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Seymour Miller's Account of an Early Sheep Operation on Fremont Island
Seymour Miller's Account of an Early Sheep Operation on Fremont Island
EDITED BY DAVID H. MILLER AND ANNE M. ECKMAN
IN MAY 1944 SEYMOUR MILLER, AGE SEVENTY-THREE, DICTATED the following account of the Miller family sheep operation on Fremont Island in the Great Salt Lake to his nephew, Utah historian David E. Miller. Because of the constraints of its peculiar geography, the Millers' sheep-ranching enterprise was undoubtedly one of the more unusual operations in the annals of the western sheep industry. Born in Farmington, Davis County, on November 1, 1870, to William Henry Miller and Helen Aurelia Hinman, Seymour was one of eleven brothers and sisters. He married Lily Mary Hunsaker on November 12, 1891. She bore him fifteen children between 1892 and 1914. Seymour spent most of his life as a rancher and farmer in Box Elder and Davis counties, and in southern Idaho. For several years he raised truck garden crops on the old William Henry Miller farm in Syracuse, near the shores of Great Salt Lake.
Just over a hundred years before Seymour Miller dictated his recollections, John C Fremont made the first recorded examination of Fremont Island. In September 1843 he and his men paddled to the island in an inflatable India rubber boat from the mouth of Weber River. Fremont expected to find a pristine wilderness "teeming with game of every description," untouched by human hands. Instead of a pastoral Eden, the island proved to be a treeless, wind-swept triangle of land, covered with sage and rank grasses but with no trace of the "clear streams and springs of fresh water" which Fremont's men had hoped to enjoy. His romantic expectations shattered, he called the place "Disappointment Island." Topographer Howard Stansbury subsequently named the island in Fremont's honor during his 1850 survey of the lake. A man of more practical orientation, Stansbury speculated that the island would make an "admirable range" for sheep and goats, if adequate fresh water sources could be developed.
Mormon pioneers had found the lake's largest island, Antelope Island, ideally suited for ranching operations. It provided abundant grazing, required little or no fencing, and offered both winter and summer ranges. Leaders of the Mormon church stocked Antelope Island with sheep and cattle in 1849 and in 1850 reserved grazing lands on both Antelope and Stansbury islands for the use of the Perpetual Emigrating Company in supporting Mormon immigration to Utah. Private herds were also pastured on Antelope Island under church supervision during this period. By contrast, Fremont Island attracted little attention from area stockmen until Henry William Miller and Daniel Arnold Miller decided to stock sheep there in 1859.
Henry William Miller and Daniel Arnold Miller were brothers who had immigrated to Utah after the Mormon expulsion from Nauvoo. Daniel settled in Farmington in 1848, and his brother followed in 1852. In addition to farming and stock raising, the Miller brothers built and operated a water-powered sawmill near the mouth of Farmington Canyon. The Miller brothers decided to stock Fremont Island with sheep and cattle; they built a large barge to haul their stock from Farmington Bay to the island. During the next quarter-century, the Miller brothers and their sons and grandsons pastured sheep on Fremont Island and operated a saltworks there. They hauled cedar timbers, minerals, and livestock on a small fleet of boats which they constructed and sailed on the lake. During the 1860s and 1870s, Fremont Island was known in Utah as Miller's Island, and was so designated on Augustus Mitchell's 1865 commercial County Map of Utah and Nevada.
When the Millers began their sheep operations in 1859, Fremont Island was part of the public domain. The Millers never attempted to homestead the island but were satisfied to use the island as squatters, a practice not at all uncommon among western stockmen. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory in 1869, the odd-numbered sections on Fremont Island fell within the confines of the Union Pacific Railroad land grant. According to family tradition, the Millers obtained grazing rights from the railroad as well as the option to purchase railroad lands on the island should these come on the market at a future date.
