Winter Fun in Northern Utah Valley

Winter Fun in Northern Utah Valley

By BETH R. OLSEN

Practically the only similarity between historic winter activities in Pleasant Grove and the games of the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City is the need for an abundance of ice and snow. Today, in the age of chemically and mechanically frozen ice and snow, there is less need to rely on nature's whims. But in nineteenth-century Utah Valley, residents used the real thing. Besides sports activities, the thick ice of Utah Lake was used for commercial and personal cooling purposes and for convenient travel.

A resort called Woodbury Park stood below Pleasant Grove on the eastern shore of Utah Lake, and beside it stood two large railroad-owned ice houses where ice cut from the lake was packed and stored in sawdust. In January 1884, for instance, a large force of men was working the lake daily, cutting ice for immediate shipment and to fill the two icehouses for summer shipment. At that time the Denver and Rio Grande railroad was reportedly strongly considering building a hotel at that place because of the popularity of the resort and the ice cutting. 1

Icehouses were important backyard buildings for some families. The windowless icehouse built of self-insulating tufa stone that still stands behind what "was the Oscar Winters house is typical of others built in town. Utah Lake "was not the only source of ice for storing. The Mill Pond, Jens Monson's pond, and Nick Iverson's pond also yielded thick geometric shapes of ice for home storage. Wesley Walker remembers his father taking him in a bobsled to the Will Ellis pond at the brickyard on the east side of town. During the summer months, the water from this pond was used in the brick-making process. But in the winter Wesley watched his father and others saw ice from it -with handsaws, cutting large blocks. Grabbing them with huge ice tongs, they pulled the heavy, awkward blocks up a chute onto the bobsled and took numerous loads to the family icehouse. There they bedded the harvested blocks between blankets of insulating sawdust to preserve a summer ice supply for the kitchen icebox. 2 During a cold winter, enough ice could be stored to last all summer.

Ice was very much a valued commercial commodity, and each "winter the newspapers monitored its thickness on the lake closely until the ice bins became stocked. The February 7, 1914, American Fork Citizen noted, "The local stores are beginning to -worry about the ice situation this winter. The ice has never been more than five inches thick." However, because temperatures had dropped to zero degrees, the cold weather promised to "make the crop more abundant." The 1916 "crop" must have been adequate, for although the stores were by law to be closed on Sundays, the paper reported in June that "the ice bin at A. K. Thornton Lumber Yard will be open from 9 until 11 A.M. on Sunday and holidays so anyone wishing ice on those days must be at the bin at those hours." The promising 1918 winter froze the ice on Utah Lake from sixteen to eighteen inches thick by January 27. The 1925 winter report was that "the ice has been unusually thick and plentiful this year." The Thornton Drug Company, the largest commercial ice distributor in town, filled its icehouse by the third week in January that year, and the Headquist Drug Company had stored about fifty-five tons. Also, the Union Pacific Railroad had stored an insulated carload of ice at the depot for its employees' use. 3

Harvesting ice was neither a pleasure nor a sport but cold, tiresome work for men. The reward came in the summer when the family had ice to cool homemade root beer, to make cold lemonade to quench the burning thirst of hay-hauling men, or to freeze quarts of refreshing ice cream in a handturned freezer on Sundays, birthdays, or holidays. Kitchen iceboxes required a plentiful supply of ice as well. Another necessary use for ice: E. D. Olpin, the town's first mortician, did not perform embalming services until the very early 1920s, when his sons learned the technique. Before that time, ice was packed around a corpse to keep it looking nice for the memorial service.

