of shredded wallpaper fluttering like ghosts on the walls of a few sagging houses or rusty sheets of tin clanging dismally in the quiet desolation. Even from those towns that have held their own or have increased t h e i r p o p u l a t i o n , t h e bluff a t m o s p h e r e of t h e old West h a s d e p a r t e d .

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Among the historic mining towns still viable along U.S. Highway 50, Austin has kept most of its old-time flavor. A restaurant, gasoline station, or motel here and there give evidence of some capitulation to tourism, but most of its storied buildings still stand untampered with if not completely intact. Even here, however, as in the city of Fallon farther west, which in 1921 was a booming farming center with a friendly sheriff who enthusiastically expanded on the future of Nevada, the hearty spirit of old times is felt no more. Today, you are another tourist passing through. Traveling today between Salt Lake City and San Francisco at 60 miles per hour along broad, smooth Highway 50, gives you the feeling of being lost to the past. Perhaps the story of what the m a n said at Frenchman's Station, a highway stop about 40 miles east of Fallon, best illustrates the point. W h e n we halted there for food 41 years ago, the proprietor was Emil Bermond, an hospitable Frenchman with a friendly smile, a generous way with victuals, and a fund of stories about old Nevada. When I asked the present proprietor what had happened to Monsieur Bermond, he answered with matter-of-fact impersonality, "Bermond? Oh, he's gone. They planted him a good many years ago!" T h a t is the feeling I had when I retraced that earlier journey at the swift tempo of 1962, " T h e old West is gone; it has been planted a good many years!"

Left to right, Robert E. Knowlden and William E. Oliver, with the Packard Roadster which carried them over the Lincoln Highway from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. W I L L I A M E . OLIVER

PILGRIMAGE ON WHEELS

A TRUTHFUL OF

ACCOUNT

THE

PEREGRINATIONS OF T H E PACKARD F O U R

(4)

AS CONDUCTED BY BILL O N I O N S AND BOB

KNOWLDEN

DURING T H E I R MEMORABLE

TRIP

FROM SALT L A K E C I T Y TO SAN

FRANCISCO

VIA T H E ARROWHEAD TRAIL AND T H E LINCOLN

HIGHWAY

AND SUNDRY OTHER TRAILS. BY W I L L I A M E L L W E L L

ONIONS.

SUNDAY EVENING A U G 14 TO T U E S D A Y A F T E R N O O N , A U G 24,

1921

( M I L F O R D TO S A N FRANCISCO)

Alameda, [California] Aug 25, 1921 Dear Yoshi3 — 1 have just been marking the map of our trip, and now I will tell you of our trip. We left Milford [Utah] about 11 a.m. and began one of the hardest, slowest and hottest days of the whole trip. At first, the road was fine. We roared over this stretch and felt that if such roads continued we would beat our schedule into "Frisco" [San Francisco] (as Bob persisted in misnaming it.) We soon passed Frisco [Utah] — a little abandoned skeleton of a town with false fronts to the stores, and with decayed and wooden sides propped up, — a worn out mining town. We past it and left the lizards rustling in the dead grass. We next ran into Newhouse — a modern milling town like Garfield is, with row and row of fine houses. The houses are built of cool plaster, most of them too much alike. The windows were denuded of glass and boarded up to keep out the wild folks. Under a few trees whose green bravely defied the arid brown of the desert, the company store lay, haunted by a melancholy proprietor and two sheep herding youths, who sadly agreed with him that "the place ain't what it wus!" 2 T h e spelling, grammar, and punctuation in the diary have not been changed but appear on the following pages just as written 41 years ago. 3 Yoshi was R u t h Senior (now Mrs. Roland Lewis), daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Senior, of Salt Lake City. Mr. Senior was a well-known mining lawyer, who died some years ago. His widow still lives in Salt Lake City.

UTAH HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

T h e r e was nothing to drink there but water, so we left, and began the passage of the first desert valley. Before we reached the Eastern slopes of the Sierras we passed through scores of such desolate voids, each divided from the other by the inevitable canyon summit of broken hills, washed gullies, a n d rock strewn roads. T h e first valley, however, will always impress my memory the most, due, no doubt, to the fact t h a t it was our first real desert. T h e ground was harsh dry and grey, and the tinder-like sage-brush h a d thrust through to cause uneven, gnarled bumps everywhere, so t h a t whenever we rode off the deep rutted trail because of our low hung flywheel, we were shook a n d p o u n d e d almost to insensibility. T h e crust of the earth was loose, puffed u p and mottled, a n d marked by the innumerable drops of rain that had fallen each winter, for a short space of time, since the world began. So unvisited by m a n , untouched by foot or tool, was the land! Seen from a distance the valley was that same dreary grey mottled mono-color t h a t one sees flashing past the pullman window when one is travelling on the train through Nevada. Most of our valleys r u n due north and south, you know, R u t h and all the valleys which we traversed lay in t h a t line. Sometimes the south end of a valley would be melted of[f] into indistinctness in the sweltering, rolling heat waves of the far north, while its south end ran up gently, or abruptly into the bare sides of a wall of hills. Sometimes it was the northern end of the valley we crossed, while sometimes, too, as in the case of the great Stepto[e] Valley, in which Ely and McGill lie, and which is one h u n d r e d and sixty five miles long, we cut through the middle of the valley's length and the two ends were lost in the blue welter of the sun on sand or the indistinct illusion of mirage lakes. T o return to our first valley, into which we descended, after leaving Newhouse. T h e dead, brown hills stood a r o u n d it like m u t e giants standing a r o u n d the open grave of some great kin. N o trees were on these hills to relieve the grim monotony. Just sheer, dry, greyish brown rocks a n d sand, piled thousands of feet into the clear air to brood over this L a n d that God Unfinished. O u r road lay before us like a thin livid scar on the dead grey valley floor, and over on the western side we could see it zigzagging u p the hill to the next summit which we knew would lead into another such valley and so on and on until N e v a d a was behind our gasoline tank. After crossing that summit, with a way strewn with steers' bones and horned skulls, we dropped into a lower, wider valley, whose awful desolation was only lessened by the sense of repetition. We had some tire trouble here â&#x20AC;&#x201D; our first, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and passed in the valley floor two teams, a water wagon and a group of sun wearied, heat baked men who were travelling the desert stretches of the " H i g h w a y " to repair the washouts. This one stretch from Milford until we drove through the dusty dusk that night into Garrison, was the hardest bit of going that we encountered throughout the entire trip, due chiefly to the slow speed we were forced to travel because of the deep ruts and high road centers. We intended reaching Ely this day but night fell and found us sneaking down the Narrows towards Garrison, which lay at the south-east end of one of the a r m like canyons leading into the Stepto Valley, a n d at a distance of but seventy five miles from Milford.

Log shanty (center of photograph) at Garrison, Utah.

T h e fall of darkness on the d e s e r t l a n d s is v e r y b e a u t i f u l , Ruth. I couldn't appreciate H a r o l d Bell W r i g h t ' s G o d ' s Great Out-of-Doors in the swelW I L L I A M E. OLIVER tering face of the mid-day sun; but when the same sun, chastened and shame-red has sunk behind the hills it has tortured all thro the day, and the stars glimmer whimsically through the blue mists of the canyon end, then the magic of it wipes out the harshness of day, a n d touches the twisted Junipers to life, and transmutes the wail of a coyote into the echo of a long lost tribesm a n , crying through the valleys a thousand years before the Hollanders settled on the m u d flats at M a n h a t t e n . T h e n one feels w h a t neither H a r o l d Bell Wright nor any other author has ever been able to make one feel. I n spite of the aridity of these places cattle seem to be able to live, a n d their leaders can be heard tinkling along the foot-hills to some water-hole, as they come stumbling down the slopes in the dusk. Occasionally, a range-free horse strikes his hoof on a rock, a n d a swift flash of dun, dappled grey, white and brown is seen as the horses gallop into a fold of the hill. W h e n the moon slips u p , grey and anxious looking, the world is an entirely different world: all the difference between hot gold and cool silver. T h e road loses its "gashy" appearance and becomes smooth â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a dangerous change, for one is tempted to speed, and to hit a "chuck" hole filled with soft, grey, powdery dust is as unpleasant in the moonlight as at any other time. And beside that, tires have a magnetic attraction for nails at night. You know t h a t from experience, for it seems that one nail on a road ten miles long will roll, point u p in the p a t h of your tires at night just as you come by; and it is a pleasant job to change tires in the dark! For ten miles we drove through the deep dusk to Garrison, past a very pretty lake, alive with jumping fish and plaintively calling waterfowl. W e woke u p the little village when we slowed down before the "hotel." T h e dinners h a d all been eaten a n d the stories h a d all been told over again and Garrison with its full strength of four families a n d two travellers (like ourselves, we found later) h a d begun to settle into the somnolence which precedes sleep. T h e n we stamped onto the porch of the hotel. So they all came to life again, a n d while our supper was being prepared we lounged by the car and answered the questions of the few villagers who gathered a r o u n d the "lil ole Packard-four." T h a t night, before going to bed upstairs in a room the wall paper of which transformed the scene into a violet-hung bower, the owner of the Hotel told of his Tungsten Mine, and the fabulous wealth he hoped to enjoy when the metal went u p again. His wife and d a u g h t e r h a d evidently heard this story before, or else its realization h a d no meaning to them, for they rattled and splashed their dishes in the kitchen sink the louder, the louder he talked and waxed enthusiastic. Bob wanted to form a stock company immediately and begin making shipments of ore, via parcel post to save freightage

