Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 53, Number 4, 1985

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

STANFORD J. LAYTON. Managing Editor MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Associate Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS KENNETH L. CANNON n, Salt Lake City, 1986 ARLENE H. EAKLE, Woods Cross, 1987

PETER L. Goss, Salt Lake City, 1985 GLEN M. LEONARD, Farmington, 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.


H I S T O R I C A L ai7A.RTSRZ.-ir

Contents FALL 1985/VOLUME 53/NUMBER 4

IN T H I S ISSUE

307

T H E SUBSTANCE OF T H E LAND: AGRICULTURE V. INDUSTRY IN T H E SMELTER CASES OF 1904

AND

1906

.

. J O H N E . LAMBORNAND CHARLES S. PETERSON

FROM HOUSEWORK T O OFFICE CLERK: UTAH'S WORKING WOMEN, 1870-1900 T H E PEERLESS COAL MINES ROBERT D. YOUNG AND T H E O T T E R CREEK RESERVOIR

A. . . .

MICHAEL VINSON

326

PHILIP CEDERLOF

336

M.

YOUNG

357

A.

HALES

367

EDITED BY GARY TOPPING

380

" T H E GYPSIES ARE COMING! T H E GYPSIES ARE COMING!" DON MAGUIRE'S T R A D I N G EXPEDITION IN N O R T H E R N ARIZONA, 1879

308

.REVO

DAVID

BOOK REVIEWS

396

BOOK NOTICES

405

INDEX

406

T H E COVER The U.S. Mining and Smelting Company smelter in Midvale, Utah, ca. 1905. The smelter closed in 1908 following a court suit brought by area farmers. USHS collections.

© Copyright 1985 Utah State Historical Society


Books reviewed

THOMAS G. ALEXANDER AND JAMES B . ALLEN.

Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Uake City LARRY R.

GERLACH

396

NANCY D . MCCORMICK AND J O H N S. MCCORMICK.

Saltair

. .

.DOROTHY

Mormonism: of a New Religious

J A N SHIPPS.

Z.

MORTENSEN

398

The Study

Tradition

MELVIN T . SMITH

399

W. TURRENTINE JACKSON. Wells

Fargo & Co. in Idaho Territory PAUL ANDREW H U T T O N .

and His Army DAVID LAVENDER.

.

Phil

ROBERT

River

LASS

402

Sheridan A . TRENNERT

403

WILLIAM

E.

Runners

of the Grand Canyon

GARY TOPPING

404


In this issue The entrepreneurial spirit flourishes in America where individuals embark on new enterprises with astonishing eagerness. This bold determination may lead to success, but sometimes conflict and unexpected difficulties block the path. T h e first article examines the court cases initiated by farmers in the Salt Lake Valley who found their livelihoods threatened by smelter smoke. T h e new industrial giants represented economic growth and jobs, but not everyone was prepared to relinquish the old values attached to the land. T h e economic development represented by the smelters was echoed in other business ventures near the turn of the century that, as the second piece explains, enabled many working women to abandon domestic service occupations for the greater opportunities of office employment. Initiative and ingenuity often overcame long odds. T h e Peerless coal entrepreneurs, who struggled to keep old equipment running and to mine tricky seams, succeeded beyond expectation because of the dedication and skill of many employees. T h e story of the Otter Creek Reservoir, above, provides another example of unusual pluck. T h e final two articles look at enterprising people on the road. T h e Gypsies who made annual visits to many Utah communities seemed exotic and at times controversial to residents, but oral testimony also tells of the talented entertainers among them. As a traveling trader, Don Maguire found opportunity in out-of-the-way places. T h e first-person account of his 1879 trading expedition to northern Arizona reveals the audacity and improvisational ability that sometimes fueled the entrepreneurial spirit on the American frontier.


The Substance of the Land: Agriculture v. Industry in the Smelter Cases of 1904 and 1906 BY J O H N E. L A M B O R N A N D C H A R L E S S. P E T E R S O N

1 HE TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY YEARS were an exciting and challenging time for Utah. Statehood had been achieved. T h e prospects looked almost limitless. Among other things, the economy was shifting from Mr. Lamborn is special collections librarian at Weber State College, Ogden; Dr. Peterson is professor of history at Utah State University, Logan. Most of the material in this article was prepared originally as a report for the Henry Wheeler Living Historical Farm in Salt Lake County u n d e r a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Strawberry fields near Salt Lake City, early 1900s. USHS collections.

..***


The Smelter Cases of 1904 and 1906

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self-sufficiency to industry and commerce. Yet the period's changes were not unmixed blessings as older elements of society found it necessary to make important adjustments. Among no segment of society was this more apparent than to farmers of Salt Lake and adjoining counties. On the one hand, they found profit in product specialization, improved access to national markets, expanded local markets, federally funded reclamation projects, and the applications of scientific agriculture. On the other hand, they confronted formidable problems arising from aspects of industry and commerce with which farming was incompatible. For many Salt Lake Valley farmers mining and smelting proved to be particularly

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threatening. Involving progress, tradition, and the various side effects of mineral production, the confrontations that ensued were surprisingly modern in character. At stake were such diverse considerations as job opportunities, enhanced payrolls, air and water pollutants, despoiled land, radically altered farming strategies, and various changes in life-style. In this early period of Utah's industrial revolution the by-products of change were largely unanticipated. But expected or not they touched the lives of individuals, brought interest groups into being, and triggered a communitywide examination of values and interests. In the pages that follow a profile of the confrontation between farming and the smelting industry will be sketched. Elements in the outline presented here include earlier shifts on the part of Wasatch County farmers towards commercial agriculture and land speculation, problems with chemical poisons, a major section on air pollution growing from the increasing number of smelters, and the impact all these changes had upon farmers as viewed through the experience of one family. First, it is important to have some sense of the significance of farming in the Wasatch Front counties. From 1880 on the five leading counties in almost all categories of Utah agriculture were spread along the Wasatch Front. In terms of farm population Salt Lake County was always the largest, with Utah, Weber, Davis, and Cache following. Often Salt Lake County was among the top overall producers of agricultural goods as well.1 That this was so was due in part to the fact that adapting to change had been an integral part of the farm heritage in Salt Lake Valley. Initial efforts in agriculture succeeded only after pioneer farmers tailored their techniques to the demands of a semi-arid environment. In the more recent past, stability for the area's farm economy had been achieved through compromise and experimentation that enabled farmers to make the transition from the subsistence agriculture of the nineteenth century to the changing markets of national and local needs. Henry Wheeler, for example, expanded the enterprise of his farm southeast of Murray to include a farm flock of sheep, a dairy and milk delivery route, an ice distribution 1 For historical treatments of Utah agriculture in this period see Leonard J. Arrington, "The Commercialization of Utah's Economy: T r e n d s and Developments from Statehood to 1910," in Arrington and Thomas G. Alexander, A Dependent Commonwealth: Utah's Economy from Statehood to the Great Depression, ed. Dean May (Provo, Ut.: Brigham Young University Press, 1974), pp. 16-19; Charles S. Peterson, " T h e Americanization of Utah's Agriculture," Utah Historical Quarterly 42 (1974): 108-25; Noble Warrum, Utah Since Statehood, Historical and Biographical, vol. 1 (Chicago. 1919), 1:223-51.


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business, and orchard husbandry. Others took similar action, with the result that many of the most progressive farms in the state were found near Salt Lake City. As one contemporary described it, "Sugar beets, celery, vegetables of all kinds and fruits are raised in profusion, and there are numerous dairies, Salt Lake City affording a convenient and ready market for the products of farms, gardens and dairies." 2 Farm women came and went from the city, trading butter and eggs. West side farm youngsters marketed geese and ducks shot in the sloughs and marshes of the North Point near the present international airport. Farmers from points as distant as Spanish Fork brought their hay to the city's hay markets or delivered directly to its carriage houses and livery stables. Davis County, too, served Salt Lake City's farmers' markets with an outpouring of truck crops and farm goods, while Ogden became a processing point for sugar, flour, and canned goods, allowing farmers there and farther north in Box Elder and Cache counties to enjoy the potentials — and the drawbacks — of national markets. 3 It is not clear when growing pains first adversely affected relations between the mines and smelters and Salt Lake Valley's farmers, but complaints during the 1880s about "nuisance" water in the Surplus Canal that ran into the Jordan River near the Great Salt Lake suggest that it may have been early indeed. By 1901, however, complaints became more specific, and problems appeared that engaged not only the attention of the mining corporations but the state's scientists. In December of that year, an unusual illness struck the cattle of two Layton farmers, E. P. Ellison and the partnership of Nalder and Sons. T h e malady was characterized by constipation, loss of appetite, moaning, and a tendency to push at barns and fences. Eventually, stricken animals left the herd, laid on their left sides, and showed signs of delirium before dying. Both farmers ran progressive operations including the cultivation of sugar beets — the wonder crop of the age — and fed beet pulp from an Ogden sugar factory to their cattle. T h e afflicted animals had, in fact, been placed on beet pulp early in December and had been eating over fifty pounds per day when they were stricken. 2

Steven Sorensen, "Research Report on the Social and Cultural History of the Wheeler Farm Neighborhood," (Salt Lake City: Friends of the Henry Wheeler Farm, 1979); Warrum, Utah Since Statehood, p. 512. 3 For circumstances in Salt Lake County agriculture during this period see Charles S. Peterson and John Lamborn, "Agriculture in Salt Lake County, 1890 to 1915" (prepared for Henry Wheeler Living Historical Farm, 1980).


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Professors J o h n A. Widtsoe and Lewis A. Merrill of the Utah State Agricultural College, who were called in to diagnose the cause of death, declared it to be lead poisoning and singled out beet pulp as the likely offender. Further investigation confirmed that the pulp had been contaminated while being hauled in boxcars used previously to transport lead ore. 4 Almost immediately another incident of stock poisoning occurred at Rosette in Box Elder County. T h e Century Mining Company, which was located near Rosette, discharged water used in milling into a nearby stream. As a result, the contaminated water spread two or three miles onto open range. Twenty-one cattle died from drinking this water, the linings "of their throats and stomachs" "burnt black and practically eaten away." Chemical analysis showed that the water was "so highly charged with arsenic that an ordinary drink for man or beast would contain sufficient to kill."5 These and similar poisonings no doubt contributed to the ill will of the farmers towards the mining companies. But it was the problem of air pollution created by smelters in Salt Lake County that brought agriculture and mining into a pitched battle. T h e first smelter constructed in Utah for the reduction of copper ores was located eight miles south of Salt Lake City in Murray. Called the Highland Boy, it was financed with British capital through Utah Consolidated Gold Mines, Limited, under the leadership of Samuel Newhouse and Thomas Weir. T h e plant had a capacity of 250 tons of ore per day. Shortly before its completion in 1899, the company decided to add a lead smelter capable of handling 300 tons of ore daily. These two facilities were followed in 1900 by "a three-stack semipyritic" smelter of a 250-ton capacity, constructed at Midvale by the Bingham Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company, under the direction of Edward L. White, W. S. McCornick, and Duncan McVichie. It began operation at about the time Albert E. Holden's United States Mining Company was preparing a site on the J o r d a n River at Bingham Junction for its 1,000-ton capacity copper smelter. 6

4 J o h n A. Widtsoe and Lewis A. Merrill, "Lead Ore in Sugar Beet Pulp," Utah State Agricultural College Experiment Station Bulletin No. 74 (Logan, Ut., 1902), pp. 57-62. 5 P. A. Yoder, "Poison in Water from a Gold and Silver Mine," Utah State Agricultural College Experiment Station Bulletin No. 81 (Logan, Ut., 1903), pp. 199-202. 6 Gary B. Hansen, "Industry of Destiny: Copper in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 31 (1963): 263-79; and Leonard J. Arrington and Gary B. Hansen, "The Richest Hole on Earth": A History of the Bingham Copper Mine (Logan, 1963), especially pp. 7-56.


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Until 1903 these smelters operated with little apparent effect upon the neighboring farms. But early in the summer of that year a series of rain and wind storms spread smelter smut in a path of devastation that quickly became known as the "smoke belt." It extended from Murray to the limits of Salt Lake City. Along its route crops, livestock, orchards, and even the trees of Liberty Park were blighted. 7 T h e outcry of the farmers was bitter and loud. Any and all problems affecting crops, stock, or soil were caused by the smoke, they alleged, and they demanded an investigation of the situation. Certain that the farmers' complaints were greatly exaggerated, the smelter operators agreed to the need for a study. Both sides turned to the Agricultural College at Logan for settlement of the matter. Beginning in J u n e and continuing through the growing season, J o h n A. Widtsoe directed a study of the affected area. His task was complicated by a number of factors. T h e capricious character of the pollution pattern made the survey of actual smoke damage difficult. Shifting wind patterns scattered the smoke, spokelike through various sections of the county. Rainfall while a dust cloud h u n g over an area was usually disastrous. Downdrafts while irrigation water stood in the fields also accentuated the smoke's detrimental effects. But the inconsistent manner in which both crops and livestock were actually harmed by the smoke made definite conclusions about the problem seem uncertain. Only one result was known for sure — continuing damage and the lack of factual information on the situation was promoting a widespread belief that farms for miles around the plants would have to be abandoned. 8 T o allay these fears, Widtsoe's investigation sought to report the "extent, degree and nature of the damage" actually resulting from "the activity of the copper smelters" and to suggest ways for farmers to guard against such damage. In October the investigation reported its findings and recommendations. With regard to actual damages resulting from the smoke, they had reached the following cautious conclusions: 1. When the wind causes the smoke to beat upon a field for a considerable length of time, it tends to injure the crops severely, and thus to diminish their yields.

7

Hansen, "Industry of Destiny," p. 277. John A. Widtsoe, "The Relation of Smelter Smoke to Utah Agriculture," Utah State Agricultural College Experiment Station Bulletin No. 88 (Logan, Ut., 1903). 8


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More optimistically, the report continued, smoke did not "inj u r e the fertility of the soils nor materially affect the feeding value of crops grown in the area." Furthermore, Widtsoe suggested farmers could reduce the actual damage related to the smoke by taking some "practical," but as it proved not always easily applied, precautions: 1. Don't irrigate on days when wind blows the smelter smoke towards your farm. T h e injuries from the smoke are always greatest when the soil is wet. 2. Animals on pasture are likely to gather more flue dust than if barn fed. As far as possible, therefore, grow hay on the affected pastures. 3. Trees are weakened so much by being robbed of their leaves several times in one or several seasons that death usually follows. It is not advisable to plant orchards or trees of any kind in the districts affected by smelter smoke. 4. Annual crops are generally the safest in smelter districts. 5. Lucern, which is perennial, appears to withstand the effect of the smelter smoke very well, and is a safe crop for the smelter smoke. 6. Windbreaks of any kind, sheltering a farm from the direct action of the smoke, would do much to modify the injuries from the smelter smoke. 7. Don't ascribe all your misfortunes to the smelter smoke. Be reasonable in your claims, and then insist upon your rights. 10

Not surprisingly, very little in Widtsoe's report was appreciated by the farmers. As far as their most vocal representatives were concerned, there was only one "practical" solution to the problem — stop the smoke altogether! As a result, their confrontation with the smelter owners erupted into a bitter feud pitting the county's agricultural interests against its mining industries, or in effect, into a contest between its nineteenth-century heritage and its twentiethcentury aspirations. T h e potential for serious financial loss should either side triumph completely over the other was obvious. Both agriculture and industry were important factors in Salt Lake County's economic well-being. T h e county was, in fact, Utah's leading county in mineral production and housed well over half of the state's manufacturing 'ibid. °Ibid.


The Smelter Cases of 1904 and 1906

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establishments. On the other hand, it was home to more farmers than any other county in the state and was by almost all indexes one of the most important agricultural counties in Utah. 11 Ideally, "agriculture and mining, the two great industries of the region," should have been mutually beneficial. As Widtsoe pointed out in a major position paper dealing with the problem: The operation of the mines, reduction mills and smelters necessitates the employment of large numbers of people, who swell the population of the State, and consume a large part of its agricultural products. Utah, which is an inland State, possessing as yet few large manufacturing enterprises, finds the markets afforded by the mining industry of decided advantage to the farmers. 12

By the same token, Widtsoe continued, "the interests of all phases of the mining industry were furthered by the proximity of prosperous agricultural communities." 13 Widtsoe's effort to calm the troubled issue notwithstanding, the farmers' protests against the smelters had become a frequent and commanding news item by the latter part of 1904 as damage continued. As the protests grew, pulling more and more people into the row, so grew the fear that the battle would culminate in the closure of the plants. Mediation was called for, and the Deseret News acted to amplify that call. "There is no denial of the fact," its editor wrote in the August 30 issue, that great injury has been done to the crops and the trees and grass in this county from the sulphorous fumes from the smelter. . . . The damages that have been suffered are great and widespread and evidence of them are abundant and indisputable. On the other hand, the smelting industry is of great value and of much benefit to labor and its suppression or even hindrance would be in that sense a calamity to working people and also to the state.

Therefore, the News suggested a meeting of the feuding sides to arrange an amenable solution to the dilemma. 14 In fact, just such a meeting had been arranged by farmers from Granger, Murray, Taylorsville, Sandy, and other affected areas. It was scheduled for September 9 in Murray. To pay its expenses, "a tax was levied on each land holder at ten cents per acre." T h e meeting's purpose was to "try by peaceable measure to effect an 1 ' Data on which the relative role of Salt Lake County in agriculture is based were extracted from the Utah sections of the Agricultural Reports of the U.S. Censuses for the years 1890-1910. 12 Widtsoe, "The Relation of Smelter Smoke to Utah Agriculture." 13 Ibid. ^Deseret News, August 30, 1904.


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U.S. Mining and Smelting Company's copper smelter in Midvale ca. 1906, looking northwest. Note small cemetery in foreground. USHS collections.

understanding with the smelters." T h e farmers hoped in this way to convince the industry to make an all-out effort to solve the smoke problem by making adjustments in the operations of the plants. However, the hope of both the News and the farmers that such a meeting would terminate the feud was short-lived. While some of the smelter managers "treated the farmers' petition respectfully, . . . others felt that it was none of the farmers affair what the smelters proposed to do." T h e farmers were determined to make it their affair.15 In fact, the animosity had become so great that the optimism of the News began to sag. Shifting its position somewhat, the newspaper became an apologist for the feud: "TheNews has, all along, advanced and maintained the opinion that the wrong can be remedied if not entirely removed," they editorialized. "We have demanded action in that direction. . . . We have suggested friendly conference of the 15

Deseret News, September 9, 1904.


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parties. . . . We have advised conciliation." All for naught. T h e farmers continued to complain that the smelters were uncooperative and a threat to their lives, their homes, and their property. T h e smelter managers insisted that they were doing everything possible to see the matter properly settled and that the farmers were being unrealistic in their demands. It was a sad state of affairs. T h e News appealed to both sides for arbitration. "Let the contending parties, or their chosen representatives, come together in the spirit of fairness," they advised. "Let each recognize the other's rights and let no resort to force of any kind be had until the very last extremity is reached." 16 For the farmers that extremity was fast approaching. Tired of delay, they looked for an appropriate forum from which to air the merits of the case. On December 12 a petition signed by 800 men protesting the smelter smoke was presented to the county commissioners. T h e following day another petition, this time "signed by almost twice as many people," was delivered to the State Board of Health. Both requested an "investigation on [the board's] part, under the statutes requiring it to investigate reported unsanitary and unhealthful conditions." 17 T h e farmers next sought the assistance of the Salt Lake County Board of Health. On February 8, 1905, representatives for the farmers and the smelters met in a courtroom at the Salt Lake City and County Building. Representing the county at the meeting were Commissioners J. C. Mackay, W. W. Wilson, and E. D. Miller; county physician E. W. Whitney; Dr. Straup, health officer at Bingham; Dr. W. E. Ferrebee, health officer at Murray; and Dr. Robertson, health officer at Sandy. T h e farmers were represented by O. P. Miller of Mill Creek, chairman; M. E. Lee of Murray; Joseph W. Carlise of Mill Creek; Henry Burton of Farmers Ward; W. H. Hague of Taylorsville; Mahroni Spencer of Taylorsville; and James Godfrey of South Cottonwood. For the smelter operators, there appeared attorneys W. H. Bradley, R. H. Channing, and C. W. Whitney. T h e farmers asked "that the smoke be declared a public nuisance and that steps be taken to abate it." T h e smelter operators asked for more time. 18 According to the account of the hearing presented in the News, ^Deseret News, September 5, 1904. X1 Deseret News, December 13 and 14, 1904. 18 Deseret News, February 8, 1905.


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the farmers introduced "some very convincing evidence of the damage done by the poisonous fumes from the smelters." T h e i r position was stated to the board by O. P. Miller: We were led to believe that something definite would be done in this matter by the smelter people, a n d we would be given relief. In October, the smelter men reported that they had decided to employ a commission of three experts, one to be selected by the farmers, to investigate the evil and decide on some plan of overwhelming it. This proposition was not satisfactory to the farmers, as we thought it meant delay, a n d would give no relief. We think o u r belief has been verified by present conditions. 19

T h e attorney for the smelter managers countered that "if this question could have been solved in a few days or weeks it would have been done long ago." As it was, it was a complex matter needing investigation. Such an investigation had in fact been made. T h e conclusion was that "the smoke nuisance could be overcome" — eventually. Indeed, the operators were planning the construction of a plant costing some $ 150,000 specifically for that purpose. But, they were quick to add, they needed more time. 20 More time was the one thing the farmers did not favor. Indeed they wanted immediate action. As Miller p u t it, " T h e present laws are adequate to give us relief, if the board will act on the matter." As he and his fellow farmers saw the matter, it had three alternatives. "One is to control the smoke; another is to close the smelters; the third is to abandon the homes in the acreage lying within the affected district and turn the country over to the smelters intact." As for the farmers, they wanted "the court to o r d e r the smelters to close until such time as they can open with the problem solved and their poisoned fumes so contained that they do not lay waste the homes of the inhabitants t h r o u g h o u t the valley." 21 Such a direct challenge alienated many county residents who had heretofore sympathized with the farmers. Realizing the damage the farmers' suits could do to the economy, many began to protest that the farmers had gone too far. As an advocate of the farmers, the News, found itself the focus of growing abuse. In response it reduced the feud to a pat case of "Right" v. " T h e Moneyed Interests." Realizing the great good to the commonwealth of the money brought in by the smelters, Salt Lakers have been slow to join their rural 19

Ibid. Ibid. 21 Ibid.

20


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neighbors in an aggressive fight to force the expenditure of enough money by the smelters to take care of the smoke. T h e money thus e x p e n d e d doesn't increase dividends and managers have been slow to undertake it and bout [?] the objections of boards of directors in the east who are interested only in the dividend end of the business. Newspapers which have printed the story of the loss of vegetation out in the valley have been roundly scored as enemies of the community and as desiring the death of one of the great industries of the state. 2

T h e News continued to champion the farmers. In spite of the wealth associated with the smelters, it reminded people that "the loss to the entire state, should this part of the county become unfit for agriculture, could scarcely be estimated." T h u s supported, the farmers were not to be swayed from their objective by the criticism of others. T h e matter finally came before the federal courts in the early part of 1905. T h e first case to be heard by the court was Daniel McCleery et al. v. United Consolidated Mining Company. Presiding was District Court J u d g e J o h n A. Marshall. T h e objective of the complaint was to have the court "enjoin continuation of the smelting operations." 23 In their arguments the farmers claimed that "the fumes and dust expelled from the defendant's smelter (The Highland Boy) fell to some extent upon the land of the complainants and inflicted substantial damage." It was asserted that In the process of smelting, sulphur dioxide fumes are generated and escape. When moisture is added to this sulphur dioxide, it becomes sulphorous or sulphuric acid, and when by reason of becoming cool it falls to the ground, it is injurious to growing vegetation. It is also claimed that dust escapes from the stack of the smelter in such quantities as to injure vegetation and has to be injurious to stock fed on hay which the dust may have settled. 24

J u d g e Marshall responded with his decision on September 5. T o the attorney for the smelter operators, he pointed out that "the right of complainants to protection in equity by injunction is not affected by the fact that defendant has large capital invested in its business, while the value of the complainants' is comparatively small." T o the farmers he explained that though they were "entitled to protection in equity," their delay in asking for an injunction would hinder its application. Furthermore, he was not convinced that the

22

Deseret News, August 29, 1905. Federal Reporter, vol. 140. 24 Ibid. 23


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amount of the damages claimed against the Highland Boy was fully justified. "Evidence tended to show," he stated, "that the Highland Boy Smelter is not alone responsible for damage done farms and crops of the complainants." T h e damage was, in fact, the result of the operation of several smelting plants. Therefore, he determined to "arbitrarily reach a conclusion and assess the defendant company with what he considered to be its fair proportion of compensation." 25 If the company took exception to this decision, they had option to "decline to comply," in which case the court would immediately "issue an injunction." 26 T h o u g h the McCleery decision was clearly in favor of the farmers, it was a subsequent court case that brought a decisive action against the smelters: James Godfrey et al. v. American Smelting and Refining Company, et al. Again the presiding magistrate was J u d g e Marshall, and again the farmers were seeking an injunction against the smelters' operation. But the magnitude of this case was considerably greater. Involved were 419 farmers and not one, but five, of the valley's smelting firms: the American Smelting and Refining Company; the Utah Consolidated Smelting Company; the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company; and the Bingham Copper and Gold Mining Company. In this instance, the verdict handed down by the court was more than a victory for the farmers, it was a decision of "sweeping significance to the mining and smelting industry." Reporting on J u d g e Marshall's ruling, the Salt Lake Tribune said that the outcome had "caused a decided shock in smelting circles" and that the case would thereafter "provide food for thought in the smelting industry throughout the county." In his decision, J u d g e Marshall gave the farmers what they had previously been denied. Each of the plants involved was thereafter prohibited "from smelting ores carrying ten percent or more sulphur content at their present locations." T h e injunction was placed into effect thirty days from the date of the decree, allowing the defendents time to appeal. T h e court then left it to the smelter operators to either clean u p their plants or have them permanently enjoined. 27 With the exception of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which traded a $60,000 compensation to the farmers for 5

ibid. Salt Lake Tribune, September 5, 1905. 'Salt Lake Tribune, November 6, 1906. 3


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Workers at U.S. Mining and Smelting Company were caught in the middle when farmers sued the smelter. USHS collections.

a "modification of the decree permitting continued operations in Murray," the smelter owners opted for permanent enjoinment. T h e Highland Boy was closed in January 1908, and Utah Consolidated "transferred its ore to the plant of the International Smelting and Refining Company in Tooele. . . . Bingham Consolidated closed its Bingham Smelter in 1907. . . . T h e United States Mining Company closed its Midvale Smelter in 1908." T h e boom of Salt Lake County's sulfide copper smelting industry was ended. 28 With this victory the farmers received an angry backlash from the communities in which the smelters operated. Facing possible economic ruin, "it began to dawn on many in the affected communities . . . that the smoke nuisance had its advantages as well as disadvantages, and that the permanent removal of the plants would stop their source of revenue." 29 28

Hansen, "Industry of Destiny," pp. 277-278 SaltLake Tribune, December 28, 1906.

29


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Voicing this anger, the Salt Lake Tribune ran a taunting feature, comparing the farmers to "the fabled gent who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs." Entitled " T h e Smelter Goose," the piece read: T h e smelters employed the farmers' boys in the wintertime; the smelters were a strong factor in providing a good market for the farmers' products in the summertime — when he made any crop; and the smelters usually paid for a crop for the farmer in the summertime when he failed to make one. T h e smelting industry was the big fat goose. Every summer it laid two golden eggs. Also the farmer plucked the down off its breast, from which he made a soft cushion u p o n which he could sit in the shade of the old apple tree and watch the smoke which made his industrial dividends coil itself from the top of the stack and circulate itself in an ambient shower u p o n his fruitful land. But with the growth of the store of the golden eggs, the farmer became ambitious to get a big setting all at once, and therefore killed the goose that laid the eggs. 30

It was apparent to most that the farmers were not the greedcrazed criminals, nor the smelters the unfortunate goose that the Tribune portrayed. T o accusations that the farmers had "collected damages greater than the actual value of the crops" and then proceeded to sell the "portion of the crop saved as well" came the response that no farmer had "received a dollar . . . but after a fair and honest trial of his case." A n d as for the smelters — they had met a reverse, but they were far from calling it quits as the great day for the Utah copper industry still lay in the future. 31 Early in 1907 the smelter operators appealed the decision to the circuit court. When that court r e n d e r e d a decision sustaining the previous verdict, smelter managers made preparations to restructure their operations in compliance with the court o r d e r or to relocate their facilities in the western part of Salt Lake County, near Garfield and Magna. Farmers had won a victory, but for years smoke continued to be a special problem for Salt Lake Valley agriculture. From time to time farmers complained, special commissions studied the problem, and companies m a d e adjustments. Tensions cropped u p again and again, but in the main farmers and industrialists alike lived with the problem. In the long r u n there can be no doubt that agriculture fought a rear g u a r d action in Salt Lake and most of its neighboring Wasatch Front counties as industry and other u r b a n influences continued to grow.

Tbid. Arrington and Hansen, "The Richest Hole on Earth."


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Suggestive of the nature of the smelter smoke problems as well as the impact of the larger changes Salt Lake Valley farmers faced in the process of making the transition from the old order of subsistence farming to commercial agriculture in an increasingly industrialized world was the case of Harold Wagstaff and his father. 32 A long-time resident of a farming district in southeast Salt Lake City called Farmers Ward, the elder Wagstaff had raised a large part of his family during the turn-of-the-century decades on a fifteen-acre farm. On this small piece of ground farming was an intensive but stable process with the family raising much of what they ate and lived on. T h e Wagstaffs tried to enhance their income by raising stock carrots for sale to the owners of horses and cows in the city. Carrots were planted in rows fourteen inches apart, tended carefully by growing children, harvested, and stored in pits on the farm. Living only three or four miles from town, the elder Wagstaff made regular deliveries to customers throughout the city, thus adding a small cash income to produce consumed by the family. After many years real estate developments seemed to favor Wagstaff, and his land rose in value, making it possible in about 1915 to trade it for a fifty-six-acre farm on 54th South in Murray, a block and a half from one of the valley's major smelters. Unaware of smoke problems when he took possession of his new place, Wagstaff learned quickly and to his sorrow. As his son recalled: " T h e smelter was poison, that's all. Alfalfa a foot high would be swept by lead and arsenic like it had been frozen." Cows and horses died. T h e smelter provided a small windfall when it offered $10 per tree if he would remove damning evidence by chopping down his orchard. Even worse, neighbors, particularly those who worked in the smelter, showed the adverse effects of poisoning. Men who fired the furnaces were permanently pockmarked by hot ash flying in their face and damaging their skins. Others were "leaded" and retired sick and worn men at forty, or in some cases they died. T h e damage was restricted to a fairly limited area a r o u n d the smelters but was in the experience of the Wagstaff family a definite problem for all who lived within the smoke's reach. As in the case of other farmers in the smoke belts, smelter pollutants tended to usher the Wagstaffs into the technological age at an accelerated pace. In many respects their experience rep32

Interview with Harold Wagstaff, Salt Lake City, April 1980.