In the winter the frozen Utah Lake provided a shortcut from the mountains west of the lake to Pleasant Grove on the east side. Since early days, the practice had been that before snow fell men would cut cedar posts or firewood from the west mountains and pile the wood on the lake shore until January, when the ice froze thick. "It was much faster to cross the lake with bobsleds on the ice rather than go [around the lake] by way of Lehi" in the summer. Usually, teams could make winter crossings on any section of the lake. However, in mid-January 1918 a span of mules with a good set of harnesses and a practically new wagon loaded with two tons of alfalfa disappeared under the ice. The driver was rescued by a party crossing the lake ice in an automobile. At the time, the ice on the lake was sixteen to eighteen inches thick; earlier that same week on the north end of Utah Lake, nine horses, four wagons, and about a dozen men had safely gathered in one place on the ice by Saratoga to watch the Holmstead brothers draw their fishing nets. And on the day of the accident twenty-five teams with similar loads had traversed without mishap the same fourteen-mile stretch between Mosida and Provo Bay. But the twenty-sixth trip was nearly fatal. 4

The accident may have ended the practice of heavy load-hauling across the lake; however, automobiles had discovered the shorter winter route, and by 1920 "automobile coasting" on Utah Lake had become the latest sport. At the wheel of a "flivver with chained wheels and hand sleds trailing behind," the driver opened the machine to its full speed and then turned to one side "while the trailing coasters sped on," slipping and swirling around the automobile. Each evening, dozens of cars "were on the lake participating in the sport in January 1920—and the newspaper reported the ice safe for both automobiles and teams. 5

Ice-skating on Utah Lake had been a popular sport since the early years, but skating nearly proved fatal to three young Pleasant Grove boys who ventured onto thin ice on December 1, 1938. Guy Hillman and Gene Christensen underwent a frigid dousing, as did Blain Richards, who attempted to rescue the two after they went through the ice. Two other skating companions ran to the Chris Barbarkus farm and found William Nerdin, a hired farmhand, and Provo jeweler Frank Mullet, who rescued the boys with the aid of a rope. The near-frozen skaters received medical treatment at the farm before being moved to their homes. 6

In Pleasant Grove proper, ice-skating was available most of the winter, since the water used for drinking was run in the canals and irrigation ditches all winter. In the Manila area, drinking streams were run well into the 1930s because this farming area lacked a piped culinary system. The water froze with the first cold weather and remained frozen all winter, creating ice highways on which skaters could travel long distances. Children and teenagers clamped on single- or double-runner skates to glide across the silver ribbons, perhaps ending up at the millpond for a day of skating. The frozen canals worked out well for the skaters, but for about two months in the winter those who depended on drinking streams for domestic water had to haul it from flowing wells located lower in the valley.

What of the winter snow, and how did people react to it? The January 10, 1920, newspaper cheerfully reported the heaviest snowstorm of the season: ten inches in the valley and plenty more expected. "A storm of this kind is "worth thousands of dollars to the Fishermen on Utah Lake pulling farmers hereabouts. Sleighs are to be seen on in their nets. the streets now and the whole town has taken on a winter look," reported the paper. Five years later, in December 1924, a million-dollar storm fell as a Christmas present. "The prospect of plenty of water for their crops the coming season brought smiles to the faces of men who stood in groups on the streets, just enjoying the fall of the snow on their clothing." At the time, a railroad carload of coal shipped in for widows and the poor was being hauled into town by teams and wagons. Wagon after wagon laden with coal went along the streets, the horses and men covered "with snow. People said that this storm was similar to one that had come eight years previously, almost on the exact date. As the week progressed, the thermometers plunged to below zero, and as water lines broke the city water master kept busy turning water away from homes. The few commercial garages overflowed with cars that had broken radiators or frozen engines. Longtime residents stated that they had not seen such cold weather in twenty-six years. 7

Winter's snows provided an opportunity for partying in Pleasant Grove, and the townspeople devised innovative ways to get together and enjoy the snow and cold weather. Groups of young men often set a hayrack on bobsled runners, filled it with loose hay, and nestled down with their girlfriends for a moonlit winter's night hayride.