UTAH HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

costs, but an undeniable yawn from me suggested the same thing to him, and yawning both, we stumbled upstairs. Next morning, about 6 a.m. I got Bob out of bed, and then got out myself. I did it by the simple expedient of telling him t h a t the freezing night must certainly have h a r m e d the radiator of the Peregrinating Packard. T h e hot sun came rolling down the canyon, however, and dispelled my foreboding a n d the rattling of a cracked bell dispelled any thoughts he may have h a d of climbing "back in." W e h a d a very good home raised steak for breakfast, with, however, atrocious oatmeal. I t was about 8 a.m. when we coughed away from Garrison, with its Tungsten Millionaire, its h o m e cooking hotel and its sleepy dogs. I was eagerly watching for some change in the scenary or the topography, for better or for worse, to indicate when we should pass hors de U t a h and into the "Silver State." I t was not until Baker sprang like a rattlesnake out of a browngrey vista ahead that I found myself s u d d e n l y i n N e v a d a . Evidently the border inhabit a n t s of U t a h a n d N e v a d a don't believe in signs! Baker was a fitting omen, as I discovered later. It h a d all the qualities of w h a t I should say is a good-natured Nevada town. It had been deserted long ago. It h a d a defunct W I L L I A M E . OLIVER saloon t h a t sold innocous BudLooking east down Sacramento Pass toward Utah. The weiser a n d real whiskey when ruts of the Lincoln Highway can be seen to the right of the one said confidentially, "Have abandoned highway which is below U.S. Highway 50. you got anything to drink?" Several of its houses h a d been and now weren't. A few little brightly painted cottages told of high-hoping newcomers, who not knowing its days of old, were untroubled by its traditions, broken and un-maintained, and being ignorant of its once pulsating expansiveness when silver was pouring out of the hills around it, believed they were "in on the ground floor" of a boom which was bound to come since breched and puttied [breeched a n d putteed] autoists came through and marked the road with red, white and blue L [Lincoln Highway] signs. I a m reminded here of a sign I saw gliding down the Foothill Boulevard, into O a k l a n d . I t read something like this, " R i c h m o n d will grow! T h e Lincoln Highway has brought the United States to her doors. Tourists Paradise!" Still, I know that some of those ranch people accomplish their intensest enjoyments from the cosmopolitan crowd which keeps the dust whirling outside their picket fences.

PILGRIMAGE ON WHEELS

T h e most of the morning's ride after we left Baker, was spent in dropping in easy stages down a valley that h a d been cut to pieces in its trough by cloud-bursts. After hours of straddling the deep ruts, we caught sight of a large valley in which poplar lined waters lay. For the little patch of green we saw, even at a distance of ten miles, as we swung around N o r t h , and up the great Stepto valley, we were grateful. Green can be the most vital color in the world. It is like salt to the taste. A long stretch of newly constructed grade road lay between us and Ely. T h e r e must be some hidden virtue in dust, just plain dust, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a rock powder, fine m u d , or dried soil, either for the tires or for the lungs of the travellers, because the road builders carefully scrape u p the loose dirt removed by the wind and d u m p it down on the road again. We moved on to Ely, flanked it and thundered through its undefended gates concealed in a dust curtain. After we p u t the boat in a garage and h a d our tires worked on by one of the brood of Vulcan, we sought eats and then, while we waited for the car to be fixed we called around the town to see the sights. And sights they were! Ely is something like Bingham, in as m u c h as it is strung along the bottom of a canyon. McGill, paralleling Garfield, lies across the valley on a hill, a grey-white block of mill buildings and concentration plants. It was still and silent! T h e compact mass of tin roofs blinked idly in the sun. T h e r e is a really very good Main street in Ely. A n u m b e r of large stores, cafes, candy shops a n d garages compose this thoroughfare. T h e garages a n d vulcanizing shops entirely o u t n u m b e r the other places of business, by proportion, and immediately suggest an a m e n d m e n t to Sinclair Lewis's description of Gopher Prairie. Bob a n d I had dinner at a cafe that h a d seen better and livelier days. Its oaken (or were they imitation?) panels were dumbly eloquent of the days t h a t used to be when Ely, as a metal exporting c a m p , was a red spot on the m a p o' things. A suave, carefully combed d a p p e r little m a n waited on us, and in his deft scooping u p of the empty dishes I saw the practised gesture of a roulette king. T h e price of copper played havoc with his destiny, evidently. T w o pale, loose lipped men came in with that nauseate expression of the never-hungry on their pasty faces. T h e i r front hair was combed into a low h u n g meticulous curve, reminiscent of our family photograph album. I judged they were card sharks, or pool professionals. Perhaps they were barbers. N o w I a m going to describe something to you that I saw with my own eyes and which heretofore, although I h a d heard of, I h a d not believed to exist. Bob, w h o h a d sold candy in Ely when there was gold and silver flowing through her veins, asked m e if I should like to look at " T h e Row." Not being exactly sure of w h a t the Row was, or whether I h a d seen it anywhere, I assented, a n d we walked off the main street a block until we came to a residential section, the general appearance of which suggested Arthur, near the A r t h u r Milling Plant, at Garfield. O n e street, about a block in length, was completely lined on both sides by "cribs," the common n a m e for the hovel which the common w o m a n of the mining camps inhabit. E a c h crib was stuck to the side of the other, so that they formed a continuous line of small, wooden, box-like rooms, each with a door and a window opening on the street. T h e line on one side of the street was unbroken except for an establishment t h a t h a d the air of a saloon, with its wide doors and brass fixings here and there.

NEVADA STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT

Ely, Nevada,

in the 1920's, entering

Recent photograph NEVADA STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT

town from the

of the same area on U.S. Highway

west.

50.

PILGRIMAGE ON

WHEELS

T h e saloon place was O'niels Place, and its wide m o u t h was egress to twenty five or thirty other cribs situated, or rather, hidden in its rear. T h e r e must have been about one h u n d r e d and fifty of these places. As I walked u p the wooden side walk, wondering about the feet a n d the folly a n d the tragedy that h a d passed over these same boards, I saw t h a t each little window h a d a card h u n g in it. These cards h a d the names of the occupants on t h e m : Mary, Rose, Helen, Doll, were some of the names I remember. Over each door was an electric meter, and somehow that spinning disc measured more than kilowatts — it measured life for each one of those strange, fallen creatures w h o lived in her wooden box like cell. T h r o u g h the windows, I saw a deal table, a chair or two and a plain, iron bedstead. Erotic pictures on the walls a n d the r e m n e n t of a colored shirtwaist, or discarded powder box gave a clue to the personalities w h o h a d gone. I asked Bob if there were any of these women left and he suggested t h a t we walk to the end to see if there was any sign of life. At the open entrance of O'niels through which the flies a n d the sunbeams went in promiscuous company, a washed out, wizened old m a n sat, with the impassive face of a Chinese. H e was waiting for the fools who never came a n d he h a d been waiting for a long time, I should judge, and furthermore, I should judge he will wait a long time again before Ely will light u p with the old, easy lights again. Another row of cribs faced the Street and as we hesitated on the corner, I saw a w o m a n behind a screen door, watching us. W h e n she saw she h a d been detected she called out. "Boys come on over!" Bob asked me whether I w a n t e d to go there and I said yes; so we strolled u p . She was about twenty five, I should estimate, a n d her features h a d a h a r d complacency t h a t I have only seen once before. T h a t was in the face of a cadaver at the University of U t a h , — a criminal who h a d been shot in a gun battle. H e r voice h a d this same W I L L I A M E. O L I V E R h a r d quality a n d m a d e the "Honey," with which she addressed us, a mockery. S h e a s k e d u s if w e wanted a drink of beer — of whiskey; a n d on our refusal, sat down a n d began a rapid appraisal of us. I could see it g o i n g o n in h e r eyes. S h e crossed her legs, a n d u n d e r her short skirts hideous red g a r t e r s f l a m e d o u t . I felt amused at those garters a n d wondered what primitive aestheticism they were intended to satisfy. The remains of Ely's shanty town district of past days.

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W e learned that w h e n "business was good" there were over two h u n d r e d girls on the " r o w ; " but that at that time there were but thirteen a n d they were starving to death. Bob and I left the door step from which we h a d been talking to her through the screen, a n d walked out of the little desolate corner of Hell to the m a i n street again. I couldn't realize t h a t there were decent people in the city, a n d t h a t they could tolerate such a place. And I wondered w h a t crime, filth, disease, misery, madness, despair and ruin h a d come out of that hole. Isn't that amazing? I would not have dwelt on it so long, but t h a t it impressed m e so m u c h . I have seen a n d sensed such conditions in other countries a n d places but never have I dreamed t h a t close to the heart of a prosperous city such a terrible place would be tolerated. We left Ely about 3 p.m. and started for Eureka, intending to reach that town the same night. We reached Eureka thirty hours later. I t was evident t h a t an itinerant preacher h a d been along the route for on posts a n d saloon doors, and even on the doors of cribs themselves were painted such signs as "Jesus Loves." "Jesus Saves." " R e p e n t Acts 2 : 3 3 . " " O b e y ! " etc. T h e r e was an air of mockery about those new signs on old, empty places. A n d then I imagined a sardonic monster doing this at night and chuckling to himself as he hid among the dark canyons during the day. W e passed Riepetown and then Kimberly. Riepetown, Bob told m e is known as " T h e T o w n that God Forgot," a n d [h]as the wickedest collection of tumble down abodes in Nevada. Kimberly has been a great copper a n d silver mining camp. Now it is dead and empty. W e found ourselves immediately among a series of winding canyons and foothills, with dangerously high road centers. T h e r e were stiff grades too, and treacherous rocks embedded in the center of the trail. Such rocks are as fatal to us as are sunken rocks to a ship. If we hit one at high speed our fly-wheel and shaft would probably be bent, a n d the car laid u p a m o n t h for repairs. T h a t is why m u c h of the road was navigated at eight miles per hour. Dusk rolled down the hillsides and found us picking our way u p White Pine pass. W e h a d a puncture almost immediately a n d in the fifteen minutes that were consumed in changing tires, the dark night came completely on us. So we drove on until we heard a dog barking and saw a light gleaming from a cabin door. Only our winning ways secured us hospitality here, for the people really were crowded. They fixed us supper however and m a d e up a bed in the other shack. T h e n a m e of the m a n a n d his wife was Caputin, a n d since N e v a d a is full of old French emigrants, I judge they were originally of that nationality. M r . C a p u t i n was drilling for oil. T h e next morning we walked over to the drill and by the aid of a mirror were able to look down the n a r r o w bore for four hundred feet. We said goodbye to the Oil drillers about eight o'clock and continued up the pass. Bob fell in love with Caputin's dog, a fine thoroughbred setter. H e kept talking about Spike, w h o m he h a d left in Salt Lake City! I learned quite a lot of things from those oil-drillers. T h e discussion of the "shale formations" and the probable flow of oil raised our enthusiasm to such an extent that

