Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 70, Number 2, 2002

UTAH

UTA H HISTORICA L QUARTERL Y (ISSN

0042-143X)

EDITORIA L STAF F

MAXJ. EVANS, Editor

STANFORD J LAYTON, Managing Editor

KRISTEN SMART ROGERS, Associate Editor

ALLAN KENT POWELL, Book Review Editor

ADVISOR Y BOAR D O F EDITOR S

NOEL A CARMACK, Hyrum, 2003

LEE ANN KREUTZER,Torrey, 2003

ROBERT S. MCPHERSON, Blanding, 2004

MIRIAM B MURPHY, Murray, 2003

ANTONETTE CHAMBERS NOBLE, Cora,WY, 2002

JANET BURTON SEEGMILLER, Cedar City, 2002

JOHN SILLITO, Ogden, 2004

GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City, 2002

RONALD G.WATT,WestValley City, 2004

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah 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, $25; institution, $25; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or older), $20; sustaining, $35; patron, $50; business, $100.

Manuscripts submitted for publication should be double-spaced with endnotes. Authors are encouraged to include a PC diskette with the submission For additional information on requirements, contact the managing editor Articles and book reviews represent the views of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Utah State Historical Society.

Periodicals postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah.

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

106 I N THIS ISSUE

108 Comin g Home : Communit y Baseball in Cache Valley, Utah By

Jessie L. Embry and Adam Seth Darowski

123 Finns and the Winter Quarters Mine Disaster

By Craig Fuller

140 A n Explosive Lesson: Gome r Thomas , Safety, and the Winter Quarters Mine Disaster By Nancy J

Taniguchi

158 Infant Deaths in Utah, 1850-1939

By Lee L Bean,

Ken R Smith, Geraldine P

Mineau, Alison Fraser, and Diana Lane

174 BOO K REVIEWS

James M. Cahalan. Edward Abbey: A Life

Reviewed by Gary Topping

Colleen Whitley, ed. Worth Their Salt, Too: More Notable but Often Unnoted Women of Utah

Reviewed by Cynthia Buckingham

Donald G Godfrey Philo T. Farnsworth: The Father ofTelevision

Reviewed by H Bert Jenson

Willow Roberts Powers. Navajo Trading: The End of an Era

Reviewed by Robert S. McPherson

Wade Davies. Healing Ways: Navajo Health Care in the Twentieth Century

Reviewed by Stephen C Sturgeon

Oscar J. Martinez. Mexican- Origin People in the United States: A Topical History

Reviewed by Jorge Iber

Robert A. Trennert. Riding the High Wire: Aerial Tramways in the West

Reviewed by Frank W Millsaps

Eilean Adams. Hell or High Water: James White's Disputed Passage through Grand Canyon, 1867

Reviewed by W L Rusho

There are only two joys as succinctly wondrous as sitting beside an appreciative young lady and upstaging, for an instant, the infinite grace of Maya Plisetskaya," says Robert Mayer in Baseball and Men's Lives. "One is watching the turning of an exquisite double play.The other, longer lasting,isturning one yourself."

For most people, watching has had to be wondrous enough But for countless numbers of young men through most of the twentieth century local baseball leagues have provided the opportunity to put aside their workday tools and worries, grab their gloves, bats, balls, and cleats and seek some weekend wonder at the municipal ballpark It has been a defining slice of Americana—one that began with neighborhood Knickerbockers in the 1840s and then spread across the landjust as fast as leisure time, population, and recreational dollars would allow Taking its inspiration from the rise of big-time professional sports in the 1920s, community baseball blossomed as part of the national pastime.

Nowhere did the summer game thrive more vigorously than in our own Cache Valley. By the 1950s, when drive-in movies, tourism, and other leisure-time activities began to challenge baseball, hundreds of young men were still meeting on the diamonds of Smithfield, Cornish, Trenton, Newton, and other northern Utah and southern Idaho towns to match skills and win bragging rights.The players and fans, the atmosphere,lore, and

color of this social phenomenon have escaped the notice of historians far too long Our first article in this issue takes a giant stride toward rectifying that oversight.

The mood then turns toward the somber as our next two articles deal with one of Utah's greatest tragedies,theWinter Quarters mine explosion of May 1, 1900.The first analysis takes an ethnic twist, focusing on the Finnish victims and survivors This stalwart group had aparticularly heavy burden to bear;not only did they sustain heavy losses in lives but they also were forced to deal with lingering resentment within a community that held Finnish miners responsible for causing the lethal blast. By spotlighting particular families and individuals, the author helps us see the importance of cultural conditioning in providing strength and determination in facing such travail. The second Winter Quarters article looks at individuals as -well—this time safety inspectors who also came in for some hard questions and finger pointing In the process, it illuminates many of the technical problems inherent in coal mining and confirms our suspicions that paradigm changes -within that industry were long overdue

Our issue concludes with a look at infant mortality in Utah. Primarily a statistical analysis, it nevertheless offers sufficient anecdotal evidence to create a humanistic context. It is an article that can be read and appreciated on more than one level, and its conclusions will almost certainly offer a surprise or two. But however read and interpreted, it is sure to leave the readers quietly shaking their heads as they ponder the hazards and heartaches oflife before our easy access to modern health care.

One of the nifty facets to history, however, is that triumph can always be found among sadness and personal loss. It isjust a matter of panning back our contextual cameras a bit There is something innately reassuring about the big picture. Little wonder that history remains America's best-selling nonfiction subject

OPPOSITE: Young women playing baseball, c. 1900, probably in Cache County. ON THE COVER: The Levi Jones family mourns following the Winter Quarters Mine explosion of May 1,1900. George E. Anderson photo, USHS.

Coming Home: Community Baseball in Cache Valley, Utah

By JESSIE L EMBRY and ADAM SETH DAROWSKI

I've read A. Bartlett Giamatti's analysis that baseball is a reflection of life in America. Our whole lives are about coming home. I'm not sure...we understood that. We knew baseball was a sport, but we took it very seriously or we were looked down on in the community. At least one day a week most people who were really good at baseball were considered the hierarchy of the community."1

Ernst L.Thayer's late nineteenth-century poem "Casey at the Bat" tells the story of proud Casey, who causes his team to lose a baseball game In the poem Casey arrogantly refuses to swing at two good pitches. He then swings at and misses the third.With Casey striking out, the ball game is over. The poem closes with the famous lines, "There was no joy in Mudville / Mighty Casey had struck out."2

"Casey at the Bat" refers to a time when baseball was the major recreational and social Wellsville baseball team, 1908.

Jessie L Embry is assistant director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University

Adam Seth Darowski graduated from BYU in August -with a degree in history He is currently a law student at Duke University

1 Kenneth Godfrey Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, Logan, Utah, 2002 Cache Valley Baseball Oral History Project, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, L.Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (Unless otherwise indicated, all oral histories cited are part of this collection.)

