Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, Number 3, 1998

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0042-143X)

EDITORIAL STAFF

MAX J. EVANS, Editor

STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor

KRISTEN S. ROGERS, Associate Editor

ALLAN KENT POWELL, Book Review Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS

AUDREY M GODFREY, Logan, 2000

LEE ANN KREUTZER, Torrey, 2000

ROBERT S. MCPHERSON, Blanding, 1998

MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Murray, 2000

ANTONETTE CHAMBERS NOBLE, Cora, WY, 1999

JANET

BURTON SEEGMILLER, Cedar City, 1999

GENE A. SESSIONS, Ogden, 1998

GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City, 1999

RICHARD S VAN WAGONER, Lehi, 1998

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah's history The Quarterly is published four times a year by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-3500 for membership and publications information Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Beehive History, Utah Preservation, and the bimonthly Newsletter'upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $20.00; institution, $20.00; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or over), $15.00; contributing, $25.00; sustaining, $35.00; patron, $50.00; business, $100.00.

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate, typed double-space, with footnotes at die end Authors are encouraged to submit material in a computer-readable form, on 3J4 inch MSDOS or PC-DOS diskettes, standard ASCII text file For additional information on requirements contact the managing editor Articles and book reviews represent die views of die authors and are not necessarily those of die Utah State Historical Society

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POSTMASTER: Send address change to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101

RONALD W WALKER Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young DENNIS LYTHGOE 271

DONNA TOLAND SMART, ed Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions AUDREY M GODFREY 273

RICHARD K YOUNG The Ute Indians of Colorado in the Twentieth Century . . . .GREGORY C. THOMPSON 274

HAROLD SCHINDLER, comp. and ed. Crossing the Plains: New and Fascinating Accounts of the Hardships, Controversies and Courage Experienced and Chronicled by the 1847Pioneers on the Mormon Trail

DAVID L. BIGLER 276

M.L. MIRANDA. A History of Hispanics in Southern Nevada JORGE IBER

277

FRED M BLACKBURN and RAY A WILLIAMSON. Cowboys and Cave Dwellers: Basketmaker Archaeology in Utah's Grand Gulch JOE L C JANETSKI 278 279

MALCOLM J. ROHRBOUGH Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation . .GERHARD GRYTZ

DARLIS MILLER, ed Above a Common Soldier: Frank and Mary Clarke in the American West and Civil War, 1847-1872 . .MARK R. GRANDSTAFF 280

CHAR MILLER, ed American Forests: Nature, Culture, and Politics . . . .LEX RENDA 281

In this issue

Anyone looking to support the oft-repeated aphorism of former Historical Society director A. R. Mortensen that "history is but geography in motion" can point to our first article as Exhibit A Professor Edward Geary, native son and long-time student of Emery County, analyzes the dynamics of man's determination to challenge the Colorado Plateau's natural intractability It is a story of heroism, failures, compromise, and eventual accommodation well told by a master stylist

The second selection also looks at community building—and destruction and rebuilding—though with a singular focus: the devastating Park City fire of a hundred years ago Risking conflagration by opting for a main street lined with frame buildings, residents paid the ultimate price on Jun e 19, 1898. Although this was the most spectacular fire in Park City's history, it was not to be the last Readers will surely be intrigued not just by the action and excitement of the great fire but also by the author's thoughtful questions about modern guidelines and assumptions governing building styles.

Military matters define the last two articles First, a young World War II fighter pilot from Utah offers his diary of a six-month confinement in a German POW camp. Written in an easy-to-read manner, it reveals not only the day-to-day details of life behind barbed wire but also the changing attitudes of the German guards as the outcome of the war became increasingly apparent. Then, in a shift of time and place, we are treated to a historian-asdetective analysis as one of Utah's most engaging writers solves the mystery of Maj Frederick William Benteen's unlikely appearance in an 1887 Fort Douglas photograph. In the process, we get to know this crusty old army officer, experience his frustrations with Fort Damn Shame (Duchesne), and are given more food for thought on eastern Utah as a case study for the geography-in-motion theory.

Mine rescue team, Mohrland, Emery County. USHS collections.

History Written on the Land in Emery County

BY EDWARD A. GEARY

TH E TERM HINTERLAND DESCRIBES FEW REGIONS more accurately than it does the Colorado Plateau in eastern Utah and western Colorado In common usage, a hinterland is an area remote from major cities or cultural centers. The root meaning of the term, however, is "the land behind." The situation of the Colorado Plateau as the land behind the main Rocky Mountain ranges on the east, the Uinta Range on the north, and the Wasatch Range and the high plateaus on the west delayed its development by Anglo settlers for several decades after immigrants occupied adjacent areas. By the mid-1870s, the Colorado Plateau was probably the largest area in the contiguous United States without permanent Euro-American settlements.

Several distinct subregions comprise this Colorado Plateau hinterland, each with its own character and history Emery County, at the Plateau's western edge, exhibits the area's characteristic landforms, including massive uplifts, buttes, mesas, badland hills, deep canyons, and long lines of sheer erosional cliffs where thousands of feet of geologic strata are exposed with textbook clarity. Along its western border, the county takes in the high country of the Wasatch Plateau, whose watersheds, coal deposits, grazing lands, and timber have been vital economic resources. The county's center is dominated by the San Rafael Swell, an anticlinal uplift covering more than two thousand square miles. East of the Swell, the Green River Desert reaches to the Green River itself, which forms the county's eastern border in the depths of Labyrinth Canyon. Emery County's developed lands and population are confined to two widely separated areas: Castle Valley, at the base of the Wasatch Plateau, and the low banks of the Green River below Gray Canyon.

In common with other areas of the Colorado Plateau, Emery County has an extensive prehistory reaching back to the Paleo-Indian culture. Projectile points dated to about 11,000 years ago have been

Dr Geary is a professor of English and director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University He presented a version of this work as the Statehood Day address in Castle Dale,January 4, 199*7.

recovered from local sites, suggesting that ancient peoples hunted the mammoths, mastodons, and other ice-age mammals that once roamed the region.1 Artifacts representing all four recognized phases of the later Archaic culture have also been found in the county,2 as have dwelling and storage sites of the San Rafael variant of the Fremont culture, dating from A.D 500 tol200 Perhaps the most impressive record written on the land by these ancient peoples is the rock art in both Barrier Canyon and Fremont styles. More than 200 prehistoric rock art panels have been identified in Emery County.3

When Euro-Americans first entered the Colorado Plateau region, what is now Emery County belonged to the Ute domain The San Pitch band made seasonal use of the resources of Castle Valley, and the Sheberetch and Weeminuche probably visited the eastern and southern areas of the county John Wesley Powell understood the name Castle Valley to be a translation of the Ute Toom'pin wunear' Tuweap' or "stone house land."4 The only names of presumably Ute origin that are still attached to major Emery County landmarks are Wasatch and Tavaputs for the two elevated plateaus and Quitchupah for a small tributary to Muddy Creek.

The earliest Euro-American traveler clearly on record as visiting the county wasJedediah S. Smith during his southwestern expedition of 1826.5 Smith found the region "unpromising," describing it as "verry barren and Rocky" with "little appearance of Indians and game quite scarce a few Mt. Sheep and Antelope."6 The Old Spanish Trail reached its northernmost point in Emery County in order to skirt the canyonlands and take advantage of the Green River crossing and the relatively low elevation of Wasatch Pass. In some places, visible traces

1 George W Tripp, "A Clovis Point from Central Utah," American Antiquity 31 (1966): 435;Alan R Schroedl, "Paleo-Indian Occupation in the Eastern Great Basin and Northern Colorado Plateau," Utah Archaeology 1991, pp 8-9

2 Kevin D Black and Michael D Metcalf, "The Castle Valley Archaeological Project: An Inventory and Predictive Model of Selected Tracts," Cultural Resource Series no 19 (Salt Lake City: Utah State Office, Bureau of Land Management, 1986), pp 9-12

3 Lee M Swasey, "Emery County Indian Writing Site Study" (unpublished manuscript) lists 226 sites Emery County History Archives, Castle Dale, Utah

4 John Wesley Powell, The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), p 204; "Diary of Almon Harris Thompson, Geographer: Explorations of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, 1871-75," Utah Historical Quarterly 7 (1939): 44

5 Mauricio Arze and Lagos Garcia may have passed through Emery County on a fur-trading expedition in 1813 The claim that two "lost trappers" named James Workman and William Spencer visited the region in 1809 rests on dubious historical grounds LeRoy R Hafen and Ann W Hafen, Old Spanish Trail, Santa Fe to Los Angeles (Glendale, CA: Arthur H Clark, 1954), p 86;J Cecil Alter, Utah, the Storied Domain: A Documentary History of Utah's Eventful Career (Chicago and New York: American Historical Society, 1932), 1:10-11.

6 George R Brooks, The Southwest Expedition ofJedediah S. Smith: His Personal Account of theJourney to California, 1826-27 (Glendale, CA: Arthur H Clark, 1977), pp 11-14, 47

of the thousands of horses and mules that traveled the trail remained imprinted on the land until the mid-twentieth century. Now only the San Rafael name remains to memorialize this era, though at one time many landmarks bore Spanish names Huntington Creek was known as the San Marcus, Cottonwood Creek as the San Mateo, Muddy Creek as Rio del Morro, or "Castle River," and Ivie Creek as Rio del Puerto, or "River of the Pass."

Most of the recorded impressions of the Emery County region by early travelers carried on the uncomplimentary tradition established byJedediah Smith George C Yount, a member of the 1830 William Wolfskill party, remembered Castle Valley as "the most desolate 8c forlorn dell in the world—Every thing about it was repulsive 8c supremely awful."7 Orville C. Pratt, a War Department official en route to California in 1848, described the Emery County region as "sandy, hilly 8c utterly barren Water is also scarce, 8c if there is no mineral wealth in these mountains I can hardly conceive of what earthly use a large proportion of this country was designed for!"8 Stephen Vandiver Jones, with the second John Wesley Powell Green River expedition in 1871, summed up his impressions with the remark, "I never understood before the full meaning of the term 'bare ground.'" 9 Powell himself admired the massive erosional landforms and declared that to describe the region would "beggar language and pall imagination." At the same time, he characterized it as "a land of desolation, dedicated forever to the geologist and the artist, where civilization can find no resting place."10 Similarly negative assessments of the region's potential for development continued into the settlement era. Mormon apostle Francis M Lyman remarked on his first visit to Emery County in 1880 that "the more of such land a man possessed himself of, the poorer he would be."11

The first comers to discover something of economic value in the region were the stockraisers who in the mid-1870s moved their herds to the Colorado Plateau from the crowded ranges of western Utah and found an advantageous natural grazing drift between the summer range on the Wasatch Plateau and the winter range in Castle Valley

7 "The Chronicles of George C Yount, California Pioneer of 1826," California Historical Society Quarterly 2.1 (1923): 38

8 "TheJournal of Orville C Pratt," in Hafen and Hafen, Old Spanish Trail, pp 350-51

9 Herbert E Gregory, ed., "Journal of Stephen VandiverJones, April 21, 1871-December 14, 1872," Utah Historical Quarterly 16-17 (1948-49): 73

10 Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River, p. 76.

11 F M Lyman, Letter to the Editor, Deseret Evening News, August 28, 1880

and the San Rafael country Almon H Thompson, who in 1876 investigated the irrigation potential of the lands drained by the San Rafael River, reported that the region was "much used as a winter herding ground for stock owned by the settlers in other portions of Utah."

12 A railroad surveyor who worked in Castle Valley in 1881 wrote of seeing "great numbers of cattle" and "about 50,000 sheep" grazing in the area, "although I could not see what in the world they found to eat."

13 The grazing frontier was a passing phase. Within less than a decade, much of the region was "et out," as the stockmen put it, and permanent settlers were developing farms and towns. Most of the large herds were broken up or Sid's Leap. As the story goes,SidSwasey accepted a challenge tojump his horse across the San Rafael River at this point. He made it. USHS collections.

moved out of the region although some of the early stockmen remained to become permanent residents of Emery County. The memory of this era is written on the land in numerous place names, including Gentry Mountain, Starr Point, McHadden Hollow, Miller Creek, Seely Creek, Swasey Creek, Sid's Mountain, Sid's Leap, and Rod's Valley. The 1873 Ferron survey had made Emery County land available for occupation under the homestead laws, but no attempts at colonization were made for several years An 1898 history reported that many men had visited the region with the Sanpete militia

12 A H Thompson, "Irrigable Lands of That Portion of Utah Drained by the Colorado River and Its Tributaries," in John Wesley Powell, Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah (1878), Wallace Stegner, ed (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962), p 171

13 Francis Hodgman, "In the Mountains of Utah," in Jackson Thode and James L Ozment, eds., Dreams, Visions and Visionaries: Colorado Rail Annual, 1992 (Golden, CO: Colorado Railroad Museum, 1992), pp 29, 35

in search of captured livestock during the Black Hawk conflict (1865-68), and the "most observing ones noticed the many beautiful locations and expressed a desire to found new homes in this section." They were deterred, however, by concerns about water availability and soil quality.14 In 1875 Brigham Young reportedly expressed an interest in "the lands east of Sanpete" as a possible site for colonization, but no definite action was taken until the spring of 1877 when five men were sent across the mountains by LDS stake officials in Sanpete to investigate possible settlement locations. This party explored as far as the Green River but reported that the most promising sites were along the creeks that flowed from the Wasatch Plateau.15

On August 22, 1877, a formal call for settlers to colonize Castle Valley was sent out over the signature of Brigham Young President Young had issued many similar directives during the preceding three decades, but this was to be the last. He fell ill the next day and died a week later on August 29. This sequence of dates gave rise to an oftenrepeated local saying—"When Brother Brigham called settlers to Emery County, the Lord took him"—with a deliberate ambiguity as to whether the Lord had taken him because his work had now been completed or because he had finally gone too far.

Orange Seely, bishop of the Mount Pleasant North Ward, was appointed to direct the Castle Valley colonization and was given ecclesiastical authority over the entire region from the Wasatch Plateau to the Colorado border. Seely had spent two winters in Castle Valley with cattle and sheep belonging to the Mount Pleasant United Order and was apparently a strong supporter of the colonization plan

Orange Seely was an energetic man in his mid-thirties, weighing more than 300 pounds yet so agile that he continued to perform "stepdancing" routines into his sixties. He made his pastoral rounds (which extended from Muddy Creek on the south to Price River on the north and all the way to Moab on the east, a 200-mile circuit that required two weeks to complete) riding one mule and leading another packed with food and camping supplies, blacksmith tools, and even a pair of dental forceps.16 Charles R. Curtis, who in 1878 came to Emery County

14 W H Lever, History of Sanpete and Emery Counties, Utah (Ogden: Author, 1898), p 594

15 Journal History, Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, May 24, 1875, cited in John H S Smith, "Census Perspectives: The Sanpete Origins of Emery County Settlement," in Allan Kent Powell, Emery County: Reflections on Its Past and Future (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1979), p 46; Stella McElprang, comp., Castle Valley, a History of Emery County (n.p.: Emery County Company of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1949), p 17

16 McElprang, Castle Valley, p 27;Argene Olsen, "The Leader of die First Setders of Emery County," in Montell Seely et at, comps., Emery County, 1880-1980 (n.p.: Emery County Historical Society, 1981), p 432

as a twelve-year-old boy, later recorded his recollections of Seely in verse:

I remember Uncle Orange, how I used to hear him say, "This land will all be taken up at some near future day." He was alwaysjolly, he could laugh and joke all night, And he could eat a half of mutton and his belly would not be tight, His heart was in proportion with the rest of him you know, For he helped a many a poor cuss then, that fifty years ago. 17

Hanna Seely, compelled to trade a spacious brick home in Mount Pleasant for a one-room log cabin on the banks of Cottonwood Creek, was initially less optimistic than her husband about the region's prospects. She later recalled, "The first time I ever swore was when we arrived in Emery County and I said 'Damn a man who would bring a woman to such a God Forsaken country!'"18

The years from 1877 to 1880 were a transitional period, with settlers living in wagon boxes, dugouts, or rough cabins while they constructed irrigation works and attempted to bring some land under cultivation. The earliest dwellings were of three kinds: dugouts excavated into hillsides or creek banks, crude cabins built of cottonwood logs, and shelters made of "small saplings set upright and interwoven with willow like a basket."19 All three typically had dirt floors and roofs made "of poles, brush or hay, and earth."20 There are no surviving "basket-work" houses and only a few identifiable remains of dugouts, but several cottonwood-log cabins can still be found in various stages of decay.

In many cases, wives and young children remained in Sanpete Valley while husbands and older sons labored to establish homes in Castle Valley In at least one instance, however, these pioneering roles were reversed as Ann Singleton Wrigley and her young children were left to fend for themselves on Ferron Creek while her husband spent the winter of 1878-79 in American Fork with his other wife.21

Eighteen-eighty was a landmark year for the Colorado Plateau region In February, in the midst of the harshest winter in memory, the territorial legislature created Uintah, San Juan, and Emery counties. A petition drafted the preceding fall by Castle Valley residents had

17 Charles R Curtis, "Fifty Years Ago," in McElprang, Castle Valley, p 56

18 Emery County Historical Records Survey, quoted in Ward J Roylance, ed., Utah: A Guide to the State (Salt Lake City: Utah a Guide to the State Foundation, 1982), p 700

19 Hodgman, "In the Mountains of Utah," p 32

20 Ibid., p 34

21 McElprang, Castle Valley, p 153

requested the name of Castle County, but legislators chose instead to name the county in honor of outgoing territorial governor George W Emery.22 The decennial United States census taken in June found 556 residents, 84 farms, and 1,618 acres of "improved land" in Emery County, which at that time included the areas that would later become Grand and Carbon counties. In August the Emery LDS Stake was established with Christian G. Larsen as president, thereby giving the Emery County settlements ecclesiastical as well as political independence from the Sanpete motherland.

The early settlers were typically second-generation Utahns who had grown up to find the available land and water in their home regions already claimed. There were also several older men and women, experienced pioneers who had helped establish earlier communities. A majority of colonists came from Sanpete County, and Lowry Nelson noted that Emery County provided for Sanpete communities "an economic release of prime importance."23 But many were drawn from other places. Indeed, the early history of Emery County suggests that there was a high degree of mobility in nineteenth-century Utah, with some families changing their residence every few years in response to church assignments or in search of better opportunities. A large proportion of Ferron colonists came from American Fork. Although most Huntington settlers came from Fairview, Moroni, or Fountain Green, the community also attracted people from literally every quarter of Utah, from Grouse Creek to Pine Valley and from Randolph to Bluff. The early Cleveland population was composed of Sanpete Danes, English, Welsh, and Scottish coal miners from Scofield, and Icelanders from Spanish Fork.

Castle Valley was among the first areas in Utah to be occupied under provisions of the homestead laws, which required claimants to live on their farms for several years. But the homestead system, designed for the Midwest, was poorly suited to the arid Colorado Plateau. The rectangular grid survey used to allocate property did not take into account the necessity of aligning irrigation systems to the natural contours of the land. Moreover, the 160 acres available to a homesteader represented in most instances more land than could be

22 "An Act Creating Emery County," Chapter TV, and "An Act Providing for the Organization of San Juan County, and Changing the Boundaries of Emery County," Chapter IX of Laws of the Territory of Utah, Passed at the Twenty-fourth Session of the Legislative Assembly (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Printing and Publishing Establishment, 1880), pp. 4-5, 10; see also James B. Allen, "The Evolution of County Boundaries in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 23 (1955): 273-74.

23 Lowry Nelson, In the Direction of His Dreams: Memoirs (New York: Philosophical Library, 1985), p

effectively cultivated by a single family The dispersed rural settlement pattern fostered by the homestead system also ran counter to the Mormon emphasis on the social, religious, and educational advantages of living in compact communities.

When LDS officials Erastus Snow, Brigham Young,Jr., and Francis M. Lyman visited the county in August 1880, they expressed concern at the "scattered condition" in which they found the homesteaders. Lyman wrote, "I have made diligent inquiry for two days to find the County seat of Emery County, known by the name of Castledale, and it is so scattered up and down the Cottonwood, that it is very difficult to tell which is the centre of gravitation. Every man has located upon his quarter section."24 The church leaders counseled colonists "to settle as soon as possible in a town, to build school and meeting houses, to establish schools, and to hold their meetings regularly."25

In accordance with these instructions, the Orangeville, Castle Dale, Huntington, and Ferron townsites were laid out before the end of the year. The two settlements on Cottonwood Creek were known as Upper Castle Dale and Lower Castle Dale until 1882, when Upper Castle Dale was named Orangeville in honor of Orange Seely.26 This designation was somewhat anomalous in that Seely was a resident of the lower settlement, and the Castle Dale post office had originally been established by John K. Reid at the upper settlement. Most colonists moved into the towns after they had proved up on their homesteads. Some families, however, chose to make permanent homes on their farms This was especially true at Ferron, where about one-third of the residents remained on their farms, and at Cleveland (platted in 1892), where fewer than half resided in the village.

The first settlers took up land near the creeks, where the soil was of relatively good quality and easy to irrigate Those who came later claimed homesteads on the benchlands and found it necessary to construct longer canals diverted higher on the streams Before the town of Emery could be established in 1888, the colonists had to build a canal for four miles along the base of the mountain, including a long tunnel through an obstructing hill, in order to bring the waters of Muddy Creek onto the bench. The founders of Cleveland were compelled to haul water for domestic use for four years while they labored 24 F M Lyman, Letter to the Editor, Deseret Evening News, August 28, 1880 25 Ibid 26 McElprang, Castle Valley, p. 69.

to complete a sixteen-mile canal. These and other irrigation developments provided for an expansion of cultivated land to 13,347 acres on 266 farms by 1890 and 25,918 acres on 458 farms by 1900.27 Relatively few Castle Valley homesteaders kept the entire 160 acres to which they were entitled. In most instances, individuals took up homesteads with the intention of dividing them with relatives or selling a portion of the land to later-arriving settlers The average farm size in 1900 was less than sixty cultivated acres

The period from 1880 to 1900 saw the development of Emery County from a frontier subsistence way of life to a more fully developed economy based on farming and stockraising supplemented by coal mining and supporting a wider range of occupational activities. As Allan Kent Powell has noted, the 1880 census listed only eight occupations in the county, with 94 percent of the men identified as farmers or ranchers and a single representative in each of six other trades. By 1900 only 58 percent were listed as farmers or ranchers, and there were sixty-one different occupations, including building trades and health occupations, merchants, teachers, lawyers, hotel keepers, and

27 Compendium of the Eleventh Census, 1890 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1892), pp 402-403; Report on the Statistics ofAgriculture in the United States at the Eleventh Census, 1890 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1895), pp 189, 231; Census Reports: Population, Part I. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900 (Washington, D.C.: U S Census Office, 1901), p 391; Census Reports: Agriculture, Parti, Farms, Livestock, and Animal Products. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900 (Washington, D.C.: U.S Census Office, 1902), pp 130-31, 302

Ranch near Ferron, c. 1900. G. E. Anderson photo, courtesy Photographic Archives, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

"the ultimate occupational example of the passing frontier, a life insurance salesman."28

The isolation of the Colorado Plateau hinterland had been relieved by construction of the Rio Grande Western Railway in 1881-83. The original intent of the railroad builders was apparently to follow the Spanish Trail route from Green River to Castle Valley Junction, east of Huntington; from there, one line would run north over Soldier Summit to Salt Lake City and Ogden and another would go south over Wasatch Pass and eventually to southern California. This plan, if carried to completion, would have placed Emery County in a prominent position on a transcontinental main line. Between May and December 1881, several hundred workers graded a fifty-mile roadbed from the Green River crossing to the site of the intended junction Other construction crews were working at the same time in Salina Canyon. Then on December 23, 1881, the railroad abruptly abandoned the partially constructed roadbed and instead routed its line through the Price River Valley. Two critical factors apparently precipitated this decision: the lack of sufficient capital to build a line to California and a faulty engineering study that had underestimated the elevation of the Buckhorn divide by several hundred feet.29 It is still possible to trace the unfinished railroad grade across the face of the land and to see the remains of stone culverts, feed and water troughs for the horses, and shelters for the workers.