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we forgot our proposed Tungsten C o m p a n y and w a n t e d to promote an oil company. But the cool a n n o u n c e m e n t from M r . Caputin t h a t he a n d his partners h a d already sunk seventeen thousand dollars in that slender hole calmed us down a n d saved the day for a college education. A dome is a strata formation and is arranged in the shape of a bowl turned upside down. I t is under such domes that oil is usually found. T h e Caputins were drilling through such a dome. For three days my keen eyes searched N e v a d a for domes. But I saw n o n e ! I only saw sage brush and prospect holes. A sin cline is a dip in the strata of the earth similar to one side of the cross section of a saucer. . . .* An anti cline is the reverse. . . .* T w o anticlines extending 360Â° form a dome. A monocline is one single curve in the strata when there are a series of undulations. . . .* Faults of course you are familiar with. T h e y are breaks or interruptions in the continuity of a cline where the broken ends are displaced by subsidence... .* It is these faults that give so m u c h trouble to mines, for you can see, if a vein of ore, or a bed of coal is being followed in a strata a n d a fault is reached, it may require months of exploration tunnelling before the other end of the fault is found. Sometimes, as in the case of the Comstock lode, I believe, it is never found and the mine is finished. I mentioned t h a t oil was generally found u n d e r domes. T h a t is because the water, seeping through the earth and running down the strata, is heavier t h a n the oil a n d forces it u p into, a n d u n d e r n e a t h these domes. T h e existence of a rocky layer of shale in the dome prevents the oil from escaping until a drill cuts through, a n d the oil, with thousands of tons of water pressure behind it, goes u p with a spout, and the midgets on the earth's surface shout, "She gushes! She gushes! We're rich!" Isn't it all interesting? White Pine Summit is covered with twisted Junipers and the way lay u p the dry bed of a mountain torrent until we reached the top. I t wasn't necessary to go into Hamilton, but we wanted to get some tobacco for M r . C a p u t i n and some candy for his wife, to be taken down to them by the stage; a n d we wanted to see the relics of what was one of the earliest and greatest of Nevada's silver mines. T h e mines of Hamilton are in a great high hill called Treasure Hill. An old I n d i a n discovered the silver, it is said, a n d would inflame the miners down in the towns by coming in with sacks of silver nuggets. A miner bought his secret from him, and for fifty years, Treasure Hill was ripped and hacked and battered at. N o w it lies again in its age old silence, despoiled and useless! An old G e r m a n lady who h a d kept a store there since '73 told us how the twelve mule stages would come thundering u p the street with the driver cracking his whip and shouting fire to get the people out of the cabins. T h e r e were real stone buildings then. T h e n the big fire came a n d burned Hamilton out. She never recovered from this, a n d w h e n the silver gave out the sound of cracking whips a n d heavy miners' boots departed for ever from Hamilton. After another drive through the canyons and over two more dead valleys, we drove into Eureka, the town that used to control the world's silver market. T h e world has gone o n ; Eureka has gone back. W e got gas here at 45 cents a gallon; a n d had some tire work done. While that was being attended t o ; I sent those postcards away. Bob and I had a soda drink in the dreary ice-cream-soda store. T h e proprietor stung Bob to * Ed. note: Rough sketches illustrate these geologic phenomena in the original diary.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

wrath by charging him forty five cents for an ice cream soda and a plain drink. We were glad to leave this bemeaned relic of another day. The only life in Eureka is the life brought in by the Lincoln Highway tourists and sheep herders who ride in for supplies. Eureka has a Chinese section. It is small, consisting of but five or six places, but these few abodes are picturesque and Chinese enough to color the whole town. Each ramshackle place is built pagoda style, with furtive windows and secretive doors. That is the one thing about "choses chinoises" that antagonizes me. I cannot see the reason for all the furtiveness. Each place was plastered over with red and yellow sheets of Chinese characters. Faded black and tarnished gilt with red and yellow paper pasted on was my impression of them. Eureka is unique in another way. There are no more than three hundred people living in the town I should judge; and yet on seven of the score of hills surrounding her are cemetaries. Seven graveyards for such a little town! Things must have had a lively tempo in the good old days! Out of Eureka we ran on to another sage brush valley, starting rabbits up at almost every turn of the wheel. The comparative security of these rabbits, which was manifested in their fat and lazy escape, contrasted with the seven cemetaries on the seven hills back at Eureka. Just at this time the engine began to cough nervously. It was about 6 oclock and no time for a respectable engine to misbehave. Engines, however, when they do go bad, do so at a time and place which leave no doubt as to their moral collapse. With the moral collapse of the Packard Nine (one always remembers the age of a car at such times) our morale collapsed. Bob and I lifted both sides of the hood simultaneously and peered in and about the rods, pipes, valves and what ever else goes to make the front end of an automobile fascinating. We took out the spark plugs and polished them, drained some oil from the crank case. She still limped and since the plain was getting spooky and dark, we decided to hobble along into the mountains where we hoped to find a ranch house. While Bob was lying on his back soulfully surveying the transmission case I saw two coyotes sneaking around the sage brush at a distance of two hundred yards. They moved like grey shadows in the dusk. I believe this was the only thing that saved Bob from the unholy joy of tearing out the transmission case; for although he didn't believe I had seen coyotes, he got up and threw the tools into the side pocket. We stuttered through the gloomy portals of "Devil's Gate" and found ourselves winding along a dugway. It was pitch dark when we reached "Hay Ranch." Mrs. Fox, there, gave us lodging for the night. I found in the course of the conversation that she was the aunt of a Miss Kitchen who was a sophomore at the University of California. I didn't sleep well, for I was beginning to doubt our ability to reach Berkeley in four days and I knew I wanted to be at school as soon as possible. So next morning about four oclock I was up and getting the car ready: â&#x20AC;&#x201D; filling the radiator and waterbags, oiling and tightening, etc. Bob swore that I had never been to bed at all. We had breakfast and left about 6:30 a.m. Miss Fox had given me some mail to take to a ranch "just a little ways down the road." It turned out to be Grimes Ranch, almost thirty miles away! We were ready for dinner when we reached that place. Mrs. Grimes was one of the Dickens' characters misplaced in time. She was extremely voluble and volatile, and while she boiled potatoes and fried bacon, kept up a

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running stream of gossip from the kitchen. I soon found a book in which to interest myself, —- Laurence Hope's " I n d i a n Love Lyrics." But Bob was idle — and helpless. H e endured it by keeping behind a screen of smoke from his corn-cob pipe. Mrs. Grimes was evidently yearning for some one to talk to, for she sat while we ate and kept us both supplied with questions, bacon, potatoes and coffee. I asked her how she came to have Hope's " I n d i a n Love Lyrics" a n d intimated t h a t I should like to take it with me. She looked through it with the expression of one w h o anticipates the discovery of a great masterpiece hidden in his own home. But the lyrics seemed to baffle her. She said, " I don't know w h a t it's all about. I t seems to be love or something." I offered her half a dollar and the anticipation came to maturity in her face. Some one h a d paid her fifty cents for that old book! T h e first song in the book is "Less than the Dust." "Till I Awake" is also contained in the volume, and "Kashmiri Song." T h e r e are some beautiful verses in it. [Verses deleted.] We left "Grimes" under a shower of thanks for the mail we h a d delivered. Bob was lusting after a real well-cooked m e a l ; I, after a bath. T h e roads were good, however, and we spun along in good spirits. And now I must retrace my steps back a distance of twenty miles. This is proof of that theory in psychology that the mind forgets and ignores the incidents t h a t are not pleasing. I had completely forgotten our near-breakdown. About ten miles out of the " H a y R a n c h , " something began to thrash itself thunderously in the gear case. We stopped a n d emptied t h a t complicated box of iniquity of oil and began fishing with our fingers. Bob drew out several pieces of broken teeth, — gear teeth. We discovered that almost the entire length of two teeth in the Master Gear and three teeth in the large Ring G u a r d h a d been chewed off. T h a t was serious, for a new gear of that sort would mean a rest for two weeks, at least, while a new p a r t came from San Francisco. W h e n we h a d cleared the casing of all the broken pieces of steel, we p u t the covers on again and drove very cautiously on. T h e car ran all right and continued to do so. But we stopped every ten or fifteen miles and fished out of that case more broken pieces of steel. For a day we were in sad anxiety! After leaving Mrs. Grimes, we forgot the broken gears, — the car r a n smoothly and well. T h e sky was a little overcast and the day bearably cool. This m a d e the trip more enjoyable. Mrs. Grimes h a d told us t h a t the "Willows" where we stopped for water h a d a lady dentist who was ranching. I remembered seeing a little, shrivelled u p , pinchskinned m a n in breeches and brown shirt and realized that it h a d been the "Lady Dentist !'' Poor neuralgic cow-punchers! Soon after this, we dropped out of a group of broken hills over the first summit into a low valley, and began the ascent of Toyiabe Range. T h e r e was a beautifully constructed Government road here and the Packard flew at it like a hungry grey-hound. As we ascended, the country became greener and the trees untwisted, until at the Toyiabe Summit we found ourselves among pines for the first time. T h e grey-mud hills h a d vanished with the sage brush and good, clean red rock and granite met our eyes. F r o m the summit to Austin, which nestles on the west side of the Toyiabe Range, we dropped almost a thousand feet in three miles. T h e road was beautiful, — a series of perfectly graded curves and m a c a d a m . T h e pleasure I got out of this stretch of road

