Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 34, Number 2, 1966

HISTORIC I QUARTE SPRING,

1966 • VOLUME 3 4 ^

NUMBER

2

iip m

J j|

OF

TRU?*TFF^

U STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BO A R D

j . GRANT IVERSON, Salt Lake City, 1967 President

MRS. JUANITA BROOKS, St. George, 1969 MRS. A. c. J E N S E N , Sandy, 1967

JACK GOODMAN, Salt Lake City, 1969 Vice-President EVERETT L. COOLEY. Salt Lake City Secretary

CLYDE L. MILLER, Secretary of State

Ex officio HOWARD c. PRICE, J R . , Price, 1967

MILTON c. ABRAMS, Smithfield, 1969 j . STERLING ANDERSON, Grantsville, 1967 DEAN R. BRIMHALL, Fruita, 1969

MRS. ELIZABETH SKANCHY, M i d v a l e , 1 9 6 9

L. GLEN SNARR, Salt Lake City, 1967

AD EVERETT L, COOLEY, Director T. H . JACOBSEN, State Archivist, Archives

F. T. J O H N S O N , Records Manager, Archives

J O H N J A M E S , J R . , Librarian

MARGERY w. WARD, Associate Editor

IRIS SCOTT, Business Manager

The Utah State Historical Society is an organization devoted to the collection, preservation, and publication of Utah 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. The 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 Utah State Historical Society live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

The primary purpose of the Quarterly is the 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 Utah State Historical Society does not assume responsibility for statements of fact or opinions expressed by contributors.

The Utah Historical Quarterly is entered as second-class postage, paid at Salt Lake City, Utah. Copyright 1966, Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102.

SPRING,

1966 • VOLUME

34 • NUMBER

2

OT&H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY e©L7¥(&(BLr^ UTAH'S PIONEER BEET SUGAR PLANT: THE LEHI FACTORY OF THE UTAH SUGAR COMPANY

95

BY L E O N A R D J . A R R I N G T O N

BRIEF HISTORIES OF THREE FEDERAL MILITARY INSTALLATIONS IN UTAH: KEARNS ARMY AIR BASE, HURRICANE MESA, AND GREEN RIVER TEST COMPLEX

121

BY T H O M A S G. A L E X A N D E R

T H E COMPANY T O W N : A PASSING PHASE OF UTAH'S INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

138

BY J A M E S B . A L L E N

ECHOES FROM T H E PAST: THE STORY OF THE ECHO FLOUR MILL

161

BY M A R G U E R I T E J . W R I G H T

THE KINTNER LETTERS: AN ASTRONOMER'S ACCOUNT OF THE WHEELER SURVEY IN UTAH AND IDAHO I N T R O D U C T I O N BY R U S S E L L E . BIDLACK A N D EDITORIAL N O T A T I O N S BY E V E R E T T L . COOLEY

REVIEWS AND PUBLICATIONS

•felK Painting

169 183

(SOW®!]"

of Lehi Factory depicting it during early days of

operation.

DALE K I L B O U R N E , A R T I S T

EDITOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR ART EDITOR

-

L. COOLEY Margery W. Ward Roy J- Olsen

EVERETT

H A F E N , L E R O Y R., ED., The Mountain

Men

and the Fur Trade of the Far West,

BY DALE L. MORGAN

183

T A Y L O R , P. A. M., Expectations Westward: The Mormons and the Emigration of their British Converts in the Nineteenth Century,

BOOKS REVIEWED

BYGUSTIVE O. LARSON

184

T R E N H O L M , V I R G I N I A C O L E , AND C A R L E Y , M A U R I N E , The Shoshonis, Sentinels

of the Rockies,

BY OMER C. STEWART .... 185

K E L L Y , C H A R L E S , AND M O R G A N , D A L E L., Old Greenwood: The Story of Caleb Greenwood: Trapper, Pathfinder, and early Pioneer, BY A. R. M O R T E N S E N

__

186

K A R O L E V I T Z , R O B E R T F., Newspapering in the Old West: A Pictorial History of Journalism and Printing on the Frontier,

BY STANLEY R. DAVISON

P A R E , M A D E L I N E F E R R I N , Arizona A Short History of the 48th State,

BY MARIA S. ELLSWORTH

187

Pageant: 188

Utah's Pioneer Beet Sugar Plant: THE LEHI FACTORY of the UTAH SUGAR COMPANY

BY L E O N A R D J . A R R I N G T O N

T h e Lehi factory of the U t a h Sugar Company occupies a pre-eminent place among the early sugarbeet factories of America. Commencing operations in 1891, it was the first sugarbeet factory in the Mountain West, the first to utilize beets grown by irrigation, the first to have a systematic program for the production of its own beet seed, the first to use Americanmade machinery, the first to use the "osmose process" of reprocessing molasses, the first to build auxiliary cutting stations, and the first to have been established as part of a great social and religious movement. This factory also served as a training base for a high proportion of the technical leaders of the sugarbeet industry of the United States. After 75 years it is well to remind ourselves of the truly pioneering character of this first successful sugar enterprise in Utah.

T h e story of the construction of the Lehi plant begins with the efforts of Arthur Stayner, a Mormon horticulturist from England, to make sugar Leonard Arrington is professor of economics at U t a h State University. This article was prepared under grants from the U t a h - I d a h o Sugar Company and the U t a h State University Research Council. The photographs were furnished by U t a h - I d a h o Sugar Company and the author.

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from sugar cane, sorghum cane, and sugarbeets in the 1880's.1 In 1887 Stayner received a $5,000 bounty from the territorial legislature for the first 7,000 pounds of marketable sugar produced in Utah. This brown sugar was made from grain sorghum at a small plant erected at Spanish Fork in 1886. Continuing in his efforts to found an industry, Stayner visited the experimental sorghum cane plant of the federal government at Fort Scott, Kansas, and also the pilot beet sugar plant of E. H. Dyer at Alvarado, California, which was the first successful sugarbeet plant in the nation. With passionate earnestness Stayner solicited the support of . church and business leaders until they finally agreed to participate in the formation of a company to finance further investigations.2 On September 4, 1889, the Utah Sugar Company filed incorporation papers in Salt Lake City. Total subscribed capital stock was $15,000, consisting of 1,500 shares with a par value of $10.00 each. Only 10 per cent of the capital ($1,500) was paid up. The president was Elias Morris, a Salt Lake City builder who, as a Welsh immigrant, had been in charge of sugarbeet machinery transported from England to Utah in the 1850's in an earlier Mormon attempt to produce sugar from beets.3 The other officers were Vice President Francis Armstrong, a Salt Lake City utilities executive; Secretary Arthur Stayner, who also assumed the role of general manager until the spring of 1891; Treasurer James Jack, financial secretary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and the officers already listed plus Henry Dinwoodey, Charles H. Hardy, Leonard G. Hardy, Amos Howe, Charles W. Stayner, Samuel P. Teasdel, George W. Thatcher, R. K. Thomas, and Henry Wallace as directors. Other important stockholders (there was a total of 28) were Wilford Woodruff and George Q. Cannon, of the L.D.S. Church First Presidency; Daniel 1 Unless otherwise indicated this paper is based primarily upon Fred G. Taylor, A Saga of Sugar (Salt Lake City, 1944), and manuscript materials in the archives of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 47 West South Temple Street, Salt Lake City. The latter include: Minute Books of the U t a h Sugar Company, The U t a h Sugar Company, and the U t a h - I d a h o Sugar Company; papers and memoirs written and collected by Walter L. Webb, a retired executive of U & I (hereafter referred to as the Webb MSS) ; and verifax copies of clippings and excerpts from clippings collected by D a n Gutleben (hereafter referred to as Gutleben M S S ) . The Gutleben MSS on Lehi consist essentially of excerpts from articles in the Lehi Banner, 1891-1901, of which Walter Webb was editor; Deseret Evening News (Salt Lake City) ; Salt Lake Herald; and Salt Lake Tribune.

There is also a collection of Webb MSS, including a long "oral history interview" with Walter L. Webb, in the archives of the Brigham Young University Library.

2 Nine letters from Arthur Stayner to members of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, written in 1888 and urging church promotion of a sugar manufacturing enterprise, are in the Arthur Stayner file, Manuscripts Division, L.D.S. Church Historian's Library, Salt Lake City.

3 The story of the daring enterprise of the 1850's is told in Andrew Love Neff, History of Utah, 1847 to 1869, ed., Leland Hargrave Creer (Salt Lake City, 1940), 292-300; Taylor, Saga of Sugar, 2 3 - 6 0 ; and Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, 1958), 116-20.

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Stuart (or S t e w a r t ) ; John W. Young, son of Brigham; Jesse W. Fox, Jr.; and George M. Cannon, a Salt Lake banker. All of the stockholders were from Salt Lake City with the exception of George W. Thatcher, who lived in Logan.

The first action of the company after incorporation was to appropriate $300.00 for a "first class" polariscope to be used in testing the sugar in the beets being grown on an experimental basis in Utah. T h e second action was the appointment of a committee of five persons (Morris, Armstrong, A. Stayner, Howe, and Thatcher) to visit the two beet factories in operation in California and the sorghum plant in Kansas. According to the committee's report, as presented to the board of directors on October 23, 1889, the factory of the Pacific Sugar Company at Alvarado was earning profits at the rate of $500.00 per day for a run of 90 days. This was a 25 per cent return on invested capital of $190,000. T h e works of the Western Sugar Company at Watsonville, California, was earning profits of almost $1,000 per day on a 90-day run, which was 19 per cent on the invested capital of $475,000. O n the other hand, because of adverse weather and other factors, the $72,000 sorghum sugar works near Fort Scott, Kansas, was found to be in a failing condition. Stayner remained convinced that the alkali in Utah soils would increase the refractoriness of beet juice and render its crystallization uncertain and costly, and continued to argue for a dual plant which could work up both cane and beets. 4 But the remainder of the committee began to be more and more impressed with the possibilities of a single-purpose beet plant.

T h e next step was to determine the practicability of beet sugar production in Utah. Seed was acquired and distributed widely, and local newspapers carried articles on the culture of the beet. Tests of beets grown in widely scattered areas of the territory showed a satisfactory sugar content. 5 T h e committee calculated that the cost of growing and manufacturing beets in U t a h would be no greater than in California. T h e committee also ascertained that there was a good choice of sites for a factory, with suitable land for growing beets, ample supply of water, and close proximity to other manufacturing materials and markets. A factory, according to committee calculations, would cost $300,000. With a working 4

See his reports and interviews in Deseret Evening News, February 1, 1888, February 4, March 12, 1889.

5 The original laboratory records of these tests, conducted by Dr. James E. Talmage, a leading contemporary Mormon scientist, are among the James E. Talmage Papers in the Brigham Young University Archives. In terms of modern standards, the per cents of sucrose and purity were so low that it would seem to have required a heroic imagination to see potential profit in the industry.

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capital of $50,000, this would mean a total capital requirement of $350,000. Such a factory would cut 30,000 tons of beets per season and produce 6 million pounds of sugar. By paying farmers $5.00 per ton for the beets, and selling the sugar for seven cents per pound, profits would amount to $120,000 per season, yielding a return of about 33 per cent on investment.

Spurred on by the profit incentive, the board, on November 20, 1889, made a definite decision to build a factory. Officers and directors prepared a prospectus setting forth the obj ects and prospects of the company and the amount of capital needed. At the same time they investigated suitable sites from the standpoint of their technical feasibility and the financial inducements that might be offered by the communities in which they were located. 6 Arthur Stayner and others also persuaded the territorial legislature, meeting in the spring of 1890, to vote a bounty of one cent per pound on all sugar manufactured in Utah during the succeeding two years. (This bounty was renewed for a second biennium in 1892.)

T H E L E H I FACTORY

Upon solicitation from the board, the Oxnards, who had begun three factories in Nebraska, bid $450,000 for a 300-ton factory imported from Europe. E. H. Dyer and Company, who had made arrangements with the Kilby Manufacturing Company of Cleveland to make machinery according to their design, bid $400,000. A contract was let to the latter on November 5, 1890. This provided that the factory be completed by October 1, 1891, and that two of the Dyers remain to manage the factory during the first two campaigns. The Utah people agreed to procure railroad communication with the plant in time for the reception of machinery and building material.

Because the cost of the factory and other expenses were much in excess of original estimates, the capital stock of the company was increased to $1 million on October 9, 1890, and an issue of $400,000 was placed on sale immediately thereafter. 7 The only substantial subscriptions came from a group of persons from Lehi, including John Beck, the mining magnate; Thomas R. and John C. Cutler, merchants; and John Austin and sons, farmers and stockmen. The Lehi group provided a particuc A printed circular entitled "Extracts from the Report of the Committee of the Utah Sugar Company on the Practicability of the Sugar Industry in Utah," dated May 13, 1890, is in the Utah Sugar Company file of the Manuscripts Division, L.D.S. Church Historian's Library.

7 A printed "Prospectus" of The Utah Sugar Company, dated November 14, 1890, is in the Utah Sugar Company file of the Manuscripts Division, L.D.S. Church Historian's Library. Attached thereto is a printed letter from the church First Presidency, same date, asking local church officials to cooperate in the subscription drive.

The Lehi Sugar Factory shown on the title page was constructed in 1891. This photograph was made after the capacity was expanded four-fold in 1900. In 1924 the factory was retired, and finally dismantled in the 1930's.

larky attractive financial inducement. Through Mayor Samuel Taylor, Lehi offered as a building site 40 acres of the old Mulliner Flour Mill property (including building rock) ,8 together with a perpetual water right to the millpond sufficient to run the factory. Lehi also offered to donate $1,000 to apply on the purchase of additional ground, $1,000 in labor to make a good road to the site, 1,500 acres of land (at $30.00 per acre) for a company beet farm, 80 acres of good limestone quarry eight miles from Lehi, and subscriptions for $88,000 in company stock.9 After several visits to the chief contending locations in Cache, Weber, Salt Lake, and Utah counties, the directors finally approved a motion, on November 18, 1890, to begin immediately the work of building at Lehi.

The site was admirable from a transportation standpoint since the Rio 8 T h e first gristmill in Lehi was erected by Samuel Mulliner, with the assistance of villagers, in 1854. A millpond was created by diverting the stream from a spring which ran down into U t a h Lake. Walter L. Webb, "History of the Old Lehi Grist Mill," Lehi Free Press, May 26, 1960.

9 See also Hamilton Gardner, History of Lehi (Salt Lake City, 1913), 261-62.

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Grande Western Railway passed on one side and the Union Pacific Railway on the other.

A formal cornerstone-laying ceremony was held on December 26, 1890, at which were present more than 2,000 persons, including the First Presidency of the Mormon Church, leading business and political figures in the territory, and farmers and mechanics from several nearby communities. 10 President Wilford Woodruff said: I want to say to all Israel that we believe it right to dedicate everything we engage in to the Lord. We have assembled today to lay this cornerstone, as is our custom in establishing all our temples. I will call on President George Q . Cannon to offer the dedicatory prayer. . . . I want you all to unite on the subject of sugar. There is not a question of public improvement which is of more value or has better prospects than sugar. God bless you.

After placing a tin box with contemporary relics in position and laying the stone in place with cement mortar, President Cannon said, "I take pleasure in announcing that the cornerstone of the Utah Sugar Factory has been laid. God bless it." A newspaperman then reported that he mounted the stone and offered prayer, at the close of which there were "three cheers for the enterprise, which were followed with great spirit and two additional tigers."

As designed by the Dyers the main factory was 172 feet long, 86 feet wide, and three stories high. T h e factory annex was 176 feet long and 38 feet wide — 76 feet of it, containing bone black filters and lime kiln, was three stories high, while the other 100 feet where the steam plant was located was but one story. One hundred carloads of machinery, valued at $260,000, were shipped from Cleveland to equip the plant. Back of the main buildings were six beet sheds, 500 feet long and 24 feet wide, with a capacity of 14,000 tons of beets. There were four pulp silos 180 by 24 feet and 10 feet deep, and coal bins 250 feet long and 48 feet wide. The millpond which furnished most of the water was fed by natural springs with a capacity of 4 million gallons in 24 hours. The facilities also included a boardinghouse with accommodations for 50 people. 11 While the Dyers were engaged in the construction, committees were appointed to visit the farmers and "labor with them" to raise the beets required by the enterprise. But the principal concern of the company was 10

Salt Lake Herald, December 27, 1890; Deseret Evening News, December 27, 1890.

Contemporary descriptions of the factory and its construction are found in Deseret Evening News, May 23, 29, October 8, 1891; Salt Lake Tribune, October 8, 1891; Scientific American, L X V (December 5, 1891), 360; and Herbert Myrick, The American Sugar Industry (New York, 1902), 54-60, 11

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financial. Even before the cornerstone was laid the company owed the Dyers $50,000 in cash as first payment, but the company was unable to raise even this sum. The church assisted the drive for funds by appointing committees of general church authorities to visit the various congregations in northern Utah to solicit subscriptions. Not much was raised. A committee was appointed to visit the Dyers to see if an extension of time could be arranged on the first payment, but the Dyers reported that they had already placed orders with the machinery manufacturers in Cleveland and that they could not grant the extension. Serious consideration was given to forfeiting the $50,000 deposit and abandoning the whole project. But President Woodruff declared that "the inspiration of the Lord to me is to build this factory." 12 Finally, at the December 9 meeting of the board, President Cannon moved "that we pay the first $50,000, that the treasurer raise all he can, and that he personally [President Cannon] will raise the remainder."

This, of course, was only the first payment. Additional payments of $50,000 were due in February, March, and April, and substantial amounts in the months following. As the time for the second payment of $50,000 approached, the company and First Presidency joined in appointing Apostle Heber J. Grant as financial agent to produce the funds. He and others, including many company and church officials, devoted anxious weeks to the solicitation. They sought to sell stock, obtain credit, and make loans in any amount, no matter how small or humiliating, to make the payments to the contractors. Person after person was authorized to raise money. Upon the resignation of Arthur Stayner, Thomas R. Cutler, an English immigrant who was bishop of the Lehi L.D.S. Ward, was appointed general manager. Cutler and others made contacts with Mormon capitalists and with banks in Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Boston. What little working capital the company was able to acquire was used to pay the expenses of officers' travel for the purpose of borrowing money. All told, something like $200,000 was subscribed by several dozen Utah citizens (though virtually none of these subscriptions was fully paid for several years), $50,000 was subscribed (fully paid up) by the Mormon Church; $130,000 was borrowed on a short-term loan from the church; $150,000 was borrowed from Salt Lake City banks on notes signed by the First Presidency of the church; and 12 As reported by Heber J. Grant, Ninetieth Annual Conference of the Church . . . (Salt Lake City, 1919), 8-9. Also statement of George Q. Cannon, Deseret Evening News, October 22, 1900.

another $100,000 was borr o w e d , on a s i m i l a r e n d o r s e m e n t , from WellsFargo in San Francisco.

T H E F I R S T SUGAR

Thomas

R. Cutler (1844-1922), second general manager of the Utah Sugar Company.

E. H. Dyer, builder of sugar factories, constructed the Lehi Factory for $400,000.

Members of his company remained at the factory to manage it through two campaigns.

T h e financial p r o b lems b e c a m e ever more critical as the stockholders, creditors, factory officials, growers, and others awaited the opening of the plant in October. Would it actually produce sugar?

T h e cloud of uncertainty was darkened by the expressed doubts of m a n y who h a d been involved in the earlier attempt of the M o r m o n s , in w h i c h the only product had been a s y r u p so s h a r p t h a t " i t would take the end of your tongue off." James Gardner, who had learned the art of boiling molasses in a church sugar cane enterprise in Hawaii, related the events of October 15, 1891, as follows: 13 T h e first strike of sugar was watched with g r e a t interest and considerable concern. Such a crowd of citizens were present in the p a n room while the boiling was going on that it was difficult to get around. . . . Fred 13

Taylor, Saga of Sugar, 91.

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T r a n e was the "doubting T h o m a s " who repeatedly stated that he wouldn't be convinced that white sugar could be m a d e from that black syrup until he saw the sugar right in his hand.

I t was after midnight when the strike was dropped, but they all waited for that important event. T h e n everyone rushed to the centrifugal and when the first machine h a d spun off the molasses, M r . [Ed] Dyer could hardly get room enough to perform the washing. However, he soon passed out the clear white sugar, giving each one of his audience some of it "right in his h a n d . " Immediately " h u r r a h s " a n d "hosannas" filled the air — even Fred T r a n e cried out, " I ' m now convinced t h a t sugar can be m a d e from beets!"

Manager Cutler telephoned the Salt Lake Herald: "We have just made the first pound of sugar. By morning we will have 20 tons ready."

That morning, 20,000 pounds of sugar were sacked and placed on a Union Pacific Railroad car. Upon arrival at the Salt Lake City depot the sugar was transferred to three drays. Led by a yoke of oxen to dramatize the pioneering nature of the enterprise, the procession made its way to leading Salt Lake City retailers under the sign "First Carload of Granulated Sugar Made by the Utah Sugar Company." At the retailers' "there was almost a riot of people taking the sugar." Within two hours after the sugar was unloaded, it was distributed throughout the city, and within a short time confectioners displayed signs "First Candy Made from Utah Sugar."

In the meantime, in Lehi, the shipment of the first carload of finished product was celebrated by a factory marriage, with J. C. Jensen and Agnes Anderson united in the bonds of holy wedlock by Bishop-General Manager Cutler.14 The thrill and pride of the accomplishment is reflected in a variety of contemporary stories. At one of the shops all present accorded high praise to the new product except a drummer, who persisted in making disparaging remarks about "Lehi sugar." It had a yellowish tinge, tasted of the beet, and so on. The proprietor finally told the salesman that he was the first to object to the Utah product and that he (the proprietor) could not see that it was so different from California cane sugar, but if that was what he wanted he could have it. So saying, he winked at a clerk and told him to "Hand this man a scoopful of that California sugar."

"That," said the salesman, "is the stuff! That's sugar; none of your beet juice about that; see the difference in color?"

14 Salt Lake Herald, October 16, 18, 1891. Sacks of sugar from the first beets were sent to President Benjamin Harrison, Vice President Levi P. Morton, members of the cabinet, and prominent senators and representatives. Their letters of appreciation, containing comments on the infant beet industry, are in the George Q . Cannon Papers, 1888-1892, Manuscripts Division, L.D.S. Church Historian's Library.

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When everyone burst out laughing, he finally realized that it was a trick — all of the sugar in the shop was made from beets at Lehi !15 A similar episode occurred at the Knutsford Hotel, where a practical joker filled a box with salt and placed it on the counter under the label "First Sugar from the Lehi Factory." Soon a salesman came along and with a broad smile grabbed a fistful of the sugar and popped it in his mouth. T h e result was an exclamation so loud and painful that it interrupted the family prayers of Proprietor Holmes in Parlor A. 10 As agreed upon previously, the general superintendent of the factory during the first season was Edward F. Dyer, son of E. H., the contractor.

Clarence A. Granger was assistant superintendent; Hugh Dyer and Guy Dyer, foremen; M. W. Ingalls, master mechanic; Hubert Dyer, chemist; James H. Gardner, sugar boiler; and George Austin, field superintendent.

Gardner and Austin, in addition to Manager Cutler, were the only Lehi men in command positions during the first campaign. Some 120 men were employed in and around the factory.

T h e factory "campaign" during this first season of production ran from October 12 to December 17, and operated 58 days or parts of days.

During this period approximately 10,000 tons of beets were run through; 12,500 100-pound bags of sugar were produced. All of the sugar was sold in Utah. Indeed, the demand for the product of this new "home industry" was so strong "that orders ran ten days ahead continuously and the factory could not fill nearly all of the orders." 17 Even so, revenue from the first year's sale was hardly enough to pay operating costs, let alone the heavy burden of interest and dividends. 18 HISTORICAL PERIODS

T h e history of the Lehi factory may be divided into three periods: 1. T h e learning period, 1891 to 1898, during which U t a h Sugar groped to establish the basis for successful agricultural a n d manufacturing programs. This was a period of frank experimentation, of occasional failure, and of technical and financial uncertainty.

2. T h e teaching period, 1899 to 1919, during which the know-how acquired during the pioneer years at Lehi was used by the U t a h Sugar Company 15

Salt Lake Herald, October 19, 1891.

Ibid.

11 Gutleben MSS, "Lehi," January 1, 1892.

18 E. F. Benson, in a report of his tour of sugar factories in the United States, said that in the early years the Lehi factory received six and one-half cents a pound for its sugar, plus a federal bounty of two cents per pound under the McKinley law and a state bounty of one cent per pound, and that it nevertheless ran behind $60,000 because the farmers didn't know how to raise beets.

Gutleben MSS, "Washington," February 12, 1896.

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to establish new factories in U t a h , I d a h o , and Washington, and to assist other companies desiring to establish new factories in many localities in the West and Midwest.

3. T h e period of decline, 1920 to 1939, during which the Lehi factory came to be replaced by larger and more modern factories a n d was eventually dismantled.

It is the early "learning period" in which we are most interested on the occasion of this seventy-fifth anniversary of the Lehi plant.