Emery County residents were disappointed by the railroad's change of plans and continued for several decades to hope for the building of the Wasatch Pass route. Still, the Rio Grande Western brought some substantial benefits to the region in addition to greatly improved access to the outside world. The construction crews provided a profitable cash market for the produce of Castle Valley farms. An 1898 history reported that prices for farm products during the railroad construction period were "the highest ever recorded in this valley."30 Many settlers obtained employment on the construction crews or in cutting railroad ties, earning money that was used to purchase farm equipment or build homes. The most

28 Allan Kent Powell, "Castle Valley at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century," in Powell, ed., Emery County, pp 5-6

29 Thode and Ozment, Dreams, Visions and Visionaries, pp 51, 68 30 Lever, History of Sanpete and Emery Counties, pp. 599-600.

important benefit, however, was the building up of the Green River area.

Green River was beyond the scope of the Mormon colonization plan for Castle Valley, but a few independent settlers had located on the banks of the river by 1878, and a postal station named Blake had been established on the mail route that extended from Salina, Utah, to Ouray, Colorado Most prominent among the settlers was Thomas Farrer, an English immigrant who had lived for a time at Ophir, Tooele County, and who reportedly chose Green River because he "wanted to get as far away from civilization as possible."31 The Farrer family became the community's largest landholders and dominated its commercial activity for three decades

Early attempts at agriculture were of only limited success because of the extreme variations in the river's flow, which washed away the diversion dams in the spring then left the canals high and dry in late summer. A visitor in the summer of 1880 reported that "Green River City" consisted only of "a postoffice, store, ferry, and three families."32 The area would change radically in the next few months as construction crews moved in to build the railroad bridge. The Rio Grande Western established a divisional headquarters at Green River in 1883 and erected a hotel named the Palmer House, a three-story French empire-style building with landscaped grounds By 1890, the community had grown to 375 residents.

The construction of the railroad through what was then the northern part of Emery County brought great economic and social changes. The tiny settlement of Price, which had fewer than twenty inhabitants at the time of the 1880 census, soon became the shipping point and commercial center of Castle Valley. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1890 to move the county seat from Castle Dale to Price, residents of the railroad and coal towns to the north initiated a campaign to divide the county, a goal that was accomplished with the creation of Carbon County in 1894. By 1900 Carbon County surpassed Emery County in population and was more than twice as large by 1920.

By the early years of the twentieth century, the county was approaching the practical limits of its agrarian economy. The available water supply was sufficient to irrigate only about 2 percent of the area. Extensions of the canals made possible the development of new lands and small communities at Rochester (later renamed Moore), Clawson,

and Elmo, but these gains were largely offset by the deterioration of older farmland. Several thousand acres were lost to saltgrass and alkali through the effects of irrigation on the salt-impregnated Mancos shale soils. Furthermore, as canals and laterals grew more extensive, seepage and evaporation claimed a larger share of the water before it could be put to beneficial use

The economic limits were also being reached, or exceeded, on the public lands that made up the bulk of the county's area Severe overgrazing on the Wasatch Plateau during the last two decades of the nineteenth century had reduced the carrying capacity of the range and damaged the watersheds, increasing the frequency and intensity of floods and lowering the recharge rate of underground aquifers. Streams that had once been muddy only during the spring high water period now became roily and unpalatable the year round. Wastes from bedding grounds and even sheep carcasses got into the streams

This presented a serious problem for Emery County residents, who typically dipped water for household use directly from roadside irrigation ditches Several sheepherders were arrested for "befouling

Young women in their spring dresses, Ferron, c. 1900. G. E. Anderson photo, courtesy Photographic Archives, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

the waters," but convictions were rare because the law only applied to pollution that occurred within seven miles of a town.33 Senator Thomas Kearns, defending the state's powerful woolgrower interests, declared at the height of the debate over livestock numbers, "If it be true, and scientific men tell us it is a fact, that water purifies itself within three miles, then it occurs to me that all that is necessary ... is to guard the streams against contamination from that distance."34 However, Huntington resident William Howard had anticipated and refuted that line of reasoning several months earlier in a letter to the editor of the Emery County Progress: "When we dip up a bucket of water from our town ditches to drink or cook our food in, and find sheep droppings in it, as we often do, all the science on earth cannot make us believe it is pure water."35 Further supporting evidence for Howard's position was to be found in the typhoid fever that was endemic in the county during this period, claiming several lives each year and leaving others with permanently impaired health.

The creation of the Manti National Forest in 1903, with wide support from Emery County residents, led to a decline in the number and influence of the big livestock operations that had previously dominated the range. In issuing grazing permits, the stated policy of forest supervisor A W Jensen was "to maintain the little man in their status quo and reduce stock of big owners."36 Jensen encouraged local groups to form livestock associations and to cooperate with forest officials in establishing grazing unit boundaries and regulations. Over time, forest grazing permits were restricted to those individuals who operated farms in adjacent areas, effectively eliminating the transient herds that had competed with locally owned livestock These policies helped to foster the emerging farmer-stockraiser economy in Emery County, with a typical farmer cultivating from forty to eighty acres and in addition running from a few dozen to a few hundred head of livestock on the range.

Many visible signs of the county's early history remain inscribed on the landscape. The rectangular survey can be seen in the northeast-south-west townsite grids and in the fence lines of the fields that surround each town like a patchwork quilt In contrast to this rigid geometric pattern are the free-flowing lines of the irrigation canals,

33 Emery County Progress, September 5, October 24, 1903

34 Ibid., February 20, 1904

35 Ibid., November 14, 1903

36 A. W.Jensen, "Recollections," in Albert C. T. Antrei, ed., The Other Forty-niners: A Topical History of Sanpete County, Utah, 1849-1983 (Salt Lake City: Western Epics, 1983), pp. 206-207.

whose ditchbank thickets wind across the valley and divide cultivated land from unreclaimed desert. A continuity of economic practices and community ideals with earlier-settled areas of Utah is apparent in the relatively small size of the farms and in the large blocks and wide streets of the towns. In the tradition of the Mormon farm village, each block was originally divided into four large lots, providing space for farm buildings, orchards, gardens, and cow pastures. Houses were typically situated on the corners of the blocks, giving each family three close neighbors, while farm buildings were clustered in the centers of the blocks These village farmsteads were a dominant feature of the Emery County landscape for many years. A few still remain though most were obliterated by "community beautification" zeal during the 1960s and by the rapid growth of the 1970s. Once-common farm structures that can still be seen in scattered examples include unpainted barns built of native lumber on a pole frame, corrals made of horizontal poles or vertical "winny-edge" boards, "inside-out" granaries with exposed stud walls, ramada-like cowsheds thatched with straw and supported by cedar (juniper) posts, and haypoles and stacking derricks in a variety of designs.

Regrettably few public buildings have survived from the county's early decades. Spacious brick meetinghouses were erected by the LDS wards in Ferron and Huntington during the 1890s, and the Emery Ward completed a handsome frame building in 1902 Of these, only the Emery meetinghouse was still standing in 1997. The neo-Gothic Green River Presbyterian church (1907) and Ferron Presbyterian church/school (completed in 1914) are the only other surviving religious buildings dating to the period before the First World War. The only historic school buildings still standing in 1998 are the 1909 Castle Dale public school, now used for city offices and a pioneer museum, and the 1925 North Emery High School in Huntington, which now houses mining company offices.

While communities developed in western Emery County, the boom-and-bust history of Green River passed through several phases The transfer of the railroad divisional operations to Helper in 1892 cut the community's population by half. Agriculture was limited to the few hundred acres under the Gravity Ditch and small riverside fields that could be irrigated by means of water wheels or steam-powered pumps The town's situation as an oasis amid several thousand square miles of open range and its location on the outlaw trail that ran between Robbers Roost and Browns Hole brought in a rough element

that hung out at the saloon on "the island" (an area belonging to Grand County but located on the Emery County side of the river and hence largely ignored by both counties), sometimes engaged in gunfights in the streets, and even held up a passenger train.

An oil exploration boom in 1901-02 had little lasting effect, but the "peach boom" of 1905-06 made a profound impact Inspired by developments that had sent land prices soaring in the Grand Valley area of Colorado, promoters acquired purchase options on most of the available property and initiated a sales campaign aimed largely at Colorado and the Midwest, touting Green River as a fruitgrower's paradise with mild winters and endless sunshine. The development scheme included a large diversion dam that would also provide power to pump water into a canal forty-two feet above the river level, bringing several thousand additional acres under cultivation Land was offered in ten- to twenty-acre plots surrounding a large new townsite laid out on the desert above the Gravity Ditch.

The population quadrupled from the 222 recorded in the 1900 census to more than 1,000 in 1910, including the community of Elgin on the east bank of the river. Homes and business buildings rose on the desert townsite complete with concrete sidewalks, a culinary water system, a large new school, a new wagon bridge to replace the river ferry, and plans for electric and telephone service. In 1911 Green River became the first incorporated city in the southeastern quadrant of Utah, beating out Price by two weeks. With its small residential lots and active commercial district, Green River resembled a market town in the Midwest more than it did the Mormon farm villages elsewhere in the county. Its institutions, too, were atypical for rural Utah, with a

Then: coal mine in Cedar Canyon. Charles Savage photo, USHS collections.

Presbyterian church as the community's religious center and with a social life revolving around the Masonic and Knights of Pythias lodges

The peach boom soon faded. The costly diversion dam washed out during its first season, and 25,000 newly-planted trees died for lack of water. More limited diversion works augmented by pumping allowed for replanting of the orchards, which produced their first full crop in 1915 only to find the market saturated and prices so low that "the commission men were the only ones who made any money—and the growers still owed the railroad company for freight."37 Severe temperatures the following winter killed most of the peach trees. Many newcomers who had arrived in Green River with high hopes returned in disappointment to their former homes or tried some other frontier of opportunity. There were widespread defaults and foreclosures. Businesses closed, the bank failed, and a large part of the townsite remained as unreclaimed desert

But some residents refused to give up. Under the direction of a tenacious Iowan named George Thurman, a new diversion dam was built that Thurman claimed was "as much a part of the river bed as the ledges which hold the river up in the canyons."38 Sam Wilson acquired the land under the unfinished Forty-two Foot Canal at a tax sale and developed the largest agricultural operation in Emery County. Those newcomers who stuck it out soon learned what old settlers had known for some time, that the soil and climate were not well adapted to orchard fruits but were ideal for growing melons. During the 1920s, the Wilson Produce Company shipped as many as

37 Billy Howland, "The Planting of the Seed and How It Grew," unpublished manuscript copy in Emery County History Archives, p 4, Castle Dale

Now: coal mine in Huntington Canyon. Photo courtesy of author.

38 Pearl Baker and Ruth Wilcox, "Greenriver," in McElprang, Castle Valley, p 184

350 carloads of melons per year to eastern markets.39 Even in the depths of the Great Depression, Green River melons found a profitable market Labor shortages during the Second World War led to a reduction in the acreage planted, however, and the industry has never regained its former scale Nevertheless, Green River melons are still among Utah's best-known agricultural products.

Visible signs of Green River history that remain imprinted on the land include the symmetrical arc of the diversion dam, the parallel winding courses of the Gravity Ditch and the Forty-two Foot Canal, massive water wheels, homes and business buildings erected during the peach boom, and a sequence of hotels and other tourist service businesses beginning with the designation of the Midland Trail as one of the first transcontinental highways in 1913 and continuing to recently constructed facilities to serve the thousands of travelers who pass through the area each day on Interstate 70

The story of Emery County during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century is representative in some respects of what was happening throughout rural Utah and indeed much of rural America. Population growth slowed and then stopped For the next two decades, population would deviate little from the 1920 figure of 7,411 as almost the entire natural population increase was exported to other areas, primarily to the growing cities of the Wasatch Front or southern California. The market for agricultural products was generally strong in the first two decades of the century but declined sharply in the early 1920s A partial recovery in the latter years of that decade was followed by the more drastic collapse of the 1930s, exacerbated in Emery County, as in most of the American West, by severe droughts in 1931 and 1934.

Coal demand followed a similar trend as production from the Carbon County mines grew from about one million tons in 1900 to 5.3 million in 1920, fell to 3.6 million the next year, recovered to 4.6 million by the end of the 1920s, and sank to a low of 2.1 million tons in 1934.40 The Emery County coal camp of Mohrland, established in 1910, reached its peak in the early 1920s, when it consisted of "about two hundred modern dwelling houses, a store, post office, hospital, church, hotel, theater, and amusement hall."41 Mohrland was closed

39 Baker and Wilcox, "Greenriver," p 191;Laura L Acerson, "Green River Melon Days," typescript copy in Emery County History Archives, Castle Dale

40 Floyd A O'Neil, "Victims of Demand: The Vagaries of the Carbon County Coal Industry," in Carbon County: Eastern Utah's Industrialized Island, Philip F Notarianni, ed (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1981), p 27

41 Irene C O'Driscoll, "Mohrland," typescript copy in Emery County History Archives, Castle Dale

in 1938 following the decision by the United States Fuel Company to extract and process the coal on the other side of the mountain at Hiawatha Every structure was dismantled or moved, leaving only concrete foundations, sidewalks, and refuse heaps to mark the sites of the community center at the mouth of Cedar Creek Canyon and of the several ethnic neighborhoods that had extended up the canyon toward the mine portal.

Emery County was among the hardest-hit regions in one of the hardest-hit states during the Great Depression, because prices for the products of basic industries such as agriculture and mining declined more drastically than prices of manufactured goods.42 Recurrent droughts exacerbated the general economic distress. At the depth of the depression, four out of ten Emery County families were receiving public assistance.43 And yet a certain buoyancy of spirit persisted in the face of hard times An example appears in a report from the Cleveland correspondent to the Emery County Progress during the impoverished summer of 1934: "Our farmers have found that they can raise a crop of whiskers without water, so they are making good use of their opportunity. It seems that all other crops are failing this year."44

The Wilberg Resort, located midway between Huntington and Castle Dale, prospered throughout the depression with crowds of several hundred attending weekend dances. Remains of the large dance floor can still be seen in a verdant hilltop grove, and elderly residents speak fondly of romantic summer nights under the stars. Also vivid are memories of the Prohibition era, which extended through the 1920s and into the 1930s but which seemed to have little impact on the availability of alcoholic beverages. Wine and sake could always be found in the ethnic neighborhoods of Mohrland. Several bootleg whiskey stills reportedly operated at remote springs or pools in the San Rafael country, and the necessary ingredients for home-brewed beer could be purchased at any grocery store According to one recollection of the period, on dance nights at Wilberg, "you only had to walk along the road between the long rows of parked cars, and someone would come up to you and ask if you were looking for a drink. The price was a dollar a pint; it never changed.'"45

42 See Brian Q Cannon "Against Great Odds: Challenges in Utah's Marginal Agricultural Areas, 1925-39," Utah Historical Quarterly 54 (1986): 321; R Thomas Quinn, "Out of the Depression's Depths: Henry H Blood's First Year as Governor," Utah Historical Quarterly 54 (1986): 217

43 Emery County Progress, October 23, 1936.

44 Ibid.,July 6, 1934

45 Owen McClenahan, "Days of Prohibition," in Emery County History Archives, Castle Dale

Many evidences of depression-relief public works projects are still visible in the Emery County landscape. Civilian Conservation Corps companies based at Ferron, Castle Dale, and Green River built roads and bridges that provided much improved access to the forest and to the San Rafael Swell. The "CCs" also constructed campgrounds, fish ponds, and flood-control structures, provided stock-watering facilities in the desert, fought a destructive forest fire during the drought-ravaged summer of 1934, and provided husbands for numerous local women. Other government programs paved highways, built manual arts buildings for the high schools, funded water systems, and paid almost half the cost of the new Emery County Courthouse erected in 1939. Self-help efforts during this period included a cooperative coal mine, several projects for growing and preserving food, and a surprising renewal of the county's housing stock. Many "depression homes," built with an outlay of only a few hundred dollars combined with ingenious bartering of goods and services, remain as comfortable and attractive additions to their communities.

A significant development of the period was the 1934 passage of the Taylor Grazing Act, which introduced rules for the use of federal lands outside the national forests. In view of the tensions in recent decades between rural residents and federal land managers, it is worth remembering that there was widespread support in Emery County and the state for regulation of the public lands, largely because of concerns about transient herds that competed with locally owned livestock.

The Second World War affected Emery County much as it did other regions of the state and the nation. On the home front, many people left the area for jobs in war industries on the Wasatch Front or the Pacific Coast. Others found full employment and more in the coal mines, often "batching" in dormitories at Carbon County camps dur-

Light pole and bandstand, Wilberg Resort.

ing the week and on weekends trying to make it home on rationed tires and rationed gasoline. Emery County played a small role in the relocation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast when several families were brought to Green River to grow sugar beets in 1942 and others occupied old CCC barracks at the Dog Valley mine south of Emery where they produced coal for the large internment camp at Topaz.

In 1942 the Defense Plant Corporation began developing a mine at Horse Canyon in the Tavaputs Plateau to supply coking coal for the Geneva Steel Plant The Horse Canyon mine, which had a peak employment of about 800, was located in Emery County, but Dragerton, the town built to house the workers, was several miles away in Carbon County. The Emery County "wagon mines," which had formerly served only local fuel needs, also felt the impact of wartime demand combined with improved highways and trucks that made it feasible to reach outside markets Fourteen mines operated in Huntington Canyon under an informal cooperative marketing agreement in which one company would obtain a large contract and other mines would assist in meeting the delivery schedule and would then be paid by the contracting company. One mine operator reported that to the best of his knowledge not a single dispute ever arose from these complicated arrangements.

46

Many families who left the county during the war never returned; the 1940 population of 7,072 had fallen to 6,304 by 1950 Then, in the 1950s, the uranium rush brought a temporary economic stimulus to the county, as it did to much of the Colorado Plateau. Temple Mountain, on the southeastern fringe of the San Rafael Swell, where radioactive ore had first been mined during the radium boom in the

San Rafael suspension bridge, built by the CCC. Photos courtesyof author.

46 Vernon Leamaster, "Leamaster Coal Company" (February 1994), typescript copy in Emery County History Archives, Castle Dale

early years of the century, yielded 1.29 million pounds of uranium oxide between 1948 and 1956.47

In Castle Valley, the traditional Easter outing to the San Rafael was converted into a "Uranium-Easter" celebration. Dozens of amateur prospectors scrambled up and down ledges with Geiger counters or, if they lacked such devices, brought promising chunks of rock to be checked by Castle Dale druggist L. T. Hunter, who kept ore samples on display in his store window. Many uranium deposits were located, but most were too small for profitable development. A few county residents, however, "struck it rich" in a modest way Owen McClenahan of Castle Dale recalled a visit to the Lucky Strike mine, which had been discovered by a group of prospectors from Ferron:

The men were over 60 years of age, and they were all doing their own mining Two men were breaking the ore with sledge hammers, one was loading the truck, and the other was doing the drilling and loading the holes For a long time their ore ran over 1% at the mill I never heard how much they made, but it wasn't long until they were riding around in Buicks and Lincolns.48

A decline in the uranium, coal, and other extractive industries left the entire Colorado Plateau as a depressed area in the 1960s. In 1968 Congress established the Four Corners Regional Commission with the objective of diversifying the region's economy and reducing a "job gap" estimated at 137,000.49 This experiment in regional economic planning had only a modest effect on Emery County, but other federal activities made a significant impact on the county's landscape, economy, and quality of life. For instance, the Emery County Project (1963-66), a participating unit in the Upper Colorado Reclamation Project, and the Ferron Watershed Project (1965-71) brought improved efficiency to the management of the water supply and for the first time allowed storage of water from one season to another. The projects' storage units, the Joe's Valley, Huntington North, and Mill Site reservoirs, became popular recreation facilities. In 1963 the Army established the Utah Launch Complex near Green River, where it assembled, tested, and launched Athena and Pershing missiles that landed at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The "missile

47 Daniel K. Newsome and Betsy L. Tipps, "Cultural Resource Reconnaissance and Evaluation in the Temple Mountain and Tomisch Butte Mining Areas, Emery County, Utah," Cultural Resources Report 5011-01-9311 (Antiquities Section, Utah Division of State History, and Moab District, Bureau of Land Management, 1993), pp 9-11

48 Owen McClenahan, "Uranium Mining in the Colorado Plateau," p 12, unpublished manuscript used by permission of the author.

49 "Four Corners Regional Economic Plan Proposal" (Provo: Center for Business and Economic Research, Brigham Young University, 1971)

base," as it was popularly called, employed more than 500 workers at its peak in 1965, raised the population of Green River to a historic high of almost 2,000, and stimulated the building of new residential subdivisions, schools, and churches. With the reduction and eventual cessation of activity at the launch complex by 1979, the population fell again. This decline was partly offset, however, by the new economic stimulus of Interstate 70, begun in 1963 and opened to traffic in 1970

When 1957 legislation added one thousand additional miles to the original 40,000-mile interstate highway system, Utah officials proposed that part of the added mileage be devoted to a new highway connecting Denver with the Wasatch Front metropolitan area However, federal highway officials decided that the new route should go more directly west from Denver and connect with Interstate 15 at Cove Fort. This plan was decried by the Salt Lake Tribune as a "superhighway [that] goes nowhere" but was welcomed in Emery County as a long-overdue recognition of the natural advantages of the Wasatch Pass route.50

As initially proposed, the interstate would have followed the approximate course of the Old Spanish Trail through Emery County, bringing it close to most of the towns. The route was later altered, however, to cut directly across the San Rafael Swell. This meant that only Green River, situated at one end of what is still the longest stretch without services on the entire interstate highway system, would benefit directly from 1-70 traffic. However, the highway construction, like the major water projects, provided several years of employment for Emery County workers. Interstate 70 also provided easy access for the first time to the interior of the San Rafael Swell, leading to greatly increased public awareness of this remarkable region

Despite these developments, the county's population continued to decline, falling to 5,137 in 1970. The median age, which had been below twenty-one throughout most of the county's history, had risen to twenty-eight, and between 1940 and 1970 the proportion of residents over the age of sixty-five more than doubled. The Ferron-Emery region was especially hard-hit, losing almost half of its population and reaching an exceptionally high median age of 33.5 in 1970. The town of Emery, which had 705 residents in 1940, had only 216 in 1970. That year, Emery County ranked twenty-fifth among the state's twenty-nine counties in average family income.

~ M Salt Lake Tribune, October 21, 1957.

