Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 53, Number 1, 1985

aUAFtXERLY

&r?»

Ships, Stages, nnd^Jrains

^

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0042-143X) EDITORIAL STAFF MELVIN T. SMITH, Editor

STAN FORD J. LAVTON, Managing Editor MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Associate Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS KENNETH L. CANNON u. Salt Lake City, 1986 ARLENEH. EAKLE, Woods Cross, 1987

PETER L. Goss,Sa/i Lake City, 1985 GLEN M. LEONARD, Earmington, 1985

LAMAR PETERSEN, Salt Lake City, 1986 RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden, 1985

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1987 GENE A. SESSIONS, Bountiful, 1986

GREGORY C THOMPSON, Salt Lake City, 1987 Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah's history. T h e Quarterly is published by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-6024 for membership and publications information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Beehive History, and the bimonthly Newsletter upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $15.00; institutions, $20.00; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or over), $10.00; contributing, $20.00; sustaining, $25.00; patron, $50.00; business, $100.00.

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate accompanied by return postage and should be typed double-space with footnotes at the end. Additional information on requirements is available from the managing editor.

T h e Society assumes no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by contributors.

Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah.

Postmaster: Send form 3579 (change of address) to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101.

HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

Contents WINTER 1985/VOLUME 53/NUMBER 1

IN T H I S ISSUE

3

SALT LAKE CITY: WELLS FARGO'S TRANSPORTATION DEPOT DURING T H E STAGECOACH ERA

W. TURRENTINEJACKSON

GERMANICUS PASSENGERS: FROM ENGLAND T O EARLY SETTLEMENT IN U T A H AND I D A H O

JANET

BRIDGE: A RAILROADING COMMUNITY ON T H E GREAT SALT LAKE RAILROAD DEPOTS IN OGDEN: MICROCOSMS OF A COMMUNITY

E.

DORIS

RICHARD

C.

5

WORRALL

40

R.

DANT

55

ROBERTS

74

BOOK REVIEWS

100

BOOK NOTICES

107

THE COVER Wells, Fargo & Co. Express station at Silver Reef, Utah, once a booming mining town. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, this building was erected ca. 1877 using local red sandstone. USHS collections.

© Copyright 1985 Utah State Historical Society

Books reviewed S. DELLENBAUGH. A Canyon Voyage: The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedition GARY TOPPING 100

FREDERICK

RICHARD LOWITT. The

Deal and the West . . . .

New ROBERT

A.

GOLDBERG

101

The Great Father: The United States Government and the

FRANCIS PAUL PRUCHA.

American

Indians

. . S. LYMAN TYLER

102

SAM BINGHAM a n d JANET BINGHAM, e d s .

Between Sacred Mountains: Navajo Stories and Lessons from the Land . . ROBERT Hashknife Cowboy: Recollections of Mack Hughes . . .

MCPHERSON

104

STELLA HUGHES.

KARL

ARRELL MORGAN GIBSON. The

E.

YOUNG

105

STRINGHAM

106

Santa

Fe and Taos Colonies: Age of the Muses, 1900-1942 . . WILLIAM C.

In this issue T h e journey has always been one of the great themes in history and literature. Examples abound, from the Odyssey of Homer to the travels of Marco Polo. Every place and time has its legendary journeyers; the American West is especially rich in travel history and lore.

With the possible exception of the Pony Express, no agency in the West conjurs up so many images of epic adventure as Wells, Fargo & Co. T h e opening article in this issue reveals how important Salt Lake City and the famous stage line were to each other, a long overdue assessment that keeps the legend in bounds but intact.

In detailing the journey of one group of Mormon immigrants from Liverpool, England, to Utah, the second piece provides an excellent picture of the tediousness and perils of travel over such a great distance and the reward awaiting the survivors at journey's end — a new beginning in a raw land.

Many of the dangers and thrills of travel in and to the West vanished with the completion of the transcontinental railroad, but train travel retains a mystique of its own, as the final two articles illustrate. T h e men who worked at Bridge, a mere bulge on the trestle crossing the Great Salt Lake, kept freight and passenger traffic moving safely and created a small body of lore. T h e successive railroad depots at Ogden played a significant role in the travels of countless passengers and boosted the city's economy and its civic pride.

It seems safe to say that both history and literature will continue to find ships, stages, and trains and those who traveled on them grist for many more journeys of the mind.

Salt Lake City: Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot during the Stagecoach Era

BY W. TURRENTINE JACKSON

W I T H THE BEGINNING OF COMMERCIAL TRANSPORTATION and in

the

twenty years following, 1850-70, Salt Lake City was the most important and widely publicized transportation center between the Missouri frontier and California. Residents throughout the American West vitally concerned with the arrival of stagecoach passengers, mail, express, and freight focused their attention on that community in the Great Basin. No company played a more continuous and significant role in this vital endeavor to maintain channels of communication and transportation than Wells, Fargo 8c Co. Dr. Jackson is professor of history at the University of California, Davis.

Wells Fargo stagecoach near the company's offices on the east side of Main Street, between First and Second South in Salt Lake City. USHS collections.

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When the federal government first introduced overland mail routes, all recognized that the delivery by one contractor from the Missouri River to the Pacific was too great an undertaking, and Salt Lake City was designated as a halfway settlement where mails coming west from Missouri and those headed east from California could be exchanged. T h e government m a d e the initial contract with William H. Woodson in 1850 to carry the mail from Independence to Salt Lake, monthly each way, and with Absolom Woodward and George C h o r p e n n i n g the following year to transport letters between California a n d Salt Lake City where an exchange could be carried out.

From the very beginning two factors largely determined the success of the overland mail service: the weather and Indian depredations. O n the eastern sector mail carriers on occasion were lost for days in the vicinity of the South Pass or struggled through the snow for over a month between Fort Laramie a n d Salt Lake City, finally abandoning their horses and personally dragging the letter mail over the snow of the Wasatch Mountains for the last forty miles into the Mormon capital. Property, mostly horses and mules, was repeatedly stolen or destroyed by Indians. T o the west, the story was much the same. Woodward was killed by the Indians just west of the Malad River in northern Utah. During the winter months the mail carriers from Sacramento witnessed their horses freezing to death in the Goose Creek Mountains and had to go the last two h u n d r e d miles into Salt Lake on foot. When the Sacramento mail carriers were forced to return on account of d e e p snow in the Sierra Nevada, C h o r p e n n i n g sought and obtained permission to deliver the mails between the two termini by an alternate route. 1 T h e route chosen was that explored by Jedediah Smith from Salt Lake southwestward by way of Utah Lake, then by the Sevier River, across the mountain range to the Virgin River which he and his party followed to the Colorado River, across the Mohave Desert, and t h r o u g h the Cajon Pass into southern California. In their search for a "corridor to the sea" the Mormon pioneers had established outposts along this route that became known as the Mormon Trail connecting Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. T h e Salt Lake mails d u r i n g the winter months were taken to the port at San Pedro and delivered north by ship and ultimately reached their destination in 1 LeRoy R. Hafen, The Overland Mail, 1849-1869 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1926), pp. 56-70.

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San Francisco or Sacramento, and the mail carrier thus fulfilled his contract.

T h e entrepreneurs of the express companies always sought to provide patrons with an alternative to shipping letters and packages by the United States mails. Wells, Fargo 8c Co. was established as a joint stock association in New York in March 1852, chiefly to take advantage of business opportunities in California. Business got u n d e r way by July and the company quickly made contracts with local express organizations to carry letters, treasure, and packages that had been entrusted to Wells Fargo. For example, the company announced that Frank D. Gilbert, a well-known messenger of the company, would leave Los Angeles on April 25, 1855, for San Bernardino and from there for Salt Lake City on May 1. Gilbert was to connect with Wells, Fargo 8c Co. in Los Angeles on the first day of each month thereafter and run the express through to Salt Lake City. Los Angeles newspapers immediately began advertising "Gilbert 8c Co.'s Salt Lake Express in connection with Wells, Fargo 8c Co." H. R. Myles served as agent of both companies. 2 Upon leaving San Bernardino this express route provided the small and somewhat isolated Mormon communities in southern Utah with service to Salt Lake City, southern California, and the world beyond. T h e carrier stopped at Coal Creek, Parowan, Red Creek, Fillmore City, Nephi City, Summit Creek, Payson, Springville, Provo City, and American Fork. This express service apparently continued until 1858. 3 Congress, meanwhile, was considering an improvement of the overland mail service to California. After extensive debate, the overland mail bill was enacted in March 1857. T h e legislation provided that the route would be chosen by the postmaster general who decided that the service should start in St. Louis and Memphis with converging lines to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and thence by way of El Paso, Tucson, Yuma, and Los Angeles to San Francisco. T h e following September a contract was made to deliver the mail over this route with the directors and large investors of the major express companies with eastern headquarters.

From the inception of the Overland Mail Company an interlocking directorate existed with Wells, Fargo 8c Co. Moreover Wells, 2 W. Turrentine Jackson, "Stages, Mails and Express in Southern California: T h e Role of Wells, Fargo & Co. in the Pre-Railroad Period," Southern California Quarterly 56 (Fall 1974): 236-38; Southern Californian (Los Angeles), March 28, 1855, April 18, 1855; Los Angeles Star, April 28, 1855.

3 Los Angeles Star, April 28, 1855; Hafen, Overland Mail, p. 68.

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Fargo served as the banker for the mail company in the Far West advancing the funds essential to opening the route west of the Rio Grande. As indebtedness mounted, the express and banking company was forced to remove J o h n Butterfield as president and reconstruct the board of directors to protect its investment. Thenceforth, managerial responsibility, policy, and personnel decisions were dominated by the Wells Fargo directors on the board. 4 For an interlude of four years, 1858-61, the focal point of the nation's attention to overland communication and transportation was not on Salt Lake City. Some historians have suggested that the overland mail followed an oxbow trace through the Southwest because the postmaster general was a southerner and favored that section. He insisted that the decision was prompted by the weather conditions on the more direct route via Salt Lake that made it impractical for year-round travel. Many of the California newspapers suggested that the postmaster general was right. T h e San Francisco Evening Telegram reported on the horrible suffering of travelers in the mountains and on the plains in their journey from Salt Lake to the Missouri border when ten men and nine mules froze to death in a single night and suggested that "those who escaped would have almost preferred death to the indescribable suffering they were compelled to endure." T h e newspaper continued: Some weeks ago we were made acquainted with the terrible results of a snow storm which overtook the overland mail coach in Sept. last [1858], after leaving Salt Lake. T h e sufferings of those accompanying the mail on that occasion were very great. A number of mules perished. . . .

We have now had enough of this terrible experience to satisfy any sane man that for all practical purposes the route by way of Salt Lake is a failure. We said as much when the Sept. storms were killing the animals and frightening the passengers nearly to death. T h e Nov. calamity, however, but places the selection of that route, for U.S. mail services, still farther from serious consideration.

We are in favor of just as many routes as can be opened to California. We do not think we can have too many channels of communication with the Atlantic side. But we have heard quite enough about this Salt Lake route. Too many valuable lives have already been sacrificed in an effort to bolster that route u p . T h e road on the other side of Salt Lake has been found impassable, as early in the year as Sept. and after that period the journey involves the most fearful risks. It is high time we take the central route as it is — not as some would have it.5 4 W. Turrentine Jackson, "A New Look at Wells, Fargo, Stagecoaches and the Pony Express," California Historical Quarterly 45 (December 1966): 291-324.

5 Evening Telegram (San Francisco), February 7, 1859.

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

Stagecoach infront of Wells Fargo's office on Main Street in Salt Lake City. USHS collections.

With the coming of the Civil War the spotlight controlled by those concerned with overland communication and transportation was again focused on Salt Lake City. T h e secession of the southern states precluded the operation of the mail route through Texas, and the exigencies of the war dictated that 2. daily mail service was needed to bind the communities in the Great Basin and on the Pacific Coast more closely with the Union. T h e big question was which company would obtain the contract. Russell, Majors, and Waddell, partners in the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company, had hoped to obtain the contract, having established the Pony Express in 1860 as a private venture without government subsidy to advertise their service and the importance of the central route.

When the time came, Russell, Majors, and Waddell were in no financial position to undertake the assignment. T h e Overland Mail Company, having been forced off the oxbow route, was the only serious contender for the 1861 contract, providing not only for a daily overland mail but for a semi-weekly Pony Express, a joint undertaking supported by $1,000,000 a year by the federal government.

T h e contract stipulated that daily mail service was to be provided either from St. Joseph, Missouri, or Atchison, Kansas, and Placerville, California. In addition, the mails were to be delivered three times a week each way into Denver and Salt Lake City. Just as soon as the contract for the entire route had been signed at the post office, a subcontract was signed between the Overland Mail Company and the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express

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Company whereby the latter company was to provide service from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City, connecting there with the Overland Mail Company stages that would carry the mail and passengers over the western portion. 6 Once again, Salt Lake City became the key location in the western transportation network.

As one historian has written, the financial fabric of the Overland Mail Company "was largely woven with skeins of Wells, Fargo yarn." 7 T h e Overland Company had reserved the right to make an exclusive agreement with Wells, Fargo & Co. to handle all the express business coming from the east to points west of Salt Lake City and all express business originating in the west headed east. 8 In addition, the Overland Mail Company intended to operate out of Salt Lake City only as far as Carson City. There, the Pioneer Stage Company, later owned by Wells, Fargo 8c Co., would run the stages for mails and passengers via Virginia City into Placerville, the western end of the route. !)

Responsibility for the Pony Express was transferred to the Overland Mail Company. Russell, Majors, and Waddell continued to operate the service east of Salt Lake and the Overland company to the west. T h e actual management of the Pony Express west of Salt Lake City was entrusted to Wells, Fargo 8c Co. in the interim of March to July 1861, between the signing of the mail contract and the date of its initiation as a government-sponsored endeavor. From July 1861 until its demise, Wells, Fargo 8c Co. through the Overland Mail Company was deeply involved in the ownership, expense, and supervision of the Pony Express west of Salt Lake City. Californians were disappointed that the Pony Express service stopped in Placerville, and Wells, Fargo 8c Co. immediately established a private pony express between that terminus and San Francisco with an integrated schedule to provide continuous through-service to Salt Lake City and beyond. 10 After 1861 the offices, personnel, and services of the 6 Jackson, "A New Look," pp. 302-3; Contract and Correspondence in Minutes of the Mail Company, New York, pp. 146-156; "Contract of the Joint Carriage of Mail Between the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express and Overland Mail," William B. Waddell Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.

7 Roy S. Bloss, Pony Express — The Great Gamble (Berkeley: Howell-North, 1959), p. 133.

8 Seventh Section, Overland Mail Contract, March 16, 1861.

"General Cash Books, San Francisco Office, Wells, Fargo & Co., New York, November 1861 to October 1866; Minute Books of the Board of Directors of Wells, Fargo & Co., December 15, 1864, September 8 and 9, November 17, 1865, J u n e 13, 1866, Wells Fargo & Co. Archives, San Francisco.

10 W. Turrentine Jackson, "Wells Fargo's Pony Expresses," Journal of the West 11 (July 1972): 405-36; San Francisco Daily Herald and Mirror, April 16, 1861, San Francisco Evening Bulletin, J u n e 26, 1861; Sacramento Daily Union, J u n e 28, 1861.

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

11

Overland Mail Company and Wells, Fargo 8c Co. in Salt Lake City were closely interrelated.

Salt Lake was also a transportation center of prime importance to the residents of the Pacific Northwest. Within three months after establishing offices in San Francisco, Wells, Fargo 8c Co. announced the opening of an agency in Portland, from that time forward the hub of the company's operations in the Pacific Northwest. Slowly but surely, transportation and communication facilities radiated out of Portland with the waterways providing the first avenues. When gold was first discovered in the Inland Empire of Idaho, the United States mails were delivered over the central route via Salt Lake to San Francisco, thence by steamer northward to Portland and up the Columbia to the mining camps. This round-about route was most unsatisfactory, and when gold was discovered in the Boise Basin, the residents there began to debate whether it was better to look to the Columbia River route and Portland or to Salt Lake City for transportation and communication services.

D. C. Patterson's Salt Lake City Express operated d u r i n g 1863-64, bringing mails and newspapers from the east into Boise.

Late in November 1863 the express rider was attacked by Indians and the service disrupted. As usual, weather conditions of midwinter further delayed deliveries. T h e express rider was overdue almost a month in January 1864 and reported on arrival that he had been on the road for twenty-eight days. Not until mid-March did the express arrive with a bundle of newspaper exchanges that had accumulated all winter in Salt Lake City. High winds, snow, and troublesome Indians had made the initial attempt to bridge the gap between Salt Lake City and Boise unreliable and unsatisfactory. 11 When the time came to negotiate a new mail contract in July 1864 Ben Holladay was selected to deliver the mails from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City and the Overland Mail Company from Salt Lake City to California. T h e western terminus was changed from Placerville to Folsom, closer to Sacramento. Holladay had controlled the eastern portion of the route since 1862 when he had taken over the stock, equipment, and tangible assets of the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company as a result of the latter company's indebtedness to him. In October 1865 Wells, Fargo 8c Co. established regional headquarters in Salt Lake at the 11 W. Turrentine Jackson, "Wells Fargo & Co.: Into the Inland Empire and Idaho Territory," Idaho Yesterdays 25 (Winter 1982): 10-11.

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principal midpoint on the overland mail route. Hiram S. Rumfield, general agent of the Overland Mail Company, served as agent of both firms, clear evidence of the financial and managerial relationship between them.

Holladay also obtained a mail contract for delivery from Salt Lake City to Walla Walla in the Pacific Northwest, bringing an end to Patterson's Salt Lake City Express. Scheduled to begin service on July 1, 1864, Holladay was only operating his stages as far as Boise a month later. From there he made a subcontract with George F. Thomas to carry on to Walla Walla. With the discovery of silver in southwestern Idaho came a shift of emphasis to the possibility of finding a more convenient and direct route for supplies and shipping treasure directly to California rather than going northward to the Columbia River, on to Portland, and south by steamer to San Francisco. Once the railroad was completed connections could be made both east and west. Thus threatened, the communities along the Columbia River agitated to strengthen the stage and mail service from Salt Lake. As a result, Holladay obtained a new contract in 1866 for a daily mail service from Salt Lake all the way to T h e Dalles via Walla Walla. Again, George Thomas operated beyond Walla Walla.12 On November 1, 1866, there was a "grand consolidation" of the Holladay interests, the Overland Mail Company, Wells, Fargo 8c Co., and other stage companies into one giant enterprise controlling all transportation and mail facilities west of the Missouri River. In undertaking this vast responsibility and opportunity, along with other means of transportation, Wells, Fargo 8c Co. now looked to the north and northwest from Salt Lake City, into the Montana and Idaho territories as well as to the east and west.13 Stages moved out of the Mormon capital for Virginia City, Helena, and on to the Missouri River at Fort Benton loaded with passengers, express, and mail that had arrived from both California and the Missouri-Kansas frontier. One Salt Lake newspaper reported the opinion of travelers that "the Montana coach route is the finest in the country." 14 Wells, Fargo 8c Co. unquestionably experienced some difficulty in assuming responsibility from Ben Holladay 12 W. Turrentine Jackson, "Wells Fargo & Co. in Idaho Territory: Old and New Routes, 1865," Idaho Yesterdays 26 (Spring 1982): 2-23.

13 Betty M. Madsen and Brigham D. Madsen, North to Montana! Jehus, Bullwhackers, and Mule Skinners on the Montana Trail (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980.)

14 W. Turrentine Jackson, Wells Fargo Stagecoaching in Montana Territory (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1979).

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

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for the Idaho stage routes in mid-winter, but by early summer the stages were running regularly between T h e Dalles and Salt Lake City.15 A major change in personnel occurred in 1867 when Theodore F. Tracy, the former general agent of Wells Fargo's subsidiary, the Pioneer Stage Company in California, was appointed the general agent for Wells, Fargo 8c Co. in Salt Lake City to supervise both banking and express operations. T h e Salt Lake City newspapers carried stories about Wells, Fargo 8c Co., reporting that the "enterprising" company of "world renouned fame" had moved into a new building on Main Street and that "the arrangements for the transaction of the banking and express business are complete and the whole interior, as well as exterior, present an appearance worthy of the old and established firm."16 Even the display of the eight-horse team of Wells, Fargo & Co., with a big sleigh attached, traversing the principal streets of the town during the first week of January 1867 attracted a great deal of attention. 17 T h e editor of the Salt Lake Daily Telegraph commented, "We thank the gentlemen concerned therein for a call to the Telegraph office and an invitation to take a ride. We regretted being unable to accept the courtesy. 18 Recognizing the growing importance of Salt Lake City as a banking and transportation center, Wells Fargo made plans for a new building. T h e Vedette reported: We were shown, yesterday, the plan for the new building about to be erected by Wells, Fargo 8c Co. on third East street, between what is known as Brigham and Theatre streets, (called, we believe, South Temple and First South Temple streets). These buildings are intended for the use of the express company. T h e building containing the coal, iron, lumber, wood, horses, harness, paint and blacksmith shops is to be 180 feet by 26 feet. T h e stables adjoining are to be 80 feet by 34 feet.

T h e erection of these buildings will add much to the value of property in that portion of the city.

T h e Northern Division of Wells Fargo's stage and express network was supervised by William H. Taylor, a popular and innovative employee. When he found the road between Salt Lake City and 15 W. Turrentine Jackson, "Wells Fargo & Co. in Idaho Territory: T o the 'Grand Consolidation' of 1866," Idaho Yesterdays 26 (Summer 1982): 9-19, 22-29; Jackson, "Wells Fargo in Idaho Territory: T h e Year of Greatest Activity," Idaho Yesterdays 26 (Fall 1982): 2-24.

16 Daily Union Vedette (Salt Lake City), December 27, 1866.

17 Daily Union Vedette, January 9, 1867.

18 Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, January 15, 1867. u> Daily Union Vedette, January 19, 1867.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Wells Fargo's stables, repair shops, and storage shedsfor harness and other supplies ca. 1868 on Second East between South Temple and First South. USHS collections.

Weber in an unsatisfactory condition, he rerouted the stages by way of Ogden. New and shorter routes were located from Salt Lake into both Bannock and Virginia City, Montana. T h e Montana Democrat proclaimed, "Since Mr. Taylor's arrival, and control of the line, matters have greatly improved. We have heard encomiums on all sides of the excellent management on the part of Superintendent Taylor." 20 T h e Montana Post agreed, " U n d e r his efficient management the express line from Salt Lake City to Benton approaches near perfection in speed, safety, and regularity and accommodative spirit manifested toward persons." 21 At the time of the "grand consolidation" Wells, Fargo 8c Co. assumed responsibility for the operation of two east-west routes.

O n e known as the Platte route ran from the settlement at N o r t h Platte where the terminus of the Union Pacific was located, a n d a second line known as the Smoky Hill route, for a time the responsibility of the United States Express Company, a Wells Fargo ally, from the terminus of the Eastern Division of the Union Pacific, later known as the Kansas Pacific. Both routes converged on Denver. All passengers, mail, and express brought into Denver over both of 20 21

Montana Democrat, October 5, 1867.

Montana Post, October 5, 1867.

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these routes west were transported on Wells Fargo stages to Salt Lake City and California p o i n t s . West of Denver t h e stages to Salt Lake ran north through Boulder and La Porte to Wyoming and then followed the route across Wyoming and the Continental Divide to the Green River, Fort Bridger, and on into Salt Lake City. T h e total distance between Denver and Salt Lake City was 596 miles or 789 miles from the railhead of the Union Pacific. T h e r e were fifty-one stage stops, twelve of which were home stations providing meals and/or lodging.

Wells Fargo published a card of William H. Taylor, early Wells Fargo distances to provide potential supervisor. Courtesy of Wells Fargo travelers with complete inforArchives, San Francisco. mation about the journey. 22 By no means did Wells, Fargo & Co. escape criticism for its handling of the United States mail. A cry of outrage came from the editor of the Vedette in Salt Lake City: On Saturday last we received a bushel of mail matter, or thereabouts, from America, by Wells, Fargo 8c Co. . . . It was a nasty looking lot of information, and the latest dates were March 9th. We don't object to their making corduroy bridges of our eastern exchanges, to safely cross stage passengers and express matter, over the bad sloughs on the road, if they won't use them more than thirty days at a time. 23

Thereafter, scarcely an issue appeared that did not criticize the company. T h e stages were coming regularly to Salt Lake from Denver full with passengers and express but with no mails. Some two h u n d r e d sacks were said to be strewn on the route for lack of room, the express company was deemed a miserable failure as mail carriers, and the Vedette suggested the contract should be given to "some enterprising, honest company." T h e impact of these attacks was 22 W. Turrentine Jackson, Wells Fargo in Colorado Territory (Denver: Colorado Historical Society, 1982), pp. 15-29.

23 Daily Union Vedette, May 25, 1867.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

The River Bed stage station southwest of Simpson Springs was painted by Utah primitive artist Francis L. H orspool from a photograph by C. W. Carter. The painter'sfather, William Francis Horspool, received a bonus to man the station for a year. It supposedly was haunted. USHS collections.

widespread. In Idaho both the Owyhee Avalanche and theldaho World reprinted every tirade and added editorial comment. Tiring of the criticism, theldaho Tri-Weekly Statesman in Boise came to the defense of Wells Fargo. T h e same division of opinion existed in Montana Territory where the Helena Herald led a vicious attack u p o n Wells Fargo, and the Virginia City newspapers — led by the Montana Post — defended the company and explained that the problems with the mail service were beyond its control. An intense feud resulted.

T h e r e were also differences of opinion in Utah Territory where, in contrast to the extreme hostility of the Vedette, the Telegraph began to display greater understanding of the problems of handling the mail.

In Denver the Rocky Mountain News, whose editor thought Wells Fargo could do no wrong, exploded in anger at the New York Tribune for its eastern attitude toward the uncertainty of the delivery of mail and its newspapers in the West. T h e basic problem lay in the uncertainty and irregularity with which the railroads delivered mail matter to their respective termini. In addition, the Indians had completely disrupted all service on the Smoky Hill route, and large quantities of mail had been destroyed or delayed east of Denver. 24 Not everyone was critical of Wells, Fargo & Co.'s service. T h e editor of the Salt Lake Reporter commented: 24

Jackson, "Wells Fargo in Idaho Territory: T h e Year of Greatest Activity," p p . 14-16.