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resented the most tension-ridden point of contact between old ways and new. T h e life of the Wagstaffs is instructive at a n u m b e r of points. On the small Farmers Ward place they survived by feeding themselves and selling produce to people who lived in the city and worked at industrial urban pursuits. In time city growth resulted in a rise in value on the Farmers Ward place. Cheaper land was found and purchased. Ironically, the new Murray place was not cheap because it was undeveloped, but because it lay adjacent to an industrial plant that injured its productive capacity. T o offset this challenge the elder Wagstaff found employment one winter at the smelter, turning from the land for the only time in his entire life. Immediately the twelve h o u r days in close proximity to the plant told on him. Fortunately he worked with a son who bore much of the b r u n t of a job at which they worked together. Even more important, perhaps, in the context of this article is the fact that while the older m a n stayed with the land, accepting such as it could give — work for his children, city markets, land increments, poison fumes and all — the younger man, like many others of his generation, found no direct opportunity u p o n the land, although indirectly it apparently served him well. Even as he worked alongside his ailing father, Harold Wagstaff was moving into a succession of jobs at nurseries, laundries, stockyards, and about the city. School and professions were beyond his reach. O d d jobs, occasional periods of unemployment and imaginative exploitation of needs he saw a r o u n d him enabled him to make a good living. While at the nurseries he hit on the idea of hauling topsoil to people landscaping city lots. From that it was a short step to hauling fertilizer from the North Salt Lake Stockyards on his way to his h o m e in the Holladay suburb each evening. Similarly, an odd dollar could be turned by exploiting opportunities that grew from the restaurants to which he made laundry deliveries. From them he gathered slop for u p to 240 head of hogs kept u n d e r partnership arrangements on the farms of several friends. In his old age Harold Wagstaff remained convinced that the experience of these years added u p to a good life. But in hearing his experience one is aware of its insecurity, of its hand-to-mouth quality, and most of all of its distance from the stable routines of his father's life. One is also aware that the routine stability of the fully developed industrial society backed by a welfare state that has existed since World War II had not yet provided defenses against mishap and individual responsibility.


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Thus it is apparent that change had been not only an important aspect of farm life in turn-of-the-century Salt Lake Valley but that it was accompanied by friction and insecurity at both the individual and group levels. Agriculture was still important, if not actually basic to the area's economy and life-style. It made significant advances and continued to represent a viable and important element in the cultural mix of the county. But changes that ensued involved revolutionary shifts. Even adjustments that sought to stave off disaster for farmers contributed in the long run to agriculture's diminishing role in Salt Lake County. Although Harold Wagstaff and his peers were in a poor place to understand it, any attempt to interpret the era must be cognizant of shifts in the balance between agriculture and other industries and of change's long-lasting impact. Interpretation must look for those manifestations that, like the life of Harold Wagstaff and the smelter smoke controversy generally, tell emphatically of the tensions that accompanied change.


Minnie Neilson, left, equipped for housework. Photograph donated by Lela Fackrell. Office workers Maggie Heenan and Sybil Holland in Park City. USHS collections.

From Housework to Office Clerk: Utah's Working Women, 1870-1900 BY M I C H A E L VINSON

America often labored as domestic servants, more often d u e to compulsion, through lack of other opportunities, r a t h e r than choice. O n e domestic servant summed u p her options by citing h e r situation: W O R K I N G WOMEN IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY

Mr. Vinson is a graduate student in history at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. This article began as a research paper in D. Michael Quinn's class in American social history at BYU. The paper was also presented to a meeting of the Utah Women's History Association where it benefited from many helpful comments.


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No matter what they call us — no matter what they teach their children to call us — we must tamely submit and answer when we are called; we must enter no protest; if we did object, we should be driven out without the least ceremony, and, in applying for work at other places, we should find it very hard to procure another situation. 1

Utah's working women were no exception in the labor force. Although opportunity for work was limited in Utah in 1870, by 1900 expanding business offered another alternative to educated women. In this study, all women over ten years old are considered eligible to work, married or single. T h e percentages of women in the Utah work force are taken from the published censuses of 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1900. Two random samplings of the manuscript censuses in 1870 and 1900 were conducted for comparison and accuracy. T h e work force is considered to be those employed at occupations outside of the home. In 1870 Utah was a small frontier territory, and agriculture was the main enterprise. Not surprisingly, census takers recorded that only 4 percent of women in Utah were employed outside of the home, and of that, 84 percent were employed in domestic service. These figures may be misleading. Ann Lobb and Jill Derr have noted that women made other contributions to the development of the frontier. They cite the example of Christina Oleson Warnick, who helped to build the family home, tilled and planted the fields, channeled irrigation ditches, and gathered wild hay for the cows.2 This contribution is significant; of the 20,309 men in Utah between sixteen and fifty-nine years old (at least a significant proportion of whom were married, since the U.S. census shows that there were 17,210 families), almost half were farmers or planters. 3 Utah's three major urban centers, Provo, Ogden, and Salt Lake City, were surveyed in the manuscript census by looking at every third woman over ten years old and seeing if an occupation was listed. T h e results for the 1870 survey seem to indicate that the percentage of women workers in urban areas was often double the state average. *W. Elliot Brownlee and Mary M. Brownlee, Women in the American Economy: A Documentary History, 1675 to 1929 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 248. 2 Ann Vest Lobb and Jill Mulvay Derr, "Women in Early Utah," in Utah's History, ed. Richard D. Poll (Provo, Ut.: Brigham Young University Press, 1978), p. 338. For the important role of pioneer women, see also Leonard J. Arrington "The Economic Role of Pioneer Mormon Women," Western Humanities Review 9 (1955): 145-64; Glenda Riley, "Not Gainfully Employed: Women on the Iowa Frontier," Pacific Historical Review 47 (May 1980): 265-84; and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, "Women's Work on the Mormon Frontier," Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (1981): 276-90. 3 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Ninth Census of the United States, 1870: Occupation, 2:585.


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Provo, in 1870 the most agricultural of the three urban centers, closely approximated the statewide average for working women. This study counted 159 women, and 8 were employed (5 percent). Five of these were domestic servants, and the other three occupations were weaver, soapmaker and milliner. 4 T h e influence of the railroad may have made Ogden a slightly more urban center. Of the 180 women counted in Ogden, 14 were employed (8 percent); 86 percent of the working women were domestic servants, and the others were a schoolteacher and a factory hand. 5 Salt Lake City had a working female population in this sampling of the first, seventh and thirteenth wards of almost three times the state average. Of the 231 women checked, 31 (13 percent) were employed. Although a greater variety of jobs existed, such as a shoe shop keeper, nurse, and hotel steward, the majority of women were engaged in domestic service. 6 T h e number of working married women is not shown in the published census, but the manuscript sampling indicates that the percentage was very small. Of the 53 working women found in the sample, only two were married. T h e r e may be several reasons for the lack of women in the work force. If a large number of women worked with their husbands on the family farm, as Lobb and Derr alluded to, then few married women could be expected to be employed. Other reasons may be religious pressure, social disapproval, or a simple lack of opportunities. T h e published report of the 1880 census showed that the population of Utah increased from 86,786 to 143,832 and the number of working women more than doubled to 2,887. By comparison, in the rest of the nation Edith Abbot noted that from 1870 to 1880 the number of employed women rose from 353,950 to 631,034, a 78 percent increase. 7 In Utah the percentage of women in the work force rose from 4 to 7 percent. Although a large number of women were still working 4 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Census for Provo City, Utah First Ward, 1870. 5 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Census for Ogden City, Utah First Ward, 1870. 6 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Census for Salt Lake City, First, Seventh and Thirteenth Wards, 1870. 7 Edith Abbot, Women in Industry: A Study in American Economic History (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1913), p. 359.


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in domestic service, the percentage had decreased to 65 percent. 8 One quarter were working as dressmakers or tailors, and 3.3 percent were working in jobs such as clerks and saleswomen. 9 Even though a majority of working women in Utah labored in domestic service, there seems to be little evidence to show that it was a preferred occupation. W. Elliot Brownlee and Mary M. Brownlee write that " . . . American women have never accepted domestic service as an attractive form of employment; those who perform such work have always done so largely because they were unable to find other means of securing an income." 10 Mahalia Dorcas Moor understood the good fortune of those women who found jobs outside of domestic service. In a letter written in 1878 to a granddaughter in Utah, she commented: "You write you had been keeping school that is a good occupation I should think . . . they get good salary there but there are so many that fit themselves for teachers that they cannot find employment in that line." 11 Helen Campbell, writing in 1891, found it hard to understand why a woman would not prefer to work as a domestic servant. T h e wages were higher, more money could be saved, no capital outlay for something like a typewriter was required, the work was healthy and varied, and, finally, the work better prepared one for married life.12 Yet Campbell also reported the results of a survey taken by Eliza S. T u r n e r of the Philadelphia Working-Woman's Guild. When asked, "Why do not intelligent refined girls more frequently choose house service as a support?" the replies varied from a loss of personal freedom to degrading to one's self-respect. One girl replied, "It is all well enough to talk about service being divine, but that is not the way the world looks at it."13 T h e Brownlees report that when 562 women were asked why they did not prefer housework, 292 replied that it was because of pride, too much confinement, and not enough independence. 1 4 8

U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Tenth Census of the United States, 1880: Occupation, 2:760. 9 Ibid., 2:761. 10 Brownlee and Brownlee, Women in the American Economy, p. 249. 11 Mahalia Dorcas Moor, April 7, 1878, Sacramento, California, to a granddaughter in Utah. Brigham Young University Archives, Provo, Utah. 12 Helen Campbell, Women Wage Earners: Their Past, Their Present and Their Future (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1891), p. 239. 13 Ibid., 2:761. 14 Brownlee and Brownlee, Women in the American Economy, p. 250.


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T h e preference for occupations other than domestic service was seen in the published 1890 census. Utah's population increased by 44.5 percent to 207,905 and the number of employed women rose 145 percent to 7,076. 15 T h e percentage of working women increased from 7 to 10.5 percent. 16 Significantly, slightly less than half of the working females were now in domestic service. T e n percent were employed as teachers, musicians, and actresses in the expanding labor market. Another 25 percent worked as seamstresses and milliners and dressmakers; almost 8 percent were emerging as clerks, copyists, and saleswomen. 17 If women all across the country were leaving domestic service for expanded opportunities, their departure was not always viewed favorably. Alice Kessler-Harris noted that opposition to working women was twofold. First, most working women were single and their personal moral laxity was in question. Second, women were seen as a pool of labor that kept wages depressed. 18 T h e solution to both problems was proposed by the editor oi the Boston Daily Evening Voice: Remove ladies from the work force by finding them husbands in the West, where there was a shortage of women. 19 Kessler-Harris noted that hopes to solve the low wage problem by marriage continued into the twentieth century. A delegate to the Milwaukee Metal Polishers and Brass Workers Association told the convention that workers in one Chicago factory "successfully adopted a new method of preventing women from working in the shop. They marry the women." T h e delegate proposed that instead of trying to force the women out of the shops, they should either "marry them or find good husbands for them." 20 Campbell also noted that depressed earnings for women continued because "underbidding from the unemployed is a fruitful source of low wages." 21 She further alluded to the probable outcome of this situation, after noting that most of women's work in industry was seasonal: ". . . i n the intervals between . . . the worker waits and starves, or if too desperate, goes upon the streets, driven there by the 15 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890: Occupation, 2:94. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 2:95. 18 Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 98. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 99. 21 Campbell, Women Wage Earners, p. 236.


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wretched competitive system, the evils of which increase in direct ratio to the longing for speedy wealth. 22 Kessler-Harris q u o t e d o n e y o u n g w o m a n , an advocate of domestic service, who claimed that housekeepers m a d e better wives because of practical experience gained in others' homes. 2 3 But if practical experience was touted as an asset, a certain liability was the d a n g e r foretold by Lillie Devereux Blake in 1883: "You have to give women a respectable means of income or you are apt to drive t h e m into vice." 24 Evidence of this is seen in a study d o n e by the United States g o v e r n m e n t in 1910 that showed that 77.5 percent of female criminals in o n e s a m p l i n g c a m e from domestic service backgrounds. 2 5 Perhaps Kessler-Harris has best pointed out the reasoning used by laboring w o m e n to find a n o t h e r means of s u p p o r t : T o wage-earning women, prostitution a p p e a r e d as a rational choice in a world where few opportunities for a comfortable income offered themselves. Maimie Pinzer, a prostitute, s u m m e d u p h e r feelings in a letter to her friend and benefactor, Mrs. Fanny Quincy Howe. "I don't propose to get u p at 6:30 to be to work at 8 a n d work in a close stuffy r o o m with people I despise, until after dark for six or seven dollars a week! W h e n I could, j u s t by p h o n i n g , spend an afternoon with some congenial person and in the e n d have m o r e than a week's work could pay me." 2

Although published census records for Utah d o not show how many working women were driven to the point of prostitution, the 1900 published census indicates that alternative forms of escape were emerging. Utah's population h a d a 33 percent gain, to 276,749, while the n u m b e r of women in the Utah work force rose slightly, from 10.5 to 13.5 percent. 2 7 In 1900 only 42 percent of working w o m e n were involved in domestic service, while other labor opportunities showed an increase in the female work forces. Professional service (usually teachers and musicians) increased 33 percent, to 13 p e r c e n t of the labor force. Female participation in trade a n d transportation increased 66 percent, to 13 p e r c e n t of the work force. Manufacturing showed a 10 percent decline, to 23 percent of the work force. 22

Ibid., p. 237. Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, p . 106. 24 Ibid., p. 104. 25 Ibid., p. 103. 26 Ibid., p . 104-5. 27 U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of C o m m e r c e , B u r e a u of the Census, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900: Population, 2: 541-49. 23


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Agriculture also showed a 16 percent increase for women, to more than 9 percent. 28 T h e manuscript study of the 1900 U.S. census records for Provo, Ogden, and Salt Lake shows that the percentage of women in the work force approximates the state average. T h e Provo sample showed 28 women working (12 percent) out of 233 women checked. Only 4 working women were married, less than 2 percent of the total women counted. One of the married women was working as a midwife; another was a miner. Other occupations in Provo included 4 women working as milliners or in the woolen mills. Females in business included 1 saleswoman and 2 capitalists. 29 In Ogden working women constituted only 24 (10.25 percent) of the 234 females checked. Only 1 married working woman (a music teacher) was found in this sampling. Nine women (37.5 percent) of the 24 employed were working as launderers and servants. Among the other occupations, 1 was a capitalist, 2 were lodging house keepers, 5 were dressmakers, and there was 1 nurse, 1 bookbinder, and 1 schoolteacher. 30 Salt Lake City's working women constituted 34 (13 percent) of the 260 women checked in this sampling. Married working women formed slightly more than 1 percent of the total checked. Domestic jobs such as house cleaners and servants occupied 23.5 percent of the working women. A greater variety of employment opportunity seems to have been available. In business (18 percent) women were working as clerks, bookkeepers, capitalists, and stenographers. In education another 20.5 percent were schoolteachers. T h e remainder were dressmakers, nurses, and a binder at the news office.31 If working women by the early twentieth century were looking for alternatives to domestic service, the Brownlees pointed out that they were not alone. They note that as early as 1889 the Business Woman's Journal was founded in New York by Mary Seymour. T h e journal was designed to "reduce the number of women who are crowding into the ranks of unskilled labor, by pointing out new occupations." 32 28

Ibid. U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Census for Provo City, Utah, First Precinct, 1900. 30 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Census for Ogden City, Utah, First Precinct, 1900. 31 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Census for Salt Lake City, Utah, First Precinct, 1900. 32 Brownlee and Brownlee, Women in the American Economy, p. 257. 29


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Margery W. Davies noted that women first began to enter the business world when Francis Elias Spinner, the U.S. treasurer general, decided to hire female clerks to lessen the labor shortage of men caused by the Civil War. Spinner continued to hire females after the war, declaring that it had been a "complete success." Davies further noted that one of the reasons the treasurer general thought so highly of his female help was that they would work as hard as the male clerks for half the wages.33 Another factor in opening opportunities for women outside of domestic service may have been technology. Kessler-Harris wrote that household production declined as baked goods, clothes, and soap could be purchased in the market. 34 The U.S. Department of Agriculture thought that as women acquired "vacuum cleaners, washers, wringers, fireless cookers and cream separators," time spent in the home would be reduced so that they could use their time to develop "cash returns" for the family.35 T h e invention of the typewriter in 1867 may have provided the coup de grace to the masculine business world. Elizabeth Faulkner Baker wrote that the inventor of the typewriter, Christopher Latham Sholes, remarked in 1900, " . . . I feel I have done something for the women who have always had to work so hard. This will help them earn a living more easily."36 A Remington advertisement in 1875 listed some of the better qualities of this new technology: . . . the benevolent can, by the gift of a "Type-Writer" to a poor, deserving young woman, put her at once in the way of earning a good living as a copyist or corresponding clerk. No invention has opened for women so broad and easy an avenue to profitable and suitable employment as the "Type-Writer," and it merits the careful consideration of all thoughtful and charitable persons interested in the subject of work for women.

Baker pointed out that by the turn of the century, nearly 19,000 girls were taking courses in typewriting, stenography, and bookkeeping in public high schools, "almost half of all such pupils; and nearly 24,000 or more than half of the commercial and business students were women." 38 33 Margery W. Davies, Woman's Place Is the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers: 1870-1930 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), p. 51. 34 Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, p. 110. 35 Ibid., p. 111. 36 Elizabeth Faulkner Baker, Technology and Women's Work (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 70-1. 37 Davies, Woman's Place, p. 54. 38 Baker, Technology, p. 72-3.


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An important liberating factor in Utah was the changing view women had of themselves. This was especially seen in the 1890s meetings of the Beaver County Women's Suffrage Association. Although the association was primarily concerned with obtaining the right to vote, the title of their newsletter was The Equal Rights Banner and the monthly meetings gave local women the opportunity to vent held-back feelings. T h e minutes recorded several women, at different times, such as Mrs. White, who complained of restricted opportunity: "All women cannot stick to their sphere in the home." Later Mrs. Murdock, p r e s i d e n t of t h e association, s u g g e s t e d t h a t p e r h a p s " . . . women have allowed themselves to be kept back by their household chores." But Mrs. Jones, when speaking of the miserable conditions of working-class women, placed the blame squarely where it belonged: " T h e laws made by the men are for the men." 39 In 1870 Utah certainly did not abound with opportunity for working women, since only 4 percent of females were in the territorial work force, while nationwide, 13.3 percent of women over ten were working — unless the example of Christina Warnick is remembered. While working women in Utah gained a 237 percent increase over thirty years to 13.5 percent of women available, it was still only barely above the 1870 total of 13.3 percent for the nation, well below the nationwide average of 18.8 percent in 1900.40 Utah's low percentage of women in employment did not necessarily mean a correspondingly limited opportunity. In 1890 cities such as Nashville and San Francisco, where anywhere from 16 to 22 percent of the female population were employed, only 3.5 to 4 percent of those working had clerical jobs; in Utah only 10.5 percent were working, but 7.6 percent of those working were in clerical jobs. 41 If domestic service as a form of employment was decreasing, in Utah, twenty years after 1900, it still had not disappeared. T h e "female help wanted" column of the Deseret News in 1920 listed several ads similar to this one: "General Housework Girl. Apply 1153 Second Avenue. Good wages, small family, no washing." 42 39 Minutes of the Beaver County Women's Suffrage Association for May 16, 1892, September 18, 1893, and March 16, 1894, Brigham Young University Archives. 40 ElyceJ. Rotella, From Home to Office: U.S. Women at Work, 1870-1930 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1981), p. 4. 41 Ibid., Table B. 4. 42 DeseretNews, September 20, 1920, p. 7.


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However, opportunities were still expanding. In the same issue a cartoon strip, "Keeping u p with the Joneses," appeared. In the first frame a cigar-chomping businessman is interrupted at his desk when his messenger boy announces, "Mr. McGinis, there's a swell lookin' dame outside to see you." In the second frame, an assertive young woman with her hands on her hips is seated opposite Mr. McGinis. She tells him, "Sir, I am a reporter from the Daily Buzz! Since your nomination your opponents have unearthed the fact that years ago you were in the dairy business in West Port, Connecticut!" He replies, "Yep! A long time ago." In the third frame she turns to him, and placing her hands on her knees, says, "Well, your political enemies are now saying that the milk you used to sell was watered, that it was not pure!" He retorts, "Dawgunit! Itwaspure!" In the final frame, Mr. McGinis explains to her, "I only used to use th' purest spring water in that milk! ! !" and she faints backwards. 43 Women were becoming more accepted in traditional male roles, even if they still had typically "feminine" reactions. Edith Abbot, writing in 1913, saw that the process to integrate women in the work world would be long, slow, and given to setbacks. She noted that seventy-five years earlier, when the mills needed women laborers, T h e public moralist denounced her for eating the bread of idleness if she refused to obey the call. Now, there is some fear . . . that there may not be work enough for the men, [and] it is the public moralist who again finds that her [woman's] proper place is at home and that the world of industry was created for men. 44

Utah Territory in 1870 offered a masculine work world, and most of the doors to the work world opened for women were those to the kitchen. T h e new Beehive State in 1900 still kept the kitchen doors open, but those to the business world began to be unlocked.


The Peerless Coal Mines B Y A. P H I L I P C E D E R L O F

N o OBJECTIVELY WRITTEN ARTICLE CAN ever tell the story of a coal mine. T o me every coal mine has not only a story but also a distinct personality. It is discovered, is born, lives, and dies. T h e original Peerless coal land is located on an arrowheadshaped mountain point that juts east toward Helper, Utah, as one goes up Spring Canyon. T h e r e is nothing left of the town now. T h e tramway grade, which went u p to the two mines, has been taken over by nature but is still visible. High u p on the cliffs to the northwest and Mr. Cederlof (1908-80) was general manager of the Peerless Coal Company. He completed a history of the Peerless coal mines in 1975. T h e article published here is a shortened version of his original manuscript. It is published with the kind permission of Mrs. A. P. Cederlof of Salt Lake City. T h e editors also extend their appreciation to Dr. J. Eldon Dorman of Price, Utah, a member of the Board of State History, for his interest in seeing this project to its completion.


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northeast you can see the black streaks that are the No. 3 and No. 2 subseams that were mined in the 1930s through the early 1950s. T h e No. 2Vz subseam further u p the canyon appears as a streak of a few inches at Peerless. T h e Starpoint Sandstone underneath forms the floor of the subseams. Much higher, about 150 feet, lies the famous Aberdeen Sandstone on top of which is the Castle Gate "A" seam where the old Peerless mine operated. This seam, one of the most consistent in the field, was worked by a number of mines in Carbon County. T h e Peerless coal land east of the tramway was owned in 1916 by the Crystal Coal Company. So far as I know, this company did not operate a coal mine. Crystal sold the land and the townsite in the canyon below to William H. Sweet and Charles N. Sweet, brothers prominent in the Utah coal industry. Another brother, Victor, later developed his own mine in the Gordon Creek area. Peerless ca. 1925 with, from left, Greek coffeehouse and Japanese bunkhouse, school and single dwellings, tipple, boardinghouse, bunkhouses, store, and superintendent's house (the cottage). Photographs arefrom the author's manuscript history of Peerless.


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In 1916 the Sweets developed the Peerless property, building the tramway and the tipple, opening the mine on the "A" seam, and bringing the production up to 500 tons a day. Then in 1917 or 1918 the mine was sold to the newly organized Peerless Coal Company. T h e principals were Ezra Thompson, one-time mayor of Salt Lake City, and James Murdoch. Both men were prominent in Utah metal mining and in Salt Lake real estate. A key figure in the acquisition and early operation of the mine by Peerless Coal Company was former state coal mine inspector Robert Howard, a friend of Thompson and the mine's first superintendent. Engineering reports estimated coal reserves in the Castle Gate "A" and "B" seams at 6 million tons. Although it was not anticipated, burned coal was encountered as mining progressed, and recoverable coal estimates were revised sharply downward. Ultimately, only ninety-seven acres (less than one-third of the projected amount) were found mineable in the "A" seam and but a small amount in the "B" seam. T h e company did not expect to recover its $300,000 initial investment. However, favorable market conditions during World War I made it possible to "pay out" and leave a surplus to help finance a new mine elsewhere. Mining conditions in the "A" seam were good. There were no gas or water problems, and the roof was satisfactory. T h e seam pitched a few degrees northeast. T h e main mine slope was served by an outside hoist that dropped the trip of six coal cars around a half-circle to the left at which point the big tramway hoist hooked on and dropped the trip down a 16 to 22 degree grade to the tipple. T h e mine cars were pulled from the working places in the mine to the "parting" by horses. In the earlier days of mining the miner undercut the coal by hand. With a pick he cut a tapering slot into the coal seam at the bottom. This provided a space for the explosives to shoot to. To shoot coal "off the solid" was dangerous and illegal. Shooting was done with black powder. It made nice lumpy coal, but the flash was dangerous. When so-called permissible powder was developed the use of black powder was forbidden by law. Until the early 1930s coal was loaded by hand with the aid of a shovel (which I have heard miners call a "banjo"). First the big lumps were picked up by hand and loaded into the mine car. Then the smaller coal was shoveled in. Louis Vuksinick, a former mine superintendent, started in the


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mines in 1926 at age eighteen. He described the old Peerless mine in a letter to me: . . . J o h n Selan, age 83 . . . started at work in Peerless in 1919. He told me his brother Frank worked in the slopes for a year or two, undermining with a pick. I understand they did have some shortwall cutters in 1917. For drilling they used hand augers. . . . T h e first electric drill I saw was in 1929. T h e r e was some shooting off the solid in early days, mostly in pillar work, but I didn't see a lot of it. I used black powder in one mine and also used carbide lamps, although I believe electric lamps were being used in 1924-1925. T h e miners loading coal were paid . . . 790 a ton, but they bought their own powder and caps, set their timber, laid their track and made their own dummies. 1 T h e horse driver would bring one car at a time to a miner working in a room. . . . Later, when the mine had electric motors, the miner had to take two cars at a time. . . . On "idle" days the miner would take a horse and pull his own coal. . . . All miners were given a check number — then given about 12 metal checks. They would place one in the empty car on a hook, then load the car. At night when the car was d u m p e d the check was placed on a board. T h e miner picked the checks u p at the bulletin board and got the weights of his cars. But if you loaded too much rock you were docked for the whole car. A good miner would load 14 to 16 tons a day. Some would load more. . . .

Ott Burton, mine clerk for four years in the early 1920s, remembered what remarkable creatures the mine horses were. They literally ran, at times, and the light was sometimes poor. They had to step between the ties where chuckholes would be worn. Irritating dust would get u n d e r their collars. Some mines brought their horses or mules outside daily. Other mines had barns inside and brought the animals out less frequently. Coming into daylight was difficult, but with the aid of blinders the horses' sight adjusted in a matter of days. T h e Peerless townsite was located at the foot of the tramway and around the tipple, both above and below the highway. Some of the buildings, including the Greek coffeehouse and the "Jap" (so-called then) bunkhouse, were torn down or removed about the time the old Peerless mine closed in 1930-31. 1 A dummy is a bag filled with sand or clay for tamping or for separating two charges in a double-loaded bore hole. 2 Idle days were days when the mines were not running the tipple and dumping coal.


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Ott Burton recalled the Greek coffeehouse and pool room where the Greek miners socialized and smoked their long-stemmed pipes. He said the Japanese had a large wooden tub in which several at a time would sit for a bath. A Japanese boss looked after the interests of the Japanese miners. The Austrians and Italians mixed considerably, according to Burton, but the Greeks and Japanese were inclined to stay with their own groups. The nationalistic spirit and the grouping of large numbers of immigrants were characteristic of this period, not only in the coal camps but also in other large industrial settings in the state and in the country. Most of the immigrants were single men or men with families left behind. Many were Greeks, but there were also Japanese, Italians, and Austrians. Lesser numbers came from other countries. The immigrants were not assimilated readily into community life. They spoke their own languages and had their natural leaders. They were good workers and not unfriendly. However, with the different groups, outside influences, and the general wage situation and labor turbulence of that period some strikes occurred, notably in 1922. Peerless had its problems along with the other camps. The changes brought about by the automobile and improved roads in the late 1920s were very pronounced and significantly affected the makeup of the work force and working conditions in general. The day of the unmarried immigrant worker passed. In 1932 the Peerless boardinghouse and bunkhouses were closed and did not operate again except for a period during World War II. Available houses in camp were always occupied and in demand, but most of the miners commuted from the surrounding area. In 1922 a school was set up in Peerless for the small children. T h e older children walked about half a mile up the canyon to Storrs. The following year a company store was built in Peerless. Ben Deal was the manager and also the postmaster. Another store a quarter of a mile down the canyon, the Square Deal Store, was owned and operated by Gus Winkelried. The miners' families also bought from Helper stores, especially one operated by John and Joe Quillico who took orders and made deliveries once a week to Peerless. In good weather farmers from Utah County drove to the camps with truckloads of farm produce. There was intercamp socializing in Spring Canyon, especially among the married people. For instance, the Spring Canyon Dance


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and Bridge Club consisted of about twenty couples who met every Saturday. Ott B u r t o n r e m e m b e r e d the boxing and wrestling matches put on in the Spring Canyon area in the early days of Peerless. T o p flight athletes were brought in, and on one occasion Jack Dempsey was in attendance. Baseball was also big in the coal country in the twenties and earlier. All of the larger camps had teams. Competition and interest were keen. T h e superintendents and mine management went to great lengths to get good players. Both local and outside men were sought for their playing skills and could get a job anytime. T h e men, women, and young people in the camps enthusiastically supported their teams. T h e company, anticipating the exhaustion of old Peerless, negotiated a lease in the mid-1920s to develop a large property in Price Canyon, adjacent to the Royal mine at Rolapp. This land was on a federal lease held by brothers Emmett and Culbert Olson. Emmett was a well-known Carbon County engineer and coal man. Culbert, a lawyer, served in the Utah State Legislature and later became governor of California. T h e Price Canyon property, obtained on an overriding royalty basis, contained two seams, Castle Gate "B" and "D", twenty-four feet thick and sixteen to eighteen feet thick, respectively. Two slopes (tunnels) were driven from a point near the highway on a 30 degree incline to the seams, a distance of some 2,500 feet and some 1,100 feet below the level of the Price River. Yards for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad were put in, and a modern McNallyPittsburgh steel tipple was built. Both seams were worked for approximately two years, until J u n e 1931. Production grew until it approximated that of old Peerless which was accordingly phased out. T h e new Peerless mine made gas. An explosion there in March 1930 on the night shift killed five men. T h r e e miners survived, one of them reporting that he saved himself by huddling over a leak in a compressed air line with his coat thrown over his head. When the new Peerless shut down in J u n e 1931 during the depression everybody was out of a job. Robert Howard, Sr., who had been superintendent at new Peerless, and Robert J. T u r n e r , a mining man from Price, formed a partnership and leased old Peerless. Their plan was to mine the remaining pillars and sell coal to trucks. Trucking coal was, with a deepening depression, growing rapidly.