During the first two of these years, as previously mentioned, the factory was under the superintendency of the construction firm. Completely on its own, beginning in 1893, U t a h Sugar chose Clarence A. Granger as superintendent and Henry A. Vallez as chemist. Both were brilliant and energetic young men who had served apprenticeships with the Dyers at Alvarado. In collaboration with Manager Cutler, they were eventually able to make the factory pay. But in the meantime the perfection of techniques for growing and irrigating beets, the technical problems confronted in their manufacture, and the decline in the world price of sugar produced losses year after year. Each year, as additional problems were solved, the company hoped for "good profits" the following season. Not until 1897, the seventh year of operation, did the books show a profit. T h e company's persistence, despite continued financial reverses, in working out technical and practical solutions to the many problems involved in growing beets and manufacturing sugar, illustrates the innovative contributions of this truly pioneer enterprise.

T h e significant activities of U t a h Sugar during the learning or experimental period may be summarized under three headings: (1) production of seed; (2) growing the crop; and (3) operations at the factory.

PRODUCTION OF SEED

Most of the seed used in the experimental plots planted on U t a h farms before 1891 was obtained gratis from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which was seeking to determine the areas where the crop could be grown. T h e only available seed in commercial quantities was from France and Germany, and under a thoughtful act of Congress sugarbeet seed could be imported free from 1888 to 1892. 19 Inasmuch as these countries tended to retain their best seed for their own use, that which was ]9 Treatments of seed production during the 1890's are found in Lewis S. Ware, Sugar Beet Seed (Chicago, 1898) and T r u m a n G. Palmer, Sugar Beet Seed: History and Development (New York, 1918).

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planted at Lehi during the early years was often of inferior quality. 20 Much of the seed planted the first two seasons appears to have been mangel-wurzel, a variety of beets fed to stock. These pinkish beets fell far below the requisite percentage of sugar content and purity. Partly as the result of the urging of Henry Vallez, who knew there were better beets in France, Manager Cutler and Superintendent Granger spent several weeks in Europe visiting beet seed farms and factories and were able to contract for better seed. T h e varieties most often used were "Vilmorin Amelioree" from the great Paris seed firm of Vilmorin, Andrieux & Company, and "Klein Wanzlebener," developed by a large seed establishment near Magdeburg in eastern Germany.

T h e uncertain supply, price, and quality caused the company to consider growing its own seed. I n 1895, in cooperation with George Austin and the field department, Vallez selected the best beet fields in the Lehi district and saw that they were given good care. When the beets were grown, 30 tons of the best beets were selected for size and shape, tested for sugar content, and placed in pit silos near the factory. T h e following March these pits were opened, beets again selected and tested for sugar, and the best ones planted on a 13-acre plot of "good" land at the companyowned Saratoga Springs Ranch west of Lehi. 2 1 These "Mother Beets" were planted by hand three feet apart in the row and in rows three feet apart, giving plenty of room for cultivation. This was the first attempt to grow beet seed in an arid, irrigated region.

Although the plants bloomed in profusion, the seed on the outside branches ripened first and had to be cut. T o do this by hand was slow, expensive work in a pioneer country where labor was always scarce; but when the seed was threshed there was a crop of nine to ten tons of seed showing a high germination test. When the Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson, visited the Lehi sugar works in 1897 he "expressed astonishment" at the magnitude of Utah Sugar's seed planting activity, which he said was "the only one of the kind in America."

This system was followed on an expanded basis in 1897 and succeeding years, with the company planting from 5 to 20 acres of Mother Beets yearly. In 1899, for example, the company produced more than 70,000 pounds of beet seed. Some of this seed was sold to other companies under 20 Many contemporary sources indicate a prevalent belief that Germany did not want American sugar enterprises to succeed because this would destroy a potential market — hence the poor quality of seed exported. One can reject this conspiratorial theory and still acknowledge that the seed imported for use at Lehi was inferior.

21 There is some evidence that the company did not acquire the Saratoga farm until 1899.

See Gutleben MSS, "Lehi," October 29, 1899.

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the name "Utah Klein Wanzlebener" and was said to be "superior in pure sugar per acre," but "a little inferior in yield of tonnage." 22 When the American Beet Sugar Company and other companies took up seed growing on a still larger scale beginning in 1901, Utah Sugar's seed production became less important. One difficulty was keeping the Mother Beets through the winter. Nevertheless, in 1904 when American sugar companies were seeking a monogerm beet seed (to replace the multigerm seed which caused several plants to come up in one spot), Utah Sugar proffered the U.S. Department of Agriculture the use of its Saratoga Ranch as an experimental farm. About 1,000 pounds of what were thought to be singlegerm Mother Beets were set out, and several thousand pounds of their seed were planted the following spring. More than four tons of beets were harvested from this seed, and these were used as Mother Beets the following year. No success was achieved in this effort, but through continued experimentation scientists working for the Department of Agriculture and for such companies as Utah-Idaho Sugar eventually developed the commercial monogerm seed which farmers use today.23 22 C. W. Hamburger, The Beet Growers' Manual . . . (Chicago, 1901), 44, 6 6 ; William H .

Holabird, American Beet Sugar . . . (Los Angeles, 1898), 2 3 ; Palmer, Sugar Beet Seed, 6 1 - 6 2 ; Deseret Evening News, April 7, July 3 1 , 1900.

23 These early experimenters noted that there were occasional seeds which were single, i.e., were not p a r t of a cluster. O n the presumption that these were monogerm, they were planted and the beets which grew from them were used as Mother Beets with the intention of developing a

Men harvesting and shocking sugarbeet seed.

Beet seed is now cut by a combine, dried in windrows, and picked up and threshed by a combine.

: '

.

.

.

•

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GROWING T H E C R O P

Sugarbeets are a relatively temperamental crop; they require special care and intensive cultivation. The ground must be well prepared; good stands depend upon proper planting, irrigation, and cultivation; and, until the mechanization of recent years, the heavy labor required at thinning, weeding, and harvest-time has tended to discourage all but the hardiest farmers. 24 When George Austin planted the first sugarbeet seed on the farm of George Comer in Lehi in 1891, virtually nothing was known about the culture of sugarbeets in the arid West. Indeed, Manager Cutler estimated that the U t a h Sugar Company spent $40,000 during the first two years just to educate Utah farmers in the art of growing beets. One aspect about which almost nothing was known either by the company or by the farmers was the proper procedure of growing beets by irrigation. Indeed, after unsuccessful experiments in Spain and Italy it was a common opinion that irrigation would ruin beets for sugar making. 25 Clarence Granger had only his California experience to go by, and as he delivered lectures to U t a h farmers on the growing of beets he instructed them not to fertilize for that would produce large beets — and size was incompatible with quality. Indeed, the factory refused beets that exceeded three and onehalf pounds in weight. Granger also instructed farmers not to irrigate more than once or twice a year —• and then only in midsummer. 26 Too much irrigation — and here he was merely echoing what was generally believed — would diminish both the sugar content and the purity. Utah farmers, who had produced crops under irrigation for more than 40 years, did not accept this idea and were unenthusiastic about signing contracts with any such stipulations. consistent monogerm strain. But it is probable that these single seeds were the product of brokenoff segments of multigerm clusters and that the Mother Beets from these segments could produce only multigerm seed and did not have genetic monogerm characteristics. Not until the work of two Russian-born Salt Lakers, V. F. and Helen Savitsky, were the genetically-bred monogerm seeds used today made possible. See U.S., Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, C. O. Townsend and E. C. Rittue, The Development of Single-germ Beet Seed, Bulletin No. 73 (Washington, D . C , 1905) ; Palmer, Sugar Beet Seed, 7 8 - 8 4 ; "A Life of Service for the Benefit of Humanity," The U & I Cultivator, X X I V (Spring, 1964), 38-40, and (Fall, 1964), 20-21.

24 Contemporary treatments of sugarbeet culture include: U.S., Department of Agriculture, C. F. Saylor, Progress of the Beet-Sugar Industry (Washington, D . C , 1898-1909) ; U.S., Department of Agriculture, Chemical Division, H. W. Wiley, The Sugar Industry of the United States, Bulletin No. 5 (Washington, D . C , 1885) ; and F. S. Harris, The Sugar-Beet in America (New York, 1919). ^ R e m a r k s of Henry Oxnard, Gutleben MSS, "Lehi," August 16, 1893. Also U.S., Department of Agriculture, Special Report on the Beet-Sugar Industry in the United States (Washington, D . C , 1 8 9 8 ) , 1 9 3 .

26 Mark Austin told Dan Gutleben that "if Granger strove for the wrong way to grow beets, he was completely successful." Gutleben MSS, "Travel Diary, April 1931." See also Gutleben, "Dear Harry," December, 1945, p. 21 (mimeographed letter, Utah-Idaho Sugar Company Archives).

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During the first season the company contracted with 556 farmers to grow 1,800 acres of beets. Many of these first hesitant contracts were for no more than one acre; the average was three acres to the farmer. One reason for the small plots was that U t a h farms were characteristically small. Another was the lack of proper implements. Utah's primary field crop had been grain, which was irrigated by flooding, but sugarbeets had to be planted in rows and irrigated by furrows, as with garden crops.

Granger had specified that beets be planted in rows eight inches apart, which was too close together to permit the use of horse-drawn equipment.

Thus, under company direction growers used hand planters, hand-push hoes as cultivators, and pull hoes as corrugators. T h e only large operation was conducted by the company itself, which owned a 1,000-acre farm, with 146 acres in beets in 1891 and 400 acres in 1892.

Since the rate of germination of beet seed was not particularly high, seed was planted in practically a continuous stream in order to insure a good stand. Since the seed was multigerm many plants often sprouted from a particular cluster. But beets would not mature that did not have living space, and so the plants had to be "blocked" and "thinned." (The original instructions were to block and thin the beets three inches apart, but later experience demonstrated that beet plants should be 8 to 10 inches apart.) Thinning was "stoop labor," and farmers in many parts of the country would not do it. The solution in such places was to import families of newly arrived immigrants — Russians, Germans, Japanese, or Mexicans. 27 U t a h deviated from this pattern, and most of the work was done by the farmer and his family. For the factory farm and other large acreages, Utah's high birth rate insured an ample supply of boys, whose labor in a beet field was approximately equal to that of an adult. When the plants were two or three inches high, i.e., about the time school let out in May, brigades of boys from Lehi and other villages would congregate at the meetinghouse at 6 A.M. and ride horses or wagons out to the fields.28 T. F. Kirkham and Al Yates recall their thinning experience when in their early teens. 29 We aimed to be in the fields to begin work at seven in the morning, took an hour out for noon, and quit at six in the evening. For that day of ten hours 21 "Chinese and Japanese laborers don't get tired," while "white laborers refuse to get down on their knees." Gutleben MSS, "Labor," June 11, 1897, April 19, May 9, June 3, 1899, March 14, 1902.

28 Having settled according to the Mormon village pattern, the people lived in "town" and rode or walked to their fields each day to work. See Lowry Nelson, The Mormon Village: A Pattern and Technique of Land Settlement (Salt Lake City, 1952).

29 Paraphrased from recollections in Webb MSS, 13—14.

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we received 50 cents — 5 cents per hour — and were very glad for the job.

T h e beet gang consisted of a group of men and boys. Older boys with longhandled 4-inch hoes would block the beets, that is, chop the compact row of plants into bunches. T h e younger boys crawled behind on their hands and knees, with a short-handled hoe, thinning each block to a single good plant.

T o save wear and tear most of the boys wore knee pads — i.e., sack-like cushions tied with strings above and below the knee. Every thinner h a d for this highest ambition the time when he would have a crawler following him on hands and knees. Twenty rows 40 rods long was a good day's work and parents had no trouble getting boys to bed by suppertime. O n e person could thin from a fourth to a half of an acre per day.

T h e transportation of beet workers to the beet fields in the 90's sometimes became a problem. Old Bill Cutler and Lawrence Hill with their teams and wagons with boards placed across the box as improvised seats, provided a big share of transportation. Some men took their buggies; many boys rode horseback. Each rider and each driver provided himself with long stake ropes and at the field of activity the horses would be staked to fences and ditch banks and allowed to feed while the owners worked.

At noon the horses would be taken to water and staked again for the afternoon. At the close of day it was like a cavalry charging down the road to home with those horses and wagons stirring up the dust.

Similar gangs of boys were used for hoeing out "corrugates" or ditches down each row for irrigation purposes, and for hoeing and weeding in midsummer. Many hoeings were regarded as indispensable, and it was not uncommon to hear a farmer urge on the boys by repeating the German admonition, " T h e sugar must be hoed into the beets." 30 T h e beet harvest approached in late September and early October.

T h e original technique of digging was to use a horse-driven sub-soil plow with mold board and share removed, which would dig into the ground and loosen the beets without bruising them. Gangs of older boys, now let out of school for a two-week "beet vacation," would follow with large butcher knives or machetes. Reaching down and grabbing the leaves with one hand, they whacked off the crown of the beet with one blow. The "tops" would be dropped to the ground to be plowed under or consumed by sheep, and the beet itself would be tossed into a pile. Other boys would throw the beets one by one into horse-drawn wagon boxes, which were then hauled by team to the factory and unloaded by hand. (After the first year or two, local blacksmiths fashioned "beet forks" for the unloading.) Farmers in outlying districts which were too distant for hauling by team took their beets to "loading stations" where they were dumped into bin cars and shipped by rail to the factory. 31 Both thinning and 30

Hamburger, Beet Growers' Manual, 70.

Walter Webb wrote that during one of the early campaigns a farmer from a distant town grew some beets which he hauled to the factory. After unloading them he waited around nearly S1

The Lehi Sugar Factory

HI

topping were back-breaking tasks, as the writer can personally testify, and Utah's boys became men at an early age via the sugarbeet route.

At the time the Lehi factory was built in 1891 a farmer could earn about $20.00 per acre growing wheat, $13.00 from hay, and $36.00 from potatoes.32 With the company offering $4.50 a ton for beets (compared with $4.00 in California and $3.50 in Nebraska), a 10-ton crop would bring $45.00 per acre. But the average yield for the 1891 season was actually about half this much. The total crop amounted to 9,540 tons, with an average tonnage of only 5.3 per acre, or a cash value of approximately $24.00 per acre. It was a great disappointment to both the farmers and the factory men. Much of the explanation, of course, lay in the company's insistence on only one or two waterings, and in its refusal to accept the larger beets.

Although it was feared that the farmers might not grow sufficient beets another year, the church joined in the persuasion, and 604 farmers signed contracts for about 1,800 acres the second year.33 Care was taken to level and work down the ground in a more systematic way, beet cultivators were fashioned by local mechanics, and more care was exercised in irrigating the crop. When the harvest was over the tonnage was up above 10,000, with an average of 6.7 tons per acre. This was not a large increase but enough to give some encouragement.

For the third season — the first which was completely directed by "local" people — new contracts were issued to 763 farmers which omitted some of the ill-advised instructions of the first two years. The quality of beets had not been specified in former contracts, and the company now indicated its refusal to receive beets under 12 per cent sugar and 80 per cent purity. Some 2,755 acres were planted. With better seed, greater knowledge of beet growing, more care in thinning, more frequent waterings, and better implements for planting, cultivating, and harvesting, the 1893 crop totaled 26,800 tons — an average of 9.7 tons per acre. The industry now had a better standing with the farmers, and the factory people were happy to have more beets to work — more than they had had for the two previous campaigns put together. This was a kind of turning point for the agricultural department. In 1895 the acreage was 3,300; in all day. W h e n asked what he was waiting for he said, "For my sugar." M a n a g e r Cutler h a d to explain to him that a sugar factory was not like a flour mill where he took his wheat and got flour. " H e told the men to give him some sugar and let him go home." Webb M S S , 17.

32 Ibid., 3 - 5 , 26, 39.

33 Walter Webb, who lived through the experience, wrote that "President Woodruff saved the day [after the first crop] by working with the farmers persuading them to continue. H e said, 'I know you can make a success of growing beets and I know you can make white sugar.' " "Oral History Interview with Walter L. Webb," November 10, 1964 (B.Y.U. Archives), p. 34.

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1899, 5,000; in 1900, 7,500. Other districts watched the progress made at Lehi, and when the tons harvested per acre reached 12, other factories were planned.

One innovation which resulted from farmer enthusiasm was the construction of a cluster of satellite factories called "cutting stations" — the only such system in American experience. Erected at a cost of about $150,000 each, these slicing plants cut the beets, produced the juice, and pumped it through a pipeline to the parent factory. The first of these was erected at Springville in 1899, and was connected with the Lehi factory by means of a five-inch pipeline — the first such facility in the United States.

Additional slicing plants and connecting pipelines were built in 1900 at Bingham Junction (West J o r d a n ) , and in 1901 at Provo. A fourth, erected at Spanish Fork in 1904, was connected with Lehi by means of a 22-mile pipe which was the longest beet pipeline in the world. (In 1916 this station was removed to Pleasant Grove.) These four auxiliary slicers, each with a capability of cutting 350 tons of beets per day, served to expand the acreage territory of the mother plant at Lehi. Beets from as far north as Bear River Valley, and from as far south as the Sevier River Basin were ultimately transformed into sugar at Lehi.

In the long run, however, the pipelines were not a success. Placed in alkali soil, the pipes corroded and developed thousands of small leaks.

Even so, the stations at Provo and Pleasant Grove were still operable when the Lehi factory closed in 1925.

During the early years at Lehi, the factory recommended that the farmers plant their crops on land which had been planted to sugarbeets the preceding year. T h e reason for this was that this land was already "worked u p " ; i.e., leveled, harrowed, and prepared for the intensive kind of cultivation which sugarbeets required. Two problems arose as the result of this custom. The first was that the importance of crop rotation in maintaining soil fertility was overlooked. Since each crop took certain nutrients out of the soil, it was harmful to grow sugarbeets on the same land year after year.

T h e second was the propagation of parasites which fed on the beet.

In fields where beets were grown year after year "bad spots" appeared, yields declined, and eventually whole fields were not worth digging. The cause of this was not known until 1901, when Dr. E. G. Titus found beet nematode in two fields in the Lehi district. This tiny pest, hardly visible to the naked eye, had infected the beet growing districts of Europe and was probably carried to Utah on sugarbeet seed. By working on the

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The Lehi Sugar Factory

rootlets of the beet, the nematode effectively stopped growth. Clods of soil infested with brown cysts containing nematode eggs were gradually spread over the fields by cultivators, levelers, harrows, and irrigation water. They spread from farm to farm by means of machinery and by farmers carrying back infested dirt from the beet dump. Years passed before factory officials became aware of the problem, but when they did the growing of beets year after year on the same field was stopped.

A definite system of crop rotation was advocated so that crops were planted on which the nematode could not feed. Methods were adopted at the beet dumps so that each farmer took back only the dirt and screenings

Tools and equipment were specially designed to dig, plant, and harvest sugar beets.

To the right is a "beet fork" used for unloading beets. Note the rounded knobs on the ends of the tines to prevent piercing the beet. The beet lifter (to the left) is a horse-drawn, single-row "puller" which loosened the beet so the toppers could easily remove it from the ground and cut off the top.

The earliest methods were slow and frequently done "by hand." The implement below is a single-row planter pushed by one person.

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from his own farm. While these practices were instituted too late to prevent the infestation of thousands of acres in the Lehi district (thus contributing to the closing of the Lehi factory in 1925), Lehi's lesson of the necessity of rotation saved other districts from the same fate. 34 OPERATIONS AT T H E FACTORY

Perhaps the most important pioneering aspect of the Lehi factory was the manner in which farmers and rural laborers, who knew nothing about machinery, were taught to manage the various factory stations. The California and Nebraska factories had made substantial use of immigrantspecialists, but the Lehi management took on men whose knowledge of power was restricted to horsepower and manpower and taught them to operate a factory making use of steam and electricity. Illustrative of the magnitude of the task was the astonishment of the master mechanic when his chief assistant, a few weeks after the plant was in operation, asked him if the armature revolving between the field magnets was for the purpose of keeping the magnets cool! O n another occasion part of the plant went dark because a fuse was blown when a sacker began probing in a light socket with his big sewing needle in order to find out where the light came from. O n still another occasion a man was killed unloading a centrifugal because the blade whirled with such rapidity and smoothness that he did not realize it could hurt him. Another workman was badly burned in the boiler room before learning the dangers of steam. These lessons were slow and painful, but unforgettable !35 Relying on their California experience, the Dyers had cautioned that frosted or frozen beets would yield low percentages and purities of sugar.

They suggested the erection of long covered sheds into which the beets hauled in by farmers were thrown. T h e sheds were made frostproof by a double wall filled with cinders, and a roof covered with earth. There was no screening of dirt and leaves brought in by the farmers, so that the wellprotected piles of beets in the bins inevitably contained small bits of tops which began to heat. Because of poor circulation of air in the tightly covered sheds, a rot was eventually produced which had a far worse effect on sugar extraction than frost. It was several years before the company reluctantly abandoned the covered bins and left the piles out in the open 34 Webb M S S , 4, 16, 2 4 - 2 5 ; U.S., Department of Agriculture, Gerald Thorne, Control of the Sugar Beet Nematode by Crop Rotation, Bulletin 1514 (Washington, D . C , 1926).

88 M. W. Ingalls, "Early Days at the Lehi Sugar Factory," The Cossette, I I I (Tune, 1921), 1; Webb MSS. X U& I Farm Messenger (September, 1933), 5, 6.

if • *

J"

J*-

«#*

*J»8C***

£<?<?£ storage sheds at the Lehi Sugar

(T' 'HPfe

Factory.

The beets in the sheds were conveyed into the factory by means of a wooden flume through which flowed a current of warm water.37 Thrown by hand into the flume, the beets were carried to the washer in the factory.

(Later, in 1900, a V-shaped wooden floor was put in the shed and sloped so that the beets would naturally roll toward the flume. This saved the labor of five men.) The beets were raised from the flume to the washer by means of a large 16-foot "beet wheel," designed by Chief Engineer Merrill Ingalls especially for the Lehi factory and later standard equipment in all factories. From the washer the beets were conveyed by a bucket elevator to a "cutter," in which special triangular knives sliced the beets into long siender slices ("cossettes") that looked something like shoestring potatoes. Because of lack of screening the cutter knives were frequently damaged by rocks and other trash that went into the factory along with the beets. Trash catchers and rock catchers were then installed in the flume and beet washer which gathered wagonloads of fill every day.

After cutting, the cossettes were dropped by means of a revolving chute to a battery of 12 wrought-iron "diffusers," with a capacity of two and one-half tons each. These cooked the "noodles" to extract the sugar.

The primary problem here was to assure that the hot water soaked all the sugar out of the cossettes in the battery cells. This was a continuous process of cells being filled and pulp dumped out. While the water which went 37 Early factory operations are described in Salt Lake Tribune, American, L X V (December 5, 1891), 360; and Webb MSS, passim.

October 8, 1891;

Scientific

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Utah Historical Quarterly

into the battery was from artesian wells (the factory site had eight wells from 65 to 135 feet deep with a capacity of 500 gallons per minute), and therefore soft and pure, the beets were grown in "alkali soil" and produced an alkali reaction which had not been experienced in beet sugar manufacture since the pioneer enterprise of the 1850's. The presence of alkali salt in the beets lowered the purity of the juice, resulting in more molasses and less sugar.38 As this difficulty came to be appreciated the contracts with the farmers gave increasing emphasis to beet purity, and there was a determined effort to improve the chemistry. The amount of sugar extracted rose markedly from 108.2 pounds per ton of beets in 1891 to 134 pounds in 1892, 153 pounds in 1893, 167 pounds in 1894, and 193 pounds in 1895. By 1900 it had reached 232.5 pounds per ton. After the "osmose process" was installed in 1898 the amount of sugar going into the bag increased to 254 pounds per ton of beets worked.

The next stage in the manufacturing process was to convey the darkcolored juice to "carbonators" where milk of lime and carbon dioxide gas were added to combine with impurities, which were then filtered out through canvas cloth.39 The lime cake was then washed out of the factory as a useless waste. The "thin juice" was now ready for the evaporator, where the excess water was evaporated to make it into a "thick juice."

Relying upon European information, Dyer installed 20 large bone black filters in the Lehi plant. These were of upright boiler iron construction, with each holding five tons of bone black. The theory was that after "clarification," the molasses had to be filtered through bone char.

During the first two years the company learned that when the juice was in good condition these expensive filters were not necessary to make good white sugar. They were removed and not used in subsequent American factories. This production of superior white sugar directly from the juice was "a triumph of American industrial chemistry over the long experience of Europe." 40 38 Sugarbeets contain various substances in solution other than sugar; e.g., proteins and salts.

T h e presence of these substances makes sugar extraction expensive. They also decrease the amount of sugar that can be extracted, as these impurities must not pass into the sugar. Beet men refer to the per cent of sugar in the beet, as compared with the total amount of salts present, as the purity.

It is commonly accepted today that beets must have at least an 80 per cent purity to be fit for sugar making, but Lehi beets tested in the first week of December 1891 showed purities ranging from a low of 70.6 per cent to a high of 75.7 per cent. The per cent of sucrose ranged from a low of 9.2 per cent to a high of 11.4 per cent. Obviously, there was nothing in these findings to warm the heart of a sugar man! "Laboratory Record Book C," James E. Talmage Papers (B.Y.U. Archives), p. 195.