Clockwisefrom bottom: South Main Street, Huntington: cabin infoe's Valley (USHS collections); Green River Opera House (courtesy of Marriott Library, University of Utah); Green River Presbyterian Church, erected 1907; Frank Young House, c. 1895, Huntington; water wheel at Hastings ranch, Green River, still used to irrigate riverside land-the first water wheel was reportedly installed here in 1880. (Photoscourtesy of author.)

Emery County was propelled to the next stage of its history by the international "energy crisis" of the early 1970s. Price increases and production restrictions by petroleum-exporting nations led to widespread fears of an imminent exhaustion of the world's oil reserves and a consequent scramble to develop alternative energy sources Coal, which had been losing its traditional markets to oil and natural gas for decades, was once again in demand. Shirl C. McArthur had foreseen a bright future in coal mining even when the industry was at a low ebb during the early 1960s. Confident that the county's coal reserves could be economically developed, the McArthurs mortgaged their home to establish Castle Valley Mining Company and helped to persuade Utah Power and Light to build coal-fired generating facilities in the county.

UP&L began construction on the Huntington Canyon Plant in January 1972, and the 430,000-kilowatt first unit went online in July 1974 A second unit was completed in 1977 The first unit of the Hunter Plant, located near Castle Dale, was completed in 1978. Units two and three followed in 1980 and 1983. In addition to these massive industrial structures, the Emery County landscape was altered by construction of Electric Lake, a 32,000-acre-foot reservoir in upper Huntington Canyon completed in 1973, and by development of coal mines on a much larger scale than ever before.

Within a short time, the county was transformed from a highunemployment area to a magnet for workers By 1977 the county's average per capita income was the highest in the state, almost 20 percent above second-place Summit County.51 The population grew by 155 percent between 1970 and 1983, from 5,137 to 13,100. In addition, numerous workers commuted to Emery Countyjobs from homes in Carbon and Sanpete counties.

At the beginning of the boom, the county's infrastructure was poorly equipped to accommodate the influx of new residents. Available rental housing was quickly occupied despite a rapid escalation of rents for even substandard units. Mobile home parks were hurriedly opened and almost immediately filled, leaving incoming workers to park mobile homes, travel trailers, and campers on vacant lots or alongside existing homes. By late 1973, Huntington had more mobile homes than houses. Many construction workers lived in campers or tents in Huntington Canyon, often discharging their wastes directly into the creek New annexations almost doubled the

51 Emery County Progress-Leader, April 27, 1978

area of Castle Dale, Orangeville, and Ferron, and residential growth sprawled beyond the towns into unincorporated areas of the county. Land that had sold for less than $100 per acre during the 1960s was priced as high as $7,500 per acre in 1974. Some families began constructing homes without an assured water supply Others, unfamiliar with the peculiar qualities of Mancos shale soil, built on wet or unstable ground

Law enforcement agencies accustomed to a quiet rural population were unprepared for the influx of construction workers and a crime rate that soared to twice that of neighboring Sanpete County. On one occasion, county commissioners were pressed into service to guardjail prisoners in order to give overworked sheriff's officers a few hours of rest The county became increasingly plagued with "big city" crimes, including a bank robbery in 1979 during which two local women were killed In addition, Interstate 70 gained a reputation as a major artery in the transportation of illegal drugs, and drug traffickers also took advantage of remote, uranium-era airstrips in the San Rafael Swell. In 1983, sheriff's officers and federal drug agents seized an airplane, loaded with 12.7 tons of marijuana, that had landed at Temple Mountain

The strains of rapid growth were felt most painfully by the towns. Culinary water systems had been barely sufficient for the pre-boom population. Sewer systems, where they existed at all, provided little or no treatment of sewage and were out of compliance with health and environmental regulations. Yet because the industrial installations were located in unincorporated areas, the immense growth in the county's assessed valuation was of little benefit to town governments The plight of the towns was addressed with the formation of the Castle Valley Special Service District in 1976 Over the next several years, the CVSSD financed new sewer systems, culinary water and pressurized irrigation systems, and the paving of many miles of streets. In addition, county government increased its involvement in providing municipaltype services, establishing a centralized landfill, building and equipping fire stations, providing ambulance and emergency medical technician services, and constructing new libraries.

School enrollments doubled, from 1,732 students in 1974 to 3,589 in 1982 Almost two-thirds of the students were in the elementary grades, reflecting the high proportion of young families. To accommodate this growth and replace outdated facilities, the school district built new schools and expanded others. The county's churches

experienced a similar growth By 1981, the historic Emery LDS Stake with its eight wards had expanded to three stakes and seventeen wards. In addition, Catholics, Baptists, Assemblies of God, and several nondenominational religious groups formed new congregations in the county.

By the early 1980s, however, the oil embargo of the early 1970s was only a memory. Moreover, a national economic slump had reduced the demand for industrial energy. The boom's end was almost as abrupt and unsettling as its beginning Mine layoffs between March 1982 and July 1983 cost more than 1,100 Emery County workers their jobs. Construction employment on the third unit of the Hunter Plant, which peaked at 1,200 in November 1982, fell to 650 by April 1983 and only a skeleton staff byJuly. Then, in April 1983, the Thistle landslide severed the main transportation arteries linking southeastern Utah with the Wasatch Front and halted rail shipments of coal to West Coast ports Other mudslides from that exceptionally wet winter blocked alternate routes for several days at a time. Utah coal production fell from seventeen million tons in 1982 to eleven million in 1983.

Nineteen-eighty-four began with a fire in the Beehive Mine that idled 165 workers. By May, coal mining employment in the county was down to 550 from a high of 2,426 only a few years earlier. An estimated thirty percent of housing units in Ferron, Orangeville, and Castle Dale were vacant. Many businesses shut their doors, and mortgage foreclosure notices filled the legal pages of the local newspaper. A painful year ended with the greatest disaster in the county's history when a fire in the Wilberg Mine on December 19 killed twenty-seven workers. The magnitude of the disaster and the drama of the rescue efforts attracted national and international attention, and network television news programs for several days included scenes of the wintry Emery County landscape with smoke billowing from the Wilberg portal. A particularly poignant moment was the memorial service held on December 26 in the spacious new auditorium at Emery High School— the building's ambitious scale a visible symbol of the heady optimism of a boom period that was now definitely at an end

By the end of the 1980s, however, retrenchment and partial recovery had brought the county's economy to a relatively steady state. Technological advances enabled coal production to increase with a smaller workforce Utah Power's Emery County mines had already been among the most efficient underground operations in the nation

in 1980, but output per miner-day doubled between 1980 and 1988 The 1990s brought further reductions in mining and power plant employment However, maintenance, repair, and construction work in support of these major industries provided a sizeable number of additional jobs, many of them in locally owned enterprises. The 1990 census found a median household income of $30,525 in Emery County, above the state average and substantially higher than income in neighboring counties

A lasting benefit from the energy boom was the rejuvenation of the population Indeed, the 1990 census found that Emery County was the youngest county in Utah and the third-youngest in the nation. Forty-nine percent of the households were composed of marriedcouple families with children under the age of eighteen, compared to the national average of 26.7 percent.52

The traditional mainstays of farming and stockraising have become relatively minor factors in the county's economy. Not only did most of the village farmsteads disappear during the boom, replaced by new houses and trailer courts, but much farm land was subdivided into the ten-acre lots required by county zoning ordinances The intent of these ordinances was to discourage residential sprawl, but the ultimate effect was the creation of numerous plots that were larger than necessary for residential purposes but too small to be viable farms. The 718 farms reported in the 1954 census of agriculture had shrunk to 420 by 1992, only 348 of which harvested any crops More significantly, only 126 county residents reported a primary employment in agriculture in 1990, compared with more than 400 in 1960 Nevertheless, farming and stockraising still have a cultural value for many residents, who hold onto their family farms even though they provide little economic return. The county's agrarian heritage is celebrated in the annual Castle Valley Pageant with its covered wagons and flamboyant exhibitions of

horsemanship

Emery County residents not only cherish their rural heritage but also place a high value on easy access to both the Wasatch Plateau and the San Rafael Swell Local people tend to read their own and their families' history in these public lands. They return year after year to the same mountain campsites or take their Easter excursions to the same favorite destinations in the San Rafael. They show their children and grandchildren where a pioneer ancestor scratched his name on a

rock or where a sheepherding great-uncle carved an inscription in the smooth white bark of a quaking aspen The trails where the family's cattle were once driven to the summer range on the mountain or the winter range in the desert, the forest clearing where a relative once operated a sawmill, the ledge where grandpa almost struck it rich during the uranium boom: all have deep personal meaning.

In an essay on the central and eastern Utah hinterland, Wallace Stegner remarked on "the aloofness with which this country greeted human intrusion" and "the effect it has had on its settlers. The plateaus remain aloof and almost uninhabited, but the valleys are a collaboration between land and people, and each has changed the other."53 That collaborative effort continues as history is still being written on the Emery County landscape It is a history representative of land use and abuse in the Colorado Plateau region; representative of the ups and downs of local economies that are dependent on extractive industries; representative, too, of the persistence of an agrarian ideal in a place only marginally suitable for agriculture and of the persistence of a village-based society in an era dominated by the impersonal scale of urban life.

But it is also a unique history of a unique place—as all places are unique. Essayist Scott Russell Sanders has argued that instead of such generalizing abstractions and false metaphors as "the global village" we need to develop "a richer vocabulary of place." "The earth needs fewer tourists and more inhabitants, . . . people committed to knowing and tending their home ground." Nor is this a call for a return to provincial narrowness and isolation, for "every thread you discover in the local web of life leads beyond your place to life elsewhere."54 For lifelong residents of Emery County, for many who first came during the boom years and developed a lasting attachment, and for many native-born whose lives have carried them to other areas, this distinctive landscape at the edge of the Colorado Plateau hinterland will always be "home ground."

53 Wallace Stegner, "High Plateaus," in Wallace Stegner and Page Stegner, American Places (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1983), p 128

54 Scott Russell Sanders, "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America," in Writing from the Center (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 17-19.

Remembering Park City's Great Fire

BY DAVID HAMPSHIRE

FIRES HAVE HELPED DEFINE PARK CITY in much the way they have helped define Yellowstone National Park The town's history has been punctuated by savage conflagrations that have cleansed the town of its older structures in frenzied destructive bursts.

Many current residents remember the searing blaze that demol-

David Hampshire, former director of the Park City Museum, is co-author of the Summit County centennial history He has also served on the Park City Historic District Commission Park City fire, courtesy of Leland Paxton and Park City Museum. Park City miners, USHS collections.

ished the majestic old Silver King Coalition ore-loading station on Park Avenue in 1981. Some still recall the frightening fire that took out half a city block on the west side of Main Street in 1973. With wood-frame structures built shoulder to shoulder in a narrow canyon, Park City's mining-camp muddle has always been an invitation to disaster. Under the right conditions, flames can dance from building to building, mocking the feeble efforts of fire crews to control them.

And the conditions were right on June 19, 1898. According to the Park Record, Park City's weekly newspaper, a stiff breeze was blowing from the south that morning when a policeman sounded the alarm.

Bang! Bang!! Bang!!! Three pistol shots fired by Policeman Walden at 4 o'clock Sunday morning last, sounded the death knell of Park City's happiness and contentment A few heart-rending shrieks from the whistle at the Marsac mill and a drowsy community was aroused to witness a sight that caused stout-hearted men to stand paralyzed, women to faint and children to scream with fear.1

Fire had broken out at the American Hotel on the east side of upper Main Street.2 The Salt Lake Herald later suggested, without much evidence, that someone using coal oil to start the kitchen stove may have triggered the blaze. However, the hotel proprietor told the Salt Lake Tribune that he thought a drunken lodger may have kicked over a lamp.

As Park City's volunteer firefighters scrambled from their beds, flames quickly shot through the roof and rode the winds down the street to the adjacent buildings.John Funk's barber shop, the Bates & Kimball drugstore, and the Judge, Ivers and Keith stable were quickly enveloped.

At that time the stable had the contract to haul ore from the Silver King Mine, in the mountains west of town, to the Union Pacific Depot at the bottom of Main Street. It was a big operation; there were more than 100 horses in the stable when the fire broke out "Horses were whinnying, men shouting, whistles screeching," the Salt Lake Tribune reported. "The spectacle as the first shafts of approaching day shot athwart the eastern hills was appalling."3 The stable lost all its harnesses and ore wagons, along with forty tons of oats and eight tons of hay Fortunately, all but seven horses were rescued

1 Park Record, June 25, 1898

2 On the site of the present Prothro Building

3 Salt Lake Tribune, June 20, 1898

By this time, local residents, realizing that their own well-being was in jeopardy, had begun spilling into the street. Some were barefoot, still in their nightclothes. Others had grabbed the first pieces of clothing within reach.

"When we looked out of the window, we saw it was a big fire and not very far off," said the diary of nine-year-old Edna Sutton whose father ran a local butcher shop. "Allie hurried and went to help. Aunt Cora and Ma hurried and dressed. It kept coming nearer. Aunt Annie and Aunt Maud came running down The folks kept running by and saying one building after another was going. Allie, Uncle Dave and Uncle Lynn said the shop and house would sur[e]ly go. The[y] got the team and put in our trunks, piano and curtains. While they went with the things, Uncle Lynn took up the carpets."4

George Hall, proprietor of the Park City Hotel on the west side of Main Street, also scrambled to salvage some of his family's possessions, along with furniture and bedding from the hotel, and move

Main Street in 1890, showing many of the buildings that would burn in 1898. USHS collections.

4 Diary of Edna Sutton, MS, Utah State Historical Society Edna's parents, William and Susie Sutton, started a diary on her behalf at the time of her birth in 1888 This entry, along with the others in the early years of Edna's life, was written by an adult, possibly her mother The Suttons also kept a similar diary for Edna's older brother, Willie

them to the Kimball house, a large two-story structure on lower Park Avenue.

Many others followed this example, dragging their possessions out into the street But few had the luxury of horse and wagon to carry them to safety

"Hundreds of men and women, too, worked with desperation to save their belongings," the Park Record reported, "but nearly everything that was taken into the street was quickly consumed in the fierce •-».«. heat and blaze that was driven through town with an intensity that resembled the flame from the end of a blowpipe."5

Relentlessly, the fire swept on down the street, consuming building after building. It gutted the Grand Opera House, an elegant three-story brick building designed by Salt Lake City architect J.A Headlund that I had been open only about a year The winds also veered in both directions, carrying the flames east into Chinatown—in the area now known | as Swede Alley—and west to the other side of Main Street. From Chinatown the flames raced up into * the cluster of miners' cabins on Rossie Hill (which the Tribune reporter spelled phonetically as "Raw Chill").

A.M. the flames had burned through the block on the west side of Main Street, reaching Park Avenue, which was home to the city's churches and "the aristocratic portion of Park City's population," to use the Tribune's words

By 5

"Then the whole gulch in which the business district is located was a river of flame. Fire brands were being swished through the air for hundreds and hundreds of feet and dropping among the inflammable material around the buildings, stables and outhouses," wrote the Park Record reporter.

There was good water pressure in the city's mains, according to

Park City firemen at work. USHS collections.

the Park Record. However, the volunteer fire crews, armed with little more than a few hose carts and a hook-and-ladder truck, were no match for the flames. They tried to create firebreaks by demolishing buildings with "giant" (blasting) powder but with little success.

"Again and again the buildings were blown up by giant powder to create a gap over which the fire would not leap," the Salt Lake Herald reported, "but the demon only laughed at the puny effort and reached out its reddened tongue further to destroy."6

Along Park Avenue, citizens tried to make a stand. One of those was the town doctor, E.R LeCompte, whose heroic efforts were described by the Tribune:

Doctor Le Compte, in a determined effort to cheat the flames of his pretty home, toward which they were rapaciously advancing, had an adventure that was almost satanic. With his lawn hose he persisted in playing upon his dwelling while a neighbor kept him drenched with buckets of water Now and then a flame reached him, but not until he began to remove his clothes and search for a fresh suit did he learn that in the fight with the flames the tails of his coat had been burned to a crisp, that his shoulderblades were exposed and that a pair of new trousers were necessary to prevent an arrest for undue exposure. The doctor lost his clothes, but after as game a fight as was put up by any man engaged in it, saved his home from all but a thorough drenching and a terrific roast.7

The Park Record ran a sketch of "Dr. LeCompte After The Battle," with wisps of smoke hovering around him like a swarm of bees, his coat hanging in tatters from his back

The most conspicuous building to survive the blaze was the Marsac Mill, a large multi-story building directly east of Main Street that processed ore from the silver mines. Three or four times it was ignited by the flames, only to be doused by water from hoses manned by the mill's own employees.

Park City's telephone link to the outside world was severed when the flames demolished the First National Bank building, where the switchboard was located. However, the telegraph link remained intact at the Union Pacific depot at the bottom of Main Street. Three hours after the blaze started, Park City Fire Chief James Berry used the telegraph to appeal to his counterparts in Salt Lake City and Ogden.

"Dr. LeCompte After the Battle. "From the Park Record.

"Send us some help to put out fire here. The city is burning," said a dispatch that arrived at the Ogden fire station shortly after 7 A.M.8 About an hour later, special trains left Salt Lake City and Ogden, carrying men and equipment to fight the fire. Unfortunately, by the time they arrived, there was little to do except soak down the smoldering ruins.

"FLAMES DESTROY PARK CITY. The Greatest Blaze That has Ever Occurred in the History of Utah," blared the lead story in the Salt Lake Tribune the following day For the moment, the SpanishAmerican War exploits of Admiral George Dewey and Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt were relegated to the inside pages.

The fire had wiped out virtually the entire business district, from Heber Avenue on the north to Fifth Street on the south. 9 A front-page sketch in the Tribune onJune 21 showed a scene of surreal devastation. The block between Main Street and Park Avenue was leveled, with John Harwood's concrete house the only survivor in a landscape of blackened rubble. East of Main Street, the Marsac Mill stood alone in the smoking ruins.

The Suttons lost both their home and their shop. "The only thing that they got out of the shop that was worth anything was the marble slab of the counter," said the diary of Edna Sutton's older brother, Willie. "They saved a little meat and a few hams. Our things were stored in the small house back of the Kimball house."10 Park Record editor Sam Raddon also lost his house and his Main Street building, including the newspaper's files dating back to its inception in 1880.

Ruins. Large building may be the Opera House. George Beard photo, courtesy of Photographic Archives, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

8 Salt Lake Herald, op cit

9 Fifth Street was later renamed Third Street and now survives as a set of public stairs immediately north of the present Treasure Mountain Inn

10 Diary of Willie Sutton, MS, Utah State Historical Society

The Tribune, the Herald, and the Park Record each ran an inventory of the buildings lost in the fire, along with their estimated value: about 200 buildings, with a value of about $1 million, had been burned. Among the casualties were five churches, two opera houses, two bank buildings, the city hall, and numerous retail shops and saloons. One church—St. Mary's of the Assumption Catholic church—survived, thanks to its location beyond the southern perimeter of the fire.

An Ogden firefighter found a moment of humor among the devastation, recalling for the benefit of the Salt Lake Tribune this encounter with a Park City resident: "I was quite amused at a fellow Irishman who happened on the scene during my stay at the Park He sized me up for an instant and, concluding that I was of his own nationality, he said: 'Well, well, the Mormon church is gone, the Methodist church is gone and the Episcopal church is gone, while the Roman Catholic church still stands; sure the Lord was with us in this, our hour of need.'"

Miraculously, no one died in the blaze. However, in addition to the seven horses, the flames immolated several family pets, including "Duke," a St. Bernard locked in the Bates & Kimball drugstore. The Tribune estimated that at least 1,500 people were left homeless by the fire. "The doors of every dwelling that survived the cruel flames have been thrown open to all alike; the awful misfortune has wiped out all caste and leveled all ranks Tents and other structures have been improvised; others have found rest in a roll of blankets upon the loose earth, but all have found rest in whatever rugged form it came."

A messenger set out on horseback to notify Mayor J.H. Deming, who was in the Strawberry Valley, fishing, while Park City burned As the assistant cashier for the First National Bank and an insurance agent with policies on a number of Park City buildings, Deming was much in demand. He returned to town about 3 A.M. the following day. Unfortunately, insurance covered only about 10 percent of the losses, according to calculations made by the Salt Lake Tribune and the Salt Lake Herald. One of the costliest losses was the Grand Opera House, valued at $50,000. It was insured for only $5,000—and the policy reportedly had lapsed the day before the fire!

Would Park City ever recover? At one point it would have been blasphemy to ask that question. The discovery of a rich vein of silver in Ontario Canyon in 1872 had touched off two decades of wild opti-

mism and explosive growth for Park City. For a time, the mining camp's potential seemed unlimited. However, the collapse of silver prices in the early 1890s had cast a cloud over silver-mining districts across the West.

"As the price of silver kept going down, it soon wiped out the profit of mining, and in the summer of 1897 the big mines which had sustained and built up the entire [Park City] district were forced to [temporarily] close down," the Tribune reported. 1 1 Many families left town to look for work elsewhere.

According to the Herald, insurance companies were turning their backs on the "once proud and prosperous mining town. . . . Recently, as fire insurance risks have been expiring, the companies have declined to renew, saying it was the intention to retire from the Park City field. All of the agencies have continued to write risks, but at stiffer rates and on a basis of shrinking values."12

In an editorial in the same issue, the Herald wondered how much of the town would be rebuilt "Aside from the great loss involved in yesterday's fire, it will have a depressing effect upon those who suffered losses and all others interested in the town directly. With business so slow as it is now, there will be a disinclination to build again."

11 Salt Lake Tribune, January 1, 1899

12 Salt Lake Herald, op cit

Sketchfrom

the Salt Lake Tribune showing the extent of the destruction, looking south from the bottom of Main Street. Numbered buildings are: 1) Mar sac Mill; 2) City Hall;

3) John Harwood home;

4) Crescent Blacksmith Shop.

Remembering Park City's Great Fire 233

Gawkers swarmed into Park City from surrounding towns to view the devastation; several, including Coalville photographer George Beard, carried "Kodaks." Crews began to level the masonry walls left standing by the fire. "The toughestjob Marshal Hyde had after the fire was to shoot down [with explosives] the towering remnants of the Grand Opera House walls," the Park Record reported. "He said they were the finest specimens of good brickwork he ever saw."

On Tuesday afternoon, only two days after the fire, the whistles at the Marsac Mill sounded the alarm again. The Kimball house on lower Park Avenue, where George Hall had moved after the destruction of the Park City Hotel, was on fire. In spite of the best efforts of firefighters, the building was destroyed.

"Everything which he saved from the burning hotel on Sunday morning was placed [in the Kimball house], and included bedding, furniture and personal effects," the Salt Lake Tribune reported on June 22. "All succumbed to flames yesterday, even to thejewelry and money which Mrs. Hall had placed in her purse for safe keeping, and the saving and work of the proprietor on Sunday last counted for naught." Fortunately, the flames didn't reach the small adjacent building where the Suttons had stored their belongings.

In spite of the Salt Lake newspapers' gloomy assessment, Park City merchants wasted no time in going back to work By the day after the fire, several saloons were already operating from makeshift facili-

ties. The Suttons began selling meat from a corner of the Union Pacific depot. The Park Record never missed an issue. Editor Sam Raddon set up a tent on the paper's charred Main Street lot, and the Herald agreed to handle the printing until the new presses arrived.