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T u r n e r ran the mine and Howard kept the books and handled the business end from his h o m e in Salt Lake City. They soon found that they needed some help in selling and handling carloads of the off sizes produced. They offered jobs to me and a former salesman at new Peerless. I was paid $ 150.00 a month, and the salesman was paid a salary plus traveling expenses. We rented a small office in the Newhouse Building where we handled the orders, billings, and the accounts receivable ledger. When Howard, who had been in failing health, died, T u r n e r , the surviving partner, decided to try to buy old Peerless. This meant opening the low seams. Peerless Sales Company was incorporated with 100 shares of no-par stock, of which T u r n e r had 40 shares; 3 Ezra P. T h o m p s o n , 40 shares; Mrs. Howard, 10 shares; and Jack Jones, 10 shares. Jones was the mine foreman and very valuable to the organization. T h e new corporation paid Peerless Coal Company $16,000 for the property. T u r n e r decided to work the No. 3 (bottom) subseam which had been experimentally opened by the old company in 1929. But the lower seam had problems: a rock band in the middle, a bony streak near the roof, and, perhaps worst of all, a roily, sticky floor. It was dirty coal. T h e mine workers, inside and outside, fought it and cursed it. T h e railroad customers quit buying the slack and nut sizes. T h e first year in the bottom seam we hand-loaded the coal into old mine cars. We lost $6,000. We drilled and shot that sticky bottom coal. It was not just rough, it was impossible. Louis Vuksinick described it: T w o men worked in each room. We had to push our empty cars to the face, put a check inside the car, load it and let it r u n out. It went out by gravity, but we had to go with it and block it so the rope rider could pick it up. 4 Each room had two tracks. We were paid 500 a ton for loading coal and 350 a hole for drilling by hand. We took care of track, set props and made dummies. We got the dirt out on the entry to fill the d u m mies. T h e coal was cut with a CE7 shortwall but d u e to the rolls in the floor a lot of bottom coal was left, so Jack Jones got us a breast auger. With a breast auger you did not need a post. It was simple. You put it u p to your breast and turned the auger with a crank. We could drill a hole from 6" to 12" for shooting u p bottom coal. No pay for this drilling. If you did not shoot u p the bottom coal the place would get lower and lower. We also had to pick the rock band off the coal. T h e coal was 4 feet 3

Ezra P. Thompson was a son of Ezra Thompson mentioned early as one of the original organizers of the Peerless Coal Company. 4 A rope rider sees that cars are coupled properly and inspects ropes, chains, links, and all coupling equipment.


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Left; Ezra P. Thompson, president of Peerless, was the son of Ezra Thompson, mayor of Salt Lake City in the early 1900s. Right: fack and Betty Jones, fack was superintendent of Peerless during 1936-41.

high with a 3" to 4" rock band. T h e top was good. It was too much to clean a place a day with all the other work so we would pick the coal off the rock and throw it back while waiting for the cars. T h e coal in this seam was hard drilling by hand. Jack put a man on to go behind the miners and repick the rock off the coal. H e got paid $ 1.00 a ton but he did not last long because he could not make any money.

Although we had broken and gouged out the tramway and built our generators and shops on the No. 3 level, the only thing to do was to go into the No. 2 subseam, 30 feet above, and abandon No. 3. We ran a tunnel to No. 2. T h e coal was clean, the roof and floor good, but in forty-two inches height we couldn't get our old wooden mine cars in. We used a few old low steel cars and pushed the back wheels


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off the track so we could squeeze the coal in. We couldn't long continue to push the cars to the face and off the track. We decided to take up two feet of bottom in the entries and buy some conveyors for the rooms. We bought some Eickhoff air-driven shakers in the fall of 1933. T h e conveyors came but they lacked enough "kick" to move the coal, and at times the miners had to push the coal along them in low spots. In 1935 we bought some Vulcan shaking conveyors in Denver. They cost less and came well recommended, but they didn't do well in our conditions. We muddled along. When we heard about Jeffrey chain conveyors that would go u p as well as down the pitch, Jack Jones and I went to Colorado in 1936 to see some in operation. We bought some. They were pretty good. Our hand shovelers loaded on them, and later our mechanics made some face conveyors that cut down the throw to the room conveyors. Ezra Thompson and Robert T u r n e r did not see eye to eye in the management of the company. T u r n e r agreed to sell his shares to Thompson. Mrs. Howard's and Jack Jones's stock were bought later. In our second year — the year of the open winter and the drought — we lost $18,000. At income tax time old Mr. Abbey, our CPA, looked over the top of his glasses and said, "Hrn — you have an impairment of capital; you're insolvent." For three or four years we had not paid our Carbon County property taxes, thereby making our mine and equipment subject to a tax sale by the county. We also owed for power. Our equipment was obsolete. I remember especially that we lacked an electric arc-welding m a c h i n e , without which o u r mechanics were severely handicapped. We had to load boxcar orders by hand, lacking a loader. Our cutting machines were old and slow Sullivan chain models, the old CE7s. Some of them must have been in use in the early days of old Peerless. However, they were a great development and improvement in the industry in their time. They carried us and owed us nothing. Our drills were old and slow. Our mine cars were old, comparatively small, wooden, worn, and leaked fine coal along the tracks in the mine. This had to be shoveled u p regularly as it was a safety hazard. One of our most serious equipment deficiences was our miners' cap lamps. We had inherited them from the old company. They were obsolete, gave poor light, and wouldn't hold a charge long. Ez tried to borrow $7,000 to pay the Carbon County taxes. He tried banks in Salt Lake City and Carbon County. He offered to give


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a mortgage on the whole mine as security. Such was the condition of the company, the industry, and the country that no one would lend us the money. Late on the day we were to be auctioned off on the steps of the courthouse in Price, Ez came to our house. I was resting in bed because of a heart problem. His hat was still on as he stood at the foot of the bed smiling and waving back and forth the receipted tax notices. We were redeemed. I asked him how he had done it. H e said that he had taken a thousand dollars and bet on a horse race at Hollywood Park and had won. Many years later, after the mine was worked out and closed and Ez had long since passed away, I was reminiscing with my brother Burke who had been our bookkeeper. I said how wonderful it was that that horse had won and saved the mine. Burke said, "Ez didn't win that money on a horse race. H e just told you that. He scraped u p everything we had and could get from our dealers and went down and paid." Burke was surprised that in all the years that followed I had never learned what happened. I had never questioned it, and no one had ever told me. How we got through that summer I will never know. I borrowed on my insurance and went to California on doctor's orders to recuperate. I doubt that anybody got paid anything until August or September, at least in the office. We had all "sweat out" other periods, but when I was off sick my check came. Not only did we owe for taxes, we also owed for power and for additional royalty because of a survey error in plotting our original boundary. In a routine check, based on a shot at the North Star, the government discovered the error, and the subsequent correction put a sizeable quantity of fee coal into our government lease ground. Besides, we owed local bills for material and supplies. T h e Square Deal store down the canyon gave our miners food on a payroll checkoff basis. I guess Gus Winkelried got some credit from the wholesalers. This helped. It is tough in the months when you are losing money to still push development in order to have anything to sell when business opens u p in the fall. We were not the only organization that had a hard time during this period. Many there were, large and small, for whom it was "root, hog, or die." In 1933 I became our outside salesman, and Leona Savage was hired as secretary for the office. Ez and I drove to Spokane. After we called on our dealer there, Ez left for Salt Lake by train. I had a list of the dealers who had bought from us before, but I had no sales


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Left: Dr. A. R. Demman, company doctorfor Peerless, filled an important role in the company, for heavy industry, especially mining with its many hazards, requires competent, on-site medical care. Right: A. Philip Cederlof, Peerless general manager.

training or experience. T h e competition was intense. T h e r e was pressure on prices, and cut-rate deals were made that we could not meet and live. T h e delivery capability of the big mines was h a r d to match. Also, they had good advertising. Washed coal in the small sizes was a strong sales point. Probably most telling of all was the quality and quantity of sales personnel. Their men were seasoned and personable. I had only modest success in the three years I was on the road, although we sold all the coal we could mine in the coal season. Later, we hired Frank Bletcher as a salesman for the territory, and I stayed in Salt Lake as manager. Frank had operated a mine in the Rock Springs area for several years and had been a salesman for Independent Coal & Coke Company, a big Utah operator. When T u r n e r left we had no superintendent. Jack Jones, our mine foreman, and his wife Betty were living in the superintendent's cottage. He was upset by the turn of events. We decided that we should hire a veteran superintendent. We moved the new man and


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his family into the cottage and moved Jack and Betty into a fourroom frame house at the other end of the camp. T h e new superintendent made some good suggestions and looked after general operations. Jack took good care of the mine, but he was unhappy. After a number of weeks we heard that Jack was going to quit. Ez and I went to Peerless and up to the mine. Jack was right in the middle of things, swinging a pick and ordering the men around. They were just opening the airway to No. 2. Whether unhappy or not, Jack did the job. He didn't particularly resent having a superintendent over him, but he needed a free hand and was chafing. We could see that it wouldn't work out. Without any pressure from Jack, we made him superintendent, and he and Betty moved back into the cottage. Geno Ori was made mine foreman. Jack spent most of his time in the mine; that was his forte. He had good assistants, a good mechanical staff, a strong outside crew at the tipple, and Evan Jones in the office. Though he operated in a quiet way, Evan Jones's work and influence were felt throughout the company. He was conscientious, a born diplomat, and tops in his craft. Jack Huntsman was a seasoned, top-flight master mechanic. Harry Draper, his assistant, was full of energy and talent. In the ranks were some of the best miners and specialists in the field. If a man wasn't good he didn't last long in that low coal. Howevc., we lacked first-class equipment. T h e chain conveyors we bought were a big step in the right direction, but we were still hand-loading. In 1935 we installed Viking equipment to oil-treat our stoker coal. We were one of the first in the field to do this. In 1938 we bought four Joy face conveyors, but it was still handloading. That winter we bought our first arc welder. Each year we bought more Jeffrey chain conveyors and small used electric locomotives to serve them. In 1939 an Ottumwa boxcar loader became available in the county and we snapped it up. It saved a lot of arduous, costly labor at the tipple. It isn't hard to visualize the difficulty of loading a forty-foot boxcar with big lump coal. In the latter part of Jack Jones's time a calamitous thing happened. Our large DC generator in the mine was destroyed. It furnished the power to operate our haulage locomotives. T h e outside man who operated the generators threw the wrong switches, and the generator was overspeeded and literally tore itself to pieces. Jack called me, very upset, and said, "We have been sabotaged." Before 1 could even arrive on the scene the mine people had located an old converted steam generator in Sanpete County for $600. It was


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powerful and in good condition, only 600 RPM. It was so big that we had to set it u p outside, adding to our shop building and putting in a concrete foundation. In addition, we had to buy h u n d r e d s of feet of scarce and expensive armored cable to carry the power into the mine. While all this was going on our production was badly cut. We had only a small outside generator set and could move only small trips of coal out of the mine. O u r market suffered and we lost tens of thousands of dollars. I never did know who caused it all, but from my distance I felt that the system should have been fail-safe. When Jack Jones retired in 1941 he was succeeded by Jack Huntsman, our master mechanic. T h e resourcefulness, devotion, a n d e n d u r a n c e of H u n t s m a n , H a r r y D r a p e r , a n d o u r o t h e r mechanics were essential to the successful running of a mine like ours. When something vital broke down they were on the j o b early and late and stayed until we were going again. Breakdowns occur most often, particularly outside, in very cold weather. T h e broken equipment, especially on the tipple, is heavy, cold, and dirty. In the early days we didn't have a shop at the mine portal. I remember one time a locomotive broke down outside. We were shut down. T h e mechanics worked far into a bitter winter night u p on that mountain to have us going by morning. In 1941 we bought a good used thirteen-ton Jeffrey locomotive. T h e seam pitch in our dips gave us an 8 percent grade to pull u p with loads; 5 percent is about all an engineer likes to see. We had no choice. I went to Pittsburgh and bought the Jeffrey from the Moorhead Equipment Company. T h e men at the mine liked the Jeffrey and soon had it operating. T h e following year Jack Huntsman and I, and, I think, Harry Draper went to the Lion Coal Company mine at Rock Springs, Wyoming, to look at Goodman duckbills (automatic, power-loading, shaking conveyors). We bought two duckbills and shaker units for delivery in August and also ordered a new Joy 12BU loader (one and a half tons per minute). So started a mechanization program. T h e duckbill was an ingenious but simple coal-loading device made up of a series of steel troughs on the end of which was a trough flared out like a duck's bill. A ratcheting device would thrust the duckbill under the pile of shot-down coal, and the coal moved down the trough line. T h e duckbill was moved from side to side by a man who simply stuck a crowbar u n d e r the flare of the duckbill. T h e back-and-forth action did the rest. This device lent itself to a tight


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cycle of continuous mining. Millions of tons of coal were efficiently produced a r o u n d the country with duckbills. After we had installed our two new duckbills a bad cave came down on one of them. H u g e blocks of the sandstone roof rested on the damaged duckbill and troughing. Harry Draper said that if we got the duckbill out he could fix it. A miner volunteered, but mine foreman Harry Greenall said he wouldn't ask any man to do something he wouldn't do himself. If the duckbill came out, he would get it out. Besides his other abilities, Greenall was an expert rock man. T h e j o b looked tough to me, but I knew what the decision had to be. T h e duckbill came out, was worked over in our shop, and loaded coal again. O n e day Harry Greenall, Jack H u n t s m a n , and I went in the bottom (No. 3) seam to have another look at its possibilities. A little square door had been provided in the cinderblock wall that sealed the entry. Harry went in last, carrying his safety lamp. If gas was present the flame in the lamp would increase in size but would not cause an explosion. T h e safety lamp went out. Jack and I sat on the floor while Harry went to the shop to fix it. Suddenly my heart started p o u n d i n g and I said, "I feel funny." Jack j u m p e d u p and scrambled out the hole. I was close behind, not stopping to wonder why — bad air. T h u s ended, for the time being, the bottom seam exploration. Something should be said about operating conditions d u r i n g World War II. They can be s u m m e d u p in a few words: a good market, controlled prices and profits, shortages of materials, and a shortage of labor. As to materials, the government gave the industry priority ratings that enabled us to secure sheet steel, welding rod, steel shapes, etc., from supply houses. Manufacturers of metal products such as wire rope, machine parts, electric wire and cables, mining equipment, etc., had their own priority ratings. We did quite well in getting what we needed, but we did have to get specific government approval on some items and we did have to anticipate on major items. A difficult item to obtain, for instance, was a r m o r e d power cable which contained steel, lead, zinc, copper, and j u t e . O u r experience was that government a n d industry did remarkably well in keeping us supplied and operating. As for manpower, we had to let our rank-and-file men go when their draft numbers came u p . Key top men were deferred, in most cases, u p o n petition and representation from the company. T h e


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government gave us suggested methods of scheduling in advance our manpower requirements and position. They also gave courses and developed trainers within industry and among management. Courses included j o b instruction, job methods, job relations, and program development. These courses, in our area, reached their peak late in the war. Wonderful in conception and simplicity, the courses formed the basis of much development after the war. It was difficult to replace our losses of men to the draft and to normal attrition. We had to equip and start u p our bunkhouse and boardinghouse again. Some, or most, of the men who came rustling for jobs were marginal workers or were drifters. So scarce were men that Evan Jones, our mine clerk, and I made a recruiting trip through Sanpete County and down as far as Richfield. We had some handbills printed and put them in or on mailboxes in the towns and along the country roads. They told about our good jobs and conditions and where those interested could meet us. We picked u p a few men, a couple of them good, experienced ones. During the war, in 1944, we bought our first m o d e r n 7B ropetype Sullivan shortwall undercutter. T h e high seam mines were going to mobile rubber-tired undercutters (lORUs), and this was releasing 7Bs. They were great machines for us — fast. T h e rule of t h u m b was that your cutter bar could be as long as the seam was high. O u r seam was three and a half feet high. We figured we could trim the ten-foot cutter bar down to six feet or so in our shop, but the mine staff decided to try it first at ten feet. They found they could get away with it. T h e coal shot satisfactorily. Here was 50 percent more coal per cut and much faster. We picked up several more 7Bs as we went along. We now had faster cutting, faster drilling, and mechanical loading. Taking u p the two to two and a half feet of tough sandstone bottom (floor) everywhere our entries went was hard, slow work and had to be kept u p . In 1945 we learned about a used Goodman hydraulic shovel. It was a heavy brute of a machine. We bought it for a song and later another one for parts. It worked like a giant hand shovel. It would lift the shovel full of rock, turn around, and push the rock off into the gob. Almost human. In November 1945 Ezra T h o m p s o n , our president and owner, had a heart attack and died. In all the years since 1932 we had talked over in detail our problems and our solutions. His drive and decisiveness and his enthusiasm and courage carried us over many


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Peerless supervisory staff, from left: James Ori, night foreman; Albert Fossat, assistant clerk; Evan Jones, chief clerk; Charles Jones, outside preparation foreman; Henry Draper, master mechanic; Vic Fossat, mine foreman; Louis Vuksinick, superintendent.

r o u g h spots. H e had a u n i q u e way in his relationships with employees and dealers or anyone — young or old, black or white. His standards of friendly, yet dignified, treatment of people rubbed off on others and filtered down through the organization. We were now on our own. His wife became president; I was the secretary; and with his children, Ezra Junior, and Enid, the four of us formed the Board of Directors. It is difficult and costly to r u n the "outside" works, especially the tipple, at night. Although some large preparation plants are set u p for multiple shifts, it would have been hard, if not impossible, for us to d u m p , screen, clean, and load coal at night and especially to balance our railroad and truck business. If only we had about a h u n d r e d or so mine cars, we thought. We had the space and trackage in the lower seam to store them.


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In March 1946 our superintendent and I went to Ohio to see 100 three-ton cars at the M. A. Hanna Coal Company, a huge operator. T h e cars were strewn on a muddy hillside. Their paint was gone and they were rusty. Both the cars and our tipple would have to be modified to accommodate them. I was bearish about the deal, but our superintendent was in favor. He said that if we didn't buy these we would never have any good cars. Without different cars our plans for a big night shift would never materialize. I knew he was right. Harry Draper and his mechanics liked the cars when they arrived at Peerless, and they knew just what to do. It was a beautiful sight, on my next trip down, to see some of the cars cleaned u p and painted yellow and all the fittings adjusted. A young mechanical engineer from Salt Lake planned the tipple changes to accommodate the new cars, and our men did the work. Nearly half a day's production could be mined and loaded and stored in the mine at night. T h e tipple could take all the coal we could throw at it next morning. A person standing at the tipple and looking up the tramway might wonder what would happen if a trip of mine cars broke loose from the cable and ran away down the tramway. It happened. As the cars go onto the tipple bridge there is a bend or offset in the tracks to prevent a runaway from going through the tipple. This offset worked, for when a trip of six empty cars ran away on one occasion they j u m p e d the track at the bend and sailed off the bridge. They sailed right over a truckload of powder that was being unloaded at the foot of the tramway, coming so close that they tore a board off the top of a box of powder. What might have happened had they hit a few inches lower is beyond comprehension. T h e cars, pinned and chained together, hurtled on, striking a miner's new Ford pickup and damaging two or three passenger cars. They crossed the highway, swinging and fishtailing, went over the railroad tracks, over a dirt bank, and finally stopped by the side of our slack bin. Even now I can only shake my head in amazement. Our insurance company had stipulated that explosives would not be permitted in the vicinity of the tipple. After we had explained that we must at times load powder there for transportation via mine cars to our magazine located halfway to the mine, the insurance company had relented and inserted in the policy a substitute provision that we would have explosives there only "in such quantities and at such times as the exigencies of the business require." One load of powder maybe every two or


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three months. One runaway in over twenty years. Impossible odds. But that's coal mining. In 1946 Louis Vuksinick, who had succeeded Harry Greenall as mine foreman, was promoted to superintendent. He had worked u n d e r Jack Jones, a great u n d e r g r o u n d man, and under Geno Ori and Harry Greenall, both top-flight men. He had survived the tough bottom seam and had worked all the shifts, hand-loaded coal, shot and hand-loaded rock, and drilled. He had also been a machine helper, loaderhead man, motorman, material man, shot firer, pillar man, and even rock duster. Vic Fossat, a young but capable and experienced man, was appointed mine foreman. A nice part of life at Peerless in our time were the dances. T h e employees fixed up an old stone building near the highway that had been the camp store. T h e company supplied the material. A new hardwood floor was put in, among other improvements. We found a good used jukebox, and records were provided by the mine employees. Polka music was often played. T h e favorite dance tunes were recordings by Frankie Yankovic and his orchestra. T h e most popular tune was "Charlie Was a Boxer." Other favorites were "Just Because" and "You'll Be Sorry from Now on." Louis and Zelpha Vuksinick joined in the dances and other camp activities and events. They very generously sent me several great polka records that became a valued part of my collection. Knowing the potential tonnage in our bottom seam (No. 3), and despite previous failures there, we were constantly looking for a means of working to produce reasonably clean coal at a livable cost. At first blush the Sullivan 10RU mobile, rubber-tired undercutter looked like a perfect answer. We visited a mine in West Virginia that was using the machine on a job similar to ours. With chalk we marked the coal face to show where our shale band was. We could not get the cutter bar into the shale band. That was that. Jeffrey's similar type cutter wouldn't do either. Finally we visited a mine at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, that was using Goodman's top-cutting shortwall. Hydraulic jacks positioned the whole machine. It fit our job, so we ordered one for delivery in several months at a cost of $9,000. T h e final step in mechanization was a fast loader, Joy's 14BU. It was low, wide, and heavy, but it was fast — five tons a minute. All the elements in the mining cycle were now speeded up — cutting, drilling, loading, and conveying.


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We made improvements in the preparation plant, too, including big bins and a big crusher to size lumps and take them down as far as 1% by 3 inches. A smaller crusher would take 1% by 3-inch nut down to slack. We could screen out 3/16 by 0-inch from our stoker coal. We also had a new tramp-iron magnet and new oil treating equipment. Well equipped inside and outside, we also had excellent mine leadership and crew. We had survived the financial storms, paid our bills, and established bank credit. Now, however, we had to worry about coal reserves. We hoped that the coal would continue through all our land to the northeast and east, but it didn't. It pinched down until it was only twenty-seven inches high in the northeast. This would just clear a shortwall mining machine. We stayed with it, hoping it would come up, but it didn't and we had to give up there. We had three 40s (120 acres) in our dip country that we had leased from Utah Fuel Company. This was six years' work for us and hopefully more coal land beyond. We had high hopes for this dip area, although we knew that the Diamantis had struck a "want" or barren area in their workings to the east. No coal had formed in a

Partial view of old Peerless showing bunkhouse and store at left, cottage and new single dwellings at right. In 1953, its coal almost gone, the company liquidated its holdings, including the buildings at Peerless. Nothing now remains of the town in Spring Canyon, Carbon County.


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"want" in the primeval swamp or forest. A pond or lake may have drowned out the vegetation, and when the area sank during the coal-forming process the pond or lake filled with onrushing dirt — thus a "want" in the coal seam, unknown until you hit it in mining or drilling. We hoped that the Diamanti "want" did not extend into our ground or that we could get around it or through it. Louis Vuksinick called me one evening and said, "The coal is gone." That was it. We diamond drilled and we drove in rock and we drove over into the Spring Canyon boundary on the west, all to no avail. This left us with only the dirty, tough lower seam and the remaining known reserves in the No. 2 seam. On the remaining reserves in the No. 2 seam we did well. T h e modern equipment paid off, and we operated at a steady, albeit a modest profit until 1953. In the interim we looked in both the Book Cliffs and in the Wasatch Plateau for a "good proposition" within our capability. We found nothing to fit our situation. Using our 712 Goodman topcutter we mined a quantity of coal from our No. 3 seam and had an exclusive dry r u n through the tipple on this coal. We cleaned it and sampled it for analysis. Carl Westerberg of Utah Fuel, their preparation engineer and a widely recognized expert, assisted us. Carloads of the various sizes were shipped to our retail yard in Salt Lake. When the results were in — mining problems, costs, preparation and quality factors, and finally markets — the company decided that the lower seam could not be successfully worked. With less than a year's coal left in the No. 2 seam we decided to liquidate. 5 I had the unhappy duty in March 1953 of driving to the mine and making the announcement. I shall never forget my feelings as I drove u p Spring Canyon and stopped for a few minutes on a little rise before reaching Peerless. T h e sun was setting on the rocky cliffs of the canyon. Trails of smoke were rising from the chimneys of the houses in camp. T h e mine staff u n d e r Evan Jones inventoried everything. With the help of Chet Whitelock of Payson we liquidated every nut and bolt, every house, every machine, rail, and timber. When everything was gone Chet shot down the portals of the mine and bulldozed dirt into the scale pits. A few concrete footings that had supported part 5 Over the years the Peerless mines produced 1.5 million tons in the old mine "A" seam, over 100,000 tons at new Peerless, and 1.9 million tons in the low seams, a total of approximately 3.5 million tons.


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of the tipple remained and the rock wall by the cottage. Even that has now disappeared. Evan and Hazel Jones were the last to leave Peerless — on December 24, 1953. By the following year the situation in the industry had changed. We could not then have liquidated the property nearly as well or as cleanly as we did. Someone has said that every man has a story. I'm sure that is true. And as I said in the beginning, I think that every coal mine has a story and a personality. Beyond that, there is a romance and a fascination about coal mining that is h a r d to explain. Perhaps it is a combination of things: challenge, danger, gamble, capriciousness, mystery. Perhaps it is in dealing with great, even awesome forces. Perhaps it is an awareness that you are putting your h a n d to something that nature was a h u n d r e d and fifty million years or so in making. Scientists have studied it and explained it and understand it. But I am sure that no man can fully grasp and encompass in his mind the dimensions of the growth in the primeval swamps and forests, the enormousness of the forces involved, the repetition of the process in the many seams, the uplifting and sinking of the earth's crust, and above all the eons of time. Many will see in it the hand of the Creator. Some will not see beyond the commercial aspects of it. Be that as it may, this is another age and against the great backdrop of ages past are men whose lives are touched and molded and who rise and fall and develop and break. Men, using the tools and resources of their time, worked and struggled, often doggedly day by day and then so heroically in times of danger or crisis. Perhaps from this comes the greatest fascination of all. If someone has never seen and felt all this in a coal mine, he could. It's there.


Robert D. Young and the earth-filled dam built under his supervision. Photographs courtesy of the author.

Robert D. Young and the Otter Creek Reservoir BY REVO M. YOUNG

1 HE SEVIER RIVER BECAME FAMOUS for the use of its water by means of dams, reservoirs, and canals. One of the most important is the Otter Creek Reservoir. It lies at the confluence of the Otter Creek with the east fork of the Sevier River at an elevation of 6,400 feet,

Mrs. Young is a resident of Richfield, Utah, and a daughter-in-law of the late Robert D. Young.