2 Benjamin G Rader, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports, 2d ed (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), 78-79

activity in many towns and cities across the United States At least once a week, usually on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, townsfolk gathered at the ball field to root for the home team These games bound communities together, crossing generational, religious, social, and economic barriers in remarkable ways Baseball helped build communities The story of the Cache Valley Baseball League provides a case study of how the game strengthened communities throughout the United States This paper -will discuss the development of that league, the value of the sport to the rural towns,and the reasons why,later,local baseball nearly vanished in the valley3 Community is a catchword in American society today From Hillary Rodham Clinton's catch-phrase "It takes avillage to raise a child"to evolutionary psychologists' concerns that technology has made Americans too isolated and has caused depression and anxiety,Americans look back with nostalgia to rural villages where everyone knew each other While there are many definitions of community, sociologist Larry Lyon's three elements fit well: "people living together within a specific area, sharing common ties, and interacting with one another." Former major league baseball commissioner A Bartlett Giamatti explains how even one baseball game fits this definition: "Very soon the crowd is no crowd at all but a community, a small town of people sharing neither work nor pain nor deprivation nor anger but the common experience of being released to enjoy the moment."4

Many fear that this type of community has disappeared in American society People often do not share experiences or activities with their neighbors When did this shift take place? Historian Robert H.Wiebe's The Search for Order outlines a transfer bet-ween 1877 and 1920, arguing that while the Populist movement of the 1890s attempted to preserve community, the Progressives in the early 1900s represented a new middle class and a transfer of the "core" values to the national focus In a technological age where the focus is on the larger society, the local community vanishes Sports historians describe a similar transfer in the shift from town baseball to the major leagues Foster Rhea Dulles argues,"The small town -was the backbone of the nation in the closing decades of the past century," and sports played an important role "Everyone gathered at the ball park on a Saturday afternoon to watch the local team in action." But by the 1920s amateur playing was over, andAmericans had become "a nation of onlookers."Historian Benjamin G Rader agrees,referring to a transfer of baseball first from an informal game to a club (or town) sport and then to "a

3 This paper is based on articles in the Logan HeraldJournal and interviews with players and fans. The authors have not found contemporary sources other than newspapers that include information on town baseball While there were other leagues, and colleges and high schools played baseball on and off during this time period, these are beyond the scope of this paper

4 Hillary Rodham Clinton, It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Robert Wright, "The Evolution of Despair," Time, August 28, 1995, 50-57; Larry Lyon, The Community in Urban Society (Philadelphia: Temple University, 1987), 5;A Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise (NewYork: Summit Books, 1989), 32.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

commercial, spectator-centered sport The formation of the National League in 1876 signaled the arrival ofbaseball asabusiness enterprise."5

Yet even with the creation of business baseball, local town teams continued, because baseball was a popular sport Long after 1876, Cache Valley men, women, and children gathered every Saturday or Sunday to play baseball or cheer for the home team. CacheValley remained isolated; television as a form of entertainment came slowly to the area. So "weekly baseball games were important until the 1960s.Then a shift took place, with more focus on the national scene and professional sports But until then, baseball was one of the elements that held the small communities in northern Utah and southern Idaho together.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, agriculture was the most important industry in CacheValley. Farming required a great deal of manual labor Rey Naegle,who was born in Cornish in 1937,recalled that the town had "approximately a hundred residents...and pretty nearly everybody there -were dairy farmers" who also raised hay,grain, sugar beets, and tomatoes, doing all the work by hand or with horses."It was a lot of hard -work When we thought the work was done out in the field, then we would come in and milk the cows."6

But even earlier generations had found time to play Holidays in the last quarter of the nineteenth century included parades, speeches, games, and food "climaxed by a baseball game." Historian F.Ross Peterson explains that both baseball and softball had "a consistent history in the valley." By the 1890s Cache Valley towns had baseball teams Baseball rather than cricket came to be preferred in Utah and throughout the United States because "participants only needed a fairly level field upon which to play and minimal equipment—a stick and a ball."As a result, according to Peterson, "During the World War I years and the 1920s, Cache Valley seemed preoccupied with baseball."7 That tradition continued.According to Wallace Kohler, "who played in North Logan during the 1950s and 1960s,

5 Robert H.Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 12, 84-85, 111—13, 121, 133, 139, 164; Foster Rhea Dulles, A History of Recreation: America Learns to Play, 2d ed (New York:Appleton-Century Crofts, 1940),248, 190-91, 345;Rader, American Sports, 64

6 Rey Naegle Oral History, interviewed byJessie Embry, Preston, Idaho, 2000, 3

7 F Ross Peterson, A History of Cache County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Cache County Commission, 1997), 265 This paper focuses on the CacheValley Baseball League in the northern part of the county Peterson explains,"While baseball seemed more popular and enduring in the north end of the valley, softball became dominant in the communities of the southern part of the county" (267) Although for a short time in the 1950sWellsville, Mendon, and Hyrum had baseball teams and occasionally Logan did also, Logan and the towns on the south end mostly played softball. Ivan Christensen, a Providence native born in 1934, played on other baseball teams in the valley because Providence never had a baseball team but had a softball team instead When asked why, Christensen replied, "I guess one thing was we never had a baseball field." RichardV Hansen, who has managed the Smithfield Blue Sox team for more than fifty years, was not sure why either but confirmed, "That was the -way it was [in the south] They were fast pitch [softball], and baseball was in the north end of the valley." Logan, the largest city in the valley and the county seat, occasionally had a baseball team, but according to Hansen, "They were the poorest-supported baseball of any Even the little towns [could] outdraw the city of Logan." However, Logan did have several commercial softball leagues, and in 1948 the newspaper described softball as

"Playing ball was about the only entertainment" because "we could go play ball for free ifwe had a ball Buying a glove was a big investment, but that was only once."8

Saturday or Sunday afternoons were set aside to play ball. Since most town residents were Mormons, some frowned on Sunday baseball, preferring a half-day holiday on Saturday.9 According to Naegle, "The farmers...would go work like dogs on Saturday up until noon Everything came to a halt.The ones that played baseball would go play.The others that didn't -would go -watch. Saturday afternoon -was the recreation part of the day."As a result, according to Marcell Pitcher, a Cornish baseball player, "Baseball was king"there Farmers would start work at"four o'clock in the morning on game day so as to have all the work done by noon." Cornish residentVerl M.Buxton added that this was an established pattern that even outsiders understood. Threshing crews who came to Cornish to harvest knew that everything stopped on Saturday afternoons.10

This pattern was true throughout northern CacheValley Anthony Hall, from Lewiston, explained that even if his father had "hay out in the field, Saturday afternoon he went and played baseball." Farres Nyman of North Logan described some jobs like topping beets and irrigating that did not stop for baseball But in Cornish, according to Verl Buxton, even the irrigating stopped.11

While there had been earlier leagues, the CacheValley Baseball League started in 1919 when the Commercial Club met "for the purpose of forming a county baseball league." Lewiston, Richmond, Logan, and Preston (Idaho) were the founding members "organized on the principles of clean sportsmanship [and] good baseball."Usually there was only one league, but in the 1930s and late 1940s and 1950s, the league was split because more towns fielded teams.The increased involvement in the 1930s matched a

"Logan's number one summer-time sport." See Ivan Christensen Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, Providence, Utah, 2000, 4; Richard V Hansen Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, Amalga, Utah, 2000,3; Logan HeraldJournal, May 25,1948

8 Wallace Kohler Oral History, interviewed byJessie Embry, North Logan, Utah, 2000, 4.

9 Based on our reading of the HeraldJournal, the CacheValley Baseball League usually played games on Saturday.The Utah-Idaho League, a more professional group, played on Sunday, sometimes drawing players from towns that had played on Saturday Reed Woodland of Richmond noted, "When we played on Sunday, there were more fans." Mercell Pitcher of Cornish talked about how he worked to eliminate Sunday baseball in the Cache Valley Baseball League See Reed Woodland Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, Richmond, Utah, 2000, 8; Mercell Pitcher Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, Preston, Idaho, 2000, 7 LDS apostle Heber J Grant spoke out against Sunday baseball in 1913: "I am opposed to Sunday baseball, and have been so from my boyhood days When a young man, I was passionately fond of the game Today I am happy in contemplating the fact that, as much as I loved to play it, I never played a game on Sunday"; see G Homer Durham, Gospel Standards: Selections from the Sermons and Writings of HeberJ. Grant (Salt Lake City:Bookcraft, 1941), 249."LDS" and "Mormon" refer to the Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

10 Eugene E. Campbell,"Social, Cultural, and Recreational Life," in Joel E. Ricks, ed., History of a Valley (Logan, UT: Cache Valley Centennial Commission, 1956), 420; Naegle Oral History, 5; Pitcher Oral History, 2, 3;Verl M and Helen Buxton Oral History, interviewed byJessie Embry, Cornish, Utah, 2000, 4 " Anthony Hall Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, Lewiston, Utah, 2000, 6; Farres Nyman Oral History, interviewed byJessie Embry, Smithfield, Utah, 2000, 5-6; Buxton Oral History, 4