39 An interesting use of filter cloths was observed in 1899. R. Doerstling, a German sugar technician who became superintendent of the factory at La Grande, Oregon, reported that he had seen an occupied Indian tepee constructed of old filter press cloths from Lehi, Ogden Standard, July 8, 1899.

40 Gutleben MSS, "Lehi," January 1893.

The Lehi Sugar Factory

117

After being treated with sulphur gas in order to "clarify" the molasses and improve the crystallization, the "thick liquor" was pumped to the floor of the 35-ton capacity vacuum pan. 41 There James H. Gardner, the only Utahn who knew anything about his station, performed the miracle of converting black molasses into white sugar. After each strike the centrifugals spun out the molasses, and the wet sugar went through a drier and out to the bags where it was sacked in a white cotton bag placed inside a burlap bag. Approximately 36 hours elapsed between the time the beet left the shed and the moment that glistening sugar was ready to sweeten Lehi's economy.

Lehi mechanics made a number of important changes in the centrifugals or "spinners." Although these machines ran at 1,200 revolutions per minute, they were unloaded by hand with a wooden paddle â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a hot, sticky, dangerous job. Eugene Roberts, a young Lehi mechanic, developed mechanical unloaders and other improvements and eventually spent his life installing new machinery in sugar factories in many parts of the world.

The molasses which was spun off the white sugar by the centrifugals was boiled again to make a brown sugar. This was slow to granulate, and since there were no crystallizers it was run from the brown "pan" to one of the two 80-ton settling tanks, where it was allowed to stand over the summer until the sugar granulated and settled to the bottom of the tank.

According to the plan, the liquor would then be drained off again and the brown sugar dug out with a hand paddle. Later, slow-turning horizontal crystallizers took over this work and dumped the load into the brown mixer and the brown sugar was spun out.

Work at the factory went on night and day during each campaign.

Whereas three 8-hour shifts are customary today, two 12-hour shifts operated in the 1890's â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a night crew and a day crew. Every two weeks the shift was changed and at the time of the change the men worked 18hour shifts. There were some differences in pay scales, but the most uncomfortable work was perhaps that done in the boiler room where 10 hand-fired boilers furnished steam for heating and boiling the juice. The boiler crew was paid $1.80 per shift. There were, of course, no labor unions during this period, and little evidence of disputes with management. A large share of the workmen were farmers who had raised beets during the summer.

41 If syrup is boiled in the open air it will burn, rather than produce sugar; i.e., it will carbonize, not crystallize. When placed in a vacuum, the syrup can be boiled at a low temperature until it is heavy enough for crystals to begin to form. At first, these are very small crystals, and the attendant leaves the juice in the " p a n " until the crystals are built up to the desired size.

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Factory work was exacting, but there was something fascinating if not miraculous about the making of sugar. Those who worked in the plant were regarded with a certain awe. "The whole process of beet sugar making," writes Walter Webb, "was considered a mystery. The boiling of the syrup was the greatest mystery of all. The sugar boiler was almost a superman." 42 Their close juxtaposition during the campaign, and their mutual struggle to overcome the many problems, created among the workmen a strong esprit de corps. In a sense, Sugar Men were a breed set apart.

During the worst days of the Cleveland Depression of the 1890's, the employees were paid no salary for several months. Most of them lived on credit extended by the Lehi People's Cooperative. (Technically, they were paid in co-op scrip.) When the campaign had been completed and the factory put in shape for the next season's run, the entire crew went camping in American Fork Canyon for 30 days. There they engaged in fishing, hunting, prospecting, and eating Merrill Ingalls' "matchless baked beans," cooked overnight in a large earthen jar in a pit of live coals.

On a well-remembered occasion the people of Lehi, including the Lehi Silver Band and Choir, decided to spend Sunday and Pioneer Day (July 24) in the canyon with the Sugar Men. The outcome is told by Walter Webb: 43 They went u p the north fork and a short way up Deer Creek near a grassy flat where the sugar group h a d camped.

H e r e Bishop T . R. Cutler conducted services on Sunday with the choir doing the singing. A big celebration was held on Pioneer Day with pioneer speeches and music. In the afternoon the Lehi people left for home, a big parade of wagons and buggies down the canyon, leaving the sugar group in camp. T h a t night heavy clouds came up bringing a sudden thunderstorm u p the canyon near Silver Lake. T h e campers had to move to higher ground before the flood came down the canyon. T h e storm soon passed. I n the morning they saw the little grassy flat where they had camped covered with large granite boulders washed down from the cliffs near Silver Lake.

42 43

Webb MSS, 16.

Ibid., 37. Also Gutleben MSS, "Lehi," June 9, 1895.

Sugar Men were almost a breed set apart. "The whole process of beet sugar making was considered a mystery. The boiling of the syrup was the greatest mystery of all. The sugar boiler was almost a superman."

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Factory

Of such events legends are made, and there are many such legends in the sugar industry. 44 T H E L E H I P L A N T AS T E A C H E R

Beginning with the 1897 season, the Lehi plant was doing well enough to be regarded as a technical and financial success. A large cattlefeeding program had been inaugurated to make use of the pulp, and other improvements had been made in both the agricultural and industrial aspects of the enterprise. M a n y contemporary writers, anxious to score a point for "protective" legislation, attributed the hard-won profitability to the Dingley Tariff, which was passed that year by Congress. But it must be obvious that six years of struggle and experimentation, of innovation and improvement, had prepared the way for whatever measure of success the plant and company h a d achieved. T h e Dingley Tariff may have been the frosting on the cake, but the cake itself h a d been baked many times before it came out sweet. Lehi technicians learned their trade in "the school of hard knocks" and in the process acquired a special capacity to devise imaginative solutions to problems. They became persons on whom 44 T h e best introduction to sugar folklore is the collection of "Letters to H a r r y " a n d " T h e Sugar T r a m p " by D a n Gutleben. Complete collections are in the University of California Library, Berkeley; the library of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia; and the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

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the emergent industry could rely as it expanded toward national stature.

In the 20 years after Lehi's success, 116 factories were established in the United States, including 17 in Utah and 10 in Idaho. A substantial number of these factories, from Binghamton, New York, to La Grande, Oregon, employed Lehi "alumni" to pass on the benefit of their experiences.

T h e first of these factories to profit from Lehi's learning was established at Ogden in 1898. T h a t enterprise was to form the nucleus for a chain of factories ultimately established in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and U t a h by T h e Amalgamated Sugar Company. 45 A second group of factories was built with Lehi assistance in Colorado by T h e Great Western Sugar Company and other predecessor and competing companies, forming the basis for one of the largest concentrations of beet sugar factories in the world. 46 Still other concentrations which profited from Lehi instruction were in Nebraska and Michigan. Above all, Lehi was the parent plant of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company which built or acquired 29 different factories in the irrigated West. These have manufactured more than 160 million bags of sugar since the Lehi factory began producing in 1891.

While its "graduates" were distinguishing themselves, the Lehi factory was gradually becoming the little old red schoolhouse of the industry.

Larger and more modern factories were erected. When Utah-Idaho built a plant at West Jordan in 1916, its capability included the absorption of the Lehi district. (The West Jordan plant now produces as much sugar each year as the Lehi plant produced during the first eight years of its existence, and the total production of sugar in Utah today is well in excess of all but two of the peak campaigns of yesteryear.) After the 1924 season "Old Lehi" was retired and the final dismantling took place in 1939.

Nevertheless, even today in Toppenish, Washington, some of the Lehi machinery continues to produce the sparkling white crystals which delighted Utah's pioneers of 75 years ago.

45 J. R. Bachman, Story of The Amalgamated Sugar Company, 1897-1961 (Caldwell, Idaho, 1962). For evidence of Lehi assistance in building the Ogden plant, see Gutleben MSS, "Lehi," November 26, 1896, March 15, 1897, April 15, November 10, 1898.

4 " Examples of Lehi assistance to Colorado factories are given in Alvin T. Steinel, History of Agriculture in Colorado (Fort Collins, 1926), 3 0 1 - 3 . When Mark Austin left Lehi in 1901 to supervise all the agricultural work for The Great Western Sugar Company at Loveland, Colorado, he took with him 70 boys from Lehi and adjoining towns to thin bieets. One of these boys who went on to become vice president and general manager of the vast Utah-Tdaho Sugar Company network was Douglas E. Scalley.

The first decade of settlement in Utah had scarcely passed when U.S. troops founded Camp Floyd, which was to become only the first of Utah's numerous bases or military installations. Troops of infantry and cavalry were stationed at the first camp. Since that time, practically every branch of the military has either had bases in Utah, has had components attached to bases, or presently has personnel serving in reserve units in various parts of the state.

These military posts and personnel have had a profound effect upon the history of Utah. Topographical surveys were made, roads and bridges were constructed, Indians were subjugated, civil authorities were supported in their positions, mineral discoveries were made with their subsequent development, and above all the economy of the territory and the state has not only been bolstered but from time to time it has been to a large degree supported through military expenditures.

During the past three years, 10 articles have appeared in the Utah Historical Quarterly concerning Utah's military installaby tions and their impact upon the THOMAS 6 . A L E X A N D E R social, political, and economic life of the state. These three brief histories complete the series initiated in the Winter 1963 issue of the Quarterly.

Brief Histories of Three Federal Military Installations in Utah

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KEARNS ARMY AIR BASE

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M I L I T A R Y INSTALLATIONS IN UTAH, 1858-1966 LEGEND

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Utah's City of Airmen: KEARNS ARMY AIR BASE, 1942-1948 In attempting to mobilize effectively to meet the threat posed by the Japanese bombardment of Pearl Harbor, the United States Air Force determined that most large training bases should be located far enough inland to secure them from a West Coast attack. One area, the northern part of Utah, presented an ideal location for these bases under World War II conditions. Almost equidistant from the three major West Coast ports of San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles, and halfway between Canada and Mexico, northern Utah formed a location which was readily defensible yet easily accessible by rail, truck, and air.1 Dr. Alexander is assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University. T h e work on this article was done under the direction of Dr. Leonard J. Arrington, professor of economics, U t a h State University. Research on these installations was done under a grant from the U t a h State University Research Council.

1 Scrapbook at the U t a h Historical Society entitled "Colonel Walter F. Siegmund, A. C , Commanding Officer Army Air Base Kearns, U t a h , " inside title "Encamped at K e a r n s , " ca. 1944, hereafter referred to as Kearns Scrapbook; " W h a t A Wonderful T o w n ! " Report of the History Committee, Kearns Community Development Program, June 6, 1960, Jerry Payne, chairman, p. 3, in a bound volume entitled "Kearns, U t a h Community Development Program, 1959-1960," in the office of Professor J. D . Williams, project director at the University of U t a h , Department of Political Science, hereafter cited as, "Wonderful T o w n . "

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Early in 1942, the United States district engineer, Colonel E. G. Thomas, and his staff searched this region for a suitable site for an Air Corps training base. Specifically required were good drainage, accessible water supply, and a climate which would not hinder the landing of aircraft. O n February 10, 1942, Colonel Thomas recommended that the Army choose a 5,450-acre dry farming area in Kearns, 14 miles west of Salt Lake City. The base was located about midway between the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains.

Since officials intended the base to be temporary, the construction proceeded rapidly, though hampered by "swirls and eddies" of the omnipresent dust. In a month and a half â&#x20AC;&#x201D; between April 7 and May 22, 1942 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the contractors laid out streets, put in water mains and an electric system, and constructed tarpaper buildings. About $500,000 was spent on the construction of roads, and $1,827,644 for water, sewage, and electric systems capable of serving between 30,000 and 70,000 persons. In addition $89,518 was spent to build a railroad spur from the Denver and Rio Grande Western to the base, and another $38,000 on a fence around the cantonment area. By August 21, 1942, all the barracks had been completed, and on September 12 the base held its first formal review for the new commander, Colonel Leo F. Post.2 Total cost of the entire installation was estimated at $17 million.

T h e base had warehouse space totaling 1.7 million square feet, 926 tarpaper-sheathed buildings, three theatres, two gymnasiums, three completely equipped fire stations, two service clubs, 16 mess halls, a cold storage plant, recreation fields, parking areas, a 10-wing hospital capable of accommodating 1,000 patients, a railroad station to which heaping trainloads of food and equipment were directed, and a sewage treatment plant.

T h e base had a bank, a post office, a telegraph office, a library with 8,500 volumes, four chapels, and a number of tailor shops, barber shops, and shoe repair shops. Even though the base had no water supply nearer than the Salt Lake City municipal system, only 16 days were required to complete the 9-mile tie-in-line. More than 25,000 trees and shrubs, and a great amount of grass were later added to keep the dirt in place and lend a touch of beauty. 3 During World War I I Kearns Air Base served primarily as a training field for Air Corps personnel. O n July 20, 1942, Kearns officially 2 "Wonderful Town," 4, 6; Salt Lake Tribune, June 27, 1943, Sunday Magazine of July 18, 1943; Kearns Scrapbook. '"Wonderful Town," 6; Tribune, June 27, 1943, Sunday Magazine of July 18, 1943, February 28, 1948; Kearns Scrapbook.

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opened as an adjunct of the Army Air Force Training Command, and on August 15 became a basic training center. On September 16 the Army designated Kearns as an overseas replacement center. During 1943 and part of 1944, Kearns served as a field of the Second Air Force, which conducted schools for Air Force specialists, particularly ground crews.

Air Corps gunners, including some from the 509th Composite Group who distinguished themselves at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, trained at the base.

On April 15, 1944, the War Department transferred Kearns to the Western Technical Training Command under whose jurisdiction it continued to train personnel until it was deactivated.4 Early in 1944 the Army established a release point at Kearns for skilled Air Force personnel who were needed in defense industries on the West Coast. Those with special skills for whom a replacement could be found were allowed to leave the Air Corps and go to work in the West Coast airplane industries. The Air Corps sent men from 500 different posts to Kearns for release.

By the spring of 1943, Kearns had grown until it was Utah's third largest city. At its peak the Army stationed 40,000 troops at Kearns and between 1,000 and 1,200 civilians were employed there. By October 1943 Kearns facilities had trained 90,000 airmen. The facilities for training included a mile-long obstacle course, a grenade-throwing ground, and bayonet targets. There was a large area for beachhead maneuvers, and another for gas demonstrations. There was training in camouflage and airdrome defense. Southwest of the camp, near the Oquirrh range, was the nation's second largest rifle range, with 600 targets. In addition to having the second largest hospital in the state and one of two then existing 4

Kearns Scrapbook; Tribune,

May 6, 1956.

Senator Harry S Truman, chairman of the war investigating committee, visited Utah in 1944, and with Utah governor, Herbert B. Maw, and the post commander inspected the troops at Camp Kearns.

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sewage treatment plants in Utah, Kearns had one of the largest dental installations in the entire nation.5 Despite these assets, Kearns was not without problems. The great influx of airmen produced friction with Salt Lake City residents â&#x20AC;&#x201D; buses carried servicemen to the city in 35 minutes. Airmen complained that Salt Lakers were not hospitable, that there was a lack of entertainment, limited U.S.O. facilities, and an archaic Sunday closing ordinance. Airmen's wives had trouble finding apartments, and transportation facilities were found to be inadequate.

The boon which the base represented for Utah's economy, however, tended to counteract any local opposition to the base. In 1943, for instance, the State of Utah, the City of Salt Lake, and the commanding officers of nearby installations helped organize recruiting parades in Salt Lake City. The parades were designed, not to recruit fighting men for frontline activity, but to obtain civilians as workers at the many large War Department installations in the state.6 The acknowledged temporary base continued to function until the end of World War II. On January 24, 1947, the War Assets Administration declared Camp Kearns to be surplus, and planned to return it to its previous farmland status. Influential Utah citizens protested this move.

Here, in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, they argued, the Army had laid out a model city. More than $1.8 million had been spent on a complete utilities system which would cost over $3 million to replace.7 As the result of this pressure, War Assets Administration changed its classification and opened the 1,200-acre "fenced-in ghost town" to public bidding. By 1948 only 100 of the buildings remained, but railroad tracks, paved streets, utilities, and fire equipment still graced the area. When the government opened the bids in July 1948, Standard Surplus, Incorporated, of New York, had submitted the high bid of $287,270. Thus, a ready-made housing development, complete with utilities, streets, and 2 million board feet of lumber sold for less than 10 per cent of the value of the utilities alone.8 The "surplus" townsite became one of Utah's fastest growing communities. The build-up of missiles and metal manufacturing and other economic activity west of Salt Lake City produced a steady growth in population, which reached 17,172 in 1960.

5

Tribune, July 18, 1943, February 28, 1948, May 6, 1956; "Wonderful Town," 4.

Kearns Scrapbook.

7 Ibid.; "Wonderful Town," 6-7.

8 Quoted from the Rocky Mountain Empire Magazine of the Denver Post in "Wonderful Town," 6; Tribune, July 2, 1948.

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The Vicissitudes of "HURRICANE SAM': The Supersonic Military Air Research Site at Hurricane Mesa, 1934-1961 From time immemorial, man dreamed of leaving the earth like the mythical Icarus and joining the gods and the birds in their freedom of movement. Sitting on the seacoast, he watched the gulls soaring above the water; inland he saw the eagle effortlessly gliding on invisible ribbons of air. Owing to his inventive nature, man took the principles of flight taught him by the birds and perfected them to a point where the birds' soaring seems puny compared with the speeds which he has reached.

In the early years of the Cold War that followed World War II, the speed of the new jet planes began to exceed 500 miles per hour, and the Air Force found that pilots had trouble making emergency escapes. Indeed, during the years 1949 to 1956, pilots accomplished only 20 per cent of the ejections without harm. Seeing the need for an ejection system Hurricane Mesa, the testing ground of Project SMART, is a flat, arid mesa ending in a 1,500-foot drop into the valley of the Virgin River, 16 miles west of Zion National Park, near the town of Hurricane, Utah.

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which would allow the pilot to be thrown clear of his airplane without causing him any injury, the Air Force constructed track systems in deserts and lake beds to perfect such a system. But because tests at such sites resulted in the early impact of the ejected dummy, it was impossible to observe the complete ejection cycle.

I n 1953 the Air Force announced a competition for the design of a high-speed track on an elevated site where engineers could observe the entire cycle and recover the ejected dummy. Its primary purpose was to stabilize the seats in some way so they would not spin and tumble, causing injury to the pilot.

Together with several other companies, Coleman Engineering Company, Incorporated, of Torrance, California, entered the competition for the design of the elevated track. Coleman had previously contracted to study the design of existing tracks for the Air Force, and partly because of its previous experience was awarded the $2 million contract to construct the Supersonic Military Air Research Track ( S M A R T ) at Hurricane Mesa. Coleman agreed to complete construction of the new facility within 18 months from the awarding of the contract in June of 1954, but

by July 8, 1955, only 13 months after the Air Force awarded the contract, the first test took place. 1 T h e site which the Air Force selected for the facility was a flat, arid mesa ending in a 1,500-foot drop into the valley of the Virgin River, 16 miles west of Zion National Park, near the town of Hurricane, Utah. After careful observation, the Air Force found that they could expect favorable testing weather all year round and a temperature which ranged between 27 and 98 degrees. Observation also showed that the mesa contained a flat bedrock of faultless Shinarump conglomerate into which a track could be securely anchored. Finally, the Virgin River would supply the necessary water.

T h e contract called for a great amount of equipment and precise workmanship on the part of the Coleman Company. T h e track was constructed on 12,000 feet of continuously welded, heavy-duty crane-rails aligned to within plus or minus one-tenth inch tolerance. It was the longest rocket research track built in the nation to that date. Coleman also contracted to construct mechanical arresting gear and retro rockets, 1 Unless otherwise noted, the information in this section is taken from "Project HSRS, Formerly Project S M A R T : Its History and Its Mission" (typescript, ca. 1960), furnished the writer by Coleman Engineering Company; Hurricane Supersonic Research Site, User's Manual, prepared by Coleman Engineering Company for the Air Force Flight Test Center, February 1, 1960; Coleman Engineering Company, Inc. (n.p., n.d.) ; "Hurricane Supersonic Research Site," August 25, 1960, furnished the writer by R. L. Olson, St. George, U t a h ; letter from R. L. Olson to the writer, August 8, 1961.

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along with photographic and telemetering facilities. T h e site included the track, launching pad, crew shelters, camera towers, revetments, rocket storage depots, water system (pumped five miles from the Virgin River), power system, communications system, 20-mile road system, security facilities, administration building, and shop building.

After moving forward at breakneck speed to complete the facility ahead of schedule, Coleman received the Air Force contract to operate the facility for one year on November 30, 1955. A similar contract was renewed annually, and by the middle of 1961 Coleman had supervised some 334 tests. During the six years of operation, not only companies from the United States but also teams from several foreign countries, including England and Canada, conducted tests at Hurricane.

In a typical test the rocket sled was hurled along the track at a speed of 1,050 miles per hour, or Mach 1.3, carrying the seat with a dummy strapped to it. T h e dummy was a highly instrumented anthropoid simulator named "Hurricane Sam." To the dummy, engineers connected electronic equipment and a radio for transmitting its condition to the telemetering stations. Along the track cameras followed the movement of the sled, then just before the edge of the cliff, the ejection mechanism fired, and the seat hurtled over the cliff where its parachute opened and it floated to the valley floor 1,500 feet below. By this method the Air Force was able to standardize ejection systems for industry-wide acceptance for both fighters and bombers. In one series of tests, apes were substituted for the dummy in order to determine the effects of ejection on live beings.

For the purpose of arresting the sled, Coleman constructed water brakes similar to those on aircraft carriers, with a capacity of 34 tons of braking force. The attempt to stop a sled moving at the speed of sound was described by one Coleman official as akin to stopping an automobile traveling 100 miles an hour in a space of three and a half feet without demolishing the car. In the first year of operation, "Coleman set a world land speed record and fulfilled its contract with the Air Force by sending a 9,400-pound sled rocketing down the track at 1,800 miles an hour." 2 The result of all this was the perfection of an ejection seat that would not tumble, and would give the pilot maximum protection from the devastating effects of wind blast.

By 1958 Coleman was conducting tests other than those involving rocket ejection seats, and the name of the site was changed to Hurricane Supersonic Research Site ( H S R S ) . In one of these tests, Coleman 2

Frank Jensen, "A. F. Cites 'Track' Tests," Salt Lake Tribune,

December 8, 1960.

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launched a missile from the rocket sled and shot it at a target suspended from a balloon 75 miles away. This made possible the observation of the separation of missile stages. T h e facility also tested the use of escape capsules in the B-58 Hustler bomber. Because many of the projects were secretive, details are not available on all types of tests conducted at the site.

After the functions of the test site expanded, the facility changed hands. At first it was responsible to the Wright Air Development Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, and then it came under the Air Force Flight Test Center of the Air Research and Development Command, Edwards, California.

T h e developments at H S R S were of value not only to the Air Force, but to industry as well. At the peak there were five different aircraft companies testing their equipment at Hurricane Mesa at one time. 3 Several railroads adopted the Coleman method of welding tracks under high temperature. T h e rockets were handled by power equipment developed for that purpose, and testing of ignition systems practically eliminated rocket failures at H S R S . Several industrial concerns adopted HSRS methods of handling liquid rocket fuel, and several of the trailers which Coleman designed for more efficient handling of the sleds and rockets found acceptance in industry.

T h e facility also improved upon old telemetering and camera techniques. At first, H S R S used hand-operated comparators and made calculations on desk calculators. Later, Coleman developed a powered comparator to review high-speed motion pictures. I n 1956 the base acquired the I B M 607 computer, and in 1960 it replaced the IBM machine with a Bendix G-15 electronic digital computer. By 1960 all data reduction was done by a system of semiautomatic processing equipment. By 1961 complex equipment permitted telemetering of simultaneous ejections such as one from a dual seat bomber with data transmitted from both dummies.

Industry was not the only beneficiary from Coleman's occupation of Hurricane Mesa. Like a phoenix arising from its own ashes, the addition of new blood to the small town (1,271) gave Hurricane a new lease on life.

Skilled technicians, mechanics, and engineers, 90 per cent of whom had families, took part in local community activities and development, and the Coleman Company itself helped induce Hurricane High School to achieve accreditation by offering a scholarship to the student body based 3 Jeanne Bethers, " ' H u r r i c a n e Sam' Ends Test Leaps," Deseret News March 9, 1962.

(Salt Lake City),

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Rocket sled with dummy, "Hurricane Sam," strapped in position. A typical test consisted of hurtling the sled along the track at a speed of 1,050 miles per hour. The lummy, a highly instrumented anthropoid simulator, was strapped in the seat on the ;led. Just before the edge of the cliff, the ejection mechanism fired, and the seat hurtled yver the cliff where its parachute opened and it floated to the valley floor.

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on that condition. Of the Coleman employees 50 per cent claimed Utah as a home, and the other 50 per cent came from 11 states, thus offering to Hurricane a cultural and intellectual diversity and bringing new ideas to the small southern Utah town. In 1961, although the force was considerably reduced, Coleman had up to 100 employees and the testing companies up to 25 at one time. In addition the Air Force stationed one liaison officer at the base.