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T h e exactness with which Wells, Fargo 8c Co.'s coaches arrive and depart, upon time, is particularly commendable. Yesterday while in the office of the Company, we were informed that the Northern Stage was d u e at three o'clock. It then wanted but one minute of that time. T h e hands of the clock had no sooner indicated the h o u r of three, than the stage drew u p before the door, punctual to the minute. T h e management of the various stage lines, and the business W.F. 8c C, is entrusted to skillful and competent men; which makes them superior to any other Express Company in the United States. 25

T h e company was also aware of the importance of public relations. Salt Lake had planned a celebration on July 4, 1868. T h e press reported: T h e establishment of Wells, Fargo 8c Co. in this city was represented on the streets early in the day, by a turnout often magnificent grays, attached to a carriage d r a p e d with American flags, and driven by Charles S. Burnett, who handled the ribbons beautifully. During the forenoon the employees of the company, and a number of citizens occupied the carriage and rode through the streets. In the afternoon Crezall's band was driven a r o u n d and delighted the ears of the citizens with fine music. T h e turnout was a splendid tribute to "the day we celebrate." 26

Two months later a Salt Lake newspaper commented, We omitted to mention yesterday, in our notice of the Episcopal Sunday School Pic-nic, that Wells, Fargo 8c Co. furnished one of their fine coaches and four horses for the occasion. T h e coach was decorated with small flags, red and blue cloth was also arranged in festoons u p o n each side. 27

T h e expiration date of Wells, Fargo 8c Co.'s contract to carry the overland mail on the central route was October 1, 1868. T o provide mail transportation between that date and the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads, which then was not expected to occur until J u n e 30, 1870, the postmaster general, on March 8, 1868, advertised for proposals to carry the mails between the termini, at the time a distance of 1,095 miles, on a daily basis both ways. T h e specific provision provided that the compensation of the mail contractors would be reduced p r o rata as the distance shortened between the termini of the two railroads. 28 Five bidders answered the 25

Salt Lake Reporter, July 24, 1868.

Salt Lake Reporter, July 6, 1868. Aaron Stein wrote the Reporter the following day that it was J o h n S. Burnett, the division agent of the Montana line between Salt Lake City and Snake River, rather than Charles S. Burnett who drove the ten-horse outfit of Wells, Fargo & Co. so gracefully a n d skillfully.

27 Salt Lake Reporter, October 2, 1868.

28 U.S., Congress, House, Report of the Committee on Public Expenditures: Contract — Overland Pacific Mails, February 27, 1869, 40th Cong., 3d sess., 1869, House Report No. 37, p p . 1-2.

26

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Utah Historical Quarterly

advertisement. Wells Fargo's bid of $1,314,000 was two and a half times that of the next highest offer. An outcry came from the western press.

Wells Fargo officials knew that Congress was u n d e r pressure from the Mountain States to reduce postage rates on newspapers, magazines, and books to the same level that was applied for their transportation to the Pacific Coast by ship. T h e company's bid was made with that possibility in mind, while the competitors did not consider the change. When, in J u n e 1868, Congress repealed the provision requiring full letter-rate postage on all mail including newspapers, magazines, and books sent by the overland route, it was clear that there would be an increase of several h u n d r e d percent on the amount of mail the contractor would have to carry. T h e lowest bidder refused to undertake the contract. Soon it was obvious that only Wells Fargo had the equipment and facilities to undertake the new volume of mail that had increased from 600 to 4,000 pounds daily. T h e figure agreed upon was $ 1,750,000. Once again the press wrote of extortion and described the transaction as an outrage.

A congressional investigation by the Committee on Public Expenditures concluded that it was the Congress, not the postmaster

s s ^ v . -*

. -7-. "*W***^

Wells Fargo participated in the July 4, 1868, parade in Salt Lake City. USHS collections.

•>•

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

19

general, that should assume the blame for unreasonably increasing the volume of mail. Moreover, the railroads were building faster than anticipated, shortening the time that Wells Fargo could benefit from its investment in expanding the n u m b e r of coaches and amount of stock on its line necessary to undertake the contract. As the distance between the termini was shortened, Wells Fargo's payments were reduced accordingly. T h e committee concluded that the cost to the government would be about $500,000, a far cry from the $1,750,000 contract figure.29 During the debate over the contract the Union Pacific had established a new terminal town at Benton, where the rails crossed the North Fork of the Platte River, 120 miles from the previous station at Laramie, and 700 miles from Omaha. 30 Simultaneously, the Central Pacific completed a new section to Wadsworth Station, 32 miles east of Reno, Nevada. T h e stages ran from Wadsworth to Benton, only 376 miles from Salt Lake City. "The staging will then, it is expected, only occupy three days from that point to this city," suggested the Telegraph.31 On October 1, 1868, Wells, Fargo 8c Co. lost the contract to deliver the mails between Salt Lake City and T h e Dalles to C. M. Lockwood. T h e Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman of Boise reported the departure of Wells Fargo's division agents and drivers with the stages belonging to the company: "We are indeed sorry to lose the association of these gentlemen. . . . We learn that they proceed to Salt Lake, and from thence to other fields of labor, which will be assigned them by the company." 32 Wells, Fargo & Co. engaged in fast and furious staging operations in 1868 between the railroad termini and along the feeder lines in Nevada, Montana, and Colorado. By January 1869 the company's stages began leaving Salt Lake City at 4 A.M. to connect with the Union Pacific at Evanston. T h e trip took twenty hours unless sleighing was good and then it could be reduced to sixteen hours. 3 3 On the overland route west of Salt Lake, Howard Egan, who was u n d e r contract to Wells Fargo, located a new stage route from 2t!

Jackson, Wells Fargo Stagecoaching in Montana Territory, pp. 36-37, 41-46.

Salt Lake Daily Reporter, July 20 and 25, 1868.

31 SaltLake Telegraph, July 20, 1868.

32 W. Turrentine Jackson, "Wells Fargo & Co. in Idaho Territory: T h e Railroads and the Demise of Staging," Idaho Yesterdays 26 (Winter 1983): 10-11; Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, October 6, 1868.

33 Salt Lake Reporter, quoted in the Weekly Montana Democrat, January 2, 1869.

30

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Humboldt Wells to Bear River north by way of Promontory City; and in February Wells Fargo placed stages on this route, which saved several h u n d r e d miles of travel between the railroad termini and significantly reduced the time of the trip across the continent. 34 For the first time in almost twenty years through travelers did not always come through Salt Lake City. However, Wells, Fargo 8c Co. maintained connections between the city and the railroad. During the winter Salt Lake papers reported the snow was two feet deep on the summit of the Wasatch Mountains west of Park City. Wells Fargo's sleighs ran the distance from the Park to the head of Echo Canyon.

Any delay was not with the stagecoaches but with the Union Pacific trains blocked by snow. 35

By April 1869 Corinne had replaced Salt Lake City as the transportation center in Utah. Wells Fargo announced that the new railroad town would become its terminal point for the stages running northward into Montana. T h e company continued to maintain stagecoach service between Corinne and Salt Lake City. A great flux of visitors to the "City of the Saints" during the summer of 1869 taxed Wells, Fargo & Co.'s coaches to the utmost capacity. T h e heavy traffic justified a reduction of the fare between Corinne and Salt Lake City from $4.50 to $ 1 , and it was reported in the newspaper that "every Mormon, big and little, [was] enjoying a trip to the railroad." 36 In February 1869 J o h n Hailey, veteran Idaho stageman, purchased C M . Lockwood's contract for mail service between Salt Lake City and T h e Dalles. Convinced that Corinne was too far to the east on the railroad for the most advantageous connection with the communities of Idaho and eastern Oregon and Washington, he moved his depot on the railroad to Indian Creek and m a d e the distance from there to Boise on his Idaho and Oregon Stage Line in forty hours. As in the case of Salt Lake passengers headed for Montana who had to take the short stage to Corinne, Idaho travelers had to get to and from Indian Creek. 37 Once the railroad was completed the stagecoach era of Wells, Fargo & Co. drew rapidly to a close. T h e company's board of directors had earlier, on May 16, 1868, voted to sell the overland 3i

Salt Lake Reporter, February 6, 1869; Rocky Mountain Gazette, February 25, 1869.

Salt Lake Reporter, January 2 a n d February 9, 1869.

36 Utak Daily Reporter, April 21 and July 20, 1869; Montana Post, July 4, 1869.

37 Jackson, "Wells Fargo in Idaho Territory: T h e Railroads and the Demise of Staging," p p .

20-21; Utah Reporter, J u n e 12, 1869.

35

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

21

The Echo Canyon stage station east of Salt Lake City was used by Wells Fargo.

USHS collections.

stagecoach network fashioned at the time of the "grand consolidation." 38 T h e company sold its stage lines in Utah and Montana to J. T. Gilbert and O . J . Salisbury on August 1, 1869.3!) A few days later, August 18, came the terse announcement that Wells, Fargo 8c Co. had sold their repair shops and office buildings that originally cost $15,000 to Brigham Young for $30,000. Wells Fargo officials quickly corrected this report stating that the original cost had been $50,000. 40 In October the company sold its stage lines in Colorado to J o h n Hughes 8c Co. but retained its express business. 41 T h r o u g h o u t the years Wells Fargo made a significant contribution to the Utah economy. One Salt Lake newspaper item of August 1869 is sufficient to illustrate the point: From the beginning of the Overland Mail Company's business in this city to the present time, including the more distinctive firm name of Wells, Fargo 8c Co., they have probably paid over five millions of dollars for grain, etc. to our citizens. During all that time and with all that business, we never hear of but one man who ever complained of them.

38

Wells, Fargo 8c Co., Minute Book, May 16, 1868, Wells Fargo & Co. Archives, San Francisco.

Tbid., August 1, 1869; Utah Daily Reporter, August 14, 1869.

40 Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), August 19 and 25, 1869.

41 Minute Book of Wells, Fargo & Co., October 14, 1869, vol. 2. pp. 146-149.

3!

22

Utah Historical Quarterly They have promptly and fully met the demands made u p o n them, and have maintained an excellent name. We will miss the stage company. 4 2

Amid the rapidly changing company's responsibilities, the key to its success in Salt Lake City was its personnel. As mentioned earlier, Wells, Fargo 8c Co. had an express agent in Salt Lake City by September 1865 when Hiram S. Rumfield, already an experienced agent for the Overland Mail, assumed responsibility for the express service of the company. In his unique published correspondence Rumfield reveals the cordial relationship that existed between the Mormon community and the employees of the Overland Mail in contrast to the Mormon attitude toward the subcontractors William H. Russell and associates on the route east of Salt Lake City. " T h e Mormons have always been hostile in feeling toward the Eastern Division and its management," he wrote. T h e explanation was clear.

From the very beginning of Salt Lake City the Mormon leaders were eager to develop mail lines r u n n i n g both east and west. In October 1856 Hiram Kimball had been awarded a contract to deliver mail east to Leavenworth, Kansas. Brigham Young offered to equip three h u n d r e d miles of the route. Enthusiasm ran high in Salt Lake City, for the Mormons expected to make each station along the line an agricultural center where stock could be raised and emigrant trains assisted. T h e n came the Utah War between the Mormons and the federal government. T h e mail contract was annulled. Rumfield wrote friends summarizing the decline of the eastern sector of the overland route and the necessity for Holladay to take over as described earlier. In contrast, the western sector of the road commanded the "undivided confidence, friendship and affection" of the Mormons. Rumfield explained: T h e principal part of our supplies — amounting in the aggregate, since the first day of July last [1861] to several h u n d r e d thousand dollars, — have been purchased in this valley and paid for with glittering gold!

O u r dealings with them have been conducted u p o n principles of firmness and justice. While we permit no person in the service of the company to deal unfairly with them, we will submit to no wrong in turn.

We do not hesitate to employ a Mormon, — or rather, in this respect, make no distinction between "Saint and Gentile," other things being equal. Whenever a dispute arises between us and any of the people concerning a matter of consequence, whether involving money or otherwise, we at once refer the case to Brigham who never fails to hear patiently and decide with wisdom and impartiality.

l

Salt Lake Telegraph, August 20, 1869.

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

23

T h e Overland Mail Company adopted a somewhat paternalistic policy toward the Indians along the route west of Salt Lake. "The poor Indians along the lines are quiet and well disposed," he wrote.

"They regard the Overland Company as their best friend." In November 1862 the company bought 400 head of beef cattle to sustain the Indians through the storms of winter on the bleak desert.

Working on the principle that it was better to feed than to fight, Rumfield commented, "The same policy on the Eastern Line would have saved many lives and delays it was subjected to last spring and summer."

Rumfield enjoyed the confidence of Brigham Young and regularly conferred with him and other leaders of the community. One such occasion is worthy of note: Heber C. Kimball — brother Heber, as he is familiarly called by the "saints," paid me a visit last week, and in conversation gave the most gratifying assurances of the good feeling cherished by his people towards the company. It was the first and only interview I have had with him — the first time he ever entered this office. Like Brigham, he is seldom seen on the streets, except on Sunday, on his way to or from the Tabernacle. Our interview took place in the back office — was strictly private — and continued about an hour. Not a word was said upon the subject of religion — the Mormon religion especially. When the old man was ready to depart he arose from his chair, and placing his right hand on my head, in the most solemn tone and manner pronounced a blessing — almost in the exact words of the old Apostalic Benediction.

T h e proceeding was so unexpected that it startled me. He noticed my momentary confusion and seeming to think I doubted his sincerity took my hand in his own and looking square in the face, said, — "No one can justly accuse Heber of hyprocrisy — I always speak as I am moved by the Holy Spirit; my blessing was from the heart — from the the heart. . . ." He then brushed the tears from his eyes — for by this time his feelings had entirely overcome him — and, with a hearty and emphatic "God bless you," took his departure. 4

Theodore F. Tracy, appointed January 1, 1867, was the first in a line of distinguished Wells Fargo agents to manage both the express and banking business. Tracy had come to California in 1853 and for the next four years gained extensive experience in the express business working for various companies operating between Placerville and Carson Valley, Nevada. From the first he was an entrepreneur, organizing his own Carson Valley Express, but in 1857 he went to work for Wells Fargo as agent in El Dorado and the next year in 43 Archer Butler Hulbert, ed., "Letters of an Overland Agent in Utah," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, New Series (Worcester, Mass., 1929), vol. 38, pp. 227-35, 267-71, 275, 280.

Utah Historical Quarterly

24

Nat Stein, left, and his brother Aaron Stein, right, were popular with Utahns when they ran Wells Fargo's Salt Lake operations. Courtesy of Wells Fargo Archives, San Francisco.

Placerville. He also managed the Pioneer Stage Company and served as a director of the Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad. Tracy was elected city treasurer and in 1863 chosen mayor of Placerville. When Wells, Fargo 8c Co. selected him to go to Salt Lake City, the Mountain Democrat stated, "We have always regarded him as one of the fixtures of Placerville — as one of her most popular and cherished citizens, and we cannot part with him without a feeling of sadness and sorrow." 44 From Salt Lake City T. F. Tracy had supervisory control of Wells Fargo's Overland Express, that portion of the business that extended eastward from Salt Lake City to Omaha, Nebraska, and northward into Montana and Idaho, and his movements and the information provided by him about the status of transportation were found in nearly every issue of the Salt Lake papers.

T h e Salt Lake agency included several additional employees.

T h e chief clerk, Henry D. Sherwood, took a leave of absence to go to Colorado in search of improved health in July 1869, and Wells Fargo, always ready to transfer personnel, sent for H. P. Parsons, the agent in Virginia City, Montana, to substitute. Soon Nat Stein arrived in Salt Lake to take over so Parsons could return to his post.

44

Robert D. Livingston, "The Three Tracy Brothers," Western Express 13 (October 1973): 3-5.

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

25

Nat's brother, Aaron, was already working for Wells Fargo in Salt Lake. On his arrival the Salt Lake Reporter commented, "Nat's friends, and that's everybody in this vicinity, will be glad to learn that he returns in good health. He will remain here until Mr. S. returns and perhaps long enough thereafter to allow his 'match brother' Aaron Stein, Esq. to make a visit east."45 T h e Stein brothers were exceptionally well liked in Salt Lake City. On one occasion the Reporter noted: Aaron Stein, Esq., our ever genial and pleasant friend of Wells, Fargo 8c Co.'s office in this city left us Tuesday morning for the East. May the 'car of progress' roll him safely and speedily into 'America' beyond the mountains. While we do not wish to deprive him the pleasure of a prolonged stay with his friends, we trust to see him back in 'Zion' before the warm breath of spring fans the verdure of the fields. 46

Sherwood returned to Salt Lake on August 15 but was too ill to resume his duties, and by the end of October he had died, receiving a glowing tribute in the Salt Lake newspapers. 47 Another Wells, Fargo 8c Co. employee in Salt Lake City on many occasions was James J. Tracy, the general superintendent of the stage department. On one of his periodic tours of inspection the Reporter commented, "Mr. Tracy is one of the most popular and efficient officers of this favorite Express Company, and we are glad to say that he is in good health and enjoying himself." T h e report was too optimistic, for within a week he was confined to his room with mountain fever and for the next month bulletins were released to the public on the status of his health. 48 Company records indicate that Theodore Tracy's salary as agent was $150 a month. 49 He left the company in 1873 to form a partnership with Charles F. Smith in Theo. F. Tracy 8c Co., Bankers.

G. L. Greathouse became Wells Fargo agent in July 1873, serving for four or five months until he was replaced by Henry W. Wadsworth. 50 Like his predecessor, Wadsworth hailed from California, having served as Wells Fargo agent in Yreka. He remained in Salt Lake as agent during 1873-76 and was then transferred to San Francisco as

45

Salt Lake Daily Reporter, July 17, 1869.

Salt Lake Daily Reporter, March 11, 1869.

47 Salt Lake Daily Reporter, August 15 and October 27, 1868.

48 Salt Lake Daily Reporter, August 8, 15, and 19, and September 12, 1868.

49 Wells, Fargo & Co., Interior Division Cashbook, March and May 1871, Wells Fargo & Co. Archives, San Francisco.

50 Salt Lake Daily Tribune, July 12, August 7, and October 2, 1873.

46

26

Utah Historical Quarterly

treasurer of Wells, Fargo 8c Co. and cashier of the bank, a position he held until 1903. 51 J o h n E. Dooly was named Wells Fargo express agent and cashier of the Wells Fargo Bank in Salt Lake City in 1876 and represented the financial interests of the company in Utah until 1902. Dooly had arrived in California in 1863 at twenty-one years of age and two years later had obtained a position with Wells Fargo in Sacramento where he remained until 1869 when he was transferred to Truckee on the Central Pacific Railroad. Leaving Truckee in 1872, he visited Europe and on his return the next year was appointed Wells Fargo agent in Ogden, at the time only a transfer point. T h r o u g h o u t his years in Utah Dooly was interested in banking and real estate promotion in addition to his work with Wells Fargo. He established the first bank injunction City, known as J. E. Dooly 8c Co., was one of the organizers of the Utah National Bank of Ogden, and was identified with real estate promotion in the Dooly Block in downtown Salt Lake City, the Syndicate Investment Company, and the J o h n E. Dooly Company. Not only a businessman, Dooly was extremely active in public affairs, serving as president of the Salt Lake City Board of Education, regent of the University of Utah, chairman of the Territorial Board of Equalization, chairman of the Board of Public Works, chairman of the Republican State Central Committee, and member of the city council. H e also held memberships in both the Alta and the Commercial clubs of Salt Lake City. He and his wife lived in a spacious home on the southeast corner of South T e m p l e and Fifth East streets. 52 Salt Lake City newspapers paid him glowing tributes at the time of his retirement in 1902.53 No Hollywood movie director or television script writer can create a myth concerning the experiences of those traveling on Wells Fargo stagecoaches in the Great Basin more exciting than the reality.54 Employees e n d u r e d great physical hardship in the continuous struggle of man against nature that was part of the frontier experience. In December 1868, for example, a Wells Fargo driver aban51

Catalogue, Wells, Fargo 8c Co., Historical Exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893; San Francisco Chronicle, J u n e 27, 1903, p. 9.

52 Sketches of the Intermountain States Together with Many Prominent and Progressive Citizens (Salt Lake City, 1909), p. 9 1 .

53 Salt Lake Tribune, August 6, 1902.

54 W. Turrentine Jackson, "Wells Fargo: Symbol of the Wild West," Western Historical Quarterly 3 (April 1972): 179-96.

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

27

The Deep Creek station near the Utah-Nevada border was painted by Utah primitive artist Francis L. Horspool. This part of the state remains isolated and not easily accessible even today. USHS collections.

doned his stage at Fort Bridger and hitched his horses to a bobsled in hopes of making it through the snow to Muddy Station en route to Salt Lake City. A search party found him almost frozen by the side of the road, and six weeks later both his feet were amputated. 5 5 Spring brought the hazards and inconvenience of floods. In April 1868 mail stages were stopped by high water at Bitter Creek, Utah Territory, en route to Salt Lake City. T h e utter absence of timber there with which to make a raft to float two waiting stages across prompted Wells Fargo's determined employees to tear down a portion of the nearest station to get the job done. Once this obstacle was overcome the drivers discovered that the ice on Smiths Fork had begun to move and carried away the bridge. Later a new track had to be broken through the m u d from Fort Bridger to the Weber River.

Once the two stages arrived in Salt Lake City, they brought five days' mail. 56 A Salt Lake newspaper reported that the Wells Fargo stagecoaches headed east in January 1869 went only as far as Hardy's Station and that passengers would find sleighs there waiting 'Salt Lake Telegraph, February 29 and March 21, 1868.

'Salt Lake Telegraph, April 7, 1868.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

their arrival. " T h e nerves of the timid traveler will be considerably improved by this information," observed the editor of the Salt Lake Telegraphy"7 T h e n as now accidents threatened the lives and limbs of employees and passengers. In September 1867 one Salt Lake paper routinely reported, " T h e eastern stage, which came in about nine o-clock last night, reports some mishaps on the line. At Rock Creek the stage was upset and one of the passengers had his leg broken, while another suffered severe injuries." 58 T h e stagecoach driver always appeared to be the most vulnerable when accidents occurred.

T h e Salt Lake Telegraph reported the details of a fatal accident: About 8 o'clock on Wednesday evening last, as Wells Fargo & Co.'s coach was coming down Yellow Creek Hill, 8 miles east of Echo Canyon, the wheel horses became refractory and the driver asked Murphy, who was sitting beside him, to take hold of the wheel lines, as he was unable to control the team. Murphy said, after the accident, that he pulled the horses off into the ditch, thinking it was better to capsize the coach than let the teams r u n away. When the driver saw the danger, he called 'Look out; we are going,' and made a spring, it is supposed for the purpose of stopping his team while on the ground. In doing so his feet either got caught in the lines, or he staggered and fell, u p o n striking the ground, for when he was found the railing of the coach lay embedded in his temples, which killed him instantly. T h e r e were nine passengers on board, none of whom were injured, excepting General Clampitt and J. Q. Knowlton, who are neither seriously hurt. T h e driver, Shade Collier, was about 30 years of age, and has been known as a good and careful driver. No blame whatever can be justly attached to him.;,!l

A month later a Salt Lake City newspaper reported, "Bill Long, the stage driver who left this city with the eastern b o u n d stage on Saturday evening last, fell from his seat almost a quarter mile this side of Hardy's station, in Parley's Canyon, and was rather badly bruised. No bones were broken and the m a n is doing well. His place was supplied by another driver and the stage proceeded without delay." 60 Mishaps even occurred within the city. As Wells Fargo's stage was moving away from the Ogden Hotel and the passengers were arranging their seats, a traveler, who resided in Montana, accidently discharged his gun with the contents passing through his right leg. H e had to be carried into the hotel and when it was 'Salt Lake Telegraph, J a n u a r y 9, 1869. *Daily Union Vedette, September 30, 1867.

1 Salt Lake Telegraph, October 30, 1868.

'Salt Lake Telegraph, December 14, 1868.

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

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discovered that his leg was broken the stage departed without him. 61 Another unusual incident took place at Wanship where a Utah citizen owned an old camel that was seen by the stagecoach horses.

Predictably, they became frightened and unruly, a situation that came close to being disastrous. However, the principal loss was a delay that prevented the stagecoach from arriving in Salt Lake City on time.62 Far more important in establishing Wells Fargo as a symbol of the Wild West were the activities of thieves and knights of the road.

One such incident can serve to illustrate many others. When the stagecoach headed eastward from Salt Lake City was robbed just west of the Laclede station, four bandits took $42,000. Wells, Fargo 8c Co. immediately advertised a reward. $15,000 Reward!

One of our coaches was robbed, on the night of the 25th instant, near Laclede Station, Eastern Road, by four men.

WE WILL PAY $10,000 FOR T H E RECOVERY OF T H E C O N T E N T S OF T H E TREASURE BOX And in proportion for any part thereof: AND $5,000 FOR T H E ARREST OR C O N V I C T I O N OF T H E ROBBERS OR P R O P O R T I O N A T E A M O U N T FOR ONE OR MORE OF T H E M DEAD OR ALIVE Wells, Fargo & Co. Salt Lake City, August 26, 1868 63

Laclede station was in southern Wyoming, eighty-five miles east of Green River. Four men and a boy, all "veiled," perpetrated the robbery. T h e only people on the coach were the driver and a company blacksmith. Neither was injured. T h e robbers left the U.S. mail untouched but loaded the Wells Fargo express box on a horse and headed up a ravine in a northeasterly direction. T h e robbery was promptly reported at the next station, and when the westbound coach arrived at the spot the passengers alighted and spread out in search of the treasure box which they found rifled a mile and a half away in a ravine. T h e $42,000 treasure was mostly in gold bars, but 61

SaltLake Telegraph, December 23, 1868.

Salt Lake Telegraph, January 7, 1869.

63 Salt Lake Reporter, August 26, 1868, Deseret News, August 26, 1868, published a short report of the robbery. A similar report was in the Salt Lake News.