Several Park City women, representing the various churches, organized a relief committee to help those who had been burned out. In the following four months they raised about $5,700 in cash and distributed about 6,700 pounds of flour, 51 tons of coal, and numerous articles of clothing In spite of the open hostility that had been directed toward Latter-day Saints in Park City, the committee included Mormons; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir also held a benefit concert for fire victims.13

By July 2, according to the Park Record, thirtyfive new buildings were under construction. In their haste to rebuild, most business owners erected wood-frame structures. Construction of the Record's new offices began on July 4; they were ready for occupancy only twelve days later. George Hall's new Park City Hotel was almost finished by the end ofJuly.

"Since the fire, which occurred one month ago Tuesday, the 19th, an average of one building a day in the business district has been erected," the Park Record said on July 23. "By the time the snow flies, Main street will boast in the neighborhood of seventy-five new buildings."

William Sutton's new butcher/grocery shop, with meeting space on the second floor for the Masons, opened about the end of August "Papa has got the shop all finished and also the Masonic Hall over it

Hosing down the ruins. George Beard photo, courtesy Photographic Archives, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

Remembering Park City's Great Fire

and it is a very nice place," said one of the Sutton diaries. "The Boy [Willie] helped to work on it until it was finished, and has been lots of help in the Grocier [sic] department. [He] can remember prices quite well."

A new opera house, also made of wood, was rushed to completion on the site of the old Judge, Ivers and Keith stable The building, with a bowling alley in the basement, was christened the Dewey Theatre after the Spanish-American War hero.

A few business owners were more deliberate. The First National Bank bought a lot on the west side of Main Street and announced plans to erect a stone and brick structure in conjunction with the Silver King Mining Company. According to the local newspaper:

The plans for the building were drawn up by Fred A. Hale, of Salt Lake, and the blue prints show a handsome and imposing front The finest red pressed brick will be used in both the front and the south side walls. A brick division wall will separate the bank from the Silver King office side of the building, and a splendid, modern, roomy,joint vault—each side being 6x8 and seven feet high inside—will intersect the division wall.14

prosperity should again return to us

Cannot accomplish very r~uch toward that restoration, but every iittle~will help, and our mite (small though it be) will contribute somewhat In making

^r*—THE TASK EASIER BY SEILING^*^~~: : GROCERIES, DR Y GOODS, ^ CLOTHING

Boots and Shoes, Furnishings,NOTIONS, BEDDING, DISHES, - • Tinware, Lamps and all Other Goods •**

Businessesfound ways to survive after the fire. Welsh, Driscolland Buck apparently took advantage of the situation; the Park Record never missed an issue, producing papersfrom a makeshift tent. Ad from £AePark Record; photo courtesy off. Paxton, Chris Stafford, and Park City Museum.

Frederic A. Hale is known as the architect of a number of distinguished structures in Salt

Is the transformation wrought by the merciless flames that attacked aJHt destroyed » large portion of our once comfortable and happy

Lake City, including the Alta Club, the David Keith building, and the David Keith mansion on South Temple.

Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company bought property on the east side of Main Street and hired architect Richard Kletting to design a two-story brick building. Kletting, the architect of several other telephone-exchange buildings in Utah and surrounding states, secured a place in Utah history by designing the first Saltair resort, a fanciful Moorish castle on the shores of the Great Salt Lake That Kletting creation burned in 1925, but another of his designs—the State Capitol—continues to stand guard over Salt Lake City today.

Frank Andrew, whose furniture store on the east side of Main Street was gutted in the fire, erected a new stone building with a brick facade The city council voted to rebuild the city hall, keeping virtually intact the Main Street facade that had survived the fire. The remains of another brick buildingjust south of the city hall were also

Interior of a Park City butcher shop. USHScollections.

incorporated into a new structure that, by 1900, housed a tailor and harness-maker.

In its New Year's edition in 1899, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that sixty-three buildings had been erected in the burned-out district.

Park City has risen phoenix-like from its ashes When on the morning of the 19th of June almost the entire business portion of the town, together with scores of dwellings, lay in smoldering ruins, it was on every tongue that Park City was a thing of the past; that the town would never be rebuilt, and that this last calamity, following the bank failure and the terrible drop in silver, was the last act in the drama of this great mining camp

But the pessimists for the moment forgot that the city is supported entirely by the great mines of precious metals hidden in the surrounding hills, and that the productive capacity of the camp was not in the slightest impaired by the terrible calamity which had ruined so many individuals in the camp. 15

The Sanborn-Perris map of 1900 shows about seventy new Main Street buildings in the area gutted by the fire Of those, all but thir-

Salt Lake Tribune, January 1, 1899

Thefacade of City Hall. George Beard photo courtesy of Photographic Archives, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

teen were wood-frame structures A few years later, this dependence on wood as a building material may have hurt Park City's bid to wrest the county courthouse away from Coalville. In the fall of 1902, Summit County residents were asked to vote on a proposal to move the county seat. In arguing against the plan, the Coalville Times questioned the wisdom of spending $50,000 or $60,000 to build a new courthouse in an area surrounded by wooden structures

It may be claimed that greater precautions will be taken. It is conceded, however, that the majority of the new buildings erected since the fire are very temporary bal[l]oon wooden structures, with less substantial permanent buildings If the town is considered so permanent, with such a bright future as is claimed by the advocates of removal [of the county seat from Coalville], why is it that the leading merchants and hotel proprietors have not erected substantial fire-proof buildings? Has not the fact that it is a mining town and the fear of a lack of permanence deter [r]ed them from making anything but temporary buildings?16

When the vote was counted in November 1902, Park City propo-

16 Coalville Times, October 31, 1902

Wooden structure under construction, Park City, 1894. Even after the fire, residents and businesses built mostly wooden buildings. USHS collections.

nents had fallen just short of the two-thirds majority needed to move the county seat. Construction on a new sandstone courthouse in Coalville began the following year. That imposing structure, with an addition built about twenty years ago, still serves the people of Summit County.

In the long term, the prevalence of hastily-built wooden structures after the fire committed Park City's Main Street to many more years of change as, one after another, the post-fire wooden buildings vanished from the landscape. One of the first to go was the Park City Hotel, which burned in July 1912. The Park Record gave credit to the city's new high-pressure water system for preventing the hotel fire from triggering a recurrence of the 1898 fire. A year later, the New Park Hotel, made of brick, was erected in its place. That building is now known as the Claimjumper Hotel.17

Then, in January 1916, the Dewey Theatre collapsed under the weight of heavy snow The collapse came about two hours after some 300 silent-movie patrons had left the building "During the entire performance, 'creaking' and 'banging' noises were heard, causing much nervousness, but none seemed to connect the unusual noises with the breaking of timbers in the building," the Park Record reported. 1 8

According to Park City historians George Thompson and Fraser Buck, the manager of the Dewey, rather than risk a panic by evacuating the building, ordered the projectionist to speed up the film, while the piano accompanist struggled to keep up. 19

The Record claimed that the building had been considered a dangerous fire-trap for a number of years. "It was poorly constructed to begin with and with changes made at different times, it was weakened, until it became a menace, and the public generally is glad that it is wrecked." The Egyptian Theatre, built of brick, opened on the same site in 1926

The Park Record's own building, reflecting the personality of its feisty editor, Sam Raddon, proved more difficult to bring down. It continued to house the newspaper's offices and plant until 1956 when Raddon's descendants sold the paper. In April 1958, groaning under the weight of about six feet of ice and snow, the old building was finally torn down.20

17 Park Record, July 13, 1912, April 5, 1913, and November 8, 1913

18 Park Record, January 21, 1916

19 George A. Thompson and Fraser Buck, Treasure Mountain Home: Park City Revisited (Salt Lake City: Dream Garden Press, 1981), p 166

20 Park Record, April 24, 1958

Above: Park City Bank before the fire. Courtesy of Nick Nass, Main Street Photographer, Park City.

Right: Bank after the fire. Courtesy ofLeland Paxton and Park City Museum.

Below: Shell of the same bank building some time after the fire. The second story has been removed,and a wooden building has been built adjacent. USHS collections.

Remembering Park City's Great Fire 241

Among a handful of 1898 post-fire wooden buildings that continue to defy the odds is Sutton's building, which still stands on the west side of Main Street across from the Post Office, a diamondshaped opening on the second floor giving a hint about its former Masonic occupants.21

On the other hand, the stone and brick buildings have suffered a kinder fate. Of the eight such structures built in the fire-ravaged area by 1900, five are still in use today.22

Of the buildings that defied the flames, the Marsac Mill soon outlived its usefulness and was demolished in 1904. A portion of its sandstone foundation still holds back the hill east of the old city hall. On the other hand, John Harwood's concrete home still stands at the corner of Park and Heber avenues. The building later served as the boyhood home of Willis W Ritter, who went on to become a federal judge in Utah known for his bristiy demeanor on the bench. Still later, it doubled as a restaurant and a house of ill-repute. Since Park City turned to skiing, the building has held several retail businesses.23

Although the people of Park City would never have admitted it, the editor of the Coalville Times was probably right. By putting their faith in flimsy wooden structures—many of them supported by the most tenuous of foundations—residents were expressing a lack of confidence in their town's future. And that attitude ultimately took a toll on Main Street Today, Park City's "historic" business district lacks the nineteenth-century authenticity of other western mining towns such as Virginia City, Nevada. The overwhelming majority of Main Street buildings date from the twentieth century, including many built in the thirty-five years since skiing replaced mining as the economic lifeblood of the town

Architects working in Park City today walk a fine line, trying to satisfy historic district guidelines that call for new buildings to pay homage to mining-era structures without replicating them. The success of this approach is open to question. Many visitors struggle to

21 The building, which includes an addition built soon after the turn of the century, is now known as the Anderson Apartments. The ground level continues to serve retail customers.

22 Frederic Hale's First National Bank/Silver King building, its vault still intact, now serves as an art gallery Richard Kletting's Rocky Mountain Telephone Exchange, its brick facade now pitted from sandblasting, houses a restaurant. Frank Andrew's furniture and hardware now houses an art gallery, a restaurant, and a gift shop The city hall continued to house the municipal offices until 1983 It was remodeled and reopened as a museum in 1984, the 100th anniversary of Park City's incorporation The brick buildingjust south of the old city hall, its south wall showing a clear line between pre-fire and postfire construction, served as the city library until 1982. It now houses a clothing store and state liquor store

23 Gary Kimball, "Strong Coffee, Cheap Sex," Park City Lodestar, Winter 1987, p 30; Raye Ringholz, "TheJury Is Still Out," Park City Lodestar, Winter 1988, p 87

identify which buildings are, in fact, historically significant and which ones are recent fabrications. Some critics say that the guidelines promote architectural chicanery, turning the business district into a caricature of itself in the pursuit of tourist dollars. Why not let new buildings reflect the architecture of their own era, critics ask, instead of some arbitrary conception of what the town may have looked like a century ago?

One hundred years after Park City burned, such questions are part of the legacy left by the Great Fire of 1898.

Allen Dahl Young: The Diary of a Prisoner of War

EDITED BY COLLEEN WHITLEY

ALLE N DAHL YOUNG WAS BORN IN SALT LAKE CITY on January 19, 1920, the same birthday, he notes, as Robert E. Lee. The oldest of six children born to Lawrence Alonzo and Louie May Dahl Young, he wasjust six weeks shy of his twenty-second birthday when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Until that December Allen had lived in Salt Lake City, taken some classes at the LDS Business College, and worked summers as a bellhop at Bryce Canyon He was finishing fall quarter at the University of

Lieutenant Allen Young in the cockpit ofhisP-51. All photos courtesy ofAllen Young.

Colleen Whitley lives in Salt Lake City and is an instructor in the Honors and English departments at Brigham Young University

Utah and later recalled, "Another fellow and I had sat together many times on the grass at the U. trying to determine whether we should go up and join the Canadian Air Force. It wasjust thirty days after that I was drafted."1

Allen joined the field artillery in January 1942. After basic training, he was assigned to duty as an instructor in a radio battery at Camp Roberts, California. He applied for pilot training but "so many men were entering the service that the Air Corps was not prepared to take us all at once." In the field artillery he realized that his trigonometry classes from the university made the gunnery problems seem simple. His commanding officer invited him to attend a preparatory Officer Candidate School which he did and liked very much. He subsequently went to OCS at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. After receiving his commission in the artillery, he was given ten days leave which he used to return to Utah and marry Betty June Fisher. The ceremony was performed by his uncle, Walter Rampton, ajustice of the peace in Farmington, Utah. He returned to service as an instructor in 155 mm howitzers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Being right next to Pope field at Fort Bragg, Allen realized again how much he wanted to fly. He was transferred to a replacement battalion in Monroe, North Carolina, which was preparing to go overseas when he received his orders to go to flight school. Successfully completing that training, he flew P-47 fighter planes, commonly known as Thunderbolts, out of Tallahassee, Florida

Taking an opportunity to volunteer for duty in Europe, Allen was transferred to California in the winter of 1943. There he became part of the 339th Fighter Group and flew maneuvers with forces being trained for the invasion of Europe.

He was subsequently transferred to Lakeland, Florida, where he

Allen and Betty Young, wedding photograph.

1 This and subsequent quotes from Allen Young in the introduction and footnotes are from his typescript notes to Colleen Whitley prepared in 1997 and in her possession

Diary of a Prisoner of War 245

flew with the Third Air Commando Group under Col. Phil Cochran, the model for Col Flip Corkin in Milt Caniff's comic strip, "Terry and the Pirates," which was syndicated in papers across America for over thirty years

In May 1944 the 339th Fighter Group was transferred to Fowlmere, near Cambridge, England, where Allen piloted a P-51 fighter protecting bombers flying raids over Germany. Following the Allied invasion at Normandy on June 6, 1944, and the German reversal at Stalingrad, Allied troops had been advancing toward Berlin from the west while Russian troops moved in from the East To aid the advancing ground troops, strategic targets were bombed heavily.

Allen's first child, a son, Terry Allen Young, was born on Halloween night, 1944 Allen learned of the birth on November 17; the next day he was shot down near Metz on his fifty-seventh mission over Germany Because the mail did not get through to the POW camp, he did not see a picture of his son or learn anything more about him until after he was liberated, six months later. At home, Betty first learned her husband was a prisoner from ham radio operators between Ohio and New York who heard German propaganda broadcasts on short-wave radio Eventually she received official notice from the War Department.

Allen was interned at Stalag One, Prisoner of War Camp, near Barth, Germany, on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Each prisoner was given American cigarettes; Allen, who did not smoke, carefully slit his cigarettes up the side, poured out the tobacco, and flattened the paper to write on. This became his initial diary. When he was given a "joy box," the Red Cross kit given to each prisoner, he found it contained necessary items like soap, razor blades, cigarettes, and candy bars, but it also included a YMCA notebook From that notebook he fashioned two records. In one he kept the minutes of the meetings of LDS prisoners; in February, 1995, he donated those minutes to the LDS Church Historical Department. 2 The rest of the notebook became his diary. He fashioned a cover from a tin can, which he flattened, bent to shape, and stamped with his name and a set of Air Force wings with a parachute.

The diary begins with a calendar, meticulously drawn, in which Allen entered the date on each day of his captivity, followed by daily

2 Those minutes were recently published See Colleen Whitley, ed., "Prisoners of War: Minutes of Meetings of Latter-day Saint Servicemen Held in Stalag Luft 1, Barth, Germany," BYU Studies 37 (1997-98): 206-17

entries Spelling, punctuation , an d commo n abbreviations, includin g th e ampersan d (&) have bee n preserve d as in th e original; editor' s notes are in brackets Th e original journa l is in Allen Young's possession in Salt Lake City.

DIARY OF ALLEN DAH L YOUN G

PRISONER OF WAR STALAG LUF T I

BARTH, GERMANY

18 NOVEMBER 1944-1 8 MAY 1945

P.O.W. in German y - Sho t dow n nea r Sarlauter n - 1330 hour sNov. 18.

Horror Story

On the way out from a fighter sweep near Munich, Germany I was hit directly in the Belly of my ship by heavy flak. I was flying at 15,000'. I lost my oil and coolant but worst of all I had lost my elevator controls. I made my first attempt at getting out at about 13,000'. I believe, at that time, that I was traveling at an indicated 300 mph. The air stream was so strong that it threw me straight back upon the radio section I couldn't pull myself free and it seemed an eternity before I was finally thrown free of the plane. That is the last I remembe r until I came to find myself practically on the ground Whether I pulled my ripchord or my chute was torn open on the radio, I'll never know I probably unconsciously pulled it after leaving the ship I later had a large bruise on my left shoulder and neck and some very sore ribs on my right side

For the first 3 or 4 days I could hardly move my left leg or my head. To feed me in the mornings the Jerries3 would have to come in and lift me out of bed Evidently the chute had been opened at an extremely high speed I can hardly see how I got out of it all without hitting the tail of my plane or without breaking my neck or back when the chute opened After hitting the ground (like a ton of lead) I got out of the chute as fast as I could and hid it in the water and mud of a trench that I had barely missed landing in I couldn't run so I hid in a hedgerow a few yards away. I layed there for about two seconds before a shot whistled throug h the hedge Whoever had fired shouted "stand up." I stayed where I was, hoping that I had not been seen. Another shot and this time it was much closer I figured then that they knew where I was so I started to stand up. I guess I waited too long for he shot again, missing my head by inches. I hit the ground with a bang. He shouted again so I stood up in a hurry. There was as I remember now, about six soldiers and a mess of young kids out there and they had me pretty well surrounded It seemed as though the world had come to an end for me Here I 3 "Germans" is inserted above

Diary of a Prisoner of War 247

was, a P.O.W. and unable to help myself. They searched me and took everything I had—which wasn't much—a lighter, watch, and knife. A German officer then arrived and took charge. He spoke a little English and asked me if I was hurt and the old routine of what was I flying, where I had been and where I was going. (They already had parts of my plane) I gave him my N-R-S.41 was taken to a small village where I seemed to be regarded more as a curiosity with the civilians rather than an enemy. (I was in Alsace Lorraine—maybe I was not Their enemy) 5 Just at the edge of town T-Bolts were dive bombing and strafing.61 was taken into a cellar for shelter. I was then taken to Sarlautern to another Hdq The 3rd Hdq was in a church as was the 5th. The 4th was in a private home. Usually the army took over one part of the house and the owner would live in the other

I was first interrogated by a non-com who told me he had worked as a Butler in the Hearst Mansion in Calif All in all I was taken to eight different Hdq. My last for the day was at Saarbruken. There I was given the good food they had been promising me—Black Bread and Black Coffee (I couldn't eat it). I was given a straw bunk and got a few hours sleep. I stayed here in Solitary confinement for three days I couldn't stomach the food but was sure getting hungry.

While I was here I learned that a pilot named VanZandt had been shot down near where I was and was in the cell next to me. He told me later that he thought I was a Frenchman. We were both loaded on the train one morning and started out for Frankfurt. We had a wonderful chance for escape at the station but Van didn't have his dogtags and I was pretty well bunged up. I could hardly move The trip took us about 16 hrs during which Van & I got more or less acquainted—as much as we could without giving out information We did, however, speak of escape At one time during the trip we were threatened by P-51's strafing but flak drove them away. The civilians went crazy trying to get away from trains during such alerts From the time I was captured to the time I got on the train, I witnessed hundreds of families with their push carts and evacuating their homes with what belongings they could carry. It was a pitiful sight. We arrived at Frankfurt at about 1800 hours And was marched thru the middle of town It was really in shambles We then took a trolley to our first camp—Oberusal.

We were stripped and searched and then assigned to our room. I was interrogated that evening and asked to fill out a Red Cross form I filled in my name, rank and serial number. I crossed all the other lines out on the rest of the paper—It made [the interrogator] quite mad and he told me I

4 Name, rank, and serial number, the only information prisoners of war were required to give in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

5 Alsace and Lorraine were two of the historic provinces claimed by both Germany and France Bismark had annexed them to the Second Reich, an act denounced in France as brutal dismemberment. The Treaty of Versailles awarded them to France at the end of World War I though many Germans, including Hitier, insisted that they should be German The Nazis entered them in 1940 with the occupation of France Many of the citizens Young observed doubtless saw Americans as liberators rather than enemies Currently, those provinces are part of France, included in the Departments of Moselle, MeurtheMoselle, Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, and Vosges.

6 T-Bolts were American fighter planes, P-47's, called Thunderbolts

wouldn't leave there until he got all the information on me. I was then taken to my room It was a dinky, little hole in the wall and the bed was bare wooden slats. The room had an electric heater but I didn't get any heat for 3 days. I had to keep moving to keep warm. The food was terrible. Breakfast was two slices of Black bread with warm Barley water. Lunch consisted of a "weed" soup It was sickening to smell let alone eat It looked like grass, leaves, cabbage 8c sugar beets all boiled together. I had to eat it however just to get something hot in my stomach. Dinner was the same as breakfast. I was in Solitary for 8 days and was then called in for more questioning. This time he told me where I was from etc I was sent back to my cell and was there for 3 more days. It sure was a relief to get out of this place. I thought I recognized my friend Muller there while I was going down the hall. I think he recognized me too. He was shot down a couple months before I was. The 3rd of Dec a bunch of us were sent to Wetzlar (Dulag Luft)

We were issued a "Joy Box" and clothed. This was stuff sent in by the Red Cross We were given a shower and some hot food We felt like new men The Jerry doesn't give you anything but misery and a pain in the neck. I was here at Dulag for a week. We had a few air raids while we were there. Gedson, which was just over the hill was plastered by the R. A. F. It burned for 8 days & was still burning when I left there For our trip to Stalag #1 we were issued 1/2 a Red Cross parcel and a 1/10 of a loaf of bread per day. We got along fairly well although I have as yet to fill the hole in my stomach. It took us five days to go little more than 300 mi I was quite cold because the

Right: Guard tower at Stalag Luft I. Below: View ofNorth Compound. Photosfrom Behind Barbed Wire by Morris Roy.

Diary of a Prisoner of War 249

civilians had knocked the windows out of our train There was ten in a compartment made for six It was quite cramped.7

After arriving at Stalag Luft I we were given a shower and delousing and assigned to our compound and Barracks We sleep 3 deep with 24 men to a room. Not like home but Sardines get along so I guess we can. We have our own cook and K.P.'s etc. Col. Gabreski is our C. O. of our compound. I met old Buddies—Lt. [Theodore R.] Staggers, [William] Moore, [John E.] Benbow and Capt. [Raymond] Mitchell. Major [John] Reynolds was killed by civilians down at Munich I also met a fellow from Salt Lake

Dec. 17, 1944 — Got out of the sack at 0930 this morning. Had coffee and bread and jam Went to Protestant Services The lesson was on the Birth of Christ. After services I went to one of the rooms in the Bks. where they had a phonograph. It sure brought back a lot of precious memories. For lunch we had Sour Kraut and corn beef, bread and jam, and prunes. For supper we had scalloped potatos, bread and coffee It tasted very good but could have eaten twice as much

Dec. 18, 1944 — Was on water detail today. Got our German dog tags. Went to the library and got a book Played a few games of Hearts before roll call Had fish and cheese and coffee for supper

Dec. 19, 1944 — Traded two pkgs of tobacco and a pipe for 4 D bars.8 Was on K. P. with Van. Had a prune pie for dessert.