Cornish team at the 1936 Franklin Little World Series. This team lost to Trenton that year. Caption lists on back row: Karl Hanson, Roy Erikson, Francis Bench, Roy Bingham, Dale Bergeson, Ervin Kendall, Douglas Bergeson. Front row: Brian Bergeson, James Seamons, L. Butler, Arnold (Shorty) Troseth, Byron Hanson, Newell Lewis, Raymond Dopp.

growing interest in town baseball throughout the United States.Sports historian Richard O. Davies explains,"In the 1930s baseball took on a greater degree of importance because people were looking for inexpensive entertainment and diversion."Times were hard,and baseball "provided ameans of forgetting the sorry economic predicament for a few hours." Marcell Pitcher agreed: "We played ball [during the depression because] that didn't cost anything."12

Play stopped duringWorldWar II.There were games during the summer of 1941,the year of Pearl Harbor. In 1942,the Logan newspaper advertised softball, but it did not mention the Cache Valley Baseball League Vaughn Richardson of Smithfield, who received a farm deferment during the war, remembered there -were not enough men left to play baseball. By 1946, after the servicemen had returned home, they were eager to play and the league started up again Marcell Pitcher explained, "I don't remember just how it all came about I know as soon as we got home, -we couldn't wait until the snow "wasgone.We'd be out on the store corner. I can remember throwing balls back and forth just waiting for it to start.We then had the Cache Valley League organized." The newspaper reported in April 1948 that "play ball"was happening not only in the major leagues "CacheValley baseball loop...-will knock the lid from its barrel of activity on Saturday afternoon when the 12 teams square off in the initial round of a prolonged 1 3 season.

The makeup of the Cache Valley League varied; twenty-six towns or companies fielded teams at some time between 1919 and 1966 Smithfield

12 Logan Journal, April 22, 1919; Richard O Davies, Main Street Blues:The Decline of Small-Town America (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1998), 113; Pitcher Oral History, 11

13 Herald Journal, May 2, 4, 24, 1942; Richardson Oral History, 12; Pitcher Oral History, 12; Herald Journal, April 10,1948

Cornish team, Cache Valley Baseball League 1949 champions.

Caption lists on back row: Gilbert Baker, Virginia Hanson, Marcell Pitcher, Blaine Abell, Grant Bair, Dale Bergeson, Garth Bergeson, Paul McKnight, Edith Pearce, Carl Hanson.

Front row: Grant Erickson, Don Bingham, Wayne Price, LaVar Richmond, Byron Hanson, Dean Bergeson, Verl Buxton. Boys in front: Rod Pearce, Scott Bergeson.

usually had a team in the league and also played in other leagues, often drawing players from other town teams.Logan sometimes had two teams in the league, but usually it had none, focusing instead on the Logan Collegians,who played in the Utah-Idaho League.Except during the years when the league was split in half, between eight and ten teams north of Logan in Utah and in southern Idaho played in the CacheValley League. Towns that usually fielded baseball teams were Cornish, Clarkston, Hyde Park, Lewiston (sometimes two or three teams,the second team referred to as Southwest Lewiston and the third team as Lewiston Third, so named in reference to the LDS ward, although it was not a church-sponsored team), Trenton, Smithfield, and Richmond Towns that occasionally had teams were Logan, North Logan, and Newton in Utah and Preston, Franklin, Weston, and Fairview in Idaho.Teams usually got their start when a group of men who wanted to play baseball gathered together. Sometimes the town provided support; at other times the players financed their own teams Less often, businesses gave assistance.14

Each season was unique In May 1932 the Logan Herald fournal announced that the Lewiston team was "organized and ready for business They are anxious to play -with any team in CacheValley."The first games reported that year did not seem to be league play, however, but by June the South Cache, North Cache, and Independent leagues -were operating.15

The fournal reported many games, but not all of them. As Richard V Hansen, a player on and then manager of the Smithfield Blue Sox team,

14 The list of towns with teams was determined from reading the Herald Journal. For two years the North Logan team was sponsored by a local service station. Some interviewees discussed getting financial aid from their cities.But there are no clear records of who paid and how the league was organized.

15 HeraldJournal, May 16,June 6,June 30, 1932;August 23, 1932

Championship Cornish team in the 1950s. Caption lists on back row: Paul McKnight, Verl Buxton, Marcell Pitcher, Rey Naegle, Steve Hinckley, John Hyde, Jay Cole, Dean Bambrough. Front row: Bill Veibell, Sammy Kent, LaVar Richmond, Garth Karen, Jerry Pitcher, Lyle Godfrey, Darwin Bingham.

explained, "The -winning team had to report the stuff in [to the paper] because the loser -will never do it."16 Some of the reports were quite flowery.When Cornish won an upset in 1936,the newspaper explained, "With their star hurler Kendall silencing the heavy guns of the Southwest Lewiston sluggers, Cornish eked out a 3 to 2 victory in one of the best Cache Valley league games of the season The Cornish hurler's work in the pinches -was brilliant...cutting off the Lewiston hitters with only one run in the first and one in the fifth." Three years later, when Hyde Park beat North Logan 6—5 in ten innings, the paper reported, "When the dust of the battle had cleared away and the grim players walked off the diamond after the tell tale last frame. .CacheValley baseball fans agreed that they had just seen about the best display ofiValley circuit this season for tight playing and expert tactics."17

Baseball provided opportunities for players and fans to -work together, promoting the sense of community Just organizing a team was an act of community Vaughn Richardson and some friends went to the Smithfield City Council in 1937 and asked for money to start a baseball team. When the city council said that it had no money, the twelve players pooled their funds and purchased some balls, bats, and catcher equipment. After World War II the team members decided they wanted lights so they could play night games.They again went to the city council members, who again explained that they had no money. The players worked together, using money from the gate receipts to installlights in 1948.18

A CacheValley League rule specified that players had to live in the town for which they played. In 1948 a dispute arose when North Logan beat

16 Hansen Oral History, 16

17 HeraldJournal, June 25, 1936June 12, 1939

18

Vaughn Richardson Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, Smithfield, Utah, 2000, 5, 7; Stan Richardson Oral History, interviewed byJessie Embry, Beaver Creek, Utah, 2000, 4—5

Hyde Park 21-5 using a player who had moved The North Logan team argued that their player still -worked in town, but Hyde Park protested and was awarded the game.Later, the rule was changed, so in a few cases when a player moved out of town the team paid for his gas to come back and play For example, in the 1950sVerl Buxton went to carpentry school in Pocatello, Idaho, and came back to his hometown of Cornish for the Saturday games. Players who traveled for their jobs, such as Hyde Park's Wade Howell, who -worked for a highway construction company, usually came home for the baseball games. 19

The teams included boys in their early teens to men in their mid-forties As Rey Naegle explained, the teams were "made up of the farmers' boys, the farmers themselves, -whatever they could scrape up, whoever could throw a ball, use a bat, or field a ball." Stan Richardson from Smithfield remembered he started playing in 1937 -when he was eighteen; he continued to play until almost 1950. Even when he could no longer play, he managed the Smithfield team.Wade Howell was injured in World War II, and although he could still hit,he could not run, so he became the manager of Hyde Park's team But occasionally he would put himself in the game—and one time he hit a home run so he did not have to run the bases.Boys started playing assoon asthey were good enough; age -wasnot a factor. Ken Godfrey remembered that some boys started playing before he did; he himself started in his mid-teens because the Cornish team needed someone in the outfield.20

Anthony Hall's father played for the Lewiston team, and the whole family usually went to the games Anthony explained, "I was raised in a family that really liked baseball in the summer because that -was the only thing to do. I grew up with my dad telling me that he had taken me every Saturday as a little boy to watch him play." Hall did not remember seeing his dad play, but "that's the environment I grew up in It was baseball-oriented every Saturday afternoon in the community of Lewiston." Hall continued to go to games with his brother. In the early 1960s,when he -wastwelve, he and his fourteen-year-old brother -walked down to a game because the rest of the family could not go.The boys took their mitts in hopes of playing catch with aball when it -wasnot in use That -week Lewiston did not have enough players to field a team, so the manager asked the Hall boys to play. Both boys did well, making some outstanding plays, and so they became part of the team.21