Added to these cultural advantages, Coleman also injected a spurt of life into Hurricane's economy. In 1960 Coleman employed 67 persons full time, in addition to 3,939 man days which temporary employees, most of whom were local people, worked. To these employees the company paid $400,000 in payroll checks annually. In addition the company purchased more than $200,000 worth of goods and services on the local market and paid $50,000 for its utilities. The employees themselves, according to company computations, annually spent $90,000 for food, $50,000 for clothing and household necessities, $30,000 for utilities, $50,000 for car expenses, and additional amounts for medical care, entertainment, new cars, furniture, and other items. Total cost of operating the base was approximately $ 1 million per year.

For the economy of Hurricane, however, the future of HSRS was not secure. Beginning in 1961 the work force was reduced, and the facility was gradually phased out. In December 1961 the base was closed and held by Edwards Air Force Base, California, on a stand-by basis.

PROJECT ATHENA The Green River Test Complex, 1963-1966

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For some time the Ballistic Systems Division of the United States Air Force Systems Command was concerned about the high cost of testing re-entry systems.

In 1961 the AFSC instituted, as part of the Advanced Ballistic Re-entry System program (ABRES), the Athena program which was aimed at improving ballistic penetration through the use of smaller, less expensive missiles than those flown from the eastern and western test ranges at Cape Kennedy, Florida, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The BSD officials concluded that if they could develop scaling laws, a smaller missile could do the same job as a larger Atlas or Titan and that the results from the smaller projectile could then be scaled up to fit the larger and more costly rockets.1 The Air Force had conducted some re-entry type experiments at the Army's 4,000 square-mile White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. But to make test flights at re-entry velocities ABRES had to find a launch site from which missiles could be projected from some distance to the White Sands site. It was necessary that overland test flights dislocate and inconvenience as few people as possible. After considerable research, the Department of Defense concluded late in 1962 that shots from Green River, Utah, would inconvenience only 32 1 T h e writer is particularly grateful for material furnished by Lieutenant Colonel Jack F. McAhon, information officer, White Sands Missile Range.

The Atlantic Research Green River field facility is a remote city of hurried labor. More than 100 employees of the Missile Systems Division divide their time between the cantonment area, a large city of trailers, and the support operations and missile assembly area (upper portion of the photograph).

The blockhouse and launch pads (not shown in the picture) are located approximately five miles from the entrance of the site.

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people, and so Green River was chosen. 2 It is some 425 miles northwest of the impact area of White Sands.

At first, there was considerable local and state apprehension over the establishment of the missile base near Green River. Lieutenant Colonel August T. McColgan, former information officer at White Sands, met with the Green River Chamber of Commerce to allay such fears. H e said that the town would grow accustomed to the noise after the first couple of shots, and that there would be no hazard to the town. T h e government contracted to pay per diem to ranchers for evacuating during Athena firings and to reimburse them for any damage which the test did to their property. 3 A major concern was associated with the area of the drop zone of the first-stage booster rocket. T h e impact dispersion area lay about 45 miles southeast of Green River, between the Colorado River and the north edge of the Manti-LaSal National Forest. About five per cent of the zone was within the Canyonlands National Park, and there was some fear that park visitors might be in danger. Service officials pointed out that they would give 24 hours notice before any launch and post signs at all roads entering the drop area. After these assurances, state officials agreed that the Defense Department could locate the site at Green River. 4 Concurrently with obtaining agreements with the owners in the safety areas, the Army Corps of Engineers had begun construction at the cantonment and assembly areas, which were located approximately two miles southeast of Green River. T h e U t a h State Land Board granted a right-of-entry to 1,600 acres of state land, and the Bureau of Land Management issued a special permit to the Corps of Engineers for 11,098 acres.

Low bidder for the basic construction was the Olson Construction Company of Salt Lake City, which bid $1,235,072. T h e contract included support structures, utilities, and roads. 5 Later construction has increased the value of the installation to more than $3 million.

T h e Green River Launch Facility is actually an Army installation which is operated in connection with the White Sands Missile Range, with the Air Force as a tenant. The Air Force Ballistic Systems Division at Norton Air Force Base near San Bernardino, California, directs the missile program, and the Ogden Air Materiel Area at Hill Air Force Base near 2 "Athena Research Pushed," Missiles and Rockets Tribune, July 2, 1963.

3 Tribune, February 16, May 25, 1963.

4 Ibid., May 25, July 2, 1963.

5 Ibid., January 10, 11, February 16, 1963.

(September 2, 1963), 1 0 - 1 1 ; Salt Lake

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Sunset, Utah, has support responsibilities for the installation. O O A M A stores the Athena rocket motors in ammunition igloos at Hill AFB and sends calibration specialists to calibrate missile control instruments at the Green River site. Prime contractor for the Air Force program is the Atlantic Research Corporation of Alexandria, Virginia, through its offices in Duarte, California. Other contractors include Dynalectron and American Vitro Corporation ( A V C O ) . 6 T h e facility consists basically of three areas. 7 T h e first of these is the cantonment area near Green River, supported and maintained by Dynalectron's Land-Air Division which succeeded Bendix Field Engineering Corporation in this capacity on February 1, 1965. This area includes 59 trailers used as bachelor officers' quarters, offices, a mess hall, a laundry, and a latrine. There are seven prefabricated buildings for supply, a telephone exchange, and engineer and transportation use. Adjacent to the cantonment area are storage facilities for the Athena missile rocket motors.

Although near the cantonment area, the second area, the Atlantic Research Corporation Assembly Area, is outside the actual limits of the government-controlled complex. It occupies the facilities originally constructed for the Union Carbide Uranium Company, which had produced uranium and vanadium in the 1940's and 1950's.

T h e third, or launch area, is almost five miles down range from the assembly area. It consists of a fall-back area, a blockhouse, three concrete launching pads, and various meteorological system component facilities.

T h e assembly areas and housing area at Green River comprise 44 acres, the operations are contained in 3,546 acres, and the safety area is 12,000 acres. All land areas were acquired through cooperation of the individual landowners and without condemnation proceedings. White Sands Missile Range holds the land under an exclusive use lease with renewal options through June 30,1968.

T h e Athena, which is the test vehicle for the ABRES program, is a 4-stage, 50-foot, 8-ton, solid-fuel missile which can simulate the speeds and re-entry phenomena of the much larger intercontinental ballistic missiles. It incorporates an altitude control system for terminal guidance and has two basic configurations enabling re-entry angles of 21 and 43 6 Robert W. Bernick, "Missile Base Spurs Emery's Economy," Tribune, December 1, 1963.

Also ibid., February 6, 1963; Leonard J. Arrington and George Jensen, The Defense Industry of Utah (Logan, U t a h , 1965), 24; Helen Rice, Chronology: Ogden Air Materiel Area, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, 1962-1963 (Hill Air Force Base, 1964), 52.

7 Based upon material furnished by Lieutenant Colonel McAhon.

The Athena, which is the test vehicle for the ABRES program, has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of a low-cost system to simulate flight dynamics of full-scale intercontinental missiles.

degrees. T h e Athena carries a nominal payload of 50 pounds and its re-entry velocity is approximately 23,000 feet per second.

T h e major part of the Athena is produced by U t a h companies. T h e first stage consists of a Thiokol X M - 3 3 E8 Castor missile, augmented by two X M 19 E L Recruits, both of which are products of T h i o k o l ' s W a s a t c h Division (west of Brigham City). T h e second stage consists of either a Thiokol T X 261-2 for low a n g l e r e - e n t r y or the Hercules X259-A4 for high angle reentry tests. T h e fourth stage is a Hercules BE-3 Ranger (Bacchus). T h e third stage â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the only stage not produced in U t a h â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is an Aerojet General 30KS1100. T h e payloads themselves are produced by General Electric, Lockheed, A V C O , Sperry (Salt Lake City), and other companies. 8 Several problems are being studied in the current set of test firings, which began in 1964 and have recently been rescheduled to last through 1967. During Athena flights, data are gathered by sophisticated radar and other instrumentation installed at White Sands.

Preliminary test firings made in February and May 1964 failed, but later 8 Rice, Chronology: OOAMA, 5 6 ; "U.S. Research and Sounding Rockets," Missiles and Rockets (July 29, 1963), 75.

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firings were concluded successfully. The original 77 launches announced in the series were to cost $65 million, but a new contract for $14 million will allow 36 subsequent launches. The initial tests were successful, and with the new contract, it is possible that the Green River range may develop into a permanent low-cost site for testing small scale re-entry vehicles for larger rockets.9 In addition to the service it performs for the Department of Defense, the Green River Test Complex provides another example of the positive impact of the federal government upon the economy of a Utah community. By December 1963, 136 persons had already been employed at the installation. Atlantic Research Corporation had opened nearly a full block of offices at the site, and the bulk of the personnel was finding homes in Green River, though some lived at Price, Dragerton, and Moab. By 1963 approximately 450 persons were employed at the base, with a payroll in excess of $3 million yearly. This installation has undoubtedly provided a shot in the arm for Emery County which, owing to difficulties in the coal industry, underwent a decline in population between 1950 and I960.10

9 "Athena Research Pushed," Missiles and Rockets (September 2, 1963), 1 0 - 1 1 ; Arrington and Jensen, Defense Industry, 2 3 - 2 4 ; Rice, Chronology: OOAMA, 5 7 ; Tribune, August 18, 1963; Hal Knight, "Missile Tests Extended," Deseret News (Salt Lake C i t y ) , February 10, 1966.

10 Bernick in Tribune, December 1, 1963; Arrington and Jensen, Defense Industry, 24; Thomas G. Alexander, "From D e a r t h to Deluge: Utah's Coal Industry," Utah Historical Quarterly, 31 (Summer, 1963), 245.

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UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Sunnyside, Utah, ca. 1900. Mining operations commenced in 1898, and from that time production increased rapidly. Prosperity reached its peak in the early 1920's, but by 1930 a decline had begun in the coal industry and the once-thriving community began to dwindle rapidly. The economic stimulus of World War II brought new life to the town, and the area of Sunnyside continues to operate today as a company-owned community.

Late in the year 1903, an Italian miner in the company-owned town of Castle Gate, Utah, was listening to the harangues of organizers from the United Mine Workers. He could hardly understand English, but in translation he understood that he was being told of the need to join the union in order to obtain better wages, better working conditions, and a permanent bargaining agency. He was urged to go out on strike against Utah Fuel Company, and he finally went out, along with hundreds of others, mostly immigrants, who had been overawed by union promises. With his decision to strike, however, came serious problems. The home in which he lived was owned by the company for which he worked, and he was soon ordered to vacate. The company-owned store was closed, and it became difficult for him to purchase the necessities of life. The union set Dr. Allen is assistant professor of history, Brigham Young University. The subject of his Ph.D. dissertation was "The Company Town as a Feature of Western American Development."

...THE COMPANY TOWN: A Passing Phase of Utah's Industrial Development

By James B. Allen

up a tent colony off company property, but the tents provided only minimal protection. It was impossible for him to move in with friends who might own their own homes in town, for these were on company property, and owners were required to leave the premises, either selling their homes or forfeiting them to the company. Finally, the company provided an easy way for him to leave Utah, with the practical guarantee that he had no further opportunity for work.

This story, while hypothetical, represents some of the problems created in the early years of the twentieth century in connection with a little-publicized but nevertheless significant industrial institution â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the company town. This was a unique type of settlement in which all property â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including homes, business facilities, utilities, etc. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; was owned outright by a particular company, having been created specifically for the purpose of housing company employees. Literally hundreds of these communities have dotted the American map, and more than 200 have existed in the 11 Far Western States alone. They have been important particularly in the support of coal mining, copper production, and lumbering.

In most cases company towns were created because of the need to provide living quarters for workers at a mine, mill, or processing plant

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established in a remote area. Faced with this necessity in order to assure a permanent work force, company managers found themselves involved not only in the operation of their primary business, but also in the curious and often irritating process of town planning, community building, merchandising, and public welfare. T h e owner of a company town became, in a real sense, not only the employer but also the landlord, merchant, town government, police, and sometimes even counselor and father confessor. T o the employee "the company" was synonymous with everything in town, including the company-owned store where he could charge goods against future pay checks, and where sometimes he was compelled to trade. Only a handful of these company-owned towns remain today, at least in the West, but their story has been an interesting and significant sidelight in the economic development of the nation.

T h e company town has also been a significant feature in Utah's industrial development. No industry, of course, was absolutely dependent upon company towns, but particular companies have sometimes found them highly important to their initial success and continued operation.

Most of Utah's company towns existed in the coal fields of Carbon County, but mining for lead, zinc, and silver produced such company-owned communities as Newhouse, in Beaver County, and Dividend, in Utah County.

Bacchus was once a full-fledged company town supporting the operation of Hercules Powder Company near Magna. Kennecott Copper Corporation once owned completely the town of Copperton and, in connection with American Smelting and Refining Company, the town of Garfield. 1 I n addition to the full-fledged company towns in Utah, there were many modifications. In some cases a company owned all the land around a mine, but did not attempt to provide homes or community services, except, perhaps, a store. T h e company also allowed employees to build their own homes on company land. Such a settlement was Mammoth, in J u a b County. There were other communities in which a particular company built some of the houses and provided a few services. They frequently are referred to as company towns, for in each case a single company seemed to dominate. They did not, however, become full-fledged company towns, for other businesses were allowed to operate, or the company did not take on full community responsibilities. They might be 1 It is highly unusual for two companies to have shared in the ownership of the same town, but in this case it was to be expected because both companies were involved in the smelter operations at Garfield. American Smelting and Refining Company also owned some property and a few homes in the Kennecott company town of Hayden, Arizona.

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dubbed "company controlled," or semi-company towns. Such a community was Silver City, near Eureka.

The original townsite of Garland was owned and laid out in 1903 by Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, and 14 homes were built for certain key employees, but it never became exclusively a company town.2 The townsite of Lark, near Magna, was located on land owned by the United States Smelter and Refining Company. The company owned several houses which it rented to employees and allowed other workers to build their own homes on company property,3 but the town never became fully paternalistic in the sense of a full-fledged company town. Finally, the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad was responsible for the thriving settlement which once existed at Soldier Summit. In 1919 the company completed an elaborate new hotel and owned 40 "modern" cottages for the benefit of its employees. In the same year it was planning to participate in the building of a swimming pool and a YMCA building. The fast-growing community was not fully company owned, however, and sported such noncompany businesses as three general stores, two automobile garages, a real estate office, and a billiard parlor.4 In the mining fields of Utah, there were many small camps which could hardly be called towns but were important to the success of particular operations. In 1938, for example, the Utah Industrial Commission described at least 30 mines throughout the state at which some sort of living quarters were provided by the company. Although none of these were company towns, some of the facilities were fairly extensive. Several companies provided cottages and boardinghouses, while the Silver King Coalition Mines Company in Summit County operated its own boardinghouse, grocery store, and coal yard "without profit for the benefit of its employees." 5 None of these camps reached the status of legitimate towns, but they illustrate the same need for providing certain benefits and services which, at larger mines, led to the creation of company towns.

Another modified version of the company town in Utah was Dragerton, Carbon County. This coal mining community grew out of the steppedup needs of World War II. It was actually constructed under contract from the federal Defense Plant Corporation for the purpose of housing 2 Daughters of U t a h Pioneers of Box Elder County, comp., History of Box Elder County (Brigham City, [1937]), 313-15.

3 State of Utah, Bulletin Number 4 of The Industrial Commission of Utah, Period July 1, 1938 through June 30, 1940 ([Salt Lake City, 1940]), 203-4. (The title of the Industrial Commission reports varies, but will hereafter be cited as State of Utah, Report of Industrial Commission with the years covered and the bulletin number.)

4 Sun (Price, U t a h ) , August 14, 1919.

5 State of Utah, Report of Industrial Commission, 1936-38, Bulletin Number 4, 15-90.

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United States Steel employees at the Horse Canyon Mine. The town was operated by U.S. Steel, but was never as paternalistic as the typical company town considered here. In 1947 the War Assets Administration sold the town to Geneva Steel Company which, in turn, engaged the real estate firm of John W. Galbreath & Company to sell the town to residents.

A FEW UTAH TOWNS

It would not be feasible to tell the story of every company town in the state, but a brief summary of the development of a few of the most interesting communities will help demonstrate the role of the company town in Utah's industrial development. 6 The settlement at Grass Creek, in Summit County, never became a full-fledged company town, but for a few years it was a sort of semi-company town and because of its connection with the Mormon Church it has special interest here. Furthermore, it is an example of the early tendencies toward company-town ownership. 7 T h e Grass Creek area was originally settled in 1883, when a number of Chinese laborers and a few local Mormon miners were hired by the Union Pacific Railroad to work its coal mine in the area. 8 Union Pacific built a number of houses for employees, but in 1886 and 1887 the mine was closed, the houses taken down, and the camp abandoned. T h e L.D.S. Church, meanwhile, had built a combination meetinghouse and schoolhouse, which was left standing until moved to a new location in 1901. In 1893 the Mormon Church began to develop its own mine, about three 6 The following list represents the company towns which have existed in U t a h and were identified in the course of this research, although, undoubtedly, there were others. Bacchus (Hercules Powder Company), Castle Gate ( U t a h Fuel Company), Clear Creek (Utah Fuel Company), Columbia (United States Steel Corporation), Consumers (Mutual Coal Company), Copperton (Kennecott Copper Corporation), Dividend (Tintic Standard Mining Company), Dragerton (built by U.S. government, but operated by United States Steel Corporation), Garfield (Kennecott Copper Corporation and American Smelting and Refining Corporation), Grass Creek (Grass Creek Coal Company), Hiawatha (United States Fuel Company), Keetley (ParkUtah Mining Company), Kenilworth (Independent Coal and Coke Company), Mohrland (Utah Fuel Company), Newhouse (Samuel Newhouse), Rains (Carbon Coal Company), Spring Canyon (Spring Canyon Coal Company), Standardville (Standard Coal Company), Sunnyside (Utah Fuel Company), Wattis (Lion Coal Company), Winter Quarters ( U t a h Fuel Company).

7 Information about Grass Creek is based on the following sources: "Summit Stake Wards" (MSS, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Historian's Library, Salt Lake City) ; Grass Creek Coal Company, "Journal [1896-1902]" (L.D.S. Church Historian's Library) ; State of Utah, Report of the Coal Mine Inspector for the State of Utah for the Years 1899 and 1900 (Salt Lake City, 1901), 24-25 (hereafter cited as State of Utah, Mine Inspector's Report, with the year) ; ibid., 1901â&#x20AC;&#x201D;02, 3 1 ; John Edward Petit, "Grass Creek Coal Mining," in Marie Ross Peterson, comp., Echoes of Yesterday: Summit County Centennial History (Salt Lake City, 1947), 99-100; letter from Moses C. Taylor, Kamas, U t a h , to James B. Allen, July 18, 1962.

8 The Union Pacific Railroad began mining in the West as early as the 1860's, in order to provide coal for its engines. Most of the Union Pacific mines were in Wyoming, but a few operated in Utah. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad later entered into stiff competition with the Union Pacific in U t a h .

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miles above the old Union Pacific camp, and Mormon miners again moved into the area. About 1896 this mine was abandoned and work began on another church mine a half-mile farther up the canyon. This was the basis for the Grass Creek settlement, and several L.D.S. people moved there. T h e Grass Creek Coal Company was owned outright by the Mormon Church. T h e company allowed many of its workers to build their own homes on company land, but its journal shows that the settlement had some of the elements of a company town. T h e company owned several homes, collected rent, sold coal to employees, and provided supplies from the company-owned "mine supplies store." 9 Its connection with the church is emphasized by the fact that church tithing orders were accepted at the store in lieu of cash. As in most early company towns, the company deducted rent, board, coal, and other items from the miner's wages. I n 1897 the company owned at least 14 houses in Grass Creek, and in 1899 the state mine inspector reported the addition of three miners' cottages, one large lodginghouse, and a schoolhouse. There were approximately 55 men employed in the mine. About 1910 the Grass Creek property was turned over to another company, and a few years later the mine was closed. T h e history of this small mine, however, illustrates the need some mining companies felt to provide certain community facilities.

This need became the basis for other larger and more permanent company towns.

T h e largest "chain" of company towns owned by any U t a h corporation belonged to U t a h Fuel Company, a subsidiary of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. 1 0 T h e railroad's main interest, of course, was in obtaining a supply of coal to keep its engines running. In this way Rio Grande, like Union Pacific, found itself in the curious position of acting as landlord for several mining towns, including Castle Gate, Clear Creek, Sunnyside, Winter Quarters, Black Hawk, and Mohrland, Utah, and Somerset, Colorado. This "chain" never reached the proportions of the string of towns operated by Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation, which was probably the largest single company-town landlord in the West. 11 9 I t is not known how long this store continued to operate, but it seems apparent that it functioned only for a few years. At least by 1904 there was a privately owned store in Grass Creek.

10 I n 1901 the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad purchased the Rio Grande Western, which owned U t a h Fuel Company. U t a h Fuel was eventually sold at public auction in 1918.

For the full and interesting story of this railroad, see Robert G. Athearn, Rebel of the Rockies: A History of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (New Haven, 1962).

11 I n 1901 a n d 1902 Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation's directory of mining camps listed at least 30 towns and camps fully operated by the company, in addition to company housing maintained at other communities near its mines. Camp and Plant: A Weekly of Sociological Development Devoted to News from the Mines and Mills of Colorado Fuel and Iron Company,

I (Nos. 2-10, 1901-02), passim.

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But in the early years of the century the unions and the Progressive party criticized U t a h Fuel Company in connection with its towns in much the same way as they did its huge Colorado counterpart.

Castle Gate is one of Utah's oldest and most enduring company towns. In 1883 the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad completed its line into eastern Utah, and soon after this Pleasant Valley Coal Company opened Castle Gate Mine Number 1 near the railroad. There was no immediate effort on the part of the company to construct living quarters for employees, but many of the early settlers lived in box cars provided by the railroad. 12 T h e mine prospered and in 1888 U t a h Fuel Company, which eventually took over Pleasant Valley Coal Company, acquired properties there. By then a few homes had been constructed, and in one of them the town's first school was conducted. In 1901 Castle Gate boasted a population of 1,300, with 480 men being employed at the mines and coke ovens. T h e town had a school, two "hotels" (boardinghouses for single employees), and 65 company-owned cottages. T h e company also had permitted several employees to build dwellings of their own on company grounds. 13 This beginning was somewhat typical of the origin of many company towns.

There is little information available concerning the adequacy of houses originally provided by Utah Fuel, although criticism, by union organizers a few years later would lead one to believe they were inadequate. At any rate by 1912, the company apparently had become more concerned with the nature of its dwellings. Fifty additional houses had been erected, and the state mine inspector gave the following description of the new structures: T h e new houses are of pleasing appearance, of much better construction, and have more conveniences than heretofore has been the rule.

All have closets and pantries and pleasant porches, while the four-room cottages have a screened and well protected back porch. All houses will be lighted by electricity generated by the new turbo-generator. T h e houses are painted with light, pleasing colors which present a marked contrast to the mineral red color of the old buildings. 14

Not many company towns in the West actually became incorporated communities, but in 1914 residents of Castle Gate petitioned for incor12 Frank C Memmott, "Development of the Union and Coal Production in Carbon County, U t a h " (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1950), 46.

13 State of U t a h , Mine Inspector's Report, 1901-1902, 25.

"Ibid..1911-1912, 118.

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poration, and they were granted their wish. T h e town was to be governed by a board of trustees, presided over by a president. If the government was anything like that of other incorporated company towns, company management usually had ample representation among the trustees. T h e town later passed into the hands of Independent Coal and Coke Company, but remained as a full-fledged company-owned community until about 1960, when the company sold its houses. Over the years the landlord company has participated in community activities by providing a social hall, contributing to the Castle Gate Welfare Association, and operating a hospital. Population of Castle Gate has dropped from a rollicking 1,300 in 1901 to about 350 at the present time.

Located six miles south of Scofield, Clear Creek (sometimes spelled Cleer Creek) had its beginning as a company town when U t a h Fuel Company opened a new mine on July 5, 1899. By November 500 tons of coal per day were being produced. T h e original workers lived in the traditional tent colony until houses could be built, but by the end of the year the company was employing 200 men and had laid the foundation for a typical company-owned community. In his report for 1899, the mine inspector described the town: T h e company has also built one large, new, modern hotel, with electric lights and baths, large enough to accomodate 150 m e n ; twenty fiveroom modern houses, with electric lights; one barn and workshop combined, with room for fifty horses; one large store, also a water system.

Besides this, the Finlanders have built a large hotel and several houses of their own. 15

T h e Wasatch Store Company, which operated a store in Clear Creek, was the merchandising subsidiary of U t a h Fuel and ran stores in other company towns as well. Clear Creek never became an incorporated community.

Perhaps the largest and most significant town in U t a h Fuel's network was Sunnyside. Mining operations commenced in 1898, and from that time production increased rapidly. T h e earliest settlers lived in tents until houses could be provided for them, but by 1901 the company had built 100 five- and six-room cottages. They were constructed of wood and all were equipped with electric lights and a water system. Already, however, the company was employing 450 men, and the population of the town had jumped to 1,500. Since the company could not erect homes fast enough to accommodate the mushrooming population, it allowed many '"Ibid.,

1899-1900,23.