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about two miles north of Antimony, Piute County, Utah. T h e reservoir has a capacity of 52,550 acre-feet of water, used mainly for irrigation in Sevier and Millard counties. T h e water is contained in the reservoir by an earthen dam built at the turn of the century and still serving its purpose. Robert Dixon Young, known locally as the father of the Otter Creek Reservoir, was a prominent citizen of Richfield, Utah. Born in Kirkintilloch, Scotland, on July 24, 1867, he came to Utah with his parents in 1871, grew u p in Richfield where he was active in pioneering the region, filled many civic positions, and was a key figure in farming, construction, and religion. Always involved in irrigation matters, he first superintended the construction of the Sevier Valley Canal. T h e n he was president and superintendent of the Otter Creek Reservoir Company during the time of the construction of the reservoir. He completed the Piute Reservoir started by another company. His company was the forerunner of the present Young Construction Company. These activities brought him recognition. He served as vice-president of the International Irrigation Congress that met in St. Louis in 1919. In 1922 he accompanied U. S. government officials on a survey trip down the Colorado River to locate dam sites, one of which was later utilized to build Hoover Dam. Young served as president of the Sevier Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for twenty-three years, 1910-33. He left Richfield to become president of the Manti LDS Temple, 1933-42, and then president of the Salt Lake Temple, 1949-54. A vigorous man, he was still working at age ninety-four as a receptionist at the LDS church office building. He died in Salt Lake City on J u n e 12, 1962. Young left his family accounts of his activity in building the Otter Creek Reservoir. In these he described the dry years in the 1880s before the reservoir was built: All through the eighties most of the seasons were extremely dry, particularly in the latter parts of the seasons. Sometimes . . . the river would get down to about 20 second feet of water. This was hardly enough to supply one-fourth of what was needed for one of the canals in Sevier Valley. T h e r e were feuds and battles over the inadequate supply of water from the river. Towns were against each other. Sometimes the quarrels were quite serious. . . . Finally, Joseph F. Smith, President of the Church . . . , took it up and sent down . . . J o h n Henry Smith and Anthon H. Lund. At conference in Monroe they advised the people, rather than quarreling,


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to reservoir. They said the Church was not able, at that time, to give monetary aid, but would give moral support. 1

T h e people of Sevier Valley, struggling to make a living u n d e r drought conditions, had to be converted, as they had no knowledge of water storage. They were reluctant to commit money and labor to something in which they had no faith. After several years of effort and numerous meetings in the various towns, the Sevier Stake presidency (William H. Seegmiller, Joseph H o m e , and William H. Clark) was able to get nine canal companies to organize for a reservoir project. Robert D. Young was selected as president of the Otter Creek Reservoir Company with William Baker, secretary; William Ogden, treasurer; Jorgen Jorgensen, Peter Christensen, A. W. Bohman, Simon Christensen, James A. Ross, Beason Lewis, Carlow Hutchings, and James H. Wells, directors. Some of these men were presidents of local canal companies, and others were interested individuals. Almost as soon as the new company was organized the officers "discovered that the laws of Utah prohibited companies taking stock in companies. Consequently," Young reported, "we had to wait and meet with the Legislature to get the law changed, which we did. Barney H. Greenwood was our Representative who sponsored the bill" during the 1897 legislative session. Prior to August 1897 much preliminary work had been done by committees and individuals. T h e site for the reservoir had been selected and surveyed, water filed on, subscriptions taken to pay lawyers, surveyors, etc. Robert D. Young and L. P. Hansen made legal claim in April 1896 to the reservoir site, Young wrote, "just three days ahead of a Texas company" that had "made application to take all the surplus Sevier River water down to Millard County." A site was also found for the Piute Reservoir. Although the company obtained options on the ranches along Otter Creek that would be inundated by the reservoir, it had no money to purchase the land. "The rest of the land, with the exception of the 160 acres, belonged to the government and came to us as a gift because we were reservoiring," Young wrote. "We were pioneers in reservoiring for irrigation purposes, among the very first in the United States." 1 All of the quotes attributed to Robert D. Young and Mary Young are edited versions of "From Sagebrush to Roses" by Robert D. Young in Voices from the Past: Diaries, Journals, and Autobiographies, comp. Campus Education Week (Provo, Ut: Brigham Young University Press, 1980).


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T h e company applied for a loan of $ 18,000 to pay for the ranch land, but no bank in Utah would venture to lend the money, Young said, "although we were ready to mortgage practically everything worthwhile in Sevier County, including the holdings of nine irrigation companies, which meant their land and all." When it came time to vote on whether to proceed with building the Otter Creek Reservoir strong feelings were expressed. Some felt that an out-of-state company might be in a better position to finance and build the structure. Others like Young remembered that "the Brethren had warned us to build it ourselves and not put ourselves in bondage as had the Children of Israel, and have to pay high prices for our water." Some saw the banks' refusal to loan money as the sign of "an unsure deal." Other interested parties thought the project was too costly to be paid for without outside help. When "the meeting was called to order and its purpose stated," Young recalled, "six of the directors put on their hats and walked out." An attorney present suggested that their action ended the project, but Young persisted, saying, "I have the inspiration that we can go ahead. How many directors were here in response to the notice?" he inquired. When told that eight had been present, Young "called for the motion. James Andrew Ross moved that we build a reservoir and that we proceed immediately." Ross, Jorgen Jorgensen, and James H. Wells voted in favor of the motion by standing up. When Young called for those opposed to stand, no one did. He thereupon called the vote for construction of the reservoir unanimous. A superintendent was needed to oversee the construction project. T h e supportive members of the board were too old to take the responsibility. T h e younger directors felt they were too busy and could not afford to do the work. Rather than let the project fail, Young said, "In Sevier Valley we ought to bring u n d e r cultivation the beautiful virgin land that is now lying in sagebrush, greasewood and shadscale. . . . If my wife is willing, I will volunteer to go and superintend the work for one year without pay to show the people that reservoiring is our only chance for success." Young was at the time about thirty years of age and with no previous experience except what he had gained in canal construction. Mary Young agreed to leave her new brick home in Richfield and move into the log cabins on the barren, windswept hill at Otter Creek. T h e cabins had been moved from the ranches on the reservoir site, one for a cookhouse and one for a bunkhouse. Mary had


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Mary 5. P. Young and others at Otter Creek Reservoir cook/bunkhouse. Some workers on the reservoir slept in the bunkhouse and took their meals with the Youngs, but others lived camp style on their own.

two small children and was expecting another in February. She said, "We have flour and meat for ourselves. If the men will furnish their own food, I will cook it and wash their dishes if it will encourage them." With Young installed as superintendent, the project moved through the final pre-construction stage. Willard Young, a retired engineer, and R. C. Gemmel, the state engineer, came from Salt Lake City to view the site and give the company "some ideas and some sort of a plan." Young recalled their extraordinary visit: I took them up to the reservoir site in my white-top buggy. I had only $2.50 in cash, but hotels in those days were very reasonable with good beds and meals. T h e first night we stopped in Kingston. T h e $2.50 covered the bill for the engineers . . . I told them my condition, which they naturally thought was my health, would not permit me to sleep or eat inside. It was a fabrication, of course, . . . the money was the question. I slept in the straw stack. My good wife had put up a lunch for me. We had plenty of food to eat. We went to the reservoir site on Otter Creek the next morning. . . . They said the dam would be a treacherous and difficult project and we couldn't start without from twenty-five to a hundred thousand dollars


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Utah Historical Quarterly worth of machinery. . . . They laughed when I told them we had spent the last $2.50 we had for their bed, and that we planned to build without money, as a cooperative project with good honest, earnest work on the part of the people. All we asked of them was, when it was completed, to tell whether or not it was worthy of backing water against the dam.

Ground was broken for the Otter Creek Reservoir on October 19, 1897. T h e construction crew consisted of three boys and one man to begin the job. Wages were 18 cents an hour for single hands and 32 cents an hour for a man and team. Usually, credit was given to canal water shareholders for their assessments. In other cases, shares in the Otter Creek Reservoir Company were given, to be paid in water. Busy farmers usually sent their sons or hired men to work their allotments. T h u s the reservoir was said to have been built by boys. Some of the workers slept in the bunkhouse and ate their meals with the Youngs. T h e majority, however, brought tents, bedrolls, and grub boxes and lived camp style for from two weeks to several months at a time. Frank M. Ogden remembered going to work on the dam the summer he was twenty along with his brother Charles who was eighteen. Some of the boys working there were "so small they had to stand on the wagon tongues to bridle their horses," he said.2 The Ogden boys made their home with the Youngs as did Chris Christensen, Jim Peterson, and others. Frank O g d e n recalled that "Whenever any of us came from Richfield we would bring a load of vegetables from the gardens and some meat." He also remembered another custom: Night and morning we had family prayer — the [Young] family and the boy workers, of whom there weren't so many at first, just about half dozen. Later, the engineer, a Gentile government man was staying at Youngs. He was the only one who wouldn't join in prayer. He just sat on the plank that ran the length of the table, while the others knelt. R. D. told him it was our custom to pray, and if he was afraid he wouldn't get his share of the food, Mrs. Young would dish up his and save it for him. Years later this same man called R. D. and identified himself as "the man you taught to pray."

There was a swamp about 150 feet across the dam site from ledge to ledge. It had to be excavated in order to get down to bedrock 2 This quote and subsequent quotes attributed to Frank and Charles Ogden and Joseph H. Christensen are from a compilation made by Revo M. Young in 1964 entitled "Men and Boys Who Worked on the Otter Creek Reservoir," MS in author's possession.


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where the dam was to be built. T h e tangle of roots on the surface was difficult to cut. It would not support horses, so most of the labor came from manpower. First, two coffer dams were made, using horse-drawn scrapers and fresnos, to hold back the water from the bog. T o cut through the tough entangled bog a plowshare was attached to a chain that was strung across the swamp and anchored on each side. A team of horses on one bank drew the plow one way and a team on the opposite bank drew it the other. Young described the removal process: As we got into the excavation of the bog, it became very difficult. It was a terrible place to work, without machinery, a steam shovel, etc. We could not get in; in fact we needed a drag line with machinery so we could be on dry ground to drag it out for it was slow and dirty work. Much of the bog was taken out by teams standing on the bank, hitched to man-directed-scrapers by means of a long chain.

T h e Ogden brothers remembered working in the bog, Charles with a scraper and Frank in "mud up to our armpits. We pushed the scrapers as the teams pulled on the drag lines." T h e lack of power machinery and the constant seepage of water into the bog made this excavation one of the most difficult parts of the dam construction. T o add to Young's frustration, "Just when we were having our worst time, the six discouraged directors called a meeting [in Richfield] and decided to shut us down. . . . People were jeering . . . we had no money. They said I had run them and the county into a lot of debt." Two board members were sent to the construction site to tell Young to close down. Young's arguments against stopping the project failed to convince the two directors. Nevertheless, the following morning Young called the men out to work and told the visitors: T h e people are fighting for water and there's no water to get. We're going to go ahead and we're going to complete this reservoir! There's a lot of discouragement right now among the men working in this mud, and you're not helping it out any. I'm president and general manager of this reservoir; when a meeting is called for the purpose of shutting down, I'll call it. Now you two men get in your white-top buggy and get down the canyon! I haven't very kind regards to send to the directors. You go home and stay there until I call a meeting legally and lawfully.

A major unresolved financial problem also p l a g u e d the superintendent. T h e option on the ranches was about to r u n out. Just three days before it did the company was able to persuade a


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Otter Creek ca. 1912 with gatehouse on top.

No. 1 diversion point showing creek and bulkhead, August 1915.


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bank in Mount Pleasant to sponsor the company for a loan with a New York bank for $18,000. With this matter settled in-February 1898 other institutions soon began lending funds. By trading, the company was able to get the use of an engine and boiler to assist in removing the bog. Despite loans and equipment purchases, the building methods remained fairly primitive. For $300 the company bought 50,000 feet of red pine planks to make a core for the dam. Lacking a piledriver, Young directed the men to build one from red pine poles and scrap iron gathered from the surrounding towns. A hammer made of red pine was lifted by horse-powered pulleys. It worked well enough to drive in the lumber, one layer overlapping another. As the work proceeded, the rear coffer dam was continually being raised higher and higher to store water behind it. T h e stored water, Young said, "was our bank to pay our debts when they came due in six to eight months." Ralph Fairbanks of Annabella drove a spillway tunnel 274 feet long through the solid rock cliff at the north end of the dam at a cost of $1,813. It was lined with cement. T h e two gates to control the flow cost $875. A spillway was also provided to control high water. With the dam foundation in and the tunnel complete and working, Young asked the board of directors to visit the site. "We are burning up in the valley," they said. Several miles of water were backed up behind the coffer dam. Young thought he could provide 150 second-feet of water daily. T h e directors "were jubilant when they saw the water coming through the tunnel! They all felt so good that they voted me $2.50 a day from then on. They got busy and paid the lumber bill of $300.00. They asked me to stay on the job." T h e farmers in the valley were also jubilant, for their crops were saved. They also saw the value of completing the work, for "about a hundred teams came u p and we soon finished the job," Young recounted. T h e lumber piling core of the dam was lined front and back with clay and earth. T h e n thousands of loads of rock from the surrounding hills were d u m p e d against the core, making the dam eighty feet thick at the base. T h e rocks, from a few h u n d r e d pounds in weight to several tons, were loaded and d u m p e d by manpower using ingenious methods. Joseph H. Christensen remembered that the men would load the rocks onto their wagons by leaning poles against the wagons and then working the rocks into them. "Some of


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the rocks were so large that one rock would be a full wagon load," he said. Last of all, the dam was riprapped with rock. By 1901 the major part of the dam was finished, and Young took a leave of absence until 1904 to fill an LDS church mission to Australia. While he was away E. C. Peterson was superintendent with L. P. Hansen as his assistant. Work around the dam went on for several years as additions and improvements such as diversion canals, spillways, and channels were made. Young concluded his account of the dam by noting that "After the dam was finished the state authorities were probably a little bit dubious of it and they called in Mr. Quinton, one of the leading engineers in the United States. . . . to come out and pass on it. . . . he declared it one of the best and most secure earth reservoir dams in the country." Repairs and upgrading of the reservoir facilities in recent years have cost between four and five h u n d r e d thousand dollars. A new control tower with hydraulically controlled gates has been built. Damage caused by floods in 1983 forced repairs along the feeder canal to the reservoir and made it necessary to contruct a new diversion at the head of the canal. These improvements greatly enhanced the company's ability to control the flow into the reservoir. Otter Creek Reservoir continues to be an important factor in southern Utah life. Along with providing the needed water storage for irrigation downstream, it has become a popular recreational site. In 1965 Otter Creek State Park was opened on the southwest end of the reservoir with camping and picnicking units and fishing and boating facilities. T h e Bureau of Land Management has constructed camping facilities on the west side of the reservoir. Nevertheless, increasing recreational use of the reservoir will not supersede its basic importance of providing water for irrigation for southern Utah farmers.


"The Gypsies Are Coming! The Gypsies Are Coming!" BY DAVID A. HALES

O N E OF OUR FAVORITE EVENING PASTIMES as

children growing up in the small farming community of Deseret, Utah, was to hear our parents tell about the Gypsies coming to town. Although the stories were always the same, with no new accounts, these incidents held a great deal of interest and intrigue for us and we enjoyed hearing them time and time again. A repeated request around our house was, "Tell us about the Gypsies." My childhood interest in Gypsies has continued over the years. In an effort to find out what has been written about the Gypsies and Mr. Hales is associate professor of library science at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Gypsies were frequent visitors to the Abe Roper home, Oak City, where they obtained fresh produce. Photographs courtesy of the author.


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their visits to rural communitites in Utah, I was very surprised to learn that almost nothing has been recorded. T h e number of people who remember the days when Gypsies brought excitement to routine living in small towns throughout Utah is diminishing. Therefore, this article is written to add to the sparse records that exist about the Gypsies in early Utah as remembered by individuals who lived in these small communities in the early 1900s. T h e accounts are recorded here as given to the author and express the feelings of those individuals who had contact with the Gypsies in bygone years. Here one may detect certain elements of prejudice and stereotyping and also possible envy of the perceived carefree and happy lives of the Gypsies. It is not known exactly when the Gypsies first came to Utah, and accounts regarding the frequency of their visits also vary. Kate Snow states that, "Rare were the occasions when an adventuresome band would brave the rough, dusty road in quest of a little easy money." 1 However, others report that Gypsies were regular visitors in the early 1900s to small Utah communities during the spring and summer months. In Elsinore, Utah, the Gypsies were known to visit the community every year during the summer and stay for about a month. 2 Myrtle Western, a resident of Deseret for over sixty years, remembered when the Gypsies made their annual trips to that area. She did not remember the same groups coming back. It was always a different group who would come. 3 However, Laverne Rigby Johnson stated, "In the early 1900s, many gypsies traveled Echo Canyon during the seasons that roads were passable. They were always traveling west. T h e same gypsies called at the ranches so frequently that they were known by name and their individual personality quirks were learned." 4 Who were these nomadic people who made their appearance in rural Utah communities? Historians generally agree that they were of Hindu origin and were primarily from northern India. Some believe they left India around A.D. 100.5 Others believe they were 1 Kate B. Carter, comp., Heart Throbs of the West, 12 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, 1939-51), 1:203. 2 Laverne Rigby Johnson to author, March 1985. i n t e r v i e w with Myrtle Western, Deseret, Utah, J u n e 1984. 4 Laverne Rigby Johnson, "A History of Castle Rock," p. 15, MS in Utah State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City. 5 Josef Koudelka, Gypsies (Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1975), p. 1.


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exiled because of their religious beliefs or ran away from the persecution of Tamerlane or Timur, the great T a r t a r conqueror who invaded India in 1398. 6 It is generally agreed that after leaving India the Gypsies moved westward across Asia Minor and continued the dispersion westward and northward. In some areas the Gypsies settled as serfs on the lands of noblemen while others continued to wander and were tinkers, woodcarvers, minstrels, and fortunetellers. They also became horse traders and were involved in caring for sick animals and horseshoeing. A large group of Gypsies appeared in Hungary in 1417. After traveling westward across Slovakia and Bohemia, they divided into smaller groups that went into Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, and northern Spain. 7 Old documents show that Gypsies appeared in England in the reign of Henry VIII and soon crossed the borders into Scotland. 8 T h e first English Gypsies that came to the United States were transported from Glasgow, Scotland, to a Virginia plantation on the ship Greenock in 1715. This group formed the original stock of the English Gypsies in America. 9 Over the years, Gypsies from other parts of the world have also come to the United States. Some came directly from Europe or through Mexico and Canada where immigration restrictions were more lenient. However, most of the American Gypsies are descendants of Balkan, Eastern, and Central European Gypsies who crossed the Atlantic during the wave of immigration at the turn of the century. 10 T h e r e is considerable lore as to how this group of people from India became known as Gypsies. Some say they claimed to come from a country called Little Egypt, and that Gypsies was a shortened form oiEgyptian.11 Another source states that there was a tradition among early Christians that the Egyptians were condemned to wander forever through the far lands of the world for having kept the Israelites in captivity. Thus, these strange, dark-skinned travelers who spoke an unknown tongue, wore different clothes, and dealt in trading, fortunetelling, and the like must certainly be Egyptians. 6

Konrad Bercovici, "The American Gipsy," Century Magazine, No. 103 (1922): 509. Koudelka, Gypsies, p . l . 8 "History of the Gypsies," Salt Lake Tribune, March 14, 1923. 9 Bercovici, "The American Gipsy," p. 511. 10 Carol Tina Silverman, "Expressive Behavior as Adaptive Strategy among American Gypsies" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1979), p. 6. "Bercovici, " T h e American Gipsy," p. 509. 7


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Again, the corruption of the word Egyptians to Gypsies stuck fast, and the Romany tribes adopted the name too; thus, they became known the world over as Gypsies.12 Some individuals claim that the Gypsies knew which communities to visit during their journeys in Utah. They would make markers at crossroads such as stacking stones, marking trees, and making similar signs so that the next band of Gypsies would know which towns were hospitable to them. 13 T h e Gypsies brought excitement and adventure to remote farming communities. Myrtle Western recounted, "We always knew when the Gypsies were in town. As soon as the kids saw them they would call out, 'The Gypsies are coming, the Gypsies are coming.' Kids further down the street would pick u p on the call and relay it on down the street until everyone knew the Gypsies were in town." 14 Lucile Roper Hales, a lifelong resident of the Pahvant Valley, explained, "We had a big brass bucket and a small one. T h e Gypsies tried to get them from us one time to make jewelry. After that, as soon as we found out that the Gypsies were in town we would r u n home as fast as we could, calling, 'Mama, hide the brass buckets, the Gypsies are coming!' "15 Exotic visitors always attracted attention. Kate Snow noted, . . . the men with their big hats and spangled vests, the women with their full skirts, figured waists, braids of black hair and large earrings. . . . They would always have, besides the wagons, horses, dogs and children, some added attraction. One band that came to Manti had a large black bear that would dance. H e wore a muzzle to which a chain was attached. T h e trainer held the chain and directed the dance. They also had an organ grinder, and a monkey that never missed catching the nickles that were thrown to him. T h e whole population turned out to see the strange people, and enjoy their entertainment. No advertising was necessary, by word of mouth the whole population soon knew of the attraction. 1

Many memories linger on. Myrtle Western related, "The one thing I always remember about the Gypsies is the bright clothes and jewelry, especially the women with the bright red and purple skirts." 17 However, she also said that the women dressed in black, 12

"History of the Gypsies." Interview with Lemira Roper Dutson, Oak City, Utah, J u n e 1984. 14 Western interview. 15 Interview with Lucile Roper Hales, Deseret, Utah, J u n e 1984. 16 Carter, Heart Throbs, p. 203. 17 Western interview. 13


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Gypsies camped in a grove of tamarisks between the old LDS chapel in Deseret and the Sevier River.

including a black headdress, when they were telling fortunes. 18 Ralph Crafts remembered that "The ladies wore bright-colored dresses, bright scarves or bandanas, large dangly gold earrings and necklaces made of coins."19 Some of these coins were fifty-cent pieces, quarters or dollars, and some were gold worth twenty dollars or more. "Their skin was sun dark[ened]. . . . They came to the store to shop and all the kids would stare and gawk."20 Verda Hatch recalled the Gypsies as frequent visitors to her parents' store in Delta, Utah, where they came to purchase cloth from a large selection of plain and printed silk and satin materials. 21 T h e Gypsies traveled in groups of about five to ten families. Each community seemed to have one or more spots where the Gypsies would always camp. In Deseret there were two major places where they would usually stay. One favorite spot was a vacant lot close to the west entrance of the town. It was covered with salt grass, and there was an old water well from which they could get water. 18

Ibid. Ralph Crafts to author, September 1984. 20 Ibid. 21 Verda L. Hatch to author, August 1984. 19


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A n o t h e r favorite camping place was behind the old LDS church. T h e r e was a stand of tamarisks between the back of the church and the banks of the Sevier River where they stayed. 22 T h e wagons they used came in a variety of styles a n d decoration. Some were plain and others were very fancy. A few even h a d stained glass windows. 23 Wells Robinson of Deseret, Utah, recalled when the Gypsies came to Scipio, Utah. They lived in tents as well as in their wagons. All the local boys would go to their camps as soon as they knew they were in town. T h e women would offer to tell the boys their fortunes in exchange for some food a n d water. Naturally, the youths were anxious to have their fortunes told. T h e Gypsies would read the lines in the boys' hands and tell them the long line was the lifeline, a n d if it had a break in it they were going to be very sick, but t h e n the fortunetellers would see a n o t h e r line a n d that would make the boys better and maybe even rich or famous or some other great thing. T h e youngsters would be so p r o u d that their chests would swell u p so big they thought their buttons would fly off. After the Gypsies finished telling fortunes they would always say, "Now, don't tell your friends or your fortune will not come true." Later, all of the boys would congregate on the fence line a n d tell each other their fortunes a n d have a good laugh because they were all alike. Robinson also recalled that sometimes the Gypsies would invite him a n d other youngsters into their tents to talk. T h e travelers even asked questions about the prevailing religious beliefs, but the boys were too young to be able to answer all of them. 2 4 Ralph Crafts related that when the Gypsies came to Deseret the women would tell fortunes for fifty cents: T h e y would start to tell a fortune and tell you something great was going to h a p p e n to you but you would have to give them fifty cents m o r e before they would tell you what it was. O n e time the Gypsies told a m a n in town they could tell him how old he was, where he came from, and where he was going. T h e answer was that he was a day older t h a n he was yesterday, he came from his m o t h e r and he was going to die. 2 5

Many r e m e m b e r the Gypsies as a r d e n t horse traders. Crafts told of a band of Gypsies who came to Deseret in about 1920: T h e r e were five or six families. T h e y came in white top buggies a n d light wagons. Each family h a d five or six trading horses tied behind 22

Western interview. Interview with Clayton Palmer, Deseret, Utah, September 1984. 24 Interview with Wells Robinson, Deseret, Utah, August 1984. 25 Crafts letter. 23


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Gypsy visitors were remembered by Millard County residents. Clockwise from u p p e r left: Myrtle Western, Wells Robinson, Lucile and Bert Hales, and Lemira Dutson. their wagons and buggies. If you traded horses you always gave ten or fifteen dollars to boot. They were adept at grooming horses to make them look nice. They would take an old nag and trim his mane, file his teeth, and curry some shiny oil into his hair. T w o hours after the trade you realized you had been gyped. 2

Bert Hales told the story of a m a n in Deseret who traded horses with the Gypsies. One day when he was looking at a horse, the Gypsy 26

Ibid.


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said, "This horse don't look too good, but it is a real good horse." T h e m a n traded with him, but soon after he got the horse h o m e h e found that it was blind. H e went back to the Gypsy and asked, "Why didn't you tell m e the horse was blind?" T h e Gypsy said, "Oh, but I did. I told you the horse didn't look too good." 27 Many of the Gypsies were excellent singers and musicians and many could play the mandolin, guitar, or fiddle. Others would entertain with rope tricks for a fee. During one of their visits to Deseret, Ralph Crafts r e m e m b e r e d the young Gypsy fellows singing a r o u n d their big camp fires: "As we passed by, we could hear them three or four blocks away. It was the first time I ever h e a r d 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary' and 'When You Wore a Tulip.' O n e of the fellows had a beautiful voice a n d we loved to walk slow and listen to him. They were a happy lot." 28 Lemira Dutson r e m e m b e r e d a time when members of the community went to the town hall in Oak City to be entertained by a Gypsy singer. H e played and sang for hours with an extensive repertoire. 2 9 One of the Gypsies that visited in Elsinore was a trick roper, and h e put on an hour's demonstration of his skill at one of their Fourth of July celebrations. George Staples recalled, "A rider would gallop his horse past the Gypsy and h e would call his shots and would rope that animal on the left front leg, then the right front leg, then a hind leg, then both hind legs, and finally by the tail. T o me his skill was almost unbelievable." 30 Gypsy conduct appears somewhat controversial. Some informants related incidents of shady business dealings and begging but claimed they never personally knew the Gypsies to actually steal anything. Others related stories of outright thievery. Rumors of Gypsies kidnapping children abound, but n o actual accounts have been related to the author. Perhaps this r u m o r stemmed from children often being told, "If you are not good the Gypsies will get you" or "If you are not good we will sell you to the Gypsies the next time they come." Gladys Winters r e m e m b e r e d that she never went anywhere when the Gypsies were in town. As a young girl in Bountiful, Utah, she was very m u c h afraid of them. She was " I n t e r v i e w with Bert Hales, Deseret, Utah, J u n e 1984. 28 Crafts letter. 29 Dutson interview. 30 Laverne Rigby J o h n s o n to author, March 1985.


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always told to give them something, usually food, if they came begging as they did not want a Gypsy angry with them. 31 O n e time two pigs were missing after the Gypsies left Deseret. Some say the Gypsies stole them, but nobody really knows what happened. 3 2 As soon as they arrived in town they m a d e camp; the women a n d older children would go from house to house begging for food or whatever they could get. Myrtle Western r e m e m b e r e d , "They always said the Gypsies stole chickens, pigs, horses, children and clothes off the line. They begged, but I never knew of them stealing in Deseret." 33 In contrast, Ralph Crafts recalled a time when his father was in the store in Deseret. A Gypsy girl grabbed a ten dollar gold piece right out of his h a n d and started to r u n away with it. "Dad had to chase h e r down and grab her and take it away from her." 34 O n e time when the Gypsies were in Oak City, Lemira Dutson recalled, We had our washing on the line. Mother had m a d e m e a shirtwaist blouse from some red and white striped material. A young Gypsy woman kept begging mother to give it to h e r but she would not. Finally, when I got h o m e from school mother asked m e a n d I said it would be all right to let the Gypsy woman have it. She was p r e g n a n t and did not seem to have anything appropriate to wear. She was happy to get the blouse. 3 5

Much oral testimony suggests that the Gypsies were very persistent a n d would d o almost anything they thought would make people give them what they wanted. Lucile Roper Hales recalled the time h e r m o t h e r was making pancakes a n d a Gypsy woman came into the kitchen and stuck h e r dirty finger into the batter. T h e m o t h e r did not want to cook it for h e r own family then, so she gave the batter to the Gypsy and told h e r to go h o m e a n d cook it herself. A n o t h e r time a Gypsy came into that same kitchen and found the children eating cookie dough. She became very upset at the sight of the children eating the raw d o u g h a n d warned them that it would surely clog them up. 3 6 Gypsies often visited the Abe Roper h o m e in Oak City. "We always had a big garden," Hales explained: 31

Interview with Gladys Winters, Salt Lake City, J u n e 1984. Western interview. 33 Ibid. 34 Crafts letter. 35 Dutson interview. 36 Hales interview. 32


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The Rigby ranch in Castle Rock ca. 1911 was often visited by Gypsies. Ralph Crafts, inset, remembered Gypsy visits in Millard County.

Papa peddled a lot of produce to help support the family. I'll never forget the time he had cucumbers out on the lawn getting them washed and ready to peddle. T h e Gypsies arrived and wanted some so he let them have a few. They snatched them u p and ate them, peel and all. That was the first time I had ever seen anyone eat cucumbers without being peeled. One time Father had given them a lot of produce from the garden. One Gypsy lady was determined that she did not have enough and she was going back to the garden to get more. Papa told her that he could not give her any more. He needed the rest for his customers when he went peddling, but she still insisted. Papa finally told her he would send the dog after her if she went into the garden again. She started down the path so Papa called the dog. T h e minute he called the dog she came r u n n i n g out and left. 37

When Gypsies were passing though Echo Canyon, Laverne Rigby Johnson recounted that A favorite camping spot was on Rees Creek where it ran beneath a bridge on the Lincoln Highway. T h e r e they had water and grass for their horses, the children could wash themselves in the creek; but best of all they had a clear, unbroken view of the Rigby Ranch house. If it happened to be a season when a crew of men were working there, the gypsie [sic] women timed arrival at the ranch house kitchen door as the Tbid.


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Laverne Rigby Johnson, secondfrom left, about the time she ran to see if her horse was safe. men left the dining room. O n e gypsie woman was particularly obnoxious. She quickly moved about the kitchen touching food, knowing the cook would not use what had been handled by a gypsie. She quickly bunched her apron, as though preparing to gather chips and firewood, then d u m p e d mashed potatoes, left-over roast, or whatever was available, into the apron. 3 8

As an eight year old, Laverne Rigby J o h n s o n saw the Gypsies breaking camp one morning as her mother was brushing her hair. She thought of the horse in the pasture beside the highway. She left her mother, brush in the air, ran u p the lane to the highway, one pigtail and the remaining hair flying loose. As she reached the highway a Gypsy had a rope in his h a n d and was at the pasture gate stroking her horse's nose. As she appeared he turned away. Of course, she always knew her sudden appearance had caused his change of mind. 39 Merchants and shopkeepers seemed to have had their share of problems with the ubiquitous Gypsies. "We had a bakery and the Gypsies were so quick that they could steal a whole bag of rolls right

8 9

Johnson, "A History of Castle Rock," p. 15 Ibid., p. 16. Johnson letter, March 1985, notes that she was the young girl.


