The 1876 Arsenal Hill Explosion BY M E L V I N L. B A S H O R E
Looking north toward Arsenal Hill (present Capitol Hill), one can see the arsenal at extreme upper left. The powder magazines would have been on the hill also, to the right of the Beehive House. USHS collections.
SOME KINDS OF EXPERIENCE WHICH A person having passed through once in this life, never desires a repetition. Of this kind was the explosion of the powder magazines on Arsenal Hill." Those who witnessed the devastating explosion that Brigham Young wrote to his son Arta about would have echoed his sentiments. Accountably, it was one of the most terrible accidents on record in pioneer Utah. 1 On Wednesday, April 5, 1876, Salt Lake City was teeming with its semiannual influx of visitors to the general conference of the Mormon church. Conference-goers throughout the territory arrived early to visit friends and relatives and to take advantage of the special sales offered by local merchants. A raw north wind kept most people inside homes and stores during the day. A group of young boys, undaunted by the bitter weather, played ball on the old Deseret
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Mr. Bashore is a librarian, indexer/abstractor, and long-time drag racing technical official at Bonneville Raceway. 1 Dean C. Jessee, ed., Letters of Brigham Young to His Sons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1974), p. 255; Seymour B. Young, Diary, April 5, 1876, Utah State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City; Mary Ann Burnham Freeze, Diary, April 5, 1876, Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