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miners to build their own, using plans furnished by the company. In this way the traditional uniform architecture of the company town was maintained, and the company later purchased these dwellings. The town also boasted a church building, a school equipped to handle 200 children, a hospital, a company boardinghouse for single men which gave them board at 75 cents per day, and a branch of the Wasatch Store Company.16 The mine inspector reported in 1901 that the company had taken care to give Sunnyside a modern appearance, and hence the town was "free from shacks and shambles which have characterized the early coal camps of the west." If this description is accurate, the idyllic picture implied did not last for long. Population continued to flow into the area as coal production increased, and by 1903 the company had added 18 cottages, 20 two-story houses, and 10 "double houses." Three hotels were operated by private parties, and there were still several privately owned homes on company property. With all this it remained impossible to provide enough homes for the rapid influx of workers and their families, and a great many tents were in use. Many of the new immigrants were from Greece and other parts of southern Europe. They located in the southern part of the canyon which became known as "Ragtown." By 1906 there were 226 Italian, 278 Austrian, and 111 Greek miners working for Utah Fuel and Pleasant Valley Coal Companies. It is presumed that a large portion of them had settled with their families in the tents of Sunnyside's Ragtown where neither water nor adequate sewage disposal was available. Eventually, however, company dwellings were built for them, and old Ragtown became known as New Town. The mine inspector called Sunnyside the "Queen of the Coal Camps," but apparently the queen was rather disheveled in places.17 As in the case of most coal mining towns, the location of the mine in a canyon made town planning difficult, and the homes of Sunnyside might be built anywhere from the canyon floor to a precarious hillside.

Helen Zeese Papanikolas described the typical problem this way: "The very terrain of mining towns that could not grow outwards but must grow up the slopes of the mountains made for a crowded, intimate confusion." 18 Sunnyside apparently was not the worst in this respect, but it did have 1G Lucille Richens, "A Social History of Sunnyside" (MS, U t a h State Historical Society), 2 - 3 ; State of Utah, Mine Inspector's Report, 1901-1902, 26; "A Brief History of Carbon County, by the Teachers, Pupils, and Patrons of Carbon County School District" (typescript, Brigham Young University, 1930), 22.

17 Richens, "Social History of Sunnyside," 3 ; State of U t a h , Mine Inspector's Report, 1901-1902, 26; ibid., 1903-1904, 2 5 ; ibid., 1905-1906, 21, 5 8 ; Helen Zeese Papanikolas, "The Greeks of Carbon County," Utah Historical Quarterly, X X I I (April, 1954), 144-47.

18 Papanikolas, "Greeks of Carbon County," U.H.Q., X X I I , 145.

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problems. Company houses were numbered for identification purposes, with Number 1 being at the northern end or "top" of the town. A longtime resident reported that Number 2 house "was perched on a very steep hillside and always looked as if it were going to slide off." 19 Also typical of coal mining camps is the fact that there were at least two distinct sections of town, primarily because the terrain would not allow otherwise and the fact that Americans lived in one section while immigrants and their families congregated in the other.

Although a company store operated profitably in Sunnyside, the company could do little about private merchants who established themselves near town. In the early days miners apparently were required to trade at the company store as a matter of job security, but in later years this policy softened and little was said if employees traded at other institutions.20 Sunnyside Mercantile, for example, located off company land, delivered merchandise into town, and local farmers were allowed to peddle their produce in the community.21 The company had given the milk monopoly to a local ranch, however, and residents in Sunnyside had difficulty getting permission even to own a family cow.22 Sunnyside continued to boom, and in 1906 the company erected 48 new employee cottages and located a second branch of the company store in the southern section of the town. The company also installed a new water system which accommodated both sections of town. In 1916 the town was incorporated. Prosperity reached its peak in the early 1920's, but by 1930 a decline had begun in the coal industry23 and the oncethriving community began to dwindle rapidly. In 1940 the population was down to 424.

By the beginning of World War II, Sunnyside had become practically a ghost town, but the economic stimulus of the war suddenly brought new life to the community. Demand for high quality coking coal led to rehabilitation of the mines. One mine was leased to Kaiser Company, Incorporated, forerunner of the present Kaiser Steel Corporation. Realizing that the old homes were not adequate for modern needs, Utah Fuel Company erected a new $2 million, modern housing area one mile from the old 19

Richens, "Social History of Sunnyside," 3.

Ibid., 4.

21 Thursey Jessen Reynolds, comp., Centennial Echoes From Carbon County ([Price], 1948), 200-2.

22 Richens, "Social History of Sunnyside," 4.

23 For the interesting story of the rise and decline of the coal industry in Utah, see Thomas G. Alexander, "From Dearth to Deluge: Utah's Coal Industry," U.H.Q., 31 (Summer, 1963), 235-47.

20

;;v«™«-...,

KENNECOTT COPPER CORPORATION

Copperton, Utah, constructed by Utah Copper Company to house supervisory and skilled personnel at Bingham, was built as a show place. Wherever possible copper was used in the construction of the homes. Utah Copper is a subsidiary of Kennecott Copper Corporation, and in 1955 this firm sold all its company towns, including Copperton, to a real estate firm, which sold the homes to individuals.

townsite, calling it Sunnydale. Sunnydale became an attractive, well-built residential area with all modern conveniences. Since shopping and civic facilities were still located at Sunnyside, the company instituted a bus service which made scheduled trips to the shopping center and theatre.

The round-trip fee was 10 cents. A branch of the company store was later established at Sunnydale. So attractive were the new housing facilities that old residents at Sunnyside quickly put their names on a waiting list to move into the new section. By 1947 additional community improvements made the new settlement of Sunnydale even more desirable. These included cement walks, curbs and gutters, and asphalt topping on all streets. In that year also the painting of the 240 new houses was completed.24 In 1950 Kaiser purchased all assets of Utah Fuel Company, which included the Utah mines at Castle Gate, Clear Creek, and Sunnyside, as well as three Colorado mines. The purchase also included such subsidi21 Salt Lake Tribune, August 23, 1942, July 27, 1947; Aaron E. Jones, "Contractors Build City to O r d e r for Coal, Coke Workers," ibid., Sunday Magazine, February 21, 1943, p. 6; W. C. Walker, "Sunnydale — A Model Mining Town," Mining Congress Journal, X X X I I I (June, 1947), 4 1 - 4 3 .

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aries as Wasatch Store Company, Sunnyside Improvement Company (which owned the homes at Sunnyside), Utah Grazing Lands Company, and Castle Gate Coal Company (a retail firm). The area of Sunnyside and Sunnydale continues to operate today as a company-owned community named Sunnyside. Coal mined at Sunnyside is coked there and shipped to Kaiser's steel plant at Fontana, California. (The latter, incidentally, receives most of its iron ore from a mine adjacent to another town owned by Kaiser Steel Corporation, Eagle Mountain, California.)

One of the most unique company towns in the West was the little settlement of Copperton, not far from the famed open-pit copper mine at Bingham. Copperton was built in the 1920's by Utah Copper Company to house employees at the Bingham Mine. Previously, workers had been housed at scattered locations in the canyons surrounding the mine. But with expanded mining activities it became necessary to pre-empt these sites, and the company decided to build a townsite at a more desirable location three miles from the mine. In the new town homes were provided primarily for supervisory and skilled personnel.

Since the new community was located on the main highway to the mine, which attracted many visitors, the company decided to make a show place of Copperton by using the "everlasting metal" wherever possible in the construction of the homes. Specifications called for copper-clad strip shingles to be fastened with copper nails; copper valleys, hips, ridges, and downspouts; copper gutter straps, downspout stays, and chimney saddles; copper vents; bronze hardware and screens; and brass pipes, pipe fittings, and shower fixtures. It was estimated that the copper-clad town cost only four per cent more than it would have if more common perishable materials had been used. One house was built almost entirely of copper, with even the walls made of heavy copper sheathing.25 Copperton was strictly a residential community, and residents traveled to Bingham or other nearby towns to shop. Utah Copper was a subsidiary of Kennecott Copper Corporation, and in 1955 this firm sold all of its company towns, including Copperton, to a real estate firm which, in turn, sold the homes to individuals.

Jesse Knight, one of Utah's most prominent pioneer mining men and industrialists, was the founder of Spring Canyon, a town which was almost unique among company towns as far as its management was concerned.

Even before building this community, however, "Uncle Jesse," as he was 25 State of Utah, Report of Industrial Commission, 1936-1938, Bulletin 4, 4 7 - 4 8 ; William Spencer, "Copperton â&#x20AC;&#x201D; A Model Town for U t a h Copper Employees," Engineering and Mining Journal, C X X V (March 3, 1928), 369-72.

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traditionally called, had had some experience with paternalism. In 1896 he had opened a copper mine in J u a b County called the Humbug, and the community built around the mine was named Knightsville. H e did not own the homes and business establishments, but without question he took pride in and controlled the town. At his own expense he built an L.D.S. chapel, which also doubled as a school. When he received word that there were not enough children in Knightsville to qualify for county school funds, Knight proceeded to the town of Diamond where he hired James Higginson, who had eight children, and this addition provided a schoolage population sufficient for county support. "Uncle Jesse," attempting in his own way to enforce Mormon standards of morality in his community, did not allow saloons to operate and immediately discharged anyone who was known to be spending his earnings for liquor, neglecting his family, or living a licentious life. H e even closed his mines on Sunday to encourage his employees, all of whom were Mormons, to attend church.

T o offset possible dissatisfaction at the loss of a day's work, he paid them 25 cents per day more than other mine operators. 26 A second town with which Jesse Knight was involved was Silver City, where, in 1907, he built a smelter. A small boom hit the town and it grew to a population of about 1,500. For the benefit of his employees Knight built 100 frame homes in Silver City. 27 These houses apparently were arranged in the typical company-town fashion, with uniform architecture and neat rows of houses. "Uncle Jesse" did not have the same control over the town, however, and it must have rankled him not a little to see several saloons operating in the community.

Later, in Carbon County, the Mormon industrialist had his chance to build and control his own town. Apparently it became a model community, and it represented almost better than any other company town the local Mormon traditions. In 1912 Knight organized the Spring Canyon Coal Company in order to exploit 2,000 acres of good mining property he had acquired. Even before mining began, however, he started to build his town, and 60 modern homes were constructed of sandstone. At first the community was called Storrs, after Knight's friend and company superintendent, George A. Storrs, but it was changed to Spring Canyon in 1924.

Since Jesse Knight owned the town, he had complete control over what kind of businesses could be established, and he absolutely forbade saloons and gambling houses. By 1914 a school building and a meetinghouse were 20 Alice Paxman M c C u n e , History of Juab County: A History Prepared for the of the Coming of the Pioneers to Utah, 1847-1947 (Springville, 1947), 237-39.

27 Ibid., 229-32.

Centennial

The Company Town

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completed. As in Knightsville, most of the employees were Mormons. T h e manager of the company store became the first bishop of the Storrs Ward.

T h e town provided the first school and church building in the district, and residents at other new camps came to take advantage of these opportunities until they could be provided at home. Homes at Spring Canyon were well built; good water and sewage systems were provided; and the elaborate Storrs hotel was a prominent landmark in the well-planned model community. At its peak 200 men were employed in the Spring Canyon Mine, and the town reached a population of close to 1,000 people. 28 In 1922 Spring Canyon Coal Company was purchased by James B. Smith and Associates. Mining continued until 1958 when the cost of mining the remaining coal was considered prohibitive. T h e mine closed and 140 miners were left jobless. 29 T h e once bustling community was soon abandoned and Spring Canyon became virtually a ghost town.

T H E C O M M U N I T Y AND ITS FACILITIES

If there was anything which characterized most company-owned towns throughout the nation, at least in the early years of this century, it was the drab uniformity of every settlement. All houses were of similar color and architecture and arranged along rectangular lines of survey.

Streets were usually wide and house lots were fairly large, which were advantages, but roads were unpaved and sidewalks were a rarity. Beautification of the town through the planting of trees, grasses, and shrubs was largely neglected. 30 Many of Utah's company towns seemed to follow the same general pattern. 3 1 O n the other hand a number of companies took some pride in creating more attractive communities. By the 1920's a number of "model" communities were being erected throughout the country, as well as in Utah, and owners of older towns were beginning to beautify their settlements. Trees and shrubs were provided free of charge to residents who 28 Jesse William Knight, The Jesse Knight Family: Jesse Knight, His Forbears and Family (Salt Lake City, 1941), 7 0 - 7 2 ; Arthur E. Gibson, "In the Coal Fields of Eastern U t a h , Carbon and Emery Counties, Spring Canyon District Carbon County," in Reynolds, Centennial Echos, 2 2 1 - 2 5 ; Deseret News (Salt Lake City), June 15, 1960.

29 Deseret News, September 25, 1958.

30 Liefur Magnusson, "Company Housing in the Bituminous Coal Fields," Monthly Labor Review, X (April, 1920), 216.

31 For example, a picture of Rains, Utah, shown to the author by a former resident, was a view of a row of uniform frame houses on either side of a wide dirt road. The houses looked to be fairly substantial, but there were no ornamental features such as grass, trees, or shrubs. Copperton, on the other hand, was a notable exception to the lack of ornamental features, and included a park, playground, beautiful landscaping, and a company-owned greenhouse to help beautify yards.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Eagle Baseball Team of Tooele, photographed

in 1908.

In large towns the company sponsored community clubs and various recreational activities. Baseball was frequently a chief pastime. Another activity which brought competition between towns was first aid â&#x20AC;&#x201D; with first aid teams sometimes traveling long distances in order to participate in well-publicized contests.

Utah Fuel Company

First Aid Day at Winter Quarters,

Utah, July 24} 1914.

INDEPENDENT COAL AND COKE COMPANY

'fc.^-"

t, mm 11

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153

would plant them. Regular contests were held and prizes awarded for the best yards, thus providing an incentive to help keep the community beautified. Some companies even painted their homes a variety of colors, rather than the uniform drab grey or red which typified older settlements. Some of Utah's well-planned model mining company towns included Dividend, in Utah County; Keetley, in Wasatch County; and the Carbon County communities of Hiawatha and Standardville. Each of these towns received high praise in 1925 in The Mining Congress Journal because of the planning which had gone into them and their generally attractive appearance. 3 2 In addition to providing housing, company stores, and other normal community services, some companies went so far as to operate slaughterhouses, icehouses, and even ranches in order to provide goods needed for the town. Near its model community of Hiawatha, for example, United States Fuel Company established a dairy farm with a herd of registered Holstein cows. T h e mine inspector reported in 1924: This dairy is one of the most m o d e r n in U t a h a n d is equipped with milking machines, a refrigerating plant a n d everything t h a t goes to assure clean, nourishing milk, butter a n d ice-cream for the miners' families. 33

Space does not permit a discussion of company housing, employee welfare, and other social aspects of the company town, but a few brief generalizations should be given. 34 T h e adequacy of company housing naturally varied with the company. But it appears that at least by the 1920's most companies were beginning to provide substantial frame homes with adequate water, plumbing facilities, and frequently electricity. General maintenance was the responsibility of the company, but upkeep and appearance depended largely upon the initiative and social sensitivity of individual tenants. I n large towns the company usually provided recreation halls and sponsored community clubs and various recreational activities. Baseball was frequently a chief pastime, and it was not uncommon for companies to put professional players on the payroll during the ball season, not to work in the mine or plant, but to make sure that the town team made a good showing in the intense competition. Another activity which brought much competition between towns was first aid â&#x20AC;&#x201D; with first 32 A. L. Murray, "Welfare and Safety in Connection with Mining in U t a h , " The Mining Congress Journal, X I (October, 1925), 478. Murray was a surgeon for the U.S. Bureau of Mines.

33 State of Utah, Mine Inspector's Report, 1923-1924, 18.

34 For a discussion of some social aspects of the company town, see James B. Allen, " T h e Company Town as a Feature of Western American Development" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1963), chapters 7 and 8.

â&#x20AC;˘

^

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aid teams sometimes traveling long distances in order to participate in well-publicized contests. Churches and schools were encouraged, and frequently the company participated financially in the support of both.

In short, life in the company town was not necessarily as drab as some have viewed it, in spite of some of the problems suggested below.

T H E FOREIGN IMMIGRANT

W h e n vast numbers of Greek, Austrian, Italian, and other coal miners from southern Europe began to migrate to America, they frequently found the great "melting pot" to be a hostile environment. This was as true of the coal fields of U t a h as elsewhere. 35 Foreign miners did not settle exclusively in company towns, of course, but an interesting report of the United States Coal Commission in 1923 suggested that the company town had a particular attraction for them. Said the report: " I t is only in sections which have a large portion of foreign born that relatively large numbers of mine workers are found living in company communities when normal communities are within a practicable distance." 36 Undoubtedly one reason for this was the fact that the immigrant usually arrived almost penniless, and the paternalistic situation in the company town immediately gave him a home as well as credit in the company store.

In 1900 approximately half the population of Carbon County was foreign-born, as compared with less than 25 per cent in the rest of the state. 37 I n 1905 approximately half the employees of U t a h Fuel and Pleasant Valley Coal companies were foreign-born. In 1914 only about one-third of the men employed in Utah's coal and hydrocarbon fields were native Americans. T h e dominant Europeans were Greek, Italian, and Austrian, in that order. 38 It is assumed that the same approximate ratio applied in the company-owned coal towns.

While the immigrant was not unique to the company town, his very existence did have an effect upon the town. I n Sunnyside, for example, the Europeans huddled together in one section of town, while the Americans lived in the other. T h e immigrant's Old World social customs, as well as the fact that he was used to a far different standard of living than some 33 For the very interesting story of the treatment of one substantial group in Utah, see Papanikolas, "Greeks of Carbon County," U.H.Q., X X I I , 143-64. For the story of immigrants in Bingham Canyon, see Helen Zeese Papanikolas, "Life and Labor Among the Immigrants of Bingham Canyon," ibid., 33 (Fall, 1965), 289-315.

36 U.S., Coal Commission, Report of the United States Coal Commission, Dec. 10, 1923 (Washington, D . C , 1925), I I I , 1426.

37 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1900. Population (Washington, D . C , 1901), Part I, 604.

38 State of U t a h , Mine Inspector's Report, 1913-1914, 108.

The Company Town

155

native-born Americans in Sunnyside, made for strained relations between the two groups. One long-time resident of Sunnyside reported that southern European immigrants simply would not take care of the premises provided by the company, even going so far as to keep barnyard animals in the house and slaughter pigs in the bathtubs. 39 The foreigner was a fertile field for the labor agitator and union organizer, and this apparently had much to do with the unfortunate attitude of coal company management toward the immigrant worker. During the costly strike for union recognition in 1903 and 1904, Utah Fuel Company was seriously considering ways and means of getting rid of the foreign worker in favor of native Americans. Mormon farmers had been brought in to work the mines as strikebreakers under the assumption that their religious training would make them impervious to union organization.40 In January 1904 the state mine inspector talked over the situation with J. R. Sharp, superintendent at Sunnyside, who explained the company's attitude toward foreign workers and its hopes to replace them: If the state of U t a h can furnish us enough miners to work our mines, the U t a h men will be given every preference and we will hire no more foreigners. This company has h a d enough of the foreign element, which has caused us so m u c h trouble and we will hire no more foreigners unless we are forced to . . . .

T h e company was, in the first place, forced to hire foreigners, because no other class of miners could be secured . . . . T h e foreigners came a n d wanted work. T h e y came, as a rule, good miners, a n d we h a d to have miners, so we filled u p our mines with t h e m to our sorrow, as the outcome has proved, and we are through with them, if we can get along without them.

W e have h a d a h a r d fight to get men here during the past two months, but we are beginning to see daylight ahead now. . . . W e needed these farmer boys. Needed them badly. So we h a d to guarantee them employment for as long a period as we h a d employment for them and as long as they could do the work. Accordingly we told them w h a t I have just told you, that U t a h men would be given every preference in these mines from now on, and that if we could prevent it, the foreign element would never again be permitted in the mines of the U t a h Fuel Company. . . . 41

These company efforts were not successful in the long run; the foreignborn population continued to increase and eventually the union, which also appealed to native American workers, had to be recognized.

39

Richens, "Social History of Sunnyside," passim.

State of U t a h , Mine Inspector's Report, 1903-1904, 41 Ibid., 66-67.

40

67.

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T H E C O M P A N Y T O W N AS A POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC T O O L

T h e Constitution of the State of U t a h declares that " T h e Legislature shall prohibit: . . . T h e political and commercial control of employees," 42 but this provision apparently has not been rigidly enforced. Employeetenants living in company-owned towns sometimes found themselves under almost feudal conditions, as they were required to follow the dictates of company policy. It was not uncommon around the turn of the century for employees to be coerced into buying all their goods at the company store, or to be discharged if they failed to do so. Few companies saw the company store strictly as a beneficent service to employees. Since the store was necessary anyway, they also saw in it a need, if not a golden opportunity, to turn a profit. I n the matter of company housing, employees were again at the mercy of management, for they could legally be required to leave the property as soon as they were not employed by the company. I n this way the company town sometimes became a tool against unions, as organizers were not allowed on company property, and strikers were evicted from company housing. While such exploitation was not the whole picture in U t a h , and what did exist apparently did not last beyond the first two decades of the century, a few examples will illustrate this aspect of the company town in the Beehive State.

I n 1913 The Progressive, official organ of the Progressive party in Utah, ran a series of articles entitled "Carbon County and Corporate Greed." T h e series was primarily a bitter attack upon the coal companies and their methods of exploiting the miners. Labeled the "invisible government," U t a h Fuel Company was charged with controlling not only every employee, but also the county government and the local press. /An extreme example of anti-company propaganda is seen in the attack printed on February 8: At the outset if the miner chances to be a m a n of family, after paying a dollar for his job, he ceases to be a citizen of this or any other country, being obliged to surrender all his political rights to one of the most contemptable [sic] political bosses t h a t ever inflicted his blighting presence u p o n a community . . . . After getting his job, he is obliged to house his family in a company house. This house is cheaply constructed, but he is obliged to pay the company a rental, three times as great as a better house would cost him a few miles away . . . . T h e next question is that of food.

H e is given to understand that if he wishes to keep in the employment of the company, that he must buy his supplies at the company stores. His wife takes her basket and starts out. W h e n she reaches the store she finds that 42 U t a h State Archives, comp., Constitution (Salt Lake City, 1959), Art. X V I , Sec. 3, p. 44.

of the State of Utah, Original and

Amended

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157

everything she needs for her table has gone u p in price, a n d that all articles are from 20 to 35 per cent higher t h a n they could be procured elsewhere . . . .

Perhaps during the night a child is taken sick a n d a doctor has to be called in. This causes an outlay of money above the r u n n i n g expenses of the family. T h e miner is given to understand t h a t his credit is good at the company store as long as he is employed at the mine. H e accepts the accommodation, but when his monthly pay day comes around, h e sees t h a t all the necessaries of life h a d gone u p fully 10 per cent higher to h i m . . . .

Perhaps the child recovers, and to celebrate the event, he goes to the saloon a n d finds t h a t beer has gone u p 100 per cent. His wife is fagged out a n d needs some beer at home, when h e orders a barrel he finds out that the wholesale price of beer has gone u p from $9.50 to $14.50 a barrel.

H e a n d his wife could get along without it, but he is h u m a n , a n d pays the price . . . for h e learns by inquiring t h a t there is a subtle connection between the coal company and the liquor dealer. 4 3

The language of The Progressive was obviously exaggerated. There is no evidence that the kind of house a miner would build for himself or rent three miles away from town would be any better constructed than a company house in camps such as Sunnyside, Castle Gate, or Clear Creek, or that it would cost him less. Rentals in this period for company houses seemed to vary from $6.00 to $12.50 per month. It is true that prices in company stores were higher than elsewhere, although probably not as much as suggested, but this is partly accounted for by the fact that company stores usually dealt in the best quality goods and also allowed credit against earnings, which was not true elsewhere. It is also evident that certain companies had a rebate arrangement with saloons which were allowed on company property, but these saloons nevertheless prospered, and it was still up to the worker's own sense of values as to where he spent his money. The Utah Fuel Company town of Winter Quarters sported a privately owned saloon which, in 1904, was called "one of the swellest houses of its kind in the state outside of Salt Lake City." 44 There is evidence, however, that in some cases Utah workers were coerced into trading at the company store. At Sunnyside it was reported that men lost their jobs if they did not patronize the company's store, at least in the early years. Later the company said little about it if men traded at stores below town, as long as the trade was kept at a minimum. 45 In the 1890's a strike took place at Mammoth, a company-dominated town in Juab County, over the policy of requiring employees to live and eat at the 43 "Carbon County and Corporate Greed," Progressive (Salt Lake City), February 8, 1913, Vol. I, p. 18.

44 Eastern Utah Advocate (Price), January 7, 1904.

45 Richens, "Social History of Sunnyside," 3-4.

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company "beanery," or boardinghouse, and trade at the company store.

Even married men were expected to board at the beanery. 46 T h e strike of 1903-04 provides a good example of a supplementary advantage to management of owning a company town; i.e., its use as a tool against the union. When the miners struck against U t a h Fuel Company, their right to enter company property and to live in company houses was automatically terminated, for they were no longer employed by the company. Accordingly, the strikers were paid off in full and eviction notices were issued ordering them to vacate company property. The company, it was said, wanted the houses for new men that were eventually to take their places. 47 T h e strikers, most of whom were foreign-born, were forced to pack up all they owned and move elsewhere.

