Stone Houses of Northern Utah BY AUSTIN E. FIFE
and even sawed wood and brick are from the A earth and of it. Their earth origins are still visible in the finished products, .DOBE, STONE; LOGS,
and dwelling houses built thereof bespeak man at one with his environment rather than in arrogant conflict. With steel, concrete, macadam, plastics, fiberboard, and a host of other industrial concoctions, man's marriage with the earth is leached out, and his architectural creations stand out upon the landscape like tumors, despite titillations wrought by form, line, pattern, or simply mass. The creative work I wish to discuss is of the earth and at one with it: rough-hewn stone, gleaned or cut at or near the site of the building and shaped in the most rudimentary way by master craftsmen, unashamed of the earth whence they came and to which they would return, welcome because of the sobriety and humility of their stewardship. My interest in these buildings was first incited by a student, not from this region, who presented an exciting term paper in a course on folklore I taught at Utah State University in 1958. The paper was on the stone houses of Willard. Since that time, whenever opportunity has presented itself, I have examined stone houses, photographed them, and, lately, measured them to draw elevations and floor plans. The results of these recent investigations I wish to present here. Most of my observations are based on houses in Cache and Box Elder counties, although I have also made excursions into Weber and Davis counties. This lecture was prepared for presentation at the annual dinner of the Utah Heritage Foundation held at Fort Douglas on February 11, 1971, at which time Dr. Fife was honored as a Fellow of the Foundation. Since then he has given the lecture several times in Utah. He also presented it —• adding some data relating these houses to counterparts in Great Britain •— at the First International Congress on European Ethnology in Paris, France, in August 1971. Photographs and captions, unless otherwise noted, are by Dr. Fife, drawings by Richard J. Cloutier. Dr. Fife is professor of English and French at Utah State University and a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society.