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from u n d e r your eyes," recalled Delilah Brown of Salt Lake City. T h e women had bright, full skirts that reportedly had large pockets sewn into them in which to conceal things. 40 Blaine Winters, whose father owned a hardware store in Garland, Utah, during the early 1900s, remembered that the minute the Gypsies came to town he was summoned to help guard the store and see that they did not steal the merchandise. Winters recalled the time a Gypsy wanted him to open his money purse and just let him pass his fingers over it: "I had about two dollars in change in the purse. I opened the purse and just let him r u n his finger over the top of it. I was watching closely to see that the money was not taken. When I got home I opened my money purse and it was empty. T h e Gypsy's fingers were quicker than my eyes." 41 A similar story was told by Myrtle Western: I was clerking in a store in Fillmore when I was a young girl and before I was married. One morning I was alone in the store and just getting the money out of the safe when from out from nowhere appeared a Gypsy lady. She saw me with the cash box and tried to get me to just let her r u n her hands over the top of the box. I was scared and did not know what to do. Just then the owner of the store came in and said, "What's going on in here?" When he saw the Gypsy lady and me with the cash box in my hand he told me to lock that cash box in the safe at once. T h a t is where it stayed until he was able to get the Gypsy lady out of the store. 42

Another story told of a very attractive Gypsy girl who wore a sheer blouse hopefully to distract male clerks as the other Gypsies roamed the store gathering what they wanted. 43 One evening Wanda Jenkins, her mother, brother, and sisters were gathered around an old pot-bellied stove in Kanab, Utah. H e r father was away at the time. T h e r e was a loud knock on the door, and before they could answer it a group of Gypsies came into their home. They wanted to read their palms and tell their fortunes. Wanda was about ten years old at the time and she was scared. "While one had you cornered the others seemed to be everywhere in the house. They grabbed your hand and looked at you with their dark eyes," she recalled. Finally, her mother pointed to the door and ordered them out. They seemed to vanish as quickly as they came. They checked afterward, but found nothing missing. Later, in her teenage 40

Interview with Delilah Brown, Salt Lake City, June 1984. Interview with Blaine Winters, Salt Lake City, June 1984. 42 Western interview. 43 Laverne Rigby Johnson to author, August 1984. 41


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years, Jenkins was working at a restaurant and motel when suddenly some Gypsies came in the building and were everywhere, even behind the counters. Again, one would occupy her while the others went everywhere. Because of her earlier experience with them, she was more brazen and followed her mother's example. She ordered them out of the place. They left as quickly as they had come. 44 Jenkins related a third incident with the Gypsies that was indicative of the changing times and the changing life-style of the traveling people. She was in the hospital in Kanab when a big^ black car with three rows of seats drove up. A pregnant woman was brought in, and in about thirty minutes she had her baby. After the baby was born, one of the men went out to the car and got a piece of cloth that they wrapped the baby in and then they all drove away.45 In later years the Gypsies were known to travel around the state in big cars, and they were engaged in car trading. However, they did not bring the exitement or thrill that the wagon bands of the previous era brought. During the late 1920s their life-style was greatly affected by industrialization. With the coming of the automobile and tractors and the introduction of stainless steel, there was not a demand for tinkers or horse traders. Also, with the crash of 1929 and the depression, people had little spare money for fortune telling, carnivals, and entertainers. T h e depression welfare projects likewise enticed the Gypsies to flock to the cities where they had to stay in order to be eligible for the welfare money that was available. T h e rationing of gasoline limited their mobility, too. 46 Some observers state that the Gypsies have now lost their identity and that they have been swept into the mainstream of American life, while others claim there is a thriving Gypsy population in the United States. Not only have Gypsies survived in the New World, but they have also synthesized a viable dynamic life-style and have sustained core values while making use of the American environment. 47 Gone are the days when the Gypsies traveled from community to community in rural Utah, but the excitement they brought still lingers in the memories of those who recall the cry, "The Gypsies are coming, the Gypsies are coming!" "Interview with Wanda Crosby Jenkins, Kanab, Utah, September 1984. 45 Ibid. "Silverman, "Expressive Behavior," p. 8. 47 Ibid., p. 1.


Don Maguire's Trading Expedition in Northern Arizona, 1879 EDITED BY GARY TOPPING


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pulled into the Mormon settlement of Sunset on the Little Colorado River early in 1879, he was nearing the end of a series of five remarkable trading expeditions in the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest since 1876, three of which had brought him into Arizona. From his home in Ogden, Utah, Maguire had ranged into Idaho, Nevada, California, Arizona, and Mexico. Traveling light, he had planned carefully to utilize points of resupply at remote railheads. He had improvised, too, taking advantage of local trading opportunities: only a few weeks before his arrival at Sunset, for example, he had suddenly conceived the idea of carrying the abundant produce of the Mormon communities along the Virgin River in rented Mormon wagons with hired Mormon teamsters to hungry miners in Mohave County, Arizona. More recently, he had purchased from the quartermaster at Fort Verde a quantity of surplus and obsolete firearms and ammunition. Those guns, plus a remainder of domestic trade goods brought from Utah, were what he sought to sell to Mormons and Indians along his return route. Maguire was born in 1852 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, to Irish political refugees of 1848. His father and four brothers were all peddlers who, drawn by western commercial opportunity, followed the railroad to Ogden, Utah, in the early 1870s. Following his education at a Franciscan school in Santa Barbara, California, and limited success on a trading expedition in north Africa and the eastern Mediterranean in 1875, Maguire turned his commercial attention to the American West. A sketchy diary and a lengthy unpublished autobiographical account written in San Francisco in 1883 are the main sources of our knowledge of those five journeys, and it is from the autobiography that the narrative published here has been taken. Upon completion of the expedition described in part here, Maguire retired from itinerant trade and devoted the rest of his life to mining speculation in Utah, writing, and archaeology. All of his endeavors met with success: his trading and mining ventures brought him a great deal of money (his house is still an important architectural landmark in Ogden); his literary career produced a W H E N D O N MAGUIRE, HIS WAGON, AND FOUR MEN

Dr. Topping is curator of manuscripts for the Utah State Historical Society Library.

Opposite: Don Maguire. USHS collections.


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novel, a book of poems, several collections of stories, a large number of articles, and a large collection of unpublished manuscripts; and his collection of archaeological artifacts became (ironically, because of his passionate anti-Mormonism) a basis of the Temple Square Museum exhibits in Salt Lake City. An equal irony is that Maguire, who had survived the Apaches, the rattlesnakes, and the desert heat of Arizona, was killed by an automobile near his home in Ogden in 1933. 1 Maguire's intellect was as lively as his feet and as tenacious as his commercial ambition. In the following autobiographical excerpt, while he matches economic wits with the parsimonious Lot Smith and the wily Manuelito, he simultaneously makes elaborate mental notes on the details of Mormon communal living and Navajo culture. Readers of the Maguire autobiography must exercise caution in several ways. For one thing, his anti-Mormon bias is in constant evidence. Also, he is careless about personal names (Emma Lee, J o h n D.'s widow, appears here as "Mary" Lee), a fact that makes it difficult to corroborate persons who are reported here. Finally, he credulously reports hearsay evidence, some of which, like the account here of Lot Smith's death, is in error. This autobiographical excerpt is significant for several reasons. In the first place, it gives fairly minute details of life at Sunset, Lee's Ferry, and, to a lesser degree, Moencopi. It gives evidence of the existence of several minor figures in northern Arizona history who may have escaped mention in other records. Perhaps most important, it gives a detailed look at the business practices of a type of f r o n t i e r t r a d e r whose activities a r e o t h e r w i s e very p o o r l y documented. Finally, there is an understated humor here that is highly entertaining, particularly in his dealings with Lot Smith, a man whom he admittedly scorned: upon Maguire's arrival, Smith ' I n spite of Maguire's diverse ambitions, his life left few documentary traces and almost completely escaped the attention of subsequent historians. T h e only published biographical material is the sketch in J. Cecil Alter's Utah: The Storied Domain, 3 vols. (Washington, D . C , 1932), 2: 32-36, and the obituaries in the Deseret News, January 9, 1933, p. 3, and the Ogden [Utah] Standard Examiner, January 8, 1933, p. 1, and January 9, 1933, p. 10. Bruce Jessen's essay, "Mining in Weber County, Utah," which is available in manuscript form at the Utah State Historical Society, devotes considerable attention to alleged swindles during Maguire's career as a mining speculator. Charles Nettleton Strevell, As I Recall Them (Salt Lake City, n.d.), pp. 133-35, records conversations with Maguire regarding his archaeological investigations, a subject that also figures prominently in Maguire's correspondence with Charles Kelly, in the Kelly papers at the Utah State Historical Society. A fire in 1929 destroyed most of what was reportedly an immense collection of manuscripts and personal papers in Maguire's home; those that survived are in the possession of the Utah State Historical Society. T h e autobiographical excerpt published here is from that collection.


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charged him what Maguire considered "outrageously high prices" for stabling his mules. But he smiled through it all and bided his time until Smith tried to purchase some guns, at which time Maguire wreaked his revenge through a 300 percent markup. Not content with that, Maguire took the rest of his guns up to Moencopi and sold them to the Navajo — the very Indians against whom Smith wished to defend himself! In preparing the following excerpt for publication, I have exercised a very free editorial hand. T h e original manuscript was dictated to a stenographer and never had the advantage of Maguire's final editing. It is replete with misspellings and grammatical and stylistic errors. Consequently, I have made abridgments and g r a m m a t i c a l revisions w h e r e v e r I d e e m e d t h e m d e s i r a b l e . Nevertheless, Maguire's unique style and his main narrative thread are maintained — indeed, I hope clarified — in what follows. MAGUIRES ACCOUNT

Another day's drive brought us to the Mormon fort on the Little Colorado. It was built of palisades made of split cottonwood timber of about ten to twelve inches in diameter. It was about three hundred feet square. There were two large gates, one on the north and another on the south, these swinging on heavy iron hinges. There were about seventy families in the fort. A Mormon bishop officiated there. The place bore an intensely religious and formal air. A man named Lot Smith, from Farmington, Utah, twenty miles north of Salt Lake City, was Bishop over this community. His First Counsellor was a man named Ramsey, by birth a Scotchman.2 This was an interesting community, and to describe its main features I will have to go back three or four years into Mormon history. Sometime about the year 1874, Brigham Young called upon the Mormons to join an order he was going to establish, which was to be known as the Order of Enoch. This was a work which he claimed to have been inspired by the Almighty to do, and in its nature it was this: that every Saint who could bring his mind to enter into the work was to come forward and sign over all his earthly possessions to the Order of Enoch or Church of Latter-day 2 T h e story of Lot Smith and the Mormon colonies on the Little Colorado is told definitively by Charles S. Peterson in " 'A Mighty Man was Brother Lot': A Portrait of Lot Smith — Mormon Frontiersman," Western Historical Quarterly 1 (October 1970): 393-414, and Take Up Your Mission: Mormon Colonizing along the Little Colorado River, 1870-1900 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973). T h e "Ramsey" referred to here appears to be a name invented to cover Maguire's memory lapse; no person of that name appears in Mormon church records in any official capacity on the Little Colorado. When Maguire was in Sunset, Lot Smith was the stake president (as Maguire later speculates), not the bishop; his counselors were Jacob Hamblin and Lorenzo H. Hatch. T h e bishop of Sunset was Levi Mathers Savage, and his counselors were J o h n Bloomfield and Addison Hicken. Copies of the stake and ward records are in Rulon E. Porter, "This Is My Own, My Native Land: Description, History, Etc.," manuscript copy at the Utah State Historical Society.


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Saints, his land, money, horses and cattle — in a word, all he possessed — and it was to become the common property of the church. In return, each man and woman was to receive bread and clothing and house room for himself and family until death, and the same was to extend to his family after his death so long as they were willing to toil in that way. But no man of the rank and file was to handle a dollar of money as his own. Men and women were to come together, and after giving the O r d e r of Enoch all that had not been taken from them as tithing, they were to live unitedly as one family. Man and woman were to work according to orders from the bishop or taskmaster of each community. When any man required anything for himself or family, he asked the bishop or taskmaster for it, and if the bishop or taskmaster thought that he did not require the favor, he must go without it. Now this plan did not work very well. Brigham Young started it thinking that he would cut off all outside trade in Utah, but willing as most members of the church had been to live according to orders or rules of the faith, many of the Mormons seemed to be averse to this sort of life and would not listen or accept a bait of this kind. However, many did, and in this community far away on the Little Colorado they entered into a method which in itself was simply an example of socialism as to the rules and methods laid down for this type of life in general. I will introduce the reader to a few of the conditions as I saw them. I found in going u p into this fort that all business would have to be transacted through the bishop. I bought from him a thousand pounds of damaged grain for ten cents per pound, which he claimed was a great favor to me. Of course I thanked him for it and made it a point for my men to be as agreeable as possible as I wanted to see as much and learn as much as possible of the institution there established as I could. I told my men 3 to go and prepare their supper in our tents, as I desired to remain and see what kind of table living there was in the community. I managed affairs socially in such a way as to have the bishop invite me to eat with him on that occasion. This was as I desired, so I entered with the bishop, who followed the people going to supper. A bell soon announced that supper was ready, and this first course was for the young married men and wives who were engaged in labor in the field and around the community where the fort was built, also for the young women and young unmarried men. This dining service was carried out in a long hall fifty feet in width by one h u n d r e d in length. In this hall there were three long tables. For each man and woman, boy or girl, there was a tin plate, a steel knife and fork, also a tinned iron spoon. By the side of each plate there was a little pot or cup made of clay and b u r n e d in a kiln near the fort. T o every four persons there was an earthen pitcher, homemade at the local kiln and here on the table filled with molasses.

3

T h e names of Maguire's men on this expedition were Con Dawson, Isodore Mooncraft, Eusebius Seaboldt, and Q u o n g Hing. Although this passage seems to indicate that Maguire was the only member of his party who ate with the Mormons, we learn later that Dawson was also with him.


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T h e r e was another pitcher of the same make as the other, only big enough to be its father. This was full of water. In a large dishpan of tin there was a quantity of beans and fat pork. There was also a large quantity of corn bread, and this was all there was to eat and drink on either table. T h e r e was a Bishop's Counsellor, Deputy, or Elder at every table, who, calling on all to arise, offered a long prayer, thanking God for all the good things in sight on that table, for the fine quarters they possessed, for health and strength and for the great jewel of religious faith of which they were in possession. T h e n all fell to eating, and during the meal not one word was spoken by anyone. When the meal was finished, the aforesaid Elder or Bishop's Counsellor again arose, thanking God for the excellent supper they had partaken of. He asked Providence to protect them as a body and as a people, to give to the young strength to resist the falsehoods of the Gentile world. He prayed that God would hasten the perfection of the Latter-day Kingdom over all the land, that the enemies of the church might be laid low, and he said to the Lord that they knew they had the true and everlasting Gospel. As to himself individually, he said to the Almighty that he hoped He would strike him with forked lightning before he would be permitted to apostasize from a church so pure and holy as that taken from the Hill Cumorah by Joseph Smith, Jr. A general "Amen" went up at the conclusion of this prayer and then a hymn was sung, after which we as a body drew out and let the children of both sexes come to supper. Their supper consisted of corn bread, molasses, and water. T h e r e was a dance after supper. Both old and young took part, the tables being removed from [to?] the sides of the hall to allow dancing. After the dance had ended, the Bishop, Lot Smith (or perhaps he was President), arose and again thanked the Lord that they had been permitted to take part in this very pleasurable dance that evening, after which the good people of the fort separated for the evening, each going to his or her respective department for the night. Dawson and myself returned to our tents where we freely talked until late hours of the peculiar creatures we mortals be. This band of men and women had been called by the Almighty, as they put it, to come here and build up this establishment. It was to be merely a church plantation where everything belonged to President Taylor, 4 including men, women, and children who toiled in the fields or in the workshop. Of course the average intellect of this body of humanity was not extraordinarily high and they reasoned not as to the cause for which they toiled, but satisfied with the homely fare and the generally peculiar privileges afforded by their faith, they were content to toil and ask no questions. [Maguire at this point hired a Mormon guide to Oraibi, where he spent two days trading with the Hopis.] 4 J o h n Taylor (1808-87) succeeded Brigham Young as president of the Mormon church upon the latter's death in 1877, though he was not officially "sustained" (ordained or confirmed) in that post until 1880, and served as president until his death.


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Now I previously stated that this Mormon settlement was presided over by Lot Smith, a man of rather gloomy manners. In Utah he formerly lived at Farmington, between Salt Lake and Ogden, until called to establish this mission of communistic life on the Little Colorado. He had quite a history. When General Albert Sidney Johnston's 5 army of the United States troops was marching into Utah in the latter part of 1857, Smith, with a body of mounted Utah militia, attacked three large but poorly guarded government supply trains, burned all the wagons together with the army supplies, thus crippling the incoming army and compelling almost five thousand men to camp with only a starvation quantity of food for five months in a savage wilderness until fresh supplies were brought from Fort Leavenworth the following spring. T h e suffering of these officers and men that winter was terrible. Knowing these things, I was not very much impressed with the man who thus was the author of their suffering and misery, and at whose fort I and my men were resting. But compelling my personal feeling to conform to the necessity of business, safety, and the requirements of student and explorer, I made myself as agreeable to Lot Smith and his associates as possible. I entered into trade with Smith and his counsellors, and as I had with me yet a large number of government muskets, pistols, and carbines, also ammunition obtained from the commander at Fort Verde, I sold to Lot Smith and party six hundred dollars worth of caliber fifty breechloading muskets, a number of cap and ball cavalry revolvers, and a considerable quantity of ammunition. They purchased these because of the danger they were constantly in because of the Apache and Navajo Indians. 6 T h e prices obtained for these arms was about three times what I paid for them at Fort Verde, but as Lot Smith charged us outrageously high prices for grain, hay, and shelter for our mules and guide to and from Oraibi, I was only moderate in advance in the sales of arms thus made to him. We spent the day after my return from Oraibi in trading at the Mormon community fort and after closing u p our business for the day when it was quite late in the afternoon, imagine my surprise to see arriving at my tents Chief, or Hopi President, J u a n Miguel 7 with four other Hopi men of prominence. Their appearance or arrival was because they wanted to purchase from me a number of carbines, muskets, and Colt's pistols, and a number of knives. They had brought with them three h u n d r e d dollars in 5 Albert Sidney Johnston (1803-62) led the punitive expedition into Utah in 1857-58 to put down the alleged rebellion of the Mormons against federal authority. When the Civil War broke out, Johnston returned to the East to join the Confederacy and died at Shiloh. Maguire's account of Smith's harassment of Johnston's troops is essentially accurate. 6 Maguire is in error here if he implies overt hostility between Mormons and Indians. Relations with the Navajo during this period were always touch and go, but the death of Lot Smith in 1892 appears to have been the earliest instance of violence. With a few exceptions, the Mormons tended to avoid the Apaches, and though trouble broke out between the two groups in 1880, there seems to have been little indication of its imminence in 1879. In purchasing Maguire's guns, Smith probably had general defense in mind, rather than a specific threat. See Peterson, Take Up Your Mission, pp. 200-204; 207-11. 7 1 have been unable to verify the existence of a Hopi leader of this name.


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American coin, for which I sold them ten fifty caliber three-banded needle guns, five remodeled fifty caliber Sharps carbines, five Colt's cap and ball cavalry pistols, one thousand rounds of ammunition, and one dozen hunting knives. J u a n Miguel and his party came mounted on Mexican ponies with three pack animals. Having secured the arms they wanted, they started back on their return the same day, as they were anxious to reach home as soon as possible lest they be intercepted by a superior number of Navajos and robbed of the firearms just purchased. So closed my experience with the Hopi inhabitants of old Oraibi. Four days after leaving Sunset Crossing of the Little Colorado and Mormon fort, we reached Moencopi, a sort of trading post or home station in the Painted Desert country. Here we found a white man named Ben Hawley with his family.8 He was a Mormon from Battle Creek or Pleasant Grove, ten miles north of Provo in Utah County, Utah, who appeared to be a sort of missionary and Indian trader at this point and holding a government permit for that purpose. At this point he was purchasing wool from the Navajos at five cents per pound, exchanging with them such articles in trade as tobacco, calico, men's cotton shirts, coarse shoes, cotton trousers, paints, and beads. As there was a blacksmith shop at Hawley's place on the Moencopi, and I wanted to study the Navajo tribe, their manners and disposition, and also trade with them, we camped for four days adjacent to Hawley's residence and trading post. He had on hand a quantity of charcoal, and Mooncraft and Seaboldt, who were good blacksmiths, wagon repairers, and mule shoers, were set to work reshoeing our four mules, cutting, rewelding, and resetting our wagon tires, and replacing lost nuts, bolts, and screws. From Moencopi to Lee's Ferry on the Big Colorado, the distance is about eighty miles, counting for the curves and angles in the primitive road we would yet have to travel. At a few hundred feet from Hawley's residence, we first put up our tents. Quong Hing at once was placed in charge of our kitchen. For our mules we obtained barley from Mr. Hawley, as well as well-cured alfalfa or lucerne hay, and as he had a store room that we could use in our trade with the Navajo Indians, I felt quite pleased with the situation. My men soon had everything well fixed for our camp and we were about to sit down to our evening meal when u p walked from the south and over the same road we had traveled that day a man, dark-skinned, heavyset, having long hair and beard. On his shoulder he carried a short gun or rifle of the muzzle-loading type, but of enormous weight and very richly mounted with silver decorations. He came to our tents and at my invitation ate supper with us. At first sight I took him to be a prospector, but soon found that he knew little about mines or minerals, or very much in a practical way about anything else. He said that he had been on our trail since we left the 8

Like "Ramsey," "Ben Hawley" does not appear in any Mormon church records.


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Petrified Forest, but our gait being too rapid for him, and having had twenty miles start on him, we were at Moencopi ere he reached our camp. As we talked with him about the wonders of the Petrified Forest and I narrated of it as a great feature and of great age, he said that he was well acquainted with that locality and the cause of its destruction and also of the different animals whose petrified remains we had seen so plentifully scattered around there. T h e n he stated that it all had taken place at the time of Noah's flood, and that several nights previous to our meeting he had had a revelation to that effect. We, not knowing positively to the contrary, did not dispute him. I asked him his business in those parts, and he said he was a Mormon missionary among the Indians of that desolate region. He said his name was Peter Jonathan Edwards, 9 that his home was in Salt Lake City, that he was on a three-year mission amongst the Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni Indians, and that another year would release him from his mission amongst those Indians, after which he expected to do missionary work in the Sandwich Islands. I asked him then if he had made many conversions amongst the Navajo or Hopi people in the cliff country. H e said as yet he did not know that he had, but he felt certain that he had good reason to believe that the Gospel was being considered very seriously by each of these nations. He had sowed the seed of the everlasting Gospel amongst them and the next missionaries amongst them would reap a rich harvest of souls. Along with his heavy short rifle he carried with him a frying pan with a small copper pot, a few spoons, knives and forks, a tin cup, and a large tanned black and white oxhide that he used for bed and covering at night. This oxhide was tanned so that it was very flexible. By means of a small but sharp axe he carried with him he could cut dry wood for fire, and with rifle of large bore he could use buckshot or bullets. A large part of his living he said was made u p of rabbits, mountain rats, chipmunks, and occasionally a pine hen; at times he was forced to accept for his meals crickets and grasshoppers. At times he obtained parched corn from Indians, and such other kinds of foods as they themselves possessed. Amongst other statements he made to us was that the petrified forest through which we had passed was the identical locality at which Noah had built his ark, and that he had discovered the spot where the timbers had been dressed for that famous vessel, and where the petrified chips and shavings and ends of timbers were yet abundant, but in a petrified state. He further stated that he was fully convinced that because of a dream he had had recently, the ark itself would yet be found in a petrified state on some of the high mesas or benches or table lands of that region. He further stated that the petrified bones we saw in the fossilized forest were the bones of animals for which Noah did not have room in the ark and so as a consequence they were drowned in the great flood, and that now, along with the petrified forest itself, they were a proof to mankind that the 9 Evidently another invented name. T h e Little Colorado Stake Minutes contain lists of Lamanite (Indian) missionaries, and Edwards's name is not among them.


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statement relative to Noah and his ship as given in the Bible was literally true. As to himself, he stated that wandering as he now was in that land as a sort of missionary and prophet, he was really a sort of St. J o h n the Baptist, just one crying in the wilderness, "Make ready the way of the Lord." He was just heralding of one, the latches of whose sandals he was not worthy of untying, and who in that desert land was to come and complete the work of which he himself had been laying the foundation for the last two years. Having eaten supper with us and given us all the above information, he said that he must now go and meet Brother Ben Hawley at his house and deliver to him a letter he was carrying from Lot Smith of the Mormon fort at Sunset Crossing on the Little Colorado, and that he must start at the break of day for Oraibi to deliver a verbal message of a religious nature to the people of the six rock-built cities, as he called them. Then, raising his hands high above his head, he gave us his patriarchal blessing, took up his heavy rifle, his tanned oxhide bundle with its repacked contents, and passed out of our tents. We never saw him again, but Ben Hawley told us the next day that he was a sort of half-cracked missionary who had been appointed to labor amongst the Navajo, Hopi, and other Indians in Arizona and New Mexico. Up in Utah he had become a sort of harmless nuisance around Salt Lake City, so it was thought best to give him a commission amongst the Indians of the Arizona wilderness and later let him go to the Sandwich Islands on a mission, as he had stated to us he expected soon to go. As on this occasion, he frequently carried messages from one Mormon settlement or colony to another. As above stated, after his departure from our tents, we did not see him again. I had Mr. Hawley send two of his men out to points round about to inform families and groups of Navajo Indians that there was a trader with various sorts of goods for Indians at Moencopi, and for them to come in with money, blankets, or silver ornaments to trade for the articles, and on the second day after our arrival fully one hundred men and women of the Navajo tribe arrived at the Moencopi trading post. This band of Indians that had gathered for trading with us that day was a good representative makeup of the entire tribe. Some of them were exceedingly fine-looking men and women, having noble features, wearing a very bold and manly expression, and all of them were quite pleasing. I should have made mention previously of a historic fact associated with the principal figure at the Mormon fort back at Sunset Crossing of the Little Colorado. Lot Smith, of whom I have already made frequent mention, had unfortunately not ingratiated himself with these Indians. Previous to my leaving the fort at Sunset, I learned that on several occasions he had had trouble with the Navajos and a considerable time after our visit to his settlement or fort a Navajo stole his favorite riding mule. Lot Smith, instead of going to a Navajo camp nearby and informing the head man of his loss and demanding that the mule be returned, took the matter into his own hands, and with three or four of his neighbors, started in pursuit of the thieving Navajo.


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This Indian was accompanied by two or three others. In his escape from the neighborhood of the Mormon fort where he had stolen the mule, he and his associates crossed the Little Colorado River into a broken country to the west. T h e Indian and his associates saw Lot Smith and his party approaching. They were some distance away when first observed by the Navajo horse thieves who, drawing away from the main trail a few h u n d r e d feet, secreted themselves behind a group of immense sandstone boulders, and upon the near approach of Lot Smith and his partners, opened fire upon them, instantly killing Lot Smith and wounding one or two of his associates, who beat a retreat. T h e Navajo and his comrades succeeded in making their escape, and their names not being known to the white people at the fort, they were never apprehended. So ended the life of a prominent early pioneer leader of Utah territory, Lot Smith. 10 We yet had about forty guns for trade or sale, all of military type or pattern. These we had obtained at Fort Verde. T h e r e were yet remaining from the same purchase seventeen Colt's revolvers of the cap and ball pattern, about one h u n d r e d rounds of ammunition for different guns and pistols, a considerable quantity of Indian beads, paints, and a small stock of colored cottons, especially large red and yellow bandana handkerchiefs. T h e r e were a few magnifying glasses, a few pair of field glasses, about seventy-five p o u n d s of plug tobacco, spectacles, small m i r r o r s , or looking-glasses. Save the field glasses, optical instruments, and spectacles, almost all of what we had now on hand was what I obtained from the sutler or post trader and quartermaster at Fort Verde. T h e two features the Navajos had for which to carry forward trade were Navajo blankets, large and small, silver work of different kinds, some tanned buckskin, and some deer, wolf, mountain lion, and fox skins tanned and yet having the fur or hair intact. We inquired the prices of the blankets, of the silver jewelry, and other articles of work such as furs, knives, saddles, and bridle ornaments. We had previously known that Navajos ask outrageous prices for anything they might have for sale. Their blankets they placed at from eight to forty dollars each, and their silver jewelry and other ornaments at ten times their weight in silver coin. I at once informed Manuelito, 11 their high chief who happened to be one of the party visiting me that day, that I well knew what their blankets, jewelry, and furs were worth. I then went over all of our own stock of goods, gave them my prices, and said that if they wanted to trade on such a basis we would proceed; if not, we would close the store, I would pack u p our stock of merchandise, and leave the country. I knew well enough that h u m a n nature was well developed in them and that although they were shrewd traders, yet like all other classes of people they were anxious to

10 As mentioned in the introduction, this account of Smith's death is incorrect. Smith, a hottempered and autocratic man, was shot by Navajos in 1892 when he killed some of their sheep that were grazing on his property. See Peterson, " 'A Mighty Man Was Brother Lot,' " pp. 412-13. 11 This was the great Navajo leader who led the resistance to Kit Carson in the 1860s. H e died in 1893. See Ruth Underhill, The Navajos (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), passim.