In 1885 Judge Uriah J. Wenner challenged the Millers' claim to the island. Wenner and his young bride Kate had arrived in Salt Lake City in 1880. Wenner opened a law office in the city, while his wife immersed herself in the social scene. Their son, George, was born in 1881 and a daughter, Blanche, in 1883. Gov. Eli H. Murray appointed Wenner (a non-Mormon) to the bench as probate judge in 1882. He replaced Elias A. Smith, who was disqualified under terms of the Edmunds Act of 1882. The Wenners prospered in Salt Lake City until 1885 when Judge Wenner contracted tuberculosis. Forced to step down from the bench, Wenner followed his physician's advice and began searching out a secluded spot where he could raise his growing family while recuperating from the ravages of the disease. He and a friend visited Fremont Island in 1885, and on at least one occasion that year, he visited the island as a guest of the Miller brothers. Without consulting the Millers he initiated plans to gain possession of the island.
The means by which Wenner obtained control of the island in 1885 and 1886 are not entirely clear. In 1885 when he first took the island move under consideration, Wenner offered to purchase the Millers' grazing rights and sheep should he decide to take up residence there. Later that year, after considering the Millers' tenuous claim, he decided to force them and their sheep off the island by legally gaining control of its only reliable water supply, a spring situated on the southeastern tip of the island. He led the Millers to believe that he had negotiated the purchase of the railroad lands from a Union Pacific agent, but he actually filed for 390.83 acres of federal land on the island under terms of the Desert Land Act of 1877. Under the provisions of this law, a settler could file for up to one section (640 acres) of the public domain for a twenty-five cents per acre down payment. The purpose of the legislation was to encourage irrigation of arid western lands. In order to receive title to his claim, the applicant was required to irrigate the entire claim and pay an additional dollar per acre within a three-year period.
Judge Wenner was well aware that the island was unsuitable for farming and that its springs and seepages would provide insufficient water for irrigation. Like many stockmen who filed claims under the Desert Land Act, Wenner had no intention of building an irrigation project but instead used his claim as a temporary means of gaining control of the island.
In 1892 after her husband's death, and long after the Millers had been evicted, Kate Wenner relinquished the Desert Land Act claim and on the same day filed for a homestead on the island, which she patented in 1893. She also purchased 1,109.9 acres from the Union Pacific Railroad in 1892 for $2.00 per acre. Subsequently she acquired the rest of the island, thus terminating any claim the Miller family had to Fremont Island.
Seymour Miller was not the only member of the family to record his reminiscences. His cousin Jacob Miller also kept an account of the Miller brothers' sheep operation. Jacob, the son of Daniel Arnold Miller, took an active role in the family's livestock business between 1860 and the time the Millers withdrew from the island in 1886. His journal provides much insight into daily operations on the island and provides details of the recurring cycle of shearing, lambing, and transporting sheep across the lake. Storms on the lake were a constant hazard, and boats were frequently blown off course and grounded on shoals. Sometimes the consequences were serious, as on June 9, 1862, when Daniel Miller's flatboat sprang a leak, forcing him to throw forty-eight sheep overboard.
Jacob Miller's journal also provides interesting details of a saltworks the Millers operated on the island during the winter of 1865-66. Jacob built large vats with sheet metal bottoms and plank sides for boiling the salt water, hauled them to the island, and rigged a pump to bring water directly from the lake. Using sagebrush for fuel, he boiled down several boatloads of salt, most of which he hauled by wagon to mines at Virginia City, Montana, for use in fluxing ore. His journal also provides details about the construction of several boats used to haul livestock on the lake, including the Lady of the Lake, a two-mast schooner he built in 1879. The Lady of the Lake (rechristened the Argo when the Wenners bought her in the 1880s) was used on the lake for at least two decades and was still intact as late as 1909.