Dec. 20, 1944 — Had our picture taken again today That makes the 3rd time since I've been down. Sure am sweating out the war. Will be glad to get out of this barbed wire cage. I sympathize with the guys that have been here for yrs.

Dec. 21, 1944 — Shortest day of the year. Drew some wings on the back of my field jacket Took my mattress out and tried to fluf it up I'm sore & stiff as a board in the mornings It's like sleeping on concrete News is a bit encouraging.

Dec. 22, 1944 — Went on sick call this morning Wrote a letter home Sure hope they get it.9

7 Young later recalled: "One of the most harrowing experiences I have ever had was on our way to Stalag Luft I at Barth The train went through the marshaling yards of Berlin during the night The British night bombers really plastered us The remaining windows of the train were blown out The train was rocked back and forth by the bombing, but miraculously we made it through When we were on the ground I sure got a different picture of what we had in our minds about Germany It wasjust utter, total confusion with die civilian population The trains werejust full of people trying to get away from the area they were in and I know the Ninth Air Force was bombing and strafing the railroads all the way through but theyjust seemed to be able to keep them going

"While on the train Van and I must have looked quite pitiful A little elderly lady who was sitting close by must have had some feeling for our plight She shared an apple with us I'm sure she didn't own much more herself I will never forget her kindness It greatly softened my heart toward the German people in general but I guess we could have killed the guards if we'd had the chance."

8 D bars were the chocolate bars included in K rations, the highly condensed emergency food given to soldiers.

9 They did not Nor did their mail get through to him According to Young, "After I was shot down, I never heard from home again Betty made arrangements to send some packages, mainly cigarettes because that was a form of barter Cigarette companies made deals to get things through But I never got anything, no letters, no nothing."

Dec. 23, 1944 Got out and walked around the compound today Drew lots for pipe, tobacco, and a wash rag. 10 Had a few pes. of candy.

Dec. 24, 1944 — The day before Xmas Little did I expect to spend Xmas in Germany. Bob and I have been thinking about going into some type of business together. We would like to get some land near Indio, Calif. The compounds were open today Went over and visited Capt Mitchell Went to our Xmas program in the Mess Hall. Came back and had a snack of Cocoa and toast with a prune whip. Went to bed at 12:30 P.M. Took a bath in one of the old wooden tubs in the Latrine It was pretty cold out there

Dec. 25, 1944 — Xmas Day Some contrast to last Xmas We did have a good dinner though — thanks to the Red Cross parcels. Some of the boys got sick, eating so much. Our stomachs sure aren't what they used to be. Bob, Hank, 8c I talked some more about the Date Business.11

Dec. 26, 1944 — Was on K. P. again today. I'll be glad when I can get back to the old way of eating 8c cleanliness.

Dec 27, 1944 — Was on coal detail this morning. We sure cheat the Heck out of the Jerries so far as our ration is concerned. Walked around the compound about six times

Dec. 28, 1944 — Tried to sew some wings on my shirt bu t mad e a poo r excuse of a jo b of it. Layed around and got tired of myself

Dec. 29, 1944 — Getting pretty impatient for the war to end. Red Cross Pkgs. are getting scarce. At least there is a little action on the fronts now. 12 Weather has been good lately

Dec. 30, 1944 — Snowed today so I didn't take my regular walk Am trying to get the stiffness out of my back. Got four new Rriegies13 in our room today. Am trying to sew epellets on one of my shirts. Have quite a headache so am going to turn in Hate to go to bed tho The sack is so darn hard Feel like I've been thro the mill every morning.

Dec. 31, 1944 — New Years Eve but just anothe r day aroun d here. Col.

10 Young did not use tobacco himself but recognized the value of American cigarettes to the Germans Some brands were more coveted than others, with Lucky Strike being worth five times as much as Old Gold.

11 Bob was 2d Lt Robert C Bueker, and Hank was 2d Lt Henry D Schmid The three had talked about raising dates after the war. Recalled Young: "One of these guys had been raised on a date farm and when I flew maneuvers in the California desert, Betty and I lived in a trailer amidst the date palms. It was very fascinating and I had thought it would be interesting to make the California desert my home after the war. I could have bought an acre of date palms for $500 then."

12 The Battle of the Bulge, the German offensive through the Ardennes Forest in France, begun in mid-December, had been halted at the Meuse River on December 24 By that same date, the Russians had surrounded Budapest In the Pacific, U.S troops had taken the main Japanese base in Leyte

13 The word used for prisoners, probably from the German "Krieger," meaning warrior or soldier

Betty and the baby, Terry.

Diary of a Prisoner of War 251

Henderson was shot down by a 190. He 8c Mitch came over to see me. I also paid them a visit Had another program in the Mess Hall Pretty good too Stayed up to see the New Year come in What a place to be in at this time Just wondering what Betty and the baby were doing.14

January 1, 1945 — New Years Day. Hope this year sees an early victory. Had a good meal today Just like Xmas Played a few games of Cribbage The day ended with a snack of hot milk and a piece of cake.

Jan. 2, 1945 — Did a bit of washing today. Am getting to be quite a wife. Weather was wet and miserable The chaplan gave me a copy of the New Testament.15 Hope I can read 8c really understand it Am still having trouble with my ribs on my right side. They are still quite sore.

Jan. 3, 1945 — Was on K.P again today Didn't work too hard but sure am tired Guess it's from being in this smelly old room all day Sometimes I think I'm going a bit batty, being stuck up here like this.

Jan. 4, 1945 Foun d out today that [Boyd] Jackson, [Bert] Stiles and [Leland] Stoudt had been killed. Was quite shocked to hear about them. Especially old Jackson He was a class mate of mine [Richard C ] Cain came in as a P.O.W. last night. He was in my Sqd. in England. Room was quarantined for lice 8c scabies. Carved myself a P-51 of wood today.

Jan. 5, 1945 —Just another day except that we finally got a shower and had our clothing deloused.16 My hair has grown way down over my ears. Will cut it off soon.

Jan. 6, 1945 — Was on coal detail today Managed to sneak a few extra pieces from the Jerries again. Got deloused again. Had a date cake for a snack — was delicious Dates are one of my favorite—

Jan. 7, 1945 — Went to church this morning Sure would like to be hom e going to one of our own wards. Helped open Red X parcels. The Jerries cut open the sides of the cans before they are issued.

14 Betty and the baby were living with her parents in Salt Lake City She had the boy named by Bishop Kenneth Lake of the Salt Lake Highland Park Ward at a meeting she remembers as very sad In the congregation were two widows who had recently learned of their husbands' deaths and two other women whose husbands were POWs No one in the group was untouched by the war At the time, no one knew whether Allen was alive or dead, and, as a result, friends and neighbors did not know how to treat Betty—as a wife or a widow One friend later admitted to avoiding her because she did not know what to say In time ham radio operators on the east coast of the United States intercepted propaganda broadcasts and learned that Allen was a POW. See supra, p. 245.

15 Young notes, "Padre Clark was a chaplain assigned to a bomber group He apparently finagled a ride on a mission and was shot down He should never have been off the ground."

16 Reflecting back on that moment, Young recalled, "From what we had heard of concentration camps, it seemed to be quite a gamble whether or not to enter the shower room—one large room with many shower heads They would herd us into the showers, maybe 100 guys at a time We got one minute of warm water and three minutes of cold We didn't know for certain about the gas chambers, but we had our suspicions It could have been water or it could have been gas I don't remember whether it was in die camp or after but we heard that Hitler had given the order to exterminate the prisoners and that would have been one way of doing it We heard that his girlfriend Eva Braun countermanded that Anyway, that was the rumor."

Jan. 8, 1945 Got another delousing. I haven't found any lice yet. I have my fingers crossed.

Jan. 9, 1945 Have been getting a little snow today It snows continually but very light. Walked around the compound and paced it off to be about a half mile Am making a cracker grinder out of cocoa cans for the cook

Jan. 10, 1945 — Still snowing. Sure makes me homesick. Mixed some chocolate with snow 8c had some ice cream. Can really think up imitations and substitutes for things here.

Jan. 11, 1945 — My right eye is quite swollen today. Hope that nothing is wrong. Propped up one end of the bed. Just like a lawn chair (made of concrete).

Jan. 12, 1945 — Was to have a movie today but it fizzled out. They couldn't get any sound May see it Monday

Jan. 13, 1945 — Had an inspection today. The Jerries also searched a couple of the Barracks.

Jan. 14, 1945 — Went to Church Bob 8c I did some walking around the compound. Built a shelf at the end of the Bunk. Got a few Jerry rations — cabbage, bread, rutabagas, potatos

Jan. 15, 1945 — Went to a commercial Law class today The instructor was [a fellow POW and] a lawyer in civilian life 8c seems to be OK.

Jan. 16, 1945 — Saw the show "Andy Hardy's Double Life." Red Cross parcels have stopped 8c all we are eating is rutabagas, bread and spuds. Guess I'll live but I sure don't like them.

Jan. 17, 1945 — Have a touch of the Flu Feel quite bad News sounds good.17 Most of the fellows are quite optimistic but as yet I can't see it.

Jan. 18, 1945 Sure did sweat last night. My shoes aren't very good. The room is so stuffy that it alone is enough to make a guy sick Be glad to get in a place where I can see from one wall to the other.

17 Young remembers that the POWs received news in two ways "One was the camp newspaper The only truthful newspaper in Germany, the Pow Wow (Prisoners of War Waiting on Winning) was the largest circulating daily underground newspaper in Germany, growing from a small penciled newssheet read by hundreds into a neatly printed daily, eagerly perused by thousands. The copy was brought daily to Barracks 9, North Compound I, in a hollow wrist watch To save space, it was written on toilet paper The news was then checked on the maps, interpreted, and "printed" on two German typewriters Kriegie guards, or 'goon guards,' were posted to herald the approach of roaming Germans Goon Guards were prisoners guarding against the Germans. We were each given an assignment each day to be the guard for our particular barracks to watch for what we called the Germans, the goons, and to warn the barracks when they came around Sometimes they'd have surprise inspections They wanted to know what we were doing and we didn't always know what some of our guys were trying to do It gave us time to hide something if we needed to Copies of the paper, one for each barrack, were distributed by a team of hard-working Kriegie delivery boys before lock-up time at night. These delivery boys saw to it that the copies were destroyed before the following morning, so that the Germans would not uncover the underground press "News was also obtained from a tiny radio set hidden in a barrack wall of the South Compound. A correspondent from the United States who had been taken prisoner had organized this whole thing The parts to make this radio had been smuggled into camp by German guards in exchange for cigarettes The rest of the Germans didn't know about the radio and no one man among the prisoners in the camp knew where all the parts were so no one could tell them everything if they found out."

Jan. 19, 1945 — Was quite sick today. Would give a lot to be back home right now. Was my 25th birthday today.

Jan. 20, 1945 — Was in bed most of the day. My eyes hurt quite bad. Had our first snack for a long time tonight.

Jan. 21, 1945 — Was down in bed all day today. Feeling pretty tough. A guy might be able to fight Flu Etc. if he had some decent food to eat.

Jan. 22, 1945 — Went on sick call this morning. Got some aspirin and cough syrup. Am staying in bed as much as possible.

Jan. 23, 1945 — Am trying to draw up the plans of a house and yard I would like to have an acre or so of land so I could raise a few vegetables, fruit 8c chickens

Jan. 24, 1945 — Am still in bed Getting tired of laying on this concrete bunk. On top of being hard it's full of bumps.

Jan. 25, 1945 Some of the boys found more lice on them so we had to get deloused again The shower felt good It's getting quite cold here nowadays

Jan. 26, 1945 Really cold around here Our coal ration has been cut again Sure sweating out the war. This place is no picnic.

Jan. 27, 1945 — Talk about windy places this place takes the cake. Have been debating with myself about getting some land near Indio, Calif, or at home I'd like to raise dates. All depends on what Betty wants to do.

Jan. 28, 1945 The weeks sure do drag by Blizzard outside Got 15 lumps of coal today Spent most of the day up with Hank in his bunk It's like ice down on the bottom bunks.

Jan. 29, 1945 Played Hank a lot of cards today Hope Russia & U.S don't ever break up I don't know what would happen to us if they did

Jan. 30, 1945 Nothing much of anything to talk about today. It's usually the same old thing day after day

Jan. 31, 1945 Started to read a book from the library. Started reading "Riders of The Night."

Feb. 1, 1945 — Thawing quite a bit today. Sure wet and muddy outside. Was on Goon Guard Got the names and addresses of the boys here in the room

Feb. 2, 1945 — Ground Hog Day. Wonder if he saw his shadow. Ha d n o power today, so we had no water or lights. Hope that doesn't last long although I hope the Russians are destroying everything in their path. I think our power comes from Stettin.18

Feb. 3, 1945 — On K. P. today. Drew a plan of a cabin. Ralph cut my hair today. Sure like to take another shower.

18 Stettin was southeast of Barth and in the path of the Russian advance

Inside a barracks. Twenty-two men slept in this space. Allen Young is on second row, secondfrom left. From Behind Barbed Wire.

Feb. 4, 1945 — Got out and got some fresh air today Be glad when summer comes. The P.O.W. camp we almost went to was liberated. Hope we get the same Soon No lights again tonight

Feb. 5, 1945 — Did my washing today My left foot is in bad shape It is swollen and cracked around the toes. Have a 12% cut in Jerry rations and no Red Cross parcels Not a very bright future Sure could go for some of Betty's cooking right now.

Feb. 6, 1945 — Regardless of the bad weather I had to get out of this stuffy room. Got quite a headache. Had the portable phonograph in the Barracks today. Sounded good.19

Feb. 7, 1945 — 1500 wounded that were evacuated from Stalag #3 came in today Many who were able walked to Munich

Feb. 8, 1945 — I guess we have it pretty good here compared to other camps according to the new bunch that came in. I guess they were treated pretty rough Had a few air raid alarms The Blasts were visible here

Feb. 9, 1945 Have been thinking more 8c more about going back to school again I think I'll be better off in the long run, I think, if I do have a degree I want to Major in Geology. — Set my goal to at least a Masters Degree.

Feb. 10, 1945 — Still waiting for a shower. Read the book — "The Range Hawk."

Feb. 11, 1945 Got up a meeting of L.D.S. fellows in the compound. So far we have seven. We are going to try to get together with others who are in other compounds I was assigned the first lesson for our first class

19 The prisoners had a small hand-crank phonograph and a few records that the Red Cross and YMCA had succeeded in getting to them

Feb. 12, 1945 Uncle Oscar Lundgren's birthday today Have been trying to plan out a shop and a den. Some place to cut and put my rocks.

Feb. 13, 1945 On K P again Real bad weather again

Feb. 14, 1945 — St. Valentines Day. Wish I could send some way or another my love for Betty I'm no poet so I'll stop here

Feb. 15, 1945 Had four roll calls today. Sure gets monotonous. The whole thing here gets on my nerves.

Feb. 16, 1945 — Went to Bible Class today. Got a Bible from Padre Clarke.

Feb. 17, 1945 Quite cold all day today. Hardly any fuel. Got a rutabaga stew from the Jerries Hungry as Heck Things sure taste flat without salt

Feb. 18, 1945 Gave the Sunday School lesson today on the "Spirit of Giving." I am the secretary of the meetings

Feb. 19, 1945 Hank, Pete [2d Lt. Harlan O. Peterson], 8c I talked quite a bit on what we'd like to do if and when we get out of here Played a few games of cribbage.

Feb. 20, 1945 — Another Blank day — Nothing about Nothing

Feb. 21, 1945 — Tried to work a few algebra problems. Got a pencil from the Block trader.20 Was a sunny day. Geese are flying north so maybe that's a good sign

Feb. 22, 1945 Shaved today for the first time in about a week Don't shave very often Lack Blades.21

Feb. 23, 1945 — Went to algebra class. Sure have forgotten a lot about it. My back is still quite sore between the shoulder blades.

Feb. 24, 1945 — Another day on K. P. Talked with Claire Oliphant about land up in Washington. He tells me there is a lot of Home Stead land there now.

Feb. 25, 1945 — Wonder how many more weeks I'll spend in this place. Went to church Had a show at the mess hall but I didn't go

Feb. 26, 1945 — Got lazy 8c forgot to write

Feb. 27, 1945— •*"""" "

Feb. 28, 1945—"""

March. 1, 1945 — Nice clear day today. Walked aroun d the compound . Played a few games of cribbage

20 A block trader was the prisoner who received various items from the other POWs and used them as barter with the Germans

21 Young remembers that the razor blades came in the Red Cross parcels "The idea I guess was that each prisoner would get a complete parcel but each prisoner got nothing, really They were so few and far between that we'd pool them all and the cook would put together what he could from it."

March 2, 1945 — Like to see a big raid around here to break the monotony. Some are busy catching lice

March 3, 1945 — Was going over to North Compound No #11 but the Jerries screwed up on the list so I didn't go. 22

March 4, 1945 — Was supposed to play the accordion for singing in Sunday school but was unable to get it.23

March 5, 1945 — Did quite a bit of walking today. Good day for air warfare. Sure like to be up there. Was on K. P. again.

March 6, 1945 Trying to absorb the sun when it comes out. Oliphant came over for a while. Waterproofed some matches and a "D" bar in case we walk out of here

March 7, 1945 — Layed around all day No fuel 8c no food so have to conserve energy Had a little bread and stew today Future looks dull

March 8, 1945 Stayed in bed most of the day. (To keep warm) Went over 8c had a shower. First in about 3 weeks. Have the scabies 8c itch like heck.

March 9, 1945 — News sounds good Sure hope nothing stops the advances Quite optimistic now.

March 10, 1945 — Main subject for discussion is food. Sure am hungry. Reports are the Red X parcels are being rushed to POW's but haven't seen any here yet.

March 11, 1945 — Had a rutabaga stew today Very poo r food Went to church We have had 7 or 8 fellows out each Sunday Sure wish I knew more about my church I hope to do as much as I can in it when I get home

March 12, 1945 Stayed in bed most of the day. Nothing to do and nothing to eat. Really loosing weight 8c strength.

March 13, 1945 — Woke up early 8c read from the New Testament Wish I knew all about it or could understand it better.

March 14, 1945 — Got more Stew today. Not very tasty. Dr. tells us we are getting only about 200 calories a day That's not near enough There is enough food in camp to last another week Hope we get some relief

22 His errand was probably church related Contrary to usual procedure, the Germans allowed LDS prisoners to move from one compound to another for church meetings Young says, "Clare Oliphant had arranged with the Germans for the men to come over to join us, but I don't know how he did it Eventually we had about twenty people."

23 The POWs created their own amusements to punctuate the monotony of camp life Young later recalled: "They had an accordion there in camp that we could play and I had played the accordion for a number of years In fact, I won the state contest when I was at LDS Business College after the war There were several musical instruments in camp None of us came to the camp with anything, of course, but the Germans supplied them They had a little theater in the camp and the inmates would put on plays, mostly comedies There were some instruments and a bunch would get together once in awhile in the mess hall area and they'd put on plays and play music and it was kind of enjoyable Morris Roy has some pictures of some of the plays in his book, Behind Barbed Wire. These were all pictures confiscated from the Germans."

March 15, 1945 Did some washing today. Thought much on what 8c where I would like to live after the war. Wonder if I'll ever see the states again.

March 16, 1945 Stew was a little better today. I think we had salt in it today.

March 17, 1945 — Played a little catch today. For the first time I found a louse on me. Covered myself with louse powder. It's no wonder with the amount of showers we get here.

March 18, 1945 — Went to church. Some fellows from South Compoun d came up for meeting. Had a thick stew today.24

March 19, 1945 — Am copying the ordinances of the church as far as I can get them from Oliphant. He knows quite a bit abut it. Took a lesson on "Bridge"

March 20, 1945 The cook made up a bread pudding today Sure isn't like Mom's puddings.

March 21, 1945 Got some oatmeal this morning for the first time Sure tastes good Sure takes something like this place to make you appreciate home

March 22, 1945 — Mom's Birthday. Would give anything to be hom e with her. Sure do get homesick at times. Someone tried to escape tonight but they got them.

March 23, 1945 — Good weather but low morale. Would like to get out of the rut. Sewed up my pants. They came around and made a record of who could not walk in case we are evacuated May walk yet

March 24, 1945 Spent most of the day basking in the sun. Morale is high when weather is good. Had a potato sandwich tonight.

March 25, 1945 — Went to church. Sure hope the good weather lasts. Oral Birch 8c I walked around the compound together. We may get together on school when we get home.

March 26, 1945 On K P again today Only one man at a time now because of nothin g muc h to do. Rumo r that we may get 1/4 issue of Red Cross Parcel.

March 27, 1945 Got deloused again today Doesn't seem to do much good War news very good lately

March 28, 1945 — Did more walking around. Just wondering if I couldn't work in the mines during the summers while going to school. Patton is reported near Nuremburg. Hope it's right.25

24 Young clarifies for the modern reader, "A thick stew is not what you may think It was still mostly water and tasted like Box Elder leaves and twigs."

25 Patton's Third Army was still several miles west of Nuremburg but was rapidly crossing the Rhine at Remagen where the First Army had rebuilt the bridge By March 28 the U.S Third Corps took Marburg, sixty miles east of the Rhine

March 29, 1945 Chilly and dreary today. Stayed inside all day. Red Cross parcels are starting to come in now so maybe we'll get something to eat. I think the Germans are getting to a point where they think they'll get off a bit easier [when the war ends] if they give us something to eat

March 30, 1945 — We are going to get a full issue of parcels now. May be able to put some weight back on again. I went down from 150 to 120 while we were on starvation rations. Am trying to design a plywood hut to use camping instead of a tent

March 31, — [Blank]

April 1, 1945 — Easter and April Fool's Day. Went to church. Had a good dinner. A couple weeks ago all we had to look forward to was a few spuds. Walked around the compound for a while.

April 2, 1945 — Stomach has been upset for the past couple days. Not used to the change in food I guess. Rained quite a bit today.

April 3, 1945 — Sure a lot of machine gun fire close by early this morning

Sounded like the camp was being clobbered. Firing at an airplane I believe.

April 4, 1945— [Blank]

April 5, 1945 — Making cigarette pks. from butter cans for some of the fellows.26 Talked some more to Oral abut raising chickens

April 6, 1945 — Drew some more house plans and also some coops. I'd like to live up around Fisher's Lane.27

April 7, 1945 Had an inspection today. Sure is a pain in the neck. Did some more walking. It's about the only thing to do around here.

April 8, 1945 Our church services have been discontinued because of lack of room My back still bothers me a little Hope nothing ever develops from it.

April 9, 1945 — Sure hope we don't have many more weeks to spend here. War news is good.

April 10, 1945 — The Protecting Powers came around today. I sure can't see much that they are doing for us I may be wrong Made a buttercan toothbrush holder.

April 11, 1945 — Layed out in the Sun but was finally driven in by the bugs. At last we got a shower Sure will be something to be able to take a bath anytime you want.

26 We didn't always have paper," Young explains. "I was lucky to have that notebook I could cut up and use for my diary We'd make little booklets out of cigarette paper and the guys could use them for what they wanted Not many prisoners actually smoked I don't think anyone in our room did Cigarettes were too valuable as trade with the Germans The butter cans were round tin cans, kind of like pork and bean cans We pounded the tin to make things out of it."