62

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Utah Historical Quarterly

greenbacks were also taken. Any letters in the express box that looked as if they might contain money were broken open, but the others were left untouched. T h e robbers, including the boy, were cool and efficient in going about their business, according to reports. 64 All the Salt Lake newspapers reported this incident, and the news was republished throughout the American West. T h e Weekly Montana Democrat suggested, " H e m p and hot lead should be brought into immediate requisition." 65 Before long a break came in the case.

T h e boy, who had strayed from his bandit companions, was captured in the mountains adjoining the railroad route by a search party. Shortly thereafter the other culprits were r o u n d e d up. 66 Indians did attack the Pony Express and stagecoaches, burn the way stations, d i s r u p t t h e mails, a n d h a r a s s t h e p a s s e n g e r s .

T h r o u g h o u t the 1860s the United States Cavalry or the local militiamen rode to the rescue and often punished the Indians mercilessly, if circumstances permitted it. Just as the Pony Express and Wells Fargo's stagecoaches were symbols of the Wild West to the white man, the pony and the stagecoaches were symbols of westward expansion and cultural disruption to the Indians.

T h e Paiutes near Pyramid Lake in Nevada went on the warpath in May 1860, defeating a military command. T h e Sacramento Union suggested, "If no peace is negotiated, small parties will be in danger from predatory bands of Indians, and they may render it very difficult to keep the mail route from Carson Valley to Salt Lake open and stocked for the Pony Express and mail coaches." 67 Relief parties sent out from Carson City found stations halfway to Salt Lake City destroyed, the keepers killed, horses driven off by the Indians, and the service disrupted. They met the Pony Express accompanied by U.S. troops along with sixty emigrant wagons transporting Mormon families numbering 250 to 300 men, women, and children from Salt Lake to California. For three months the military found it necessary to escort the Pony Express west of Salt Lake City until peace was restored. 68 Wells Fargo inherited a significant Indian problem when it became the sole owner directly responsible for the overland route in 64

Salt Lake Telegraph, August 28, 1868.

Weekly Montana Democrat, August 29, 1868. ™Daily Montana Post, September 14, 1868.

67 Sacramento Daily Union, J u n e 16, 1860. ^Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, August 21 and 3 1 , 1860. e5

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

31

1866. In spite of the company's good intentions, service along the Platte route was erratic. In May 1867 the Rock Creek station on the eastern end of the line was burned by Indians who took away eight horses. Men at the station were unhurt. Troops were immediately dispatched and a Wells Fargo official announced, " T h e utmost caution will be observed, and no passengers will be exposed to danger, but the stages will continue to push through." 69 T h e entire line was immediately stocked for a double daily service and a large supply of guns purchased and distributed to each station where six employees were to defend against attack.70 Even so, the next month Indians attacked the company's stations to the east and west of the North Platte crossing and drove off the stock.71 Near Cheyenne toward the end of August 1868 Indians scalped a man and drove off thirty horses and mules. That same evening they drove off all the stock from Wells Fargo's herd camp twenty miles below Cheyenne. 72 On the Smoky Hill route the Indians burned three stations and drove off all the cattle and horses east of Denver in May 1867, and then two of Wells Fargo's fast freight drivers were found mortally wounded by the side of the road a short distance from Denver. 73 "Where are the troops?" asked the Vedette. In J u n e 1867 the stage was passing an old abandoned station on the road in eastern Colorado when thirty mounted Indians concealed behind the adobe walls opened fire. T h e stage driver, sitting alone on the box, fell to the ground and was scalped on the spot. His body was later found riddled with bullets and arrows. One of two company stock-tenders was shot and scalped, while the other made his escape. T h e Indians seized eight horses and mules and cut away all the leather found on the coach. They slit open the mailbags, rifled all letters and packages sealed with red wax that indicated their value, and scattered the remaining contents. An elderly passenger, an itinerant preacher, crawled to safety down the road embankment, j u m p e d into a nearby stream, and was carried to safety by the current. Later he was rescued by soldiers escorting immigrants. 74 No wonder the mails were sometimes late in arriving in Denver and Salt Lake City. Problems were so difficult on the route between 6

Âť Salt Lake Telegraph, May 14, 1867.

'Denver Rocky Mountain News, May 11, 1867.

71 Salt Lake Telegraph, J u n e 6, 1867.

72 Rocky Mountain News, August 29, 1868; Salt Lake Reporter, August 29, 1868.

73 Salt Lake Telegraph, J u n e 6, 1867.

74 Reese River Reveille, J u n e 20, 1867.

7U

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Utah Historical Quarterly

these two communities in May 1867 that the division agent telegraphed the Denver office not to send any passengers on the stagecoaches until further notice. T h e Salt Lake City coach occasionally came into Denver two or three days behind time because of Indian troubles on the road. 75 T h e company announced that Indians had taken over 155 head of stock from the stations between Denver and Salt Lake City and resolved to send out men to protect the line. T h e Rocky Mountain News in Denver printed a telegraphic dispatch stating, "Indians are thicker than gnats at buffalo time." 76 Despite such incidents, Wells Fargo continued to operate on the Smoky Hill route during 1869. In January Indians attacked one of the stagecoaches on the route, and both the messenger and the stage driver were killed. An elaborate funeral was held in Denver. T h e stages of various lines were draped in black for the procession, and the services were attended by company officials and their wives.77 It is not surprising, then, that Events such as these established the image of Wells Fargo in the wild and romantic west. . . . T h e individuals responsible for creating this picture were the newspaper editors who published the hundreds of journals that appeared in the Far West. . . . From their viewpoint and that of their readers, these reports represented hard reality and no myth. . . . T h e picture the newspapers created has taken on a mythical cast only as it is viewed from the perspectives and prejudices of our own times. 78

T u r n i n g to a more stable and continuous activity of Wells, Fargo 8c Co. — banking — the historian should note that in addition to the headquarters in San Francisco, the company maintained banking offices in New York, Portland, Denver, Virginia City, Carson City, and Salt Lake City. It began providing services in the Salt Lake City area in 1865 when it purchased Holladay and Halsey's bank. As soon as Ben Holladay had obtained the United States mail contract in 1864, he and his Salt Lake agent W. L. Halsey had formed a partnership to be bankers, dealers in exchange and gold dust. From Salt Lake they had moved into the Pacific Northwest, establishing an office in Virginia City, Montana Territory. 7!l 75

Denver Rocky Mountain News, May 17, 1867.

Denver Rocky Mountain News, J u n e 24, July 25 and 26, 1867.

77 Denver Rocky Mountain Herald, January 22, 1869; Denver Rocky Mountain News, January 25, 76

1869.

78

Jackson, "Wells Fargo: Symbol of the Wild West," p. 189.

'Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, July 5 and 7, 1864; Roland Stucki, Commercial Banking in Utah, 1847-1966 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, Bureau of Business and Economic Research, 1967), p.

13.

7i

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

33

A crowd gathered infront of Wells Fargo to look at 5,000 pounds of bullionfrom a mine in Big Cottonwood Canyon ca. 1870. Courtesy of Wells Fargo Archives, San Francisco.

In the 1860s the Wells Fargo Bank in Salt Lake City was largely responsible for handling shipments of gold and silver from the mining districts to eastern depositories. This activity was well publicized. A reporter for the Deseret News was shown 200 ounces of gold, worth approximately $5,000, that arrived at the Wells Fargo Bank from the Sweetwater mines in Wyoming in September 1868, reportedly only a third of a week's run from the Miner's Delight Ledge. 80 In March 1869 a silver brick weighing over a h u n d r e d pounds and with an assay value of $1,865.64, manufactured at the 80

Deseret News, September 19, 1868.

34

Utah Historical Quarterly

E b e r h a r d t Mine, White Pine, Nevada, was o n display prior to its s h i p m e n t east. T h e Telegraph r e p o r t e d , " T h e r e are fifteen similar bricks now in Wells, Fargo 8c Co.'s office, waiting to go East." 81 T h e Reporter c o m m e n t e d , "This, to o u r knowledge, is the largest specim e n of silver brick ever exhibited in the city, a n d , we think, a display of a few m o r e of the same kind would have a salutary effect u p o n those who impose every obstacle within their reach to prevent the d e v e l o p m e n t of o u r mines." 82 T h e first Salt Lake City Directory and Business Guide in 1869 stated, " T h e B a n k i n g Companies d o i n g business in Salt Lake City are those of Wells, Fargo 8c Co., whose general agent for all purposes in this region is T h e o d o r e F. Tracy, Esq.; a n d Hussey, Dahler 8c Co., m a n a g e d by W a r r e n Hussey, Esq.; the latter having p u r c h a s e d the 'Miners' National Bank.' Both are u n d o u b t e d in credit a n d reliability." 83 By 1874 Wells Fargo Bank h a d competition from the Deseret National Bank, the First National Bank, the Salt Lake City National Bank, Walker Brothers, White 8c McCornick, a n d Zion's T r u s t a n d Savings Bank. While confining its b a n k i n g to Salt Lake City, Wells Fargo h a d established express offices in C o r i n n e , Alta, O p h i r , a n d Ogden. 8 4 T e n years later, the Utah Gazetteer r e p o r t e d six banks still o p e r a t i n g in Salt Lake City, the majority of which were private banks. 8 5 The Salt Lake City Directory for 1890 advertised that the Wells Fargo Bank (i.e., all of its branches) h a d capital of $6,250,000 a n d a surplus of $4,000,000. 8 6 Historians of U t a h b a n k i n g have suggested that by 1891 the assets a n d volume of business of the Salt Lake b r a n c h of Wells Fargo Bank were c o m p a r a b l e to those of the San Francisco headquarters. 8 7 By 1892-93 the b a n k subscribed to a half-page advertisement on the cover of the city directory, noting that the surplus h a d now risen to $5,483,393.

F r o m offices at 123-125 South Main, exchange, banking, a n d express services were offered the public. Collections could be m a d e 81

Salt Lake Telegraph, March 6, 1869.

Salt Lake Reporter, March 7, 1869.

83 E. L. Sloan, comp., The Salt Lake City Directory andBusiness Guidefor 1869 (Salt Lake City; 1869), S2

p. 78.

84

E. L. Sloan, comp. and ed., Gazetteer of Utah and Salt Lake City Directory, 1874, pp. 59, 78, 92, 109, 303-5. Beginning in 1874 Wells Fargo filed its Act of Incorporation and By-Laws in the Corporate File of the Utah Secretary of State.

85 Robert W. Sloan, Utah Gazetteer and Directory for 1884 (Salt Lake City, 1884), p. 115.

86 Salt Lake City Directory for 1890 (Salt Lake City: R.L. Polk & Co., 1890), p. 67.

87 Stucki, Commercial Banking in Utah, p. 13.

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

35

throughout the United States or with the company's branch in London; money orders could be handled by telegraph; and, not to forget its past, the company was still giving "special attention to the purchase and sale of ores and bullion." 88 Several changes were made in the depression year 1893.

T h e e x p r e s s office of Wells Fargo was moved to 58 West Second South with A. G. Clark as agent; J o h n Dooly continued as cashier of the bank but had also become the president of the Utah Title Insurance and John E. Dooly, cashier of Wells Fargo T r u s t Co. For emphasis the Bank in Salt Lake City. From Utah, company's advertisement was the Inland Empire. printed on purple paper. 8!)

Wells Fargo's banking business began to boom at the end of the 1890s. J o h n Dooly engaged in correspondence with J. T. Hammond, the Utah secretary of state, and systematically filed a statement of condition at the end of each calendar year. Assets for the whole bank, including the amount of loans, bonds, stocks, and warrants, real estate, furniture, and funds due from other banks and bankers, were enumerated. On the liability side of the ledger were the paid u p capital, deposits, surplus, and undivided profits. T h e total of the balance sheet increased yearly, rising from $15,508,700 in 1898 to $16,814,532 in 1899 and $17,915,490 in 1900. T h e surplus fund was stabilized at $5,750,000, but the undivided profits steadily rose every year from $780,657 in 1898 to $1,820,927 by 1900 to $4,506,785 by the middle of 1902. Deposits also steadily increased from $8,508,700 in 1898 to $10,604,448 in July 1902.!,° T h e n in the midst of the financial success a scandal rocked the bank. Investigators discovered that the long-term assistant cashier and the paying teller, also a member of the Salt Lake City Council, 88

Utah Gazetteer, 1892-93 (Salt Lake City: Stenhouse & Co., 1892), p. 73.

Salt Lake City Directory for 1893 (Salt Lake City: R.L. Polk & Co., 1893), pp. 24, 272, 839.

510 Correspondence between J o h n E. Dooly, Wells Fargo Bank, and J. T. Hammond, Utah Secretary of State, 1897-1899; Quarterly Statements of Condition of Wells Fargo Bank, 1898-1900.

89

36

Utah Historical Quarterly

were guilty of embezzlement and that the defalcations had been going on for many years. Throughout July and August 1902 sensational newspaper stories appeared in the Salt Lake newspapers, chiefly in the Tribune. Headlines announced the disappearance of the bank teller, who reportedly left his home carrying a gun and headed for nearby hills. His friends feared he had taken his life and immediately instituted a systematic search. T h e next day he returned and told of his contemplated suicide while hiding in a cave and watching his friends searching for him. Rumors circulated during the first days of July that anywhere from $20,000 to $90,000 had been stolen/Cashier Dooly offered a reward of $500 for the arrest and conviction of the teller but refused to make any official announcement about the loss or those responsible for it.

As the investigation progressed, the assistant cashier continued to report to work. For forty-eight hours bank officers and employees maintained silence, much to the consternation of both the Deseret News and the Tribune. On July 3, 1902, both the assistant cashier and the paying teller were charged with embezzling $60,000. Tribune headlines told of how the paying teller had left his home and gone to the Knutsford Hotel to surrender to authorities; the assistant cashier was found hiding in the attic of his home. Both men were jailed and their bonds set at $30,000 each. T h e delay in the arrest had been caused by the official investigation of a Wells Fargo detective who had thoroughly examined the books and reported that these two employees and they alone were responsible for the embezzlement.

T h e defalcation had extended over a period often years by drawing money from accounts of out-of-town depositors who left large amounts in the bank and seldom drew upon them. T h e guilty had periodically telegraphed themselves for a portion of these funds, drawn a check for the amount requested, given it to the bookkeeper for recording against the depositor's account, and later obtained the check and destroyed it. When the depositor came for his money, they withdrew enough from another account to cover the missing funds, "robbing Peter to pay Paul."

T h e statute of limitations protected them from liability for the first six years of their activity, leaving them liable for only the last four. T h e Elks tried unsuccessfully to raise bail for the paying teller, one of the their members. However, bail was reduced to $25,000.

In time Dooly explained that he had become suspicious three weeks before the arrests and had sent to San Francisco for Darrell A.

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

37

H a r e to conduct a quiet investigation. O n c e the evidence was gathered, Dooly told H a r e , "We will count the cash tomorrow" in a voice that could be h e a r d by the assistant cashier who notified his associate, the paying teller, that the "jig" was finally and conclusively over." 1 O n July 9, 1902, H o m e r S. King, m a n a g e r of Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco, arrived in Salt Lake City accompanied by Frank B. King, his son a n d the bank auditor, a n d immediately began an investigation in consultation with Dooly, t h e accused assistant cashier, the chief of Wells Fargo's detective service in San Francisco, J. N. Thacker, and representatives of the b o n d i n g company/' 2 T h e Deseret News welcomed his arrival saying, "Mr. King is . . . a very pleasant m a n to talk to which is a delightful relief from the growl that usually goes out from those connected locally with the case when a p p r o a c h e d r e g a r d i n g it.""3 T h e editor was annoyed that the two prisoners continued to hold receptions for their friends, chiefly lawyers a n d city councilmen, in the county jail and had their meals delivered either from h o m e or restaurants.

T h e legal proceedings continued until July 20 when both men pleaded guilty, were sentenced to four years in the Utah penitentiary, but would be eligible for release t h r o u g h good behavior in two years a n d ten months." 4 T h e public considered the sentence very light, a n d the Deseret News was dissatisfied. " T h e whole story has not yet been told," c o m m e n t e d the editor. " T h e mantle of silence will probably cover over everything else that pertains to this scandal which for some weeks has agitated the public mind." T h e Salt Lake p a p e r t h o u g h t influence had been used to get the offenders to plead guilty, p r o c u r e a negotiated light sentence, a n d thereby avoid unfavorable publicity. T h e r e a p p e a r e d to be one law for the well established a n d a n o t h e r for the common citizens." 5 J o h n Dooly h a d submitted his resignation u p o n the discovery of the theft, which was finally found to be $101,000, and two weeks after the affair was settled it was accepted. F. L. Lipman, the assistant cashier in the San Francisco bank with twenty years of experience, temporarily took charge of the Salt Lake bank. T h e press expressed •nSalt Lake Tribune, J u n e 29 t h r o u g h July 4, 1892.

Salt Lake Tribune, July 6, July 7, and July 10, 1892. •}3Deseret News, July 9, 1902. ,)4 Salt Lake Daily Tribune, July 12, July 13, July 20, 1902. ™Deseret News, July 9, 1902. i,2

38

Utah Historical Quarterly

*1 *

"flE

T If

W^//s Fargo wagons in Salt Lake City, ca. 1915. Courtesy of Wells Fargo Archives, San Francisco.

regret at Dooly's departure, praising him in glowing terms and emphasizing that he was in no way involved in any malfeasance but that as chief administrative officer he was officially responsible. 96 Deposits in the Wells Fargo Bank that had reached approximately $10,600,000 just prior to the scandal dropped slightly by the end of the year. However, public confidence in the bank was not shaken, for by the end of 1903 deposits again totalled over $10 million." 7 T h e company advertised itself as the "Oldest a n d Strongest Bank in Utah" with "Unsurpassed Facilities for Transacting Business in All Parts of the World." 98 Two years later, the company advertised that its capital, surplus, and profits had risen to more than $16.6 million. 99

^Deseret News, August 5, 1902; Salt Lake Herald, August 6, 1902; Salt Lake Tribune, August 6, 1902.

1,7 Quarterly Statements of the Condition of Wells Fargo Bank, 1902 and 1903. Records of the Utah Secretary of State. All figures apply to the entire bank in San Francisco and elsewhere. •>8SaltLake City Directory, 1903 (Salt Lake City: R.L. Polk & Co., 1903), p. 3. All figures refer to the total assets of the bank. m> Salt Lake City Directory, 1905 (Salt Lake City: R.L. Polk & Co., 1905), p. 3. These figures represent all assets of the San Francisco bank and its branches.

Wells Fargo's Transportation Depot

39

On the heels of this renewed success the officers of the bank, as part of a larger corporate reorganization, elected in April 1905 to sell the Salt Lake branch to Walker Brothers, Bankers, who paid a $50,000 bonus for good will.100 However, Wells Fargo continued to operate an express business in the state until 1918 when the federal government forced the consolidation of all the major domestic express companies into the American Railway Express. 101 B. D. Caldwell, company president in New York, notified the Utah secretary of state that Wells Fargo would "retire from business in the State of Utah, from and after midnight of J u n e 30th, 1918."102 A dozen years after the company closed its express operation in Salt Lake City the Deseret News recalled its role in the developing West: Wells Fargo & Co. was a well known institution throughout the west fifty years ago, and nowhere was its importance realized better than in the farming communities and mining camps of the intermountain region.

T h e n the newspaper quoted from an article that had appeared in its pages fifty years earlier: T h e great benefit of that world-famed carrying company, to the whole region of the west in particular and the entire country in general, is recognized by every journal of importance. We cordially add our words to the great mass of testimony in favor of the great firm, which has done immense and incalculable good by its efficient express system, the only means by which hundreds of newly formed towns and mining camps have been kept in communication with the civilized world.

With these comments the Deseret News voiced what was commonly acknowledged in the state, that Wells, Fargo 8c Co., despite some difficult moments, had played a significant and positive role in the history of Salt Lake City and Utah for over sixty years.

100 Consolidated Bank Statements for Utah Banks in March and May, 1905, Records of the Utah Secretary of State: C A . Glazier, State Bank Examiner in Report of the Secretary of State, 1905-1906 in Public Documents of Utah, p. 6; Records of the Minute Books of the Board of Directors of Walker Brothers for April, 1905, concerning purchase of the Wells Fargo Bank, Salt Lake. l01 SaltLake City Directory, 1906 (Salt Lake City: R.L. Polk & Co., 1906), p. 933.

102 Correspondence in Corporate File, Office of the Utah Secretary of State, J u n e 28, 1918.

103 Deseret News, April 12, 1930. Newspaper file in the Journal History.

var

' *"iT'<-

New Orleans, where the Germanicus passengers debarked, was drawn by Frederick Piercy, who made the voyage a year earlier, for his book Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley, Illustrated. After 1855 Mormon immigrants ivere no longer routed through New Orleans.

Germanicus Passengers: From England to Early Settlement in Utah and Idaho

BY J A N E T E. WORRALL

4, 1854, THE GERMANICUS left Liverpool for New Orleans with a company of 220 Mormons on board, their ultimate destination the Great Salt Lake Valley. These men, women, and children

O N APRIL

Dr. Worrall is associate professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley.

She would like to thank the University of Northern Colorado Faculty Research and Publication Board for partially funding research for this project.

Germanicus Passengers

41

represented only a small part of the 85,000 Mormon converts who crossed the Atlantic on their way to America between 1840 and 1890. Although several general accounts of this migration have been written, there are few studies of single ships and the experiences of individual emigrants in America. What follows is a reconstruction of the voyage on the Germanicus and the experiences of its passengers after their debarkation in New Orleans through their settlement in Utah and Idaho. 1 I A profile of the Germanicus passengers can be formed from the ship's list which gives age, family relationship, sex, occupation, and residence for the travelers. Among Germanicus Mormons there was a fairly even distribution of sexes with 112 males and 108 females.

They were a youthful group â&#x20AC;&#x201D; nearly half were between 15 and 40 years of age and less than one-fifth were over 40. T h e Mormon tendency to emigrate in families was evident among this group with 175 of the 220 coming as part of a family group. Of the 45 passengers traveling alone, several were going to join families already in Utah or were men going in advance of families that would come later. 2 T h e passenger list gave occupations for 64 of the 72 adult males aboard the Germanicus, but with many j o b titles ambiguous only general occupational categories can be discerned from the available information. Thirty-four of the 64 occupations could be considered skilled or semi-skilled, including bricklayers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, bakers, and textile workers. Agricultural workers accounted for 18 men, including laborers and gardeners. Men in commerce and business n u m b e r e d 6, professionals 4, and miners 2. In many instances emigrants changed jobs quickly in Utah, suggesting either a minimal commitment or a lack of opportunity to follow their professed occupation. 3 1

For general studies of Mormon emigration see P. A .M. Taylor, Expectations Westward: The Mormons and the Emigration of Their British Converts in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966); William Mulder, Homeward to Zion: The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957); Conway B. Sonne, Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration, 1830-1890 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983). Useful works on non-Mormon migration are Caroline Golab, Immigrant Destinations (Philadelphia: T e m p l e University Press, 1977); Robert F. Foerster, The Italian Emigration of Our Times (New York: Russell & Russell, 1919); Philip Taylor, The Distant Magnet: European Emigration to the U.S.A. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).

2 British Mission Manuscript History (hereafter BMH), April 4, 1854, pp. 5-11, LDS Church Library-Archives, Salt Lake City.

3 Ibid.

42

Utah Historical Quarterly

Residences given by Germanicus passengers showed considerable geographical dispersion, with the exception of London which accounted for 84 of the 191 for whom information is available. This is consistent with other studies that show a preponderant n u m b e r of emigrants in the period 1850-62 coming from London. Substantial numbers left the industrial n o r t h e r n areas of England with Nottinghamshire accounting for 31, Yorkshire 18, Lancashire 16, Bedfordshire 15, Kent 10, Worcester 4, Norfolk 3, and 1 each from Cheshire, Middlesex, Surrey, and Lincolnshire. Four came from Glasgow and 5 from Jersey. Correlation of occupational data and residence is not possible d u e to the diversity of occupations, but one can observe that the large n u m b e r of Germanicus males in skilled and semi-skilled trades seem to have come from u r b a n rather than rural areas, with London having a large n u m b e r of tradesmen. 4 Once organized in Liverpool, the emigrant company chose three men as their leaders. They gave advice and comfort to the passengers throughout the trip. Foremost was Richard Cook who had been in England as a missionary for two years and was r e t u r n i n g h o m e in 1854. James Works, a returning missionary from New York, and James H. Hart, former president of the Channel Islands conference, assisted Cook. H a r t planned to stay in the United States and was accompanied by his wife, Emily, and her sister and two daughters. Due to Emily's poor health, the Harts were the only ones to travel cabin class rather than steerage. 5 When the Germanicus left Liverpool for New Orleans, 394 passengers filled the ship's two decks. In addition to the 220 English Saints, there were 153 Irish, 19 Germans, and 2 Scots. O n e passenger described the Germanicus as "a most splendid vessel," and indeed it was, measuring 184' 2" x 37' x 18' 6" with a registered tonnage of 1,167. As the captain and principal owner of the ship, A r t h u r M. Fales, ordered the anchor lifted, the Saints burst into songs of Zion, thereby beginning one of over three h u n d r e d voyages of M o r m o n i m m i g r a n t c o m p a n i e s across the Atlantic in t h e nineteenth century. 6 T h e journey lasted 69 days â&#x20AC;&#x201D; April 4 to J u n e 12 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; considerably longer than the average of 54 days. At first rough seas caused 4 Church Shipping Lists, LDS Church Library-Archives; Philip A. M. Taylor, "Why Did British Mormons Emigrate," Utah Historical Quarterly 22 (1954): 260.

5 Millennial Star 16 (April 15, 1854): 240.

6 Passenger Lists, National Archives, Washington, D . C ; C Sonne to J. Worrall, August 18, 1983; Thomas Featherstone Diary, LDS Church Library-Archives.