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S58 4 made me speculate on whether „ „ „ ^ j JJ. our aesthetic taste produced the curve or whether the need of curves produced the pleasure we derive from them. « .o, 1 3 Austin came in sight, far dS.I gj> S s x d P.. e:^< below us, long before we reached * °«§0i it. It is a compact little mining g s _ i ^ 8 a o i S s ' S ' « S a I I i* 3 a " 8 4 - *• =s * = llSifi«|||lg'|E|Sg5||fi|s 'i3 1 s|a5|sE«|Sa?2 jjj|" 8 |™gee||lg|5 = -1 town, cleanly and tidy. Its roofs are red and green and its houses are white walled. There are three Churches here, Catholic, Episcopal and Presbyterian. The main street lies at an incline of about twenty degrees. 33 l * = •» f i It was just dusk again, • i £ rf as] Friday evening when we pulled o « a f S S H . up to a Garage a n d walked J E - C B P O KouJJJE"»:s:iE'aKs;E- < o u E-e5 e-E-ac ja-oE-E-o down to the International Hotel. We met the Sheriff on the way down. He had seen us come in and, like almost all of his fellow citizens, wanted to know the a' » slg make, year and the number of cylinders in the car. These m o u n t a i n dwellers, miners, i -5 «~S * I | £ £ £ | J s § - ^ e l f t l " ! ™ ^ £•="£§' „•£§ -,1:^ sheepherders, since the Lincoln 2 £ S £ £ i Highway was completed, have developed a fanatical interest in <Eli| V JMl&l "Affaires de l'Essence et de 1'automobile." T h e Sheriff was a tall, - 5 I stout wholesome looking man <"£ h5« « ;S o < with a red face, yellow whiskers, a? 5 large sombrero, and two guns. |s-°_Sg > I I j.Si § |t2 | j g | _ h 3a { J £a«E°SHe asked us to come up to his cojjjs; *«jfiEfllJ D H E-oSE-XOS: BSoSBSMcorKBSCfc KWJBSE-fcm 3 < 1 eii*l2 i office and have a talk after supper and I, who had had "little talks" with sundry other sheriffs, was for continuing on to Carson City that night. But the T-bone steak we each consumed was B s

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U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

resist-less. After getting a room, we went to the Sheriff's office and talked roads, cars and Carson City with him. It seemed that every Sheriff we met, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and somehow we met 'em all -â&#x20AC;&#x201D; from Austin to Carson City, was on the pay roll of the Boosters' Club of that latter city. The Sheriff showed us the hand cuffs, leg irons, manacles and chains that Austin had used on her criminals since the earliest days. His descriptions were no doubt very interesting to Bob; but I could hardly fully enjoy them. I returned to my room while Bob played pool awhile. After writing a little and reading a little I went to sleep and didn't wake up until 5 oclock the next morning. We left Austin about 6 a.m. with instructions from the Sheriff concerning a detour, which, he said, would save us many miles of very bad roads. This detour was from Austin to lone and thence to Westgate, & took us out of our road twenty miles through some of the wildest and most gorgeous mountain scenary I have ever seen. However, if the regular road was worse than the detour it must have been unimaginably bad. We stopped at Welche's Ranch for breakfast and then continued to lone. From Austin to lone the road is very good; but from lone to Westgate, poor. lone is an abandoned quicksilver camp. There is one store there, ionic in its uniquity; it is the store, post office, town hall, and trading post for the Indians. When we went in there were several squaws and bucks and papooses in there. They left immediately for some reason when they saw us. The store keeper, who looked like a superannuated librarian, had become so accustomed to the Indians that he spoke in grunts. "Have you any crackers?" "Ugh!" "What does gasoline cost here?" "Ugh!" We found it cost 55 cents a gallon. "Is the road from here to lone good?" "Ugh!" "Is it bad?" "Ugh!" We gave up the game and came away. The country we ran into now was a enigmatical as the old man's speech had been. Once we passed a prospector, not the old fashioned kind, but one of the moderns. He was prospecting with a Ford! When we entered the mountains again, we saw strange hills of red, green, or blue rock and shale. Every mountain was jagged and broken off. The land seemed to be filled with gigantic broken teeth, bleeding red and bleached white. Several mining plants we discerned perched like gulls' nests at the ragged tops. A sign board at a crossing read Lodi, and at another place, in an abrupt canyon, we found the ruined dirt hovels of what must have been the miners of the days of "forty nine." The hills were alternately red rock, grey granite, green silicate, and white soda mud. After two hours of this wandering about through these terrible, silent staring canyons, we climbed a ridge and dropped through the foothills to Westgate. At Westgate one may buy water at five cents a gallon & also gasoline! God knows what the gasoline would cost! From Westgate to Sand Springs, the roads were fine. In fact, just before we reached Frenchman's Ranch, we passed a dried up salt lake, smooth and slick from packed-in crystals. We opened up a little here, forgot our broken gears and with the throttle only half open, flashed through about three miles in less than three minutes. Frenchman's Station had the appearance of a place constructed for "parties." Bob said, "I'll bet there have been a few good ones staged there." I astounded the proprietor by talking French to him. He is from Grenoble, and Bob had to pry him

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away before we could leave. H e gave us a lot of cheese to eat with the last box of those crackers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; these were short-bread and were awfully good. At Sand Springs, we were cursorily inspected for bed bugs, etc, and allowed to proceed. W e intended to reach Fallon t h a t night, but struck the worst road in the whole world a n d night found us ten miles from Fallon. We found a barn at a R a n c h and ate some raisons I h a d bought at lone. Bob was very tired a n d I was feeling a little discouraged at our slow progress. But we were both immensely philosophical as we lay beneath t h a t hay stack. W h e n morning came, we lost no time in starting for Fallon. We were both hungry a n d dirty a n d hardly fit objects to be seen by the C h u r c h crowds. O u r way lay through beautiful farming land, all of it reclaimed, irrigated and drained. We h a d a little trouble with the gasoline feed, b u t eventually arrived in Fallon. O u r tank was just about empty and drank in twenty gallons without taking a b r e a t h . T h e n Bob and I went to the "Barrel H o u s e " and h a d breakfast. This place was t a m e d ! T h e only bottle in the place was a ketchup bottle a n d the only barrel was a pickle barrel. Several good sized, he-man poker games a n d E u c h r e were going on, however. I heard t h a t E u c h r e is legal in N e v a d a because it is interpreted as a game of skill. We tasted some Fallon cantaloupes a n d took some along with us. T h e people seemed proud of their place, and their farms a n d the Fallon Cantaloupe. I learned t h a t much of t h e land h a d been alkali, swampy a n d as b a d as the black alkali salt spring morass we h a d plowed across the previous night, b u t t h a t drainage a n d water from a government d a m h a d changed the face of n a t u r e , so to speak, a n d m a d e m a n y rich farmers in t h a t community. I felt, from seeing this, t h a t the transformation of the West side lands in Salt Lake City was absolutely feasible a n d likely. T h e r e are quite a few oil derricks and considerable oil exploration here. Practically the entire Salt Spring district is leased to oil companies. I don't think m u c h oil is flowing, however. I t is still a gamble. Almost the first person we met in Fallon was the town marshall. H e asked us where we came from a n d whither we were bound, and in true Carson City patriotism told us to be sure and pass thro Carson City. We left about 11 a.m. for Carson City, a n d after an interesting ride, because the country was green and flourishing, reached t h a t place. I t was evident that with the Rockies behind us, the stark p a r t of N e v a d a was passed, and California was coming near. Rivers r a n in the valley bottoms, trees lined the lush fields of lucerne, a n d villages were more numerous. Racing down the hill into Carson City we h a d a blow out, a n d stopped twenty minutes to change tires, while an individual w h o m we h a d passed several miles u p the road drove by us with a smirk of self-satisfaction on his face. T h a t thing is galling! However, we reached historic Carson City, n a m e d in honor of the great scout K i t Carson. O u r car in the garage, we walked a r o u n d the town, and then h a d ice-cream in a real store. I t was Sunday afternoon, and the girls certainly did look good to us, w h o h a d been looking on Indians so long. Since we left Payson, U t a h , we h a d not seen a sign of paved road. Now, here in Carson City we h a d the unqualified luxury of rolling smoothly u p a n d down the main street on p a v e m e n t several times before we left the town a n d began to climb King's Canyon.