27 Allen and Betty Young later built their first home on a half-acre lot on Fisher Lane in Salt Lake City

April 12, 1945 Did some more washing today The water was so cold tho I almost froze my hands. Ha d a delicious prun e pie tonight.

April 13, 1945 Friday the 13th Have to take the Bad news along with the good Heard that Pres Roosevelt had died It was quite a blow Hop e it doesn't effect the Allies Policies Have kidded with Betty so much on when her birthday is that now I can't remembe r whether or not it is April 13 or Aug 13 Happy Birthday anyway Darling.28

April 14, 1945 Did nothing much today. Did make a miniature pan of the type we make to cook with. Eating a bit better nowadays.

April 15, 1945 — Latest rumo r is that the 9th Army is 13 miles from Berlin. They are about a hundre d miles from here. The following is a few expenditures I may expect to make — if & when.29

April 16, 1945—Did a little walking around with Clare Oliphant. We are starting to have quite a little air activity here. Hope they put this airfield out of commission.

April 17, 1945 Don't feel so hot today. Had a stomach ache all last night. Helped dig up a few stumps for firewood 8c also helped dig on our garden. Hop e we're not here long enough to use it. Walked around the compoun d trying to settle my stomach.

April 18, 1945 — Have started to do a little carving in soap. It is something to do and may give me a few ideas for casting when I get home.

April 19, 1945 — Did a little mor e soap carving. Just for the exercise I got out and dug a hole 3' x 2' x 2' and then just filled it u p again. Also digging stumps for firewood.

April 20, 1945 — Am trying to collect prun e boxes so I can get lead foil for casting wings. It's quite interesting an d I may try a little of it whe n I get home. 3 0

April 21, 1945 Saturday and another inspection. Nothing else except I am carving a P-51 and am going to try to cast it.

April 22, 1945 Cast the P-51 model 8c it turned out better than I thought it would. At least it will give m e something to work on for another mold. Th e sand I am using sticks to wood. Ha d a good dinne r considering Kriegie meals.

28 Betty's birthday is May 13, which was the day she received word that the camp had been liberated. The prisoners heard about Roosevelt's death from the radio hidden in the camp.

29 The list of items that Young hoped to buy upon liberation is omitted for brevity here. It included a suit for $35, shoes for $8, garters for $1, and ties for $1.50. He also listed his acquaintances in the Nordi III compound by name and address, similarly omitted. Those items are included in a full text of the diary on file with the Family History Library of the Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

30 This was another interesting pastime within the camp The prisoners saved any lead they could find, melted it, and mixed it with a fine powdery soil "We'd carve out of wood whatever kind of model we'd want and then we'd cast it," Young explained "I cast a little model P-47 but never did get it home Some of the fellows did beautiful, very artistic work."

April 23, 1945 Had cereal muffins this morning. Very good. Got the book on Sam Brannan and the California Mormons Tried to cast aluminum but can't get it hot enough to pour. The Big "B" [Berlin] ought to be kapoot in a few days (I hope). I hope they don't forget to run up here. After all, this is the most important part of Germany

April 24, 1945 — Did quite a bit of walking around the compound today Fooled around practicing making airplane molds. The Allies have linked up at both Whittenburgs now. I hope they decide to come up here someday (soon).31

April 25, 1945 — Not much doing today. Took my usual stroll around the compound. Am waiting very impatiently for a breakthrough at Stettin.

April 26, 1945 — Washed my pants etc. Hope it is the last time I do any washing here Had a couple airraids today and 3 during the night Read the book Samuel Brannan and the California Mormons.

April 27, 1945 — Had Oatmeal this morning — sure wish we could get it more often Lucky to get it once a week and then we don't get it that often most of the time.32

April 28, 1945 — Walked around the compound most of the morning. Had a personal inspection by Col. Gabreski which was a pain in the neck. I guess they're necessary to some extent The more I think about it the more I want to have some land. I guess I want to be a farmer. I don't suppose Betty would even hear of it though.

April 29, 1945 Did a little more walking around the compound. The Russians seem to have broken through According to reports they are at Anklam, about 50 miles from here We have what sounds like Artillery at times There is a lot of FW 190's on the Airfield near here now Sure wish I was up flying in a P-51 right now Did quite a bit more walking this evening

April 30, 1945 — Busy day around here There has been an awful lot of air activity. The Jerries have been blowing up their Radar equipment and we have been digging fox holes with Klem Cans.

May 1, 1945 — Learned this morning that the camp came under Allied control abut 1:30 this morning There is no activity at all here today No planes no nothing except that a few delayed action demolitions are still going off. Hoping to get outside the camp on the peninsula tomorrow. Berlin has fallen Straslund also Sure would like to get some sort of souvenirs but I guess it will be impossible unde r the circumstances. — Boy what a day.

31 Allied troops reached Wittenberg on the Elbe River and were joined the next day by the Russians Berlin was close to collapse On March 28, Eisenhower had sent word to Stalin that the Allies would advance across southern Germany and Austria, leaving Berlin to Russian forces Soviet forces launched a major offensive on April 16 On April 23 Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler sent Eisenhower an offer to surrender to the Allies but not the Russians The Allies refused and Russian troops entered Berlin on April 28

32 Young inserted here a list of "Musts—in Books & Magazines for Home," omitted here for brevity It included the topics of premixed cereals, casting, molding clay, and rock cutting.

Diary of a Prisoner of War 261

Germany announces Hitler's Death and then the Russians arrived at a quarter to eleven tonight This is one day that I'll never forget What a day.3$

May 2, 1945 — We finally got outside the camp. Everyone went crazy. Knocking down fences, guard towers, plunder, etc. Van 8c I went out in the woods, in town and over to the Airdrome so missed a lot of souvenirs 8 fellows were killed by land mines so I guess we were lucky to be safe, although I would like to have gotten something. On the way toward Barth we ran across 3 women, a baby and a young boy about 6 that had been shot through the head It sure was a pitiful sight Probably some Jerry did it to his family so as not to let the Russians get ahold of them. The Russians were pretty hospitable except at first they were going to have us walk out of here. We sure did do a lot of walking

May 3, 1945 — Did some more walking out on the peninsula. Some of Boys went out and got a mess offish Didn't do much else but walk around a lot Picked up a couple of souvenirs. Put up a shelter 8c cooked spuds outside tonight. The latest rumor is that we are definitely going to fly out. I surely hope so because we were, at first, supposed to go to Odessa under Russian control We have been missing quite a few fellows Eight of them were drowned in the bay when their boat turned over and some drunke n Englishmen were shot while fooling around with a drunk Russian. It sure doesn't pay to monkey around too much after what relations I've had with them in town. Also some fellows have walked on to some land mines and have been blown to bits. Some, too, have taken out for the front to meet the British or Am which also is a crazy trick

May 4, 1945 — Did a lot more walking around today. Van 8c I got a boat and went across the bay Tried to get a chicken but the Russians couldn't see it Went down to the French 8c Italian concentration or worker camp. They are more crowded than we. 34 Got a piece of German and Russian money

May 5, 1945 — Was confined to the camp for awhile today but was soon let loose on the peninsula Virag & I then cleaned up a sunken boat and rowed across the bay. We went over to a permanent Jerry camp about 3 mi. away. I finally got aJerry bayonet 8c flag. Sure hope I can get them home. My shoes are almost falling off my feet they are so bad

May 6, 1945 — Got up early and Van, Green 8c I went back over to Zingst to get some more souvenirs. The Russians had completely taken over so we didn't get anything Sure would like to get a luger I do have a bayonet anyway My shoes are really breaking up. Got my first shower in over 3 weeks. Also did a little washing. A lot of the fellows around camp are leaving for Rostok.35

33 The German guardsjust simply disappeared in the night Young remembers that "we went to bed one night with the guards and woke up the next morning and there was nobody Theyjust evacuated."

34 "They were living horribly, a lot worse than we were," Young said "The camp was almost like a pigsty One Italian I came across gave me a bit of a chicken that he had been cooking If I did it today it would turn my stomach because of the filth, but it was food He was generous to share his food."

35 Rostock, approximately thirty miles southwest of Barth, was closer to the advancing American forces

I think I'll stay and sweat it out here. It's Dad's birthday today. Sure wish I was home to see him. I got an extra bayonet for him if he wants it.

May 7, 1945 — Got up and did some more washing. Sure would like to get out of tiiis place. It looks like we'll be here for quite some time. Got a French sword today. Hope I can get most of this stuff home. Saw a Russian Show. Sure was good

May 8, 1945 — Was on K.P. today.36 Hop e all this old crap ceases soon. Walked around for awhile just to keep away from the room. Wrote a letter to Betty 8c sent it thru an airborne outfit.

May 9, 1945

Didn't bother to get up for roll call this morning After breakfast I went over to the airfield but was unable to get anything much Flubbed my dub by not staying over there the first night I was out Could have got a lot of nice things The Russian General told us we would leave here within four days Sure do hope so Am getting anxious to get home

May 10, 1945 — Went over to the Flak School Got a pair ofJerry flying boots 8c gun which is no good Sure would like to get a good knife or gun

May 11, 1945 — Tried to get in town but it was impossible to get thru our M P patrol 8c the Russian M P.'s Oh well, souvenirs don't mean a heck-of-alot anyway Signed the passport for getting out 8c back to the States Made a raft so we could go fishing but guess we won't get a chance to now. Doesn't make much difference.

May 12, 1945 — Was told at formation today that the first Bl7s are due at 2:00 o'clock. We expect to leave in the morning. Didn't stay for inspection but went out in the woods 8c layed on my blanket for awhile.

May 13, 1945 — Most of the men have been taken out of camp by plane today. So far we, who went AWOL one morning are still sweating it out. Saw my first American girl today Had my picture taken with a couple of them (Nurses.) Sure hope we get out today Didn't leave so got to go in town Got a Saber.

May 14, 1945 — Today — the day we left Barth on a B-17. We sure got a wonderful greeting when we arrived at Reims, France. Had my first taste of white bread in a year. Also had a chicken dinner. Started at 10:30 for LeHavre. Thought we would fly but are going by train.

May 15, 1945 It is now about 4:00 o'clock 8c we are still on the train Boy is it tiresome. Have had good eats on the train. Fruits 8c White Bread also. Expect to be in St. Valory in about 2 hrs. — Finally made our destination. It is a huge tent City. We got a shower 8c delousing 8c hit the sack. Sure was a relief

36 According to Young, "After we were liberated, guys went out and rounded up two or three head of cattle and butchered them. Some of us worked in the kitchen to prepare whatever was available. We just kind of scoured the countryside for whatever was available."

Diary of a Prisoner of War 263

May 16, 1945 — Finally got our breakfast after waiting in line about 2 hrs. Am in Flight 2 PB.Just roamed around all day.

May 17, 1945 Got up at 0600 for breakfast. One meal I do not miss. Got a PX ration of soap, razor, toothpowder, brush, Juice, 8c Comb. Lots of luxuries Took a walk over to the PX They sell all French goods there I'll have to buy my wife some of their perfume.

AFTERWORD

As Allen and the other men were preparing to return home, fellow POW MorrisJ. Roy collected the names and home towns of all the prisoners, which he eventually published in a book, Behind Barbed Wire (New York: Richard Smith, 1946). Allen wanted to contribute to the publication but of course had no money. With his usual ingenuity, he created a check from one of those carefully culled pieces of cigarette paper. He was delighted when his bank in Salt Lake honored it and sent Morris Roy the money.

Allen returned home to Salt Lake and a happy reunion with Betty and Terry. He and his wife were to have two more children: Christine Marie in 1949 and Scott Fisher in 1953. He fulfilled his pledge to continue activity in his church, and he achieved his goals in education, receiving a bachelor's degree in education and a master's degree in educational administration and media, both from the University of Utah. From 1948 to 1982 he served as a teacher in Salt Lake City schools while also teaching engineering graphics and educational media for the University of Utah and educational media for Brigham Young University

Allen also continued flying. He was one of the original pilots of the Utah Air National Guard. During the Korean War, he went on active duty as a fighter pilot and squadron commander. He was appointed director of training at Clovis Air Force Base, New Mexico, and served as installations officer and director of materiel. He retired from the air force as a lieutenant colonel in January 1982.

Frederick Benteen and Fort Damn Shame

BYHAROLD SCHINDLER

He is unmistakable, even in a crowd; that Dutch/English face, boyish despite its fifty-three years largely spent in the out-of-doors, sets Frederick William Benteen apart. There he sits on Officer's Circle at Fort Douglas,1 flanked by nearly a score of officers from every branch

Mr Schindler, retired staff writer for the Salt Lake Tribune and former member of the Advisory Board of Editors for Utah Historical Quarterly, lives in Salt Lake City Aversion of this article was published in the Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday Magazine, July 20, 1997.

1 Jess McCall, director/curator of the Fort Douglas Museum, was instrumental in pinpointing the precise location of the setting as the porch of Building No. 7 on Officer's Circle. Aside from 2d Lt. Richard W Young of Salt Lake City and Benteen, the other eighteen officers remain unidentified, although it is likely that the commanding officer, Lt. Col. Nathan Osborne, is among those in the photograph.

Officers at Fort Douglas. Benteen is beardless on first row; Richard W. Young isfourth from right, back row. Photo courtesy of Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

of the U S military—Indian Scouts, infantry, artillery, cavalry—none seemingly identifiable but himself and one other, 2d Lt. Richard W. Young, a Salt Lake native.2

But what was Benteen, that old war horse, doing at Fort Douglas?

Benteen was the toughest frontier officer in the cavalry. Holding the rank of major, but with the authority of a brevet (temporary) colonel, he was, after "gallant and meritorious services" at the Indian battles of Little Bighorn and Canyon Creek,3 breveted to brigadier general, the only officer so honored for the Little Bighorn. He was a good soldier, Benteen. He was dearly fond of fishing ("I saw him wade over his boot tops many times into the cold water to get mountain trout," one of his troopers recalled in later years) And he loved baseball with an extraordinary passion.

As a matter of fact, most men in his H Company were members of the "Benteen baseball and gymnasium club." The Benteen Nine team, it seems, was a ringer; it regularly shellacked army competition. For instance, inJune 1875 the Benteens played the Fort Randall First Infantry The final score was Benteens, 54; Randalls, 5.4

Benteen's courage was legendary. Anyone who has read of the Little Bighorn massacre is familiar with the story of the feisty officer, an old Briar pipe clenched firmly in his teeth, striding among the besieged Seventh Cavalry troops pinned down in a small depression atop the bluffs of the Little Bighorn by Indian snipers, all the while offering words of encouragement to the demoralized soldiers. George B. Herendeen, a civilian scout, said of the captain, "I think in desperate fighting Benteen is one of the bravest men I ever saw. . . . All the time he was going about through the bullets, encouraging the soldiers to stand up to their work, and not let Indians whip them."5 One of the officers, Lt. Charles A. Varnum, would later say that Benteen was "the

2 Young, a grandson of Brigham Young and eldest son of Joseph A. and Margaret Whitehead Young, was the second Utahn to graduate from West Point Upon graduation, he was assigned to the Fifth U.S Artillery at Governor's Island, New York; having also obtained a law degree, he was in 1885 named ActingJudge Advocate of the Department of the East The following year he was ordered to duty with a light battery stationed at Fort Hamilton, New York Harbor, but when one of his West Point classmates was assigned to the light battery stationed at Fort Douglas, the two officers managed a switch, and Young was appointed by Lt Gen Philip H Sheridan to the Utah post in the fall of 1886 Orson F Whitney, History of Utah, vol 4 (Salt Lake City: George Q Cannon and Sons), p 561

3 Francis B Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, From Its Organization, September 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903 (1903; reprint ed., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), vol 1, p 212

4 Harry H Anderson "The Benteen Baseball Club: Sports Enthusiasts of the Seventh Cavalry," Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 20 (1970): 82-85 Company H was stationed variously at Nashville, Tenn.; Fort Randall, Dakota Territory (inJuly 1875 the soldiers took baseball equipment along while campaigning in the Black Hills); and Forts Rice and Lincoln on the Missouri River. A number of players were in the Little Bighorn fight in 1876

5 New York Herald, July 8, 1876.

only man I ever saw who did not dodge when the bullets flew. . . . "6 At one point a hostile shot blew the heel from his boot Still he made no effort to take cover.

Both before and after Little Bighorn, Benteen was no admirer of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer; he considered Custer an arrogant, boastful loudmouth and was not in the least shy in sharing this opinion with others As a result, Benteen was ostracized by members of the "Custer crowd"—who, unfortunately, included many high-ranking officers

Charles K. Mills, Benteen's biographer, describes his face as "large, round and smooth-shaven. (He grew a scraggly moustache from time to time but never sported a beard.) This, coupled with his large, round, blue eyes, gave him a distinctive cherubic appearance. One reporter who described him in 1879 remarked that he might have been mistaken for an overgrown drummer boy Benteen was tall (5'10/2M) and broad-shouldered. He had a large torso, long muscular arms, and huge hands. As subsequent events proved, he was formidable in combat, including the hand-to-hand variety. Physically, Frederick W. Benteen was impressive."7 And like most frontier soldiers, he enjoyed an occasional drink

In 1886 Benteen, with his bottle, found his way into Utah Territory and a minor fiasco.

That year, the Utes on the Uintah Reservation were becoming restless because, as historian Mills expressed it, "of alleged inequities at the agency and smoldering resentment over their forced removal from Colorado six years before." Brig. Gen. George Crook responded by ordering Benteen to command two troops of the Ninth Cavalry on a forced march to Fort Bridger; from there to proceed to the Ute Reservation and build an army post to be known as Fort Duchesne.8

Crook had been widely criticized for the way he conducted a fight at Rosebud Creek in mid-June 1876 against the same Indians who rubbed out Custer a week later at the Little Bighorn. The affair had earned him the nickname "Rosebud George,"9 and Crook was more than a little sensitive about anything or anyone reminding him of it He had also been savaged in the press and in some military quarters for his inaction after the Rosebud fight, having spent the next three weeks comfortably hunting and fishing on Goose Creek, in what Ben

7 Ibid., p. 18.

8 Ibid., pp 342-45

9 Ibid., pp 343-44

6 Charles K Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets: The Army Career of Frederick William Benteen, 1834-1898. (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1985), p. 271.

Arnold, a frontiersman hired for courier service, called "criminal inertia."10 Crook may in some measure have felt a responsibility for Custer's fate. That would go far in explaining his impatient, cantankerous, and harsh attitude toward Benteen in ordering a forced march.

On the day Benteen arrived with his troops at the site location, Crook departed there for his headquarters in Omaha and left the major in charge of constructing the "fort" at a point three miles above the junction of the Duchesne and Uintah rivers. But Benteen found no lumber, no nails, no plans. To say that he was furious and frustrated would be putting it mildly.

As Mills explains it, the situation became a fiasco. Necessary supplies were unavailable and delayed, forcing the command to live in tents until almostJanuary 1887 All the essentials were slow in arriving and then only at inflated prices. Never one to mince words, Benteen was sorely put out by the apparent incompetence of the military supply system, which was enough to drive a man to drink. And, whatever else was in short supply at the fort site, whiskey was not. The Post Trader had an abundant inventory.

Benteen's problems began multiplying in September of '86, about a month after he first rode in. A wagon train from Fort Bridger had finally made it to Duchesne and brought with it Lt. and Mrs. Harry Bailey and Lt Harry G Trout, a West Pointer newly assigned to Duchesne's cavalry unit. Benteen ordered a tent erected for the Baileys After the usual welcoming chitchat among the Baileys, Trout, and others of the garrison (a second officer's wife was also present), Major Benteen, according to Capt. J. A. Olmstead, excused himself, stepped around the corner of the wall tent, "not going more than 10 feet away from where the ladies were sitting, and urinated on the tent, so that we all heard it."11

In the days and weeks to follow, Benteen spent more and more time drinking at the Post Trader's store On the night of October 10 he got into an argument and, after falling into the mud in his tipsy condition, was escorted to his tent by ajunior officer A month later Benteen again became embroiled in a dispute, this time with an employee of the Post Trader and, one thing leading to another, he also began squabbling with a visiting sheriff. Sterling Cotton, the sheriff, took umbrage when Benteen called him a "God damned

10 Evan S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), p 329

11 Frederick William Benteen, Official Court-Martial Transcript, 1887 National Archives, Old Army Branch RR2327, as quoted in ibid., pp 34-35, and in Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, p 346

Mormon," to which Cotton responded, 'You are a God damned liar, and you ain't no gentleman, or you would not talk to me that way." The quarrel almost ended in a fistfight.12

All this was prelude to Gen George Crook's next move, which was to send an investigator to determine what was delaying construction of the fort. Crook likely was under pressure from Lt. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, commander in chief of the U. S. Army in Washington, to determine why Fort Duchesne was still in tents four months after it had been designated a permanent post.13 Benteen, it was said, believed there was conniving among the civilians to swindle the government. The major referred to his station as "Fort DuShame" while others called it "Fort Damn Shame."14

The investigating officer, Maj. Robert Hall, spent a day "looking around," then left without questioning Benteen. But when his official report was filed, it dumped the blame squarely on the post commander, alleging that Benteen was "frequently unfit for duty through excessive use of intoxicating liquors. . . . "15 In mid-December, Benteen was relieved of command and ordered to face court martial on charges that included the incident with the Baileys at the tent and the two occasions at the Post Trader's. The following January a story appeared in the Kansas City Times,16 supposedly written by an unidentified enlisted man from Fort Leavenworth. It spelled out at length and in detail Benteen's view of the problems at Duchesne. Not surprisingly, Benteen was suspected of writing the letter, though he denied any knowledge of it.17 Since the article cast Crook in a bad light, the general was, understandably, incensed over it—so much so, that he tacked another charge onto Benteen's indictment, that of "conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman," in his abrasion with the sheriff the previous November.18

12 Benteen, Official Court-Martial Transcript, as quoted in Connell, Son of the Morning Star, p 35, and in Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, p 349 The shouting match ended when Lt George R Burnett intervened.

13 Earlier in the year, Sheridan had relieved Crook of command of the Department of Arizona for his perceived mishandling of the Apache campaign, transferring him to the Department of the Platte See Dan L Thrapp, Conquest ofApacheria (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), p 349

14 Stephen PerryJocelyn II, Mostly Alkali (Caldwell: Caxton, 1953), p 308

15 Benteen called the report "infamous." See Benteen, Official Court-Martial Transcript, as quoted in Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, p. 351.

16 Kansas City Times, January 3, 1887

17 This was not the first time Benteen had been involved in unsigned newspaper articles He infuriated Custer when he acknowledged writing a letter critical of Custer's actions at the battle of the Washita in November 1868 Addressed to an old comrade-in-arms, the account found its way into the columns of the Missouri Democrat, February 8, 1869, and subsequently was reprinted in the New York Times, February 14, 1869

18 Benteen, Official Court-Martial Transcript, as quoted in Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, p 358

During the seventeen days of proceedings at Fort Duchesne, Benteen argued that his problems with Fort Duchesne were not a result of his drunkenness but rather that he was "too deucedly sober." He concluded by saying, "Now . . . with my locks snowy white, gotten in the service of my country, it isjust a little severe to be court-martialed for not falling in line with a Post Trader 8c Contractor."19 Nevertheless, the court found him guilty of three counts of drunkenness and of "conduct unbecoming an officer." He was sentenced to be dismissed from the service.