43

Germanicus Passengers discomfort and cursing from the crew as pets and passengers flew about. One Saint recorded, "I thought it was the biggest hell that ever I was in or ever wished to be in." 7 T h e opposite extreme followed in and near the Caribbean as the ship was becalmed for twenty days with the temperature 120 degrees on deck in the shade and 110 b e t w e e n d e c k s . A c c o r d i n g to t h e Mormons, the dirty habits of the other passengers exacerbated the already intolerable situation. Eventually favorable winds arose, but the delay caused a water shortage, necessitating stops at Grenada and the Tortugas (near Key West). Another delay came when the ship briefly ran aground at Key West. 8

James H. Hart, one of the leaders of the Germanicus Mormons. USHS collections.

Despite the length of the journey the passengers remained remarkably healthy. Only four deaths occurred during the 69-day voyage: an elderly German who boarded in ill health, a German child, the infant daughter of Richard Major, and Mary Warren, who died after delivering an eleven and a half p o u n d son named Germanicus. T h e latter two deaths were Mormons. 9 O n Sunday, J u n e 12, the Saints met on deck to make final preparations for debarking. James Hart read his journal to the group, and Richard Cook gave final instructions warning the passengers to watch their luggage in New Orleans "and not to get Drunk But to take care of there [sic] Money and not to eat any Beef or Fruit." 10 All were in good spirits and eager to complete the trip to Salt Lake City, despite warnings that it was too late to start and that they would be frozen in the mountains. Captain Fales complimented the immigrants on their upright behavior, the only exceptions being two sisters who became friendly with ship's officers. Even though Hart 7

Featherstone Diary.

Andrew Jenson, ed., Church Emigration, 2, 3 vols., 1831-1881, looseleaf binders, MS d 4088, LDS Church Library - Archives; Millennial Star, 16: (July 22, 1854): 463; BMH, April 4, 1854, p. 4.

"Featherstone Diary; Millennial Star, 16: 462-63.

10 Featherstone Diary.

8

44

Utah Historical Quarterly

and counselor Thomas Armstrong tried to dissuade them, the young women chose to stay in New Orleans. One other passenger, Alfred Lardent, decided to stay with a relative in port and ignored the advice of his fellow passengers that he would never get to the Salt Lake Valley.11 After landing in New Orleans the immigrants faced several days on one of the hazardous steamers plying the Mississippi River.

Within two hours after arriving in the port, Richard Cook made arrangements with Captain Levensworth of the sidewheeler Uncle Sam for the trip to St. Louis (adults paid $3.50 each; children u n d e r fourteen went for half fare; luggage was free). T h e passengers transferred their luggage to the steamboat on a hot and humid Monday and Tuesday. T h e n the Uncle Sam, one of the largest boats on the Mississippi, departed at 3:00 P.M. Tuesday, J u n e 14.12 T h e journey to St. Louis brought some discomfort and varied activities to the passengers. T h e weather remained hot and humid, with frequent thunder and lightning storms. Many passengers slept on the deck and cabin floors where it was cooler than in the berths.

T h e water was unsafe to drink. A few men snatched the available jobs on the steamer at $ 1.30 a day. When the boat stopped to take on wood or deliver salt and molasses, passengers scrambled ashore and ran along the river bank for exercise. Women hastily washed clothes while others purchased supplies. On J u n e 20 the ship reached Memphis where the youngest passenger, five-week-old Germanicus Warren, died. Thomas Armstrong conducted the burial service. As the steamer approached the quarantine island below St. Louis on J u n e 23, the Saints rejoiced that the trip to Zion was nearly over, but they faced yet another peril. 13 Disease was an ever-present danger on the Mississippi in the summer months, especially where immigrants gathered near cities.

Cholera had taken a devastating toll on several groups of Danish immigrants in the spring of 1854. Cholera would also claim twentyfour (11 percent) of the Germanicus passengers, striking husbands, wives, and children indiscriminately. Of these twenty-four victims, twenty died in J u n e and July. Only three were adult males, the rest were women and children. In three cases a mother and two of her children died; in one instance a mother died, leaving her four chil11

Millennial Star, 16: 462-63.

Ibid.

13 Featherstone Diary.

12

Germanicus Passengers

45

St. Louis from Frederick Piercy's Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley. Cholera took the lives of many immigrants during the summer months on the Mississippi.

dren, ages eleven to three, orphaned. Her husband had died in England the previous November. Fortunately, someone adopted the children and took them to Utah. T h e eldest subsequently married one of the passengers from the Germanicus.14 Details are not clear, but the disease apparently took hold when the passengers were detained on the quarantine island. One passenger reported, "Our detention at quarantine was not necessary as we had obtained a clean bill of health from the doctor." 15 James Hart made the same point although exaggerated, We . . . arrived at New Orleans J u n e 12th. T e n days later we debarked, by special request of our own people, on an old hulk called the Hannibal, attached to the Quarantine Island, about 5 miles from St. Louis.. . . and about one third of the Company died of Asiatic Cholera on said Island, or, in St. Louis.

It is impossible to determine how many Germanicus Mormons went directly to the Salt Lake Valley. Lists for companies crossing the 14 William A. Empey Diary, typescript, Utah State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City; list compiled by Linda Haslam, LDS Church Library - Archives, from St. Louis, Missouri, branch record of membership, 1849-62; Family Group Sheet (hereafter FGS), James Roe, Genealogical Department, Salt Lake City.

15 Thomas Sleight to Andrew Jensen, Paris, Idaho, January 8, 1917, in BMH, April 4, 1854, p. 4.

16 Edward L. Hart, Mormon in Motion: The Life and Journals of James H. Hart, 1825-1906, in England, France, and America (Salt Lake City: Deseret Press, 1978), p. 123. As a result of the high death rate on the Mississippi, Brigham Young urged Franklin D. Richards, president of the British Mission, to send future companies to Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. If ships went to New Orleans they were to leave England no later than December 1 to insure passing up the Mississippi before the warm weather began. T h e last ship destined for New Orleans sailed in January 1855. Thereafter, all went to eastern ports and exclusively to New York beginning in 1858.

46

Utah Historical Quarterly

plains in 1854 are fragmentary at best. Many immigrants delayed the plains trip for lack of money, illness, pregnancy, or for extended visits with friends in one of the several midwestern Mormon communities.

Representative of this group was T h o m a s Featherstone and his wife Emma. They escaped the dangers of the quarantine island by obtaining a permit from the inspecting doctor to take the ferry to St. Louis. T h e r e , by chance, they met a fellow Mormon who housed them for three weeks until they found their own quarters. Featherstone found ajob paying $2.50 for a ten-hour day. While better off than many of their immigrant friends, they found conditions left much to be desired: they disliked the American food in St. Louis, preferring English food; the weather was hot, sleep was difficult, and h u n d r e d s were dying from cholera that summer. In the fall Featherstone contracted typhoid fever and was ill all winter, not regaining his health until the spring of 1855. However, the Featherstones eventually grew to like St. Louis. But Utah beckoned, and in 1857 they departed from the outfitting post of Florence, Nebraska, for Salt Lake City.17 Other immigrants of this group also postponed the trip west.

Thomas Barratt's wife, Mary, had died in St. Louis on January 5, 1855, and he waited there with his stepson, Thomas, for his new bride, Ellen Julian, to come from England. Mary had requested that should she die, her husband should marry one of the Julian sisters, her friends in England. Similarly, William Brown remained in St. Louis with his three surviving children after losing his wife and two children in the summer of 1854. He married an Englishwoman on December 24, 1854, in St. Louis, and she bore their first four children there before the family headed west. Finally, lack of money kept Joseph and Margaret Dunkley in New Orleans until the winter of 1854-55 when they went to St. Louis. T h e r e Joseph worked as a blacksmith until leaving for Utah the summer of 1855 with one of the Mormon companies. 18 Certainly some passengers on the Germanicus crossed the plains in 1854, but the only ones who can be documented are the returning missionaries Richard Cook and James Works. From St. Louis they 17

Featherstone Diary.

FGS, T h o m a s Barratt; FGS, William Parker Brown; K. Wright Dunkley, Joseph Dunkley Ancestors and Descendants, 1963, p. 6, a family history available as a bound volume and on microfilm in the LDS Church Genealogical Department.

18

Germanicus Passengers

47

went to the Mormon outfitting post in Westport, Missouri (near Kansas City). T h e r e both Cook and Works joined the Sixth Company led by Capt. Robert L. Campbell. Cook served as the captain's first counselor and Works took charge of the loose herd. After arriving in Salt Lake â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a trip of nearly 1,200 miles â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the company rewarded Works with a buffalo robe and $600 for his careful tending of the company's animals. 19 II It is difficult to trace the Germanicus passengers from St. Louis to Utah, but of the 220, 87 reached Utah, according to documentation from family group sheets, the Crossing the Plains Index, local histories, gazetteers, and census reports. Unfortunately, information from these sources is spotty and often does not indicate where the individuals settled upon arrival, only that they reached Utah or were in Utah sometime after 1854. Complete information on initial and subsequent settlements exists for only 24 (9 children and 15 adults) of the 87. This is not surprising, for unless people emigrated as a unit and settled in one place, as was the custom of groups like the Hutterites and Mennonites, they cannot be traced. However, one can make several useful observations on the nature of settlement for those on whom data can be found. Although this information is not statistically significant, it is historically significant in that it sharpens the picture of frontier life for Mormons in particular and immigrants in general. 20 T h e Germanicus passengers who can be traced dispersed throughout Utah and Idaho. Some chose recently formed communities like American Fork, which had attracted a large n u m b e r of British and Scandinavian immigrants since its foundation in 1853.

T h o m a s Barratt, who married one of the Julian sisters, apparently went directly to American Fork from St. Louis, for the couple's first child was born there in October 1856. Relatives of Ellen Julian had settled in American Fork prior to her emigration, which no doubt made the town attractive to the couple. Barratt had been a lacemaker in England; in Utah he quickly turned to farming. T h e family prospered and by 1870 had $ 1,000 in real estate wealth and $300 in

'"Journal History of the Church, October 28, 1854, p p . 2-34, LDS Church Library - Archives.

Crossing the Plains Index, LDS Church Library - Archives. T h e author has checked census rolls, but information was often illegible or incomplete; positive identifications, with a few exceptions, could not be made.

20

48

Utah Historical Quarterly

Many Germanicus passengers chose to make their home in American Fork and most remained to build up the town. Originally called Lake City, the town changed its name in 1860 to avoid confusion with Salt Lake City. USHS collections.

personal wealth. They raised twelve children, several of whom remained in American Fork where T h o m a s and Ellen died in 1906 and 1930 respectively. 21 T h e Barratt presence in American Fork probably encouraged T h o m a s and Emma Featherstone to move there in 1858. T h e Featherstones lived briefly in Salt Lake City where T h o m a s worked on public works and served in the militia. When they moved to American Fork in 1858 they lived with the Barratts temporarily until they found housing. T h o m a s continued his trade as a brickmason and prospered. In 1860 his real estate was valued at $250, increasing to $1,000 by 1870. His personal wealth climbed from $300 in 1860 to $600 in 1870. 22 21 American Fork was first named Lake City, but confusion with Salt Lake City led to the n a m e change American Fork in 1860. J. Paul Broadhead, "A History of the American Fork Citizen, 1903-1973" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1973), p p . 10, 13; FGS, T h o m a s Barratt; J. R. Kearl a n d Clayne L. Pope, Index to the 1850, 1860, and 1870 Censuses of Utah Heads of Households (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1981).

22 Featherstone Diary; Kearl and Pope, Index.

Germanicus Passengers

49

T h e Featherstones remained in American Fork, raising four children. Thomas Featherstone, Jr., followed his father's trade as a brickmason, married another resident of American Fork, and remained there to raise a family of six. In 1866 Thomas Featherstone, Sr., married a second time, choosing another English immigrant, Martha Richards, who bore four children. Thomas died in nearby Lehi in 1918; his wife Emma preceded him in 1913.23 James Hoggard, a Germanicus passenger, had also settled in American Fork with his family by 1858. Hoggard had waited in the Midwest for his wife Emily and five children who left England in 1855. They had their sixth child, Hyrum, in Iowa in 1856 and then headed west. James farmed, and by 1860 his combined real and personal wealth was $550. James and Emily spent the rest of their lives in American Fork where they died in 1883 and 1896 respectively. Their son Hyrum, a blacksmith, married Mary Anne Featherstone in 1878. They showed the same geographical stability as their parents. Mary Anne and Hyrum spent their lives in American Fork where they raised seven children. 24 T h e experiences of the Barratts, Featherstones, and Hoggards indicate that American Fork was attractive to both the first and second generations. Once settled there, both generations chose to stay. Close ties between passengers from the Germanicus continued and in the case of Mary Anne Featherstone and Hyrum Hoggard resulted in marriage.

While many immigrants settled south of Salt Lake City, Brigham Young also encouraged Mormons to move into the north end of the Cache Valley. In 1860 residents of Provo, Slaterville, Kays Creek (Kaysville), Payson, and Bountiful responded. They drove their wagons north in mid-April and began the settlement of Green Meadows, later called Franklin after Franklin D. Richards, president of the British Mission. Wagons, with the running gear removed, served as the first houses. During the spring and summer of 1860 sixty families moved to Franklin, Idaho, establishing the first colony in northern Cache Valley. They built homes, an irrigation canal for crops, roads into the canyon to gather wood, and a schoolhouse.

Among the first settlers from Provo were Joseph and Margaret Dunkley who had sailed on the Germanicus.2* 23

FGS, Thomas Featherstone.

FGS, James Hoggard.

25 James Ira Young, "The History and Development of Franklin, Idaho, during the Period 1860-1900" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1949), pp. 55-60.

24

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Utah Historical Quarterly

T h e Dunkley experiences are well documented and provide details of the hardships e n d u r e d by ordinary people. Joseph converted to Mormonism in England, much to his parents' dismay.

When he and Margaret, his wife, decided to leave for Utah, his parents again objected strenuously. As noted earlier, the Dunkleys stopped in New Orleans and continued the trip to Utah in 1855.

Joseph was a talented calico printer, but in Utah he became a farmer for want of a job in his trade. T h e Dunkleys bought a farm in Franklin that was their h o m e until 1888 when financial problems forced Joseph to sell and move to a farm in nearby Whitney. 26 Both Joseph and Margaret desired a large family, but Margaret was unable to bear children. When Joseph took a second wife, Mary Ann Hobbs, he had to promise Margaret that she could raise the first-born child. Only then would Margaret agree to Joseph's second marriage. Mary Ann had left England in the spring of 1864 with her mother, twin sister, and two brothers. H e r father had died in her infancy, and her two older brothers had left for America prior to her d e p a r t u r e . Mary Ann apparently came directly to the Salt Lake Valley and then Franklin, for on April 17, 1866, she delivered Joseph's first child. Unfortunately, an inexperienced midwife believed that the afterbirth followed immediately. She pulled on the umbilical cord, causing internal bleeding and Mary Ann's death at nineteen. Margaret raised the child until her death in 1873. 27 In November 1868, still desirous of a family, Joseph took a third wife, another immigrant, Margaret Wright. She had migrated twice: from her native Scotland to Liverpool and then to Utah. She crossed the Atlantic with her mother, siblings, and 457 other Saints on the Constitution, docking in New York August 5, 1868. After reaching Salt Lake City the Wright family was attracted to Franklin where a stepson and brother lived. After a very short courtship Joseph and Margaret were married. 28 Margaret fulfulled her husband's desire for a family by bearing twelve children â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the first eleven in Franklin, the last in nearby Whitney. All but two reached adulthood; the ninth, a girl b o r n in 1883, lived only eight months, the eleventh was stillborn. Unlike their father, the Dunkley children did not marry immigrants, r a t h e r o t h e r A m e r i c a n M o r m o n s . T h e y lived out their lives in the 26

Dunkley, Joseph Dunkley, pp. 5, 6, 8, 74; FGS, Joseph Dunkley.

Ibid., pp. 10, 30.

28 Ibid., pp. 38.

27

Germanicus Passengers

>

51

t

Urban areas like Salt Lake City attracted some immigrants. This shot of Main Street in 1869 shows Ransohoffs where one Germanicus passenger workedfor a time.

USHS collections.

Franklin-Whitney, Idaho, and n o r t h e r n Utah areas, showing little geographical mobility. T h e sons worked as farmers or in related work as cattlemen, milk inspectors, and dairymen. One became an independent grocer. T h e children remained faithful to the church and served on missions as far away as T u r k e y but always returned to their h o m e in Cache Valley.2" While these four families â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Barratts, Featherstones, Hoggards, and Dunkleys â&#x20AC;&#x201D; preferred rural areas, other passengers on the Germanicus sought the towns of Ogden and Salt Lake City. Representative of these was the Tribe family. T h e father, Joseph Tribe, died in St. Louis on August 4, 1854, probably of cholera, although his death was attributed to "brain fever" caused by the summer's heat. H e left his wife Sarah and five children, ranging from age five to fifteen years. T h e support of the family fell to the eldest, Henry, who held jobs as waiter, woodcutter, and hauler while the family wintered in St. Louis. In 1855 they headed for Utah, settling in Ogden. 30 2!

Tbid., pp. 69-143; FGS, Joseph Dunkley.

Deseret Evening News, February 16, 1914; August 28, 1909.

30

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Eventually all three Tribe sons contributed to the business and commercial life of Ogden and Salt Lake City. Henry traded his wood-hauling job for work with the Ransohoff Company in Salt Lake City, followed by a position with Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) in O g d e n from 1869 to 1877. By 1870 his real and personal property had a combined value of $3,500, a substantial sum. In 1884 the Ogden Directory listed him as a commercial traveler/merchant, a position he held until his death in 1909. H e left two families: one in the Salt Lake City area with a wife, son, and daughter, and one in O g d e n with a wife, son, and two daughters. 3 1 George H. Tribe was eleven when he came to Utah. Four years later he recrossed the plains with his brother-in-law, Emerson Shurtliff, husband of Mary A n n Tribe, to meet a party of immigrants and serve as their guide to Utah. Showing the same propensity for business as his brother, George also worked for the Ransohoff Company, eventually managing one of its branch stores in Moroni. After five years with the company and time out for militia service against Indians, he helped establish telegraph offices south to St. George. At Toquerville he was the telegraph operator and manager for four months. By the 1870s George was an established storekeeper in Ogden with personal wealth of $1,000. Subsequently he became a banker. H e was on the executive board of the First National Bank for fifteen years and then its vice-president for the last ten years of his life. Death came in 1914 after a four-year struggle with cancer. 32 George married an immigrant from Ham, Sussex, Anna Maria Foulger, in 1870. She died eight years later, leaving four children. In 1879 George married Elizabeth Harriet Foulger, probably Anna Maria's sister. Elizabeth bore eight children before her death in 1899. Five years later George married Emma Quinney, a thirtyyear-old divorcee from Logan. This union produced no children. 33 David, the youngest of the Tribe sons, also followed a business career and for a time was associated with his brother George. David and his wife, Sarah Ann Peterson, from Peterson, Utah, settled in Ogden. Of their nine children, seven reached maturity and two died when infants. David survived all his brothers and sisters, dying in 31 Deseret Evening News, August 28, 1909; Kearl and Pope, Index; Robert W. Sloan, ed., Utah Gazetteer and Directory of Logan, Ogden, Provo and Salt Lake Cities for 1884 (Salt Lake City, 1884). ^Deseret Evening News, February 16, 1914; Kearl and Pope, Index.

33 FGS, George Harrison Tribe.

Germanicus Passengers

53

1925 at the age of seventy-six. T h e Tribe brothers contributed substantially to the development of economic life in Ogden. All three provided an element of stability for Odgen as well as for the church in which they actively participated. 34 Another Germanicus passenger, T h o m a s Armstrong, also pref e r r e d u r b a n life a n d sought a livelihood in Salt Lake City.

Armstrong left England with his wife Elizabeth, son Thomas, and sixty-year-old Eliza, perhaps his mother. On board the Germanicus Armstrong served as counselor and on at least one occasion buried a child who succumbed on the Uncle Sam. His wife may have died shortly after arriving in Salt Lake City, for Thomas married Mary Ann Miles of Essex, England, in 1855. Mary Ann was the mother of a n o t h e r Germanicus passenger, Francis Hawkes, a twenty-fouryear-old baker. When Mary A n n came to Utah is uncertain, but it was probably after her husband, Francis's father, died in England in 1838. In 1860 Thomas Armstrong, Jr., was seventeen and boarded with his stepbrother, Francis Hawkes, in Salt Lake City. Both Armstrongs engaged in business; the father as a bookkeeper for the firm Kimball and Lawrence and the son as a grain dealer. Both died in Salt Lake City, the father in 1900 and the son in 1893. They apparently left the faith once in Utah, for the obituary notices make no mention of church affiliation, a usual practice then and now. 35 Ill What does this miscellany of lives reveal about immigrant life in general and the lives of these English Mormons in particular? Many raised large families but faced the deaths of two or three of their children before they reached their teenage years. T h e rigors of life were particularly hard on women, as seen in the cholera epidemic in St. Louis that took eighteen female as opposed to six male lives.

Childbearing and poor medical practices contributed to other deaths of young women. Yet the risks of travel and frontier life did not d a m p e n the enthusiasm of women to emigrate, and frequently sisters or widows with children went to join relatives already in Utah.

Settlement and marriage practices were contingent on many factors, including occupations, family ties, and opportunity. Mormon emigrants settled in both urban and rural locations. Those with S4

SaltLake Telegram, October 14, 1925; FGS, David William Tribe.

B M H , April 4, 1854, p. 7; Featherstone Diary; FGS, William Hawkes; Edward L. Sloan, ed., Utah and Salt Lake City Directory (Salt Lake City, 1874); Utah Gazetteer, 1884; Deseret Weekly, April 27, 1893; Deseret Evening News, November 30, 1900.

35

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Utah Historical Quarterly

occupational backgrounds in business chose the growing commercial life of Salt Lake City and Ogden, while skilled and semiskilled workers settled in either u r b a n or rural areas. Many m e n left their trades for agricultural work, given the availability of land. Extended families tended to settle in the same towns and served as a magnet for relatives who came later. Towns soon became identified as the home of the Julian, Tribe, or Dunkley families. T h e r e was also a tendency for first-generation emigrants to choose English-born mates rather than American-born mates, while the second generation commonly chose native-born Americans. Personal preference as well as availability probably explain this tendency.

T h e Germanicus passengers scattered throughout Utah and southern Idaho. They had shared and survived a critical time together between Liverpool and the Salt Lake Valley, b o u n d by a common faith. Once settled, they showed remarkable geographical stability. Large families were born and raised in one town a n d the second generation was inclined to remain in the same town or close by. A reconstruction of the lives of these pioneers demonstrates how vital they were to the frontier's development. Transplanted to a new country, they adjusted to the climate, land, and new occupations with perseverance and determination, inspired by the church that had motivated them to move in the first place.

Bridge: A Railroading Community on the Great Salt Lake

By DORIS R. D A N T

not where people would clamor to live but where it was needed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; atop the eastern end of the fill forming part of the bed for the train tracks traversing the Great Salt Lake. On top of huge twenty-ton boulders sloping down on two sides to the water there was room for two tracks, a telegraph station on their north side, an old boxcar on one side of it, one or two thrown-together shacks on the other side of it in good years, a water cistern, and a semaphore signal. Actually there was not even that much room, as the shacks h u n g out over the sides and had to be supported by pilings, and the community outhouse rested u p o n

T H E COMMUNITY OF BRIDGE WAS BUILT

Doris Dant is an English instructor at Brigham Young University.

Sy Napper, left, and an unidentified man on a handcar at Bridge. Courtesy of Lydia Napper.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

pilings right in the lake. T h e r e were no trees and no flowers and only occasional bands of marauding mice. If you walked along the tracks inland to the shore, there was still little sign of life â&#x20AC;&#x201D;just glittering salt and, in season, dead or dying pelicans.

As Bridge was one-fourth of a mile to a mile away from the shore and (if you could b u m p across the rough terrain in a car) fifty to eighty miles from the nearest city of Odgen, accessibility was ordinarily limited to train traffic.1 Even on a train you would have to travel about thirty miles.

Bridge was home to various telegraphers for fifteen years. One of them, a Mr. Pratt, applied in 1941 at Southern Pacific in Ogden for a telegrapher's position. A typical boomer, or railroader who frequently changed both jobs and locale, Pratt traveled lightly, even more so because he had always worked in eastern railroad stations that were adjoined by towns with hotels. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for Bridge, his new assignment, and no one in Ogden warned him. Carrying no food and no bedding, Pratt arrived in Bridge only to learn that there were no hotels, no restaurants, no stores, and no immediate means of reaching those in Ogden. T h e kindness of the other two inhabitants saved him from cold and hunger, 2 but he could not escape the stark isolation, poor accommodations, and total dependency on the railroad that formed much of the life at Bridge.

T h e foundation of Bridge was literally built during the construction of the Lucin Cutoff. In 1901 a general revamping of the Southern Pacific lines was begun. One of the major projects discussed was rerouting the lines that ran from Ogden u p through Promontory, around the north shore of the Great Salt Lake, and over to Lucin. William Hood, chief engineer for SP, had always dreamed of routing the lines straight across the lake. When he proposed that his dream become reality, several objections were raised, the most relevant being that the severe storms on the lake would wash away part of the fill and damage the structural integrity of the trestle and that the lake, which was at its lowest level since 1873, would rise again and engulf both fill and trestle. 3 1 Interviews with Farrel Ross, Oakland, California, July 12 and August 14, 1984; interviews with Jack Dockter, Ogden, Utah, August 8-10, 1984.

2 Ross interview.

3 Oscar King Davis, "The Lucin Cut-off: A Remarkable Feat of Engineering across the Great Salt Lake on Embankment and Trestle," Century 71 (January 1906): 460-65; Deon C. Greer, et al., Atlas of Utah (Odgen and Provo, Ut.: Weber State College and Brigham Young University Press, 1981), p. 45.

All the references to specific lake levels are to this page.

Bridge: A Railroading Community

57

Nevertheless, a change was badly needed. T h e proposed cutoff would shorten the distance by forty-three miles and thus save time.

(After the cutoff was built, it saved twenty-one to twenty-seven hours per trip.) Even more important, it would eliminate sharp curves and steep grades of u p to 2.2 percent, which required three locomotives for freight trains and two for just one-half or one-third of a passenger train. 4 Hood's proposal was adopted and construction began in March 1902. T h e cutoff was designed to use fill as much as possible and then a trestle in the deeper part of the lake. In the area where Bridge was eventually built, a temporary trestle was constructed to support a track for the trains that transported fill material to the d u m p site.