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W e were now tackling the Sierras, the mighty snow-mountains which barred the road of the early emigrants on their way to the Pacific O c e a n . F r o m Carson City to to the S u m m i t of the Sierras is about 2500 feet and we covered that on a twelve mile grade mostly in "high." T h e canyon is beautiful. T h e pines became larger as we ascended, a n d the fir trees lost their dwarfish, twisted appearance and became noble. E a c h wind of the road opened u p a new vista of valleys in blue haze, of far away countryside, golden in the afternoon sun, and covered with painted barns and dot-like cattle. So precipitous were the sides t h a t the tips of pine trees, whose roots were buried in the splintered rocks far below, were close to a n d level with the edge of the road around which our car swung dizzily. At one place we were stopped by a Traffic "control" who held us with several other cars while a group of tourists came down from the Californian side. We got away first, a n d were soon roaring u p the rocky trail, "exhausting" a great cloud of blue smoke behind us. Bob looked back and seemed pleased to find that we h a d apparently left everything behind. T o have m a d e one mistake on that grade would have landed us down a thousand or so feet among the pines, a n d we drove rather fast, due, no doubt, to the exhileration of such wonderful scenary. A big Hudson roared past us at a bend in the road, where we slowed to avoid a rock in the road. Its driver gave us a peculiar look of disgust as he went ahead of us a n d Bob was enraged at his disdain. W h e n I looked back, however, and saw the great cloud of choking acrid gasses our exhaust was emitting, I knew immediately why the fellow h a d looked so displeased. W e reached the top of the grade and at once burst into full view of glorious Lake T a h o e , which lay with the sun on its waters. Nothing can equal the wonder of t h a t sight! T o us, who h a d been travelling for days through dead, p a r c h e d lands, the sight of God holding that blue flood in the cupped p a l m of his h a n d was a miracle. T h e deep rooted mountains crowd and shoulder together and hold this clear body of crystal like a full goblet in offering to the skies. T h e firs a n d the pines troop down to the edges of the Lake where huge rocks lie where the h a n d of creation hurled them. T h e sun, I said, was resting full on the Lake as we r a n "silently down from the mountain's crown." It distilled gold into the blue, and its red light ricochetted into the windows of the hotels and cabins that stood on the east shore of the lake. We stopped outside Glenbrook Hotel a n d walked out on the pier to drink in the vastness of the great place. T h e water was perfectly clear, a n d cool blue, with white sand gleaming u p from the bottom. H e r e and there, around the Lake's edge, lazy spirals of smoke floated from the tips of the trees. H e r e and there a call, or a peal of laughter echoed from the woods, or the faint d r u m m i n g sound of an automobile drifted down a hidden trail. W h e n we came back from the Pier, the autoists w h o m we h a d left were there. They, too, were spelled by the wonder in the scene. After they h a d looked about them awhile, however, they j u m p e d on us and told us laughingly t h a t we h a d almost gassed everybody. T h e y said t h a t they had to wait until the Canyon cleared u p before they could breathe. T h a t m a d e Bob roar, and w h e n we went back to the Packard, he patted his darling before he climbed in as if he had found in her an a d d e d virtue to be proud of!

PILGRIMAGE ON WHEELS

We motored on through these lovely woods with the L a k e at our right elbow, passing campers in the side trails cooking supper, a n d autoists going on u p to Glenbrook to dance, and, at last, came to Lakeside, where we stopped for the night. At Lakeside Hotel, we were assigned to a dear little log cabin in which to sleep, and then, after cleaning ourselves as m u c h as possible, went in the great log dining room of the Hotel where we h a d a grand supper. T h e r e were tasteful pictures on the white walls, fir cones, a n d pine branches, and heads and skins of deer, pumas, badgers and coyotes. T h e floor was waxed a n d highly polished and I was sorry that the college crowd h a d left, for I would have liked to have danced here. A Miss G o r m a n from Sacramento was staying there with Mrs. Cox, who m a n a g e d the Hotel. I played some college songs, Bob sang, a n d then she sang, too. She h a d a nice voice. W h e n it was dark, a great log fire was m a d e inside a circle of rocks a n d easy chairs were set outside the Hotel. H e r e we sat, and talked u n d e r the stars. All the little cabins h a d lights a n d the night was filled with a blue beauty a n d star-silver magic. I was reluctant to go to b e d ; but did, and slept fine in t h a t little log cabin. We left Lakeside about six the next morning a n d continued on down the wonderland of T a h o e . Soon we passed over the state line into California. I could feel the electric thrill of it! T h e r e was a different golden glamour in the air. I was in California! Not until then, did I realize the hold the sunny California h a d got on me. I was glad to leave Nevada, the L a n d t h a t God Swept in a H e a p and Left T h e r e ! Every mile of the trail now was signed with moving and stirring bits of early Californian history. T h e early emigrants; the tragic D o n n e r expedition, the old wayside inns and hotels; Bullock yokes, with the horned skulls of oxen in them, swinging from the trees to m a r k historic spots; the sites of famous b u t vanished hostelries; the staging points of the m o u n t a i n pony-express; Observation Point, where the weary emigrants with the yoked oxen straining u p the rocky trail paused a n d saw the wonderland of the Pacific open u p to them. I t is a tremendous experience. Coming down from C a m i n o that morning, Tuesday, we were astonished to r u n suddenly on to a paved highway. W e were in Placerville, and we almost fainted in disbelief when we learned that from then on until we reached San Francisco we would not have occasion to touch a dirt road. After spending a few moments in Placerville we drove out in ectasy for Sacramento. T h e road was intoxicating, and once Bob let her out to seventy! But t h a t was playing with Fate. I glanced apprehensively at our tires. T h e air was getting hot now a n d our tires I knew h a d never been used to such hot roads. T r u e enough, coming out of the golden hills of Placerville and El D o r a d o , we blew out a tire. This h a p p e n e d almost in the center of the old placer diggings of early California history, where whole hills of gravel had been washed out, and whole river beds dredged u p for gold. W e soon changed our tire, and held our breath as we continued over the hot road to Sacramento. About ten miles from the Capital, another tire blew out and we were "checked." O u r spare tire h a d been used, so I caught a ride into Sacramento with the blown out tube in order to get it vulcanized, while Bob was coming in on the rim. T h e m a n I rode in with was a rancher from San Bernadino. His n a m e was Davis, and he h a d his wife a n d a boy and girl with him. T h e whole family were just

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

completing a thorough tour of California, and were enthusiastic and happy and bursting with tales of their experiences. Mr. Davis had lost money farming the year before this, and in order not to lose money this year he had sold a bit of land to pay his taxes and finance his trip, and had taken his family out to see "what God hath wrought." That was rather far sighted and fine of him, wasn't it? Incidentally, this case is an index of what is happening over the country. I found a vulcanizing shop in Sacramento, and, by the time Bob came trundling in, the tire was ready to go on. This delay, however, prevented us from reaching Stockton before dark as we had hoped to do. We used up all our money, to the cent, in getting a supper, and after unsuccessfully trying to get a check cashed, we started out in the late afternoon for Stockton, feeling thankful our gasoline tank was replete, if not our pocket books. Night came down and our lights were not strong enough to drive by, so we drew into the side and waited for the moon to come up. The moon came up about 12, midnight, and we essayed to drive by her beams. But fair Cynthia was not bright enough and we gave up in disgust. We had hoped to reach Stockton, where we could cash a check and get accomodations; but we were fourteen miles away on a dark road, with no money and no place to sleep. So we ambled along and peered towards the side for a likely looking barn. We passed several side roads and finally, coming to one around which were clustered some white buildings of uncertain shape, but which, I judged, were ranch buildings. We drove in. I got out the coats etc. and started for the largest of the white buildings to find some hay with which to make our bed. I fell over a tombstone. We were in a graveyard. The white objects were mausoleums! The news was galvanic. Bob backed the car out with a whoop and we drove down the road two miles before we stopped. Then, under a tree, Bob slept in the car and I slept on a table, until the pale morning came and the birds began to stir among the leaves over me. We started for Stockton — Bob had been up an hour around a fire he had built at the roadside — and 7:30 a.m. saw us looking for Vera's home. We eventually located the Keltons.4 They were enthusiastic over us, and fixed us up a nice breakfast. After a short rest and a little music, we said goodbye and went down town where we found Mr. Kelton, who helped us get the check cashed. Mr. Kelton looked fine. He has a good position in the offices of "The Stockton Record." Vera looks well, but considerably changed. She seems very happy. Mrs. Kelton seems just a little mite older, but her tremendous vivacity keeps her youthful. As we came closer to the coast — the country became more beautiful — golden hills and blue skies, with white buildings and red-tiled, Spanish roofs. It seemed as though Stockton was a few minutes ride to Alameda, so excited was I. Bob kept remarking on the beauty of the countryside, and the bungalows everywhere. Just before we reached Haywards, while we were climbing to the top of the hills that make Niles Canyon, we saw an automobile turned upside down at the side of the 4 Mr. Kelton was employed in the printing trades in Salt Lake City when I became acquainted with his daughter previous to 1921. H e moved to Stockton about 1919 to work on a newspaper there. I do not remember his full name.

PILGRIMAGE ON WHEELS

road. The accident had just occured, and the occupants of the car, a man, his wife, and his daughter, had by some miracle escaped death. It seems that they were descending the steep grade and the car became uncontrollable. We helped to put the badly wrecked machine right side up and continued on our way at a slower speed. Soon we were descending the Foothill Boulevarde and how the people stared at this low, long, mud-spattered, dust-covered car that came roaring through Oakland with packages roped on the rear! Bob was excited to see the Bay — it was too misty to see San Francisco, but the shipping and traffic and buildings amazed him. With a loud honking of the horn and an additional roar from the exhaust, we swung around the little park before our house. Dad was just going up the steps and he turned in startled surprise. Mother was sitting in the window — I saw her look up — jump and then she came running down the steps and flung her arms around me and scolded me for not sending word before. I told her I had tried to phone from Stockton — but couldn't raise the house. Then Dick, Marie and Albert came from school, and we had a grand re-union. After lunch, Bob, Albert and I drove to the Ferry, took the Auto Ferry to San Francisco and drove around that marvelous city just as we came in, bag and baggage, dust and dirt. I was certainly proud to show off San Francisco to Bob. He was thrilled, too. Especially by the Bay and the great liners and warships riding there; and the great ship yards! We met two of the autoists whom we almost asphixiated in Kings Canyon, on the Ferry. They had just come in, too. We returned about six oclock and put the Peregrinating Packard away to rest after her trip of almost a thousand miles. It was some trip! Finis.

••*:

The Southern

Cheyennes.

•;...--j*«.