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exchange what they possessed and what they could always have for things they wanted but seldom had an opportunity of procuring. After about two hours of talking amongst themselves in an excited way off to one side, they presently returned and trade began by their taking all of the three-banded breechloading caliber fifty Springfield muskets. I had also the Sharps caliber fifty carbines at twenty-five dollars each. They gave me two well-made, highly colored Navajo blankets at ten dollars each and one small saddle blanket of good make and fine colors for these articles. These small rugs or saddle blankets I took at five dollars apiece. T h e two large blankets and one small one representing twenty-five dollars were given to me for each one of the Springfield muskets or Sharp carbines. T h e same price was settled upon for the cap and ball pistols, each of these latter having holster and belt. T h e guns and pistols being thus disposed, then followed our trade of silver work along similar lines of value. Next came our business in colored cotton goods in piece or by the bolt, cotton shirts, Indian beads, paints, knives, needles, scissors, spectacles or lookingglasses, jews harps, or mouth organs. On the evening of the second day after opening trade with these Navajos, we had disposed of the entire stock of guns and pistols, ammunition, knives, and other lines of goods that I had from my original stock taken into Arizona on that expedition and also all that I had obtained at Fort Verde from the quartermaster of that post as condemned government arms and other material, and in exchange I had 151 Navajo blankets and small rugs, fifty-five pounds of silver Navajo jewelry of all sorts, thirty-one spurs, and some fifty other articles of Navajo manufacture. On coming to Moencopi, knowing what we would have to do when trading with most Indians, I purchased from Mr. Hawley ten head of sheep at two dollars per head, ten bushels of potatoes at one dollar per bushel, three bushels of wheat, a quantity of salt, and four gallons of sorghum molasses. H e had two large oblong copper-bottomed tanks or molasses pans in which to boil sorghum cane sap when making molasses. These I hired from him, then purchased from him a wagon load of cedar wood. He and my Chinese cook, Quong Hing, slaughtered the sheep and put three of the sheep carcasses at a time into one of the large molasses tanks and started a fire in the furnace. Into the second pan or tank were put the three bushels of potatoes and carrots. In a large boiler we had with us we prepared a plentiful supply of coffee. I purchased forty pounds of brown sugar from Mr. Hawley at forty cents per p o u n d and gave fifteen dollars to Mrs. Hawley for one h u n d r e d loaves of bread that she had been two days baking in a large outdoor Mexican oven. When all of these good things were being prepared, my trading with the Navajo Indians was going forward, and on the afternoon of the second day's trading, the big dinner or eat was ready, and about 120 men, women, and children were given such a feast as they seldom enjoyed in their hogans. They very much appreciated what I had thus done for them. T h e r e was yet enough left to give them another respectable meal at noon on the following day. By that time all of our trading was over. T h e goods,


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Three of the Mormons encountered by trader Don Maguire on his 1879 expedition. Clockwise from u p p e r left: Warren Marshall Johnson, probably the man at Lee's Ferry identified by Maguire as "Samson"; Lot Smith, whose death was erroneously recorded by Maguire; and Emma Batchelor Lee, John D. Lee's seventeenth wife, who ran Lee's Ferry. USHS collections.


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including guns, pistols, knives, and ammunition and other lines of goods were taken possession of by their new owners and all that I had obtained from them was safely locked up in Mr. Hawley's warehouse or storeroom. 12 I suppose it is well for me to state that as regards the exchange of possessions between the Navajo Indians and myself, we both had done well. Both were satisfied, and as to Mr. Hawley, I paid to him for mule stabling and grain, lucerne hay, bread, potatoes, sugar, salt, carrots, the mutton of ten sheep and store rent, the sum of ninety-three dollars. When we were ready to start forward on our journey toward the north, I had had a most interesting experience with the Navajo Indians, both in the way of commercial exchange and in studying them as a people. I had obtained from them an exceedingly fine lot of their handiwork or manufacture and at such prices as to enable me to make a profit from my investment when I would dispose of them at New York City, to which point I was going to send them. [From Moencopi, Maguire journeyed to Lee's Ferry.] After a rest of an hour and a half we went forward over a road that was becoming worse and more difficult until at length after a terrible uphill pull over a tract of wagon road where stones of all sizes made traveling difficult, we reached the high elevation above the Colorado, just about three-quarters of an hour before sundown, finding ourselves in sight of Lee's Ferry and the residence and home of the now deceased but famous J o h n D. Lee. After calling loudly for a time and three or four rifle discharges to attract the attention of the people of the ferry on the north side of the river, we at last heard voices saying, "All right! We will soon be over there," and so within three-quarters of an hour and in the rosey twilight we found ourselves across the Colorado River and making ready to camp for the night. J o h n D. Lee in life had been a polygamist, and was credited with having had ten wives, one of which, his wife Mary, was now with her children and conducting this Colorado River Ferry. She had at the time of our arrival a hired man of all work named Samson in her employ. 13 Arriving at her place, I called on this worthy lady, telling her that I wanted to purchase a liberal supply of lucerne hay or alfalfa hay for my mules, also for them barley or oats. For my men and self I wanted milk, vegetables, eggs, and possibly a few chickens to be converted into pot pies or fried in a long-handled spider frying pan or dutch oven.

12

As he indicates, feeding his Indian customers was a Maguire trademark; there is an instance of this practice in each of his Arizona expeditions. Obviously the purpose was to heighten good will and facilitate trading. It was not always successful: on his previous expedition, he sold a quantity of condemned military firearms to the Hualapai near the Colorado River, capped off the occasion with a feast, and found it expedient to leave in the middle of the night, perhaps before the Indians discovered that the guns were defective. 13 "Samson" must have been Warren Marshall Johnson, who worked for Emma Lee at the ferry, then succeeded her when she left in May 1879 and stayed until 1896. P. T. Reilly, "Warren Marshall Johnson, Forgotten Saint," Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (1971): 3-22; and W. L. Rusho and C. Gregory Crampton, Desert River Crossing (Salt Lake City and Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1975), pp. 25-46.


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She welcomed our coming and in a most amiable manner said that she would be most happy to furnish us with anything around the place that we might want and at the most reasonable prices possible. Learning from her also that she had on the place a shop fitted with a forge, blacksmith and woodworking tools for wagon mending and material for horseshoeing, I told her that our long march from Sunset Crossing on the Little Colorado and Moencopi was so difficult that our mules were needing rest and shoe repairing, and our wagon also required a once-over because of the frightful condition of the country over which we had traveled for the past forty-eight hours. T h e morning after our arrival at the ferry, breakfast being eaten, I ordered Quong Hing to begin his laundry work, which meant to wash sheets, table linen, towels, the personal underwear of five men, as soap, water, and wood were abundant. Our last laundry work was done at the Mormon fort of Sunset Crossing on the Little Colorado. Con Dawson, Isadore Mooncraft, and Eusebius Seaboldt had the four mules reshod, made all necessary wagon repairs, washed, sponged, and oiled the harness, and cleaned guns and pistols, thus putting our outfit in good condition for continuing our journey that was yet over a difficult road. Before ending my third expedition whilst rest and renovation were thus taking place at Lee's Ferry, I left the work being done to my men and I started to make a study and to take notes of our surroundings. T h e lady in command of the place, Mrs. Mary Lee, was the youngest of John D. Lee's wives.14 She was then, I would judge, between thirty-five and forty years of age. By birth she was an Englishwoman; in height about five feet six or seven inches, about 183 to 187 pounds in weight. In complexion she was a cross between a blond and a brunette, her hair of a light cast, neither red nor auburn. She had fine teeth, well-shaped nose and mouth, small hands and feet, pleasing manners and rather inclined to smile than to be solemn in expression. In speech she plainly indicated her nationality of the working classes of English people. Her family then and there consisted of one boy perhaps fourteen years of age, twin girls of twelve years, quite handsome, and two small boys of eight and ten years of age. T h e twin girls were of light complexion and of pleasing manners. 15 T h e Lee home was a one-story log structure of six rooms, including kitchen, the southeast of which was the sitting or living 14 As mentioned in the introduction, this is Emma (not Mary) Batchelor Lee, later French (1836-97), who first arrived at Lee's Ferry in 1871 with her husband, another of his wives, Rachel, and their families. Emma was Lee's seventeenth wife; he had a total of nineteen, not ten, as Maguire says. Maguire's description of her physical appearance and that of the ferry environs is quite valuable. Juanita Brooks,John Doyle Lee, Zealot-Pioneer Builder-Scapegoat (Glendale, Calif: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1961), pp. 379-84; and Emma Lee (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1975). Also see Rusho and Crampton, Desert River Crossing. 15 T h e twin girls were Ann Eliza and Rachel Emma; the fourteen-year-old boy was probably Ike (Isaac), who was sixteen. Emma Lee had two daughters younger than Ike — Frances Dell (seven) and Victoria Elizabeth (five) — but no younger sons. T h e two younger boys mentioned by Maguire are inexplicable, unless Maguire mistook the daughters for boys; Warren Johnson had no boys that old who might have been mistaken for Emma's. Brooks, John Doyle Lee, pp. 383-84; Reilly, "Warren Marshall Johnson," pp. 6-14.


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room. In one corner stood a half dozen shotguns and an old smoothbore United States musket, and one brass-mounted Mississippi Jaeger or Fremont rifle. On the walls there hung three Colt's pistols or revolvers. As to other wall decorations, there h u n g a picture of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, the Mormon prophets, Joseph and his brother. These figures in the pictures were represented standing, giving a side view, and each leaning on a walking stick. T h e r e was also a picture of Brigham Young, another of Heber C. Kimball, and in an oval frame a photograph of J o h n D. Lee. T h e walls of this sitting room were papered over with copies of the New York Sun, Deseret News, and New York Tribune. T h e furniture of this and other rooms of the house were homemade of native timber. Withall, the house bore a comfortable expression. Mrs. Lee had an enclosure of about sixteen acres connecting with the house and outer structures, eight acres of which was under cultivation, producing vegetables, corn, and lucerne or alfalfa hay, four crops of which were produced annually. T h e ferry boat for crossing the river was one strongly built, but of small dimensions; two wagons and eight horses were all that it could carry at a single crossing. T h e spot in which I found these conditions with its few human beings was a bowl-like depression on the great Colorado River. In the southeast, north, and northwest, cliffs of red sandstone shut out all view of the outer world. Blue sky above and a wagon road, with an open space quite narrow, shot out from this celebrated spot into the southwest, and a short distance from the place going out by this road the country opened out into considerable width and the surface showed a dry desert. T h r e e days' rest at Lee's Ferry gave our mules abundant feed and the much-needed recuperation of snap, our wagon was repaired, our harness sets again put into order, our arms cleaned, our laundry work done by Quong Hing, and I in possession of much interesting information and interesting history. After settling all accounts, we prepared to proceed on our journey. Taking our departure, we came out of the ramparted cove at Lee's Ferry and reached the wide-open [country beneath the] Paria Plateau. Our road ran somewhat to the southwest, soon reaching a point near to the abrupt banks or walls of the Grand Canyon [Marble Canyon] of the Colorado.


Book Reviews Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Lake City. By THOMAS G. ALEXANDER and JAMES B. ALLEN. (Boulder, Colo.: Pruett Publishing Co., 1984. viii 4- 360 pp. $19.95.) Despite its obvious historical importance as the capital of Utah, the metropolitan hub of the Intermountain West, and the international headquarters of the Churh of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City has not received due attention from historians. Because of the difficulty in dealing with sociocultural distinctiveness and temporal-sectarian interplay in the Rome of the Rockies, relatively little work has been done on important aspects of its history; Edward W. Tullidge's History of Salt Lake City (1886) stood for almost a century as the lone chronicle of the city. Thanks to T h o m a s A l e x a n d e r and J a m e s Allen, professors of history at Brigham Young University, we now have a m o d e r n , scholarly general history of Salt Lake. Mormons and Gentiles has three pervasive conceptual characteristics. It is first and foremost a work of synthesis in which the authors have combined their own considerable research with the findings of other historians. Second, it exhibits a traditional approach to u r b a n history that emphasizes business enterprises and voluntary associations, political elections and governmental regulations, public utilities and services, and educational and religious institutions, Third, it offers instructive comparisons with comparable urban communities in keeping with the authors' objective of portraying Salt Lake "as both a distinctive

religious capital and a significant regional center." T h e principal theme of the book is urban secularization. Despite its origin as a Mormon theocracy and the fact that the LDS church has ever been the dominant influence in community affairs, Salt Lake appears as a representative American city. From the beginning Salt Lake was "typical" — a planned community that not only conformed to the customary grid p a t t e r n of settlement b u t also fit Gunther Barth's definition of an "instant" city, Richard Wade's model of the western city that preceded frontier development, and Max Weber's criteria for an urban center. In chronological terms, Alexander and Allen see Salt Lake functioning as a Mormon "commonwealth" from 1847 to 1870, enduring a disruptive era of Mormon-Gentile conflict from 1870 to 1892, experiencing a process of "Americanization" marked by religious accommodation from 1893 to 1 9 1 1 , a n d , since World W a r I, reflecting national patterns of urban development. Given the nature and scope of the book, it is predictably u n e v e n in coverage and often more suggestive than definitive. Because the authors chose to write "for the record," they briefly mention many things instead of discussing in detail selected items. For example, they note that the city has had professional baseball, basket-


Book Reviews and Notices ball, and hockey teams, but do not identify t h e m or assess t h e significance of sports franchises to the community. And it is surprising that so little attention was paid to the arts, non-white community leaders, the special relationship between town and gown (the University of Utah), and the dominant role of the city in county and state affairs. Readers will often want to know more than they are told, but on balance the decision to opt for breadth over depth was wise for a pioneering history, and the overall treatment is judiciously selective. Qualitatively, economic and political developments are handled best because of the interest and expertise of the authors as well as the quality of the secondary literature. Ironically, given the origin and ongoing social distinctiveness of the city, the treatment of sociocultural matters is the weakest portion of the book. That is due partially to a general neglect of sociocultural history in Utah history b u t primarily to the authors' institutional approach to urban history and, I suspect, u n d u e sensitivity about religious influences. While placing the history of Salt Lake City within the framework of urban studies is unquestionably the most significant a n d far-reaching analytical contribution of the book, the effort to relate local experiences to regional and national trends has the effect of minimizing distinctiveness, just as the emphasis on the morphology of urban development unduly accentuates commonality. For all the "Americanization" and "nationalization," especially noticeable during the age of airplanes and television, Salt Lake remains the most distinctive city if its size and type in the nation and, while t h e least M o r m o n place in M o m o n d o m , is the capital of "the different world of Utah." An understanding that Salt Lake is not a variant of Denver or Phoenix would best be

397 conveyed through a more extensive assessment of life-styles, cultural values, and community attitudes. We know a great deal more about the city but need to know more about the people who live there. In a similar vein, the authors acknowledge the pervasive influence of religion in Salt Lake history but then downplay the dichotomies and tensions and influences during the twentieth century. It is true, as the authors skillfully d e m o n s t r a t e , t h a t city leadership has turned on an accommodation among Mormon, nominal M o r m o n , a n d n o n - M o r m o n elements. But in a supurb postscript, "From Today to the Future: T h e View from 1984," they note that "if cooperation is the norm in business and gove r n m e n t . . . in social and cultural matters, Salt Lake is really two cities." Much more attention is needed, then, to Mormon and non-Mormon lifestyles, to the role of Salt Lake as a religious capital, and to the ways c h u r c h influences routinely affect what elsewhere would be purely secular matters, whether the firing of a police chief and the dismissal of an orchestra conductor or the organization of Scouting and recreational sports programs. Historians of Utah have come a long way in recognizing the role of religion, but we still need to accord it proper emphasis and recognize t h a t t h e M o r m o n - G e n t i l e dichotomy has been a positive good t h a t e x t e n d s b e y o n d religious wrangling. T o raise caveats about emphasis and orientation may be carping, for Mormons and Gentiles, the fifth volume in the Western Urban History Series, is an impressive achievement. In an evenhanded and authoritative fashion the authors have successfully met the formidable challenge of writing a comprehensive urban history set in the context of a distinctive religious tradition that continues to influence


398 every aspect of life in the community. Everyone interested in the history of Salt Lake, Utah, or the West will recognize the book as both a seminal c o n t r i b u t i o n a n d as a suggestive

Utah Historical Quarterly stimulus to future research.

LARRY R. GERLACH

University of Utah

S. MCCORMICK. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985. viii + 109 p p . Paper, $14.95.)

Saltair. By NANCY D. MCCORMICK and JOHN

At first glance, one might take this book to be just another beautiful coffee table book. This reviewer, longtime student of Utah history as well as a native whose earliest memories include a fascination with Saltair, finds it much more. To be sure, just perusing the pictures and reading the quotations from Harper's Weekly, the Deseret News, the Salt Lake Tribune, advertisements, and remarks of old-timers and such notables as Wallace Stegner, takes one on a nostalgic trip back when. But in telling the story of this famous amusement park, the authors have woven a social history that mirrors the life-styles, tastes, mores, recreational pursuits, and the role of the railroad and trolley line in daily life, not only for Salt Lake City and Utah, but in the context of national life as well. A m u s e m e n t parks as a national phenomenon reached their zenith in the first two decades of the twentieth c e n t u r y , b e f o r e the a u t o m o b i l e forever changed our mode of life. T h e exotic architectural style used in most of these parks was deliberately intended to create an atmosphere of "escape and pleasure." T h e magic and mystery of the Great Salt Lake, the great inland sea in the western desert, inspired r a i l r o a d companies and individuals to invest vast sums of money in the development of several pleasure resorts along the lake shores beginning as early as 1870. It is fascinating to learn that a very early r e s o r t on the s o u t h , Garfield Beach, was built by the owner of the General Garfield, formerly the

City of Corinne, a. large triple-decked, stern-wheeling steamboat inspired by Mississippi River steamboats, that had been popular for excursions on the lake in t h e m i d - 1 8 7 0 s . After President-to-be J a m e s A. Garfield cruised the lake on the boat, the name was changed. Garfield was thus later to become the name for the site of the copper smelter, a familiar landmark in the valley. But it was January 14, 1893, when the Deseret News announced construction of Saltair by the Mormon church. T h e resort was intended to be the "Coney Island of the West" and to announce to the world that Utah had joined the mainstream of American society. Saltair would attract visitors from far and wide and at the same time provide a wholesome place for recreation under church control. Richard Kletting, later to become famous as the architect for the State Capitol, designed the "Moorish Palace in Zion." Over the years, the Saltair story is one of triumphs and tragedies. T h e r e were terrible losses by fire, the first in April 1925. T h e resort was rebuilt. Another fire occurred in 1931. Another in 1955. Each time rebuilding took place. T h e n in 1957 the wind blew down the giant racer. All the while it was a constant struggle to keep up with the vagaries of the lake itself — receding water, the stench of oozing mud flats and the elimination of the prime attraction, swimming, alternating with high water that would wipe out the latest attempts at coping. Enormous sums of money were spent.


Book Reviews and Notices In 1959 Ashby Snow presented the resort to the state. Deterioration set in rapidly. In 1970 the resort burned to the ground. Once again, "despite history, good sense, and the ravages of nature, Saltan's mythic past continued to tantalize the imaginations of developers." In July 1982 Saltair III reopened. T h e winters of 1983 and 1984 were extremely wet, and the lake reached an all-time high. "Previous Saltairs had succumbed to fire; Saltair III, in opera t i o n less t h a n two years, h a d drowned." In the summer of 1984 my husband and I drove east across Interstate 80. We crossed heavy rock infill, between dikes built to keep the water from completely inundating the freeway over what should be desert. Suddenly to the north, arising out of

399 the water like a m i r a g e , was t h e magnificent silhouette of Saltair III. Can it be that only in memory, for those of us fortunate enough to have one, will the youthful excitement of family picnics and outings at "the lake" be recalled; only in memory will the sounds of the big bands of the '40s a n d '50s come drifting across t h e water on a moonlit night? Or as the a u t h o r s say, is it too early to tell whether or not the lake will have the last word? In spite of oneself, one hopes the latter will not be so. Saltair is a beautiful book, well written and illustrated. It would be a worthwhile addition to anyone's personal library. DOROTHY Z. MORTENSEN

Escondido, California

Mormonism: The Study of a New Religious Tradition, by JAN SHIPPS. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985. xx 4- 212 pp. $14.50.) This reviewer was surprised to discover that the text for Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition covered only 149 pages. A much longer volume had been anticipated. However, the reading of this outstanding work on Mormon history shows that it is a t h o u g h t f u l , t h o r o u g h s t u d y , wherein nearly every sentence in the book is in fact a very careful synthesis statement of current Mormon history scholarship. This careful writing also makes summary analyses of what the author has said very difficult indeed. Professor Shipps is careful in her preface to alert readers to the purpose of the book: namely, to write a "religious history" about Mormonism. T o quote her: "It is filled with historical data, but because Mormon history itself is treated as text and subjected to interpretative analysis, it is as hermeneutical as it is historical." Thus the author propounds a method or system for looking at religious history, or

even more directly at the history of a religious movement, and then quite specifically at the creation of Mormonism which she proceeds to explain as a new religious tradition. Her venture is really twofold. Secondarily, it provides the vehicle by which she and other students of religious history can "test" a particular m e t h o d of writing religious history, that is, an interpretive method. But primarily the author's objective is to evaluate Mormonism according to this kind of hermeneutics. From this exercise she concludes that Mormonism does in fact have those ingredients needed to classify it as a new religious tradition. T h u s , readers are figuratively given a hilltop view or map of the route a religious movement must travel in order to become a religious tradition. In that context Mormon history becomes her text for that trip. It is a challenging undertaking, where only a very k n o w l e d g e a b l e a n d fair-


400 minded scholar could possibly succeed. In c h a r t i n g M o r m o n i s m ' s " t r a d i t i o n " trek, Professor Shipps makes comparative analogies with the J u d a i c and J u d e o - C h r i s t i a n traditions, both because they also followed somewhat similar courses in their own histories, and because Christianity's r e l a t i o n s h i p to J u d a i c t r a d i t i o n s parallels Mormonism's relationship to Christianity and its Judaic elements. Thereby, her study also serves to test and verify a method for writing effective religious histories. T o begin, Shipps notes the milieu of cultural and religious uncertainties in which M o r m o n b e g i n n i n g s w e r e staged. T h e n she observes that the Smith family itself is a microcosm of the larger macrocosm of the upstate New York region in which religious f e r m e n t flourished. Even cultural qualities of magic are noted and fit i n t o those early b e g i n n i n g s from which Joseph Smith began to sense a special religious role. Shipps sees three elements necessary to the success of Mormonism. That tripod was first of all the Book of Mormon, which validated both to Smith and to others Joseph's sense of a special mission. T h e second leg was J o s e p h ' s p r o phetic role both in his own mind and to his followers. T h e third leg was the early community of believers who provided both the catalyst and inertia for the movement wherein the symbiosis of prophet and people could occur. T h e Smith family's support was critical to the success of the movement in its earliest stages. Other early believers and their essential role followed. Shipps next shows that these believers moved from their somewhat ordinary beginnings into a sense of their history, wherein for converts their secular history metamorphosed for them into a concept of "sacred hist o r y . " W h e n t h a t h a p p e n e d they would find that the movement's and their own history became almost re-

Utah Historical Quarterly ligious texts that both played out and verified God's role both in their lives as individuals and for the new movement as a whole. This metamorphosis is seen as critical to the movement, for later followers/believers then became heirs to an attitude about "history" and the meaning of the "facts" or text of that history. Shipps's method for writing history allows her to accept the believers "claims" as truth. She does not seek proof or disproof of "facts" which are facts of belief not subject to rational verification or objective historical proof. T h e author suggests four principal activities for the community of believers as they proceed to work out their history: (1) reiterataion of Israel's chosen people's role, (2) reinterpretation of the meaning of scriptures/history, (3) recapitulation or reliving of parallel key events, and (4) the ritual/re-creation to give their behavior an acceptable Christian context. Shipps shows how events that followed the church organization all fit into such categories. T h e positions of priests, apostles, prophets, even kings, were declared and filled; the priesthoods were restored t h r o u g h J o h n the Baptist, and Peter, James, and John; the endowment from on high was given at Kirtland, plural marriage a n d temple o r d i n a n c e s instituted, apostolic order established, etc. All these were elements of "restoration" that went beyond the mere reformation of o t h e r primitive C h r i s t i a n movements. This becomes an important distinction if, in fact, a new religious tradition was to come about. T h e movement of course had to survive the death of Joseph Smith. Those Saints who followed Brigham Y o u n g west witnessed further verification of their special "chosen status." They crossed the Mississippi River on the ice (parting of the Red Sea); they experienced the miracle of


Book Reviews and Notices the quail in Iowa ( m a n n a from heaven); they trekked to the mountains (fleeing into the wilderness) to set u p the state of Deseret (the kingdom of heaven on earth). All of these events recapitulated for these new Latter-day Saints their own religious story and history. Even their persecutions were so received ("for so persecuted they the prophets before you"). All events verified to these believers their special place in God's history. Nevertheless, in order for this new religious tradition to survive, it must exercise its p r e r o g a t i v e to " t a k e charge" of how its (the Saints') storywas to be told. That issue was confronted with the writing of Lucy Mack Smith's manuscript on The Progenitors of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Brigham Young chose not only to challenge it but to suppress it. T h e long-term result was that the church established its prerogative to "get the story straight." According to the author, the major c h a l l e n g e faced by n i n e t e e n t h century Mormons resulted from their practicing polygamy. With the 1890 Manifesto Shipps sees the church determining finally how to be both "in" the world and " o f it. No longer could the "Saints" claim as security and identity their "building the kingdom," for they were no longer exempted, even in the eyes of the church, from secular jurisdiction. Who were they t h e n ? Saints? C h o s e n p e o p l e ? A peculiar priesthood? T h e adjustment was made by ritualizing their history, which allowed them to "render unto Caesar" and still "render unto Christ." T h r o u g h these changes Mormonism not only would survive as an institution, but in time it could flourish in the real world. Joseph F. Smith's speeches in 1916 are cited as example of that accommodation. Finally, let it be stated emphatically that any attempted summary of this work must be faulted. T h e book simply is so tightly written that it requires careful and attentive reading to grasp

401 what the author is saying. Be assured, however, that readers' efforts will be well worth the trouble. Shipps's method of writing religious history simply declares that historians are free to accept that claims to truth or divine sanction can be accepted as givens, since they are true in the context of the believers' faith. Further such claims do not submit to objective p r o o f or disproof. She defines the historians' task to observe from t h e o u t s i d e . Shipps h e r s e l f scrutinizes Mormon history with great insight. She regularly identifies for us what believers feel and do, yes, even what they "know" to be true. However, to debate final or even historic truths is not her challenge. Hers is a special method of study at which she has been remarkably successful. Nevertheless, some readers may feel a lack of references to the personal experiences, emotional struggles, and the poignant testimonies of the "Saints" shown in more traditional Mormon histories. Hers is not "faithful history." Rather it is a religious history in the best sense. It may prove to be that her religious history may offer church leaders today their most useful blueprint for dealing with the problems and challenges that "faithful" or "faithless" histories (however perceived) have been creating for them. This reviewer, raised in the Big H o r n Basin (Wyoming) by firstgeneration Mormon pioneers, discovered as he read this book that indeed his own life held all those essential elements that Shipps described about a religious tradition with its sacred time and sacred space. Shipps's work should place Mormon history on a new plane with exciting possibilities for both scholars and believers.

MELVIN T. SMITH

Utah State Historical Society


402

Utah Historical Quarterly

Wells FargofcfCo. in Idaho Territory. By W. TURRENTINE JACKSON. (Boise: Idaho State Historical Society, 1984. 120 pp. Paper, $5.95.) In Idaho Territory, as throughout the mining frontiers of the American West, service businesses followed close on the heels of the first prospectors. T h e discovery of gold at Lewiston in 1861 and in the Boise Basin the following year created a vigorous dem a n d for express, mail, and passenger service. Wells Fargo & Co. responded quickly. T h e young firm had been founded in New York in 1852 mainly to do business in the California gold camps. T h e very year of its establishment the company started an office in Portland, Oregon, to serve the Columbia River region. Wells Fargo tapped the "inland empire" of I d a h o by using Columbia River steamboats and overland routes from Walla Walla and other towns nearby. Then, with an eye to broad transportation patterns in the West, the company began running a pony express from Lewiston to Fort Benton, the head of steamboat navigation on the Missouri River. By the end of 1863 Wells Fargo dominated express and banking in I d a h o . No major competitors remained to its stage and express line from Portland to the Boise Basin, and the firm contracted with local companies to carry light freight, passengers, and mail to outlying mining towns. T h e importance of Wells Fargo to Idaho Territory was exemplified by the company's role as a mail carrier. Before the summer of 1864, when a United States mail service contractor was granted a postal route from Salt Lake City to Boise, Wells Fargo and various carriers working for it handled all mail. This work, along with its banking operations and forwarding of gold and silver to San Francisco by way of Portland, made Wells Fargo the most vital firm in the development of Idaho.

Jackson, who has done extensive research and writing on Wells Fargo, is very knowledgeable about his subject. In great detail he covers the period from the beginning of Wells Fargo's Idaho operations in 1861 to the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad eight years later. With a broad view of the frontier West he aptly relates the activities of Wells Fargo in Idaho Territory to the overland stage and mail r o u t e from the Missouri River to Idaho by way of Salt Lake City, the various efforts to establish stage routes from Idaho to California, and the construction of the first transcontinental railroad. As Jackson relates, the Union Pacific diminished the activities a n d significance of Wells Fargo's stagecoach operations, but the c o m p a n y was quite i m p o r t a n t in Idaho Territory until 1883 when a transcontinental railroad reached the territory. T h i s w e l l - d o c u m e n t e d history clearly establishes the importance of mail and express services to an isolated frontier. Drawing principally on contemporary newspapers, Jackson captures the concerns and emotions of a frontier people who desperately wanted faster, more efficient transportation links with other parts of the West and the nation. Rather than approach Wells Fargo narrowly, he relates its story to the economic development of Idaho Territory and adjacent regions. This is a good book that deserves to be read by anyone interested in the history of Idaho and frontier transportation. But, with some more effort and expense, it could have been a b e t t e r book. T h e lone d r a w i n g adapted from an 1874 map of Wells Fargo express routes is grossly inadequate to illustrate the book's geog r a p h i c aspects. A l t h o u g h each chapter is copiously footnoted, the ab-


Book Reviews and Notices sence of a bibliography precludes a concise overview of source materials. Likewise, in a work featuring much enriching detail, an index would have enhanced its use. However, despite these shortcomings, the book consti-

403 tutes a significant contribution to the historical literature of frontier Idaho. WILLIAM E. LASS

Mankato State University Mankato, Minnesota

Phil Sheridan and His Army. By PAUL ANDREW HUTTON. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985. xvi + 479 pp. Cloth, $29.95; paper, $14.95.) Paul Hutton's book on Gen. Phil Sheridan will be a welcome addition to the library of anyone interested in frontier, military, or Indian history. Sheridan, of course, is best remembered as one of the leading Union officers during the War of the Rebellion, emerging from that struggle as a national hero ranking alongside Grant and Sherman. It is less well known that in the years following the Civil War Sheridan was placed in charge of military operations embracing most of the frontier and thus played a key role in the Indian campaigns that ultimately destroyed native resistance to white expansion. It is this forgotten chapter of Sheridan's career that the author addresses in this well-written, fascinating study. As the title indicates, this is more than a biography; it is an examination of the entire military structure charged with defeating the Indians and placing t h e m on reservations where they could be "Americanized." Sheridan's hand in such military campaigns as the Winter War of 1868-69, t h e Red River War of 1874-75, and the Great Sioux War of 1876-77 is firmly established. Despite the fact that Custer, Crook, Miles, and others did the fighting and reaped most of the glory, Sheridan did the planning, set the strategy and terms, approved of the results, and protected his men from criticism. It was Sheridan who coined the term "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," and m u c h of his a p p r o a c h to I n d i a n

fighting reflected that s e n t i m e n t . Hutton feels that to judge the general on this statement is to miss the point, however. He was charged by the nation with opening the West and this is what he accomplished. As the nation's chief Indian fighter between 1867 and 1883, he "completed the subjugation of the American natives that had been put in motion almost four centuries before when Columbus reached the New World" (p. 345). Placing aside the question of whether the post-Civil War hostilities were morally defensible, the a c c o m p l i s h m e n t s of Phil Sheridan and his army were quite impressive given all the obstacles placed in the way. Hutton's approach to the controversial policies of General Sheridan is evenhanded, neither glorifying nor romanticizing his subject. There is no attempt to cover the fact that Sheridan had little sympathy for the Indians, treated them as inferiors, and pursued brutal and unethical tactics. If left to his own devices, he would have punished the tribes even more severely, sparing neither men, women, or children. Yet Hutton successfully places these actions within the context of the times and the political situation, enabling the reader to understand why he acted as he did. T h e author promises to leave "to the reader the final moral judgement" (p. xiv) on Sheridan's actions, and he does just that. He also takes a rather neutral stance on the general's treatment of subordinate officers. Despite a strong


404 sense of h o n o r , S h e r i d a n played games with his colleagues, holding grudges, becoming involved in petty jealousies, and playing favorites. He was particularly harsh on officers who did not agree with his methods while supporting others whose unjustified actions created national scandals. In sum, Sheridan's relationship with his comrades illustrates the pettiness and arrogance that poisoned the postwar army, and Hutton is at his best in describing these problems.