This trestle (and the other temporary trestles) were constructed by establishing stations at each mile end of the route and setting two pile-drivers to work back to back. T h e workmen were quartered right on the site "well out of the way of storm-waves" in a boarding house resting on a platform supported by piles. For this privilege the men paid four dollars a week each, but supplies and cooks were free.

(Two camps, Camp 10, later r e n a m e d Colin, and Camp 20, situated on the permanent trestle and later known as Midlake, will be referred to again.) 5 Working in ten-hour shifts a r o u n d the clock and with no days off, the men would drive four seventy-foot piles, then move down the route fifteen feet to drive four more. A total of twenty-five piles was considered a good day's work. T h e progress would be much slower either at this side of the western arm of the lake or at the other side when the 3,200-pound hammers could drive a pile only a few inches. Sometimes, when the pile was already thirty to forty feet deep, it would rebound two or three feet after being struck. T h e n a hole had to be steam-blasted. 6 T h e men had to live at their stations until their work was completed. T h e r e was no store available and no bar. In fact, liquor was strictly forbidden. Even the packages from home and the supplies were searched for contraband, and any found was for4 Davis, "The Lucin Cut-off," pp. 460, 468; J. E. Newby, "Great Salt Lake Railroad Crossing," Great Salt Lake: A Scientific, Historical and Economic Overview, ed. J. Wallace Gwynn, Utah Department of Natural Resources Bulletin 116, June 1980, p. 393.

5 Davis, "The Lucin Cut-off," pp. 462-63; Dockter interviews; Neill C. Wilson and Frank J. Taylor, Southern Pacific: The Roaring History of a Fighting Railroad (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1952), p. 111.

6 Davis, "The Lucin Cut-off," pp. 464-66.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

feited. T h u s even the excitement provided by d r u n k e n brawls was largely missing. 7 After the piles were driven, capped with a heavy beam, and connected by the stringers (big timbers laid parallel to the track), and the temporary track built, trains started backing out to the dumpsite with the fill materials. At first, gravel and dirt were used, but the lake floated those materials away; so huge multi-ton rocks were used that in turn were "swallowed u p . " D u m p i n g continued, however, until the fill started building u p ; then the finer materials were resorted to again. When the fill was completed, it was twenty feet wide at the top and sixteen or seventeen feet above the water. 8 T h e Lucin Cutoff with its twelve miles of p e r m a n e n t trestle, 2.5 miles of fill at the Promontory Point end, and 5.1 miles of fill at the opposite end, was opened to freight traffic on March 8, 1904, despite continuing problems with the fill sinking. Passenger traffic began on September 18, 1904. Across the lake, the trains traveled on a straight track boasted of as "more nearly level than an ordinary floor."9 Two-directional traffic was handled safely on the single track through the implementation of telegraph stations to direct a train to one of the frequent, mile-long sidings, two of which were at Colin and Midlake. T h e three telegraph stations primarily responsible for handling traffic over the trestle were Promontory Point on the east, Midlake, and Lakeside on the west.10 Due to the demands placed on the railroads d u r i n g World War I and the resulting congestion, the government took over control of Southern Pacific and the other railroads in December 1917 a n d did not return them to private control until March 1920. In that same year Ernest L. King was sent to supervise the O d g e n Division. By then the lake had risen and continued to rise until in 1924 it was nine feet above the level of 1902. King found that storms would d a m a g e the fill on both ends of the trestle, just as had been feared in 1901.

High winds would create waves u p to eight feet high and dash the heavy water (seventy-six p o u n d s per cubic foot) against the fill and roll away large rocks, sometimes enough of them that the track on 7

Ibid., p. 465.

Charles S. Fee, Great Salt Lake Cut-off: Going to Sea by Rail (San Francisco: Southern Pacific, 1920), pp. 26-27; Davis, " T h e Lucin Cut-off," p p . 463, 466-67.

9 Newby, "Great Salt Lake Railroad Crossing," p. 393; Davis, " T h e Lucin Cut-off," p p . 468; Fee, Great Salt Lake Cut-off, p. 27.

10 Davis, " T h e Lucin Cut-off," p p . 461, 466; The Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto [sic ]Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba, 86 vols. (New York: National Railway Publication Company, October 1920), 53:721; Dockter interviews.

8

Bridge: A Railroading Community

59

the north side could not be used. H e had rocks averaging twenty tons d u m p e d over the sides, starting thirty feet from the track, and gradually sloped the fill upwards â&#x20AC;&#x201D; thus the huge boulders found at Bridge. Also several major repairs were made to the trestle d u r i n g 1920-27. 11 In 1929 the double tracks were extended west from the station of Promontory Point to the beginning of the trestle. T h a t change meant that the controlling telegraph station should also be moved further west. Accordingly, in J u n e 1930 a new station was built on the fill about one-half mile east of the trestle. T h e station was named Bridge because it was near the end of the trestle, which was usually called T h e Bridge. Bridge became the only station between O g d e n and Lakeside; Promontory Point, which had had an agent and two telegraphers, and Midlake were both abolished. 12 Two of the men at Promontory Point chose to transfer to Bridge, one of them, the agent Al Holiday, because his family was in Ogden. He moved to an outfit car (a boxcar fixed u p as living quarters) on a spur at Saline, where his family visited him on weekends. T h e other man, one of the telegraphers (a Mr. Compton), briefly worked first trick (the 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. shift) at Bridge, then became ill. He was replaced by Jack Dockter. Jack, who had started working for Southern Pacific in 1929, was sent to Bridge because he was still on extra board. T h e extra board was composed of men who lacked the seniority to bid into a regular job; they were moved a r o u n d the various stations either to fill in for operators who were ill or on vacation or to open u p new or closed areas. Jack, too, lived at Saline until an outfit car and a cistern (for the domestic water supply) were moved to Bridge later in the summer. T h e n , because he was on first trick, he had first choice of housing. T h e third trick (midnight to 8 A.M.) was manned by L. P. Affleck, who also lived at Saline. 13 Of the first summer at Bridge, Jack remembered primarily the "big ballast rocks and the big black spiders in the office." H e remembered, too, that the water was almost u p to Saline (the lake was at 4,200 feet that year) and that big storms would push the waves u p the fill and over the tracks. When things dried off, the rails would be

11 Ernest L. King and Robert E. Mahaffay, Main Line: Fifty Years of Railroading with the Southern Pacific (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1948), pp. 181-82; Newby, "Great Salt Lake Railroad Crossing," pp. 394, 398.

12 Dockter interviews; Ross interviews.

13 Dockter interviews.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

white and the office windows so coated with salt he could hardly see out of them. 14 T h e operators at Bridge were kept busy not only with the usual volume of passenger and freight traffic but also with trains pulling "reefers," refrigerator cars shipped from California to the Chicago markets by Pacific Fruit Express, a subsidiary jointly owned by Southern Pacific and Union Pacific. When the harvest was over, the remaining volume of train traffic did not justify keeping telegraphers at Bridge, so it was closed the first of November. T h e pattern of heaviest traffic being from August to November held for much of the 1930s, because before the war, agricultural products were "one of the largest items in Southern Pacific traffic."15 Jack returned to Bridge in the winter of 1932. This time he worked second trick and lived at Saline with the signal maintainer for Promontory Point. T h e other tricks were m a n n e d by Carl Reynolds and Eric Wilson, the latter being one of the telegraphers at Promontory Point before that station was abolished. Wilson lived at Camp 10 in an outfit car. 16 By 1937 when Jack returned to Bridge, passenger traffic had so diminished that although Southern Pacific had restored all the "popular pre-depression trains," the freight and passenger totals still did not reach the 1929 totals. Therefore, only the first two tricks were manned, J o h n Reid sharing the duties. 17 This summer was more "exciting." At Saline lived Louie Gabrielli and Bob Goodnell, both bridge inspectors, whose duties included traveling in a motor launch u p the south side of the trestle to Lakeside and back via the north side. Louie had Jack shoot cottontails for them and reciprocated by cooking the rabbits and Italian food. By then the lake had receded to or below the 1902 level, so the shore was not as far away. Jack found, however, that he could not walk there too long, for the brilliant salty ground would blind him.

T h e station closed as usual in November, so Jack, who was still on extra board, was sent off to do relief work; but he returned again to man the station alone during the harvest season in 1939.

T h a t August and September Jack witnessed a p h e n o m e n o n that had been noted since at least 1935 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; pelicans coated with salt sitting 14

Ibid.

Ross interviews; Dockter interviews; S. Kip Farrington, Jr., Railroads at War (New York: Samuel Curl, 1944), p. 27.

16 Dockter interviews.

17 Ibid.; Southern Pacific's First Century (n. p.: n. d.), p. 66; Farrington, Railroads at War, p. 26.

15

Bridge: A Railroading Community

61

Dead pelicans were a common sight in the late 1930s when the lake level was low.

Examining a dead bird in September 1939 were, left to right, Ward Armstrong, Gordon Campbell, an unidentified man, and Jack Dockter. Courtesy of Jack Dockter.

upon the shoreline too weak to fly. Because Utah Lake and Great Salt Lake were very low and supported too few fish, the birds were undernourished. When they landed on the supersaturated waters of the Great Salt Lake, an "immense weight of salt" crystallized on them. T h e birds helplessly floated on the lake until death or were washed upon the shore. Somehow Ward Armstrong, who owned a sporting goods store in O g d e n and was affiliated with the fish and game department, heard about the pelicans and told Jack to bang them over the head with a baseball bat. (A couple who lived at Bridge

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Utah Historical Quarterly

in August 1941 were amazed by the great number of "dead ducks and other birds or their bones on the shore.") 18 Jack was able to bid into the job at Bridge in May 1940. He had married; his wife was living in Ogden and he wanted to be close by.

This year the station did not close down in November as usual.

Because of the war in Europe and the resulting bulge in defense shipping "in the closing months of that year, traffic began increasing so rapidly that the ton-miles of freight carried in 1940 were the greatest in its [Southern Pacific's] history up to that time." Jack stayed on alone over the winter, working a shift that went from 5:25 to 10:25 A.M. and from 11:25 A.M. to 3:25 P.M. Before he left at the end of J u n e he was joined for a time by Sy Napper. 19 Sy had already been on the railroad at that time one or two years, so he was able to bid into the job at Bridge. He was there a short while before he was joined by his wife Lydia. A new man, Farrel Ross, arrived August 10. Farrel had taken a telegrapher class offered by Southern Pacific at Weber College but was not offered a job on the extra board until two months later, when he was sent to the San Joaquin Division. He worked three days at one job, ten at another in a different location, and three at still another. T h e n some boomers came who were hired because they had more experience.

Out of work and out of money, Farrel called his former instructor, Mr. Beasley, who was a telegrapher at Ogden. Beasley told him to return, as the Salt Lake Division was now hiring. Farrel was sent to open up another trick at Bridge and a railroad shack was moved to Bridge to house him. His wife Delia stayed with her parents in Pleasant Grove until there was enough money for her to join him (ten days later). T h e Nappers left before she arrived and were replaced by Earl Wood, who had bid into the job and brought his wife Jean; he was in turn replaced by the boomer Pratt, who did not stay long.20 T h e type of recreation and the degree of socializing at Bridge were obviously influenced by the level of the lake and the amount of train traffic. However, the tenor of life there was influenced in other ways, one of them being, of course, the nature of the telegraphers' duties.

18 Dockter interviews; Dale L. Morgan, The Great Salt Lake (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., [1947]), pp. 374-75; Delia Ross, "House at Bridge," undated holograph, author's possession.

19 Dockter interviews; Farrington, Railroads at War, p. 37; interview with Lydia Napper, Martinez, California, August 4, 1984.

20 Napper interview; Ross holograph.

Bridge: A Railroading Community

63

T h e duties were shaped by the demands the single track across the trestle placed upon traffic control. When both an eastbound train and a westbound train approached the trestle, they were issued either a "meet" or a "wait." When the dispatcher in Ogden, who already knew what speed the trains would be traveling, also knew exactly where the trains were, he would "put out a meet." If, for example, the operator at Lakeside was "copying orders" for train # 5 7 6 and the one at Bridge was copying orders for # 3 7 6 9 , the order might read: "Extra # 3 7 6 9 take siding and meet # 5 7 6 at Midlake."

Probably neither train would be five minutes off schedule. If, however, the movement of the trains was more uncertain, a wait would be issued: "Extra # 3 7 6 9 wait at Colin until 5:30 P.M. for # 5 7 6 . " Sometimes the westbound train might wait fifteen to thirty minutes for the other train to come by. Most of the orders issued were meets and waits.21 T h e trains classified as "inferior" were the ones that had to do the waiting. T h e "drags," or trains pulling empty cars, had no right of way over any other train. Next up the scale of importance was usually the westbound freight train when paired with an eastbound freight. Even more superior was the fruit (a generic term for agricultural produce) train or a "hotshot manifest" ( a train carrying a very wide variety of manufactured goods). T h e most superior were passenger trains, and of them the streamliner was at the top of the list.22 Usually action was initiated by the dispatcher, who would telephone (unless the phone lines were down, in which case he would telegraph) a train's orders to the telegrapher. T h e telegrapher would copy them, repeat them back to the dispatcher, and never change a word after doing so. T h e n when he sighted the train (or sometimes when he was certain the train was due), he called the dispatcher for a "clearance." (The clearance gave the train permission to pass the station; without it the train would have to stop.)

Sometimes the dispatcher would then have another order; then the operator had to work more rapidly than usual to fasten one copy each of both the orders and the clearance to two "hoops." (The hoop was a bamboo pole with four and a half feet of its length used as a handle and its other end bent into an eighteen-inch circle. T h e papers were held in place by a clothespin-type clip.) T h e n the 21 22

Dockter interviews.

Ibid.

64

Utah Historical Quarterly

operator would take his lantern or turn on the floodlight if it was dark and stand about four and a half feet from the track to wait for the fireman to r u n his arm through the hoop, take off the papers, and throw the hoop down by the track. T h e procedure was repeated for the conductor at the end of the train. 23 Although the trains passing Bridge had slowed down â&#x20AC;&#x201D; speeds of 30 m p h for passenger trains and 20 for freight trains were the maximum on the trestle â&#x20AC;&#x201D; passing the hoop was still challenging.

T h e train would blow dust and steam all over the operator, a strong wind would make him feel he was about to be blown over, he had to hold the hoop tight enough so the wind would not blow it away or twist it but loose enough so that he would not pull the receiver off the train, and he had to release it at just the right moment. T h e sight and logistics would awe visitors from the salt mines at Saline. 24 As both ends of the train had to receive a clearance so each would know what was happening, if either man missed the hoop, he would have to stop the train and come back to the office for another one. T h e stop would ruin all the schedules. No such occurrences were reported for Bridge, but one of the operators, Sy Napper, did receive demerits at another station for such a mishap. 25 After the train passed, the operator had to "O. S. the train."

T h a t means that he had to call the dispatcher to report that the train had passed at such and such a time. O. S. stood for "on the sheet," referring to the sheet on which the dispatcher noted the information. T h e n , his duties over, the telegrapher could "go back to sleep."

One informant made the latter comment half jokingly. Actually, he received ten demerits at another station for falling asleep and not clearing the board before the train stopped. 26 If the train had no orders, the procedure was simpler but carried its own challenge. During the hours the office was open, the semaphore was kept in the "stop" position (both arms were in a horizontal position or the red light was on). A train could not proceed unless it saw the semaphore changed to the "proceed" position (the right arm d r o p p e d to a 45° angle or the green light was turned on) or unless it received a clearance from the telegrapher.

23

Ross interviews.

"Speeding Gravel from Hills to Lake Roadbed: Causeway across Great Salt Lake," Business Week (January 5, 1957): 69; Dockter interviews; Ross interviews.

25 Ross interviews; N a p p e r interviews.

26 Ross interviews; Dockter interviews.

24

Bridge: A Railroading Community

65

T h u s when the train was where it could see the signal, the operator "cleared the board" (dropped the arm), and the train would continue, knowing that it had nothing to pick u p . T h e challenge was to pull the lever on the control board neither so soon that the train was too far away to see the change nor so late that the train stopped. T h e air at Bridge was so clear that, until an operator became used to it, a train's headlights looked much closer than they actually were and the operator might change the semaphore too soon. Such a misj u d g m e n t was made by Farrel Ross, who, when the train stopped, had to call his dispatcher to report he needed a clearance for a train he had stopped. Fortunately he was not given any demerits, probably because the train was not an important one. 27 T h e experienced operator felt no pressure in carrying out these responsibilities, unless it was to stay awake during those frequent times when there was nothing to do. Everything was routine to him.

But the inexperienced operators, such as Sy and Farrel, did feel the pressure of doing the job properly so that they would not receive demerits from stopping a train. Receiving too many demerits meant that an operator would be fired; in those days jobs were considered too precious to risk. At first, Farrel would wake u p from a sound sleep in bed and "reach for the board," afraid that he had not given the proceed signal to an approaching train. 28 T h e most dramatic example of what the pressure did to those at Bridge was recorded by Delia Ross: One morning toward fall, while Farrel was still working, I arose and tried to start a fire in the pot-bellied stove so I could have breakfast ready when he finished work. No matter how hard I tried I could not get that fire to draw the smoke u p the chimney. It seems that the smoke stack on top of the house was not tall enough. T h e wind was blowing from a different direction and caused a downward draft instead of upward. Soon the house was filling with smoke. I started opening windows to get cross ventilation to blow the smoke out of the house.

These windows were the type that work by weights. T h e windows matched the cheap construction of the house; no weights had been put into the sides of the windows. As I pushed up on the frame of the bottom window, the top window frame fell, pinning all eight of my fingers between the top and bottom frame.

This window faced the west. As I looked u p prepared to scream for help, I saw the streamliner coming down the track. I dared not scream for fear Farrel would not pull the signal board at the right time and

27 28

Ross interviews.

Dockter interviews; Napper interviews; Ross interviews.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Farrel L. Ross taking a break from his telegrapher duties at Bridge. Swimming, walking, and watching the sunsets were other leisure activities. thus stop the train. As the train neared, I dared not scream for fear he would not get the orders handed up to the brakeman and stop the train. T h e n the noise of the train was too loud, and I could not be heard. As the train passed, I dared not scream until I felt Farrel had had enough time to "O. S." the train. T h e n I really screamed. Farrel came running, worked until I got my fingers released. They were unbelievably flat and hurt so much. I thought perhaps they were broken. They weren't; however each was badly bruised and cut where the frame fell on them. Our neighbor bandaged me up, but I couldn't use my fingers for some time. Farrel had to wash the black smoke from my face, hands and arms and get his own breakfast. 29

T h e equipment provided at the Bridge office was minimal and old-fashioned. Ordinarily, when the number of messages did not warrant a teletype, a typewriter was provided. Such was not the case here. Southern Pacific just tested the operators for legible handwriting. Furthermore, although keys had been available for decades that allowed messages to be sent simultaneously on the same wire in 'Ross holograph.

Bridge: A Railroading Community

67

each direction, only the standard single-use key was furnished. T h u s if Bridge opened its key, Lakeside could not send until that key was closed. Also all the operators down the line could hear any message sent out. A key, called the bug, which allowed more rapid transmission of messages, was in use at other locations in the country but not at Bridge. Jack Dockter did add his own improvement â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a tobacco can placed so that it touched the brass of the key's sounder and made the sound clearer and louder. 30 T h e wages of those at Bridge were considered quite satisfactory.

Jack Dockter, for instance, was paid in 1930 at 63% cents an hour, or $5.50 a day with only one monthly deduction â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 50 cents for the company hospital in San Francisco. By 1940 he was making 75 cents an hour. Farrel Ross started out at Bridge with 73 cents an hour.

Both men belonged to the O r d e r of Railroad Telegraphers, and that union negotiated their raises. T h e main prequisite offered was a pass for the family on some of the company passenger trains; exactly which trains a person could ride depended u p o n the operator's seniority. 31 These were the compensations for working eight hours a day seven days a week at straight time. Overtime was paid only when n o one was on duty when a train was late and another train was coming from Lakeside or for some other reason an order was needed. T h e n the dispatcher p h o n e d an operator at his quarters, sometimes at three or four in the morning. T o pass the orders, the operator received time and a half for one hour's work even though he actually worked only fifteen minutes. No vacations were given until sufficient seniority had built u p , and an operator had to remain on the j o b unless he arranged for a relief operator in advance, which is what Jack had to do when his first daughter was born. If an operator had a wife in Ogden, as Jack did, he could visit her only by catching a train and riding in a boxcar or whatever was available when his shift was over, visiting her for the next few hours, and returning in time to start 30 Charles L. Buckingham, " T h e Telegraph of To-day," The Electric Telegraph: An Historical Anthology, ed. George Shiers (New York: Arno Press, 1977), p p . 147-50; Ross interviews; Dockter interviews. Coordinating time between the telegraphers and the dispatcher apparently was done differently at different times. Farrel Ross states that a beep was sent over the telegraph at precisely 9 A.M. every day for him to set his watch by. Dockter's dispatcher called a r o u n d midnight and asked for the weather and the time; the two men then coordinated their watches. Having accurate watches was sufficiently important that the telegraphers were required to wear regulation watches a n d submit them for inspection. Again the inspection was done by different men, either annually by a certified jeweler or monthly by the watch inspector, who traveled the lines on a motor car to perform the inspections and kept a careful record of his findings on each telegrapher's watch card.

31

Ross interviews; Dockter interviews.

68

Utah Historical Quarterly

working again. T h e same practice had to be followed for any type of necessary excursion.

Such an occasion arose when Farrel wore holes t h r o u g h the soles of his shoes. After finishing his night shift, he walked to the beginning of the trestle and gave the engineer of a freight train the pickup sign. T h e train, which was already traveling slowly, slowed even m o r e to allow Farrel to j u m p into a gondola. In such style he rode into O g d e n to make the necessary purchases. Pratt, whom they called Chillicothe Ohio, figured out which train Farrel would r e t u r n on, and left the semaphore in the stop position. Farrel got out of the train right in front of his house. Unlike the others, Pratt did not worry about being fired. H e was a boomer. 3 3 Push-pull type handcars were available for shorter trips. Sy N a p p e r would transport his wife on one to Saline once a week.

T h e r e she would catch a train and travel to O g d e n to do h e r wash, pick u p the mail, and buy supplies. She would ride back on a passenger train that would stop at Saline, a n d Sy would meet her with the handcar. After his wife gave Farrel a butch haircut which stuck u p two inches all a r o u n d , he would ride the handcar to the shore for a cut from one of the men working there. O t h e r times the handcar would be used just for fun. 34 As the U. S. Postal Service did not service Bridge, mail was sent with the conductor of any train that had stopped, frequently the "local" (see below), or sent with the signal maintainer who had his own track-riding motorcar. Mail sent to Bridge was bundled together with the company mail and thrown off at the station as the train passed. 35 T h e local was a short supply train sent weekly from O g d e n to pick u p empty cars, deliver freight, do some switching, and pull a water tank for filling the cisterns of Bridge a n d other stations that did not have a local water supply. T h e residents of Bridge would o r d e r supplies from an O g d e n grocery store (the Nicholas Grocery on 25th Street a n d the American Food Store were two such stores), and the local would deliver them free of charge. (Bridge residents had free billing on any freight that came out.) T h e local also provided the fuel for the community's stoves. 36 32

Ibid.

Ross holograph; interview with Delia Ross, Sparks, Nevada, 1974.

34 Dockter interviews; N a p p e r interview; Farrel Ross interviews.

35 Farrel Ross interviews; Dockter interviews.

36 Ibid.

33

Bridge: A Railroading Community

69

Of course this arrangement, coupled with the fact that those on extra board were limited to six pieces of luggage for carrying all their belongings — bedding, clothes, food, dishes, cooking utensils, and any luxury items such as radios — and that they might be transferred at any time with little notice, meant that they had to calculate their food supply so that it stretched through the week with little left over.

If they ran out, they had no food until the local returned. 3 7 Two other limitations on their food supply arose from the lack of refrigerators (or even ice boxes) and of cooking stoves at Bridge.

Ice was kept in an ice cellar at Saline. Either the section gang would bring fifty pound blocks of it to Bridge or an operator would use the handcar to get the ice. T h e ice was kept in a covered box, and there they stored perishables; but the fresh items still had to be eaten the first couple of days, and the bread soon turned moldy. T h u s they ate food that did not spoil quickly, the type depending on their budget.

Being limited to pot-bellied stoves, which had no ovens and had the source of heat far from the top, meant that only foods that could be slowly boiled or fried could be cooked. 38 As already noted, housing was of two types, outfit cars and shacks (that was a common name for them). T h e outfit car was partially divided into two rooms — the kitchen in front and the bedroom in back. Lydia Napper recalled that the boxcar's condition was such that "I would start sweeping the floor and by the time I got across the floor, there wasn't any dirt left because it would all go down between the cracks." 39 It was a "yucky" green inside and red outside (standard colors for outfit cars) and sparsely furnished, "just makeshift," with a built-in counter on one side, a bed, a table, and a bench to sit on.40 When Sy Napper arrived, there was not even a bed.

He had to pull the springs of an old iron bed out of the lake and make a mattress out of an old rug. Orange crates served as cupboards. 41 T h e shack was described as

37 Ross holograph. T h e imposed restriction on how much a railroading family could transport (and, in essence, possess) did not disturb everyone. When a bachelor, Jack Dockter carrried a bedroll, a suitcase with clothes and a few cans of food, and a box that held a few kitchen utensils, a double boiler, a frying pan, and one knife, fork and spoon. He comments, "If I had any company, why they'd have to wait until I got through eating. T h e n we'd wash up."

38 Dockter interviews; Ross holograph.

3!l Napper interview.

40 Interview with Arlene Dockter, Ogden, Utah, August 8, 1984; Dockter interviews.

41 Napper interview.

70

Utah Historical Quarterly . . . typical of most of the S. P. houses — frame with a gable roof. It was painted like all S. P. buildings in a tannish yellow color. It was smaller, however, than most of the houses we were in. T h e house had no insulation, no r u n n i n g water, no bathroom, no electricity and no cupboards. T h e floors were bare board — not even varnished. In fact you might say it was just a shack, about twenty by thirty feet in size, finished on the inside with vee-grooved boards. . . . T h e fill gradually tapered down to the water so the back of the house was braced u p with piling. A very tiny railed area was at the back door. H e r e we disposed of our garbage into the lake. Here I also kept a box for a block of ice. . . .