Four days after Christmas, 1903, a special offer went into effect as part of the company's effort to eliminate the trouble-making miners from the county. T h e Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, which owned U t a h Fuel Company, offered the strikers passage out of Carbon County to other points in U t a h or Colorado at the special rate of one cent per mile, with the provision that this would be only a one-way ticket. This was a 75 per cent reduction over the usual fare. T h e offer was apparently made expressly for the "benefit" of the strikers, and notices were printed in a dozen different languages and posted at various camps. 48 Miners who did not immediately leave the county were forced to find lodging for themselves and their families. Some moved in with friends who lived off company property. Others lived in tents provided by the union. These tents were fairly comfortable, as tents go, being floored with wood and equipped with stoves, but they provided little real protection against the winter cold. 49 Fortunately there was no bloodshed before the strike was over. T h e same tense conditions of strikes, strikebreakers, evictions, and tent colonies were involved in the tragic Ludlow massacre in Colorado only 10 years later. 50 There were several miners who had been allowed to build their own homes on company property, but U t a h Fuel demanded that they, too, vacate the premises. T h e miners were able to get legal counsel, and a 40

Beth Kay Harris, The Towns of Tintic (Denver, 1961), 138-39.

Eastern Utah Advocate, November 19, 1903.

48 Ibid., December 31, 1903.

49 State of Utah, Mine Inspector's Report, 1903-1904, 68-69.

50 For the union's side of the story of the Ludlow massacre, see United Mines Workers Journal, X (April 1, 1949). For the contemporary management's side, see The Struggle in Colorado For Industrial Freedom, Bulletin Number 8 (July 25, 1914). This was a bulletin issued periodically by management during the 1914 labor difficulties in Colorado.

47

The Company Town

159

compromise agreement was reached. Essentially, it provided that the striker had to leave the property, but the company agreed to lease his house for six months, or until he moved or sold it. If the house were not sold at the end of the six months it was to be forfeited to the company. Strikers were not allowed to enter the property except to move the houses or conduct monthly inspections. 51 All of this was part of the company's bitter effort to thwart and discourage union activities, but demonstrates that mere ownership of the property where employees lived provided a convenient tool against the organizers. This tactic was not peculiar to Utah, of course, for it represents a general policy of antiunion action throughout the country. 52 T H E DISAPPEARANCE OF T H E C O M P A N Y T O W N

Only a handful of company towns remain in U t a h today, and none of these is as fully controlled or paternalistic as in former years. T h e company store is a thing of the past, and any effort to exploit the worker through his residence in the town is absent.

Utah's company towns have disappeared in a variety of ways. Some, such as the little community of Rains in the Spring Canyon area about nine miles northwest of Helper, were simply abandoned when it became apparent that coal could no longer be mined profitably. In other cases companies simply felt no continued need to own a town, for modern transportation facilities made it practical for employees to commute from other places. T h e attractive little village of Bacchus, which once had 200 residents, came to an end after Hercules Powder Company simply decided it was too expensive to maintain. Only six houses remain standing on the spot.

Contributing to the disappearance of the old company town is the appearance of a new kind of company town. T h e New Park Mining Company, which owned the well-planned little town of Keetley, decided in 1947 to build a new town, named Cranmer, for its employees. T h e new town was to be built expressly for the purpose of selling homes to employees so that, instead of a company-owned town, the company would have created an attractive village of homeowners. 53 Although the town 51 For details see Eastern Utah Advocate, January 14, 1940; State of U t a h , Mine Inspector's Report, 1903-1904, 69-74.

62 For example, at the same time that U t a h Fuel's company towns were being vacated, Thurber, Texas, was having the same problem in connection with a strike against Texas and Pacific Coal Company. Eastern Utah Advocate, September 17, 1903.

53 New Park Mining Company, Annual Report, 1947 ([Keetley, 1948]), 15-16; Salt Lake Tribune, October 31, 1948.

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of Cranmer was never built, the idea is typical of the direction taken by many western companies in recent years. San Manuel, Arizona, is an example.

Perhaps the most interesting sidelight to the story of the disappearance of the company town is the work of an Ohio real estate firm, John W. Galbreath & Company, which for many years has been in the curious business of buying and selling entire towns.54 The first western town purchased by Galbreath was Dragerton, Utah. Other Utah towns handled by this firm include Columbia, Copperton, and Garfield. The general pattern followed is to negotiate with the original owner, who has decided that it is no longer economically feasible to operate a town, and decide on a fair purchase price. Galbreath then takes over the entire town, becoming, in effect, the landlord. Community facilities are donated to the town, and the Galbreath Company then begins to sell the homes, with the original tenant having first choice on the purchase. In the case of Copperton and Garfield, Galbreath purchased these communities from Kennecott Copper Corporation in 1955 as part of a package deal in which Kennecott got rid of all eight of its company towns in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. The site of Garfield was eventually abandoned completely, as the company retained ownership of the land the new homeowners were required to move their dwellings. Most of them were eventually moved to sites in Salt Lake County.

The story of the company town in Utah has been, in part, a reflection of certain economic developments in the state. The company town grew in the early years of the twentieth century, when mines or processing plants in remote locations made it necessary for companies to provide living quarters and community services. It became involved in the tense struggle for union organization which characterized the first three decades of the century. The company town was most important in Utah's coal fields, and began to disappear in the 1920's and 1930's with the decline of the coal industry. Some new, modern company towns made their appearance with the economic stimulus of World War II. Today, modern transportation has largely eliminated any need for the company town.

As a newsman commented, in writing of the disappearance of Garfield, "The company town is as passe in most areas as the mule-drawn mine car." 55 54 For a more detailed discussion of the disappearance of the company town in the West and of Galbreath's activities, see Allen, "Company Town," Epilogue. See also Joseph P. Blank, "He Turned Company Towns into Home Towns," American Business, X X V I I I (September, 1958), 12-14.

55 Salt Lake Tribune, August 19, 1957.

echoes

echoes

echoes

echoes from the past: The story of the ECHO F L O U I i

AftmLI* by Marguerite J. Wright

In the name of progress, another superhighway is being constructed and one more historic landmark has been torn down to make way for it.

Within the past year the old Echo Flour Mill has disappeared from the scene.

The mill was located one mile east of Echo, Utah, at the west end of colorful and historic Echo Canyon, a canyon which has played an important role in the history of Utah â&#x20AC;&#x201D; from the Indian and mountain man to the pioneer and railroader. The salmon-colored rock formations in the canyon have been carved by the weather into fantastic shapes and suggest equally fantastic names such as Steamboat Rock, Giant Teapot, Sphinx, Gibraltar, Sentinel, the Cathedral, and Pulpit Rock.

Sentinel Rock stood across the narrow canyon from the Echo Flour Mill. Steamboat Rock could be seen to the east of the mill across the canyon, and Pulpit Rock was near Echo. The latter had to be removed for safety reasons several years ago because it stood above and near the Union Pacific Railroad tracks.

By the 1850's stagecoaches were traveling through Echo Canyon.

They were making regular trips from Independence and St. Joseph to Salt Lake City and soon afterwards to Sacramento. In 1853 a stagecoach station was erected in Echo. In 1860 the Pony Express, organized to carry mail from St. Joseph to Sacramento, went through Echo Canyon.

Mrs. Wright, of Midvale, U t a h , was reared at the Echo Flour Mill site and so has knowledge of its history. T h e photographs were furnished by the author.

first-hand

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A Pony Express station was established at Echo and another one 16 miles to the east at Castle Rock.

In this historic setting the construction of the Echo Flour Mill began in the spring of 1871. The mill stood for 93 years, and the following is the story of the mill as related by my father, Alfred Marlow Jones.

The mill was built near the stream of the Echo Creek. Nearby ran a single track of the Union Pacific Railroad that had been constructed in 1869.1 The mill was built for William L. Turpin of Taylorsville, by Ben Lamb; Lehi Henefer; William Batchelor; his son, Harry Batchelor; and William McMichael. The workmen camped nearby during construction.

As the mill neared completion, Ben Lamb lived in the building. It took two years to build the three-story structure.

The mill was built for a total of $8,000. The lumber used in the construction was obtained three miles east of the site in Saw Mill Canyon, where a water-powered sawmill was operating. The wood throughout 1 A note written on one of the wooden spouts at the mill in Alfred Jones' handwriting stated, " O n September 10, 1923, a n east-bound track was finished from Echo to Emery. T h e first engine to go over it was number 5041, with helper [engine] number 212."

Echo Flour Mill, in 1899, at the time John S. and Alfred R. Jones took possession. John Jones is holding a sack of flour at the entrance to the mill, and Alfred Jones is standing by the horse and buggy. Marlow Jones, the last owner of the mill, is the small boy sitting in the buggy.

Echo Flour Mill

163

the mill was of red pine and native pine and was hauled from Saw Mill Canyon to the building site by teams and wagons. Square nails with square heads were used throughout the entire structure, and the corners were mortised with wooden pins to hold the building securely. After 93 years the entire frame structure and double floor planking were as sturdy as ever.

At the back of the mill, below ground level, a steel James LaFell 12inch special water wheel in a penstock was located. This replaced the original overshot water wheel about 1893. The "new" wheel could develop 25 horsepower. At the time of demolition, the lower floor of the mill contained grain bins and machinery to drive its rollers. The second floor housed sifters, choppers, and rollers; the third floor had the elevatorheads and bran bins.

Flour was first ground at the mill in 1873 on two large, round stone burrs, weighing 500 to 600 pounds each. These burrs were imported from France in 1871, because at that time France was the best place to obtain stones hard enough to grind wheat without chipping and leaving grit in the flour.2 An important step in the milling process was the softening of the outer shell of the wheat so it could be easily removed. To soften the wheat, water was obtained from a well in the basement of the mill. The water was poured into a wooden barrel and dripped onto the wheat before it was milled.

After the grinding process the grist had to be sifted. This was done on what was then called a bolting frame. After sifting, the different wheat products were stored in various storage bins and later bagged for customers.

In the spring of 1893, the mill was remodeled, and steel rollers and silk reels were installed for grinding flour. But the stone burrs remained in place and were used for chopping grain for cattle feed until about 1906 when they were removed and a chopper installed for this purpose. In 1906 the mill was remodeled again, and the silk reels were replaced with a sifter. About 1920 Frank Rippon built the wooden spouts in the mill.

2 I n the operation of the stone burr, the lower millstone was furrowed on its top surface.

The radial grooves conducted the flour from the center of the stone to the edges. This stone did not turn. T h e upper millstone was furrowed on its lower surface and turned. Together this pair of stones ground the grist to the desired texture.

The radial grooves were produced by a large hardwood hammer with a hand-forged steel pick in the center. This was called a "mill pick." T h e millstone h a d to be sharpened often with the mill pick, because dull stones spoiled the quality of the grist.

During the demolition process one large millstone and three mill picks were found at the mill site. T h e Daughters of U t a h Pioneers at Henefer, U t a h , were given the millstone a n d one of the mill picks. T h e stone was placed in a monument by their cabin at Henefer.

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This machinery was used until the spring of 1942, when the last flour was ground. For the next several years, the mill continued to operate doing custom work. The chopper was run to make cattle feed and to clean wheat for planting.

The mill had several owners. William L. Turpin, 3 the original owner, ran it until April 26, 1897. He then moved to Big Piney, Wyoming. His family remained at Echo until Mr. Turpin returned for them in November.4 Heber Bennion, of Taylorsville, took possession of the mill and hired Ben Lamb to run it for him. Mr. Lamb received $25.00 a month and room and board. The following are excerpts from Heber Bennion's diary during the time he advanced financial aid to William Turpin to carry on his milling business.

[March] M o n . 20 [1893] Took train to Echo, Summit Go. to see Uncle Will [Turpin] about the mill, and learn something of my hay in the head of the canyon. Took H e b e r [jr.] with me. . . . Lodged with Uncle over night â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or rather sat u p with h i m until 3 A . M . Found the milling business very flat.

N o other show b u t to change to the roller system.

[April] Wed. 12 [1893] . . . H a d a call from Uncle Will T u r p i n and after some negotiation promised to advance more money on mill.

[Dec] Tues. 12: [1893] Went to town to see about negotiating a loan on our h o m e with which to meet pressing demands. T h e remodeling of the mill at Echo is a heavy drain on m e . . . . 5

On September 12, 1899, Alfred R. Jones and his brother, John S., bought the mill. In 1900 John Jones and his family moved from Henefer, Utah, to a house close to the mill.

Alfred Jones stayed at Echo working at the coal chutes, where he shoveled by hand about 20 tons of coal a day. This coal was used as fuel by the big engines of the Union Pacific Railroad. His wages were $1.75 a day, and from this he kept his family and saved enough to buy his share of the mill. On July 20, 1906, Alfred quit the railroad and moved to a house near the mill. At this time John Jones and his family moved to Echo (a distance of one mile) so the children could attend school.

Alfred and John continued to operate the mill until 1909, when John was called by the L.D.S. Church to go on a mission to Texas. He left his family in Echo and served two years in the mission field. After John 3

William L. Turpin died July 14, 1910, at the age of 6 1 . His wife died in 1938 at the age

of 83.

4 O n November 11, 1897, Heber Bennion met William Turpin and his daughter Lucy in a buggy on their way to Big Piney. Heber Bennion, Diaries and Correspondence, 1882â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1931 (originals, U t a h State Historical Society), Vol. 3 ( 1 8 8 9 - 1 8 9 7 ) .

5

Ibid.

Echo Flour Mill

165

returned, the Jones brothers continued to operate the mill until October 31, 1914. John and his family then moved to Honeyville, Utah, where he operated a flour mill.

Marlow Jones bought John's share in the Echo Mill. He and his father continued to operate the mill together until November 1, 1941, when Alfred died at his home by the mill.

The Echo Flour Mill was usually called The Grist Mill, because farmers would bring their grist (wheat) to have it ground into flour, bran, shorts, and germade. Wheat was seldom ground for money, but for a toll of the products of the grinding. Grain was usually cleaned for cash. Cleaning grain was to remove trash seeds before it was planted. When grain was chopped for cattle feed, the toll was 10 pounds for every 100 pounds chopped.

The miller would guarantee out of 60 pounds of wheat (the equivalent of 1 bushel) 30 to 32 pounds of flour, about 14 pounds of bran and shorts (shorts were sometimes called Red Dog), and about 5 pounds of germade (used for cereal). The rest of the wheat was chaff. Sometimes a bushel of very good wheat would make as much as 45 pounds of flour, but usually 34 to 36 pounds were obtained from a bushel of wheat. The miller's pay was the difference between the actual amount of wheat ground and the amount he guaranteed, which was usually 32 pounds.

Sometimes on poor grain the pay from the grist was very small. If the grain was of poor quality, the guarantee was cut to 25 or 28 pounds of flour, with bran, etc., given the same rate of decrease.

Nineteen barrels of flour, weighing 196 pounds to a barrel, could be ground in 24 hours at the Echo Flour Mill. Many times in the fall of the year after the harFlour sack label of the Echo Roller Mills.

v e s t , t h e m i l l w o u l d b e full of

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wheat to be ground. Then, the mill ran night and day, with one man taking the day shift and another the night shift.

I n 1910-11 flour sold for 50 to 75 cents for 100 pounds. In 1912 the price went to $1.25. Germade sold for 25 cents for 10 pounds. Farmers sold their wheat for 50 cents a bushel and made a profit on it.

During the early days of the mill, farmers brought grist in wagons pulled by oxen and horses. Four thousand pounds of wheat could be pulled by a four-horse team. Grain was brought from as far away as Fort Bridger, Millburne, and Burnt Fork, Wyoming. Mr. John M. Baxter, of Woodruff, Utah, came to the Echo Mill many times with an ox-drawn wagon.

T h e round trip took him two weeks. Customers coming a great distance to the mill would camp in tents and wagons until their grist was finished, so they could return home with it.

Every fall one or two railroad cars of wheat were shipped to the mill from the Wellsville Co-op in Cache Valley. This was ground into flour and sold from the mill. Each carload of wheat was purchased from the Wellsville Co-op by the mill owners for approximately $1,000.

A fond recollection of mine is of my grandfather, Alfred Jones, with his clothes and moustache white with flour dust, carrying a small shining flour scoop full of flour to my grandmother's kitchen. There she would make a few loaves of bread to test someone's grist. T h e bread was baked in my grandmother's black, polished coal stove which was kept so immaculate one could hardly believe coal had been placed in it for heating.

This same procedure of testing flour by bread-making is done in the large flour mills of today. Alfred Jones and his son were very proud of the flour they ground and wanted it to be the very best.

T h e mill supplied flour to stores in Echo and Coalville, and to the people living at the Grass Creek Mines and Devil's Slide.

Because water power was needed to run the mill, the original owner debated about building the mill on the Weber River or Echo Creek. T h e latter was decided upon because it was believed that the Echo Creek kept a more constant stream flow throughout the summer than the Weber River. This is difficult to believe because Echo Creek has been nearly dry for several years during the summer months. Three-and-a-half second feet of water were needed to turn the 25-horsepower wheel which ran the mill.

Because of the needed water power, a dirt-filled dam was constructed across Echo Creek behind the mill. This d a m was washed out by a flood in 1906 and rebuilt again. Then, in 1911 the dam was again destroyed

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because of high water runoff. After this flood the well in the basement of the mill dried up, and water from an outside spring had to be carried by bucket for use in the milling process.

Soon after this disaster, a wooden dam and metal headgate were constructed about 1,400 feet east of the mill. Water was then piped to the mill in an underground 24-inch redwood pipe, held together with metal rings. This dam is still standing. As a young girl I had to make several trips a day to this headgate to rake leaves and debris off the screen so water could run into the pipe.

In 1915 a small water wheel, using about one or one-and-a-half second feet of water and generating about six horsepower, was added to the penstock. The water wheel generated electric lights for the mill, two homes, and the barns nearby. This was the first electricity in Echo; the first incandescent lights used in the area. Very few electric appliances were used at this time. Few women had electric irons; most of them ironed with a heavy cast-iron flatiron which was heated on a coal range.

It was sometimes my job to go into the mill and turn a small wheel which permitted water to enter the penstock. This action turned the lights on. This was done at twilight, when shadows turned sacks of flour and machinery into weird shapes. I was never very brave going through the mill in the evening to turn the wheel. After the lights were on, they were never turned off until morning. Two or three lights were left burning in the house, and one was always on over the entrance to the mill.

These lights could not be shut off until someone turned the water wheel in the mill. There was no electricity during the day because water had to be conserved to run the mill and to generate electricity at night.

In the first log home, built close to the mill by William Turpin, and later in the two homes built by Alfred, John, and Marlow Jones, several Marlow Jones, in the spring of 1964, standing by the sifter in the Echo Flour

Mill.

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children were born. Here they, with their parents, shared in the work of the mill and the surrounding farm. T h e children grew up with a keen interest in the machinery and workings of the mill.

T h e millpond also served as a source of entertainment for those living by the mill, as well as their visitors. There were swimming and fishing in the pond. One never forgot the thrill of catching a glimpse of a speckled trout as it darted through the clear water of the millpond.

Since the spring of 1871, many changes have taken place in and around the mill, but someone has lived there constantly since that time, until May 9, 1964, when Marlow Jones and his wife moved from the site to Midvale, Utah. In the summer of 1964, when he could see the destruction of the mill was inevitable, Marlow Jones became anxious to have as much of the mill preserved as possible. H e donated the entire structure to the M a n and His Bread Museum at U t a h State University in Logan.

All the machinery, elevators, windows, and doors were salvaged. The Special Collections Division of the Utah State University Library received the mill ledgers for the period 1897 to 1942. T h e museum has made drawings of the mill's construction and taken photographs of its many parts.

T h e museum wants to construct a building based on the plans and photographs and using the timbers removed from the old mill. An operational flour mill of this nature could become an integral part of a demonstration farm which the museum committee has planned.

O n April 3, 1965, when he was informed that the new highway construction had completely destroyed the last remaining parts of the mill he loved so well, Marlow Jones died in his sleep. So now the old mill and the last of its owners belong to a colorful age of history that is gone forever.

There are still many people, in Summit County and the surrounding area, who recall with nostalgia their trips to the old mill in horse-drawn wagons, Model " T " Fords, and later more modern trucks and cars. And they talk of the days gone by and how times have changed. Now historic Echo Canyon â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which has had tribes of Indians, fur trappers, the Donner-Reed party, pioneers, the Pony Express, stagecoaches, and even buffalo (skeletons of these were found in the Echo Creek bed) travel the narrow canyon â&#x20AC;&#x201D; will have another drastic change. T h e new superhighway will cut through and fill the small canyon, and cars will speed over the place where the old mill stood. Travelers will be oblivious of the mill â&#x20AC;&#x201D; its history and the people who loved it and worked there. But still standing as reminders to those who remember the mill are Steamboat Rock and the tall-spiral Sentinel Rock located across the canyon from where the mill stood.

The Kintner Letters: fin Astronomer's flccount of the Wheeler Survey in Utah and Idaho INTRODUCTION

BY R U S S E L L E . BIDLACK AND EDITORIAL N O T A T I O N S

BY E V E R E T T L. COOLEY

[Continued from Winter Issue of the

Quarterly] Soda Springs, I d a h o * August 4, 1877.

T o the Editor of the Register.

I t is just two weeks ago since we left here and now we are back again to get our mail and to learn of the terrible times you are having in the east, or at least have been having, for we have no news later than the 28th ult.

We left here on the morning of the 22d of July, after having h a d our bumps of excitability somewhat wrought upon by an Indian scare which originated a m o n g the people of Soda Springs. I t seems a half breed I n d i a n had a misunderstanding with a worthless white m a n here and a fight ensued in which poor L o got the worst of the battle, and, I n d i a n like, was bent on revenge if the whole settlement h a d to be sacrificed. T h e r e were about a hundred and fifty or two hundred Indians encamped near the village, and the warriors appeared in war paint and feathers and sent off their squaws and children (a sure sign of trouble), so we were told. We were camped about a half mile from the village, and they sent a m a n out at dusk to ask us to come into town and help defend the place, but as all our property would be exposed, we divided the party, sending five to town and four of us staying in camp, armed with pistols and breech-loading shot guns. Your correspondent stood guard, but not an incident occurred to disturb the quiet of the lovely moonlight night, save the occasional howling of a coyote [sic] or the hooting of an owl on the mountain side. By seven o'clock, July 22d, the whole train was in motion, moving westerly and crossing Bear river again a mile below here. T h e n we followed the river u p its right bank about fifteen miles, camping for two days in a canon while the party ascended peaks in the neighborhood.

W e continued u p the right bank of Bear river until opposite Montpelier when we crossed on a bridge, the only one structure over the river from Evanston to Corinne, a distance of about 500 miles. Passing u p Montpelier canon the scenery is constantly changing, and ere we were aware of it, we had ridden twenty-five miles and did not * This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, August 22, 1877.

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experience the disagreeable weariness that so often comes over us while riding over barren plains with nothing but sage brush as far as the horizon on all sides. O u r camp for the night was at an elevation of 7,000 feet, and the change of altitude was realized next morning when the minimum thermometer registered 18 degrees above zero. T h e next day we crossed the divide between Montpelier canon and Salt Works canon, at an elevation of 8,000 feet. Passing down Salt Works canon the salt works 1 of the Mormons were reached at eve and c a m p established for that night. T h e r e is a good salt spring here and several others were seen from time to time as we passed; the ground in several instances being covered for the space of an acre with a salt incrustation an inch in thickness and many beautiful salt crystals found on the surface of the incrustation.

T h e Mormons make all the salt necessary for their consumption in these parts from the springs in this canon. T h e next day's march brought us into Salt river valley, a beautiful valley of about 50,000 acres of as fine land as ever existed, and such as would make your Michigan farmers turn green with envy. But their envy would all disappear when I tell them that although the land is of superior quality, not one foot of it is available for agricultural purposes on account of the low temperature of the climate, the thermometer standing on the morning of July 30 at eight degrees above zero, and never higher t h a n fifteen degrees above zero during our stay of four days in the valley. For the benefit of your readers who are disciples of old Sir Isaac Walton, I cannot refrain from mentioning the fine fishing we found in the west part of Salt river. 2 T w o of us kept ahead of the pack train, stopping at intervals, and cought [sic] seventy pounds of brook trout in a half a day's fishing. I never, as an angler, experienced so much genuine pleasure before, and verily believe that in this stream a good angler could catch a wagon load of trout in a day. Several of the trout we cought [sic] weighed three pounds and none of them less than half a pound. We have grown thoroughly sick of them, and have reached that point in fishing when we never keep one unless he weighs over two pounds. I t really seems incredible at the vast numbers of fish in these streams, and I assure you I have enjoyed the fishing immensely, and really believe that fishing in the lakes near Ann Arbor would have no charm for me now after such exciting sport as is here to be found.