Utah Historical Quarterly Phil Sheridan and His Army is likely to become a classic account of the military establishment charged with defeating the Indians after the Civil War. Based on solid research, it goes a long way in clarifying the actions of the I n d i a n - f i g h t i n g soldiers a n d brings Sheridan to the forefront as a major factor in the ending of Indian independence. It is good reading to boot. ROBERT A. TRENNERT

Arizona State University

River Runners of the Grand Canyon. By DAVID LAVENDER. (Grand Canyon and Tucson: Grand Canyon Natural History Association and University of Arizona Press, 1985. 147 pp. $27.50.) For over thirty years river r u n n e r Otis R. "Dock" Marston collected material on the history of the Colorado River system, particularly the Grand Canyon, in preparation for an exhaustive book which he did not live to complete. David Lavender does not claim to have given us that book, but what he has done is in some ways better than what Marston would have produced — more felicitously written and less mired in the detail for which Marston's passion for completeness and accuracy would have tempted him to sacrifice clarity and u n d e r standing. It seems fitting that Marston gave us the archives and Lavender gave us the book. This is not to say that Lavender's book is all that it should be. In spite of prepublication readings by several river authorities, it is frustratingly replete with minor errors, and one is driven to borrow Marston's outcry regarding another great river book and complain that this is such a good book that it should be even better. It is not t r u e , for e x a m p l e , t h a t N o r m a n Nevills "never had a chance to try" upstream running (p. 105); one of Harry Aleson's movies shows Nevills dangling his legs over the bow of Ale-

son's boat during one of his upstream expeditions in the lower Grand Canyon. Nor did Charles W. Larabee ever become "a well-known boatman" in the Grand or anywhere else (p. 101); as Aleson's financial backer, he participated in several river trips, but only as a passenger. And Aleson himself did not make "his first and only run through the Grand Canyon" in 1949 (p. 114); his published schedules advertise almost yearly Grand Canyon runs during the 1950s. Lavender's account of the BurgHolmstrom expeditions of 1937-38 is especially sloppy in factual detail and misleading in interpretation. Burg's inflatable boat, Charlie, was built to Burg's specifications by B. F. Goodrich, not Goodyear, and it was not "furnished" by them (p. 94); it was paid for by wealthy i n d u s t r i a l i s t Charles F. Wheeler, for whom it was named. Lavender is misled by accounts of Holmstrom's happy-golucky demeanor to report that he "had given no hint of suicidal intentions" (p. 95) before shooting himself in 1946. T h e suicide, in fact, was no surprise to Amos Burg and others who knew him well. Lavender seriously misinterprets Burg's character, too,


Book Reviews and Notices

405

r e p r e s e n t i n g him as a dandy who liked to sleep late, who wore a necktie all the time on the river, and who m a d e Willis J o h n s o n wait on him hand and foot. While it is true that Holmstrom's personal habits were less fastidious than Burg's, Burg is a fine outdoorsman who had sailed around the world before he was out of high school and run every major river in North America except for the Colo r a d o before he met H o l m s t r o m , most of them alone. He wore the necktie only while in the Grand Can y o n a n d only as a s t u n t , a n d Johnson's assumption of the camp chores was a condition of his employment so that Burg would have time to m a k e the movies which were the major purpose of the expedition. T h e "foolishness" (p. 94) of starting at Green River Lakes in 1938 is a matter of opinion; though it caused delays and frustrations, it was part of Burg's plan to run rivers from their head,

few im( wkril

and he remembers it as one of the nicest sections of the trip. If one emphasizes these m i n o r shortcomings and momentary lapses, it is only because this is one of the great river books, and anything less than perfection seems inconsistent with David Lavender's achievement throughout the rest of the book. T h e strengths of the book are its elaborate coverage of both well-known a n d obscure expeditions, its emphasis on marine design and navigational technique, its delineation of the quirky a n d often bizarre personalities of rivermen, and perhaps above all, its passages that convey the spirit of Whitewater travel. Students of the river will find this to be an indispensable book, and even casual travelers of the river will read it with profit.

GARY TOPPING

Utah State Historical Society

Book Notices

The Intimate Grand: Inside Arizona's Grand Canyon. Text by DOWLING CAMPBELL. Photographs by MARK JEFFERSON. (Flagstaff, Ariz.: Northland Press, 1985. viii 4- 64 p p . Paper, $8.95.) T h e need for yet another superficial picture book on the Grand Canyon may be questionable, but they continue compulsively to appear and evidently to find a ready market. This one offers an "intimate" look at some aspects of the canyon that the authors have found appealing during some years of hiking its trails and running

the river. Emotion is the strong suit here, in both text and photographs, with history, geography, and geology taking the back seat, though not by any means missing. T h e book would have value to a first-time visitor in orienting him to the various types of experiences available there, both on and off the beaten paths. Sources for New Mexican History, 18211848.

By DANIEL TYLER. (Santa Fe:

Museum of New Mexico Press, 1984. xviii 4- 206 pp. $17.50.) An attractive bibliographic aid.


INDEX Italic numbers refer to illustrations.

., CPA for Peerless Coal, 344 Abbey, _ Acme Comedy Co., Huntington troupe, 127 Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., UP president, 76-77 Adams, Maude, actress, 149 Affleck, L. P., telegrapher at Bridge, 59 Agriculture: industrial development threat to, in SL Valley, 308-25; water for, in Sevier and Millard counties, 357-66 Akerman, Amos T., U.S. attorney general, 218 Albers Brothers Milling Co., 84 American Fork, Utah: bootlegging in, 281-82; immigrants settled in, 47-49, 48 American Railway Express, creation of, 39 American Railway Union, 1894 strike of, 86-87 American Smelting and Refining Co., suit against, by farmers, 320-21 Amtrak, 98-99 Anderson, Hetty Guymon, play in Huntington recalled by, 121 Argyle, Lorenzo, state legislatror, 283 Armstrong, Elizabeth, wife of Thomas, 53 Armstrong, Thomas, immigrant, 44, 53 Armstrong, Ward, Ogden sporting goods store owner, 61, 61 Austrians, coal miners at Peerless, 340 Aveson, Robert, prison visitor, 230

B Bacca, Elfego, Indian agent, 252, 255 Badger, Harriet, Utah Women's Press Club member, 152 Baker, William, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359 Ball, Samuel F., SLC restaurateur, 229 Bamberger, Simon: gov., parade in Ogden led by, 89; and Prohibition, 268, 276, 283 Bamberger Railroad, 82, 161 Banks, "Nosey," burglar, 230 Barratt, Mary, immigrant, death of, 46 Barratt, Thomas, immigration of, 46, 47-48 Baskin, Robert N., U.S. attorney, 219,220 Bates, George Caesar, U.S. attorney, 211, 212, 218 Bates, Nephi J., prisoner, 232 Battle of Bear River, 241-42, 244 Bear Hunter, Shoshoni chief, and Battle of Bear River, 241-42 Beasley, , telegrapher in Ogden, 62 Beaver County Women's Suffrage Assn., 334 Beaver, James, GAR leader, 222 Beesley, Ebenezer, musician, 133, 141, 161 Bergen, John, prisoner, 230 Bigelow, A. B., Ogden C. of C. rep., 93 Bingham Consolidated Mining and Smelting Co., Midvale smelter of, 312, 321

Bingham Copper and Gold Mining Co., suit against, 320 Bingham, Utah, during Prohibition, 277, 284, 287, 289 Bishop, Anna, singer, 135 Black, Dave, and Posey War, 256-58 Black Hawk War, 114 Blackburn, , judge, 225 Blair, Thor, news agent, 96 Blanding, Utah, during Posey War, 248-67, 256, 262 Bletcher, Frank, coal salesman, 346 Bliss, Marion, Carbon County sheriff, and Prohibition, 273, 278, 288 Blood, Henry H. gov., and repeal of Prohibition, 291 Bluff, Utah, Indian-white conflict in, 249-50, 254 Bohman, A. W., and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359 Bonita Theater, Huntington, 129 Boston Con Hotel, Bingham, illegal liquor made in, 284 Boulden, Matilda, actress in Orangeville, 115 Box Elder County, water contamination in, 312 Bradley, W. H., attorney for smelters, 317 Brennan, James, Ogden C. of C. pres., 90 Brennan, Robert, rail union official, 87 Brewster, Benjamin Harris, U.S. attorney general, 209-10, 214 Bridge, Utah, history of, as railroad community on GSL, 55-73 Brown, Alex, Old Folks Day prizewinner, 164 Brown, Delilah, and Gypsies, 378 Brown, Harriet, horse racing opposed by, 174 Brown, William, immigration of, 46 Bryce Canyon, early tourist development of, 177-78 Bunnell, Louise Kofford, actress at Emery Stake Academy, 124-25 Burnett, Charles S., Wells Fargo driver, 17 Burt, Andrew D., marshal assaulted by, 217 Burton, Henry, farmer, 317 Burton, Ott, Peerless clerk, 339-41 Burton, Robert T., and Morrisite War, 216 Butterfield, John, removal of, as pres. of Overland Mail, 8

Calder and Careless, music business of, 135-36 Calder and Sears, 135 Calder, David O , music business of, 135, 136 Caldwell, B. D., Wells Fargo pres., 39 Cambrian Society of Salt Lake City, and Old Folks monument, 169 Campbell, Gordon, 61


Index Campbell, Robert L., Mormon immigrant co. leader, 47 Camp Cameron, 207; J o h n D. Lee incarcerated at, 207 Cannon, Abraham H., 223; business interests of, 230-31; experience of, in territorial penitentiary, 223-36; family and career of, 226; andjuvenileInstructor, 230,231,235-36 Cannon, Alice, daughter of Angus M., 224 Cannon, Amanda, wife of Angus M., 224 Cannon, Angus M., imprisonment of, 224 Cannon, Ann, daughter of Angus M., 224 Cannon, Annie Wells, and Utah Women's Press Club, 146 Cannon, Clara, wife of Angus M., 224 Cannon, Clarence, son of Angus M., 224 Cannon, George, son of Angus M., 224 Cannon, George M., prison visitor, 230 Cannon, George Q.: arrest of, 208; business interests of, 230; and Old Folks Day, 166; trial and imprisonment of, 223-25; writing style of, 235 Cannon, Jesse, son of Angus M., 224 Cannon, J o h n Q., brother of A. H., 230, 235 Cannon, J o h n W., donation of, to old folks, 162 Cannon, Lewis, son of Angus M., 224 Cannon, Mattie P. (Martha) Hughes, wife of Angus M., 224 Cannon, Quayle, son of Angus M., 224 Cannon, Wilhelmina, wife of A. H., 226-27,230 Carbon County: cattle rustling in, 290; history of Peerless Coal in, 336-56; organization of, 114; during Prohibition, 273, 275,278, 280, 281, 282, 284, 287, 288-89, 290 Careless Amateur Opera Co., 139-40 Careless, George, 131, 133, 138, 143; business interests of, 135; concert orchestra of, 136-39; and LDS hymnody, 136, 141-43; opera co. of, 139-40; retirement of, 140-41; students of, 140-41; as Tabernacle Choir director, 131; as theater orchestra director, 131, 132-34, 133, 143; youth, education, and LDS conversion of, 131 Careless, Lavinia Triplett, singer and wife of George, 138, 139 Careless Orchestra, 137-38 Carey, William, U.S. attorney, 211, 216, 220 Carlisle, Joseph W., farmer, 317 Carr, T., young prisoner, 232 Carter, J. F., resort mgr., 274 Castle Dale, Utah, dramatics in, 119, 123-26, 129 Castle Gate, Utah, dramatics in, 120 Cederlof, A. Philip, general mgr., Peerless Coal, history of co. by, 336-56, 346 Cederlof, Burke, 345 Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Co.: mail contract of, 9-10; taken over by Ben Holladay, 11 Central Pacific Railroad, Ogden facilities of, 75, 80, 82 Century Mining Co., Box Elder water contaminated by, 312

407 Channing, R. H., attorney for smelters, 317 Cheyenne Indians, and Sand Creek massacre, 247 Cholera, danger of, for Mormon immigrants on Mississippi, 44-45, 53 Choral Society (1884), 139 Chorpenning, George, mail contract of, 6 Christensen, C. C. A., poetry of, 164 Christensen, Chris, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 362 Christensen, Joseph H., and Otter Creek Reservoir, 365 Christensen, Peter, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359 Christensen, Simon, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: centralized entertainment policies of, 128; hymns of, 136, 141-43; and Old Folks Day, 157-69; Oder of Enoch in, 383-85; Sevier Stake of, involved in reservoir project, 359; and Wells Fargo, 22-23. See also Mormons and names of individual Mormons Clark, A. G., Wells Fargo agent, 35 Clark, Joseph, and Co., Ogden mill of, 75 Clark, Lucy A.: as editor and lyricist, 151,752; and Utah Women's Press Club, 144, 146, 153 Clark, William H., Sevier LDS Stake official, 359 Clarke, Eldredge, & Co., 162 Clawson, Rudger, at penitentiary, 228,232, 236 Cleveland, Utah, dramatics in, 119 Clinton Hotel, on GSL, 160, 160 Cluff, Walter, BYU prof., 123 Coburn, Paul, Overland Stage supt., 243-44 Colin, Utah, RR telegraph station at, 57, 58, 63 Collier, Shade, stage driver, 28 Collin, Henry F., deputy U.S. marshal, 216-17 Collingham, George, 288 Compton, , telegrapher at Bridge, 59 Condon, A. S., doctor, 79 execute Chief Pocatello, 237-46, 242; and Battle of Bear River, 241-43 Constitution, Mormons on 1868 trans-Atlantic voyage of, 50 Cook, Richard, LDS missionary, 42, 43, 44, 46 Corinne, Utah, importance of, to transportation, 20 Corless, , sheriff, 289 Cosgrave, Luke, actor, 127 Cox, Jane, actress in Orangeville, 115 Coxey, James, unemployed "armies" of, in Ogden, 84-85 Crafts, Ralph, Gypsies remembered by, 371-75, 376 Crandall, Nellie, actress in Huntington, 121 Crawford Stock Co., traveling theatrical group, 127 Crezall's band, 17 Crocheron, Augusta Joyce, author, 149, 150, 151 Croxall, Mark: brass band of, 137; cornet player, 133, 135


408 Croxall, Mary Eliza, plural wife of A. H. Cannon, 236 Crystal Coal Co., 337 Cudahy Packing Co., 84 Curtis, W. E., editor of GOP publicaation, 221 Cutler, A., Kanab LDS conf. speaker, 179 Cutler, E., Kanab LDS conf. speaker, 179

Dalton, Edward M., death of, fleeing arrest, 217 Dalton, George, rancher in Verdure, 261 "Danites," 216 Davis County, Utah, agriculture in, 311 Davis, "Fats," Ogden speakeasy owner, 287 Davis, Nevada V., teacher and journalist, 148, 152 Dawson, Con, employee of Don Maguire, 384 n. 3, 385, 394 Daynes and Son, musical publication of, 136 Daynes, Joseph, and LDS hymnody, 141 Dean, Ben, store mgr. at Peerless, 340 Dellenbaugh, Frederick, Kanab described by, 179 Demman, A. R., co. doctor at Peerless, 346 Dempsey, Jack, 341 Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, 161; in Carbon County, 341; Ogden shops of, 82, 94; and unemployed "army," 85 Dern, George H., gov., 290 Deseret Dramatic Assn. 114 Deseret National Bank, 34 Deseret News: libel suit against, 217; supported farmers in dispute with smelters, 315-19 Deseret Philharmonic Society, 134, 140 Deseret, Utah: LDS chapel in, 371; visits of Gypsies in, 367-68, 371-75 Devens, Charles, U.S. attorney general, 207-8, 210, 214 De Voto, Bernard, Ogden described by, 90 Diamanti, , coal land of, 354-55 Diamanti, John, bootlegger, 283 Dinwoody, Alice, prison visitor, 230 Dinwoody, Henry, imprisonment of, 227 Dickson, W. H., U.S. attorney, 209, 211, 212, 214-15,275, 218, 219, 221-22, 226-27 Dix, John A., Post No. 3 of the GAR, 79 Dobson, William T.,Kanab Clipper founder, 181 Docktor, Arlene (wife), 73 Docktor, Jack, telegrapher at Bridge, 59-62,61, 67-68, 71, 72 Dole, William, commissioner of Indian affairs, and Chief Pocatello, 238-39, 246 Done, Amanda, and Utah Women's Press Club, 152, 154-55 Doolan, Rebecca H., and Utah Women's Press Club, 152 Dooly, J. E., & Co., Junction City bank, 26 Dooly, John E.: and bank scandal, 35-38; business and community activities of, 26: as Wells Fargo official, 26, 35, 35 Doty, James Duane, U . T . gov., and Chief Pocatello, 244, 245, 246

Utah Historical Quarterly Dow, G. N., U.T. prison warden, 229-30, 234 Dramatics, history of, in early Castle Valley, 112-30 Draper, Henry, master mechanic at Peerless, 347-49, 351, 352 Driggs, W. King, principal of Emery Stake Academy, 125 Duncan, B. L. "Pony," deputy U.S. marshal, 213 Dunkley, Joseph, immigrant, 46, 49-51 Dunkley, Margaret, immigrant, 46, 49-51 Dutchie's Doy, Ute Indian, wounding of, 254 Dutchie, Harry, Ute Indian, and Posey War, 263 Dutson, Lemira Roper, and Gypsies, 373, 374, 375 Dwyer, James, prison visitor, 230 Dyches, Thomas M., Emery Stake Academy teacher/actor, 125 Dyer, Frank H., U.S. marshal, 224, 229-30

Eccles, David, Ogden mayor, 78, 78-79 Eighth Infantry, and 1894 rail strike in Ogden, 87 Eighth Ward Choir, 229 Egan, Howard, stage route located by, 19-20 Elks Band, 93 Ellison, E. P., Layton farmer, 311 Emery County, Utah: bootlegger in, shot, 287; settlement of, 114-15 Emery Stake Academy, dramatics at, 123-26, 128, 129 Emery, Utah, dramatics in, 119 Emmett, William, Ogden band leader, 164 Engle, J. R., actor in Huntington, 118 Equal Rights Banner, newsletter of Beaver County Women's Suffrage Assn., 334 Erickson, Hilda, 169 Eureka, Utah, and Prohibition, 287, 290 Evans, David W., violinist, 133 Evans, Hector T., and Emery Stake Academy productions, 124-26

Fairbanks, Ralph, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 265 Fales, Arthur M., capt. of Germanicus, 42, 43 Farmers Ward, area of SE SLC, 323-24 Farmington Flash Light, 151 Farr's Woolen Mills, Ogden, 75 Faust and Houtz livery stables, 204-5 Featherstone, Emma, immigrant, 46, 48-49 Featherstone, Mary Ann, wife of Hyrum Hoggard, 49 Featherstone, Thomas, immigrant, 46, 48-49 Featherstone, Thomas, Jr., brick mason, 49 Ferguson, Ellen Brooke, Utah Women's Press Club member, 154 Ferrebee, W. E., health officer at Murray, 317 Ferron, A. D., surveyor, 114 Ferron, Utah, dramatics in, 119


Index First National Bank, 34 Floyd and Co., scrip of, 118 Flynn, J. E. "Jimmy," Park City mortician, 280 Fort Douglas: official song of Training Corps at, 151; Pocatello jailed at, 244; use of troops at, by federal court, 207, 208, 223; water supply of, 208 Fossat, Albert, clerk at Peerless, 351 Fossat, Vic, Peerless foreman, 351, 353 Foster, William H., choir leader, 161 Foulger, Anna Maria, wife of George Tribe, 52 Foulger, Elizabeth Harriet, wife of George Tribe, 52 Fox, Ruth May: literary, political, and church activities of, 150-51, 152; and Utah Women's Press Club, 144, 146, 153 Francis, Frank, Ogden mayor, 90 Franklin, Idaho, Mormon settlement of, 49, 241 Freese, Lily T., Utah Women's Press Club member, 155 Frost, Allen, Kanab resident, 179

Gabrielli, Louie, RR bridge inspector, 60 Gates, Susa Young" and Utah Women's Press Club, 144, 146, 152, 155; andYoung Woman's Journal, 149-50 Gemmel, R. C , state engineer, 360 Geneva resort, bootleg liquor at, 274 Germanicus, 1854 voyage and passengers of, 40-54 Gibson, A. E., 288 Gilbert, Frank D., Wells Fargo messenger, 7 Gilson, Samuel H., detective, 209 Globe Grain and Milling Co., 84 Goates, George A., federal law officer, 283 Goddard, George, and Old Folks Day, 160, 161, 163-66 Godfrey, James, South Cottonwood farmer, 317, 320 Goodnell, Bob, RR bridge inspector, 60 Grand Army of the Republic, 1880s visit of, in SLC, 221-22 Grand Canyon, tourist development of, 175-78 Grange, Ernest, actor in Huntington, 117, 122 Grange, Rose Ramsey, actress in Huntington, 117, 119 Grant, Heber J., 161-62 Grant, William, music dealer, 135-36 Gray, Carl, UP president, 90 Grayson Elementary School, 256 Great Salt Lake: boating on, 66; dead pelicans at, 60-62, 61, 71; and RR, 55-73; telegraphers shack at Bridge on, 71 Greathouse, G. L., Wells Fargo agent, 25 Greeks: involvement of, in bootlegging, 274, 282, 284, 286; at Peerless, 339-40 Green, William, actor in Huntington, 117, 119 Greenall, Harry, Peerless foreman, 349, 353 Greenhalgh, Martha A. Y., and Utah Women's Press Club, 146

409 Greenwood, Barney H., state legislator, 359 Griggs, Thomas, and LDS hymnody, 141 Gypsies: changing life-style of, 379; origins of, 368-70; visits of, in Utah r e m e m b e r e d , 367-79

H Hafen, LeRoy R., in memoriam, 184-86, 184 Hague, W. H., farmer, 317 Hailey, John, mail contract of, 20 Hales, Bert, and Gypsies, 373-74, 373 Hales, Lucile Roper, 370, 373, 375-76 Halsey, W. L., banker, 32 Hamblin, Jacob, 171,773 Hamblin, Lillian, plural wife of A. H. Cannon, 236 Hamilton, J o h n E., RR fireman, 86 Hammon, Amasa M., Ogden sheriff, 287 Hammond, J. T., U.T. secy, of state, 35 Hammond, J. W., j u d g e , 288 Hanchett, Lafayette, C. of C. official, 93-94 Hansen, Angus, Ogden RR worker, 97 Hansen, L. P., and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359, 366 Hare, Darrell A., bank investigation of, 36-37 Harries, Benjamin R., SLC sheriff, 385 Hart, Emily, immigrant, 42 Hart, James H., immigrant leader, 42, 43, 43 Hatch, Verda, and Gypsies, 371 Hawkes, Francis, son of Mary Ann Miles, 53 Hebertson, L. R., Geneva resort mgr., 274 Heenan, Maggie, Park City office worker, 326 Helper, Utah, dramatics in, 120 Hempstead, Charles H.: as marshal at Fort Douglas, 244; as U.S. attorney, 2 1 2 , 2 7 3 Hernon, Heine, Park City saloon owner, 280 Hiawatha, Utah, dramatics in, 120 Hickman, , E m e r y Stake A c a d e m y teacher, 124 Highland Boy, Utah, 1932 fire in, 281 Highland Boy smelter, 312, 319-21 Hildebrand, Robert, 773 Hilton Flour Mills, 84 Hobbs, Mary Ann, wife of Joseph Dunkley, 50 Hoggard, Emily (wife), 49 Hoggard, Hyrum (son), 49 Hoggard, James, American Fork settler, 49 Holden, Albert E., smelter of, 312 Holiday, Al, telegrapher at Bridge, 59 Holladay, Ben: bank of, 32; mail contracts of, 11-12, 22; and Pocatello, 239-40, 246 Holland, Sybil, Park City office worker, 326 Home Dramatic Club, 137 Home Dramatic Company, 168 Hood, William, SP chief engineer, 56-57 Hopi Indians, trade with, 386-87 H o m e , Joseph, Sevier LDS Stake official, 359 Horse racing, 174 Horspool, Francis L., primitive artist, paintings of, 16, 17 Horspool, William Francis, stage station operator, 16


Utah Historical Quarterly

410 Howard, Clifton, and drama in Huntington, 130 Howard, Mrs. Robert, Sr., 342, 344 Howard, Sumner, U.S. attorney, 207, 210, 211, 216 Howard, Neil, boy in Huntington, 121-22 Howard, Robert, Sr., Peerless supt., 338, 341-42 Howard, William, actor in Huntington, 117 Howson Opera Troupe, 134 Hughes, John, & Co., Wells Fargo stage lines in Colo, sold to, 21 Hunter, Edward, LDS presiding bishop, 160 Hunter, Lyman P., and Indian-white relations in SE Utah, 252-54 Hunter, Mrs. William, costume maker in Huntington, 119 Huntington Dramatic Club, 117-18, 129-30 Huntington High School: dramatics at, 112-13, 128, 130 Huntington, Utah: dramatics in, 117-20, 127-29; meetinghouse in, 720; Relief Society hall in, 720 Huntsman, Jack, Peerless master mechanic and mine supt., 347-49 Hurst, George, and Indian-white conflict in SE Utah, 251, 261 Hussey, Warren, banker, 34 Hutchings, Carlow, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359 Hyde, Ella W., Utah Women's Press Club member, 153

I Idaho, stage and mail service to, 11-13, 16, 19, 20 Independent Coal & Coke Co., 346 Indian Rights Assn., 261 Inland Stock Co., touring theatrical group, 126 Ireland, Elwin A., U.S. marshal, 209, 209-10, 213 Irish, O. H., supt. of Indian affairs, 239-40, 244-46

Jack, Gavin, scene painter in Orangeville, 116, 129 Jackson, Bertha, and Prohibition, 286 Jakeman, Ellen Lee, journalist and typesetter, 151-52 Janney, Ed, prison guard, 224 Japanese at Peerless, 339-40 Jeffers, William, UP official, 93 Jenkins, Sarah Ann, wife of A. H. Cannon, 226-27 Jenkins, Wanda, and Gypsies, 378-79 Jensen, Harold H., and Otter Creek Reservoir, 169 Jenson, Emma, Utah Women's Press Club member, 152

Jewkes, A. G., Jr., actor in Orangeville, 120-21, 722 Jewkes, Samuel R., actor in Orangeville, 115 Jimson, Johnny, Bingham resident, 277 Joe Bishop, Ute Indian, and Posey War, 254, 257, 266 Joe Bishop's Big Boy, and Posey War, 254, 260 Joe Bishop's Little Boy, and Posey War, 253-59 Johnson, Clyde, and drama in Huntington, 130 Johnson, Evart, actor in Huntington, 129 Johnson, G. Rulon, Huntington Jr. C. of C. member, 130 Johnson, Hannah, actress in Huntington, 118 Johnson, James P., actor in Huntington, 121 J o h n s o n , J a m e s W., actor in H u n t i n g t o n , 122-24, 129 Johnson, Laverne Rigby, and Gypsies, 368, 376-77,377 Johnson, Joseph E., actor in Huntington, 117 Johnson, LeRoy, Red Cap in Ogden, 96 Johnson, Louisa Westover, and theater, 119 J o h n s o n , Luella Guymon, actress in Huntington, 722, 124, 126, 129 Johnson, Milas E., actor in Huntington, 777, 117-18 Johnson, Peter, actor in Huntington, 118 Johnson, Warren Marshall, at Lee's Ferry, 392, 393 n. 13 Johnson, William, prison school of, 232 Johnston, Albert Sidney, and Utah War, 386 Jones, , member, Beaver County Women's Suffrage Assn., 334 Jones, Alma, and Posey War, 258-59 Jones, Betty, wife of Jack, 343, 346-47 Jones, Charles, Peerless foreman, 357 Jones, Evan, Peerless clerk, 347, 350, 337, 354-55 Jones, Hazel, wife of Evan, 355 Jones, Jack, Peerless supt., 342-44,343, 346-48, 353 Jones, Kumen, and Indian-white conflict in SE Utah, 251 Jorgensen, Jorgen, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359, 360 Julian, Ellen, American Fork settler, 47-48 Juvenile Instructor: LDS hymns in, 136, 141; role of A. H. Cannon in, 230-31

K Kanab, Utah, 770, 773, 777, 752; 1896 statehood celebration in, 181-83; settlement and development of, 170-83 Kane County, Utah, 770, 773, 775, 777, 752; farming in, 172-73; movie industry in, 175, 178; ranching in, 174; settlement and development of, 170-83; and tourism, 175-78 Keddington, John, prisoner, 229, 235 Keisel, F. J., Ogden mayor, 163 Keller, Fred, district attorney, 254, 261 Kelley, Charles, Coxey "army" of, in Ogden, 84 Kelly, Charles, 773 Kerkendahl, P. F., mayor, Ogden, 93