As to the inside of the house. T h e sink and drainboard were of galvanized tin — very h a r d to clean. T h e only source for heat or cooking was a pot-bellied stove in the kitchen. This was the only piece of furniture furnished by the S. P. T h e house was divided into three equal rooms. T h e middle room had a sort of a clothes closet without a door.

T h e inside doorways didn't have doors either. T h e r e were no kitchen cupboards. Wooden orange crates were prize possessions as they provided shelves.

When Farrel arrived at Bridge, there was n o place to sleep except on the floor. An old army cot had been thrown into the lake. Farrel retrieved the cot, put it on the tracks and h a m m e r e d on it to knock the rust and salt from it. He wired it together and p u t a big cardboard box over it to protect the bedding from becoming rusty. It was a single cot that sagged in the middle, but it was better than sleeping on the floor.

Farrel worked all night while I slept. He slept in the day, so a single cot worked out fine.42

Living in a house that h u n g over the lake was somewhat scary, according to Delia, when the wind would blow so h a r d that the waves almost reached the tracks — and the house. 43 T h e wind also caused a problem when the outhouse was used.

T h e outhouse was a two-seater located behind the station on a platform placed right over the lake and u p quite a distance from the water. T h e outhouse of course had no bottom. More than one resident noticed that "using that facility was a real chore sometimes if the wind blew very hard because of the terrific updraft." 44 Life at Bridge was not all trial and tribulation, however. T h e r e were several sources of recreation. T h e conductors of passenger trains would bundle u p all the discarded newspapers and magazines and throw them off at Bridge almost daily. Such contact with the outside world was much appreciated. T h e residents could swim in the lake by the side of the fill opposite that of the outhouse, then shower off u n d e r the tap on the cistern. T h e y took walks in both 42

Ross holograph.

Interview with Delia Ross, August 4, 1984.

44 Ross holograph.

43

Bridge: A Railroading Community

71

The telegrapher's shack at Bridge featured an outhouse that hung over the water.

Note semaphore to signal trains. Also note dead pelicans on shore in foreground; undernourished birds were too weak to fly when they became crusted with salt.

directions of the fill. Jack Dockter said that on some of his long walks, "I used to talk to myself quite a lot. And a lot of times I'd answer myself, too." T h e sunsets and their reflections on the lake were striking. T h e r e was socializing with each other and with the section gang or the signal maintainer, who stopped by occasionally for a few minutes. Sometimes there were visitors from Saline, and the conductors always waved; among the railroaders there was a special camaraderie. 4 5 Obviously those at Bridge were very d e p e n d e n t u p o n the railroad, which had to supply literally all of Bridge's needs. As Farrel Ross put it, "You were totally at the mercy of the railroad." 46 Nevertheless, not one of those interviewed expressed bitterness or 45 46

N a p p e r interview; Ross holograph; Jack Dockter interviews.

Farrel Ross interviews.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

resentment. Instead, gratitude was the common sentiment, as shown in the following comments from the interviews.

Arlene Dockter: "We were glad to have a job."

Jack Dockter: We were comfortable. We were happy with what we had because when we had to move we didn't have a lot of stuff to move."

Lydia Napper: "Just being married it was kind of like a vacation. With the swimming it was like a picnic.

Delia Ross: "We were just married. It was just like a honeymoon. It was nice just to be the two of you together. . . . Because this time followed the depression, we had to take things as they were, and we weren't used to a lot."

Farrel Ross: "We were pretty happy to have a job. . . . I was paid twice what my father ever made."

When it came, the transfer was done in typical railroad fashion.

Use of the telephone was allowed for orders only, never for personal calls or messages (anything that did not pertain to train movement).

T h u s Ogden would tap "B" (for Bridge) over and over on the telegraph until "B" answered. T h e n the orders for an employee to catch a certain train and report to a particular shift elsewhere were given. 47 T h e a m o u n t of notice d e p e n d e d u p o n when the operator finished his current shift, when the new shift began, and when a connecting train would be available. Usually only a few hours were allowed for packing. When asked how much notice was usually given, Jack Dockter erupted, "No notice!" Close to the end of one shift, he would receive the transfer from the dispatcher. T h e r e would be just enough time to roll u p his bedroll, throw a few things into a cardboard box and catch a train. He would arrive at the new site with maybe three hours left before the new shift and use the time to lie on a "hard bench" and "get a few naps." T h e Rosses were given four hours' notice to leave Bridge when they were transferred at the end of September 1941. 48 With the war and the abandonment of the Panama Canal for shipping came a tremendous increase in the tonnage carried by Southern Pacific, u p from almost 53 million in 1940 to over 66 million in 1941 and almost 70 million in 1942. More traffic meant more trains, which meant that more meets and waits had to be issued. Stations were brought u p to full coverage, and 700 new

47 48

Ibid.

Delia Ross 1974 interview

Bridge: A Railroading Community

73

stations were added to the Southern Pacific system. One of those was at Midlake. A third trick was added to Bridge in the fall of 1941. 49 Bridge's days, in fact the days of the telegrapher, were numbered, however. "Twilight for Men of Morse" proclaimed one article in 1943. T h e FCC required radio service on all railroads by December 3 1 , 1945, for communications train to train, conductor to engineer, and dispatcher to train. 50 Also in 1945 central traffic control was installed in Ogden to handle traffic from Bridge to Lucin. This system used coded electrical pulses that were sent along the tracks and interrupted when a train was on the rails. This information was shown by lights on the big control board in Ogden and by pens that automatically charted the progress of the trains and recorded the times they passed each siding. Furthermore, with the CTC board the dispatcher could send coded impulses to change signals and to switch trains to sidings.

Lights would tell him if the change had been made.

A telegrapher was no longer needed to change the semaphore and to pass hand-written orders and messages to the engineer and the conductor. T h u s toward the end of 1945, Bridge was abandoned, and its buildings moved. 51

4<i Farrington, Railroads at War, pp. 26-27, 34; Farrel Ross interviews.

50 Science Digest 14 (December 1943): 66-68; New York Times, November 16, 1945. " I n t e r v i e w with Dave Larkin, Ogden, Utah, August 8, 1984. Midlake was also abandoned.

Railroad Depots in Ogden: Microcosms of a Community

BY RICHARD C. ROBERTS

the Ogden Union Station reflects the city's historical development from an ordinary pioneer town in the West to a major link in the transcontinental railroad and the commercial growth associated with that transformation. T h e impact of railroading on Ogden has been enormous. Union Station is both a m o n u m e n t to that impact and an architectural gem. But the present Italian Renaissance structure had two less impressive predecessors. Each of the three depots said something significant about the surrounding city, and each â&#x20AC;&#x201D; especially the latter two â&#x20AC;&#x201D; can serve as a peg on which to hang a part of Ogden's history.

T h e new transcontinental railroad brought to Ogden the surge of prosperity that the local boosters had predicted. By 1883 an M O R E THAN ANY OTHER SINGLE BUILDING

Dr. Roberts is professor of history at Weber State College.

The present Italian Renaissance station at Ogden, the city's third railroad depot on this site, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. USHS collections.

Railroad Depots in Ogden

75

Ogden directory listed five major milling activities owned by the J o h n Taylor, Lorin Farr, David Perry, Joseph Clark and Company, and Stevens and Stone enterprises. It also listed Farr's Woolen Mills, the Ogden Broom Factory, the Vinegar Works, Utah Powder Company, the Ogden Iron Works, and three breweries. Several fraternal and religious societies were functioning, and a variety of small shops to serve the railroad customers had been established. T h e 1880s also saw the establishment of a municipal water company, the installation of telephone service, and the founding of several banks. 1 T h e railroads had built some of their shops and freight buildings in Ogden early. In October 1870, for example, the Union Pacific began operating the first roundhouse, which had four stalls.

It was located on the west side of Wall Avenue a little north of Twenty-fourth Street. In 1882 the Central Pacific reported it had "an engine-house of seven stalls and a car-repair shop at Ogden.

This shop was for ordinary repairs only." T h e CP also built a heavy wing dam, 100 feet in length, 2 feet wide and 5 feet high, back of the engine house to protect it from Weber River floods. In 1888 the Southern Pacific shops were moved to Ogden. T h e Ogden Chamber of Commerce encouraged this move by contributing 300,000 bricks to erect the SP buildings on Twenty-third Street, west of Wall Avenue. 2 T h e volume of freight business grew tremendously in the early years. T h e Central Pacific, for example, had a Utah trade of 80,000 tons in 1871; by 1884 they reported an average of 125,000 tons yearly, two-thirds of which were imports. Freighting had become an important industry out of the Ogden depot.

Passenger service was also on the increase. Transcontinental trains arrived and departed regulary from the Ogden depot. T h e 1878 directory and various timetables of the companies showed arrivals and departures three times a day on the transcontinental line, several daily arrivals and departures on the Utah Central to Salt Lake City, and one daily departure and arrival on the Utah Northern to the north. 3 As Ogden shared in the prosperity of the various railroad lines, the depot became the center of activity in the city. In that respect, 1

Leo Haefeli and Frank J. Cannon, Directory of Ogden City and Weber County, 1883, pp. 85-125.

Milton R. Hunter, Beneath Ben Lomond's Peak: A History of Weber County, 1824-1900 (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1945), p p . 424-27; Annual Report of the Commissioner of Railroads . . .June 30, 1882 (Washington, D . C : GPO, 1882), p. 76.

3 R a n d , McNally and Co.,Railway Guide, 1874; S. A. Kenner and T h o m a s Wallace,Directory of Ogden City and North Utah Record, 1878, pp. 48-50.

2

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Ogden was like other railroad towns along the tracks. One observer reported that "usually the whole town turned out to attend the train at every station, remaining at the depot until it left. Its stay was the event of they day." As Carl W. Condit concluded, "the station became a microcity mirroring the urban life around it."4 Ogden's first depot was a two-story building of wooden clapboard painted "violent red" that provided a ticket office, waiting room, baggage area, and freight facilities. Early descriptions of the depot were not very complimentary. J o h n Codman, a traveler through Ogden in 1874, wrote that "the railroad traveller gets a very wrong impression of Ogden. He sees nothing but the Gentile part of the town, the stations of the U. P. and C. P. Railroads, their offices and engine houses, and a dozen or two shanties occupied as restaurants, grog shops and gambling-houses." Codman went on to say that if one got away from the depot area he would find that "Ogden is a pretty and quiet town, somewhat larger than Brigham City."5 For many years the citizens of the community agitated for a more imposing structure. In May and J u n e 1874 the Ogden Junction called upon the railroad officials to fix the place of the junction so that the railroad could "erect some permanent buildings, establish their workshops, and go to work like substantial corporations, instead of dickering around in shanties and balloon tinderboxes, like some two-and-a-half dollar concerns, likely to move or bust at any time." A few days after the railroad companies agreed to make Ogden the transcontinental junction, the newspaper editorialized: "We hope to see the railroad authorities go to work at once to erect some suitable buildings for their important business, and that they will cooperate harmoniously to make the depot grounds convenient and mutually useful." 6 With a growing population, an expanding industry and trade, an increasing volume of business on the various converging rail lines, and an improvement of its cultural tastes, Ogden had outgrown the old wood station by the mid-1880s. Finally, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., the president of the Union Pacific Corporation, consented to the building of a new depot. Work began in September 4 Robert L. Fulton, Epic of the Overland (San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1924), p. 108; Carl W. Condit, The Railroad and the City: A Technological and Urbanistic History of Cincinnati (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, n.d.), preface.

5 J o h n Codman, The Mormon Country: A Summer with the "Latter-Day Saints" (New York, 1874), p.

85.

6 Ogden Junction, May 6, 1870; May 30, J u n e 6, 1874.

Railroad Depots in Ogden

77

The first Ogden railroad depot at left was pictured in O g d e n City, Utah, Picturesque and Descriptive in 1889 along with the newly completed depot that replaced it.

1886, and by December 31 the sandstone foundation was finished.

Legal and political difficulties then intervened, delaying further work for over a year.

T h e legal problems related to agreements about the terminus grounds. In January 1888, after n u m e r o u s conferences between the leaders of the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific (the Denver and Rio Grande was invited to attend but did not send a representative), "the incorporation of a facility, the O g d e n Union Railway and Depot [OUR and D ] Company, was arranged to build and operate the station and appurtenant trackage." 7 T o it the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific transferred the original Brigham Young grant of 131 acres for use as "the p e r m a n e n t junction of the two roads." T h e grant of this land was on a fifty-year lease basis. 8 At this point, Adams commissioned his friend Henry Van Brunt to be the architect of the new depot. Van Brunt's company was one of the foremost architectural firms in the United States and, with its office at Kansas City, was a major firm in the western United 7 Paul Rigdon, " T h e Building of the Union Pacific Railroad, a Short Account" in Historical Catalogue Union Pacific Historical Museum, vol. 1, p. 104.

8 Weber County Recorder's Office, Ogden, Utah, Abstract of Title Lots, Book A, pp. 165-67, 254; Book L, p. 600; Book Z, p p . 541-47, 567.

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States. It designed several stations for the Union Pacific â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the O m a h a station; the O g d e n station; and the Portland, Oregon, station. Van Brunt himself was considered to be one of the most articulate and respected architects of late n i n e t e e n t h century America. 9 Meanwhile, Congress had become concerned about the way t h e r a i l r o a d c o m p a n i e s were failing to pay back the government debt and started to put greater demands upon them for repayment. Only after the concerns of Congress were Mayor David Eccles ordered taverns closed abated in the spring of 1888 did when cornerstone of new depot was laid. construction of the new O g d e n USHS collections. depot begin again. 10 T h e O g d e n newspapers followed the construction of the depot and gave frequent accounts of its progress. O n September 26, 1888, the Semi-Weekly Standard reported that the "grades a r o u n d the new depot" were being finished and m u c h dirt had been hauled in to fill the swampy areas. T h e yards were filled with the materials for the building â&#x20AC;&#x201D; carloads of lumber, stacks of bricks and red sandstone, and piles of sand had assumed large proportions. T h e newspaper concluded that T h o u g h the plans are not as large as at first contemplated, the depot building will be a large, commodious structure, the pride of O g d e n , and an h o n o r to the railroad companies, who after a long delay have at last begun to understand the necessity of something better than the shanties which the public has had to put u p with for so many years. Let the good work proceed, and Ogden's future is insured.

O n November 5, 1888, the cornerstone of the depot was laid.

O g d e n Mayor David Eccles proclaimed that all the bars in the city were to close between the hours of 12 n o o n and 6 P.M. that day. ^Dictionary ofAmerican Biography, s.v. "Van Brunt, Henry." Van Brunt and his partner, Frank M. Howe, also designed the railroad station at Sioux City, Iowa. Van Brunt served as president of the American Institute of Architects in 1899.

10 Ogden Semi-Weekly Standard, August 3, 1889.

11 Ogden Semi-Weekly Standard, September 26, 1888.

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Professional men, merchants, tradespeople, and artisans were invited to close their businesses and "engage in the ceremonies of laying the cornerstone of the new Union passenger depot." Mayor Eccles called it "an auspicious day for the Junction City." It would "signalize an event for which the worthy people of this city have waited long patiently; and it will mark the time from which Ogden will be recognized abroad, as well as at home, as the great railway center of the Inter-Mountain region." 12 T h e cornerstone ceremonies were strongly supported. Some 5,000 to 6,000 people attended. A parade with bands, dignitaries of the city, and members of the Masonic O r d e r was planned; but when a light snowstorm turned the streets m u d d y the plans for marching were given u p , and the bands and people m a d e their way to the station as best they could.

T h e main participants were the O g d e n Band in bottle-green uniforms with black braid; J o h n A. Dix, Post No. 3 of the GAR, in civilian clothes; and the Fire Department companies â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the Hose Company in a bright red uniform and the Hook and Ladder Company in a light blue uniform. Next came the Select Knights of the A O U W in black uniforms with red plumed helmets and the Knights of Pythias in similar uniforms, followed by the Fort Douglas Sixteenth Infantry Band dressed in blue uniforms and white plumed helmets. T h e Masonic groups followed. They were headed by the Utah Commandery No. 1 of Salt Lake City and El Monte Commandery No. 2 of Ogden in black uniforms with helmets covered with large white plumes. They acted as escorts to others members of the Masons of the Grand Lodge of the Utah area.

At the station the dignitaries and Masonic leaders mounted the platform, and the ceremonies began. Grand Chaplain James Lowe offered a prayer and the Salt Lake Band played. Grand Master Samuel Paul laid the cornerstone, the O g d e n Band played, and the Sixteenth Infantry Band played. Attorney Parley L. Williams delivered the keynote address, pontificating that the laying of the cornerstone "assures an early erection of a structure without which the transcontinental railway is incomplete." Dr. A. S. Condon then read a poem composed specially for the event.

T h e speeches and poem earned hearty applause, and after a benediction the crowd, bands, and dignitaries dispersed in various l2

Ogden Semi-Weekly Standard, November 3, 1888.

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directions. T h e Ogden Standard concluded that the events of the cornerstone ceremonies "will long swell in the memory of those who viewed it, and will ever arise in years to come as one of the most pleasant of fond remembrances of the past." 13 So ended the cornerstone ceremonies, and the building of the depot continued. In J a n u a r y 1889 the Ogden Standard reported that A couple of months ago the eye, in glancing over the depot grounds, saw a dreary, swampy flat with a few rickety frame buildings erroneously called "depot," and a hole in the g r o u n d where a depot really should stand. Now these shanties are h i d d e n from view by the beautiful structure being reared in front of them, about a block nearer the city.

T h e work of the stonecutters, bricklayers, and carpenters had been noted, and it was projected that their work would be finished by July 1 of that year. 14 Construction proceeded according to schedule, and July 3 1 , 1889, was set as the date for the opening of the building. T h e city of O g d e n planned a gala event. T h e Chamber of Commerce sold tickets at $5.00 apiece for a banquet and dance to celebrate the affair.

T h e events started at 8:00 P.M. with every light on Twenty-fifth Street turned on to draw attention to the depot. All the electric lights in the depot were turned on as well to highlight the building, a n d the visitors were invited to wander to all parts of the building.

T h e completion of the Union Depot in Ogden represented a significant improvement for passenger operations in Ogden. T h e railroad engineer of the Office of the Commissioner of Railroads of the U.S. Department of Interior reported that at Ogden [A] thorough change has been made by the removal of the old buildings and many of the tracks, changing the location of main tracks and sidings, laying 4,210 feet of new track, erecting a handsome two-story building of brick and stone, with commodious rooms for the railway offices and the hotel department, putting u p a new freighthouse and large addition to the ice-house.

H e also mentioned that "this work was done by the Ogden Union Railway and Depot Company, capital stock being $3,000,000, which was equally divided between the Central and Union Pacific Railway Companies." 15 13

Ogden Semi-Weekly Standard, November 7, 1888.

Ogden Semi-Weekly Standard, J a n u a r y 9, 1889.

15 U.S., Congress, House, Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 51st Cong., lstsess., 1890, H. Ex. Doc. 1, pt. 5, appendix 1: "Report of Railroad Engineer," p p . 526-27.

14

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T h e station and the depot complex became a reflection of the city's historical, cultural, and economic growth and development for the thirty-four years that it stood. T h e people were p r o u d of this structure; it symbolized good and prosperous times.

In the years 1889 to 1924 Ogden made tremendous surges ahead economically and culturally. By the turn of the century one booster claimed that "a stranger coming to Ogden will find there the largest railway center in the West, and the point toward which all central transcontinental lines are pointing." He also asserted that Ogden had "the best and most beautiful union depot west of Denver" along with the best climate and most healthy conditions in the West, good sanitary conditions, twelve beautiful churches, three beautifully improved parks, eleven good hotels, five of the most substantial banks in the country, a "wide awake daily newspaper," an opera house, a beautiful free public library, a complete telephone system, and a healthy and substantial building and business growth.

He noted the several dozen manufacturing, canning, and milling enterprises as well as the many businesses, churches, and cultural institutions. Additionally, he pointed to the scenic beauty of Ogden Canyon with the "life-giving ozone of the Rockies" and the medicinal and thermal springs rising near the Wasatch Mountains that pro-

Completed in 1889, the second Ogden Union Station was photographed by Charles R. Savage. Ogdenites could ride a mule car to the depot until 1891 when electric streetcars came into use. USHS collections.

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vided many "remedial virtues" and "effected many p h e n o m e n a l cures" for those who partook of them. 16 O g d e n â&#x20AC;&#x201D; as the terminal of the Wyoming Division of the Union Pacific and the Salt Lake Division of the Southern Pacific and the junction point for the Oregon Shortline, the Denver and Rio Grande, the Salt Lake and Ogden, and the Ogden and Northwestern Railroads â&#x20AC;&#x201D; was an important railway point in the West. With these railroads the Ogden traffic was immense. During 1919, for example, 33,040 engines, 74,750 passenger cars, 33,987 baggage cars, and 31,034 mail cars passed through. This was the greatest volume of business u p to that time.

T h e Southern Pacific sponsored the greatest amount of business in Ogden. Its shops employed 500 men. T h e Union Pacific and the Denver and Rio G r a n d e also had their western division shops in Ogden, and they kept approximately 125 men constantly employed.

T h e rapid growth of O g d e n as a railroad and jobbing center necessitated the construction of a new freight building that was described as "unequalled by any railroad freight depot in the United States." T h e two-story building, 62M> feet wide and 700 feet long, with a new seven-track system, had a capacity of handling 100 cars and over 750,000 pounds of freight daily.

Ogden also added other railroad systems to its business. T h e electrified Bamberger Railroad improved its line between O g d e n and Salt Lake, and the O g d e n Rapid Transit Company increased its trackage with the Wall Avenue and O g d e n Canyon extensions in 1909 and the Twenty-fifth Street line from Harrison Avenue to Taylor Avenue and from O r c h a r d to Monroe Avenue. O g d e n City also completed the Plain City and Hot Springs and the Brigham City lines. 17 In 1915 the C h a m b e r of C o m m e r c e advertised O g d e n as "Preeminent in the intermountain country as chief railway center, distributing center, canning center, packing house center, food manufacturing center, agricultural center, and second as jobbing center and financial center." T h e city's population was estimated at 35,000 at that time, with a growth of 1,000 people per year d u r i n g the last twenty years. O g d e n claimed three automobile and motor truck body plants, nine bakeries, three bottling works, three brick 1B

S. A. Kenner, Utah As It Is . . . (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1904), pp. 202-3.

Undated clipping from a 1910 issue of the Ogden Morning Examiner in Special Collections File, Weber County Library, Ogden.

17

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Postcard view of trains arriving at the Ogden depot ca. 1915. USHS collections.

and tile companies, eighteen canneries, six coal mining companies, four construction companies, three meat-packing plants, and several dozen factories, including twelve sugar factories.

Dominating the employment and payroll industries in Ogden was the railroad. In 1915 fifty-one regular passenger trains passed through the Ogden depot every twenty-four hours. T h e 2,503 workers employed by the steam railroads commanded an annual payroll of $3,872,568, while the 797 people employed by the Ogden Union Railroad and Depot Company claimed another $817,000 annually. An additional 606 people employed by the surburban electric lines generated $678,300 in wages a n d salaries. T h e other primary employers were the sugar companies with 1,500 employees and an annual payroll of $980,000 and the 111 mercantile houses that employed 1,080 workers with a payroll of $1,084,775. 18 A n o t h e r i m p o r t a n t development at the depot d u r i n g this period was the contribution of cattle and grain shipping facilities to economic growth. T h e trackage, pens, decks, a n d feed lots of the 18 Ogden Chamber of Commerce, Ogden Is Preeminent in the Intermountain Country, 1915, pamphlet, copy in Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

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Ogden Union Stock Yards Company made it possible for the Federal Reserve Bank to report in 1922 that Ogden was "handling m o r e cattle, hogs, and sheep than any other city in the Twelfth Federal Reserve District," essentially all of the western United States. T h e O g d e n Packing and Provisions Company, Cudahy Packing Company, and several i n d e p e n d e n t companies sent buyers to O g d e n for their livestock.

Ogden had also become a grain center, with the Federal Reserve Bank reporting it as second only to Portland, Oregon, in grain commerce in the Twelfth Federal Reserve District. Several flour mills and grain elevators had been established in Ogden, including the Sperry Flour Company, the Globe Grain and Milling Company, the Albers Brothers Milling Company, the Hilton Flour Mills, a n d several other smaller concerns. 19 So the railroad continued to have a tremendous commercial impact on the people and community. T h e mainstream of American culture flowed through the O g d e n Station. T h e great and the h u m ble came and went. Much like Frederick Jackson T u r n e r ' s description of "the procession of civilization" going through C u m b e r l a n d Gap d u r i n g a previous era, a person could see at the O g d e n Depot the culture and development of America pass by.

Not all of these scenes or experiences at the Union Station were happy or pleasant. Arrivals of friends or family were usually joyous, but departures were often sad. In the period from 1889 to 1923 the United States suffered severe economic depressions, labor unrest, and two major wars. These national experiences were reflected in the scenes and happenings at the Union Depot.

In 1894 a severe economic depression settled across the United States. Millions of workers found themselves without jobs and began casting about for solutions to their unemployment. Jacob Coxey of Ohio suggested that the unemployed laborers form into "Industrial Armies" and march to Washington to persuade the government to help them out of their plight. As a result, several "Coxey Armies" organized at various points in the United States and began their trek to Washington. One of these groups known as "Kelley's Army" (named after its leader Charles Kelley of California) a p p e a r e d in Utah on April 9, 1894. Some 1,200 desperate men had been b r o u g h t to Utah in cattle cars and freight cars of the Southern Pacific Rail1!)

16-17.

P. Bancroft, "Facilities for Shippers at Ogden," Southern Pacific Bulletin, August 1922, pp.

Railroad Depots in Ogden

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road in hopes they could transfer to the Union Pacific line and continue their trip eastward to Washington, D.C. They were disappointed, however, when the Union Pacific refused to cooperate. T h e railroad company was fearful that it would be penalized by certain state laws that would charge transp o r t a t i o n c o m p a n i e s with b r i n g i n g i n d i g e n t or u n employed people into the state.