The town's Old Folks held winter parties and often recorded that they traveled to and from the parties on horse-drawn sleighs. Groups of Scandinavians held sleigh-riding parties, each couple with their own horse-drawn sleigh. Large Swedish bells attached to horses' harnesses jingled merrily as they rode through the fields and over fences drifted "with snow. Families, too, went for sleigh rides: "We would pile into the two-seated sleigh, with hot flat irons at our feet to keep us warm, and we would go for long rides—sometimes as far as Aunt May's who lived in American Fork. The horses would have strings of Swedish bells on them, which Dad claimed sounded so much more musical than American bells," wrote Zelda Nelson Freeman. 8 Leah Fugal Dingle wrote,

The Fugal brothers had one of the big wagon beds put on runners for winter hauling on the farm. We were able to tie on behind with our little sleighs and ride while our parents were in the wagon bed on soft hay or straw and hot bricks. They would ride around town on good afternoons and evenings. We had some beautiful sounding sleigh bells Uncle Jens Fugal had brought from Norway when he returned from his mission in 1899. They jingled so beautifully as the horses trotted along. How dear to my heart are those scenes of my childhood.9

Another Scandinavian family, the Oscarsons, felt that winter was never dull, with the old clay hill, a perfect sledding place, nearby. They also held "bobsled parties with the bells merrily jingling as the horses jogged along -with everyone tucked under warm blankets." The party usually ended with an oyster stew at someone's house. The children also remember coasting down the clay hill on sleds with their cousins. 10

The Pleasant Grove terrain slopes downward from the foothills below Mt. Timpanogos on the east and from the North Field bench on the north. From any house in town, a youth could reach his favorite sledding hill in a few minutes' walk. Besides the clay hill, there were also Oscar's Hill, Harvey's Hill, the Canal Hill, and many others, each a popular gathering spot for winter fun. Flexible Flyers were high on children's Christmas want lists, and most families owned at least one.

Sometimes, teenagers converted horse-drawn wagons into sleds by transferring a wagon to runners, creating a bobsled similar to those used by farmers and ice harvesters for winter "work. They then pulled the tongue of the wagon up toward the wagon box to use for a guiding device. These sleds worked much like children's coaster wagons and, since they were so heavy and had no brakes, were reported to be very treacherous to both rider and spectator. Perhaps this is why in 1919 Nils Hanson requested of the city council that "some action be taken in the way of preventing a continuance of the coasting with wagons and sleighs on the hill in front of his residence." The council instructed the marshal to control the coasting. 11

Rhodin Christiansen wrote of winter activities in Monkey Town, a cohesive neighborhood in the eastern section of Pleasant Grove: "They whooped and hollered as they rode their sleighs bellgut down Oscar's hill. They laughed and chattered as they pulled them up for another go. Sometimes they hitched a tow behind a bobsled going up the road for another load of ice, and thought what a fine thing it was to ride both ways.12

Mary Rasmussen Nielsen's writings depict what many children from early in the century through the 1960s experienced on the various hills in town. After dinner and the dishes [and chores] were done, we spent many hours walking to the top of the hill with our sleighs to get a good start for the run down the hill. If there were two or three needing a ride, one would sit up front, knees pulled in tight with feet tucked in front, the second rider would sit with his feet on the steering bar and guide us down the road. The last person would give a hefty push, barely having time to kneel on back and grab on, and hang on he must for if the road were good and frozen glassy, he couldn't stay on. At times we were lucky enough for everyone to get on in a sitting position and there would be someone kind enough to give us a good push and we were off] Other time[s] we would stack two or three people in a laying position, and on a good sleigh we could really get going pretty fast, the person on the bottom of the stack usually steered the sleigh. There were times we ended up in the snow banks at the side of the road with snow in our nostrils, mouth and eyes and most of us having a good laugh.13

The dress style of the age, Mary said, was "double everything, flannel pajamas as a liner under two pairs of pants, shirts under sweaters plus winter coats, two to four pairs of sox and rubber boots over shoes, gloves inside mittens, scarves around necks, and ear muffs. No wonder we were worn out traipsing back up the hill. It "was good for us. We slept good and the memories are priceless." She also remembered arriving home after being in near-zero weather and coming in to the warmth of the coal stove, which she said compared with no other heat. The only miserable times she remembered had to do 'with nearly frozen feet and hands—and how she had to place them in cold "water, painfully waiting for them to warm up. 14