Seymour's grandfather, Henry W. Miller, recorded the beginning of this enterprise in his journal:
By the time Seymour Miller dictated his reminiscences, he was the only surviving eyewitness to the Miller family's unusual sheep operation. His dictated account of the sheep enterprise follows:
EXPERIENCES ON THE GREAT SALT LAKE AND ITS ISLANDS BY SEYMOUR LEWIS MILLER
My grandfather, Henry William Miller, and his brother, Daniel Arnold Miller, were the first men to occupy Fremont Island. They had formed a partnership and after having explored the island decided that it would make an excellent range for sheep, so they made arrangements to take their flocks there. These brothers had been partners in many enterprises before they came to Utah. At Quincy, III., they married sisters who were instrumental in bringing the brothers into the L.D.S. Church. After they had joined the Church, the men helped get out the timbers for the Nauvoo Temple. In 1848, soon after his arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, Daniel Miller settled at Farmington. In 1852 Henry William Miller came to Utah and also settled at Farmington. The two families owned much of the land that is now the city of Farmington including much of the present Lagoon. In fact the old race track of Lagoon was once part of the old Miller farm.
When Henry William Miller and his brother Daniel Henry decided to stock Fremont Island with sheep their sons naturally played a vital part in the actual completion of the project. The son of Henry William was William Henry, my father. Daniel's sons were Jacob, Edward, Joe, Dan, and Henry. Father's sons, William, Lyman, and I, and Jacob's sons, Frank and Dan, took an active part in the project.
The first time I visited Fremont Island was in the Spring of 1877 when I went with father and spent the whole day riding over the island on a horse. I don't know the exact date that sheep were placed on the island, but when I visited it for the first time we had had enough sheep there long enough for the island to have become over-grazed. One herd had been taken off in 1876.
One of the big problems of the sheep project was that of a satisfactory boat. Jacob Miller had made a trip around the world and had conducted quite a study of sail boats. He designed the boat, Lady of the Lake, and helped build it. Father and he took the most active part in the building. It was my job to keep the tar barrel hot for caulking the boat. Lumber for the craft was obtained from Blacksmith Fork near Logan and the timbers were taken from near-by hills.
The Lady of the Lake was about 50 feet long and 12 feet wide. She carried two main masts, the largest one being about 50 feet high. She flew four sails, two main sails and two jibs. She was a double-deck craft with three and a half or four feet clearance between decks. This was plenty of clearance for sheep and 300 head could be carried at a time. The cabin was at the rear of the boat. It contained a stove and other equipment and could accommodate eight men. A four-foot square box of sand was kept on deck where fires for cooking and signalling could be kindled. Although two or three men could easily manage the boat, four or five usually went along when a load of sheep was being hauled. The extra men were used to round up the herd. On some occasions the women folks accompanied their husbands.
The boat was built near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Creek (Farmington Creek). When she was finished we launched her side ways down some greased planks. The morning after the launching we found our boat resting on the bottom with about three feet of water in her hold. However, the lumber had soaked and sealed the seams and after we had bailed her out we never had any more trouble with leaks. She was a shallow-water boat and when empty, would float in eight or ten inches of water. We used two other small boats before we built the Lady of the Lake, but she was our main craft.
Fremont Island was ideal for sheep. There were some springs along the east side and, although the water was slightly brackish, it was satisfactory for sheep. There was enough vegetation on the island to accommodate a herd of 2,000 sheep. We always tried to keep our herd down to that number. The sheep lambed in the late fall and early winter so that by April many were ready for market. The meat of this flock tasted more like venison than mutton and would always bring a fancy price on the market when ordinary mutton could hardly be sold. We made trips to the island mainly between early April and June for the purpose of taking animals for market and for shearing. We sheared in June. Of course, whenever we wished to sell a load, we had merely to take the boat and go after them.
Since the sheep could not stray away from the island, no herder was necessary and the sheep became as wild as deer. It became quite a problem to corral them for shearing or market. We found it necessary to build a fence across the island toward the south end. This fence was built of sagebrush and was five or six feet high. There was a gate in the middle with drift fences to direct the sheep into the corrals. Even then we once made several sweeps around the island, two men on horses and three on foot, without getting a single sheep through the gate.
I said the sheep were wild. One time we had cornered some on a peninsula at the south end. Rather than be caught, several of them took off into the lake. The last I saw of them they were still going.