As a result, the 1,200 men were left at the Ogden Depot, and local officials were forced to react.

Territorial Governor Caleb W. West sent T h e territorial governor of guardsmen to Ogden depot during 1894.

USHS collections.

Utah, Caleb W. West, ordered the Utah National Guard into service in Ogden, and the Ogden and Salt Lake police forces were sent there to keep order and prevent the California workers from dispersing and causing trouble. Reports that there were "criminal types" among them made city and state officials fearful that outbreaks of lawlessness would take place. T h e National Guard and the police forces kept the men confined to the Ogden rail yards. T h e g r o u p remained u n d e r guard until April 11, 1894, when released by court order. It then marched u p Washington Boulevard to Uintah railroad sidings and eventually boarded UP freight cars and made its way to Cheyenne and on eastward.

T h r o u g h the month of May 1894 trouble continued, however, as other Industrial Army groups moved through Utah. Some of these groups forcibly took over trains to gain transportation to the East. Several Union Pacific and Denver and Rio Grande Western trains were seized. Two trains were taken at Bingham Junction and one at Thistle Junction. T h e Industrials in Ogden took one train just outside the Ogden yards, and at least three trains were taken in Weber Canyon. 20 20

Richard C Roberts, "History of the Utah National Guard, 1894-1954" (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1973), vol. 1, p p . 34-53.

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In July 1894 the scene at the O g d e n Depot became even m o r e intense. Earlier that year the American Railway Union u n d e r President Eugene V. Debs had called for a nationwide strike by the u n i o n in sympathy with workers who were striking against the Pullman Company in Illinois. Debs called for all American Railway Union members to refuse to move any trains that had Pullman cars. This strike stirred u p violence t h r o u g h o u t most of the United States, but especially in Chicago.

Local unions voted to s u p p o r t the strike, and on July 1, 1894, strikers stopped trains in the O g d e n yards. T h e tracks were soon blocked with standing cars and coaches, and the station and platforms became crowded with "about 300 stranded passengers 250 of which are desirous of proceeding west and the r e m a i n d e r are eastward bound." Some attempts were made to move the trains by loyal company men and "scab" laborers who wanted to work. This led to threats of violence on the p a r t of the strikers and b r o u g h t U.S. marshals and local police to g u a r d and patrol at the O g d e n Depot. 21 On July 4 a crowd of people filled the depot, and most of t h e m wore a piece of white ribbon to show their sympathy with the strikers. U n d e r this press of people railroad firemen refused to move any trains. However, on July 7 a fireman who had continued to work, J o h n E. Hamilton, b r o u g h t a train into the yards, got off the train, and started down the Y of the tracks. H e was followed by a small body of strikers who soon overtook him. Asked if he fired the engine from Evanston, Hamilton first denied it and then admitted it. "A few words were passed and blows were struck." After the first blow, "the unfortunate fireman caught it from all sides. H e was knocked down several times and badly bruised. T h e police officers interfered a n d took him to jail in o r d e r to protect him." 22 T h e tense situation took a frightening turn when shortly after 3:00 A.M. on July 8 a series of fires were reported to the city fire department. Some twelve fires had been set in the center of the business district, including the Boyle Block, the Cortez Block, a n d the Stevens Buildings on Washington Boulevard. Losses to fire included $90,000 to the Sidney Stevens Building a n d business, $10,000 to Newman's T i n Shop, $2,000 damage to the opera house, and $15,000 to Boyle's F u r n i t u r e . In all, damage was estimated at $135,000.

21

Deseret News, July 2, 1894; Ogden Standard, July 1, 3, 1894.

Ogden Standard, July 7, 1894; Deseret News, July 7, 1894.

22

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View of the second Ogden depot from the west shoiving tracks and baggage carts.

From Art Work of Utah, 1896.

T h e fires had been started by oily rags set ablaze and placed in various buildings in the area. It was an obvious conspiracy, and in the minds of most people the strikers had caused the conflagrations. No evidence of the strikers' guilt was ever established, but the fire threat brought regular troops of the U.S. Army to the Ogden Depot to protect property and lives. T h e Sixteenth Infantry from Fort Douglas was joined by detachments from the Seventeenth Infantry and Eighth Infantry regiments.

Fifteen strikers were arrested by the marshal, including the local union leaders — President Robert Stirrat, Robert Brennan, and others — and accused of having violated court injunctions that prohibited the strikers from interfering with the movement of passenger trains responsible for the delivery of the U.S. mails. Soon thereafter local court injunctions to end the strike brought peace to the Ogden Depot. On July 13, 1894, the trains began to move again. 23 T h e 1889 Union Depot stood through other serious cris ^ — the Spanish-American War and World War I. Both conflicts brought thousands of soldiers on their way to battle through this station.

Many Utahns last touched a foot on Utah soil in Ogden. Some would never return.

'Ogden Standard, July 9, 10, 12, 1894.

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On May 21,1898, Batteries A and B, Utah Artillery, m a d e u p of approximately 260 Utah men, arrived in Ogden on the Denver and Rio Grande Western. T h e train consisted of sixteen cars â&#x20AC;&#x201D; four flatcars loaded with guns and caissons, a freight car packed tightly with tents and camp equipage, a stock car containing horses, a baggage car, and eight passenger coaches loaded with soldiers. Last came the Pullman car Okanagon for the officers. At Ogden the train switched engines to the Southern Pacific. T h e men were met by "a great crowd at the station, but there was little in the way of demonstrations, only one solitary engine whistling a shrill greeting." T h e public attitude was subdued and sober as the soldiers made their way to the war front. After a short stop "during which some of the boys snatched a lunch at the depot, the train pulled out for the West, but not without leaving a couple of soldiers behind who had tarried too long in the station. They were later sent ahead on another train to join their units." T h e n , on May 24 Utah Cavalry T r o o p C left for San Francisco, arriving in Ogden at 7:30 P.M. where "an enthusiastic reception was given to the boys in blue at the depot." 24 In August 1899 the citizens of Ogden welcomed the r e t u r n i n g soldiers. T h e Ogden Standard wrote, "They are home. And it was Ogden which received them first on their native soil, even as it was Ogden which bade them 'God speed' when they left the state." An estimated 10,000 people congregated at the depot. T h e trains arrived to "the whistling of the engines, fully twenty of them in the yard, accompanied by the boom of cannons." It was "almost impossible for the tracks to be cleared so that the train could pull well u p to the depot, and the last h u n d r e d yards were r u n at a snail's pace."

T h e Standard described the climax in these terms: T h e r e were fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, wives, children and sweethearts, and they all reveled in the joy of honoring their loved ones h o m e again. Gray-haired mothers wept with joy, and wives a n d sweethearts clasped their husband or lover in warm embrace. And for ten or fifteen minutes they walked the platform oblivious of all but that they were once again united. 2 5

T h u s were the Spanish-American War veterans welcomed h o m e at the Ogden Station.

War came to America again in 1917. In this "war to end all wars" Utahns participated directly. Utah units included the 145th Field 4

Salt Lake Herald, April 24, May 25, 1898; Salt Lake Tribune, May 16, 21, 26, 1898.

'Ogden Standard, August 18, 19, 1899.

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Artillery Regiment in the 40th Infantry Division and the 362d Infantry Regiment of the 181st Infantry Brigade, 91st Division.

T h e 145th Artillery Regiment returned home to Utah at the Ogden Depot in January 1919. State officials expressed concern about the soldiers mixing with the crowd. With the threat of an influenza epidemic spreading in the community, orders were given that the troops would march from the railroad depot u p Twentyfifth Street to Washington Boulevard over to Twenty-eighth Street, back to Twenty-first Street, and finally down Twenty-fifth Street to r e t u r n to the depot. T h e orders stated that no crowds were to gather at the station and that "there would be no speaking nor will the soldiers be allowed to break ranks." T h e jubilation of the crowd in Ogden somewhat altered the orders. At the depot families and friends were allowed to greet their returning soldiers, and the touching homecoming scenes were left uninterrupted by officials.

T h e parade formed with Gov. Simon Bamberger and state officials leading the 1,117-man regiment in the biggest military parade in the history of the city of Ogden. After the soldiers paraded along the designated route, they returned to the train and proceeded to Logan where they were mustered out of federal service. 20 On February 13, 1923, the Ogden Depot was destroyed by fire.

Six months later, from that burned-out shell, the people of Ogden paid tribute to the deceased president of the United States, Warren G. Harding. T h e scandals of the H a r d i n g administration had not yet been fully exposed, and the public still had great respect for him.

T h e president had died in San Francisco on August 3, 1923. His funeral train arrived in Ogden at 8:59 P.M. August 4 on the Southern Pacific lines. As described by one observer, "When the train reached Ogden, the platform between the train and station walls was j a m m e d with a mass of people. Every inch of space was taken. But not a word was spoken â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not a person moved during the twenty minutes the train was there before proceeding on to Washington." 27 T h e farewell to President Harding was the final major event at the Ogden Depot.

Charred and vacant, its demise ended an important era of Ogden's historical and cultural development.

T h e total loss from the fire was fixed at $ 100,000 to the building and equipment. T h e cause of the fire was never determined, but

26

Salt Lake Tribune, January 17, 1919; Ogden Standard, January 17, 1919.

Southern Pacific Bulletin, August 1923, p p . 7-8.

27

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evidence seemed to point to an iron used to press the pants of an employee in a room on the third floor.28 T h e citizens of O g d e n did not m o u r n the loss of the old station.

On the day after the fire the Ogden Standard-Examiner reported that "a wave of relief swept the city." T h e citizens felt that "having served beyond the days of its real usefulness, the squatty, poorly lighted, ill-vented, unattractive old depot" would now have to be replaced.

An editorial in the Standard-Examiner further elaborated that the building was "old, dilapidated, ill-ventilated, unsightly, overcrowded and unsanitary." Much of this was said to convince the railroad companies to build a new station in O g d e n instead of r e p a i r i n g t h e old s t r u c t u r e as o n e c o m p a n y p r e s i d e n t h a d suggested. Bernard De Voto also expressed sentiments typical of an Ogden native. Writing of O g d e n in the 1920s, he said, "the Overland Limited stays at Ogden for fifteen minutes. T h e tourist, a little dizzy from altitude but grateful for trees after miles of desert, rushes out to change his watch and see a Mormon. H e passes t h r o u g h a station that is a deliberate t r i u m p h of hideousness and emerges at the foot of twenty-fifth street." 2 " Certainly in the minds of O g d e n people the station had served out its usefulness.

Naturally, Ogden citizens reacted quickly when the railroad officials announced that they intended to "repair the b u r n e d structure" and that there would not be a new Union Station. 30 Mayor Frank Francis and Chamber of Commerce President James Brennan made appeals to President William Sproule of the Southern Pacific, President Carl Gray of the Union Pacific, and President H. V. Piatt of the Ogden Union Railway and Depot Company to reconsider that decision. T h e O g d e n Chamber of Commerce, in a telegram to these officials, stated that the commercial interests of the city and territory expressed "their regret for the misfortune suffered by the Ogden Union Railway a n d Depot Company in the destruction by fire of the passenger station at Ogden," but they urged that the "burned structure be replaced by a new passenger station, which will fully supply the immediate a n d future needs for years to come of the immense volume of traffic passing through this gateway."

2S

Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 14, 1923, May 4, 1969.

"Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 14, 16, 1923; Bernard De Voto, "Ogden: The Underwriters of Salvation," in Duncan Aikman, ed., The Taming of the Frontier (New York: Milton, Balch and Co., 1925).

30 Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 14, 1923.

2

Railroad Depots in Ogden

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Burned-out Ogden station, February 1923. Courtesy of the Ogden Standard-Examiner.

A tragic incident at the gutted station hastened the decision. On February 26, 1923, Frank G. Yentzer, cashier of the ticket office, was killed by a stone cone that fell from the burned-out clock tower and crashed into his temporary office. T h e stone, which was about three feet long and weighed approximately 250 pounds, fell some fifty feet, striking Yentzer directly on the head. He died en route to the hospital.

Following the tragedy more newspaper editorials and more service club resolutions called for a new station to be built. Soon thereafter the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific presidents decided in favor of a new building. By April 1924 the remains of the old station had been cleared away and construction of a new station begun. 31 T h e plans for the new station were drawn by J o h n and Donald Parkinson from a Los Angeles architectural firm. Well-known architects in the West, they would have designed by 1940 over 200 major buildings in the western United States. Some of their California works included the Uos Angeles City Hall, the Union Passenger 31

Ogden Standard-Examiner,

February 21, 26, 1923, May 4, 1969.

92

Ogden Union Station, dedicated in November 1924, was designed in Italian Renaissance style. Trusses in waiting room were once brilliantly painted. Detail of entrance shows buffalo medallion. Stairway led to passenger tracks. USHS collections.

Utah Historical Quarterly

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Terminal, and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. In Nevada they designed the Caliente Railroad Station; and in Utah they designed the Hotel Utah, the Kearns Building, the Newhouse Building, and of course the Ogden Union Station. 32 Costing $400,000, the new Union Station was constructed on the site of the old station and still stands today. Its architectural design is Italian Renaissance of the style which flourished in the fifteenth century in Europe. T h e building is 374 feet long and an average of 88 feet wide, with a waiting room 60 feet by 112 feet and a ceiling height of 56 feet, T h e ceiling and roof are supported by six huge wooden trusses of Oregon or Douglas fir. T h e trusses, originally "highly ornamented in brilliant colors" and "attractive designs," have since been painted a solid color. A roof of Cordova Spanish tile tops the structure of pink buff brick produced in Ogden and faced with Boise sandstone. T h e two main entrances on the east of the building are framed by carved Boise sandstone featuring fruits, mostly clusters of grapes. Over each entrance door is a carved buffalo.33 Although Ogden again had the occasion to open a Union Station, the ceremonies of 1924 were not as elaborate as those of 1889.

On November 22, 1924, railroad officials, Ogden Chamber of Commerce representatives, civic dignitaries, and Ogden citizens assembled to dedicate the new station. At 11 o'clock in the morning the ceremony started with musical numbers from the Elks and the Ogden High School bands. Other music was provided by a male quartette. T h e program, u n d e r the direction of the president of the Ogden Chamber of Commerce, Fred M. Nye, included speeches by P. F. Kerkendahl, mayor of Ogden; A. B. Bigelow, Ogden Chamber of Commerce; C. L. McFaul, assistant passenger traffic manager of the Southern Pacific; William Jeff ers, general manager of the Union Pacific system; and Lafayette Hanchett, a representative of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce and a director of the United States Chamber of Commerce. Each described the achievement in appropriately inflated terms with a pardonable allowance for civic boosterism. McFaul, for example, asserted that "it is fitting and p r o p e r that the importance of this railway center of the intermountain territory be recognized by such a building, for from this point there Z2

National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, s.v. "Parkinson, John."

"New Ogden Station Dedicated," Southern Pacific Bulletin, December 1924, p. 19; Ogden Standard-Examiner, November 9, 1924; " T h e New Ogden Station," Union Pacific Magazine, December 1924, p. 35.

33

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Utah Historical Quarterly

radiates to the east, north, south and west the rails of those two roads that have done more than any other agency to develop the territory west of the Mississippi." And Hanchett, not to be outdone, insisted that the new station was the "first pearl in a string of stations that will eventually reach from O m a h a to San Francisco." 34 T h e new Union Station was a fitting structure, and it represented the high point in passenger railroading in Ogden. It would exist during the period of the greatest volume of passenger travel and on into the contemporary era of decline and near elimination of railroad passenger service.

T h e 1920s were booming economic years for O g d e n and its railroading business. In 1929 an Ogden Chamber of Commerce brochure still proclaimed Ogden as the "gateway to the intermountain west," and that "richly endowed by nature this thriving, m o d e r n community has steadily moved ahead to her place in the lead as industrial and railroad center of Utah." Ogden was the second largest city in Utah with approximately 45,000 residents. It also claimed 89 industrial establishments with a $40,000,000 volume of business annually. Basic industries included two meat packing plants, thirteen canning factories in the county, and a Union Stock Yard that handled 2,147,438 arrivals in 1929. O g d e n had five clothing manufacturing establishments, four bottling plants, three foundries, four baking plants, and eleven printing shops.

Ogden's importance as a rail center was most significant. It remained the center for four steam railroad lines and three electric railroads and the terminus for the Southern Pacific, the Union Pacific, and the Denver and Rio Grande Western railroads. Some 3,360 Ogden employees with annual salaries of $5,610,257 worked on the railroads. These workers serviced 119 steam trains and 58 electric trains and buses through the Ogden yards. Nearly 1,500,000 rail cars were handled through these yards with over 609 different tracks making u p 85 miles. Extensive shops a n d r o u n d h o u s e s employed h u n d r e d s of men. An icing plant producing 400 tons of ice daily made it possible to ice 272 cars per hour. In 1929, 82,302 cars carrying perishable products were iced at this facility.35 During the depths of the Great Depression, in 1932, the Chamber of Commerce still called Ogden the "gateway to the West" 34 "New Ogden Station Dedicated"; " T h e New Ogden Station"; Ogden Standard-Examiner, November 23, 1924.

35 Ogden Chamber of Commerce, Ogden â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Utah's Industrial and Rail Center, the Gateway to a Rich Inland Empire, 1929, pamphlet, copy in Bancroft Library.

Railroad Depots in Ogden

95

and boasted that "You can't get anywhere without coming to O g d e n " or "You can get anywhere by coming thru Ogden." O g d e n was the railroad center to cities of the East, to San Francisco and Los Angeles in the West, and to Butte, Montana, and Portland, Oregon, in the Northwest. It also had local lines to Preston, Idaho, and Salt Lake City.

Prior to 1932 Ogden could still claim a growing industry. It declared itself the grain and milling center of the West with 15,000 cars of grain shipped in yearly. It was the largest livestock market west of Denver with an annual volume of 250 carloads of cattle, 200 carloads of sheep, and 100 carloads of hogs. Its canning industry had increased to 29 canning plants, and a growing sugar and candy industry lent variety and additional strength to the city's economic base.

In 1932 the Chamber of Commerce began to emphasize a business that had not been p r o m o t e d before: tourism. A b r o c h u r e

Dance at Union Station in the 1930s. USHS collections.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

described the impressive scenery of the area and extolled the hotel facilities available for the tourist, including the Hermitage, the Hotel Bigelow, and the New Healy, Marion, New Community, Broom, National, and St. Paul hotels. 36 Nevertheless, the prosperous times of the 1920s ended in Ogden as in other parts of the United States with the advent of the Great Depression. Many companies and industries faltered, and a n u m b e r closed their doors for good. T h e railroad industry suffered along with the others as the freighting business and passenger business declined significantly.

T h o r Blair, newsstand agent at the Ogden Depot, remembered that during the 1930s the trains were "sporadically" ridden by "gaunt men led by a faint hope of finding some employment."

During those years a friend told him, "I've been riding this railroad for many, many years and that's the first time in my life that I have had a private car on a regular ticket." 37 T h e 1930s were h a r d times, but the 1940s brought a resurgence of business to the railroads as they became a part of the nation's military system d u r i n g World War II. In 1944 the total railroad volume in the United States increased to 738 billion ton-miles of freight. Passenger travel saw similar increases with 95 billion passenger-miles in 1944. T h e American railways carried 43 million members of the a r m e d forces in 144,000 special troop trains during the war years. 38 T h e Ogden Depot, being on the main east-west line, accommodated a tremendous a m o u n t of freight and passenger service as both civilian and troop trains moved along the rails. LeRoy Johnson, a Red Cap at the Union Station for over forty years, recalled those busy days: "At one time, during World War II, sixty-two passenger trains left the depot every day — streamliners from all over the nation carrying presidents, kings, ambassadors, movie stars, doctors, lawyers, authors, poets — and just people — thousands of them, everyday, from all walks of life." During that time eighteen Red Caps "worked a r o u n d the clock to help all these people on and off the trains. 3!)

36 Ogden Chamber of Commerce, Ogden — Utah's Industrial and Railroad Center, 1932, pamphlet, copy in Bancroft Library.

37 Salt Lake Tribune, January 18, 1972.

38 "Interesting Railroad Facts," Railroad Journal, October 1945; John F. Stover, The Life and Decline of the American Railroad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 183-85.

3 "Salt Lake Tribune, June 14, 1970; Ogden Standard-Examiner, March 13, 1955.

Railroad Depots in Ogden

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Tom Zito, who worked in the Ogden Union Pacific shops beginning in 1941, remembered the war years at the station: They [the trains] would come in there so fast. . . . There were just too many people. Nobody knew where they were going or where they came from. T h e only time things cleared out quick is when the hospital trains came through loaded with wounded soldiers . . . sights on there . . . would just tear your heart out. Those poor boys shot all to pieces.

Some of them shell shocked so bad they chained them to the floor, they didn't even have a bed. They would run some of those cars u n d e r the pit for us to repair and a lot of times we would have to get inside the car to repair it. Some of the sights were awful. But when those trains hit everyone got out of the road.

Angus Hansen, who worked as a carman and welder for the Union Pacific in Ogden, also recalled the war years: At the time I worked there it was actually the peak during World War II. Well, they had freight and passenger train service. I don't think you could go down to the depot anytime, night or day, that you didn't find that depot full of people wanting to ride the trains. Of course, during the war there was a restriction put on [civilian] travel to a certain extent, because they didn't have enough passenger trains to handle the service or military personnel.

As many as 120 trains a day moved through the depot. There were seventeen tracks for passenger service. An u n d e r g r o u n d passageway led from the station to the passenger platforms so the passengers could get to any of the seventeen tracks without walking across the others.

T h e 1940s were the busiest times for the Ogden Union Station.

They were also good economic times for the workers. T h e war years were not the happiest of times, however, because war brings with it much tragedy, as those at the station witnessed when troop trains and hospital trains arrived. Another kind of tragedy occurred when the Southern Pacific Railroad suffered a major train wreck. T h e depot served as the center for receiving the dead and injured.

In the early morning of December 31, 1944, a fast moving express and mail train crashed into the rear of a passenger train, the Pacific Limited from Ogden, at Bagley, seventeen miles west of Ogden on the Lucin Cutoff track. T h e crash killed forty-eight people and injured seventy-nine. Local sheriffs officers, National Guard troops, and medical personnel came to the Union Station to 40

Mary Werner, Interviews with T o m Zito, Ogden, Utah, July 6, 1973, and Angus Hansen, Ogden, Utah, July 6, 1973, in "The Decline of the Railroad in Ogden," Weber State College Oral History Project, Special Collections, Weber State College Library, Ogden.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

meet the rescue trains that arrived with the first casualties at 10:45 A.M. Ambulances lined the track to receive the dead and injured from the worst accident in which the Ogden Depot played a part. 41 T h e railroad continued to enjoy some prosperity after the war and into the 1950s. Visitors to Ogden could still say that Union Station was a busy place. Clarence Werner, who came to Ogden in 1959 to work for the Union Pacific, remembered many passenger trains arriving in Ogden each day: When I first started in 1959, I counted them. They were going in every direction and I worked on a lot of them in 1960.1 can't say exactly how many [ran] from here to Los Angeles or to Frisco. . . . Any direction you wanted to go, you could catch a passenger [train] out of here.

He remembered, too, that the trains were always full.42 T h e railroads, however, were in a sharp decline. Between 1949 and 1967 railroad travel would be cut in half. According to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the net operating loss from passenger traffic grew from $139 million in 1946 to $704 million in 1953. During the 1950s the losses averaged about $645 million per year. In 1947 passenger trains were operating on 160,000 miles of road or on about 71 percent of the national rail network. By 1957 passenger service was available on just over half of the railroads in the country. T h e n u m b e r of passenger-carrying cars in service d r o p p e d from 27,903 in 1949 to 10,687 in 1966. Passenger-miles, which were 484 million in 1945, declined to 189 million in 1963 with a passenger deficit of $399 million that year. 43 T h e decline of the railroad business in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s had a tremendous impact on the Ogden Depot. Once busy and bustling with passengers, it gradually came to be nearly deserted. One person described it as a "mausoleum." Another said, "Now that there are no passenger trains, it's almost deserted, with the exception of maybe one-half h o u r when the Amtrak comes in.

T h e r e is no restaurant now, no beauty shop, no red cap. It's kind of a sad looking place in the evening when the train comes in, because there are only one or two people there." Another described it as "just a huge building with one big room; they have even taken the benches 41

Ogden Standard-Examiner, January 1, 2, 1945.

Mary Werner, Interview with Clarence Werner, Roy, Utah, J u n e 29, 1973, in " T h e Decline of the Railroads in Ogden"; Union Pacific Info, May 1974, p. 7; Ogden Standard-Examiner, April 4, 1971.

43 John F. Stover, The Life and Decline of the American Railroad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 218; Peter Lyon, To Hell in a Day Coach: An Exasperated Look at American Railroads (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1968), pp. 227, 229, 231; Ogden Standard-Examiner, April 4, 1971; D. Philip Locklin, Economics of Transportation (Housewood, 111.: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1966), pp. 656-57.

42

Railroad Depots in Ogden

99

out of it now. . . . a n d there's no one in it except a m a n to sell you tickets for the Amtrak train. . . . It's a ghost city down there now." 44 With the decline in passenger service, the n u m b e r of railroad employees d r o p p e d off considerably. Some d e p a r t m e n t s were transferred and others were closed down. T h e railroads were forced to rid themselves of many facilities that no longer had any usefulness and were only a maintenance or tax burden. U n d e r those circumstances, in 1968, the Ogden Union Railway a n d Depot Company was diminished, a n d most of the properties and operation at Ogden were assumed by the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific companies.

Union Station yards. Courtesy of Union Pacific Railroad.