Salt river valley is surrounded by high mountains on both sides, but particularly high on the right h a n d side of the stream as we descend the stream. At the north end of the valley we camped on Salt creek which comes out of Oneida Salt Works canon. 3 1 A good description of this operation is given by First Lieutenant S. E. Tillman, who headed the party Kintner was in. " O n the tributaries of Salt River (Salt and Crow Creeks) are situated two establishments for manufacturing salt. T h e one on Crow Creek is in latitude 42° 27', and about four miles west of the 111th meridian. It is a small affair, and is operated by Mormons living in Montpelier. The salt is obtained by evaporation from spring-water. T h e water appears to be saturated, and the salt is said to be very pure. T h e evaporation is conducted in large pans, the fuel for heating coming from the mountains." U.S., Army, Engineer Department, George M. Wheeler, Annual Report Upon the Geographical Surveys of the Territory of the United States West of the 100th Meridian (Washington, D.C., 1878), Appendix NN, p . 110. (Hereafter cited as Wheeler, Report Upon Geographical Surveys.)

2 Salt River is in present Wyoming and the valley is a good agricultural area today. Although the growing season is short, grains and alfalfa are grown. The Salt River is still an excellent trout stream.

3 Again Lieutenant Tillman's report amplifies Kintner's. " T h e Oneida salt-works are much more extensive [than the works operated by the Mormons], and are owned by parties in Malade.

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At the extreme north end of the valley we discovered a wonderful collection of hot springs, and it is pretty self-evident we were the original discoverers, inasmuch as the peculiar formations which I will describe, had never been desecrated by the h a n d of man, a sure indication of the presence of a "live and curious Yankee."

There are, I should judge, about fifty of the springs in two groups about a quarter of a mile apart, and the peculiar feature of them is the cones out of which they flow.

Each spring flows from the top of a cone, looking not unlike an old-fashioned bee-hive.

T h e water does not flow continually, but is intermittent, flowing about ten seconds and ceasing for as long. We were unable to determine the temperature as we were so unfortunate as to have no thermometer which registered more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit. 4 Suffice it to say the temperature of the water was far above boiling heat, and it puffed and steamed away at the nozzles of the cones like a miniature steam engine. T h e holes at the tops of the cones were generally about half an inch in diameter, and if one attempted to stop the flow a terrible spluttering and splashing was the result. T h e cones are in all stages of formation from little ones not more than two inches high to the large ones eight or ten feet high, and looking in the distance like an Indian encampment, which we at first supposed they were. T h e water, when cooled at a cold spring near by, whose temperature, strange to say, is about forty degrees, has a brackish, sulphurous taste and is impregnated with an acid which bites the tongue severely. There are many curious features about these springs and the beautiful sulphur incrustations are not among the least. These incrustations being at or near the base of the cones in the most delicate figures you can imagine, looking very much like the beds of moss in tissue, but a thousand times more beautiful are their variegated colors of yellow and green.

I managed to break off one of the tops of the cones which was about a foot in diameter at the base and ran up to an apex of above an inch in diameter. T h e formation is sulphurus [sic] rock and is very brittle, in fact so brittle that myself and one other person were the only persons in the whole party who succeeded in getting perfect specimens, and I do not believe we left a perfect cone standing to tell the tale of the sad martyrdom of its unfortunate companions.

Between these two sets of hot springs are a series of cold sulphuric springs, the largest of which runs in a stream about two inches in diameter. It is excellent water; in fact, the strongest I ever tasted. T h e stream runs into a rocky basin about 100 feet in diameter, and of what depth we were unable to ascertain, but certainly very deep.

T h e process of obtaining salt is the same as already given [see footnote 1]. These works are on Salt Creek, a few miles above its junction with Salt River, about 25 miles north of the works on Crow Creek. Salt was seen as an efflorescence on several of the flats between these works, and could undoubtedly be obtained in large quantities in this vicinity. The Oneida works are operated annually between the 1st of April and 1st of October. The salt is transported by freight to Idaho and Montana. Four hundred and fifty tons were shipped during 1876. Snow prevents freighting except between dates specified." Wheeler, Report Upon Geographical Surveys, 110.

4 1 think that once again Kintner is writing for the benefit of his newspaper public for his temperatures differ from those of Lieutenant Tillman. "During the season numerous thermal and mineral springs were seen. These springs, as a rule, are located along the southern edge of the lava flow. We discovered none at any great distance from the lava. Such springs were found along the course of Bear River, from Mink Creek to Soda Springs, on the head of the Blackfoot, on Salt Creek, and along the Port Neuf River. Several of these springs are situated near the junction of Salt River and the creek of the same name. These springs have been once much more extensive.

The warmest of them reached 145°, the highest temperature our thermometers would record. . . ."

Ibid., 110.

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T h e whole surrounding country in the immediate vicinity indicates intense heat at some remote period, and as one gazes on these hot, hissing sulphur springs, he cannot help wondering at the great unseen powers that must lie hidden in the bosom of the earth. O n the morning of August 1st we left Salt river valley and passed up Oneida salt works canon which takes its name from the salt works situated about three miles from the m o u t h of the canon. T h e salt works are conducted by four men and make, so they informed us, three tons of salt every day. Ready market is found for it in Idaho and M o n t a n a where most of it is used for milling purposes in mining. T h e salt is of an excellent quality and is m a d e from brine that averages 33 per cent.

There are many of these salt springs in this canon and will all some day, doubtless, be monopolized.

Following this canon to its summit by the Salt Works road occupied the entire day and we camped about three miles from the divide on the northern side of the range. This is the range that divides the water between the Great Salt lake Valley and the Pacific. Strange to say, on the top of this range at an elevation of 8,500 feet we found quantities of wild strawberries just ripe, and I assure you we made good the time in devouring them, thanking our good luck in finding them, regardless of their unnatural home. After passing down to the bar of the mountains we came to Lane's valley, 5 a little valley of about 20,000 acres, which takes its name from J. W. Lane, who was killed here by the Indians July 18, 1859, and whose last resting place is marked by a neatly carved tombstone at the road which tells travelers now of the sad fate of one of those noble heroes, the persons who had the courage to come into this wild country and m a p out the pathways of civilization, as they have done all over our great west.

W e were now two days' march from Soda Springs and taking the west fork of Lane's valley followed it until we reached Georgetown canon, then turning west passed over the mountains by Indian trails until we reached a timber road which brought us to Soda Springs yesterday at noon. T h e weather here is quite cool, and now, at noon, the thermometer stands at fifty-five in the shade. T h e mountains are on fire on our south-west, and the hazy appearance leads one to think that a u t u m n is upon us. We leave here to-morrow for the Caraboa [Caribou] mountains, about 25 miles to the north-east of us, a n d will make another circuit of two weeks, coming back to Soda Springs about August 20th, when you shall hear all about the Caraboos [Caribou] and their mining facilities, which are said to be good. 6 C.J.K. Ogden, U t a h , September 1, 1877.* T o the Editor of the Register: O n the morning of August 5, there might have been seen a lone horseman riding rapidly across the long narrow valley that extends from Soda Springs, Idaho, to the * This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, September 12, 1877.

5 Here the party was about 26 miles northeast of Soda Springs. Several men by the name of Lane appear in Idaho histories, but a violent death is not mentioned. One Joseph Lane was superintendent of Indian affairs of Oregon Territory in 1850. See Brigham D. Madsen, The Bannock of Idaho (Caldwell, Idaho, 1958), 72.

0 Wheeler, Report Upon Geographical Surveys, 89, gives a brief description of the placer mining in the Oneida area but not the Caribou district which was an active mining area in the 1870's.

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Black Foot river. As he rode so rapidly on, the tall blue mountains appeared to rise out of the bosom of the earth suddenly, as mere specks in the distance, to disappear as suddenly behind him. L o n g beds of black lava, extending on either side of the way, only seemed to render the solitude more solitary. Not a living being, save now and then a solitary mountain hawk, lent an existence to enliven the scene. T h e great rugged old mountains, seemed singularly grand in their solitude, a n d seemed as if giving a silent autobiography by the pantomime so fitly expressed in the great smooth, wrinkles which were everywhere visible upon their surfaces. Beautiful is not the word, nor that word does not exist in any known language, that will express or convey one single idea of the grandeur that these dear old mountains exhibit on a fair summer's evening, when the sun comes aslant upon their surfaces, and makes each particular m o u n d to stand out so boldly, a n d every projecting crag to look like a living m o n u m e n t of some unknown h a n d whose works are mightier than even [ever?] we shall know of. But our horseman, w h a t of him? Well that lone horseman, was none other t h a n myself, and I was riding not a gay and festive Rosinante, like poor Don, but as homely, ungainly, a little mule as ever suffered existence, and her n a m e , though not Rosinante, was characteristic of the beast, viz: "Beauty," with a surname " U . S . " which, when combined is, you see, a very significant name, and could you but see the insignificant little beast, you would wonder how it came to pass that such a beast, long of ears, shaggy of coat and puggy of nose, ever attained to such a n a m e ; but no m a t t e r how, she was not to blame, a n d like Topsey [Topsy] she "growed," so it couldn't be helped.

Well, so m u c h for the mule. It suffices to say she has been faithful and served her master well. I h a d been left behind to get the mail while the party went on to Little Black Foot river, about 30 miles from Soda Springs, a n d after a tedious ride over this long dry valley, overtook them just as they were making c a m p near J o h n Day's Butte, on little Black Foot river. This valley, extending from Soda Springs to Black Foot, presents at least one remarkable characteristic, viz: that to all appearances it has in the past generations been the outlet of all the water in the Salk [Salt] Lake Valley

This is a photograph of the Wheeler Survey party in Yosemite.

"The party had the usual allowance of instruments, viz, one triangulation instrument to [sic] topographer's transits, two cistern barometers, two aneroids, two psychrometers, two odometers, one maximum, one minimum thermometer, two pocketthermometers/' DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY WESTERN COLLECTION

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towards the Pacific 7 We took the barometric observations on our return through it and found the elevation only a few feet above either Bear or Black Foot river. My impression is that there has been an upheaval at or near Soda Springs, that has turned Bear river from its course toward Salt Lake, and the lake markings found further down Bear river, verify this belief. T h e whole shape of the southern side of the valley next the Bear Lake range is plainly an old river bed, whatever may have been its direction.

O n the morning of the 6th we left Little Black Foot, and followed w h a t is known as the Taylor's Bridge Road, in the direction of J o h n Day's Lake. This we reached about noon, a n d here indeed is a sportsman's paradise. T h e lake covers about five thousand acres, and is for the most part overgrown with rushes and tules, which make a delightful home for all kinds of water fowls. I n the open part of the lake I do not believe there was a space ten feet square upon which there was not a duck, or some other water fowl, and the noise they made was wonderful to hear. O u r meteorologist killed all he could carry of fine large mallard and teal ducks, and all that we could eat for two or three days. At night we found ourselves at H a m ' s Fork, where camp No. 32 h a d been established, and here the survey was connected. T h e next camp was made on the south side of Cariboo [Caribou] mountain, on T i n C u p R u n . O n the morning of the 8th we started down the T i n C u p R u n canon toward Salt river. This canon was in many respects the most beautiful I h a d yet seen. Following as we did an old Indian trail which kept constantly on one side of the canon, sometimes in the valley, again far u p on the spur of a jagged mountain, winding tortuously around steep bluffs, dangerously near the precipice over which a single misstep of our mule would send us tumbling down a thousand feet below into a beautiful blue stream of water that "Laughed at us in jolly glee I n its rollicking course to the sea."

As we neared the m o u t h of the canon the trail became more precipitous, and many times I dared not trust my mule, but footed it to the next secure place.

Soon we came in sight of the famous Salt river range, or the main range of the Rocky Mountains, which passes through the Snake river country. They are as rugged mountains as can be found on the western coast, and in many places the peaks are inaccessible. O n c e more in the Salt river valley where the temperature seldom gets above 70°. Delightfully cool it is, and we camp on a creek 15 miles from the junction of the river with Snake river. Here we spent one day, while a side party went on the mountain in the neighborhood, and here again we found plenty of game and fish â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in fact where have we not been able to find an abundance since leaving Ogden? Verily it is no source of wonder how "Poor L o " has lived where game is as plenty as in this country. Several times have members of the party killed grouse with stones, and I have seen from ten to fifteen shots fired at a flock of them with revolvers without "flushing" them.

T h e next day's journey brought us to the junction of Salt, J o h n Gray's and Snake rivers, and here we established the most beautiful camp of the season, and one that would excite the envy of even an enthusiastic pleasure seeker. Just where the three 7 Here Kintner's views differ from the leader of his party, Lieutenant Tillman, who properly identifies and describes Red Rock Pass which Grove K. Gilbert held was the outlet to ancient Lake Bonneville. Ibid., 109.

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rivers come together on the m a i n point between the Snake a n d Salt rivers u n d e r the spreading cottonwoods, where the waters that r u n from the great Uintas, through hundreds of miles of wild territory, but little known, and finally over the great Soshone [Shoshone] Falls, the grandest known falls in the world. 8 You m a y imagine t h a t it necessarily brought uncomfortable thoughts to the mind when we remembered that the blue waters rolling so peacefully by us, and so free from any discolor, were mingling a few h u n d r e d miles below us with the blood of fellow h u m a n beings, w h o were being so cruelly murdered by heartless Nez Perces. 9 So far we h a d h a d little fear of Indians, but after reaching this point we learned from occasional white men we m e t that depredations were being committed and t h a t two men had been murdered at Ross Forks, only twenty-five miles below us. Not unfrequently did we question each other about the durability of our hair, etc., etc.

I promised you in my last to describe Caraboo [Caribou], b u t find that the space I have already taken will occupy more t h a n you are willing to give, a n d must defer that until my next, when you may expect a description of the mines, a n d the rest of my journey to Ogden, where I now a m again in the observatory and shall remain for a few weeks previous to going to Nevada and California, to assist in the triangulation of Nevada a n d the San Fernandez [Fernando] country in California. We have completed the principal primary triangulation for the atlas sheet of eastern I d a h o , a n d for that reason, as I first wrote you, we go to California.

C.J.K. Ogden, U t a h , September 12, 1877.* T o the Editor of the Register: "Noon by the N o r t h clock! Noon by the East! H i g h noon, too, by the hot sunbeams which fall scarcely aslant upon my head a n d almost make the water bubble and smoke in the trough u n d e r my nose." Such are the words which H a w t h o r n puts in the mouth of the old town p u m p , but not even he or his mythical town p u m p could ever have experienced such intolerable heat as our party experienced from Snake river to Caribou mountain. W e h a d been enjoying exceptionaly [sic] cool weather as I have before written, a n d perhaps this fact only added to our sufferings. But our course, too, h a d something to do with it, as it lay constantly north and south through Caribou canon and u p the creek of the same name, whose m u d d y waters presented a great contrast to the beautifully clear streams we h a d just left. For miles a n d miles we rode wearily on, now following the course of the stream and again winding around the spur of a m o u n t a i n to shorten the dreary m a r c h as m u c h as possible. With scarcely any vegitation [sic] to enliven the scene, and very m u c h of dead, burned and fallen timber to add, if possible, to the intolerable heat, our hopes fell when we learned it was yet twenty miles to Caribou. But at last, u n d e r that old rule of "patience and persever* This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, September 26, 1877.

Kintner was obviously under the impression t h a t the streams from the north slopes of the Uintas drained into the Snake River and ultimately into the Columbia River drainage system.

T h e Shoshone Falls are located near present Twin Falls, Idaho.

9 Kintner is here referring to the Nez Perce W a r in western I d a h o and M o n t a n a when Chief Joseph led his people against United States troops in what is considered one of the longest Indian treks in history. See Merrill D. Beal and Merle W. Wells, History of Idaho (3 vols., New York, 1949), I, 456-66 and Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest ( N e w H a v e n , 1965).

8

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ance," we hailed the sight of the noble old mountain as he stood like a monarch all by himself in the valley, lifting his head high above all the surrounding country. As we neared the mountain signs of civilization began to develop, and little ditches running here and there indicated t h a t the busy miner h a d been at work here, while the creek in its m u d d y appearance indicated that still higher u p they were still busy in their search for golden flakes.

At six o' :lock we camped on the side of the mountain about 2,000 feet from the base and between north and south Caribou villages. T w o days' stop would be necessary here in order to climb the m o u n t a i n and examine the mines, so we sought comfortable places for our tents and m a d e our couch accordingly.

O n the next day by seven A.M., four of us, well mounted and accompanied by a pack mule to carry our instruments began the ascent. 10 F r o m the c a m p to an altitude of 8,000 feet the course we took was through heavy pine timber in which we found considerable trouble from the fallen timber. T h e ascent was very steep and necessitated many stops to rest our weary limbs ere we reached the top, during one of which we were so fortunate as to find a quantity of ripe raspberries, and our rest on this occasion was lengihened [sic] accordingly. At 8,000 feet we reached the timber line, and the scenery around for the first time burst upon us, and all the country over which we had passed for the last week lay before us in panoramic splendor, but I must say naught of this until the remaining feet has been climbed. T h e toil from this point was very severe, and we were obliged to climb and lead our already exhausted mules. U p , up we went a n d each step detaching lose [sic] stones that rolled back a thousand feet.

At last, almost utterly exhausted, we clamber over the comb [sic] and find ourselves within a h u n d r e d yards of the highest point, but to our dismay, it is inaccessable [sic] and we must work down and around the east side along the edge of tremendous precipices, where, with great dificulty [sic] the mules are lead [sic] and not without great danger to them a n d ourselves. After a half an hour of difficult climbing the summit is reached a n d all hands sat quietly down to view the surrounding country.

T e n thousand five h u n d r e d feet above the sea is another atmosphere, almost in another world it seems. 11 T o the east of us, to the north of us, in fact, everywhere, the great ranges seem like great waves at sea, and as the clouds cast their flitting shadows upon their rolling surfaces, grand indeed is the scene. Just under us is J o h n Day's lake, which looks like a mere pond and beyond is the dividing range between Salt L a k e river and the Pacific.

T o the east of us is the famous Salt river range and the great peaks of which I have before spoken seem now doubly grand. T o the north and east is the famous Teton peak, the highess [sic] mountain in this portion of the Rocky mountains, its altitude being 10,000 feet, and as we sit there and see its steeple-like summit far above the clouds, we can scarcely realize that it is a part of old mother earth. All the portion vistble [sic] to us, about half its heights [sic] I should say, is white with snow, and so sharp is the upper 10 Lieutenant Tillman in his official report lists the instruments in the party â&#x20AC;&#x201D; many of which were carried by the pack mules. "The party had the usual allowance of instruments, viz, one triangulation instrument, to [sic] topographer's transits, two cistern barometers, two aneroids, two psychrometers, two odometers, one maximum, one minimum thermometer, two pocket-thermometers." Wheeler, Report Upon Geographical Surveys, 107.

11 This can only be Meade Peak, the highest mountain in the area, with an elevation of 9,953 feet.

4:0|^-4P8PF.

• .

•

••

• ;

U N I O N P A C I F I C RAILROAD

Looking across Jackson foreground.

Hole at the Teton

Mountains.

The Snake

River

is in the

portion t h a t it resembles very closely some great white cathedral spire lifted high above the clouds. O n the east of T e t o n peak appears the famous F r e m o n t peak, b u t it is in no sense so grand a m o u n t a i n as T e t o n , and I wondered that F r e m o n t did not n a m e the T e t o n for himself, but suppose he was unable to climb it, as it is only within a few years it has been ascended.

After a few minutes' rest we begin our observations which take three hours to complete, and then all hands build a large m o n u m e n t , but while engaged at this, dark clouds a p p e a r ominously in the neighborhood of the Tetons a n d drive rapidly down u p o n us. Soon the whole surrounding atmosphere assumes a dead quiet — in fact, a painful quiet. So painfully still is it that our ears ring continuously a n d not a sound seems to break the awful stillnes [sic], save now and then the sharp, shrill cry of the mischievous magpie full 3,000 feet below us. While this quiet lasts the great black clouds seem to boil in furious turmoil among themselves when at once there shoots across the sky a great, broad, zigzag streak of lightning, followed immediately by a terrific peal

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Utah Historical Quarterly

of thunder, and in one instant the dead quiet is changed into a terrible thunder storm, the clouds drive around us and the sun is hid from view. I n the clouds; did you ever witness it?

Truly it is a peculiar situation. A misty, foggy appearance, not unlike a morning in L o n d o n I imagine it presents, but driven along by fierce winds. Soon the clouds rise a n d below us is a grand sight.

W e are under an upper stratum of clouds and over the denser one below. Torrents of rain are descending on the valley below and the storm is wonderfully grand.

At last comes a heavier stratum of clouds above us a n d soon we are white with snow flakes falling rapidly upon us. T h e storm drives on and in half an hour there is nothing to remind us of it but an occasional distant rumble and great banks of white clouds that roll u p like snow many miles away. I have heard Adirondack M u r r y describe a storm in the Adirondacks, b u t thought that he drew on his imagination, but now I know he did not, for no h u m a n being is possessed of power to describe it and none need think of forming an idea of the grandeur until brought face to face with it.

After an hour and a half of counter-climbing we are again safely ensconced in our little portable houses and bid defiance to the storms and to the cold, provided, however, the storm is not too severe.

T h e next day the mines were visited, and we were disappointed at finding only two companies at work, each working about ten men and "panning o u t " about $40.00 per day to the m a n . T h e reason for such a limited number was a lack of water, and we were informed that less snow fell last winter than was ever known before. However, we obtained all the necessary information we desired and saw for the first time some genuine placer diggings. T h e gold is found on the banks of the streams and is drift gold. T h e y obtain it by "corraling" [sic] the water as it is called, or by backing up the water and getting a h e a d ; then a pipe or nozzle is used by which the banks are washed down a n d run through sluice-ways, w h e n the gold is obtained by "riffles" or cleats nailed to the bottom of the sluices.

While we were there one m a n cleaned u p his day's work and we h a d the satisfaction of gazing upon a hundred and forty dollars' worth of dust.

T h e men who do the labor are mostly Chinemen [sic] and they constitute a majority of the inhabitants of Caribou.

We left Caribou on the morning of the 16th of July and passed over to John Day's lake and again joined the survey previously m a d e on Little Black Fork river, working north-west until near Black Fork Peak, where a days' [sic] stop was made and points ascended from which M o u n t P u t n a m and Fort Hall were visible.

O u r course was then westward a n d south to Blackfoot river and the country, although apparently level, was cut u p by immense lava canons over which we found considerable trouble in crossing. We followed the Black Fork back to the ford I before spoke of, a n d thence to Soda Springs again.

H e r e we again stopped two days a n d replenished our diminished stores, received news from home, etc.

While here we m a d e additional explorations of the natural curiosities in the immediate neighborhood. Formation Springs and Ammonia and Steamboat springs, on Bear river. T h e formation springs take their rise about a mile from these springs, in a cave of about 300 feet in length over toward Bear river.

Kintner Letters

179

T h e peculiarity of the springs is the fact that they form an incrustation upon everything with which they come in contact.

Steamboat spring is below Soda springs on Bear river a n d is a lone spring spouting u p about three feet out of the top of a cone three feet in height. T h e water has a temperature of eighty-four degrees and spouts a n d hisses away at a great rate, emitting a volume about as thick as one's wrist. Around the base of the cone are several small apertures from which carbonic acids are constantly flowing with a hissing noise not unlike the escape of steam from a safety-valve on a steamboat, a n d which is doutless [sic] the origin of the name Steamboat spring. T h e Ammonia spring is a small spring which takes its name from its effect upon the nostrils when one attempts to drink the water, which has a brackish, sulphuric taste, slightly impregnated with carbonic acid as are all these springs in this immediate neighborhood. M u c h more might be said of the wonderful curiosities around Soda Springs, among which the Ice Cave is not the least. W e did not visit this cave but were told that ice constantly exists within the cave.

Leaving Soda Springs on the 21st, the party deviated somewhat from the projected course in order to get on to Franklin, so as to return to Ogden.

We followed Bear river through a drear b u r n t district all one day where not a spear of vegetation was visible and nothing altered the uneven surface of the prairie save the thousands of badger mounds that were everywhere visible. This was the tract that was burning when I wrote you some weeks ago and h a d been accidentally fired by some one. T h e next day's m a r c h was m u c h more interesting, being still on Bear river, but now in w h a t is known as Gentile valley, where thousands o[f] cattle and sheep were seen grazing and the bright, golden shocks of wheat added m u c h to its beauty. T h e road left the river at the foot of the valley on Cottonwood creek where were seen the lake marks mentioned in my last letter. Here, at an elevation of about 200 feet above Bear river are plainly visible lake markings and at the foot of the valley the river has cut vertically down through a canon 200 feet deep, thus showing that this water h a d all been confined in the past in this great valley.

We reached Bear river ford at evening and the next morning with a packer, two riding mules and a pack mule carrying my luggage, I left for Franklin a n d thence via narrow guage [sic] railroad to this point. I t seemed a curious sight after so many weeks of isolation to be again in the bounds of civilization and to see from either side of the car the beautiful fields of golden grain just ready for the reaper.

C.J.K. Ogden, November 28, 1877.* T o the Editor of the Register: After having written of the beautiful scenery of Northern I d a h o and its hundreds of silvery, laughing streams, whose very music fills one's soul with hallowed thoughts, it seems dreary indeed to descend to a description of that desert waste known as the Great American Desert. But dreary as it seems, no less dreary did it really a p p e a r to your correspondent when on the morning of September 30, he landed in that most desolate of western villages, known as Terrace, situated in the northern edge of the * This letter was published in the Ann Arbor Register, December 26, 1877.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Great Desert 150 miles from Ogden, and 10,000 miles from the rest of mankind, as it seemed to us ere our stay of four long weeks h a d ended in this vicinity.