By D O N A L D

J. B E R T H R O N G . The Civilization

of the

American Indian Series, L X V I (Norm a n : University of O k l a h o m a Press, 1963. xvi + 4 4 6 p p . $5.95) F o r a half-century George Bird Grinnell's The Fighting Cheyennes, a n d his other writings on the tribe, have been a principal source of information for the g e n e r a l r e a d e r or i n t e r e s t e d s c h o l a r . While Grinnell's work has stood the test of years there has occurred a gradual emergence of new information, or information h e did n o t have access to, that needed to be placed before m o d e r n readers. While it alters the Grinnell story only in detail — his sympathies for the I n d i a n point of view are well-known — nevertheless, the n e w Berthrong book m a k e s a c o n t r i b u t i o n . I t is n o t o n l y d e t a i l e d a n d w e l l - b a l a n c e d , b u t it is thoroughly documented. Grinnell was a contemporary, lived a m o n g the Cheyennes, was deeply devoted to their cause (as a perusal of his correspondence in the Bureau of I n d i a n Affairs, National Archives will s h o w ) , a n d in this he necessarily lost some objectivity. Berthrong, who was not around a half-century ago, does n o t suffer from being too close to the historical forest, a n d in this h e has a distinct advantage. O n e of the attractive features of The Southern Cheyennes, aside from its excellent format a n d attractive art work, is the balance the a u t h o r has used. His tracing of the early tribal migrations, his description of the way of life these people pursued, a n d especially his fine chapter on religion a n d government, explain a great deal about the "whys" that occur in later chapters. F r o m t h a t well-developed background Berthrong essays upon

the life of the Cheyennes along the Arkansas River, showing the separation of the tribe into N o r t h e r n a n d Southern branches, a n d the gradual move of the Southern Cheyenne branch toward reservation life. A great deal of the central section of the book is devoted to the fate of these Indians as it was spelled o u t in the aut u m n of 1864. T h e Sand Creek Massacre is well-known a n d much-written about; one can still get a h o t argument on the subject in Colorado as Michael Straight d i s c o v e r e d w h e n d i s c u s s i n g his r e c e n t novel, A Very Small Remnant, before a Denver group. Berthrong handles this highly complex a n d completely controversial m a t t e r with both skill and objectivity. H i s c h a p t e r s o n t h i s p h a s e of Southern Cheyenne life stand as the best thing done to date on the subject. Because the scope of his subject is so vast, the a u t h o r was obliged to make a choice of cutting back on his voluminous material or terminating the story at the point where these Indians were relegated to life in I n d i a n territory. H e chose the latter, a n d wiser, course. This provides him with n o t only the satisfaction of having done the early period thoroughly b u t with the opportunity of continuing the story in a subsequent volume. His colleagues in the profession sincerely hope he will write t h a t book. Again, he wisely chose to let the N o r t h e r n Cheyennes go their way a n d to write of them in another volume or to leave t h a t task for some other writer. T h e magnificent University of Oklah o m a Press The Civilization of the American Indian Series, contains 66 volumes at this time. As in any series some of the efforts are better than others. Berthrong's

REVIEWS AND PUBLICATIONS w o r k is w i t h o u t q u e s t i o n a s t a n d o u t a m o n g these studies a n d with it t h e a u thor has established himself thoroughly in the fraternity of historians. R O B E R T G. A T H E A R N

University

Colorado

short, d o not substitute one for the other; they a r e each relevant a n d important, a n d t h e scholarly world can be grateful for t h e m both. Greever's illustrations are numerous a n d well-chosen. T h e close-up maps of each region are most helpful. T h e book is well p u t together a n d handsomely de-

The Bonanza West: The Story of the Western Mining Rushes, 1848-1900. By W I L L I A M S. G R E E V E R .

ROBERT V . H l N E

University

(Norman:

University of O k l a h o m a Press, 1963. xiv + 4 3 0 p p . $5.95) William S. Greever, professor of history at the University of I d a h o , has here attempted a comprehensive examination of western mining with its economic, social, political, a n d cultural implications, and he has succeeded very well. H e begins with the California mines; spends a good deal of time on N e v a d a a n d t h e Comstock; covers Colorado, M o n t a n a , and I d a h o ; a n d concludes with t h e Klondike a n d t h e Yukon. E a c h area is treated in turn, a n d the only major mining terrain which is given relatively little a t t e n t i o n , p e r h a p s j u s t i f i a b l y , is t h e Southwest. I n the areas described the book is especially rich in detail, giving aspects of life in t h e mines which are most difficult to find elsewhere. O n e is inevitably tempted to compare Greever's book with a similar volume on western mining by R o d m a n Wilson Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1880, which appeared this same year. Paul's book is shorter, perhaps by the nature of the series of which it is a part. Greever presents more details; Paul takes a b r o a d e r v i e w of t h e w h o l e s u b j e c t . Greever by n o means ignores the bigger, n a t i o n a l q u e s t i o n s , b u t P a u l is m o r e given to organizing his material topically and with a broadly comparative m e t h o d as, for example, with t h e growth of selfgovernment on the mining frontier. Paul takes rather dramatic advantage of u n usual materials like contemporary songs, in which particular Greever only occasionally i n d u l g e s . T h e t w o b o o k s , i n

California

First White Women Over the Rockies: Diaries, Letters, and Biographical Sketches of the Six Women of the Oregon Mission who made the Overland Journey in 1836 and 1838. I n t r o d u c tions a n d Editorial Notes by CLIFFORD MERRILL

DRURY.

T W O Volumes.

Northwest Historical Series, V I a n d V I I . (Glendale: T h e A r t h u r H . Clark Company, 1963. Vol. I, 280 p p . ; Vol. I I , 382 p p . $21.00) While t h e status of women is being w o r l d - e x a m i n e d today ( 1 9 6 3 ) , a twovolume record of t h e courage of women has just been released from the press. Six women, most of t h e m brides, came west with their husbands in t h e period before wagons eased the way to t h e far reaches of Oregon. Because all of t h e m kept diaries or wrote letters recording their e x p e r i e n c e s , this i n v a l u a b l e s t u d y h a s been m a d e possible. M r . Drury, the editor, has spent 27 years in assembling the materials. H e has traveled t h e trails, examined old mission sites, i n t e r v i e w e d d e s c e n d a n t s of t h e women, a n d visited libraries from coast to coast. As a result he has produced a ripe book. " T h i s is the amazing story of t h e first w h i t e A m e r i c a n w o m e n t o cross t h e Rocky M o u n t a i n s , " explains the editor in his Introduction. " H e r e for t h e first time copies of their diaries a n d some of their letters . . . are brought together in one published account." T w o of these women, M r s . Marcus Whitman and Mrs. H. H . Spalding,

82 crossed the continent from western N e w York with their husbands in 1836. T h e journey took about seven months. F r o m the Missouri frontier the party rode horseback most of the 1,900 miles to Fort Walla Walla on the Columbia River. Since it was then considered unbecoming for a w o m a n to ride astride, t h e lady missionaries rode on sidesaddles. T h r o u g h p a r t of the distance the missionaries took a light wagon, in which the w o m e n occasionally rode. For protection against wild Indians, the party arranged to travel with fur trader caravans. F o u r newly w e d d e d missionary couples a n d a single m a n followed over the same trail to Oregon in 1838. With a dedication to serve the benighted heathen, these sisters also m a d e the trip on horseback, riding the old-fashioned sidesaddles. A ride of 25 or 30 miles a day was fairly common, a n d once they m a d e a record of 45 miles in one day! H e r e in the women's diaries and letters is an epic story of great devotion to an ideal, a n d of bulldog tenacity to t h a t ideal through 10 long discouraging years. T h e story comes to a tremendous climax in the W h i t m a n Massacre of November 29, 1847, when 14 whites were killed by the natives they h a d sought to serve. T h e tragedy resulted in a b a n d o n m e n t of the mission. T h e average age of the 13 missionaries was 28 for the women and 29 for the men. All seemed imbued with the deep religious convictions of the N e w England Protestants of their generation. Religion was for t h e m the most serious concern of life. But to hungry natives, with their language barrier, the intricacies of the theology of these highly educated missionaries were a complete loss. O u t of the recordings of these women come revelations of the h u m a n spirit — the little jealousies, the pains of childbirth, the sorrows at the death of their children, a n d the longings for the comfortable homes left behind.

UTAH HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

For serious-minded readers, who seek contemporary accounts of the events of yesterday, this study is priceless. As is characteristic of all books by this publisher, the volumes have a handsome form a t a n d are enriched by adequate footnotes, Bibliography, Index, illustrations, and a helpful Introduction. A N N W.

Provo,

HAFEN

Utah

Nevada's Turbulent Yesterday . . . a Study in Ghost Towns. By D O N A S H BAUGH. (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1963. 346 p p . $7.50) Nevada's Turbulent Yesterday is the culmination of every working newspaperman's d r e a m — to publish a book. T h e late D o n Ashbaugh was a Californian and a veteran newsman (he scooped the world with his story on the tragic death of Carol L o m b a r d ) when he came to Las Vegas, Nevada, to accept the job of S u n d a y f e a t u r e e d i t o r on t h e L a s Vegas Review-Journal. H e was on the staff 10 years. T h e material in his book h a d its beginnings as a series of Sunday features that just grew. T h e first is not included in the book; it consisted of pictures of White Pine County. W h e n the final feature appeared, Ashbaugh h a d covered over 1,347 ghost towns of the State of Nevada. Nevada's Turbulent Yesterday is breezy journalese, filled with alliteration and typically newspaper eyecatching t i t l e s — " T h e R a m b u n c t i o u s Reese River R u s h , " " T u s c a r o r a Tooted," and " N o Cherries, N o Creek." Nothing published a b o u t lusty e a r l y N e v a d a c a n touch this book for its colorful rootin', tootin', brawling style. T h e r e are errors, historical ones, but Ashbaugh's style is not geared to the researcher. None of his mistakes are serious. M r . Ashbaugh wrote in the ReviewJournal after his first year of highly successful s t o r i e s , " M a y b e G h o s t T o w n s

REVIEWS AND

PUBLICATIONS

was born accidentally, a n d it is true I didn't care m u c h for it at the start, b u t now I love the little rascal and every sand blasted, broken arched feature of it a n d I hope it will keep on growing," a n d grow it did until it became a book. Paul Bailey undertook a tremendous task when he edited these hundreds of stories after M r . Ashbaugh's death. It was he who chose the pictures and p u t the book into its final form. Ashbaugh was no easy author to cut. MARION WELLIVER