Baseball created a community because it involved not only the players but also the entire town.Whole families came to the games.Nancy

Karren

19 Herald Journal, June 17, 1948; Buxton Oral History, 2; Wade Howell Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, Hyde Park, 2000, 3

21 Hall Oral History, 1,4

20 Naegle Oral History, 10; Stan Richardson Oral History, 1, 7, 12; Howell Oral History, 7; Godfrey Oral History, 4

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Bingham, whose father played for the Smithfield team, drove with her mother and siblings to the game. Her mother put a mattress in the back of their 1956 Chevy The family and many neighborhood children -watched from the car, and when Nancy got tired she would crawl in the back and fall asleep.She also sat under the scoreboard with other children and helped update the score. Eventually she started to watch the games. "I was very proud ofmy dad and loved to watch him play,"she recalled.22

Farres Nyman remembered that his uncle Orvin Nyman managed the North Logan team, and when Farres was six years old Orvin asked him to be the team's official scorekeeper. Farres continued in that role and -was the team mascot until he was occasionally allowed to play after he turned fourteen.Wallace Kohler watched his father play on the North Logan team until he was old enough to play He loved going to the games not only for the entertainment but also for the gum that Orvin always had in his pocket for the children.Joyce Howell of Hyde Park remembered that everyone in town went to the games, but she was not as fond of baseball as the rest of the family was Her first memory is of the time she was three years old and ran home from the ballpark,worrying her family23

Many players later remembered that almost the whole town turned out for the games Ivan Christensen, who lived in Providence but played baseball for several towns during the 1950s, said, "Saturday afternoon -was baseball. Everybody came.The town would close down.They'd close the stores, and we'd have all the good townspeople there, cheering for their home team—They rolled up the side-walks until the game was over about six Then they'd go back to living again."24

Stan Richardson recalled,"There would be a double or triple line of cars parked around the field. The grandstand would be full." In the 1950s an announcer, M. T.Van Orden, drove around Smithfield announcing, "Baseball tonight."Almost everyone could afford to come;in 1958 a family pass for the entire season in Smithfield cost $3.50.25

Anthony Hall remembered "a lot ofpeople came to -watch"in Lewiston, and his father told him the fans -who "yelled the loudest and did the most cussing...were some of the ladies They really got into watching their men play baseball." Nancy Karren Bingham especially noticed "when the fans would cheer for the other team. It seemed to me that the crowds were much more vocal then and really mean-spirited." Vaughn Richardson remembered playing in a tournament where he "hit a home run with two men on base and won that one."As he was walking to the bench, "a lady friend I had been seeingjumped out of the bleachers, came running right

22 Farrell Karren and Nancy Karren Bingham Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, Smithfield, Utah, 2000, 1-4

23 Nyman Oral History, 1-2; Kohler Oral History, 1;Joyce Howell, conversation with author, July 15, 2000

24 Christensen Oral History, 11

25 Stan Richardson Oral History, 4; HeraldJournal, April 24,1958

out on the field, and gave me a big kiss."When asked how that had happened, Richardson proudly explained, "You've got to be a hero to get along with beautiful girls."26

The game went on almost regardless of what happened Alvin Hamson,a newcomer to North Logan in the 1950s,joked that baseball was so important that the players would wait until the game was over to put out a fire. Several Cornish residents recalled Gib Baker, aprominent farmer and president of the Cornish team,who was such a devoted fan that he followed the team to all the games and sat on the bench with the players In the middle of one game,Baker had aheart attack and died.However, the game continued, since the players felt that was what he would have wanted.Besides, the men commented, such a death was the "way to go."27

The town residents followed their team around the valley For those in the smaller towns, road games were special trips into neighboring towns The fans cheered loudly for their teams at home or away. Once, Jean Nyman took her young son David to watch her husband Carl play in Preston David shouted,"Daddy, hit a home run!" and Carl did After that, everyone in the stands from North Logan yelled,"Daddy, hit a home run!" whenever Carl Nyman came up to bat.28

Players and fans had asense of community pride;baseball created a sense of self-respect for many of the small towns.There were rivalries with the town up the road or the large communities North Logan got equally "keyed up" for most games, but its special rival was Hyde Park, the communityjust to the north.According to Farres Nyman,"The majority of the North Logan team were Nymans, and a majority of the Hyde Park were [relatives] of my mother." Hyde Park'sWade Howell said that, for his team, North Logan was the team to beat. "If we'd get them in North Logan, they'd beat us,and ifwe could get in Hyde Park,we'd beat them."

Cornish had an excellent team and often won the league championship. Its rivals were nearby small towns such asTrenton and Clarkston.The rivalry with Trenton was so intense that Marcell Pitcher said that some people came to see a fight and not the game. But the greatest rivalry was with Smithfield, which as a larger town had more players to draw from. It was always exciting to defeat the big town, and Cornish often did.In fact, when Vaughn Richardson from Smithfield was asked who his town's biggest rival was,he said,"Cornish was the hardest team to beat."29 Everyone wanted to beat the bigger towns.When Clarkston beat Logan and Smithfield lost to West Side (ateam combiningWeston and Dayton, Idaho) in the season-end

26 Hall Oral History, 6;Karren/Bingham Oral History, 4; Vaughn Richardson Oral History, 6

27 Alvin Hamson Oral History, interviewed by Jessie Embry, North Logan, 1998, North Logan Oral History Project, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, L Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B Lee Library, BrighamYoung University, 22; Godfrey Oral History, 7; Buxton Oral History, 4

28 Jean Nyman, conversation with author,August 20, 2000

29 Nyman Oral History, 1; Howell Oral History, 7; Pitcher Oral History, 8;Vaughn Richardson Oral History, 9

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

tournament in August 1958, the newspaper explained, "Two little communities walked around to several of the farmhouses, gathered up a baseball team, trekked on down to Hyde Park and proceeded to dump the Goliaths of CacheValley baseball."30

However, baseball was more than one town pitted against another It could also build a sense of community bet-ween the towns For special occasions such as holidays or the Labor Day tournament, teams borrowed players from towns that were not competing.There "wasmutual respect and assistance.Anthony Hall remembered that his cousin Stephen Hinckley, a native of Fairview who had played on a professional farm team, gave him pointers when Hinckley was playing on the Lewiston team with Hall. But even the older players on other teams would give him valuable advice. He remembered that Farrell Karren, a catcher and an excellent hitter for the Smithfield team, told him once, "Anthony, you keep working, and you're going to be a good baseball player." Hall continued, "That meant a lot to a young boy to have somebody that he kind of looked up to say [that]."31

The players participated for the love of the game. For many of the boys and men it was their only recreation and a break from the long, hot summers of farm work. So the league and the players were disappointed whenever a town could not field a team. Games were sometimes forfeited, but rather than not play, the team who had enough players would loan some to the other team. Marcell Pitcher remembered that one time the Cornish team loaned Bryon Hansen, one of its older players, to North Logan and then complained the player had no loyalty. He "won the game for North Logan.32

Sometimes, winning or no-hit games were not the only goals. Stan Richardson was pitching for Smithfield during one game, and his brother Con was catching. Stan asked Con if he wanted to see how far Carl Nyman could hit and Con said, "Sure." So Stan pitched a ball he knew Nyman could hit, and it soared out of the field. Winning was important, but after the game was over, the losers had the attitude, "We will get you next year"rather than the feeling that they had to win "at all cost."33

The game was the talk of the town all week Every little town had a store where farmers gathered to chat and gossip,and the baseball game was usually the main subject The Cornish store had the post office inside, and there "the farmers would kill alittle bit of time and have baseball talk about