The winters of the 1920s and early 1930s were particularly good years for sledding. During these years almost every night for a month or more the crowd was on the hill until almost midnight. The group varied a little, depending on who could come, but sledding always took precedence over homework. Sometimes the sledders would break in the middle of the night to reinforce themselves with chili or hot chocolate at one house or another then go right back out to the fun. 15

By 1949 coasting had become so popular and accepted that the PTA of the city's two schools (elementary and high school), along with the Lion's Club and city police, established legal coasting lanes on the old mill hill and on 400 North, and they installed lighted sawhorses across the streets to keep the car traffic off during winter sledding conditions. These protectors of the youth called for the public to request that other popular hills be set aside for winter coasting. 16

While the age of small Flexible Flyers lasted into the 1960s and was characteristic of the fun on all the hills in town, the memorable "schooner" era began sometime after the turn of the nineteenth century and lasted into the early 1930s. Leah Dingle described the schooners as giant sleds eighteen inches high and holding nine passengers (if none were overweight). When "the road "was frozen and very icy," these sleds would travel at "alarming rates of speed." 17 The schooner run stretched "west from Fred Smith's ranch at the mouth of Grove Creek Canyon to the city cemetery—the same run that many a Flexible Flyer took.

Rhodin Christiansen described the first homemade schooner as a "supersleigh" put together by Pete and Alma Christiansen. "It would hold from fifteen to twenty passengers, depending on the mix of grownup kids and small ones. It required a man to handle it and was usually piloted by Pete Christiansen." Rhodin described it as "the fastest thing on the road, once clocked at one minute and a half on the little more than a mile run." On cold winter nights the cry would go up and down the road, "The schooner's out, and nearly everybody who wasn't sick in bed would turn out for a ride or to watch it hurtle down the road.... Sometimes in the evenings some of the grownups would come out and share rides "with the kids, taking a few spills in the snow and having as much fun as the youngsters." There were few cars on the winter roads at the time, and since snow removal was unheard-of on the graveled rural roads in Pleasant Grove during the twenties and thirties, sledders ruled the snow-packed roads on the eastern hills. "It was the job of two or three men to pull the schooner back up the hill. Will Stagg at times donated the services of his big gray horse. At the top of the road the horse was let loose, it would follow the schooner down the hill, only for the privilege of pulling it up again." 18 This schooner may have been two Flexible Flyers, altered and joined into one. It was reportedly very hard to steer. 19

Jean Fugal described a schooner built out of smaller sleds:

Delbert Fugal had a 1900-1910 vintage six-passenger Flexible Flyer sleigh. Joe Walker's family also had one. Uncle Chris Fugal made some alterations on the [two] sleighs. He made a metal steering mechanism with metal extensions on both sides of the sleighs. There were wooden side rails and he made a device with a round piece of metal which he fastened to the runners of the sleighs to prevent the runners from buckling under the weight of six passengers. On the front of the sleighs were wooden bars and four foot rests along each side. The person in front rested his/her feet on this front bar. Persons guiding the sleigh put his/her feet on the steering mechanism, and the other passengers used the foot rests on the sides The Fugals and Walkers would race their sleighs, which were often referred to as schooners. 20

Whether the schooners were racing or not on a fateful January night in 1919 is undetermined, but the last trip of that night has long been remembered by the participants, teenagers at the time, some of whom are still living to tell the tale. Several accounts exist. Leah Dingle related the happenings of that night: "We were all having a great time on the hill. It was perhaps our third trip down the hill, with Mr. Davis following us" to give the sledders and the schooner a car ride back up. "Luckily he was close behind" as the group sped down the slope.