Nevada

Historical

Society

A Navajo Sketch Book. By D O N PERCEVAL with a descriptive text by C L A Y L O C K E T T . (Flagstaff: N o r t h l a n d Press, 1962. xv + 9 8 p p . $14.50) This is a book almost without words. And well may it be. Words are useless to the reader w h o is unable to sense the Navajo way of life in actual contact or through the excellent sketches of D o n Perceval. T h e Navajo is generally a quiet person and prefers other means of communication and insight t h a n the constant and incessant conversational way of the white m a n . I t is strange t h a t a single group of people, numbering 100,000 within the U n i t e d States and occupying thousands of square miles, should b e of so l i t t l e i n t e r e s t t o t h e a v e r a g e American. This is particularly unfortunate when one considers it is first of all an indigenous culture, secondly a profound culture, a n d thirdly a most colorful culture. Most nations have d r a w n upon the rich arts a n d crafts of their pasts and have been greater for it. W e have virtually ignored our "natives," a n d our arts and crafts have too long exhibited a certain poverty because of it. M r . Perceval's book should help us find a nation within a nation a n d realize each can prosper through the other, though perhaps in different ways. T h e sketches are perhaps at their best in the small pen and ink drawings which

admirably capture the informal attitudes which are peculiarly Navajo. W i t h even casual observation one can recognize a Navajo a mile away. T h e Navajos are in harmony a n d at complete ease with their environment. This is also graphically portrayed in the pen and ink drawings. T h e more studied a n d documentary drawings a p p e a r labored a n d reflect only surface features as was perhaps intended. H o w ever, there is no reason to neglect the more significant innate qualities even here. T h e water colors are still drawings with the addition of tinted washes. Perh a p s a g r e a t e r r i c h n e s s of c o l o r a n d value, commensurate with the Navajo, would have been more convincing. H o w ever, when one considers t h a t this is a "sketch book" only, and not a book of profound art works w o u n d with deep emotional insight, then one can overlook some of the lightness and superficialities in some of the treatments. While the drawings are not M a y n a r d Dixon's, William R. Leigh's, Charles Russell's, or Frederic Remington's, it is good to know t h a t M r . Perceval has h a d the insight and ability to preserve some of the important ways of the Navajo I n d i a n found in our time.

â&#x20AC;&#x17E;

GAELL LINDSTROM

Utah State A Guide to the Manuscript of the Bancroft Library. D A L E L.

MORGAN

and

University Collections Edited by GEORGE

H A M M O N D . (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963. vii + 379 p p . $15.00) T o appreciate fully the Bancroft Library and the task involved in publishing a guide to its resources, it is necessary to know something of H u b e r t H o w e Bancroft. H e was the first to systematically collect the source materials for the history of western America â&#x20AC;&#x201D; from Central America n o r t h w a r d to Alaska, a n d from the Pacific Coast east to include Mexico, Texas, the Rocky M o u n t a i n region, and all points between. T h e book, Hubert

Howe Bancroft, Historian of the West, by John W. Caughey (University of California Press, 1946), is recommended reading for persons who desire further information about Bancroft, his library, and his histories of the Pacific States. George P. H a m m o n d and Dale L. Morgan, co-editors of the guide to the Bancroft's manuscript collections, are both competent scholars. Professor Hammond became director of the Bancroft Library in 1946. Prior to that time he had taught history almost a quarter-century, and he had written widely on the history of the Southwest. He is editor of the Coronado Cuarto Centennial Series and of the Quivira Society Series, both of these series have made significant contributions to the history of the Spanish Southwest. Dale Morgan is one of our own. Few can match him in his knowledge of the bibliography of Utah, the Mormons, and the West in general. The Utah State Historical Society has been the inheritor of the results of much of his earlier research. His work for the Utah Writers Project during WPA days, his "Bibliography of the Churches of the Dispersion," his Union Catalog of published works pertaining to the Mormons and Mormonism were all good experience for the present work. Dale Morgan has published widely on Utah and the West, and the fur trade era is one of his specialties. His most recent work in this field is The West of William H. Ashley (Denver: Old West Publishing Company), scheduled to appear in two volumes soon. The task of giving concise, meaningful, and dependable descriptions of thousands of manuscripts and manuscript collections from thirteen Western States and Canada is not an easy one, and we are glad that it was entrusted to two such competent scholars. This volume is the first in a series of guides to the Bancroft collections comprising more than 4 million manuscripts. Described here are those pertaining to

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Canada (particularly British Columbia) , and the Pacific Islands. Two later volumes, now in preparation, will list and include descriptions of California manuscripts in one volume, and those pertaining to Mexico and Colonial Spanish America (including Louisiana and the West Indies) in another. When completed, these three volumes will be a treasure house of information that all scholars interested in the Pacific States, and every research library that attempts to cover western America will feel constrained to possess. U t a h readers will be interested to know that this volume contains over 30 pages in one block pertaining to Utah and the Mormons, as well as many single pertinent entries scattered throughout the work that are picked up in the Index. The Index is an integral part of this major reference tool, so arranged that it enhances the entire collection as well as its many parts by bringing out geographical, subject, and other interrelationships. S. LYMAN TYLER

Brigham Young University Johnston, Connor and the Mormons: An Outline of Military History in Northern Utah. Compiled by IRMA WATSON

and IRENE WARR. (Salt Lake City: Authors, 1962. ii + 178 pp.)

HANCE

This volume consists of a compilation of United States Army reports, correspondence, and orders pertaining to military activities of northern Utah; background material on Generals Albert Sydney Johnston and Patrick Edward Connor and their controversies with the Mormon people; and a brief outline history of Fort Douglas since its inception to the present time. Included, also, is information on acquisition and disposal of lands in the military reservation; names of servicemen buried at Camp Floyd, in-

REVIEWS AND PUBLICATIONS eluding those w h o died on the Johnston Expedition prior to their arrival in t h e Valley; burials at Fort Douglas; marriages recorded in t h e Union Vedette; and other miscellaneous d a t a a n d information pertaining to Fort Douglas. This does not proport to be work based on definitive research. I t is n o t wellorganized as a n historical presentation. I t is valuable because the compilers have put u n d e r one cover military information which will facilitate further research and will be foundational to a military history of the state. VIRGIL V. PETERSON

Salt Lake City,

Utah

"The Richest Hole on Earth," A History of the Bingham Copper Mine. By L E O N A R D J. A R R I N G T O N a n d G A R Y B.

H A N S E N . ( L o g a n : U t a h State U n i versity, 1963) ARTICLES OF INTEREST AIA [American Institute of Architects] Architecture—Summer 1963: "Park City: Boomtown, 1964," 7ff. Arizona and the West—V, Spring 1963: "Walter Prescott W e b b : Product of E n v i r o n m e n t , " by W A L T E R R U N D E L L ,

JR., 4 - 2 8 ; " T h e Arthur H . Clark Company, Publisher of t h e West: A R e v i e w of S i x t y Y e a r s of S e r v i c e , 1 9 0 2 - 1 9 6 2 , " by T H E O D O R E

NEW BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS Along the Lane. By L o u i s W . L A R S E N . (New York: Pageant Press, Incorporated, 1963) [selected group of poems that have been printed over pen names on the editorial page of the Salt Lake Tribune through t h e past four decades] Carnegie

Museum

Southeast

Utah.

Collection

from

By F L O Y D W . S H A R -

ROCK a n d EDWARD G. K E A N E .

(Salt

Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1962) Figs Not Gathered in Tusculum. By C E C I L W. W A R R E N . (Salt Lake City: Author, 1963) [book of poetry] In the International Peace Garden in Salt Lake City. Poetry by T H O M A S A. T H O M S E N a n d d r a w i n g s by R I C H A R D

GREGERSEN. (Salt Lake City: Fine Arts Press, 1963) Mapping

the Transmississippi

West. B Y

C A R L I. W H E A T . ( S a n F r a n c i s c o : T h e

Institute of Historical Cartography, 1963) A Preliminary Reservoir,

Survey of the Fontenelle Wyoming. By D A V I D S.

GRIVAS,

63-78. The Bulletin [Missouri Historical Society] — X X , October 1963: " T h e Private J o u r n a l of R o b e r t C a m p b e l l [fur t r a d e ] , " edited by GEORGE R. B R O O K S ,

3—24; " S l a v e h o l d i n g in Jackson County, Missouri [Mormon attitude t o w a r d ] , " by L Y L E W E S L E Y D O R S E T T ,

25-37. The California Historical Society Quarterly—XLII, M a r c h 1963: " H o w the Overland Limited C a m e to the Southern Pacific [Union Pacific Railroad]," by L U C I U S B E E B E , 3 3 - 3 8 ; "Site of t h e

D i a m o n d Swindle [Hoax] of 1872," by PETER FARQUHAR, 49-53.

Desert, Magazine of the Southwest — X X V I , April 1963: "Exploring Southern U t a h ' s Wilderness W o n d e r l a n d [entire issue devoted to this theme]," 10—34; "Roadside Geology in Textbook Country [southeastern U t a h ] , " by E U G E N E D . F O U S H E E , lOff.; "Des-

ert Gothic [Cathedral valleys of south central U t a h ] , " by J O Y C E M U E N C H ,

1 2 - 1 5 ; " O f Ruins, Rocks, a n d Routes [ M o n u m e n t Valley]," by C H O R A L P E P -

PER, 16—17; " L o v e l y , L o n e l y L a n d [Zion, Bryce, a n d G r a n d canyons]," by

D I B B L E a n d K E N T C. D A Y . (Salt L a k e

W A R D J. R O Y L A N C E , 1 8 - 2 7 ; " M e m o -

City: University of U t a h Press, 1962)

ries of the Pagahrit [Lake Pagahrit],"

U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY by ALBERT R. LYMAN, 24-25; "The

Great Basin's Restless Fly about [Blackbilled M a g p i e ] , " by EDMUND C. JAEGER, 28-30; "Canyonlands Controversy, Should Utah Mine Minerals or Tourists?" by D. JAMES CANNON, 31-34 — November 1963: "What Do They Mean? Who Made Them? How Long Ago? The Unsolved Mystery of the Southwest [Petroglyphs]," by CHORAL PEPPER, 22-27. Idaho Yesterdays — V I I , Fall 1963: "Bear Lake Century, Pictures Old and New," 16-17; "Pioneer Portraits — Charles Coulson Rich, Founder of the Bear Lake Settlements," by BARBARA BOWDITCH, 18-20; "Footnotes to History [historical statement concerning settlement of Bear Lake settlements dated September 9, 1888]," 20-21. The Improvement Era — LXVI, October 1963: "President Henry Dinwoodey Moyle, 1889-1963," by GORDON B. HINCKLEY, 840ff.; "Religion

National Parks Magazine — XXXVII, October 1963: "The Colorado River of the West," by WELDON F. HEALD,

5-9. The Sugar Beet—'XV, Autumn 1963: "The Willard Bay Reservoir . . . Water Will Run U p Hill From Here!" by DAVID H. M A N N , 22-24.