30 HeraldJournal, August 31, 1958

31 Hall Oral History, 2 Besides Stephen Hinckley, who played some professional ball, Jerry Nyman, Farres Nyman's son, pitched for several professional teams; and several interviewees, including Hall, remembered a pitching duel between Hinckley and Nyman at the Labor Day tournament in Hyde Park Professional scouts also looked at Stan Richardson and Rey Naegle, both pitchers.World War II prevented Richardson from trying out. The Utah State University coach convinced Naegle to play college ball, but too much throwing destroyed his pitching arm

32 Pitcher Oral History, 10

33 Hall Oral History, 4; Stan Richardson, conversation with author,June 2, 2000

who Cornish was going to play and how well they were doing. The big talk was always when we would play Smithfield." RichardV Hansen, who made deliveries throughout the valley, stopped at the Cornish store as -well as at the ones in Trenton, Clarkston, and Newton. "No matter where you -went,baseball was the talk of their town," he noted. Ken Godfrey explained that the game was also the main discussion on Sundays "Even some of our priesthood leaders encroached upon the time to rehash the ball games."34

According to Rey Naegle, the main reason for baseball had been recreation, an opportunity for people to take time off from their work But town baseball was more than just a pastime. Like in Mudville, the town players and fans cheered together and mourned together. AsWade Howell explained, baseball "was a lifeline If you beat one another it was wonderful Ifyou lost to one another it -was terrible."35

Baseball was so important that at times it superseded other community values. Cornish played a championship game one Sunday at the Sunday School hour. The Mormon bishopric debated "what to do and decided to postpone the church meeting since everyone would be at the game anyway Sunday School was held after dark that day36 Some ball players, including Mormons, celebrated their wins by gathering together for a beer. According to Helen Buxton, "We didn't talk about that. I think there was a lot more of that going on It was what people did to be happy." Ken Godfrey remembered walking by the pool hall after Cornish -won the 1947 championship. "The team was in the pool hall drinking beer, including a couple of members of the bishopric. I think they rationalized their behavior by the fact that winning the championship, coming from the smallest community in the valley,was so important that theWord ofWisdom was at that moment secondary"37

According to Anthony Hall, in the early days baseball "gave Lewiston and other communities like that a little identity."Whenever Lewiston residents went to church meetings in Richmond, they could feel pride if the Lewiston team had beat Richmond the year before. In Cornish, according to Rey Naegle,"it gave everybody...some pride because they did win their share of the championships." Or as Marcell Pitcher put it, "Baseball put Cornish on the map We didn't have anything else to brag about We were outcasts clear on the other side of the river." Helen Buxton agreed:"It was the heart of Cornish." Everyone put on their "second best clothes...[and] -watched our townspeople take on new roles," according to Ken Godfrey. "They became our heroes I can remember that we tended to admire those men who could hit home runs and could make fabulous plays much more than we did our ecclesiastical leaders." In these largely Mormon communi-

34 Naegle Oral History, 4; Hansen Oral History, 21;Godfrey Oral History, 1

35 Naegle Oral History, 14-15; Howell Oral History, 8.

36 Pitcher Oral History, 7, 16

37 Buxton Oral History, 13—14; Godfrey Oral History, 9.The Word of Wisdom is an LDS health code prohibiting the use of alcoholic beverages

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

ties,baseball "united the churchgoers and the non-churchgoers." According to Farres Nyman, "I don't remember when we didn't have baseball. That was the big thing on Saturdays in North Logan."38

Eventually, however, the CacheValley League stopped operating because towns no longer had teams.According to RichardV Hansen, the last year was 1966, and only five or six teams played that year.That year Hyde Park left the league. Henry Hodges, who had been president of the league, told Hansen,"When those guys [Hyde Park] go,we're dead."39

Why did baseball die out in most of the small towns in Cache Valley? F Ross Peterson suggests that the LDS church's focus on fast-pitch softball during the 1930s might have been one reason for a declining interest in baseball While that might have played a role,there were other factors After all, some, like Wallace Kohler, played American Legion baseball, church softball, commercial softball, and town baseball all at the same time The LDS church's shift in the 1970s from fast pitch to slow pitch, which gave more people a chance to participate and focused less on a good pitcher, possibly contributed to further decline Anthony Hall said that most of the boys from Lewiston that were his age played softball "because there was more participation and you didn't have to have as good a pitcher." Ivan Christensen felt that young people of a later generation did not want to practice much, and baseball and fast-pitch softball were "skilled games" that "took time to learn."40

According to Richard O Davies, the baseball team in his hometown of Canton, Ohio, "died...without a whimper" in 1953 after it "had carried the hopes and pride of the community on its shoulders" for years Better access to professional games through radio,television, and travel made a difference in Canton because it was so close to Cincinnati The same was true throughout America Not every town was close to a major league team, but the expansion of minor leagues also detracted from local baseball

However, Cache Valley residents did not discuss in their reminiscences traveling to Pioneer League games in Ogden, Salt Lake City, or Pocatello. According to the men who played baseball in CacheValley,it was radio, and even more so television, that moved the focus from the town to the professional sports. When fans could listen to—and even more important, watch—professional games, they had another choice of entertainment. Many Americans became "couch potatoes," and television "contributed to the growing nationalization" of sports. For fans, it was easier to "sit home and watch a ball game in their front room," Hansen noted, even though "every kid in [earlier] days wanted to play baseball." But with television

38 Hall Oral History, 8; Naegle Oral History, 14; Pitcher Oral History, 17; Buxton Oral History, 13; Godfrey Oral History, 1, 8; Nyman Oral History, 1

39 Hansen Oral History, 2

40 Peterson, History of Cache County, 266; Kohler Oral History, 3; Hall Oral History, 13; Christensen Oral History, 11

theyjust watched.41

Television was just one factor that changed the focus on baseball The people who lived in the towns also changed.While for some time Cache Valley had remained isolated, new people began moving in. As Hansen explained, "The players all left town The little farms all disappeared The little guys who were working on the family farm...had gone to town, college, or got other jobs." Ken Godfrey, for example, -went to college; others went to the cities. New people moved in, and "baseball was not in their blood." North Logan, for example, began growing after World War II, bringing university professors and professionals who were "totally different as far as lifestyle." Farres Nyman saidWorld War II helped end baseball in North Logan, and the sport did die there earlier than it did in communities located farther from Logan.42

There was a unique CacheValley twist to baseball's demise One team, the Smithfield Blue Sox, survived.According to Farrell Karren, Smithfield could not have continued without Richard V Hansen, who organized the leagues, scheduled the games, and found the players.When other Cache Valley towns did not have teams,Hansen made arrangements for Smithfield to play in Ogden, Brigham City, and Salt Lake City. Everyone—including Hansen—agreed that Hansen himself was not a very good player. But he loved baseball.When he had made the Smithfield team, he never missed a game for fear of being cut And "when the ball team needed management, he took over anumber of those responsibilities.43

But the town's strong team was "a double-edged sword," according to Anthony Hall Smithfield kept baseball alive, but Hansen also "borrowed" the best players from around the valley,leaving other towns unable to compete. "Maybe the [uneven levels of] skill was a factor also," said Godfrey. "After the town league folded, some of the best players still got together But they were the best of the best."Wallace Kohler explained,"I think the thing that probably was the biggest demise to the league was when one of the teams decided that they wanted to import players and not usejust people who lived in their community Of course, they got a better team than the rest.That put a few dampers on a lot of the small communities that were fielding teams fromjust inside their city boundaries."44

In recent years baseball has again increased in popularity in CacheValley. The Smithfield Blue Sox continue to play under the direction of Richard V Hansen But now,instead of having to travel beyond the valley for games, the team can compete against teams from Preston, Providence, and Hyrum Baseball is popular from Little League to high school. American Legion