Yet, many prominent Ogden City leaders and organizations realized that the demise of the Ogden Union Station would be a great loss to the community, and they began to rally public support in favor of preserving that great old structure. Their efforts were successful, and on October 21, 1978, with p r o p e r ceremony the Union Station was dedicated by Ogden City a n d railroad officials to serve as a multi-purpose community center. Today it remains as a railroad station for the r u n n i n g of Amtrak services and railroad company offices, as a community center with convention facilities and the Browning theatre, as a museum with a historic railroad display and the Browning firearms, and as a commercial facility with the establishment of space for various businesses and restaurants. In this new and important role it will continue to reflect the history and values of the Ogden community â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a prospect its builders and developers hoped for during the many years of its past.

44 Mary Warner, Interviews with Clarence Belnap, Clearfield, Utah, July 26, 1973, and William Price, Ogden, Utah, July 19, 1973, in "The Decline of the Railroad in Ogden"; Tom Zito Interview.

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Book Reviews

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A Canyon Voyage: The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedition. By FREDERICK S. DELLENBAUGH. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984. xxxvi + 277 pp.

Paper, $9.95.)

On May 22, 1871, when Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, at age seventeen, emb a r k e d from G r e e n River Station, Wyoming, as artist, b o a t m a n , a n d eventually p h o t o g r a p h e r and cartographer with the second J o h n Wesley Powell e x p e d i t i o n to e x p l o r e t h e Green and Colorado rivers and their surrounding country, he was possibly the youngest man yet to venture u p o n such a trip. He considered it his "great good fortune" to have been included, when "scores of m e n were t u r n e d away, disappointed."

Major Powell's choice of Dellenbaugh no d o u b t resulted from the lad's indisputable artistic skill and training but also from a familial relationship to Professor Almon Harris T h o m p s o n , the chief cartographer, who in turn was Powell's brother-inlaw. Powell further favored Dellenbaugh by choosing him to help row the Emma Dean, the boat upon which the major himself rode, perched on the amidships c o m p a r t m e n t in his famous armchair. Dellenbaugh, who u p to this time had never so much as spent a night out-of-doors, emerged two years later in Salt Lake City with the first detailed maps of the Colorado Plateau, maps that he himself had importantly assisted in preparing, developing in the process highly refined skills in several arts and sciences and in outdoor living.

T h o u g h Powell had secured government support for the second ven-

ture, it was nearly as poorly prepared and outfitted for its task as the first.

T h e r e were m o r e Bibles a n d less booze than probably any similar party before or since. T h e boats, narrow in beam, heavy, equipped with keels and h u g e s t e e r i n g s w e e p s , w e r e very poorly designed for r u n n i n g rapids.

Food consisted almost entirely of bacon, bread, and coffee, relieved occasionally by wild game and a meager supply of dried fruit. Nevertheless, because of the impressive skills of men like T h o m p s o n , F r a n c i s M a r i o n Bishop, photographers Beaman, Hillers, a n d later F e n n e m o r e , and young Dellenbaugh himself, the expedition accomplished a sophisticated reconnaissance of a vast unexplored r e g i o n , s u p p o r t e d a d e q u a t e l y by maps, photographs, and recorded geographic and ethnographic data.

Dellenbaugh's book was the only first-hand account of the expedition written for publication (if one excepts Powell's own Report of 1875, which mixed details from both expeditions while attributing them all to the first), and it is thus a document of primary importance in the literature of the exploration of the West. It is not without its flaws. For one thing, Dellenbaugh's gratitude to Powell for having selected him as a m e m b e r of the expedition appears as adulation virtually everywhere the major is mentioned; in fact, o n e w o n d e r s at times why Powell needed a life preserver or even a boat

Book Reviews and Notices w h e n he could so obviously have walked on the water.

Powell, as a r i v e r m a n a n d as a h u m a n being, has fared poorly at the hands of.many later historians who have found him to be a tyrant, an egomaniac, and a fabricator and distorter of historical reality. T h u s Dellenbaugh, Powell's unwavering supporter, became d u r i n g his long life something of a lightning rod for Powell criticism. Also, Dellenbaugh, an impressionable young man with no river experience, habitually exaggerates the size and dangers of the rapids to an extent that later boatmen have found laughable.

In spite of flaws such as these from which no book, particularly a book on the hotly contested subject of the Colorado River, is completely free, the University of Arizona Press does a major service to river historians and lovers of the o u t d o o r s by m a k i n g available this new paperback edition

101 of a classic. Taken together with the various volumes of the Utah Historical Quarterly that published the original journals of the Powell expeditions, A Canyon Voyage in this new edition will help disseminate first-hand knowledge of one of the major western exploratory ventures. O n e should note, too, that while its primary appeal will no doubt be to river runners and river historians, it ought not to be neglected by anyone interested in outdoor living and exploration. Dellenbaugh was equalled, p e r h a p s , only by Major Powell himself in the ability to convey d r a m a a n d a sense of m o v e m e n t t h r o u g h an almost indescribably spectacular and challenging country, and few readers indeed will be able to leave the book alone until Dellenbaugh has taken them around that last bend in the canyon.

GARY TOPPING

Utah State Historical Society

The New Deal and the West. By RICHARD LOWITT. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. xx + 283 pp. $25.00.)

T h e impact of the New Deal in the American West has long been a neglected topic. Only a scattering of books and articles have appeared; the most significant was a 1969 issue of the Pacific Historical Review which considered the New Deal from regional and state perspectives. As a result of the paucity of materials, classroom lectures and the general public remain fixed u p o n the Joads of J o h n Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and the 1930s films of Dust Bowl America.

Richard Lowitt seeks to fill the gap in our knowledge. His New Deal and the West shifts the scholarly focus from the East's urban poor and the South's sharecroppers to the depression cond i t i o n s west of t h e n i n e t y - e i g h t h meridian. H e chooses an approach that avoids a tedious state-by-state analysis for one that wisely considers

the West according to its internal regional variations. Within the different geographical divisions he surveys the workings of the New Deal agencies and programs that "centered more or less exclusively in the West: namely . . . the United States Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior." In a careful and detailed m a n n e r Lowitt relates the New Deal's efforts to bring relief, recovery, and reform to the West. O n the Great Plains, New Deal administrators carried out the soil conservation and subsidy transfer provisions of the Agr i c u l t u r a l A d j u s t m e n t Act. T h e y worked with farmers to prevent overgrazing and soil erosion and to foster scientific farming m e t h o d s . In the Great Basin and the Pacific Northwest, the New Dealers concentrated u p o n such projects as Boulder, Bon-

102 neville, and Grand Coulee dams. New Deal planners sought through such efforts to increase irrigated farmlands, control flooding, extend hydroelectric power, and provide recreational facilities. Lowitt does not ignore Native Americans, and his discussion of J o h n Collier and the Indian Reorganization Act is balanced and insightful.

For Lowitt, the New Deal was the West's springboard into the twentieth century and the American economic m a i n s t r e a m . T h e New Deal, h e m a i n t a i n s , d i d m o r e t h a n simply ameliorate the acute economic crisis of the 1930s. More important, the New Deal's work in providing power; managing soil, range, and forest resources; and opening farmland through irrigation laid the foundation for t h e West's post-World War II surge in industrial, commercial, and a g r i c u l t u r a l activity. W i t h o u t discounting the impact of war and defense spending in the West, Lowitt is convincing in his a r g u m e n t that the New Deal was the stimulus of the West's economic "take-off."

Lowitt's book will become the point of entry for anyone wishing to study the New Deal in the West. It not only p r o v i d e s a scaffolding for f u t u r e studies, but as an "interpretive and suggestive" work it keys the topics that a r e yet to be fully e x p l o r e d . For example, previous studies indicate that the western states received more in New Deal agricultural aid than did

Utah Historical Quarterly poorer southern states. Did the New Deal have a regional bias and, if so, why? What was the impact of the New Deal u p o n agribusiness and the concentration of economic power in the West? Lowitt offers us the view from W a s h i n g t o n , D.C. H o w did local interests perceive the New Deal prog r a m s ? W h a t conflicts existed between the diverse western interests and federal officials? How did these interactions mediate policy? Lowitt's analysis of the activities of the Departments of Agriculture and Interior needs to be supplemented with case studies of the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Social Security Act, and the Wagner Act in the West. T h e effect of the New Deal upon Hispanics and Blacks also requires fuller treatment.

T h e failure of U p t o n Sinclair's End-Poverty-in-California P r o g r a m draws attention to the absence on the state level of little New Deals. Why was there no lasting political realignment in the West? How did the Republican party recover so quickly? Are such questions m o r e amenable to a geog r a p h i c o r d e m o g r a p h i c analysis?

T h a t is, do the sections differ or do the race, religion, ethnicity, a n d class variables characteristic of each region better explain the responses of West, South, North, and East to New Deal liberalism?

R O B E R T A . GOLDBERG

University of Utah

The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. By FRANCIS PAULPRUCHA. 2 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. xxxii + 1302 p p . $60.00.)

A quarter-century of research and of teaching courses related to the Indians of the United States have prep a r e d P r o f e s s o r P r u c h a to b r i n g order to the mass of detailed inform a t i o n n e c e s s a r y to this wellorganized monographic study of re-

lations between the federal government and the Indians of the United States, from the b e g i n n i n g to t h e present decade.

Prucha has authored or edited at least eight books, written n u m e r o u s articles, and given several special lee-

Book Reviews and Notices tures, mainly on the period from the revolutionary era to the beginning of the twentieth century. H e enjoys national and international recognition as an eminent authority on government relations with the Indians.

Two book-length bibliographic studies (with a recent supplement upd a t i n g the "Bibliographic Guide") have b r o u g h t Prucha's mastery of twentieth-century source materials on g o v e r n m e n t - I n d i a n relations u p to the present decade.

T h u s , in this study, Prucha has been able to write authoritatively concerning the two centuries from the Revolutionary War to 1980 and to include in one work an e x t e n d e d general treatment emphasizing the government's Indian policies and programs for the entire 200-year period.

T o indicate the wealth of information available in this study a n d to demonstrate the extent of the data that it was necessary for Prucha to master in order to make it possible for us to enjoy the results of his research, let me outline his chronological and topical presentation. T h e work is divided into ten parts: (1) Formative Years, (2) Indian Removal, (3) American Expansion and the Reservation System, (4) T h e Civil W a r Years, (5) T h e Peace Policy, (6) A m e r i canizing the American Indians, (7) T h e Nation's Wards, (8) T h e Indian New Deal, (9) T e r m i n a t i o n , a n d (10) Indian Self-Determination.

Each part begins with a brief introduction. In a few pages Prucha explains what he will include in the chapters comprising that part. T h e r e are, altogether, forty-seven chapters in the ten parts. Four appendices include essential information best presented in that manner. Thirteen maps are placed appropriately throughout the work. Eighty-six illustrations are grouped to be representative of particular policy periods. Twenty-two tables p r o v i d e o r g a n i z a t i o n a l a n d

103 budgetary information. T h e r e is a useful bibliographical essay a n d a good index.

P r u c h a has m a d e a special contribution for the period since World War II, which still awaits research by many scholars following a variety of approaches and contributing the threads so helpful to future generalizers and interpreters of the relationships of cause and effect in regard to particular government programs and policies.

O u r attention is called to the increased respect shown for the Indian voice in recent decades. T h e role of Indian leadership has been enhanced, and young, educated Indians are finding employment at all levels of Indian involvement: local, regional, and national.

T h e role of federal court cases in more closely defining the boundaries of Indian rights and the Indians' use of the law to protect their rights form a recurring theme in Indian affairs, and the 1982 edition of Felix Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law is cited frequently to exemplify various ways the law has been employed to protect Indian personal, tribal, and property rights.

It will be a definite loss to the general reader if the very thoroughness and scholarliness of this impressive work causes it to be read mainly by other scholars and those with a special interest in I n d i a n affairs and used mainly as a reference work in the nation's libraries. T h e people of the United States, and even our representatives in C o n g r e s s a n d in t h e executive departments, need the information the study contains in order to be properly informed concerning the place of the Indian in our history and in our contemporary life.

Numerous individuals, institutions, and agencies are mentioned that have been helpful to Prucha over the years in making available the materials, as

104 well as the moral and financial support, that are so necessary to the completion of a work of this magnitude.

Such a study needs time to assess, evaluate, and interpret, along with the time to select, r e a d , a r r a n g e in chronological and/or topical order,

Utah Historical Quarterly and write. I would suggest that the completed work demonstrates that the helpful individuals, institutions, and agencies made a good investment.

S. LYMAN TYLER

University of Utah

Between Sacred Mountains: Navajo Stories and Lessons from the Land. Edited by SAM BINGHAM and JANET BINGHAM. (Tucson: Sun Tracks and the University of Arizona Press, 1982, 1984. xii + 287 p p . Cloth, $35.00; paper, $19.95.)

Anthropologists, sociologists, and historians have all taken turns expressing how they think Navajos perceive the world a n d historic events. Although some effort has been made to capture these views imbedded in the Navajos' metaphorical language â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Walter Dyk's work being a notable attempt â&#x20AC;&#x201D; few authors have really succeeded in doing so. Between Sacred Mountains fills part of this void, the text proving to be as much an impression as it is a historical, ecological, and cultural view of the Navajos' relation to their land. Ranging in scope from prehistory to the present, it surveys the importance of a land ethic as expressed by thirty-two contributing Native Americans. From the profusion of photographs, sketches, and testimony emerges the belief that the land is a source of cultural identity and economic security, both of which d e p e n d o n wise e n v i r o n m e n t a l choices in a world of c o n t i n u o u s change.

T h e concept for the book was generated by the Rock Point community, whose school board felt the need for a c u r r i c u l u m t h a t expressed Navajo values. T h e text does so admirably, raising p e r t i n e n t q u e s t i o n s a b o u t contemporary issues such as conservation, resource development, u n employement, cultural change, and the Navajo-Hopi land dispute. While over half of the material is concerned with events and views that have developed since 1900, all of the chapters

unite on the common thesis that many different ethnic groups have come to the land, each with its own economy and value system. T h u s , the authors' stated purpose is not to "fix one truth" but rather to encourage readers to "actively seek many truths from the land and people around them." By the last chapter, however, little doubt is left as to wherein truth lies for the Navajo.

T h e r e a d e r who approaches this book from a purely factual basis will find there are some inaccuracies, such as s t a t e m e n t s suggesting c o l u m n s were used only in the Anasazi architecture found in Chaco Canyon and that New Mexico was settled by the Spaniards in 1594 instead of 1598.

And there is some exaggeration, as seen in the ideas that Diego de Vargas's f o u r - y e a r r e c o n q u e s t of t h e Pueblos (1692-96) allowed him the ease of "picking the Pueblos like ripe corn," or that Manuelito's raid on Fort Defiance (1860) nearly succeeded in capturing the installation. Of a more serious nature, more balance could have been used in describing Spanish efforts in the Southwest instead of portraying them as motivated solely by "riches, greed, money and blood," and in a later period, having Gen. James H. Carleton moving the Navajo to Bosque Redondo so that he could look for gold, instead of seeing his action as the culmination of over a decade of wrongs on both sides. But the r e a d e r who is upset by a few inac-

Book Reviews and Notices curacies and a little exaggeration has missed the real value of the book, which lies in the personal accounts and views that comprise the bulk of the material.

T h e second half of Between Sacred Mountains is particularly successful in raising with force and insight the crucial issues that confront the Navajo in the twentieth century. Many of these concerns center in the Black Mesa area and the n o r t h e r n part of the reservation w h e r e Peabody coal, the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, the Four Corners power plant, and Aneth oil fields are located. T h r o u g h o u t this discussion pulses the u n d e r t o n e of "buyer beware" as Navajos are urged to weigh a l t e r n a t i v e s , ask c o g e n t questions, d e m a n d a g r e e m e n t s be

105 met honorably, and are encouraged to seek answers from their heritage. T h e authors offer no panaceas but point with fervor to the fact that poor decisions in the past have led to present problems and that if mistakes are to be avoided in the future, then intelligent p r e p a r a t i o n must take place now.

Navajo independence or cultural extinction rests in the balance. T h u s , the book ends on a note sounded often t h r o u g h o u t Native America â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the destiny of the Indian people lies with t h e y o u n g e r g e n e r a t i o n who can apply lessons and learning from the tribal past to forge a culturally practical and satisfying tomorrow.

ROBERT MCPHERSON

College of Eastern Utah

Hashknife Cowboy: Recollections of Mack Hughes. By STELLA HUGHES. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984. xvi + 234 p p . $17.50.)

After a first glance at the flossy title you would expect this book to be a B-class movie, full of cliches and sent i m e n t a l c l a p t r a p . W R O N G ! It is more like a documentary but without footnotes or pretense to scholarship.

It is actually as honest as a spavined workhorse, and, as for romance, it would j a r the braces off the teeth of a gawky high school teenager. It is full of hard knocks and disappointments dished u p without tears or self-pity.

T h e title is taken from the name of what I presume to be the biggest cow outfit in northern Arizona, and it does not present the a u t h o r as a poor boy who overcame adversity and got rich.

Instead, the reader learns of the slow evolution of a stripling who goes to work at age twelve partly in order to relieve his mother of the need to feed one more child in a household that was often on the edge of very short rations. T h e boy's father was himself a w o r k i n g cowboy, n o m o r e t h a n a hired hand. But that is not intended to detract from his savvy of his trade and

from the role model he filled admirably for his spunky and tenacious son.

T h e father is called Pat, which does not show much reverence for him. At times the reader is annoyed by the hard bitten, h a r d ridin' way Pat treats his wife and kids. But he earned only $65 per month and was always frustrated at not being able to do better.

He always sent his check to his wife, who needed it desperately. But he was impulsive and unsteady. In the spring of 1926 he and two of his cronies left the n o r t h e r n Arizona ranch to go u p into Utah to look for work or maybe do some trapping they said. At this announcement his wife said bitterly, "If they really wanted to trap, they could do it right here on the river. T h e whole d a m n e d state is overrun with coyotes." According to the son's recollections: "Whenever our mother cussed, which was almost never, I knew she was close to tears. I got to hell out of the house, 'cause if there was one thing I couldn't stand, it was seein' my mother cry."

106 If Mack was near tears it wasn't because he was a softie. Mr. Wyrick, foreman at the ranch, hired him to be s w a m p e r ( h e l p e r ) for t h e h o r s e breaker. H e recalled that experience in these terms: The first few weeks my hands suffered the most. I had rope burns so thick and so solid they looked like I'd placed them on top of a hot stove. I doctored them with bacon grease and after a while my hands got as callused and tough as the sole of a horse's hoof. I also had my share of skinned places and clothes torn off, but John just laughed each time I got into a jackpot and let me get out on my own. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

Utah Historical Quarterly Like Virgil, the author of this tale starts off in the midst of things, in medias res. But, unlike Virgil, he does not have a literary tradition behind him. For example, he spells chamisa like a grade-schooler: chemease. However, I figure that he could put hobbles on a spooky broomtail faster than we could dissolve sugar cubes in a china cup. It's all relative.

Despite the misleading title, this book is as honest as denim britches and gives you a feeling for the old West that might make older readers homesick.

K A R L E . YOUNG

Brigham Young University

The Santa Fe and Taos Colonies: Age of the Muses, 1900-1942. By ARRELL MORGAN GIBSON. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. xiv + 305 p p . $24.95.) " T h e very elements of the Southwestern milieu, scorned by a materialistic, progress-obsessed, urban, industrial nation — awesome vistas, alluring and variant colors, intensity of light, sweeping spaciousness, multicultural communities, and precious isolation — were discovered around 1900 by the American creative comm u n i t y . " T h r o u g h o u t his welldocumented history of the Santa Fe and Taos artistic colonies, Arrell M. Gibson returns to those elements to explain the extraordinary liveliness and e n d u r a n c e of the artistic communities in northern New Mexico.

It may come as a surprise to the uninformed that the last earthly remains of D. H. Lawrence, the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover, rest not in Y o r k s h i r e or Devon, b u t in New Mexico. Other literati, such as J o h n Galsworthy and Willa Cather, wrote lovely poems inspired by their visits to the artistic colonies at Santa Fe and Taos.

But it was the painters who were first drawn to those remote villages in

the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and formed the nucleus of aesthetes during the ' A g e of the Muses, 19001942." In the beginning, they were refugees from the tyranny and rigidity of the eastern artistic academy, centered in New York. In that regard, Santa Fe a n d Taos were one with Woodstock, Provincetown, and Carmel-by-the-Sea. These rural — at times remote — sites provided the peace and isolation, the immersion in nature, and the simplicity in life-style t h a t a p p e a l e d to t h e a v a n t - g a r d e painters just after the t u r n of the century. " T h e Sangre de Cristo r a n g e , a southern spur of the Rocky Mountains, dominates the local landscape.

Its snow-clad p e a k s , t h r u s t i n g to nearly 14,500 feet, hover over awesome canyons; the deepest of these apertures in the earth's crust is the Rio G r a n d e water course. Mile-high mesas connect the alpine chain with lowland deserts." T h e variety of the landscape, the variety of vegetation, and the general elevation all contrib-

Book Reviews and Notices

107

uted to a dazzling environment attractive to p a i n t e r s . " L i g h t is t h e dominating feature of the Santa FeTaos ambience. Artists found the sky there 'so brilliant that it vibrates.' T h e climate provided them a long painting season a n d c l e a r , b r i l l i a n t s u n light. . . ."

T h e painters were also attracted by the ethnic diversity of northern New Mexico, both ancient a n d m o d e r n .

T h e Anasazi, the Pueblo, the Navajos, the Spanish-Americans, and the Mexicans provided an array of models and cultural idiosyncrasies to delight those looking for new subjects to capture on canvas. T h e artists were especially attracted to the Pueblo Indians, their intimacy with nature and the essential dignity of their lives.

Not only did the Indians serve as subjects for art, but Native American a r t also i n t r i g u e d t h e A n g l o American painters and taught them important concepts in design, color, symbolism, and abstractionism.

From beginning to end, Professor Gibson's work is scholarly, extremely well documented, and detailed to the fullest extent. His reluctance to leave out any historical details sometimes

h a m p e r s what otherwise might be truly zestful r e a d i n g . P e r h a p s too much time is spent on the various artistic organizations and their various causes celebres.

When Gibson describes the northern New Mexican environment in its geographical, physiographical, a n d ethnic variety, his writing is at its best.

H e has obviously fallen in love with his subject, and he makes resoundingly clear the reasons why the painters, writers, sculptors, and other artists fell so rapturously in love with n o r t h e r n New Mexico.

The Santa Fe and Taos Colonies: Age of the Muses, 1900-1942, is deserving of reading by all those interested in the history of n o r t h e r n New Mexico, in the history of American artistic colonies in the first half of the twentieth c e n t u r y , a n d in t h e p e o p l e from t h r o u g h o u t the United States a n d Europe who, at one time or another d u r i n g the first four decades of this century, populated Santa Fe and Taos and left a lasting imprint on the culture of the American West.

WILLIAM C. STRINGHAM

Bountiful, Utah

Book Notices The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith.

Compiled and edited by DEAN C. JESSEE. (Salt Lake City: Deseret B o o k , 1984. xxviii + 736 p p . $18.95.)

Joseph Smith's writings, in his own h a n d or dictated to a scribe, have been

W1?

A V/ )7'-'v7'-h'.7"</. Yu\ iv

collected, annotated, and indexed in this single volume. Included are letters, j o u r n a l entries, and documents that illuminate the Mormon leader's character. N u m e r o u s photographs of the original written items accompany the type transcriptions. Jessee's work will be of great value to anyone in-

108 terested in J o s e p h Smith or early Mormon history.

Starting with Defiance: Nineteenth Century Arizona Military Posts. By CONSTANCE WYNN ALTSHULER. (Tucson:

Arizona Historical Society, 1983. vii + 80 pp.)

This handsome hard-bound book is a miniature encyclopedia of the camps and forts of Arizona Territory. Alphabetically arranged entries are enhanced with photographs that show t h e i n t e r i o r s of b a r r a c k s a n d a n officer's quarters, a baseball team, and a cavalry training exercise in addition to the more familiar exterior views of post buildings. T h e introductory section is full of interesting detail on garr i s o n flags, r a t i o n s , q u a r t e r s (a brigadier general or colonel was entitled to four rooms, a captain to two), laundresses (the only women with "official status in the army"), and the daily routine. T h e maps are very useful.

Utah Historical Quarterly Pioneer Heritage: The First Century of the Arizona Historical Society. By C. L. SONNICHSEN. ( T u c s o n : A r i z o n a Historical Society, 1984. viii + 230 pp. $15.00.)

T h e arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad in Tucson in 1880 created a feeling that the pioneer past was slipping away and that an organization was needed to preserve its history and artifacts. T h u s , the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society was born in 1884.

(This beginning is similar in essence to that of the Utah State Historical Society which traces its genesis to the events surrounding statehood in 1896 and the Pioneer Jubilee the following year.)

Sonnichsen relates the history of t h e A r i z o n a i n s t i t u t i o n in lively h u m a n terms, looking at the men and w o m e n who led it from an elitist g r o u p to a public organization concerned with all aspects of Arizona history, not just the honoring of early settlers. In recognition of that change the word Pioneers was d r o p p e d from the society's official name in 1971.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY MILTON C. ABRAMS. Logan, 1985

Chairman WAYNE K. HINTON. Cedar City, 1985

Vice-chairman MELVIN T. SMITH. Salt Lake City Secretary THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, Provo, 1987

PHILLIP A. BULLEN, Salt Lake City, 1987 J. ELDON DORMAN. Price, 1987 ELIZABETH GRIFFITH, Ogden, 1985

DEAN L. MAY, Salt Lake City, 1987 WILLIAM D. OWENS, Salt Lake City, 1987 HELEN Z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City, 1985 ANAND A. YANG, Salt Lake City, 1985

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH. DirecUrr

STANKORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor

JAY M. HAYMOND. Librarian DAVID B. MADSEN, State Archaeologist

A. KENT POWELL, Historic Presematum Research WILSON G. MARTIN,Historic Preservation Development PHILIP F. NOTARIANNI, Museum Services

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by ublishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other istorical materials; collecting historic Utah artifacts; locating, documenting, and preserving historic and prehistoric buildings and sites; and maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs, museum, or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah s past.

P

This publication has been funded with the assistance of a matching grant-in-aid from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, under provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended.

This program receivesfinancialassistance for identification and preservation of historic properties under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or handicap in its federally assisted programs. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office of Equal Opportunity, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C. 20240.