Somehow we must have slid sideways a little on the icy road, enough to make us miss the bridge, causing us to smash into the high bank on the far side of the Mill Ditch, catapulting us down into the hollow off the roadside, where some locust trees had been chopped down, leaving very sharp, jagged stumps and branch ends. These caught us in our fall as we sailed through the air. Caps, boots, and gloves, were left lying around. Mr. Davis got us into his car as best he could to haul us down to good Dr. Linebaugh's [living room]. Cyril [Walker] had a stick the size of a pencil stuck in his upper lip, like a horn, and some of the others were bleeding and pretty banged up. I suffered broken ribs, ruptured spleen, and other internal injuries lower down. I couldn't stand straight for six weeks. But in time we all recovered, undaunted, ready to go again.

Three years later, as Leah and a friend were riding a smaller sled, it hit mud and stopped short, throwing Leah off. This time she suffered only a broken collar bone. Another time, her friend Reva Christiansen suffered a broken leg when a swiftly moving sled hit her while she walked up the hill; it was not the only broken leg received by a young person on those nights. Sledding was for the fearless. 21

Townspeople envisioned a place to practice a safer sport in 1939, when they proposed converting the lower part of the Central School Elementary playground into an ice-skating rink. Until that time, recreation had been created largely by family, church, and neighborhood groups. The year preceding the establishment of the rink, prominent men in town had formed a Lions Club, and one of the club's first town improvement goals was to support youth recreation—the idea of organized recreation having recently been introduced to this small town. Club members set their sights on creating an ice skating rink and a ski run, among other recreational facilities. With the help of a newly purchased road grader (the town's first), the chamber of commerce, the faculty of Central Elementary, and hired labor, the rink was ready to be filled by November 1940.

Calvin Walker, a teacher and skating enthusiast, took on the responsibility of keeping the rink filled with irrigation water and spraying the frozen surface with a hose to keep the ice smooth. He often skated along with the children. Ned Johnson fondly relates his experiences at this ice pond: "As soon as the bell rang we started taking off shoes and putting on skates. We would play tag, hockey, whip the cord, pom-pom-pull-away, race, or just skate. The skates used were anything from single or double runners that clamped or strapped on your shoes to shoe skates, but very few of those." He also remembered bundling up in appropriate clothing and afterward draping the wet attire over the school's radiators to dry while he was in class. The pond was not limited to school hours or to schoolchildren, though. Children spent long hours after school skating, and frequently entire families gathered there on Saturdays or evenings. Sometimes a bonfire was kept going to warm cold hands and feet. 22

During the winter of 1949, frequent snowstorms hit the town, making it difficult to keep the ice in good shape. Central School principal Ray Merrill expressed thanks to city officials and workers for the cooperation in clearing snow from the rink. Because of their help, he said, the school pupils had enjoyed a good winter of skating. 23

By 1962, the skating pond, affectionately referred to as "the frog pond," was still a favorite recreational spot for the whole town. That year, the city fathers installed lights for night skating; before that, moonlight or occasional car headlights had had to suffice. The city also assumed the responsibility of keeping the ice in good condition and furnishing wood for bonfires. Most of the elementary students spent their daily recreational periods there. At night it was the Boy Scouts, junior and senior high students, and parents who skimmed over the silver surface. The pond had become the town's first recreational facility; the newspaper noted that "some folks may be growling at the long winter, but it isn't the 600 boys and girls at Central School nor the hundreds of teenagers and adults who frolic day and night at the school's skating rink. 24

During the 1950s and 1960s, ice-skating stood high on lists of recreational choices for children in Pleasant Grove. In the author's family, it became an early December ritual to take the children to a shoe shop in Provo to trade in their previous year's shoe skates, which had grown too small, for larger skates in preparation for the winter skating season. Besides skating on the Frog Pond, the Olsens often skated on Utah Lake or at Vivian Park, where "55,000 square feet of safe and well maintained ice" was waiting in Provo Canyon. 25

In 1939, the same year that the Lions Club envisioned the skating rink, other Pleasant Grove men established a ski facility at Deer Creek in the North Fork of American Fork Canyon, about a thirty-minute drive from Pleasant Grove on roads that were kept open all winter.J. I.Johnson and his son built a 1,200-foot "sleigh-type" ski lift that paralleled and received power from the Yankee Mine tramway, which they operated. A skier who climbed up the mountain from the top of the lift could ski down a run of more than 1,500 feet cleared of brush and foliage. Hy Johnson, the Pleasant Grove High School shop teacher, had been instructing the older boys in the art of making skis, creating interest in what was referred to then as "the sport of slick maples." 26