41 Davies, Main Street Blues, 154;Rader, American Sports, 244—45; Hansen Oral History, 20

42 Hansen Oral History, 20, 22; Godfrey Oral History, 10; Nyman Oral History, 13

43 Karren/Bingham Oral History,

44 Hall Oral History, 3;Godfrey Oral History, 10;Kohler Oral History, 2.

7; Hansen Oral History, 18 F Ross Peterson also credits Hansen with being the inspiration of the Smithfield team; see Peterson, History of Cache County, 267 The town has named its local ballpark after Hansen

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

team rosters often match those of the high school teams during summer play The Blue Sox team plays theAmerican Legion Smithfield Aztecs every Memorial Day to open the season and raise funds for theAmerican Legion team.Attendance is spotty,however; these games draw only those who love the sport.45 Small towns no longer sponsor teams.The glory days of town baseball have disappeared from CacheValley,taking -with them some of the sense of community that once united town residents But unlike the fans in Mudville, -where no joy remained, the players and fans of these northern Utah teams recall their experiences -with smiles, nostalgia, and a sense of special meaning

45 In 2000 the Smithfield Blue Sox team played in the Beehive State and Northern Utah leagues Several years before, Providence, Preston, and Hyrum in Cache Valley had become part of the Northern Utah League along with Bear River (Tremonton) and Weber. Providence was also a member of the Beehive League along with the Tara Wildcats, the Salt Lake Anchors, and the Utah Braves. In addition, Hansen made arrangements to play teams out of the area In 2000 the Blue Sox went to Sun Valley See Hansen Oral History

Finns and the Winter Quarters Mine Disaster

By CRAIG FULLER

A n immigrant did I become / I Homeless now I wander;

^'" l Like an orphan I roam

*JL. -JL Ever remembering my birth land.

1

For the elderly Finnish couple Abram (age seventy) and Kaisa (age sixty) Luoma,Tuesday,May 1,1900,promised to be anotherjoyous day with their recently reunited family in the small coal mining camp ofWinter Quarters, Utah.2 For many months,Abram and Kaisa had been separated from their adult children, who had joined thousands of other Finns immigrating to the United States in search of work. In the spring of 1900 the six Luoma brothers and two of their teenage children found steady work in the coal mines atWinter Quarters, Utah

With employment secured, the Luoma children persuaded their parents to leave Finland and join them in Utah, where Abram and Kaisa were promised that inlanders at the house of the their needs in their declining years would be Luoma brothers after the explomet The decision to leave the homeland for sion at the Winter Quarters Mine.

Craig Fuller is a historian at the Utah State Historical Society The author wishes to thank Philip F Notarianni and Timo Riipa for their assistance in the preparation of this paper Except for those supplied by the author, the photographs are from USHS collections; most if not all of the photos of the explosion's aftermath are by George Edward Anderson

1 Quoted in William Hoglund, Finnish Immigrants in America, 1880—1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960), 34.

2 The original family name of Isoluoma was shortened to Luoma in many written records In several instances, it was also misspelled.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

the United States was a difficult one.However, a united family was important to Abram and Kaisa, and in the spring of 1900 the couple purchased two one-way tickets from Kokkola, Finland, to Scofield, Utah.3

Most of the 1,600 residents of PleasantValley had another reason to celebrate on May 1.Two years earlier, during the Spanish-American War, the American navy had won a stunning victory in Manila Bay in the Philippines.4 Kaisa andAbram and their large family along with other Finns in the three mining camps of Clear Creek, Scofield, and Winter Quarters were eager tojoin in celebrating Dewey Day with a dance and other forms of socializing following the end of the day shift at the Winter Quarters numbers 1 and 4 mines. For Abram and Kaisa this was to be their first patriotic experience in the United States

However, these pleasant expectations -were dashed when at about 10:25 a.m., shortly after the morning shift of the PleasantValley Coal Company had begun -work, the mining camp of Winter Quarters—located a few hundred yards from the two portals—felt a shock that was immediately followed by a noise that sounded to some like a cannon being fired or a stick of dynamite being set off. At Scofield, a mile or so away, the muffled noise -wasfirstthought to have been someone prematurely celebrating Dewey Day. These impressions changed quickly when word came from Winter Quarters that apowerful explosion had occurred deep underground in the mine.

Within the hour, dozens of families and loved ones from Winter Quarters and Scofield gathered near the portals of the mine to await news of their relatives.Joining the vigil were dozens of Finnish families -who lived in "Finn Town," located a short distance down the canyon from the main section ofWinter Quarters Kaisa and Abram Luoma joined their countrymen to await word of their family.After waiting anxiously for most of the day while victim after victim was carried out on stretchers, Abram and Kaisa received word that five of their sons and other family members were among the dead.5 For the Luomas and the other Finnish families, the days and weeks ahead would test the intestinal fortitude, stamina, and courage best described in Finnish by the word sisu.

As many as 200 men—some sixty of them Finns—were killed in the explosion In numbers of Finns killed, this explosion would be the secondcostliest disaster in the United States,surpassed only by the explosion at the Hanna No. 1 Mine in Hanna, Wyoming, -where as many as 100 Finnish miners were killed in earlyJune 1903.6 TheWinter Quarters explosion also

3 At the time, the cost of two one-way tickets from Kokkola to Scofield was $164. See Migration Institute, www.migrationinstitute.fi/migration/ml (May 28, 1999).

4 The Salt Lake Tribune editorialized on May 1, 1900, that Dewey's victory "should be a holiday [and] it should be kept as one of the nation's sacred days."

5 Deseret News, May 5, 1900 On the day of the funeral at Scofield, the Deseret News reported sixty-one Finns killed and three unidentified or missing.

6 The Deseret News, July 1, 1903, reported: "About 100 [of the 234 dead miners in Hanna] were Finlanders." Like many early accounts of disasters, the total number reported killed by the newspapers was higher than the later, official count. The official number killed in the Hanna No. 1 Mine was 169. See

Wreckage at the mouth of the No. 4 Mine after the Winter Quarters explosion. became the worst coal mine disaster in Utah history and the fourth-deadliest coal mine disaster in American history. It ranks fifth overall in the number of miners killed in mining accidents.7

What brought Finns to the Intermountain region and to Utah? For more than a quarter of a century, Finland, then under rule of the Russian czars, had experienced dramatic economic, political, and social changes Among these changes were the consolidation of land holdings, industrialization of its timber enterprises, expansion of its railroad network, and a growing spirit of nationalism coupled with increased cultural and political suppression by Russia Traditional work was disrupted or altered, and for many Finns immigration to the United States and to the Intermountain region was the answer to unemployment and poor economic conditions.8 By the end of the nineteenth century, the number of foreign-born Finns in the states of Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado exceeded 5,300, or about 8.5 percent of the total number of foreign-born Finns in the United States.9 The percentage of Finns in the Intermountain region remained small compared to other parts of the United States, particularly the copper and iron ore mining locations in Michigan, Minnesota, andWisconsin. Montana led the region -with a Finnish-born population of 2,103, followed by Wyoming and Colorado. Utah's population stood at only 734 in 1900.10

H B Humphrey, "Historical Summary of Coal Mine Explosions in the United States, 1810-1958," Bureau of Mines Bulletin 586 (1960), 22

7 Humphrey, "Historical Summary," 17, 22-23 The exact number of dead will likely never be known Days after the explosion and when most of the dead had been buried, the Salt Lake Tribune on May 6 suggested that as many as 250 miners had been killed

8 Poor economic conditions and high unemployment were not unique to Finns For examples of other immigrants trying to escape economic turmoil and other disruptive conditions, see Philip F Notarianni, "Italianita in Utah," and Joseph Stipanovich, "Falcons in Flight: The Yugoslavs," in Helen Z Papanikolas, ed., The Peoples of Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1976)

9 For a study of Finns in Red Lodge, Montana, see Arlene Harris, "The Red Lodge Finns," in Shirley Zupan and Harry J Owens, eds., Red Lodge: Saga of a Western Area (Carbon County, MT: Carbon County Historical Society, 1979), 179-87

10 Matti E Kaups, "The Finns in the Copper and Iron Ore Mines of the Western Great Lakes Region, 1864—1905: Some Preliminary Observations," in Michael G Kami, Matti E Kaups, and Douglas J Ollila, Jr., eds., The Finnish Experience in the Western Great Lakes Region: New Perspectives (Turku, Finland: Institute for Migration, 1975), 55;http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/migration (May 28, 1999)

The coal mining camp of Clear Creek.