Sunset, The Magazine of Western Living— CXXXI, November 1963: "It's Paul Bunyan's Woodpile [many sided columns of lava lying in giant stacks near abandoned mines in Tintic Mountains south of Eureka, Utah]," 50 — December 1963: "December Visit to Bryce," 55. SUP News — X, July-August 1963: "Pioneer Memorial Hall or the Old Rock C h u r c h , " by H . A L L E N and BLANCH K. JENSEN, 6-7; "Indian's

Story of Bear River Battle," by MAE TIMBIMBOO PARRY, 15.

844ff.; "What Happened to Sacajawea?" by J O H N M. WOOLF, 854-56.

Time, The Weekly Newsmagazine — L X X X I I , October 18, 1963: "Religion, Mormons, The Negro Question," 83-84.

The Instructor — XCVIII, November 1963: "Paying the Tenth in Pioneer Days," by LEONARD J. A R R I N G T O N , 386ff.

USS Westerners — V I I I , March-April 1963: "Utah Bridges: Old Stone and New Steel," 8-11.

& Science," by HARVEY FLETCHER,

Journal of the West—II, October 1963: "Patrick Edward Connor, First Gentile of Utah," by LEO P. KIBBY, 42534; "The Mormon Colony of Nauvoo, Illinois," by W. GERARD HUISKAMP, 468-76. Missouri Historical Review — LVIII, October 1963: "Attempts by the State of Missouri to Extradite Joseph Smith, 1841-1843," by GEORGE R. GAYLER, 21-36. National Geographic — CXXIV, November 1963: "The Parks in Your Backyard [state parks, Dead Horse Point, page 705]," by CONRAD L. WIRTH, 647-707.

Utah Publisher and Printer — X I I , March 1963: "James Dunn [owner, editor, and publisher of the Tooele Transcript from 1897 to 1919], John R. Wallis [publisher of Randolph The Rich County Round-up; St. George, Washington County News; the American Fork Advance; Rexburg, Idaho, Fremont County Journal; and the Boise County, Idaho, Long Valley Advocate] Named to Utah State Press Association's Hall of Fame," Iff. Westways — LV, October 1963: "Requiem for the Cactus Pilots [steamboating on the Colorado River]," by JERRY MACMULLEN, 26-28.

HOLIDAY RECEPTION

For the past three holiday seasons, the Society Board of Trustees a n d staff have been hosts to friends a n d members at a holiday open house. T h e board at its November, 1963, meeting voted to honor its past-presidents — two of w h o m are still serving on the Board of Trustees. T h e third, Professor Levi E d g a r Young, was still associated with the board as an honorary life member. Unfortunately, Professor Y o u n g passed away before his c o n t r i b u t i o n s c o u l d be f u r t h e r r e c o g nized by the Society. O n December 27, 1963, an enthusiastic holiday crowd came to the Mansion to pay honor to Dr. Joel E. Ricks a n d Dr. Leland H . Creer. Dr. Ricks has served longer on the Board of Trustees of the Society than any other person. H e was first appointed to the board in 1925 during the first term of Governor George H . Dern. H e has s e r v e d in t h a t c a p a c i t y c o n t i n u o u s l y since that time. F r o m 1949 to 1957, Dr. Ricks was president of the board — during the time when the Society m a d e its most noticeable growth. A full-time, professionally trained director was a p pointed; the Society began the publication of a quarterly historical journal on a regular basis; a trained staff was hired; an archival p r o g r a m was commenced; and after years of crowding into inadequate quarters in the Capitol, the Society was given a home in the old Governors' Mansion. These are b u t a few of t h e a c c o m p l i s h m e n t s of t h e S o c i e t y under the leadership of Joel Ricks. All the while D r . Ricks was serving as chairm a n of the History D e p a r t m e n t at U t a h State Agricultural College (now U t a h S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y ) . D e s p i t e t h i s , it is strongly suspected by those w h o know him best t h a t his real love has been the U t a h State Historical Society, which he has served so long a n d so well.

Dr. Leland H . Creer, while not affiliated with the Society as long as his colleague, has nonetheless m a d e a great contribution to its welfare. First n a m e d to the board of the Society in 1949 by Governor J. Bracken Lee, Dr. Creer became president of the board in 1957. H e served in this position for two terms, until 1961. As with his predecessor, Dr. Creer witnessed a period of steady growth of the Society while he held the reins. M e m bership, staff, a n d appropriations grew during his administration. W h e n he relinquished the presidency, Dr. Creer's successor h a d a solid foundation to build upon. Dr. Creer, too, held the responsible position of c h a i r m a n of a history dep a r t m e n t (University of U t a h ) during most of his term on t h e Board of T r u s tees. His loyalty a n d devotion to the Society have been outstanding. T h e board, staff, a n d members of the Society are proud to be able to honor these m e n w h o have given so unselfishly of their time a n d themselves to the benefit of U t a h history. STATEHOOD D A Y

Again this year Statehood Day for U t a h was observed through appropriate ceremonies held in t h e State Capitol. This year the "celebration" came two days late, on J a n u a r y 6, rather t h a n J a n uary 4. However, even in 1896 J a n u a r y 6 was a day of m u c h celebrating — for it was on t h a t day t h e first elected state officers assumed their duties. A n d so to an assembled group of members, friends, a n d onlookers, the Society conducted a program befitting U t a h ' s entrance into the Union. Dr. Everett L. Cooley, director, presided ; the colors were presented; Reverend Walter Kalvesmaki gave the invocation; Governor George D . Clyde spoke briefly on h o w far U t a h h a d advanced during her statehoodship; a n d D r . Rich-

UTAH HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

ard D . Poll interested the audience with his account of U t a h ' s entrance into the U n i o n . Appropriate music was provided by M r . L a m a r Peterson playing an organ generously provided for the occasion by the Clark Music C o m p a n y .

MEMORIAM

T h e U t a h State Historical Society has lost one of its truest friends. Professor Levi Edgar Young, 89 years of age, departed this life on December 13, 1963. His passing is felt acutely by the members of this organization. T h e Society h a d planned to honor Professor Young a n d two colleagues at the Society's annual holiday open house. This recognition was voted Professor Y o u n g by the Board of Trustees for his m a n y contributions to U t a h history and to the Historical Society. T h e n a m e of Levi E d g a r Young first appears in the minutes of the Society on J a n u a r y 18,1909, when h e was n a m e d a m e m b e r of the Executive Committee of the then private U t a h State Historical Society. For him to gain this position, he obviously must h a v e held memb e r s h i p i n t h e o r g a n i z a t i o n for some time, although the date of his affiliation is unknown. O n J a n u a r y 15, 1917, M r . Young, then an instructor at the University of U t a h , was elected corresponding secretary of the Society. After the Society became a state institution, Professor Young served on the Board of Control and became its president from 1923-24 and from 1945-49. T h o u g h r e t i r e d f r o m t h e B o a r d in 1959, P r o f e s s o r Y o u n g w a s v o t e d a n honorary life membership on the Board of Trustees due to his years of devotion to the U t a h State Historical Society. A graduate of the University of U t a h , Professor Young studied at H a r v a r d , Co-

Levi Edgar Young (1874-1963) lumbia, and in Germany. For 40 years he was affiliated with the History Dep a r t m e n t , U n i v e r s i t y of U t a h . F r o m 1937 until his retirement from the University in 1939, Levi E. Young was dep a r t m e n t chairman. In 1955, the Board of Regents of the University of U t a h recognized his contributions to the University by conferring upon him the title of "professor emeritus of history." Further honors came to him in 1960 when he was awarded an honorary "Doctor of H u m a n i t i e s " degree by the University he served so long. T h e Society mourns his passing. It pays tribute to a loyal, but departed, member and leader.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Membership in the Utah State Historical Society is open to all individuals and institutions who are interested in Utah history. We invite everyone to join this one official agency of state government charged by law with the collection, preservation, and publication of materials on Utah and related history. Through the pages of the Utah Historical Quarterly, the Society is able to fulfill part of its legal responsibility. Your membership dues provide the means for publication of the Quarterly. So, we earnestly encourage present members to interest their friends in joining them in furthering the cause of Utah history. Membership brings with it the Utah Historical Quarterly, the bimonthly Newsletter, and special prices on publications of the Society. The different classes of membership are: Student

3.00

Annual

5.00

Life

$100.00

For those individuals and business firms who wish to support special projects of the Society, they may do so through making tax-exempt donations on the following membership basis: Sustaining

$ 250.00

Patron

$ 500.00

Benefactor

$1,000.00

Your interest and support are most welcome.

Utah State Historical Society

Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 32, Number 1, 1964

Articles inside

Utah After Statehood

A State is Born

Sentinels on the Desert: The Dugway Proving Ground and Deseret Chemical Depot

The Taft Victory in Utah in 1912

Pilgrimage on Wheels