Some ten years later, the American Fork Recreation Department had taken over the lift, made improvements, and named it "North Fork Ski Way." A tow cable took skiers up 1,000 feet. A snack bar and shelter had been added, and the city employed instructors, including Dick Eastmond, Leo Cleghorn, and forest ranger Wallace Saling. Utah County commissioner Burton Adams promised to keep the roads open for the special early bus run that began in Lehi and ran through American Fork, Pleasant Grove, and on up to North Fork every Saturday. The tow also operated on Sundays. 27

One more winter item: the children who enjoyed all these activities would have had to wade through knee-deep snow had it not been for Ira Deveraux. The city hired Deveraux to clear the snow from the sidewalks with his "snow lizard," a wooden triangular snowplow pulled by a trusted horse. From the 1930s into the 1960s Ira became a winter fixture in town, getting up at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. on snowy mornings to scrape the sidewalks or to create a trail beside the roads -where no sidewalk existed. All this was done in time for the children to walk to school. On snowy days he "would have the paths all scraped by the time school "was out. It is doubtful that the city paid him even enough to buy hay for the horse, but Ira enjoyed faithfully serving the people for years.

There "were no gold or silver medals given for the winter activities in Pleasant Grove. Nonetheless, all who participated usually enjoyed a good time.

NOTES

1 Beth R Olsen, who holds a master's degree in history from BYU, won UHQ's Nick Yengich Award for her 1994 article on the CCC She is presently writing a history of Pleasant Grove

2 Wesley Walker, interviewed by Mildred Sutch, September 10, 1993; copies of all interview transcripts are in possession of author

3 American Fork Citizen, February 7, 1914, June 6, 1916, January 27, 1918; Pleasant Grove Review, "Ten Years Ago," January 25, 1935

4 G. E. Sandgren, "Early Crossing of Utah Lake," Manila Daughters of Utah Pioneers biographies (typescript) 3:193; Citizen, January 20, 1918 The DUP biographies are located in the Pleasant Grove city library.

5 Citizen, January 10,1920

6 Review, December 2, 1938

7 Citizen, January 10, 1920, December 27, 1924.

8 Zelda Nelson Freeman, "History of Swen John Nelson" (typescript), CLG files, Pleasant Grove city offices.

9 Leah Fugal Dingle to author, April 2000, in author's possession

10 Roy W Oscarson and W Dean Belnap, comp., The Oscarson Families (Pleasant Grove: Oscarson Family Organization, 1991), 26 There were several roads to the east that were called "clay hill," because a vein of clay soil runs along the mountain east of Pleasant Grove, and almost all of the east-west streets crossed it The Oscarsons'"clay hill" would have been 200 South, now called Battlecreek Drive.

11 Jean Fugal interview by author,July 3, 2001; Pleasant Grove city council meeting minutes, February 1,1919

12 Rhodin Christiansen, "The Little Town That Was" (typescript), 4, CLG files. Residents today are not certain why this part of town was called Monkey Town.

13 Mary Rasmussen Nielsen, "Memories of Sleigh Riding" (typescript), CLG files.

14 Ibid

15 Ibid.; Bill Todd, interview by author, February 7, 2000

16 Jean Fugal, interview by Mildred Sutch, January 28, 2000; Pleasant Grove Review, January 28, 1949.

17 Fugal interview.

18 Christiansen, "Little Town," 4

19 Fugal interview

20 Ibid

21 Dingle to author

22 Ned Johnson, "School Memories of Central Elementary," Review, August 5, 1982

23 Review, January 28, 1949

24 Review, February 1, 1962.

25 Ibid.,January 12,1961

26 Ibid., December 29, 1939.

27 Ibid., February 3, 1950.