The number of foreignborn Finns in the Beehive State reached 1,012 in 1910, less than 0.3 percent of the state's population. That same year, the total population of foreign-born Finns in the Intermountain states was 9,154.n

The immigration story of Matti and Kalle Tokoi, two brothers from the small agricultural village of Lohtoja, Vaasa province, and that of Matti's son Oskari, illustrates the Finnish immigration experience to the IntermountainWest.The Tokoi brothers had purchased a small farm during a period of high mortgage rates and of changes in agriculture and land ownership in several provinces of Finland They were forced to mortgage their farm With low agricultural prices and slim prospects of earning money elsewhere in Finland to pay off their indebtedness, Matti and Kalle immigrated to Carbon County, Wyoming, -where they and hundreds of other Finns found plenty of work in the coal mines owned by the Union Pacific Coal Company, asubsidiary ofthe Union Pacific Railroad Company Through several years of hard work and frugality, the two brothers earned enough money to return to their farm and pay off the existing mortgage. However, on the heels of the return of his father and uncle, OskariTokoi also immigrated to southernWyoming,where he too -went to -work as a coal miner. Oskari later wrote of his journey to southern Wyoming:"I merely followed that tradition in which my father and uncle had preceded me."12

Employment opportunities were also plentiful in the hard rock and coal mines in Utah near the end of the nineteenth century.Among some of the earliest Finnish immigrants to Utah were Herman Berg and his Swedishborn wife, Karin, and the Hilstrom family.At the time of the 1900 census, the Berg family had lived in Park City for fourteen years,and the Hilstroms had been in Utah for nine years Finns and Finnish-Swedes found employ-

11 The highest number of foreign-born Finns was recorded in 1920, when the census revealed 149,824 first-generation Finns living in the United States This peak number came on the heels of war in Europe and the Finnish struggle for independence from the Soviet Union

12 Oskari Tokoi, Sisu "Even through a Stone Wall": The Autobiography of Oskari Tokoi (New York: Robert Speller & Sons, 1957), 35 Unlike his father and uncle, Oskari immigrated to southern Wyoming because of personal problems Like his uncle and father, he too eventually returned to Finland, where he later served briefly as president of the Finnish national assembly

The flowers donated by school children of Salt Lake City and the railroad car that carried the flowers to Scofield.

ment in the silver and lead mines at Park City, Bingham Canyon, Ophir, Mercur, and Eureka. There was a sufficiently large population of Finns and Finnish-Swedes in Eureka that by 1908 they were able to acquire alarge building identified on fire insurance maps as"Finn Hall." Located near the corner of Beck and Railroad streets in Eureka, Finn Hall provided a place for Finns to socialize and hold temperance meetings, and it probably served asa church aswell.13

Some of the earliest arrivals of Finnish families to Pleasant Valley in Carbon County14 wereJohn Erickson,William and Lezzie Katka,Alexander Kivla,Samuel Nisula,Jacob and Etta Peklajohn and Susie Kokla,and Jacob and Josephine Vali and their two children. These Finnish families and at least half of the Finnish miners killed in the May 1 mining disaster had emigrated from the same western province that members of theTokoi family had lived in.In fact,asmany ashalfofallFinns who immigrated to the United States between the 1880s andWorldWar I came from theVaasa province.15

Other early Finnish immigrants to Pleasant Valley were Andrew and Hilma Koski.They came from the coal fields of southern Wyoming sometime between 1895,when their daughter Elizabeth was born, and 1899, the year Hilma gave birth to John, their second child. Mrs.Vilhelmina Maki, her husband, and their four children were also prior residents ofWyoming. Vilhelmina's two oldest children, Susanna and Elizabeth, were born in Wyoming, and Katrina was born in Colorado Vilhemina's last child,

13 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Eureka, Utah, 1908; copy at the Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City (USHS). Finnish-Swedes were Finns who mainly spoke Swedish, had Swedish ancestors, and lived primarily on the west coast of Finland

14 By the end of the nineteenth century, the PleasantValley Coal Company was one of the leading producers of coal in the state In 1899, for example, PleasantValley Coal production exceeded 466,000 short tons; Salt Lake Herald, December 31, 1899

l5Timo Orta, "Finnish Emigration Prior to 1893: Economic, Demographic and Social Backgrounds," and A.William Hoglund,"No Land for Finns: Critics and Reformers View the Rural Exodus from Finland to America between the 1880s and World War I," in Kami et al., eds., The Finnish Experience in the Western Great Lakes Region; Henry Samuel Heimonen, "Finnish Rural Culture in South Ostrobothnia (Finland) and the Lake Superior Region (US)" (Ph.D diss., University of Minnesota, 1941), 5, cited m Cotton Mather and Matti Kaups, "The Finnish Sauna: A Cultural Index to Settlement," Association of American Geographic Annals 53 (1953): 499 I wish to thank Dr John Lefgren for providing me with some immigration data on the Finns who died atWinter Quarters.Through his own research while at the University of Helsinki, Dr Lefgren found in the Siirtolainen (May-August 1900), a Finnish immigrant newspaper published in the United States, a partial list of Finnish victims of the Winter Quarters mine disaster and their home villages

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Caskets brought from Salt Lake City and Denver being unloaded from a boxcar at the Wasatch Store at Winter Quarters.

Johanna, was just eighteen months old in May 1900.16

The Koski, Maki, and other Finnish families settled in the two coal camps of Clear Creek and Winter Quarters, the latter being the larger of the two coal camps in Pleasant Valley. At Clear Creek, the Finns congregated in a small side canyon identified as "Finn Canyon."There the Finns built themselves "a number of dwellings," "a large hotel,"and several boardinghouses.17 Finnish minerJohn Singo and his wife, Mary, with the help of a twenty-year-old Finnish woman, Jastina Wartela, operated aboardinghouse for ten single Finnish miners.Mat Koski (also spelled Kaski), age thirty-seven, was the Singos' oldest boarder, and Mat Hansen was the youngest at age seventeen Leander and Ida Pesola (or Pecila) also operated a boardinghouse in Finn Canyon for ten single Finnish miners. Still another boardinghouse bedded seven Finns, including Walter Luoma, a forty-nine-year-old miner who -waslikely one of the sons ofKaisa andAbram Luoma.18

Finns also lived in a segregated section of Winter Quarters called "Finland," "Finn Town," or "upper camp." One Winter Quarters miner described Finn Town as being about "a half a mile...between the nearest Finn home and the first houses of'white men.' Out there indeed, the Finn is a stranger in a strange land." Few "white men's cabins" were found in Finn Town, and those "whites" -who did live there did so "not from the choice of their inhabitants."19 Here, then, was an indication of ethnic segregation Finns were viewed as being non-white (or non-American), possessing adifferent culture and social system.

The imposed system of ethnic segregation for the Finns would change with the passage of a few short years as immigrants from other parts of the world came to Carbon County and Utah to work in the mines and smelters. For example,when Slavic and Italian miners among others struck

16 United States Manuscript Census, 1900; microfilm copy at USHS.There were several Makis killed in the explosion, and it is likely that one of them wasVilhemina's husband.

17 Salt Lake Herald, December 31, 1899

'8 These three Finnish boardinghouses continued to board single Finnish miners after the Winter Quarters disaster. See Utah Fuel Records, MS 154, Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

19 Salt Lake Herald, May 9, 1900

The Neelo Maki sauna in Scofield. against the Carbon County coal companies in 1903, some Finns participated in the picketing. However, other Finns refused to join the labor movement and were physically threatened by Italian strikers. 2 0 Elsewhere, Finns such as John Westerdahl joined the ranks of mine management. Eventually,Westerdahl became superintendent of theTintic Standard Mine in Dividend,Juab County.