So Maj. Frederick W. Benteen, Ninth U.S. Cavalry, on March 9, 1887, left for Fort Douglas to sit out the review process on his case The Tribune took notice of his arrival in Salt Lake City with this brief mention:

The Major is a fine-looking man with an enviable civil war record that will stand him in stead for the rest of his life. . . . With his snow white hair and ruddy weather-beaten face, [he] brings up at once to mind the typical Revolutionary soldier. Ajollier, warmer-hearted man never lived. But he doesn't love the Mormon Church; he has no Solomon's song to sing over her; she isn't to him any Rose of Sharon-Lily of the Valley business. . . . 20

As it happened, 2d Lt. Richard W. Young, a fresh-faced alumnus of West Point, had managed to be assigned to Fort Douglas in September 1886, a maneuver that had the Tribune sputtering over "a spy" at the fort and howling gross outrage and shame.21 Nevertheless, that is how Lieutenant Young of the Fourth Artillery and Major Benteen of the Ninth Cavalry, awaiting word concerning his career, came to share a group portrait with what appears to be the other officers at Fort Douglas that day in 1887.

When General Sheridan reviewed and endorsed the findings of Benteen's court-martial, he recommended "remission of sentence,"22

19 Ibid, p 363

20 Salt Lake Tribune, March 12, 1887.

21 "We venture die assertion that The Tribune has but mildly voiced the sentiment of every officer at Fort Douglas and of every loyal man in Utah The [Salt Lake] Herald affects to talk about there being merely a religious difference of opinion between Lieutenant Young and the soldiers at Fort Douglas This is mere childish evasion The matter is not one of religion at all, but of allegiance to the Government of the United States Lieutenant Young is in no sense a citizen of the United States Though educated at the National Military School, and though under every obligation which can be drawn around a soldier of the Republic, he holds in his soul, a command from the First Presidency of the Mormon Church as more binding than any possible command of the Government could be He is in full sympathy with an alien power here which teaches its subjects to defy the laws, and while the motives of the authorities in sending him here may have been good, at the same time the assignment was a gross wrong and insult to the soldiers at the camp and to the Americans of the Territory. . . .Why should this man be sent here where he can not help but be a constant irritant, and where he will be looked upon perpetually as a spy? To give this officer a command in the Federal Army at Douglas is a gross outrage and shame." Salt Lake Tribune, September 3, 1886 The Tribune's fears proved unfounded Lt Young resigned his commission, effective April 12, 1889, to open a law practice in Salt Lake City A detailed biographical sketch of Richard Whitehead Young can be found in Whitney, History of Utah,volA, pp 560-564

based on Benteen's service record Accordingly, in view of the officer's long and honorable service, his reputation for bravery, and his soldierly qualities, President Grover Cleveland mitigated the sentence to suspension of rank and duty for one year at half pay.

On July 7, 1888, Benteen took a medical discharge and retired to Atlanta, Georgia He died June 22, 1898, and was buried in Westview Cemetery In November 1902 his body was moved to Arlington National Cemetery, his final resting place

22 Although a champion of Custer, whom he wholeheartedly supported as the consummate Indianfighter, Sheridan also had a strong fondness for Benteen and once complimented him for commanding "the best squadron of mounted cavalry I ever saw." Mills, Harvest of Barren Regrets, pp 154, 364

Book Reviews

WALKER

Called "The New Movement" or the Godbeite Revolt when it occurred in the fall of 1869, it has been largely forgotten by many Mormons. While it was a strong expression of disagreement with Brigham Young's authoritarian leadership by British intellectuals such as William S. Godbe and E. L. T. Harrison, it was by no means halfbaked.

The rebellion was over quickly, but in the process a press was established, articles were written, a rival church was established, and a lecture hall was built. In the end, important questions were raised about the issue of religious authority

Ronald Walker, professor of history and senior research historian at Brigham Young University, has written scores of perceptive, thought-provoking articles about various phases of Mormon history Without question, this is his best work to date, an eloquent and perceptive treatment of the intellectual history of the early Latterday Saints It is clearly marked by the author's gift for the written word. Each sentence is so carefully crafted as to be both dramatic and moving. In the best tradition of the historian's craft, Walker literally makes the past come alive.

Instead of focusing angrily on dissenters as divisive heretics, as some Mormon historians have done, Walker treats the Godbeites as talented people

of ideas, deserving of the term intellectual. He believes dissent helps to define the personality of a religious movement and that the Godbeites served that role admirably in the history of Mormonism.

Moreover, Walker has shed important light on the usually forgotten spiritualist movement of early Utah In an unusually effective way to engage the reader, he begins the book with the arraignment of several Godbeite leaders before the Salt Lake School of the Prophets in October 1869.

The offense was an article in Godbe's Utah Magazine suggesting that Mormon readers avoid "blind obedience" and that they test any religious teaching by "the light of their own souls." Religious obedience in Brigham Young's Utah was, as Walker says, "a highly prized and almost unchallenged virtue in Zion—at least to members of the Mormon leadership."

An angry Brigham Young addressed the School of the Prophets and expressed dismay at "a great and secret rebellion that would shake the entire church." He singled out Godbe, Harrison, Thomas Stenhouse, Edward Tullidge, and several others for having generated a crisis of authority.

The issue for Godbe was whether Brigham Young as LDS president had the right to dictate "in all things temporal and spiritual." The Godbeites

Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young. By RONALD W

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. xxiv + 399 pp. Cloth, $49.95; paper, $25.00.)

were thinkers who prized their own right of choice and thought all Mormons deserved the same consideration. Over several chapters, Walker traces the beginnings of each of the socalled intellectuals of the Godbeite movement, telling tireir stories in vivid terms, placing them in the perspective of Mormon history.

The single most bothersome problem for the Godbeites was Brigham Young's use of an iron hand over commercial activity. Young threatened to excommunicate all Mormons who bought non-Mormon goods. The group of intellectuals believed that, in making the gentile embargo a test of church fellowship, Young had "crossed the line of reasonable and acceptable behavior."

As the story unfolds, Walker succeeds in demonstrating that "dissent and schism serve to help define what a religious community accepts and what it believes in." In fact, Walker's work most aptly implies that it is always the written word that acts as a lightning rod for those who may disagree with church leaders—even in the 20th century.

In this case, the written word proceeded from the Utah Magazine to the weekly newspaper the Mormon Tribune, designed to champion "the noblest truths of religion," and finally to the daily newspaper, the Salt Lake Tribune, which became the most volatile critic of the LDS church

Walker's forthright interpretation inevitably reminds the thoughtful reader of modern-day schisms and confrontations between intellectuals and LDS leaders, such as Sonia Johnson and her excommunication over her

activities on behalf of the ERA in the 1970s, and the more recent purge of intellectuals such as Paul Toscano and Lavina Fielding Anderson over historical interpretations as written in LDS intellectual journals such as Sunstone and Dialogue in the 1990s.

Although ecclesiastical court action was carried out in the modern cases by local LDS leaders, it was done with the express approval of the General Authorities. This means that Walker's book on the Godbeites has unusual relevance to the present day and Mormonism's continuing struggle with its intellectuals. There is still a major struggle between church leaders and a significant group of the LDS rank and file over the principle of absolute obedience

Walker succeeds to a remarkable degree in portraying the Godbeites as believable, reasonable human beings who had a clear and understandable disagreement with LDS church authority. He has not produced a polemic but a fair, scholarly treatment of this important "New Movement" that gives early Mormon development unusual balance.

Those who are drawn to Mormon history but prefer to read it in novelized form should rush to pick up Walker's book They will find that truthful history need not be dry and dull When written by a historian of Walker's grace and gifts of expression, the real story of the Mormon past becomes instantly more interesting than any multi-volume work of historical fiction

DENNIS LYTHGOE University of Utah

Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions. Edited by DONNA TOLAND SMART (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1997 xiv + 457 pp $29.95.)

In 1964 the University of Utah Press published the diaries of Hosea Stout, edited byjuanita Brooks, which outlined a man's life and Mormon experience in Nauvoo, Winter Quarters, the trek West, and settling Salt Lake City

The recently published Mormon Midwife: The 1846-1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions, edited by Donna Toland Smart, chronicles a Mormon woman's life during the same period.

Comparing the personal writings of these two individuals shows some gender differences in point of view For example, during the week of August 1-7, 1851, Sessions wrote of taking a sister through a "course of medicine," attending church, delivering a baby, cleaning garden seed, finishing a dress, and sewing carpet rags (her work at home). In contrast, Stout also worked at home, but he did not indicate what that work was He helped "all hands" in digging a cellar for the tabernacle, and attended church He also reported a general election and listed the winners

The book is the second volume in Utah State University Press's series on frontier women, and, like the first volume published last year (Maurine Ward's Winter Quarters: The Diaries of Mary Haskins Parker Richards), it won the Handcart Award from the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies Its significance lies in the historical facts Sessions recorded while she narrated her life. We see a woman's domestic and professional life in Nauvoo, Winter Quarters, and along the trail, and also witness her contribution to early Utah education, horticulture, economy, and community health

While Sessions is remembered as a midwife, she was also a savvy businesswoman who used her skills to provide for her family and to help form the economic basis of her community In fact, starting with bartering, Sessions amassed enough money to give yearly

donations to her church, to fund a school, and to care for her needs independent of her two husbands, David Sessions and, later,John Parry

Her diaries are filled with her contribution to horticulture as she collected wild strawberries on the trail and domesticated them in her Utah garden. In addition, she cultivated saplings for her orchards and traded or sold some to others She observed and recorded the beginnings of Mormon irrigation in Utah in November 1849 when she wrote of the men cutting a ditch that she and many others benefitted from.

Her voluminous domestic skills are revealed as she wrote of weaving rugs, piecing and making quilts, carding wool, spinning, and dying and weaving cloth She knitted stockings and made gaiters, wristlets, and quilted petticoats, braided straw hats, and fashioned artificial flowers and wreaths The sheer volume of her production, along with her practice of midwifery and planting and harvesting, is staggering.

Smart tells us in the introduction that Sessions learned midwifery in her early years, and her diaries indicate that she delivered hundreds of babies. She carefully recorded names, charges, and payments for these deliveries and for other medical care given.

One can't help but compare Smart's treatment of Sessions's diary with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale. Ulrich took sample entries from Martha Ballard's diaries to introduce each chapter, then used them as the basis for reconstructing Ballard's life in more detail and setting her activities into the broader context of women's and local history in her environment

In contrast, rather than analyze the diaries to produce a community social history, Smart lets the readers draw their own conclusions. She uses her introduction to briefly discuss the

importance of Sessions's life in its historical context and then lets the diary speak for itself, with some footnotes to clarify entries as needed.

The volume contains the complete text of seven diaries kept by Sessions from 1846 to 1888. Smart begins each diary with a short preface and then includes the complete text. As a result, reading the same types of entries over and over, especially in the later diaries, sometimes becomes tedious But the fact that Sessions made daily entries (as did Stout) provides a more accurate account than reminiscences or memoirs. Thus, for the historian and the domestic or social scientist the diaries are a gold mine of information

Two appendices contain the contents of an account book kept by Sessions and also a listing of family members. Smart's valiant efforts in identifying the many individuals named in the diaries and explaining various references of events and practices far exceeds Brooks's editing and

adds to the usefulness of the book for historians, genealogists, and interested readers. Also of value are the pictures of people and places, a sample page of the diaries, and photographs of items important to Sessions's life These include one shot of a loom similar to one she used and the title page, table of contents, and two illustrations of a medical book that guided her in delivering babies. An extensive index includes the names of all individuals named as well as subjects covered USU Press should be complimented for their excellence in producing a second award-winning book in two years From the high-quality binding, paper, and reproduction of photos to the press's commitment to publishing Utah and Mormon history, it is emerging as an equal to more well-known publishers in the field of history

Histories of American Indians in the West usually focus on their nineteenthcentury experiences. Twentieth-century tribal histories are few, often lacking solid research and without interpretative depth With The Ute Indians of Colorado in the Twentieth Century, Richard K. Young successfully counters these trends and presents a well-researched and readable book on two tribes of Colorado that have previously received little scholarly or publisher attention

As the author notes, while both the Southern Utes and the Ute Mountain Utes—the only two American Indian tribes with federally recognized reservations in Colorado—have lived in parts of Colorado for centuries and

side-by-side in southwestern Colorado for over 100 years, their historical and cultural experiences and development differ in remarkable ways How these differences developed throughout the twentieth century despite the two groups being closely related by a common language and culture makes for a complex and unique story that is well presented by the author

Richard Young helps the reader understand these common relationships through a brief discussion of pretwentieth century Ute history, a time when the various bands of Utes controlled two-thirds of the present state of Colorado and flourished as a power to be reckoned with by Plains and Southwest Indians, as well as by

AUDREY M GODFREY Logan, Utah

The Ute Indians of Colorado in the Twentieth Century. By RICHARD K. YOUNG. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997 xiv + 362 pp $29.95.)

Spanish and Mexican government officials, settlers, and traders However, by 1900 the Utes' Colorado domain had been reduced to two small reservations in the remote southwestern corner of the state. In the author's overview of how these events occurred, he notes that the citizens of Colorado, supported by their congressional representatives, made every effort to have the two groups completely removed from the state to a proposed reservation in southeastern Utah These efforts failed, and the ensuing history is a remarkable, often heartbreaking, description of the experiences of two peoples as they have fought for survival throughout the century.

Young vividly details a history where the cost to both tribes was extremely high in human life, quality of life, and the continuation of traditional values; yet, by the end of the twentieth century and one hundred years after the establishment of the two reservations, both the Southern Utes and the Ute Mountain Utes are still located on traditional lands and better positioned today to meet their tribal members' needs for a meaningful, quality lifestyle

The strength of Richard Young's book is presented through eight chapters that describe the accommodation of both tribes to a harsh reservation life, with erratic and inadequate federal government support, while trying to learn basic skills to first become farmers, then small business owners and entrepreneurs, depending on what federal policy was in vogue during this one-hundred-year period. Of special note is the author's presentation on the 1930s, with its New Deal programs; the 1950s, when the two tribes successfully settled their aboriginal land title rights with the federal government; and a more recent period when the tribes have developed new and creative economic strategies for supporting their own tribal members. The story of how tribal leadership developed within

the Southern Utes and the Ute Mountain Utes from the 1930s through the early 1990s is an important contribution of this book

As the core documentation of his history, Mr.Young uses the earlier research of such individuals as Floyd A O'Neil, Robert W Delaney, James Jefferson, David Lewis, Robert McPhearson, and Omer C Stewart and his Tri-Ethnic Project collection; Ute tribal archives; the National Archives holdings of the Bureau of Indian Affairs records; and a series of interviews conducted with tribal members and leaders. Unfortunately, the author does not seem to have used the Duke Indian Oral History collections at the University of Utah and at the University of New Mexico Nor is there an indication that he consulted other Ute sources housed in the libraries of Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, the Utah State Historical Society, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Historical Department, as well as those archives held by the Allen Canyon Utes and located on the White Mesa Reservation While the author does describe the 1911 taking of lands that presently comprise Mesa Verde National Park, he does not explain the controversy and the feelings generated within the Ute Mountain Utes. Throughout his life, Ute Mountain Ute Chief Jack House felt betrayed and deceived by the federal government in the creation of this national monument

Despite these criticisms, Richard Young has written an important book that should be required reading for those teaching Colorado history and that should be of interest to both the citizens and visitors to the states of Colorado and Utah. Published by the University of Oklahoma Press, Mr. Young's book is well designed, easy to read, and well illustrated

GREGORY C THOMPSON University of Utah

Crossing the Plains: New and Fascinating Accounts of the Hardships, Controversies and Courage Experienced and Chronicled by the 1847 Pioneers on the Mormon Trail. Compiled and edited by HAROLD SCHINDLER (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Tribune, 1997. 274 pp. Paper, $9.95.)

"It looked as though the face of the Earth was alive and moving like the waves of the sea," said Wilford Woodruff in 1847 as he beheld in wonder the prairie covered with buffalo from horizon to horizon. One of the Mormon pioneer company under Brigham Young, the apostle and his 147 companions would see other memorable sights before they reached their destination that summer.

Many have told the story of this historic journey but none better than Harold Schindler whose day-to-day accounts last year in the Salt Lake Tribune to honor the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Mormon pioneers in Utah have now been compiled in book form The value of this splendid series is enhanced by Dennis Green's distinctive cover and double maps that show each day's travel in relation to present landmarks as well as the overall trail.

Using diaries, letters, and journals, including the recently published 1847 Thomas Bullock account, Utah's leading journalist-historian offers a richly detailed picture of the American West and its inhabitants during the nineteenth century In addition to Indians, emigrants, and mountain men, he covers wildlife (including fish, birds, and snakes), vegetation, and historic trail sites such as Scotts Bluff, Fort Laramie, Independence Rock, and Fort Bridger.

Especially helpful to those unacquainted with this story—who, oddly, include many Mormons today— Schindler includes a brief history of the Mormons prior to their move west. To add historical perspective, he also gives information on significant events involving Brigham Young's followers elsewhere, such as the Mormon Battalion in California and later emigrant companies.

The author forthrightly identifies the road on the north side of the Platte River as the unique avenue of the Mormon emigration as pointed out on May 7 by Orson Pratt, who said, "Since we left Loup Ford, we have had to make our own trail." While Congress affirmed this when it created the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail in 1978, a few historians have wrongly challenged the designation.

At Fort Laramie, where this route crossed the North Platte, Young's 1847 company met the head of the westering emigration and other travelers, going both ways on the interstate highway of its day, the Oregon Trail. After that, Mormon pioneers had to get an early start each day to avoid eating "gentile" dust and to be the first to reach a good camping place with water, grass, and firewood

Just one of many fascinating stories relates the invention of the famous Mormon "roadometer," an ingenious device for measuring distance. With some justification, William Clayton, Orson Pratt, and Appleton Milo Harmon all claimed the credit, but the machine really came about because Clayton got tired of counting the turns of a wagon wheel to estimate mileage. Necessity proved to be the mother of cooperation as well as invention when Mormons and old persecutors from Missouri teamed up to cross the runoffswollen North Platte at today's Casper, Wyoming.

Whether one is a trails buff or an environmentalist, he will enjoy and learn from this book It is filled with information and is so well written that it is a delight to read

DAVID L BIGLER Roseville, California

A History of Hispanics in Southern Nevada. By M.L MIRANDA (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1997. xvii + 262 pp. $29.95.)

M.L. Miranda's work adds to a recent trend in Chicano studies: the examination of Hispanic communities outside "traditional" areas of concentration (such as Texas and California) In his introduction, Miranda acknowledges that this type of study has both benefits and disadvantages On the positive side, such works introduce the historical profession and readers to previously ignored communities of Spanish speakers in the West. On the other hand, the limited number and variety of sources place severe limitations on the work. But the paucity of historical source material does not lessen the importance of the contributions of Spanish-speaking people to a state's history

The first five chapters of this work examine the presence of Hispanics in the Nevada area from Spanish colonial times through 1910. In this portion of the book the influence of recent Chicano scholarship is apparent Miranda focuses upon the discrimination and dual wage system faced by Hispanics working for the railroad and mining industries. But unlike previous Chicano works, his book moves beyond a simplistic representation of all Spanish speakers as victims and all Anglos as greedy oppressors. This work emphasizes the diversity of experience that shaped racial interaction in early Nevada history. One of this work's strengths is its skillful and complex representation of interactions between these two groups over time.

Chapters six through nine detail the arrival of larger groups of Hispanics into southern Nevada during the

period between the end of World War I and 1970. The author effectively uses a variety of sources (such as school, court, census, and county records) to provide information on topics such as housing segregation, crime rates, the role of Hispanics in the gaming and entertainment industry, and the diversity within the Spanish-speaking community of Nevada and, in particular, Las Vegas.

The final chapters bring this history up to the present and further highlight the heterogeneity of this group Miranda examines the Chicano movement and the coming together of Hispanics in an attempt to improve their economic and social standing. While this movement produced benefits, the successes of Chicanismo served to divide Hispanics in the 1980s and 1990s The unity that helped generate a call for reform during the 1970s was undermined by the rise of an Hispanic middle class and by the arrival of Spanish speakers with different political views (Cuban Americans, in particular) .

This work fits squarely within the newest trends of Chicano historiography It examines a community outside "traditional" areas of Hispanic concentration and demonstrates that not all Spanish speakers share similar class, political, and social interests. It is a fine addition to the historical literature on Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest.

JORGE IBER Texas Tech University Lubbock

Cowboys and Cave Dwellers: Basketmaker Archaeology in Utah's Grand Gulch. By FRED M BLACKBURN and RAY A WILLIAMSON (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1997 viii + 188 pp Cloth, $50.00; paper, $25.00.)

This is a wonderful book! I read it one lazy Sunday afternoon feeling under the weather and was easily and willingly transported to the land of deep slickrock canyons, sage, and pinyon-and-juniper—the land of cliff dwellers and tantalizing human history This is the very land that captivated the members of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project and drove them to travel across the continent (more than once) to study and discover and then study some more and infect others with their desire to learn of the history of the Basketmakers, those incredible people that once had the Gulch to themselves and knew it like no other people before or since

This book blends three histories: one ancient and sparse, the story of the Basketmakers, ancestors to modern Puebloan peoples now living well to the south of Grand Gulch; another more detailed, yet still not totally told, of outsiders who came to Grand Gulch centuries after the Basketmaker departure and took wonderful objects away; and a third and final history (which is the real focus of the book), the story of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project and the unselfish desire of project members to bring all three histories home to the place where they happened— southeastern Utah.

The Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project tried something fresh, something they called "archaeology in reverse." Rather than removing artifacts from archaeological sites, they attempted re-connecting museum collections with the places from which they were removed a century ago. The authors relate the experiences of project members who tracked the routes of the Wetherills and others through the Gulch and numerous southeastern Utah canyons by following centuries-old signatures

on cave walls, historic photographs, and personal journals They matched catalog numbers painted on objects with field notes, and they pored over photos of objects in place. Through this process they traced many objects to their original resting places and reprovenienced artifacts whose documentation had been lost Important sites were relocated The most dramatic rediscovery was long-lost Cave 7, where the Wetherills had found evidence of the early farmers now called Basketmakers and nearly a hundred skeletons, but whose location was unknown until now. The fruits of the project's efforts at reverse archaeology (in the form of several boxes of documents) were donated to the Edge of the Cedars Museum in Blanding at the 1990 Wetherill-Grand Gulch Symposium The symposium was also organized and funded by the efforts of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project.