Father and the other men built a cabin on the island near the east shore where the fence and corrals were located. The house was 12 by 14 feet and built partly from lumber salvaged from a boat that wrecked on the north end of the island and partly from lumber shipped to the island. We used the cabin as temporary quarters on our visits to the island. There is probably no trace of either cabin or corrals or the fence we built now since a fire swept the island about 30 years ago. I should say that part of the shearing platform was made of the bottom of the above mentioned boat that had wrecked on the island. This platform would accommodate about a dozen shearers.
When we occupied the island we found sagebrush as big around as a man's waist and taller than a man on horseback. The largest sage was found on the north side. There was an abundance of grass, wild daisies, and some prickly pears. The main types of wild life on the island were snakes, mice, and lizards. Snakes were very numerous. It was asserted that there was a snake in every bush. Two types were very common, the blow snake and the whip snake. Neither is poisonous, but they caused us a lot of unpleasant experiences. On one occasion a large blowsnake crawled up on the bed where father, Dan and I were sleeping. When father awoke in the morning he found this snake, as large around as a man's arm and five or six feet long, stretched out on top of the blankets. He crawled out and calmly told us that we were sleeping with a snake. I got out at once, but Dan considered it a joke and merely opened one sleepy eye. There he was within two inches of the reptile. He was soon wide awake. With one sweep of his arm he threw the bedding into the corner and ran out the door. He didn't stop to dress and refused to even return to the cabin for his pants. I took them out to him but he refused to put them on until I had run an arm through each leg and put a hand into each pocket. He declared that he had had enough of the cabin and refused to sleep in it again. He and I made our beds on the boat after that.
The whipsnakes annoyed me more than the blow snakes. They weren't as large but very fast and not afraid of man. They traveled with their heads in the air and could go faster than a man could run. We would just jump out of the way when we saw one coming down the trail.
There were a lot of mice on the island. How they got there, I don't know. But it was a common sight to see snakes chasing mice under the floor of our cabin. Other than snakes, mice, lizards, and a few birds, there was no other wild life on the island.
We communicated with the mainland by means of signal fires. The east slope of the island was clearly visible from home. In case the folks at home wanted to communicate with us they went up on the foot hills east of Farmington and kindled their fires. Three fires was the distress signal. Mother used that signal to summon father from the island when my baby brother, Arnold, was very sick and not expected to live. Mrs. Wenner used the same signal to summon her boatman when Judge Wenner died on the island several years later. We saw her fires burning three nights in a row.
We usually sailed the lake at night because the wind was better at night. Ordinarily it was just a matter of a few hours trip from Farmington to Fremont Island. However, sometimes things didn't go so smoothly. On one occasion we spent eight days in a calm just west of Hooper with a load of sheep we were bringing from the island. Our provisions ran out, although we had plenty of mutton. We sent a man ashore in a row boat for supplies and he returned with some soda crackers instead of bread. When the wind finally came up some of the sheep had died and the rest were in bad condition. So we sailed back to the island, unloaded them and rounded up a new load.
At times storms came up and blew us off our course. On one occasion, the same trip on which we had been becalmed, we were just northwest of the north point of Church Island when we saw a storm coming up. Since we had already spent so many days on the lake, our captain decided to run full sail and try to make port. However, when the wind struck, the fore sail snapped and hit the water with a smack as loud as a cannon shot. The boat went up on its side and almost tipped over. We spent considerable time clearing up the wreckage and finally made port safely.
The oldest man on board always acted as "skipper" and we all took orders from him. Each took his turn at manning the sails or steering. We steered by the stars and by using canyons and mountain peaks as landmarks. We always carried barrels of water with us.
The first time Judge Wenner visited Fremont Island he went as our guest. We gave him free transportation and food for the trip as we did on later trips he made with us. I was present on one of these trips. We were very much surprised and quite put out when he announced, a few years later, that he had bought a section of the island and that we would have to move the sheep off within a year and pay him 100 head of sheep as rental fee during that year.