O u r party consisted of four, a n d our special duty in this section of the country was the measurement and development of a base line, 23 miles in length on the C.P.R.R., which at this point runs in a straight line to Lucin, 25 miles distant. Terrace is a village of perhaps 300 inhabitants, and has for its sole sustainance [sic] the railroad shops of the Salt Lake division of the C.P.R.R. I t is situated about 50 miles from Salt Lake 1 ' 2 and about 15 miles from the Clair [Clear] Creek range of mountains on the north from which all the water that the villagers consume is brought by pipes. Like all western villages it is composed mainly of wooden houses, one story in height and all of a monotonous sameness, being strewn here and there as the convenience or will of the builder seemed to dictate, regardless of any order relative to streets.

I n fact the shops seem to have been built, and then " T o m , Dick and Harry" built their little houses as suited their own convenience. T o the credit of the master mechanic, Mr. W m . McKenzie, I must say a new state of things is now being inaugurated, and he is building out of the chaos a truly model manufacturing town. Houses are being moved, streets opened u p and cleaned, and, best of all, under his guiding hand none of those depredating holes which ruin so many laboring men's houses and happiness, are permitted to exist. N o m a n who is addicted to strong drink is allowed to run an engine or assist in the same or to work in the machine shops of Mr. McKenzie's division of the C.P.R.R. T h e operatives are all taxed one dollar per a n n u m for the purpose of sustaining a public reading room and library, adjacent to which are a complete set of bath rooms free to all. W h a t is the result do you ask? T h e Sabbath is respected; children neatly dressed are seen throughout the village and nowhere do you see the workings of intemperance. I n short, though this little insignificant village presents not the most inviting appearance to a casual observer at first sight, I venture to say it would be difficult to find a village of its size where such universal happiness seems to abound.

All praise to Mr. McKenzie and success attend his glorious undertaking.

12 Kintner refers here to the lake rather than the city. Actually there were other "towns" along the Central Pacific Railroad which Kintner does not mention. They appear on such maps as the Froiseth's New Sectional & Mineral Map of Utah (Salt Lake City, 1878) and Rand, McNally & Company's Business Atlas of 1876 as reproduced in Pioneer Atlas of the American West (Chicago, 1956). Other towns are Matlin, Rozel, Kelton, Ombey, and Mountain.

U T A H S T A T E H I S T O R I C A L SOCIETY

Terrace, Utah, was established as a maintenance station on the Central Pacific Railroad. Railroad shops were located there for a time.

Kintner Letters

181

Like Lord J o h n Ruskin he has believed and does believe that by a proper interest in the laboring m a n he may be made to see the necessity of directing his spare time to his self-improvement and not to beggaring his little ones by tippling at the r u m pot.

I do not know where I have enjoyed an hour more than that spent by our party in visiting and conversing with this most intelligent, genial master mechanic. Truly it is a gratifying sight to see such men at the head of our mechanical institutions, men who have hearts to sympathize with their fellowmen and minds that realize that a laboring m a n is something more than a mere tool to be ground down and trodden upon. I h a d often read of the ideas of interesting laboring men in literary pursuits as advanced by Chas. Reid a n d Lord Ruskin, but never before saw the working out of the theory and now realize that it is most fully practicable.

But I started out to tell you of the Great Desert, and here a m lost in my admiration for a pet theory relative to education.

Well, no matter, the time was certainly well spent in investigating it, and I trust the words I have written may not fail to interest some one else in a cause of such universal good as that of educating the masses. But about the Great Desert you shall hear.

It lies on the western side of Great Salt Lake, and is, perhaps, of an average width of 100 miles and extending north and south for 200 miles. Not a spear of grass in all that barren waste. Alkalie, alkalie [sic] everywhere, white, almost, as the driven snow; and as the sun beats down upon it, the heat seems intolerable, and the heat waves give to the atmosphere an undulating motion plainly visible during the middle of the day.

Here it is t h a t wonderful deceiver, the mirage tempts on the weary, foot-sore traveler, seeming to beckon him on and on to sure destruction, holding out to his vision beautiful lakes and crystal water, apparently but a few miles in advance. T h e Central Pacific passenger trains pass over the desert in the night, so that travelers never see it, but, dreary as it may seem, there are many things of interest. I n the early morning, the great snow-capped mountains south of Salt Lake, loom u p like giant sentinels, and on the long ranges to the west are plainly discernable; but as the sun appears above the horizon, gilding their snowy tops, the heat waves begin to ascend over the desert, a n d now, even, while you are looking, the mirage sweeps down upon them and they are lost in this peculiar haze, soon to appear again, but bearing entirely different shapes. Now you see a long, low butte as it were, and even while we look, the scenes shift and it is changed to a sharp, rugged peak or a table land with abrupt precipices at either end, and often notched in zig-zag shapes with projecting crags here and there. T h u s the scenes are ever shifting as the currents of air change about the adjacent mountain ranges. I n the Desert itself, however, it is for the most p a r t generally quiet â&#x20AC;&#x201D; painfully quiet; and I can imagine no greater pain than to be left alone in this great space without food, water or means of exit. Not a living creature save the lazy scorpions and horned toads, or, I might add, that extremely agile and pleasing companion (?) the centipede, whose rotund body always suggests thoughts of good living (but for the life of me I don't know where it gets it,) while his long, dangling legs make one feel exceedingly uncomfortable when he awakes to find this animal of creation prancing happily about over his face. Whisky [sic] however, is a good antidote, and some of us suffered from their bites! I might add, I was not bitten, but other members of the party often thought they were and administered accordingly.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

And now arises the que[s]tion as to what this great waste is good for?

Utterly barren, it can produce nothing. Thoroughly alkalie [sic], nothing either h u m a n or inhuman can live upon it. I can think of no possible use our government can put it to than to make it our grand Indian reservation and drive all our red brethren into it, and there â&#x20AC;&#x201D; well there â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "Requieciat [sic] in peace." There are two small settlements on the line of the railroad beside Terrace: Borine [Bovine] and Lucin. At these points we stopped during the time consumed in measuring the base line.

Water is brought to these points in large tanks on the cars twice a week, and old railway ties are used for fuel. As a general rule, however, taking all things into consideration, there are plenty of villages in the west more desirable than Borine [Bovine] or Lucin as points of residence, the inhabitants of both villages being almost exclusively "almond-eyed and opium eaters," of whom I hope to be able to write more specifically in another letter, citing their wrongs and their rights as I see them and not as many of our western friends do who believe that Chinamen have no rights and forget that our constitution affords protection alike to all persons of all nationalities.

C.J.K.

R EVIEWSand PUBLICATIONS The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West. Biographical sketches of the participants by scholars of the subject a n d with introductions by the editor. E d i t e d by L E R O Y R . H A F E N .

(Glendale: T h e A r t h u r H . Clark Company, 1965. Vol. I, 397 p p . ; Vol. I I , 401 p p . $14.50 each) T h e first two volumes of t h e new western series issuing from T h e A r t h u r H .

Clark Company, forecast to comprise six or more volumes, represent something of a departure from t h e Early Western Travels Series, Southwestern Historical Series, a n d Far West and Rockies Historical Series which in the past have distinguished t h e publishing program of this firm. Instead of reprinting annotated rare Americana, or printing hitherto u n published manuscripts of documentary character, t h e publishers have undertaken a biographical dictionary relating to the western fur trade u n d e r t h e editorship of LeRoy R. Hafen, m a d e u p of sketches contributed by m a n y individual historians. D r . Hafen notes in his I n troduction t h a t emphasis rests u p o n individual m e n engaged in t h e fur trade during the first half of t h e nineteenth century in t h e trans-Mississippi West, primarily those based u p o n St. Louis a n d ranging the Central Rockies.

T h e series is one displaying a tendency to ride off in all directions, b u t Dr. Hafen makes an effort to provide unity with a 165-page introductory essay o n t h e fur trade of t h e F a r West, published in t h e first volume. This "brief history" is enlightening a n d helpful, a n d seriously endeavors to redescribe the principal events

of fur t r a d e history with regard t o the markedly enlarged recent record; thus it displays D r . Hafen's usual energy a n d willingness to work, b u t it also has more errors in detail t h a n we would have expected from so seasoned a scholar. T h e rest of V o l u m e I a n d all of V o l u m e I I consist of alphabetically arranged sketches by various scholars, 57 in all; we a r e advised t h a t t h e n u m b e r m a y grow t o some 400 before t h e series is capped with a n analytical index.

Presumably for publishing convenience, t h e desire to get on with t h e series, biographies have been published as they have come t o h a n d , without regard t o their contribution to a n overall picture.

T h e resulting biographical miscellany has a certain interest a n d c h a r m , in t h a t various figures of fur t r a d e history are lined u p in r a n d o m diversity; t h e i n congruities of juxtaposition m a y provoke a little thought, even. Still, it would seem t h a t a more meaningful work would have resulted h a d t h e publishers adopted a m o r e organic approach. W e could have anticipated ending u p with a whole a m o u n t i n g to m u c h m o r e t h a n t h e sum of its parts h a d one volume been devoted to traders a n d trappers of the pre-Ashley era (including t h e Astorians), another to British traders, a third to Missouri River entrepreneurs, a fourth to m o u n t a i n m e n of the Southwest (including California), a fifth t o m e n w h o ended u p in t h e Northwest, a n d a sixth t o m e n eluding these simple categories. I n practice n o editorial plan ever works o u t as simply as all t h a t ; still, considering this series primarily as a contribution t o knowledge, w e m a y regret a missed oppor-

184 tunity to open u p some new frontiers in fur trade history.

Certain defects of the series are inherent in the economics of scholarship.

So widely scattered are the sources of fur trade history that it requires a n enormous investment of time and money on the part of interested scholars to deal satisfactorily with any aspect of this history, biographical or otherwise. A m a n conveniently situated to exploit one archive (in St. Louis, let us say) may not be able to benefit to any great extent from materials held in Portland or San Marino, to say nothing of Santa Fe a n d St. Paul, which is one reason for the fragmented scholarship t h a t has so often characterized fur trade history. I n a sense the present work h a d to be subsidized by the participating scholars, for there was no possibility t h a t the space rates the publishers could afford could even begin to finance necessary research.

If the sketches display uneven quality, we need not be surprised. A few seem scarcely worth publishing, perfunctory rewrites of easily available published sources. In other cases the mountain m a n has been written u p by a scholar whose interests have touched his life only one-dimensionally; thus H e n r y Chatillon is presented as little more than an acquaintance of Francis P a r k m a n .

Notwithstanding, some i m p r e s s i v e scholarship is displayed in the first two volumes. Especially noteworthy is the passion for facts exhibited by J a n e t Lecompte, A. P. Nasatir, Frederic E. Voelker, and J o h n Dishon M c D e r m o t t , in all of whom scholarship may be seen in its ultimate reality, as an act of love and total dedication. U n i q u e in a book not essentially concerned with literary values is Charles L. Camp's retelling of James Clyman's story; Dr. C a m p brought the Clyman record u p to date in 1960, so what he now gives us in brief compass is an almost poetic meditation on Clyman's wonderful involvement in western history.

Utah Historical Quarterly T h e individual volumes have no indexes, so the culminating analytical index must bear the burden of integrating the series, beyond the limitations of the editorial plan. I n summary this series is not all it ought to be or all it could have been, and both scholars and general readers should use the sketches as points of departure rather than as final authority. Some sketches are more useful than others, but nearly all have value. Every library seriously concerned with western history, of course, must acquire the separate volumes as they are published.

D A L E L. M O R G A N

Bancroft

Library

Expectations Westward: The Mormons and the Emigration of their British Converts in the Nineteenth Century.

By P. A. M . Taylor. (Edinburgh and L o n d o n : Oliver & Boyd, 1965. xvi + 277 p p . $7.25) T h e latest in a succession of publications dealing with M o r m o n emigration now appears u n d e r title of Expectations Westward....

I t is authored by P. A. M. Taylor, a Britisher and member of the Church of England, and published by Oliver & Boyd of London, as a deserved prize winner in a search for an outstanding contribution to American studies.

While its 11 chapters cover much the same phases of the intriguing story which Catherine C o m a n once referred to as " T h e most successful example of regulated immigration in United States history," its real contribution lies in richness of details. These the author has pres e n t e d , as e x p r e s s e d in t h e P r e f a c e , through emphasizing "the standard practice, the routine, and not the exceptional or the picturesque." Thorough scholarship is reflected in the abundance and use of source materials.

In addition to considerable repetition in discussion of the M o r m o n "gathering" philosophy, the unique organization and planning to implement it, M o r m o n mis-

185

Reviews and Publications sionary work and motivations involved in conversions, a n d the conduct of overseas a n d overland migration, Dr. Taylor has brought to light new source materials from libraries and archives in both Britain and America. However, the very abundance of source materials and recognition of more recent publications emphasize a curious oversight of at least four pioneering contributions; namely, " C h u r c h Emigrations" (an analysis by years) by Assistant Church Historian Andrew Jenson appearing in three volumes of The Contributor during the years 1891-92; "History of the Perpetual Emigrating F u n d Company," a master's thesis by this writer completed a t the University of U t a h in 1926; A Century of "Mormonism" in Great Britain . . . ,

by Richard L. Evans in 1937; a n d " T h e Gathering of the British Mormons to Western America," a Ph.D. dissertation,

by M . Hamlin Cannon at American University in 1950.

Dr. Taylor's study centers in the emigration of about 55,000 British Mormons to America between 1840 a n d the close of the movement a half-century later.

His presentation of the subject includes a comprehensive background treatment of the westward movement as a whole into which t h e M o r m o n element is woven with proper perspective a n d characterized as to classes, motivation, and conduct. O n arrival in U t a h t h e convert is distributed and assimilated in the Mormon Zion as a last phase of the church's planned emigration program.

Finally in the 1880's, as the ratio of emigration surpassed the number of new converts in Britain, emphasis on the gathering relaxed. Perhaps if the U t a h phase of this development h a d been followed to that point, a further factor in the close of M o r m o n immigration could have been found in the depletion of available lands in Zion and, to a lesser degree, t h e restraining effects of the "crusade" in the last half of the decade.

Dr. Taylor has added something to the spirit of the emigration movement by quoting from M o r m o n hymns at the beginning of each chapter. Footnotes are readily available at the bottom of the pages and some charts and maps prove helpful to the reader. Also the local origins of the M o r m o n emigrants from the British Mission appear in the AppenGUSTIVE O. LARSON

Brigham Young The Shoshonis, By

VIRGINIA

Sentinels COLE

M A U R I N E CARLEY.

of the

University Rockies.

TRENHOLM

(Norman:

and

Uni-

versity of Oklahoma Press, 1964. xiii 4-367 p p . $5.95) This is a n unfortunate book because of the many misconceptions it conveys and because of the erroneous impressions it implies. A gross error occurs in the first paragraph of chapter one. T h e authors say the "Shoshonean linguistic stock . . . in the Great Basin area â&#x20AC;&#x201D; [includes] the Shoshonis, the Paiutes (Paviotsos), the Bannocks (Northern Paiutes), and the Utes. There was a variety of dialects, b u t the natives h a d little difficulty u n d e r s t a n d i n g e a c h other." First, Northern Paiute (Paviotsos) includes Bannock. T h e difference between Northern Paiute and Shoshoni is of the order of the distinction of French from Portuguese, if not as great as the difference between English a n d French. Shoshoni is not as close to U t e as Spanish is to Italian. These Shoshonean languages are much more distinct one from another than "dialects."

F r o m t h e first p a r a g r a p h t h e a u thors appear not to distinguish the Shoshonis from the other speakers of Shoshonean subdivisions of the Uto-Aztecan linguistic stock. Possibly Mrs. Trenholm and Miss Carley do know that the Northern Paiute (Paviotsos) speak a wholly distinctive language from the Shoshoni, whether the Northern Paiute speakers are called Bannock in I d a h o (p. 101) or

186 whether they are called Yahuskin or Walpapi Snakes (p. 208) in Oregon; if so they do not make the fact clear in their book.

T h e r e is more than enough historical material on the Shoshonis alone to make a bigger book than this, b u t the authors could not resist tossing in references to many non-Shoshoni groups without always making clear their reasons. For example, they cite Jules Remy concerning s u t t e e ( w i d o w s u i c i d e ) o c c u r r i n g in Carson Valley, Nevada, as if it were a western Shoshoni practice. T h e non-Shoshonean speaking Washoe occupied Carson Valley, a hundred miles from Shoshoni territory.

O n page 186, connected with a discussion of "Western Shoshoni depredation," is the statement that " . . . soldiers at Fort Churchill (erected on the Carson River in 1860) policed the road from Austin to Honey Lake." Thirty miles west of Austin occurred the well-recognized boundary between the Shoshonis and Northern Paiutes (Paviotsos). O n e h u n d r e d a n d fifty miles farther west in California in an area where Maidu, Washoe, a n d Northern Paiute meet is Honey Lake. T h e inclusion of long accounts of Paiutes a n d a picture of Northern Paiute Chief Winnemucca is misleading. A picture of a Northern Paiute house near Dayton, Nevada, a n d a photograph of the famous Washoe basket-weaver also seem out of place in this volume.

A large section of this book, concerned with relations between the Mormons a n d Shoshonis, contains information not widely known which is valuable to publicize. An example is the record of Brigh a m Young's suggestion that the missionaries to the Shoshoni select wives from important Indian families. O n the other h a n d the references to the Gunnison m u r d e r by U t e Indians far away from any Shoshoni a n d to Southern Paiute assistance in the M o u n t a i n Mea-

Utah Historical Quarterly dows massacre, arranged a n d carried out by white Mormons, lead to confusion.

Although references are made to Shoshoni Claims Cases a n d an opinion of the U . S . Claims Commission for July 9, 1963, is cited, neither the report (published November 1960) of the government expert anthropologist, Robert Murphy, nor my m a p a n d testimony of the hearing of 1957 for Shoshoni Claims Cases 326, 386, a n d 387 were cited.

If Mrs. Trenholm a n d Miss Carley had limited their book to a discussion of Shoshonis as found within the area well known as Shoshoni territory, one could compliment them on their diligence and energy. Appearing to have tossed in every quotation they h a d , their book is a simple compilation, like that of Bancroft of 1886 a n d 1890. Bancroft can be very confusing. A modern historical study should produce a clearer picture of Shoshoni life a n d territory than that of Bancroft of 75 years ago.

O M E R C. STEWART

University

of Colorado

Old Greenwood: The Story of Caleb Greenwood: Trapper, Pathfinder, and early Pioneer.

By C H A R L E S K E L L Y and D A L E L. MORGAN. Revised edi-

tion. (Georgetown, California: T h e Talisman Press, 1965. 3614-79 pp. $8.50) T w o "old pros," old in the sense of long involvement with research and writing on the West, combine their talents to write a new edition of an old book. Only indefatigable researchers and historical detectives like Charles Kelly a n d Dale Morgan could piece together such an interesting and important work of western history and biography, covering such a long a n d varied life-span and based on such sketchy a n d incomplete evidence.

T h a t Caleb Greenwood was born and died seems certain, but exactly where and when is extremely vague. Equally

187

Reviews and Publications puzzling are the details of a long and active life. Fie was probably born in 1763 in what is now West Virginia and died in California between the fall of 1849 and the spring of 1850, according to this latest edition of the book.

For the first 45 years of Caleb's life, little or nothing is known. It seems he came to the St. Louis area around 1808, a couple of years after the return of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. For the next two years he was probably with Manuel Lisa on the upper Missouri. H e was definitely with the Astorians, at least to the vicinity of St. Joseph, where he quit the expedition in January 1811. His whereabouts and activities for the next dozen years are rather vague. H e was with Lisa on the Missouri again in 181213, and he probably engaged in hunting and trapping on the Missouri and Arkansas rivers for the remainder of this time, headquartering out of the St. Louis area. H e showed up again briefly on the record in 1822 as a free trapper in connection with trapping on the upper Missouri and in the mountains. From assorted references it is clear that he remained in this kind of activity until 1834 when it appears he left the fur trade of the Far West for good. By his own statement in that year he had spent 26 years in Indian country.

His western fur trade experiences began when many of the more famous mountain men were mere babies and cover the beginnings and most lucrative years of that fascinating period of western history. It was during these years in the mountains that he took a Crow woman as a wife, probably in late 1825 or early 1826, by whom he had a considerable number of children â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all born after he was 65 years old.

For the next decade the activities of Old Greenwood cannot be pinpointed.

Perhaps he spent these years on a farm in western Missouri. In any event, so far as his contribution to history is concerned, the last half-dozen years of his

life are the most important. T h e year 1844 finds Caleb back on the record as a member (and guide for at least part of the journey) of an overland party going to California. T h e next spring he returned east as far as Fort Hall to guide westbound emigrants to California. H e continued to be involved as guide and trail blazer over the next several years for several overland crossings of the mountains. O t h e r activities included participation in the relief of the Donner party. Shortly after the discovery of gold early in 1848, Caleb and his family were back in California, active with nearly everyone else in the scramble for gold.

Old Greenwood is not only a biography of a m a n important in the history of the early Far West, but it is a book that opens many windows into the entire history of that area and time. I t is on the slim and little-known framework of a man's life that Kelly and Morgan hang an excellent history of the fur trade and overland travel to the Pacific in the first half of the nineteenth century. For all the vagueness of the evidence, the book is well researched and well written. It adds another important dimension to the literature of the fur trade and the opening of the West.

A. R.

MORTENSEN

University

of Utah

Newspapering in the Old West: A Pictorial History of Journalism and Printing

on

the Frontier.

By ROBERT F.

KAROLEVITZ. (Seattle: Superior Publishing C o m p a n y , 1965. 191 p p . $12.95) Anyone familiar with the publisher's previous books will know what to expect here and will not be disappointed; as before, the pictured nostalgia is served up in an attractive style. An alternative title might have been "This Was Newspapering," in line with their established series on a variety of occupations and industries.

Utah Historical Quarterly

188 As with many picture-books, organization is not always obvious, b u t inspection reveals a p a t t e r n : introductory pages on the general conditions of journalism in the West, followed by a sampling of detail from each state involved. I n this case the West is deemed to consist of Texas a n d the 16 other states to the west and north. Emphasis is on the earliest, the most picturesque, a n d the most generally significant. Concluding sections portray women among the frontier newspaper people (a considerable n u m b e r having engaged in news-gathering, writing, a n d typesetting) a n d the newsboys who m a d e deliveries a n d street sales. T h e pictures reveal that adult m e n occasionally qualified as newsboys, b u t show no female invading this specialty.

Journalism in U t a h experienced most of the trials found elsewhere. First there was a wait while the heavy press lay in storage a t t h e Winter Q u a r t e r s site until more urgent freight h a d come west; then a lack of paper, solved by improvising a paper mill from machinery intended for sugar refining. T h e continuous problem of support a n d a living for the printers was m e t by resort to barter, as subscriptions a n d ads were paid for in items of food, in furs a n d pelts, a n d even in livestock on the hoof. I t was a U t a h editor who provided one of the best of the "quotes" which introduce each section: "Printing is an art, a n d cannot be m a n aged by every ignoramus w h o takes it into his head to start a newspaper."

Considering the limitations imposed by the dependence on suitable pictures, the coverage is broad a n d deep. Early journalists were good about sitting for their portraits a n d attracting photographers to their shops a n d editorial rooms.

And thanks must go to the anonymous wonderful people w h o saved these pictures from all the dangers that could have destroyed them during the passing century. T h e picture-book nature of the volume is amusingly evident even in the index pages, where the final few illustra-

tions are tucked in. Readers w h o complain that books should have more pictures are invited to try this one.

S T A N L E Y R. D A V I S O N

Western Montana Arizona

College

Pageant: A Short History of the

48th State.

By M A D E L I N E F E R R I N PARE with the collaboration of BERT

M . FIREMAN. (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Foundation, 1965. xvi4-336 pp. $4.00) Arizona Pageant is a n appropriate title for the book. Colorful a n d dramatic stories of Indians, Spanish explorers, Catholic fathers building missions, miners, cowboys, a n d outlaws are well told and make u p most of the book. Mrs. Pare also brings the reader to see Arizona today as a fast growing state in people a n d industry, giving short biographical sketches of all governors, senators, a n d representatives to Congress.

Photographs, maps, p e n sketches, a n d a chronology a d d to the work. T h e I n troduction is by Barry Goldwater, president, Arizona Historical Foundation.

Mrs. Pare chooses to write in detail chiefly on the areas of h e r special interest. H e r topical approach eventually traps h e r into telling parts of her stories again a n d again. A n illustration is the M o r m o n Battalion episode which has eight index references (one incorrect).

M a n y readers in U t a h a n d Arizona will be disappointed a t her failure to tell the M o r m o n colonizing story that began in the early 1880's, a story as dramatic as many she does tell a n d one significant for the state.

T h e book is southern Arizona centered, a n d the reader fails to get the picture of a state with 15 national monuments, high mountains, forests, a n d valleys with small farming communities which is essential to a better understanding of the history of the forty-eighth M A R I A S. E L L S W O R T H

Logan,

Utah

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