Index

411

Kimball, Heber C , visit of, to Wells Fargo office, 23 Kimball, Hiram, mail contract of, 22 King, Byron W. visiting prof, at BYU, 123 King, Ernest L., SP supervisor, 58 King, Frank B., bank auditor, 37 King, Homer S., Wells Fargo official, 37 King, Samuel A., attorney, 284 King, William H., U.S. sen., and Posey War, 254 Kirkman, John, LDS worker, 162 Knights of Pythias, 79 Knowlton, Edith, prison visitor, 230 Knowlton, J. Q., injured stagecoach passenger, 28 Ku Klux Klan, 282

Ladies' Republican Club, 150 Lagoon, Old Folks Day at, 161, 164 Lakeside, Utah, RR telegraph station at, 58, 59, 63, 67 Lambert, George C , prisoner, 236 Lardent, Alfred, immigrant, 44 Latter-day Saints' Psalmody, 141-43, 742 Lee, Emma Batchelor, at Lee's Ferry, 392, 393-95 Lee, J. Bracken, and Prohibition, 272, 283 Lee, John D.: ferry of, 393; imprisonment of, at Camp Cameron, 207 Lee, M. E., Murray farmer, 317 Lee's Ferry, 393-95 Lewis, Beason, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359 Lewis, S. H., asst. U.S. attorney, 215-16 Lewis, Walter J., prison visitor, 230 Lincoln, Abraham, 237; Pocatello's execution stopped by, 237-39, 247 Lines, Bill, 273 Lipman, F. L., Wells Fargo official, 37 Lockwood, C. M., mail contract of, 19, 20 Long, Bill, stagecoach driver, 28 Lowe, James, Masonic grand chaplain, 79 Lucin Cutoff, building of, 56-58 Lund, Anthon H., and Otter Creek Reservoir, 358-59 Lyman, Albert R., and Indian-white conflict in S E U t a h , 250, 251, 259 Lyne, T. J., actor, 163 Lyons, Frank, illegal Provo still of, 281

M Mabey, Charles R., and Posey, 267; and Prohibition, 276 McCleery, Daniel, and farmers' suit against smelters, 319-20 McCornick, William S., Midvale smelter of, 312 McCullough, R. Verne, attorney, 284 MacDonald, Julia I., and Utah Women's Press Club, 144, 146 Mace, George, Kanab band leader, 182 Mace, Rebecca Howell, Kanab diarist, 171, 172, 174, 179-81 McEwan, Lon, prison visitor, 230

McFaul, C. L., SP official, 93-94 Mclntyre family, member of, killed by Eureka bootlegger, 287 McKay, , U.S. commissioner, 215 Mackay, J. C , SL County commissioner, 317 McKean, Edward B., T h i r d District Court judge, 214, 218, 220 McKean, E. E., Indian agent, 264, 265-66 McMurrin, Joseph W., marshal assaulted by, 216-17 MacVeagh, Wayne, U.S. attorney general, 212 McVichie, Duncan, Midvale Smelter of, 312 McVicker, Mrs. E. J., and Utah Women's Press Club, 153 Madsen, P. W., 162 Magna, Utah, during Prohibition, 281, 282, 285, 286 Maguire, Don: biog. of, 381-82, 357; 1879 trading expedition of, in northern Arizona, 380-95; relations of, with Indians, 382-83; relations of, with Mormons, 381-83 Major, Richard, immigrant, 43 Mancos Jim, Indian in SE Utah, 253 Manuelito, Navajo leader, 390 Marcusen, Carl R., state GOP chairman, 291 Marshall, John A., district court judge, 319-20 Marysvale, Utah, during Prohibition, 269 Mason, Lowell, tune book of, 136, 141 Masoic Order, and Ogden RR depot, 79 Maxwell, George R., U.S. marshal, 214 Merrill, Lewis, A., agricultural problems investigated by, 312 Metropol Hotel, Price, bootleg whiskey in, 280 Midgely, John, prison visitor, 230 Midgley, Joshua, cellist, 733 Midlake, Utah, RR telegraph station at, 57, 58, 59, 63, 73 Midvale, Utah, agriculture and industry in, 308-25 Miles, Mary Ann, wife of Thomas Armstrong, 53 Milford, Utah, during Prohibition, 278, 283 Millard County, Utah: irrigation water for agriculture in, 357-66; residents of, remember Gyspy visits to, 367-79 Miller, E. D., SL County commissioner, 317 Miller, O. P., farmer, 317-18 Miner, Aurelius, imprisonment of, 227 'Miners' National Bank, 34 Mining and Smelting: effect of, on SL County farmers, 308-25; development of, in Carbon County coal fields, 336-56 Monroe, Miss S. L., and Utah Women's Press Club, 153 Montana, stage and mail service to, 12, 14, 16, 19 Monticello, Utah, Indian-white conflict in, 250 Mooncraft, Isodore, employee of Don Maguire, 384 n. 3, 387, 394 Moore, Mahalia Dorcas, 329 Mormons: conflicts of, with Indians in SE Utah, 248-67; Don Maguire's descriptions of, 383-85; interest of, in theater, 112-14; pro-


Utah Historical Quarterly

412 tection of transportation and communications by, during Civil War, 238; relations of, with U.S. Justice Dept. officials, 204-22; trans-Atlantic immigration of, 40-54; and Utah War, 386. See also Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and names of individual Mormons Morris, Elias, 162, 224 Morrow, Henry A., Camp Douglas C O . , 207, 208 Moxum Hotel, SLC, bootleg whiskey sold in, 283-84 Murdoch, James, coal developer, 338 Murdock, , pres., Beaver County Women's Suffrage Assn., 334 Murdock, J o h n , imprisonment of, 224-25 Murray, Utah, agriculture and industry in, 308-25 Musical Advertiser, 136 Musser, A. Milton, 165

N Nalder and Sons, Layton farmers, 311 Napper, Lydia (wife), 62, 68, 69, 72 Napper, Sy, telegrapher at Bridge, 55, 62, 64, 65, 68-69 Navajo Indians, trading with, 387, 390-91, 393 The Navajo Princess, opera by W. K. Driggs, 725, 125-26 Naylor, William, 164, 166, 167 Neilson, Minnie, 326 Newhouse, Samuel, Murray smelter of, 312 Newman, , and Posey War, 260 New Orleans, La., 40; Mormon immigrants in, 43-44 Nibley, Charles W., and Old Folks Day, 165 Nicholas Grocery, Ogden, 68 Nixon, J. W., LDS bishop in H u n t i n g t o n , 129-30 North Salt Lake Stockyards, 324 Northern Stage Line, 239, 246 Nye, Fred M., Ogden C. of C. pres., 93

Ogden and Northwestern Railroad, 82 Ogden Band, 79 Ogden Broom Factory, 75 Ogden Canyon, 81, 82 Ogden Chamber of Commerce, 75, 80, 82, 90, 93-96 Ogden, Charles, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 362-63 Ogden, Frank- M., and Otter Creek Reservoir, 362-63 Ogden High School Band, 93 Ogden Iron Works, 75 Ogden Junction, 76 Ogden Packing and Provisions Co., 84 Ogden Rapid Transit Co., 82 Ogden Union Railway and Depot Co., 77, 80, 83, 90, 99

Ogden Union Station, 74, 81,83, 87, 91, 92, 95, 99; history of, 74-99 Ogden Union Stock Yards Co., 84 Ogden, Utah: arson in, during 1894 RR strike, 86-87; economic and cultural development of, 81-84, 93-95, 137-38, 311; effect of transcontinental RR on, 74-76; history of RR depots in, 74-99; and 1930s depression, 96; during Prohibition, 277, 278, 288; relation of, to Bridge, 56, 63, 67-68, 72, 73; volume of RR traffic in, 82, 94, 96-99; women workers in, 327-28,332; during WW II, 96-97 Ogden, William, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359 Old Folks Day, 756, 764, 767, 769; history of, 157-69 Oliver, Walter Taylor, judge, 247 Oliver, William H., San J u a n County sheriff, 253, 255, 257-58, 257 Olsen, W. F., Price mayor, 290 Olson, Culbert, lawyer and legislator, 341 Olson, Emmett, engineer, 341 Orangeville Dramatic Assn., 115-17 Orangeville, Utah, history of dramatics in, 115-17, 119, 120-21, 127-28, 129; social hall in, 720 Order of Railroad Telegraphers, 67 Oregon Shortline Railroad, 82, 161 Ori, James ("Geno"), Peerless foreman, 347, 357, 353 Otter Creek Reservoir and Dam, 307,357,364; building of, 357-66 Otter Creek State Park, 366 Overland Mail Co.: during Civil War, 9-10; contractsof, 9-12, 22; formation of, 7-8; and Pony Express, 10; relation of, to Wells Fargo, 7-12, 21-23 Overland Stage Line, 243

Pacific Fruit Express, 60 Paiute Indians, and Posey War, 248-67 Park City, U t a h , d u r i n g Prohibition, 270, 279-80 Parkinson, Donald, architect, 91, 93 Parkinson, J o h n , architect, 91, 93 Parry, Chauncy, so. Utah businessman and booster, 175, 177-78 Parry, Edwin, prison visitor, 230 Parry, Gronway, so. Utah businessman and booster, 175, 177-78 Parry, Whitney, so. Utah businessman a n d booster, 175, 177-78 Parsons, H. P., Wells Fargo employee, 24 Patrick, M. T., U.S. marshal, 207, 213 Patterson, Ada, author and journalist, 148-49 Patterson, D. C , express co. of, 11, 12 Paul, Samuel, Masonic grand master, 79 Peacock, Warren S., Carbon County deputy sheriff, 275, 255


Index Peerless Coal Co., 336-37, 343, 346, 351, 354; history of, 336-56 Peerless Sales Co., 342 Peerless, Utah, 336-37; immigrants in, 339-40; school in, 340; site of, 339; social life in, 340-41, 353 Perry, David, Ogden mill of, 75 Peters, George, U.S. attorney, 211, 217 Peterson, E. C , and Otter Creek Reservoir, 366 Peterson, Jim, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 362 Peterson, Sarah Ann, wife of David Tribe, 52 Philharmonic Society, 135, 137, 138 Philips, , marshal, 224 Pioneer Stage Co., 10, 13, 24 Piute Reservoir, 358, 359 Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad, 24 Piatt, H. V., OUR and D Co. pres., 90 Pocatello, Shoshoni chief, 237-47 Polygamy, federal officials in campaign against, 204-22 Pony Express, 9, 10 Posey, Paiute leader, 245, 252, 255, 267; and Indian-white conflict in SE Utah, 251-67 Posey, Anson, and Posey War, 260 Posey War, history of, 248-67 Potter, , judge, 255 Powers, O.W., 166 Pratt, , telegrapher at Bridge, 56, 62, 68 Pratt, Orson, Jr., pianist, 733 Pratt, Romania B., and Utah Women's Press Club, 144, 146, 147, 153 Preston, W. B„ LDS bishop, 163 Price Trading Co., scrip of, 118 Price, Utah, dramatics in, 119. See also Carbon County Prohibition: advent of, in Utah, 268-70; bootlegging during, 268-91; homocides during, 287; law enforcement during, 268-69, 273, 276-77,278, 281-82,255, 285-91,255 Promontory Point, Utah, RR telegraph station at, 58, 59, 60 Provo, Utah: during Prohibitin, 274,275, 275, 281; women workers in, 327-28, 332 Pulsipher, Ann, Co., scrip of, 118 Pyper, George, 131

Quillico, Joe, Helper merchant, 340 Quillico, John, Helper merchant, 340 Quinney, Emma, wife of George Tribe, 52 Quong Hing, employee of Don Maguire, 384 n. 3, 387, 391, 394, 395

Read, W. P., streetcar supt., 162 Reapters Club, literary org., 146, 150 Redd, Leland, and Indian-white conflict in SE Utah, 250 Redd, Lemuel H., and Indian-white conflict in SE Utah, 250, 264 Reid, Fred W., 116

413 Reid, John K., actor and director in Orangeville, 115, 777 Reynolds, Carl, telegrapher at Bridge, 60 Rich, Ben, prison visitor, 230 Richards, Franklin D.: and Cannon family, 224, 226; Idaho town named for, 49 Richards, Lee Green, painting of, 743 Richards, LeGarnde, 168, 169 Richards, Lula Greene, and Utah Women's Press Club, 144, 146 Richards, Martha, immigrant, 49 Richfield, Utah, Prohibition in, 270 Rigby ranch, Castle Rock, 376 Robertson, , health officer in Sandy, 317 Robertson, Jasper, actor and LDS bishop in Orangeville, 115, 121 Robinson, Adonis Findlay, Kanab historian, 181 Robinson, Wells, 373; and Gypsies, 372 Rogers, Clarence, 255 Rogers, John D., and Indian-white conflict in SE Utah, 249, 253-54, 255, 259, 265 Romney, Artemisia, painter, 168 Romney, Goerge, prison visitor, 230 Roper, Abe, home of, 367 Ross, Delia, wife of Farrel, 62, 65-66, 68, 70, 72 Ross, Farrel L., telegrapher at Bridge, 62, 65-68,66,70,71,72 Ross, James Andrew, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359, 360 Royal Slave Co., touring theatrical group, 126 Ruggeri, Henry, Carbon County attorney, 288 Rumfield, Hiram S., mail and express agent, 12, 22-23 Russell, Majors, and Waddell, 9, 10 Russell, Pearl, and Utah Women's Press Club, 153 Russell, William H., mail subcontractor, 22

St. George, Utah, musical activity in, 132-33 St. Louis, Mo., 45; Mormon immigrants in, 44-47 Saline, Utah, RR spur, 59, 64, 68, 69, 71 Saltair Road, 161 Salt Lake and Ogden Railroad, 82 Salt Lake Band, 79 Salt Lake Choral Society, 134 Salt Lake City: 4-5, 14, 51; as a cultural center, 132, 143; importance of, to Northwest, 11-14; mail service to and from, 6-8; musical activity in, 132-43; and Prohibition, 270, 274, 276, 279-83, 285-89; and Wells Fargo, 5-39; women workers in, 327-28, 332 Salt Lake City Express, 11, 12 Salt Lake City National Bank, 34 Salt Lake County: air pollution in, 312-15; Board of Health of, 317; conflict between agriculture and industry in, 308-25; farm in, 305; smelters in, 376, 327 Salt Lake Handel and Haydn Society, 135


414 Salt Lake Rock Co., 208 Salt Lake Theatre: and Old Folks Day, 168; orchestra of, 131, 132-34, 733; touring companies at, 113 Salt Lake Tribune, mining and smelting interests supported by, in dispute with farmers, 320, 322 Sands, Robert, Tabernacle Choir director, 134 San J u a n County, Utah, Indian-white conflict in, 248-67 Sanpete County, Utah: division of, 114; during Prohibition, 271, 275-76, 277, 279 San Pitch, Shoshoni chief, 242 Sanup, Ute Indian, and Posey War, 254 Sanup's Boy, Ute I n d i a n , a n d Posey War, 253-59 Savage, Charles R., founder of Old Folks Day, 158-63, 759, 165-66 Savage, Leona, secy., Peerless Coal, 345 Seaboldt, Eusebius, employee of Don Maguire, 384 n. 3, 387, 394 Seegmiller, Daniel, tourism promoter, 176 Seegmiller, William H., Sevier LDS Stake official, 359 Selan, Frank, Peerless miner, 339 Selan, J o h n , Peerless miner, 339 Select Knights of the AOUW, 79 Sells, Cato, commissioner of Indian affairs, 250 Seventeenth Infantry, during 1894 RR strike in Ogden, 87 Sevier County, Utah, irrigation water for agriculture in, 357-66 Sherwood, Henry D., Wells Fargo employee, 24-25 Shipp, Ellis (daughter), and Utah Women's Press Club, 153 Shipp, Ellis R.: medical career and writings of, 150; and Utah Women's Press Club, 144, 146, 153 Shoshoni Indians, relations of settlers and federal government to, during Lincoln administration, 237-47 Shurtliff, Emerson, h u s b a n d of Mary A n n Tribe, 52 Silver City, Utah, law officers wounded in, 287 Sixteenth Infantry: band of, 79; during 1894 RR strike in Ogden, 87 Sloane, C. F., reporter, and Posey War, 265 Smith, Charles F., banker, 25 Smith, J o h n Henry, and Otter Creek Reservoir, 358-59 Smith, Joseph F.: and polygamy, 235; and Old Folks Day, 165, 166; and Otter Creek Reservoir, 358-59 Smith, Joseph F.: and polygamy, 235; and Old Folks Day, 165, 166; and Otter Creek Reservoir, 358-59 Smith, Joseph, Jr., opinion of aged of, 158 Smith, Lot, 392; and trader Don Maguire, 382-83, 385-86, 389-90; and Utah War, 386 Smyth, A. C , and Pinafore, 137, 138 Snow, Eliza R., and Utah Women's Press Club, 153

Utah Historical Quarterly Snow, Erastus, LDS leader in so. Utah, 172 Snow, Kate, and Gypsies, 368, 370 Snow, Lorenzo: imprisonment of, 227, 230; segregation case of, 234 Snow, Warren, 1864 immigrant co. of, 132 Social Hall (SLC), theater productions in, 114 Social Hall Stock Assn., Orangeville dramatic group, 115, 116 South Sanpete Stake, old folks celebration in, 164 Southern Pacific Railroad: effect of WW II on, 58, 62, 72-73; and Lucin Cutoff, 56-58; Ogden facilities of, 75, 77, 8 2 , 9 1 , 93, 94, 99; wreck of, west of Ogden, 97-98. See also Bridge, Utah Spanish-American War, Utah troops in, 87-88 Spanish Fork, Utah, during Prohibition, 283 Spencer, Guernsey, Kanab Clipper founder, 181 Spencer, Josephine, journalist and author, 149 Spencer, Mahonri, Taylorsville farmer, 317 Sperry Flour Co., 84 Spring Canyon Dance and Bridge Club, 340 Spinner, Francis Elias, U.S. treasurer general, 333 Sproule, William, SP pres., 90 Square Deal Store, Carbon County, 340, 345 Staples, George, and Gypsies, 374 Straup, , health officer in Bingham, 317 Stegner, Wallace, Kane County described by, 170-71 Stein, Aaron, Wells Fargo employee, 24, 25 Stein, Nat, Wells Fargo employee, 24, 24-25 Stephens, Evan, musician, 141, 143 Stevens and Stone, Ogden mill of, 75 Stevens, J o r d a n , LDS bishop in Ogden, 163, 166 Stevenson, Mrs. E.J., and Utah Women's Press Club, 153 Stewart, Grace Nixon, actress in Huntington, 130 Stewart, Levi, settlers led to Kanab by, 171 Stirrat, Robert, RR union official, 87 Strong's Military Band, 168 Summit County, Utah, d u r i n g Prohibition, 279-80, 287 Sunnyside, Utah, dramatics in, 120 Sweet, Charles N., coal developer, 337-38 Sweet, Victor, coal developer, 337-38 Sweet, William H., coal developer, 337-38

Tabernacle Choir, development of, u n d e r G. Careless, 131, 134 Taft, Alphonso, U.S. attorney general, 207 Taft, William Howard, visit of, to Utah, 167-68 Taylor, J o h n : music promoted by, 140; Ogden mill of, 75; and Old Folks Day, 162; and O r d e r of Enoch, 385 Taylor, J o h n , mayor of Orangeville, 116 Taylor, Phoebe, prison visitor, 230 Taylor, William H., Wells Fargo supervisor, 13-14, 75


415

Index Templeton Building, 747 Thacker, J. N., Wells Fargo detective, 37 T h e a t e r , history of, in early Castle Valley, 112-30. See also Salt Lake T h e a t r e Theosophy, 154 Thomas and Co., scrip of, 118 Thomas, A. L., U.T. gov., 163, 166 Thomas, George F., Northwest stage operator, 12 Thomas, J o h n Charles, choir and orchestra conductor, 132-33, 134, 138 Thomas, Mathonihah, federal Prohibition official, 282 Thompson, Enid, dau. of Ezra P., 351 Thompson, Ezra, SLC mayor and coal developer, 338 Thompson, Ezra p., pres., Peerless Coal, 342, 343, 344-45, 347, 350-51 Thompson, Ezra P., Jr., 351 Thompson, Mrs. Ezra P., pres., Peerless Coal, 351 T h o m p s o n Opera Co., 139 Thompson, William, deputy U.S. marshal, 217 Tooele County, Utah, during Prohibition, 274, 279 Tracy, James J., Wells Fargo official, 25 Tracy, T h e o d o r e F., Wells Fargo agent, 13, 23-25,34 Transportaton: role of railroads in Ogden area in, 55-99; role of Wells Fargo in, 5-32, 39 Treseder, Frank M., paintingsof,237, 232,233 Tribe, David, Ogden businessman, 52-53 Tribe, George H., immigrant, 52-53 Tribe, Henry, immigrant, 51-53 Tribe, Joseph, immigrant, 51 Tribe, Mary Ann, wife of Emerson Shurtliff, 52 Tribe, Sarah, immigrant, 51 Tse-ne-gat, Ute Indian, 249, 253 T u r n e r , Robert J., coal developer, 341-42, 344, 346

u Uintah County, Utah, bootlegging in, 286 Union Pacific Railroad: and Coxey's "army," 85; in Ogden, 76-77, 80, 82, 9 1 , 93, 94, 99; and Pacific Fruit Express, 60 United Consolidated Mining Co., sued by farmers, 319-20 United States Express Co., 14 U.S. Justice D e p a r t m e n t , p e r s o n n e l and policies of, in Utah, 204-22 U.S. Mining and Smelting Co., 376, 327; smelter of, in Bingham Junction, 312, 320-21 U p p e r Castle Dale, U t a h , p r e s e n t - d a y Orangeville, 115 Usher, J o h n , Lincoln's secy, of interior, 238-39 Utah Central Railroad, 75 Utah Consolidated Gold Mines, Murray smelter of, 312 Utah Consolidated Smelting Co., suit against, 320-21 Utah Musical Bouquet, 136 Utah Musical Hours, 136

Utah Musical Times, 135-36, 141 Utah National Bank of Ogden, 26 Utah National Guard: assisted at train wreck site, 97-98; O g d e n duty of, during 1894 workers' march, 85; during 1922 coal strike, 280; in Spanish-American War, 88; in WW I, 88-89 Utah Northern Railroad, 75 Utah Powder Co., Ogden, 75 Utah Shakespearean Society, 722 Utah State Board of Health, and smelter pollution in SL County, 317 Utah State Federation of Women's Clubs, 152 Utah State Legislature, and Prohibition, 269, 272 Utah Territory: Mormon "cohabs" in penitentiary of, 223-36; penitentiary of, 226, 231, 233; U.S. Justice Department personnel and policies in, 204-22; Utah Title and Insurance Co., 35 Utah Woman's Suffrage Assn., 146, 150 U t a h W o m e n ' s Press C l u b , 7 5 5 ; a c c o m plishments of members of, 148-52; founding of, 144-45; meetings and by-laws of, 146-48, 152-56; officers of, 146 Ute Indians, and Posey War, 248-67

Van Brunt, Henry, architect, 77, 78 Vandenberg, J o h n H., LDS presiding bishop, 169 Van Zile, Philip, U.S. attorney, 208-11, 213, 218, 220-21 Varian, Charles S., U.S. attorney, 211, 214-19, 275 Vivian Park, Utah County resort, bootleg liquor at, 274 Vuksinick, Louis, Peerless supt., 339, 342-43, 357, 353-54 Vuksinick, Zelpha, 353

w Wadsworth, H e n r y W., Wells Fargo official, 25-26 Wagstaff, Harold, farmer, 323-25 Wakefield, J. Fleming, actor in Huntington, 121, 129 Wakefield, Susan, actress in Huntington, 118 Walker Brothers, Bankers, 34, 39 Walters Stock Co., acting troupe, 125, 127 Ward, J. Ray, U.S. marshal, and Posey War, 261, 264-65 Warshaw, Maurice, and Prohibition, 279 Wasatch, County, Utah, agriculture in, 310 Washakie, Shoshoni chief, 240, 242 Weihe, Willard, violinist and conductor, 137, 143 Weir, Thomas, Murray smelter of, 312 Wells, Fargo & Co.:, accidents of, 28-29; banking activity of, 13, 32-39; bullion shipped by, 33; criticism of, 15-16, 18; east-west routes of, 14-15; effect of transcontinental RR on,


416 20-21; effect of, on Utah economy, 2 1 ; employees of, 75, 22-27,24,35; express service of, 35, 39; founding and consolidation of, 7-11, 14; mail contracts and service of, 7-12, 14-19; in Northwest, 11-14; relations of, with Indians, 23, 30-32; robberies of, 29-30; in SLC during 1850-70, 5-32; stables and shops of, 13,74; stagecoaches of, 4-5, 9, 18; stations of, 76, 27, 27; wagons of, 35; weather problems of, 26-28 Wells Fargo Bank: embezzlement scandal at, 35-38; history of, in SLC, 32-39 Wells, Daniel H.: as militia leader, 216; as third husband of E. B. Wells, 145 Wells, Emmeline B.: biog. data on, 145-46; as editorof'Woman'sExponent, 144, 146, 156; as founder of Utah Women's Press Club, 144, 146, 153, 154; publications of, 146, 749 ; suffrage activities of, 146, 154 Wells, James H., and Otter Creek Reservoir, 359, 360 Werner, Clarence, UP worker, 98 West, Caleb W., U.T. gov., 85; National Guard ordered to Ogden by, 85; visit of, to prison, 234-35 West Jordan, Utah, bootlegging in, 287 West, Rolla, mayor of Price, and Prohibition, 272, 276 Westerberg, Carl, Utah Fuel engineer, 354 Western, Mrytle, 373; and Gypsies, 368, 370, 375, 378 Wheeler, Henry, farmer, 310-11 Whipple, , hospital matron, 224 Whit, R. B., young prisoner, 232 White, , member, Beaver County Women's Suffrage Assn., 334 White & McCornick, bank, 34 White, Edward L., Midvale smelter of, 312 Whitelock, Chet, liquidator, 354 Whitney, C. W., attorney for smelters, 317 Whitney, E. W., SL County physician, 317 Whitney, Horace K., flutist, 733 Whitney, Newell K., second husband of E. B. Wells, 145 Widtsoe, John A., agricultural problems investigated by, 312-15 Wilcken, C. H., 224 Wilcox, Lizzie S., and Utah Women's Press Club, 153 Williams, Parley L., attorney, 79 Williams, Selina, "oldest lady," 163 Wilson, Eric, telegrapher at Bridge, 60 Wilson, W. W., SL County commissioner, 317 Winkelried, Gus, Carbon County merchant, 340, 345 Winters, Blaine, and Gypsies, 378 Winters, Gladys, and Gypies, 374-75 Walters, Mrs. Fred C , needlework of, 168 Woman's Exponent: E. B. Wells editor of, 146; offices of, 747; and Utah Women's Press Club, 144, 146, 147, 156 Women: in agriculture, 327; as bootleggers, 284; as domestic servants, 326, 326-35; as

Utah Historical Quarterly office workers, 326, 327, 333, 334-35; and Utah Women's Press Club, 144-56 Women's Christian Temperance Union: prison visit of, 233; and Prohibition, 270 Woolley, Edwin D., tourism promoted by, 175-77, 181 Wood, Earl, telegrapher at Bridge, 62 Wood, Jean, wife of Earl, 62 Woodbury, Isaac, tune book of, 136, 141 Woodmansee, Gladys, and Utah Women's Press Club, 153 Woodson, William H., mail contract of, 6 Woodward, Absolom, mail contract of, 6 Woodward, Don C , actor in Huntington, 777, 117, 121 Woodward, James C , actor in Orangeville, 115 Woodward, Jane, Huntington nurse/doctor, 121-22 Works, James, LDS missionary and immigrant leader, 42, 46 World War I: Utah National Guard in, 88-89; railroads controlled by government during, 58 World War II, effect of, on railroad, 58, 62, 72-73 Wright, Margaret, wife of Joseph Dunkley, 50 Wyoming, liquor from, in Utah during Prohibition, 272, 276, 279-80, 287-88, 291

Yates, Elizabeth Upton, suffragist, 154 Yentzer, Frank G., RR employee, death of, 91 Young, B. B., musician, 140-41 Young, Bill, and Posey War, 259 Young, Brigham: and colonization, 114, 171; divorce trial of, 204-5, 211, 212; and G. Careless, 131; and Order of Enoch, 383-84; and Wells Fargo, 21, 22 Young, John W., and Utah Western RR, 160 Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Assn., 150 Young, Legrand, 224 Young, Margaret Johnson, actress in Huntington, 121, 125-26 Young, Mary S. P., wife of Robert D., 360-62, 367 Young, Phoebe C , and Utah Women's Press Club, 153 Young, Robert D.,357; biog. data on, 358; and building of Otter Creek Reservoir, 358-66 Young, Royal B., prisoner, 236 Young, Willard, engineer, 361

Zane, Charles S., U.T. chief justice, 218, 223 Zeese, George, illegal liquor reported by, 291 Zion Canyon, tourist development of, 176-78 Zion's Benefit Building Society, 230 Zion's Choral Union, 140 Zion's Musical Society, 140 Zion's Trust and Savings Bank, 34 Zito, Tom, Ogden RR worker, 97


UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History BOARD OF STATE HISTORY THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, Provo, 1987 Chairman LEONARD J. ARRINGTON, Salt Lake City, 1989 Vice-chairman MELVIN T . SMITH, Salt Lake City Secretary DOUGLAS D. ALDER, Logan, 1989

PHILLIP A. BULLEN, Salt Lake City, 1987 J. ELDON DORMAN, Price, 1987

HUGH C. GARNER, Salt Lake City, 1989 DAN E. JONES, Salt Lake City, 1989 DEAN L. MAY, Salt Lake City, 1987 WILLIAM D. OWENS, Salt Lake City, 1987 AMY ALLEN PRICE, Salt Lake City, 1989

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH, Director

STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor JAY M. HAYMOND, Librarian DAVID B. MADSEN, State Archaeologist

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

T h e 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 publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical 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. 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 receives financial assistance 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.


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