A large part of Fremont Island was railroad land, having been granted as subsidy to promote the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Father and Uncle Daniel had obtained from the U.P. railroad the right to use the island and an option to buy it should it be put up for sale. That is why we were so completely surprised when Wenner announced that he had bought it and that we would have to get off. We wrote to the U.P. office at Omaha to inquire about Wenner's claim but the reply letter was delayed. When it finally arrived in September, 1884, we had already moved most of the sheep from the island. The letter denied Wenner's claims to the island. I was home when the letter arrived, it being my job to receive the sheep as they were unloaded from the boat. Father and some of the other men were on the lake with the last load of sheep. When father read the letter he expressed the desire to take legal action and try to regain the island. However, since Jacob Miller was a polygamist and in "hiding" at the time, he did not wish to go to court. As a result nothing was done to regain possession of the island to which we had prior rights.
It was quite a task to bring all the sheep off the island. We used the Lady of the Lake and a cattle boat which we had built for another company for the purpose of shipping cattle to Church Island. This was a flat boat about 50 feet long and 18 feet wide. It would carry 25 head of cattle and about 200 head of sheep. At that time the lake was high and we landed sheep in various places along the east shore.
We rented the sheep out to sheep men who placed them in the custody of regular herders. However, since the animals were so wild they could not be treated and herded like ordinary sheep. One flock was counted and placed in the custody of a herder who knew all about ordinary sheep. He left them long enough to cook breakfast, and the sheep got away in the meantime. I went into his wagon and told him that he'd lose the sheep if he didn't look after them. He replied, "Don't try to tell me how to herd sheep," and finished his meal. When he came out the sheep were gone. Although he hired us to help him, most of the animals escaped. We found some as far as ten miles from the camp.
This is typical of the way we lost the sheep. They were just too wild to handle. Some were lost in an extra severe winter; others strayed away. At any rate, we never got a dollar out of them.
At one time we took a boat load of sheep to Carrington Island hoping that, with the aid of winter snow, we could develop enough water for them. However, we were unsuccessful, and many of the sheep died before we removed the herd.
Our boating on the lake was not limited to the shipping of sheep. We used our boat to haul ore, salt and cedar posts. Ore was obtained from mines located in various places around the lake. One rather rich deposit of silverlead ore was located at the west side of the lake. We hauled much of this to a spot between Farmington and Centerville where the railroad had been built to the lake. Under good conditions we would cover this distance during one night. Salt from various salt works around the lake was also hauled to this railroad connection. We built a 75 foot boat with three holds to use in this salt business.
One of our more important enterprises was that of obtaining cedar posts. These we cut on the west side of Promontory and shipped to Farmington. We cut and hauled most of the cedar posts used in Davis County. The Lady of the Lake was used for this hauling. We'd load between 2,000 and 3,000 posts on the top deck high enough so that the boom would just clear them.
In a bad storm the Lady of the Lake was finally blown upon the beach west of Farmington where she stood for years. Judge Wenner finally bought her and overhauled her for his use in going to and from Fremont Island. I understand that the boat was finally wrecked on the rocks at Promontory Point.
On one of the early expeditions of the Millers to Fremont Island, some of them climbed to the summit, a peak which they called "Courthouse Rock" because it reminded them of the courthouse in Farmington. Here Jacob Miller found a monument of rocks probably erected by either John C. Fremont or Howard Stansbury when these men visited the island. In the middle of this stack of rocks Jacob Miller found a folded piece of paper left there by the builder of the monument. Just off the top of this peak Jacob Miller also found the brass cap of Fremont's spy glass which had been accidentally left on the summit when Fremont visited the island.
I have seen and handled these two articles many times at the home of Jacob Miller in Farmington. The paper was old and yellow with age when it was found. I do not remember exactly what was written on it.
Jacob Miller scratched Fremont's name on the spy glass cap which he had found and kept it at his home as a souvenir. I don't know what has become of it since Jacob's death.
I am now the only living person who took part in the enterprises described in this statement. Because of this, and in order that these facts might not be lost to history, I have recorded them here exactly as I saw them happen and swear that the statements on these pages are true.
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