The photographs presented here are a treasure. Excavated from the archives of the American Museum of Natural History, the Chicago Field Museum, Tulane University, the National Museum of Finland, and others are numerous seldom or neverbefore-seen images of excavations and excavators in the 1890s. They effectively project the reader a hundred years into the past when an important goal of "archaeology" was to satisfy the hungry exhibit cases of eastern museums We can see into the eyes of these "cowboy archaeologists" and into rude pits from which they shoveled eagerly sought artifacts The historic photos are occasionally juxtaposed with modern images, an effective technique that reveals dramatic change (p. 157) or, in some cases, preservation of Puebloan ruins (p.114). Outstanding among photos taken by project members are

many by Bruce Hucko, whose work reminds me of the importance of having professional photographers on archaeological projects. The many pages of lush, even breathtaking, images in the section entitled "The Art and Artifacts of Grand Gulch" at once document and extol Ancestral Pueblo artisanship

Many mummified human remains were excavated by the Wetherills and others, and a good many of the items pictured herein are burial goods. Yet sensitivity to Native American concerns is exceptional and evident in several ways in the text. The authors have abandoned the traditional nonPuebloan term Anasazi in favor of "Ancestral Pueblo" throughout And the treatment of burial goods and human remains is thoughtful and respectful. I was particular taken with the tone of the descriptions of grave offerings on pp.73-74 Gone are cold terms like the "sub-adult" and "adult male" typical of archaeological technical reports; in their place are "child" and "elderly man." Descriptions of the material goods are carefully crafted and rich in detailed attention to the more tactile senses

Following a useful review of Basketmaker archaeology since the 1890s (Chapter 6), the authors take the Bureau of Land Management to task for its management policies and practices in Grand Gulch These criticisms are accompanied by specific suggestions for improvement if this historic treasure is to be preserved for future research and visitation. They make the important point that vandalism by col-

lectors continues to be a major problem, but serious damage is also inadvertently done to archaeological sites by the Grand Gulch-loving visitors Hiker numbers have grown dramatically of late, while BLM personnel has been reduced. The authors challenge the public generally to get involved in preservation efforts

There are what I would characterize as minor structural problems in the book In places I felt the narrative bounced a little too freely from historic accounts to descriptions of the Grand Gulch research team activities, causing me to pause to re-gather loose threads (see for example the bottom of page 61). Also, near the end of Chapter 5, "Rediscovering Cave 7," the authors assess both the contributions of the Wetherills to archaeology and current perceptions of these free-wheeling excavators. This section seemed a little out of place in this chapter and might have fit more comfortably elsewhere, perhaps in Chapter 6

The layout of the book is exceptional, with a pleasing mix of illustration and photographs, and reproductions are almost always technically excellent (exceptions are restricted to a couple of grainy black and white photos in Chapter 6). There are good endnotes for those who wish to dive deeper into the topics. Most important, the book is well written The text flows smoothly and clearly throughout I recommend this as a must-read for all students of the American Southwest

JOEL C.JANETSKI Brigham Young University

Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation. By MALCOLM J. ROHRBOUGH (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997 xx + 353 pp $29.95.)

In Days of Gold, Malcolm Rohrbough demonstrates that the discovery of gold

at Sutter's mill in 1848 was not just an incident in California's history but an

event that had profound repercussions felt everywhere in the nation. It triggered the largest mass migration in the history of the United States, which equally affected those who left for the California gold fields in their quest for an improved life and those they left behind It changed the fundamental values of marriage, family, work, and wealth, leaving a nation where "nothing was ever the same again." (p. 6)

Using a myriad of letters and diaries, Rohrbough tells the story of the Fortyniners from their individual decisions to leave for California, through the voyage and the work in the gold fields, to the often-painful return home and life at home itself—through the eyes of the individuals involved These first-hand memories account for the liveliness and strength of this study, which provides new insights into the gold rush migration.

For a long time, Americans had been accustomed to migrating Nevertheless, the gold rush proved to be a new experience insofar as it represented only a temporary move that separated husbands from wives and children from parents. On their departure, the Forty-niners often predicted the hardships that lay ahead of them but, as Rohrbough demonstrates, the consequences for those left behind were at least as severe, even if different The participants in this saga shared certain beliefs The argonauts, their families, and much of the rest of the nation viewed the gold rush as a continuation of the "American Dream" that rewarded hard work, honest endeavor, and right moral values. For

the majority of Forty-niners, however, the gold rush soon proved to be "a lottery [where] only few players win" (p 259), making their return emotionally difficult and sometimes impossible, as failure seemed to imply a lack of effort.

Any study that relies almost completely on subjective first-hand accounts, as Rohrbough's history does, necessarily encounters certain problems The first, of course, is that of believability Rohrbough's portrait, for instance, of the Forty-niners' attitudes concerning the "entertainment industry" is particularly questionable. The majority of the argonauts by their own accounts viewed gamblers and prostitutes with derision. Yet this "industry" was able to prosper because of the willing involvement of the Forty-niners In this respect, it was disappointing to find so little time spent on the experiences of prostitutes in the gold rush In addition, a work that attempts to demonstrate the broader impact of the gold rush must spend more time than just two pages addressing the group that the movement most profoundly affected: the California Indians

Days of Gold is nonetheless an important contribution to the history of the United States at the dawn of the Civil War. It is a necessary addition to the bookshelves of scholars and laymen alike, who will be captured by Rohrbough's entertaining writing style that elegantly intertwines first-hand accounts with historical narrative

Above a Common Soldier: Frank and Mary Clarke in theAmerican West and Civil War, 18471872. Revised Edition. Edited by DARLIS MILLER (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. xvii + 222 pp. $55.00.)

During the two decades before the Civil War, an average of 15,500 men served as enlisted soldiers annually, at

least two-thirds of whom were foreignborn They had joined the army for a variety of reasons, but most were seek-

GERHARD GRYTZ University of Nevada, Las Vegas

ing opportunities for geographic, economic, occupational, or social mobility. Only a few of all soldiers would reach the coveted rank of noncommissioned officer during their tour in the army Most soldiers, foreign-born or not, were illiterate, and many of the foreigners could speak little if any English Given the dearth ofjournals, diaries, or letters left by soldiers, any source left by the foreign-born soldier officer is rare indeed.

The letters of Frank and Mary Clarke, edited by Darlis Miller and published as Above a Common Soldier, are such a rarity. Frank's letters to his wife and family give insight into an English immigrant's life-long association with the U.S Army as a noncommissioned officer, a civilian employee, and a Union volunteer officer His missives cover most of the major conflicts of xhe mid-nineteenth century, including the War with Mexico, the Indian Wars, the Mormon War, and the Civil War. Moreover, the letters help the reader understand the mundane existence of peacetime soldiering, the exhilaration of the war experience, and the lovehate relationship many soldiers had with the Army Unfortunately, there is little discussion of daily Army life, such as lodging, friendships and off-duty activities, or of the Army's effect on family life.

Nevertheless, for the social historian who examines frontier living conditions, the correspondence provides a great deal of information. It describes pioneering life in the Upper Mis-

sissippi and Wisconsin, on the Great Plains, and in "Bleeding Kansas," Utah, and New Mexico. Students of Kansas history will be particularly delighted by the letters of Mary Clarke, which paint a vivid picture of the changes taking place in the territory as the frontier moved on and Kansas became a settled state.

Students of the frontier family and women's history will find the collection rich in detail about a family's struggle to carve out a home, educate their children, and eke out an existence during very distressing times Like many Army dependents, Mary was forced to "make do" without much aid from her soldier-husband. Indeed, the letters document Mary's growth from almost total financial and emotional dependence on her husband to her becoming "a resolute businesswoman dealing with tenants, lawyers, and government bureaucrats" (p xvi) After her husband's death in 1862, Mary continued writing to her mother-in-law over the next decade.

Darlis Miller has done a fine job editing the letters, writing good chapter introductions and annotations and producing a very useable index. I would have liked a few maps, however, to give context to the variety of places the Clarkes wrote about in their letters But the lack of maps does not detract from the general quality of the work I recommend it highly

MARK R GRANDSTAFF Brigham Young University

American Forests: Nature, Culture, and Politics. Edited by CHAR MILLER. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997. xiv + 289 pp. Cloth, $35.00; paper, $17.95.)

Char Miller, biographer of Gifford Pinchot and one of the foremost historians of the American conservation movement, edits this anthology of four-

teen previously published essays tracing the evolution of the U.S Forest Service and of forestry in general Unlike many multi-author volumes, this one has

broadly defined thematic unity It seeks to demonstrate that the relationship between conservationists, government officials, and the timber industry has been far more complex than is commonly believed.

Langston demonstrate the impact of the modern forest industry on communities and the environment

As a political historian, my only significant reservation about this book is its treatment of policymaking The book contains informative, often factladen essays on the passage of the Forest Reserve Act (1891), the Sustained Yield Act (1944), the Tongass Timber Act (1947), the National Wilderness Act (1964), and the National Forest Management Act (1976) And yet the roles of regions and political parties are not systematically explored. Did it matter, for example, that the Republicans (the more "activist" party in the nineteenth century) controlled the presidency and both branches of Congress for the first time in sixteen years when the Forest Reserve Act passed? Was Republican control of Congress significant to the evolution of the Tongass Act? What role did heavy Democratic congressional majorities play in the shaping of the Forest Management Act? If parties were not that important to national environmental policy development in the 1970s, for what reasons have they become more important in the 1990s? In what ways has the green movement in the West split the modern Democratic party constituency?

In raising these criticisms, I merely confirm what the book's contributors already know: While the historiography on conservationism and the ecosystem has experienced tremendous growth, much more remains to be done in explaining the evolution of national policy The authors here have made a good start

G. Robbins and Nancy

It is impossible to do justice to each of the essays in a short review, and there is a bit of the unevenness that one would expect in an anthology. In general, however, the authors succeed in showing that the history of forestry and the American public has indeed been a "tangled interaction" (ix) Donald Pisani, for example, explains the differences between nineteenthcentury conservationists and their early twentieth-century successors as shaped by the latter's acceptance of corporate capitalism and the former's belief in tying moral degeneration to the disappearing forest. John F. Reiger argues that sportsmen played an under-appreciated role in the creation of the national forest system Articles by Richmond L Clow and Robert E Wolf highlight the role of profit-making in shaping the goals of the Forest Service and putting it at loggerheads with many conservationists, while Susan R. Schrepfer reveals the surprisingly cooperative relationship between the Service and the Sierra Club prior to the 1950s Hal K Rothman roots the rivalry between the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service in the 1920s and 1930s in the different constituencies to which they appealed, while Thomas G Alexander argues in his piece on the Great Basin that a lengthy time lag existed between the establishment of a bureaucratic, scientific management structure and the actual application of scientific principles toward land management. Essays by William

LEX RENDA University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Samurais in Salt Lake: Diary of the First Diplomatic Japanese Delegation to Visit Utah, 1872. Translated and with commentar y by DEAN W COLLINWOOD, RYOICHI YAMAMOTO, and KAZUE

MATSUI-HAAG ([Ogden , Ut.] : USJapan Center, 1996 72 pp Paper.)

Late in 1871 a Japanese delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Tomomi Iwakura began a tour of the United States. Its purpose was to attend the Treaty Powers conference in Washington, D C, seeking diplomatic remedies to earlier disadvantageous treaties, and in the process travel the length of the United States and learn the ways of Americans. Stranded by severe winter weather in Salt Lake City, the 107 members made the best of their three-week stay there. It was the "first contact" for the two cultures—the moment when "Japan and the Japanese forcefully entered the consciousness of the people of Utah."

Historians have handled the Iwakura Delegation's stay in Utah with varying degrees of accuracy and detail The present version offers an exceptionally rich fare of historical material and insight It consists of a narrative overview, an idiomatic and well-annotated translation of that portion of the Kunitake Kume diary which covered the Salt Lake City experience, and a bibliography. The translators/authors see this historical event as having special significance for eventual Mormon proselytizing missions to Japan and for creating "an atmosphere of tolerance for people of Japanese descent which, years later, would open the door for

the successful integration of JapaneseAmericans into the mainstream of Utah Society."

Samurais in Salt Lake was one of many worthy projects to receive support from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission.

A Short Season: Story of a Montana Childhood. By DON MOREHEAD AND ANN MOREHEAD (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. xvi + 190 pp. Paper, $13.00.)

Though the Morehead ranch was located near Cut Bank, Montana, this charming memoir could just as well have come from Utah, Wyoming, or anywhere else in the Rocky Mountain West Written with exceptional clarity and style, it recounts life's more vivid moments as seen through the eyes of a precocious boy growing up on a sheep ranch in the 1940s

Precious Dust: The Saga of the Western Gold Rushes. By PAULA MITCHELL MARKS (1994; reprint ed Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998 448 pp Paper, $17.95.)

Marks does indeed unfold a saga— and a lively one at that. Her book is abundantly populated with personalities who hoped, journeyed, worked, survived, gave up, and gritted their teeth, all in the pursuit of gold

As the saying goes, "God is in the

details." Here the details muscle beneath generalities by showing how "gold fever"—a stereotype if there ever was one—really affected men and women For instance, the process of actually getting to the gold fields was more than many of the hopefuls could handle Those who pushed ahead negotiated mud in Panama, Comanche territory in the Southwest, deadly cold in the Yukon, or scurvy in boats rounding Cape Horn.

Maybe the journey was arduous, and so was the destination, but many prospectors had the good humor and spunk to see it through; in fact, many gained (though rarely materially) from the experience Readers, on the other hand, will need neither good humor nor spunk in order to negotiate thisjourney; however, they may need willpower to help them set the book down.

West, "Searchlight tried to become a ghost town but failed."

Ogden Rails: A History of Railroads in Ogden, Utah, from 1869 to Today. By DON STRACK. (Ogden: Golden Spike Chapter, Railway 8c Locomotive Historical Society, 1997 96 pp Paper, $24.95.)

Searchlight: The Camp That Didn 't Fail. By HARRY REID (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1997 xxix + 229 pp $19.95.)

Searchlight is located at the junction of state highways 95 and 68 at the southern tip of Nevada "in one of the least hospitable environments of the United States." According to one of several local traditions, "There is ore there alright, but it would take a searchlight to find it," writes U.S Senator Harry Reid (p. 16).

It may have taken a searchlight to locate the ore, but Reid has discovered the many personalities of the camp, including Bill Nellis, John Macready, "Big-Nosed Pete" Domitrovich, and the Indian Queho. He has also unearthed the camp's various economic activities of mining, dam construction, ranching, gambling, and prostitution, as well as its lively social and political developments Unlike numerous other mining camps in Nevada and elsewhere in the

This short volume is packed with railroad information found in no other published history Don Strack, aided by a grant from the George S and Delores Dore Eccles Foundation, researched the corporate archives of the Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company headquarters in San Francisco From these archives, newspapers, and other sources, including interviews, he explains the importance of the railroad to the greater Ogden area. For instance, 20,000 railroad cars carrying 1.8 million head of sheep, 19,000 railroad cars transporting 300,000 head of cattle, and 350,000 hogs packed in 6,000 cars were loaded or unloaded at the Ogden stockyards in 1945.

The important railroad facilities at Ogden spun off numerous related industries, including grain elevators, flour mills, icing and refrigeration facilities, and food processing and canning factories, making Ogden the little Chicago or Omaha of the Intermountain West

In addition to providing the railroad lineage of the Oregon Shortline, the Ogden & Hot Springs Railroad, and other streetcar and shortline railroad companies of the northern Wasatch Front, Stack also discusses briefly the roles of the Eccles, Bamberger, and other family-owned transportation companies in the development of the electric streetcar and interurban railroads of northern Utah. These various streetcar and interurban railroads transported

hundreds ofstudents daily to schools in Cache County and elsewhere, carried tons of freight to and from Davis, Box Elder, Weber, Cache, and Salt Lake counties, and provided a means for people along the northern Wasatch Front to shop and do business in the larger cities of Ogden, Logan, and Salt Lake City as well as to visit health and recreational areas in these counties

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. By Clarence King Edited and with a preface by FRANCIS P FARQUHAR (Reprint ed.; Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1997 320 pp Paper, $12.00.)

Heart-stopping adventure, passionate descriptions of wilderness, amusing and astute sketches of unforgettable characters: this book has it all. Clarence King, only twenty-nine when these essays were first published, immediately won recognition for his extraordinary accounts of his experiences during the California geological survey

The book, first published in 1872, is still a good read. For Utahns, it is particularly interesting for its portrait of the man for whom the state's highest point is named. By all accounts Clarence King was brilliant, courageous, and charming—qualities that shine through in his writing, even if that writing sometimes takes fanciful turns. Forinstance, King's descriptions of certain mountain ascents puzzle today's mountaineers, who find discrepancies between the words and the actual terrain, and some of the stories he recounts were probably embellished if not fabricated outright. But Farquhar's preface provides a cleareyed explanation of why King wrote the way hedid.

And anyway, if sins do exist in the manuscript, the author's way with words covers up a multitude of them.

Hiking, Climbing, and Exploring Western Utah's Jack Watson's Ibex Country. By MICHAEL

R KELSEY (Provo: Kelsey

Publishing,

1997 272pp Paper.)

Excerpts from diaries and narratives patched together with summary comprise the main part of this volume; the author also includes descriptions of a dozen hikes. From a stylistic, typographic, and even sometimes philosophical standpoint, the book is not easy reading In oneplace, for instance, the author says that the water from a certain spring is "as good asitwas when naked savages were roaming the hills" (p. 210). But the historical material provides a compelling sense of life in the west desert, especially of the toilsome and often-lonely days of Jack Watson, who ranched in the area around the Confusion and House ranges

Thomas Jefferson and the Changing West. Edited by JAMES P RONDA (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997 xx + 204 pp Cloth, $29.95; Paper, $16.95.)

"Perhaps more than any other national leader, Lincoln excepted, Jefferson seems to transcend time and place to become a voice for all times and allplaces," writesJames Ronda, editor of this volume. For many of Jefferson's modern admirers, his understanding of the West and of its interaction with the thirteen colonies and later the United States are clear and unambiguous However, the contributors to this volume point out that even as Jefferson asked questions about the West, the answers provided to himand others were anything but plain and certain. Rather, the answers caused conflict and tension in thenation then andnow. The collection of essays is a result of a 1994 national conference on Jefferson and the West The ten essay-

ists examine some of Jefferson's questions and answers on Native Americans, natural resources, the "Empire for Liberty,"and the ever-changing West. Authors include John Logan Allen, Anthony F C Wallace, Robert A Williams,Jr., Robert Gottlieb, Helen M Ingram and Mary G Wallace, Peter S Onuf, Elliott West, Mary Clearman Blew, and Patricia Nelson Limerick Jefferson "sought explanations" to his queries, yet many of his explanations and views raised new questions about the American experience as it has played out in the West. Still, the essayists testify that many of Jefferson's concepts continue to engage and challenge western historians today. This volume, then, is a must for students of both Jefferson and the West

dozens of other individuals became recognizable names in the lengthy battle Equally recognizable institutions involved were the Bureau of Reclamation, National Park Service, Sierra Club, Isaac Walton League, Utah Water and Power Board, National Parks Association, and the "Aqualantes."

Mark Harvey's excellent work details this fight as a victory for the conservationists; the Echo Park Dam was never built The book also shows how the Echo Park Dam conflict demonstrated the emergence of the West as "a primary region of environmental conflict in the United States."

The 1854 Oregon Trail Diary ofWinfield Scott Ebey. Edited by SUSAN BADGER

A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park andthe American Conservation Movement. By MARKW T. HARVEY (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994 xxiv + 368pp Paper, $18.85.)

During the post-World War II era of water and power development, the proposal to build a dam at Echo Park in northeastern Utah touched off a storm of controversy. The contending forces included newly emerging conservation groups who fought to preserve the wilderness stretches of the Green and Yampa rivers On the other side, energy and water developers from Washington, D.C., to California and advocates within the Department of Interior considered the Echo Park Dam a significant element in the massive multi-state Colorado River Storage Project. Both sides fought vigorously to win public support for their causes

Bernard DeVoto, Oscar Chapman, G E Untermann, Newton Drury, Fred Packard, Howard Zahniser, Stephen Bradley, David Brower, Wallace Stegner, Arthur V Watkins, Douglas McKay, and

DOYLE and FRED W DYKES Emigrant Trails Historical Studies Series No 2 (Independence, Mo.: Oregon-California Trails Association, 1997. xiv + 247 pp. Cloth, $27.95; Paper, $14.95.)

Trails enthusiasts will welcome this edition of the noteworthy Winfield Scott Ebey diary Captain of the 1854 train that is documented here, Ebey took hisjob of captain and chronicler seriously, and we are the better for it. The two-notebook travel diary was rewritten in 1857 and includes personal comments and quotes from the diarist's library This expanded version presents a detailed look at the trail as the "Ebey wagon train" traveled from Plum Grove, Missouri, to Puget Sound, Washington Territory and was welcomed by H. H. Bancroft and other early historians for its comprehensive treatment of the emigrant experience. The editors have provided maps and photo illustrations of the trail, parts of which were also followed by the Mormons and the Forty-niners. Their volume enriches our knowledge of the westering adventure and calls us to go see the actual sites for ourselves.

Letters

Editor:

The spring Historical Quarterly article by Lloyd Pierson concerning the Colorado-Utah boundary survey was interesting and informative, but unfortunately, the captions unde r the illustrations contained some inaccurate information

1) The illustration identified as a transit is, instead, a level They are two entirely different instruments

2) The "story pole" on p 102 looks like a leveling rod to this observer, and not something that would be used in an original land survey I may be wrong on that score, but it might be interesting to confirm whether or not it was used on the boundary survey

3) Th e surveyor's chain on p 106 is sixty-six feet long, not 100 feet as described in the photo caption. It is 100 links long; each link is 7.92 inches long The chain is a convenient tool for land surveys, since there are eighty chains to a mile. A parcel of ten square chains (one chain wide, ten chains long, for example) is one acre in size. On e rod (I6/2 feet) is one-fourth of a chain

I hope these errors can be corrected in some way, for the benefit of your readers.

(This observer, by the way, has not used the original link chain, but he has [in a former life] used a steel tape marked in chains and links.)

CHARLES R BATTEN Logan, Utah

Note: The editors regret the errors and emphasize that author Lloyd Pierson was not responsible for them.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

FELLOWS

THOMAS G ALEXANDER

JAMES B. ALLEN

LEONARD J ARRINGTON

MAUREEN URSENBACH BEECHER

EVERETT L. COOLEY

BRIGHAM D MADSEN

DEAN L MAY

HELEN Z. PAPANIKOLAS

CHARLES S PETERSON

HONORARY LIFE MEMBERS

VEE CARLISLE

EVERETT L. COOLEY

LORA CROUCH

J ELDON DORMAN

JACK GOODMAN

FLORENCE S JACOBSEN

MARGARET D LESTER

LAMAR PETERSEN

RICHARD C. ROBERTS

HAROLD SCHINDLER

MELVIN T. SMITH

MARTHA R. STEWART

JEROME STOFFEL

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY

PETER L. GOSS, Salt Lake City, 1999 Chair

CAROL CORNWALL MADSEN, Salt Lake City, 2001 Vice-Chair

MAX J EVANS, Salt Lake City Secretary

MARILYN CONOVER BARKER, Salt Lake City, 1999

MICHAEL W. HOMER, Salt Lake City, 2001

LORI HUNSAKER, Brigham City, 2001

KIM A HYATT, Bountiful, 2001

JOEL C JANETSKI, Provo, 2001

CHRISTIE SMITH NEEDHAM, Logan, 2001

RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden, 1999

PENNY SAMPINOS, Price, 1999

PAUL D. WILLIAMS, Salt Lake City, 1999

ADMINISTRATION

MAX J. EVANS, Director

WILSON G. MARTIN, Associate Director

PATRICIA SMITH-MANSFIELD, Assistant Director STANFORD J. LAYTON, ManagingEditor

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by 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

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