Mary Korpi, whose husband was likely John Korpi, a victim of the explosion, operated the largest of the Finnish boardinghouses in Winter Quarters, housing eighteen boarders.21 Mary had hired Helena Ogin, a Finnish girl who was about nineteen years old and single,to help with the laundry, prepare the meals, and care for the Finnish boarders. Korpi's youngest boarder -wasVoluntine Lakso, twenty-one; the oldest -was John Harris, age forty-four. Fred Lehto and his wife Hannah also boarded a few Finnish miners, and Oscary (Oscari) Camp and his wife Anna boarded three Finnish men.A number of the single Finnish miners lived in several boardinghouses in Finn Town

Of the three coal camps in Pleasant Valley, Scofield had the fewest Finnish residents,less than ahandful.Among them wasAndrew Koski, who with his partner Johnson (perhaps James Johnson, born in Denmark) had just completed a two-story stone and -wood building The second floor -was Koski's and Johnson's residence, and the ground floor housed a jewelry store and "Russian baths"—better known asthe Finnish sauna. 22

Geographer Eugene Van Cleef noted in 1918 that in the United States the Finnish sauna was a distinct "sign of the Finn."23 It is still perhaps the oldest cultural element of the Finnish people, providing a place -where several important ritualistic or near-sacred functions in Finnish culture occur. In addition to being a room or small building -where one cleansed

20 Utah Fuel Records, MS 154, Special Collections, BrighamYoung University

21 The 1900 federal census shows Korpi spelled Korp.The Scofield sexton's record lists aJohn J[a]vikorpi, and the Siirolainen and Pohjolainen list aJohn Korpi among the dead Finnish miners Mary Korpi continued to live in Winter Quarters for several years after the disaster; see United States Manuscript Census, 1900 and 1910

22 Salt Lake Herald, April 12, 1900 The "Russian baths" were probably so-named because Finland was part of the Russian empire until December 6, 1917, when the Finnish parliament issued a public declaration of independence

23 Eugene Van Cleef, "The Finn in America," Geographical Review 6 (1918): 210, quoted in Mather and Kaups,"The Finnish Sauna," 497

TOP: The Scofield District School was one place where the bodies were prepared for burial.

BOTTOM: Inside the Scofield schoolhouse.

the body,the dry heat sauna was thought also to help purge the soul. The sauna was a place of contemplation, and avisit to the sauna when ill often aided in overcoming the illness An old Finnish proverb states: "If a sauna and brandy cannot help the man, death is near at hand."24

As important as these activities were to the Finns, perhaps the most important, at least in rural Finland, was the use of the sauna as a birthing room. It provided a warm clean place where women could give birth to their babies. Most likely,Mary Singo delivered her baby son in Koski's newly constructed public sauna, and if so she would have probably been the first of many Finnish women to do so Eighty years later, all that remained of Koski's "Russian baths" was a collapsed stone building; no sign of it remains today. At present,only one or two private Finnish saunas are in use in PleasantValley. By the spring of 1900, when Mary Singo was giving birth, the Pleasant Valley Coal Company was operating "full blast" with two shifts of 800 miners mining on average 2,000 tons a day.The Finnish miners and all others "were getting all the work they could do" in the two day shifts and were hard-pressed to fill all of the company's contracts.21 Adding to the heavy demands on its labor force, the Pleasant Valley Coal Company was awarded another substantial coal contract—to supply the United States Navy with 600 tons of coal per day.Ironically, the contract was to begin on May 1,1900.26

24 Mather and Kaups,"The Finnish Sauna," 498 25 Salt LakeTribune, May 7, 1900; Deseret News, May 2, 1900

2" Salt LakeTribune, May 2, 1900.

WINTER QUARTERS MINE DISASTER

TOP: Provo group that arrived to help dig graves in Scofield.

BOTTOM: Funeral services at the Scofield Cemetery.

Even as the miners were working at a frenetic pace to fill the company's coal contracts, the company undertook the task of making improvements in the Pike's Peak area of the mine There the company wanted to straighten out the tunnel by removing a section of the wall. James Jenkins and T F Eynon had been hired for the job but -were replaced by Isaac Maki and an unidentified co-worker Before being replaced, Jenkins and Eynon had stockpiled in the construction area as many as 171 sticks of Hercules No. 2 giant powder (dynamite).When Maki and the other Finn took over the project, they carried in and stored an additional 450 sticks of giant powder, thus creating a sizeable magazine of explosives.

Several of the more experienced miners became concerned over the amount of explosives the Finns were storing. Other miners were alarmed that the Finns seemed to lack experience in using explosives in coal mining.William Coulthard, a former coal mine inspector from Colorado, -was asked by Utah coal mine inspector Gomer Thomas about the coal dust in the mine and the Finns' handling of explosives. Coulthard stated that the mine was safe, at least when it came to the management of the coal dust After the explosion, however, he said, "My opinion is different now from what it was before; I never thought there -was any danger in dust previous to this [the explosion]."He then added:"The Finlanders were very careless; they would fire from three to four shots one after another I have seen, after they have fired alarge shot,ablaze shoot across the face "27

Report of State Coal Mine Inspectorfor 1900, 77-78, copy at USHS. Coulthard lost a son in the explosion.

New grave markers placed for centennial commemoration on May 1, 2000, beside the original, weathered, markers in the Scofield Cemetery.

Another miner, when asked about the explosion and the feelings of the miners toward the Finnish miners, said, "Everyone was very bitter towards the Finns."They were particularly angry at the way Finns handled explosives. "They are said to have been in the habit of putting in blasts of giant powder at the bottom or near the floor which had the effect of cutting up the dust and ultimately causing the explosion."28 Just two months earlier, a hurried blown-shot in one of the mines had resulted in a small explosion; fortunately there were no reported fatalities or injuries.29 The existing record of mining activities does not reveal who -wasto blame for this hurried shot.

Below-ground in the mines as -well as above the ground, the Finns were for the most part segregated from the other miners. At the time of the disaster, Finns worked in what was identified as the "Finnish" level, which some miners considered to be filled with much more coal dust than were other areas of the mine."Did you ever hear anyone complain about it [the mine] being dusty or dangerous?" mine inspector Thomas asked miner William R. Davis days after the explosion. "No, I never heard anyone [complain]. I heard several say about the Finnish level that she was pretty dusty."30

The two explosions occurred in quick succession at about 10:25 a.m. W. C.Wilson, a miner with twenty-six years of experience and one of the survivors of the disaster,was at work in the No. 1Mine when he noticed "a low rumbling noise heard in the distance, followed by a sort of wave that can hardly be described but this is known to all who have been in explosions, and I have been in several. I said to my partner that if gas was known to exist in the mine I should say that an explosion had occurred. I advised that -we flee to the mouth of the tunnel, and with me came six men working in that section."31

JackWilson, a lad not much older than fourteen, hadjust entered one of the portals -with three horses. Horsepower was used to move coal cars in

; Salt Lake Herald, May 5, 1900

1 H. B. Humphrey,"Historical Summary," 5. 'Report of State Coal Mine Inspectorfor 1900, 19 Salt Lake Tribune, May 2, 1900

and out of the mines, and it wasWilson's job as a driver to move the coal cars about.The violent force of air from the explosion threw him "across the gulch at least 150 yards among the small trees and underbrush," where he was miraculously found alive a short time later His three horses were not so fortunate Two of them were found dead a few yardsjust inside the mine.The third horse was blown fifty yards from the portal of the mine. It, too,was found dead.32

Within minutes following the explosion, mine superintendent Thomas J Parmley set about to organize rescue teams.Mine rescue teams also hurried from Castle Gate to aid in the efforts.The work of locating the dead went slowly Even though the rescue teams were equipped with breathing apparatuses, the deadly after-damp, or carbon monoxide, prohibited long stays in the mine. Fresh rescue teams rotated in to retrieve the dead and possibly rescue the living.By the end of the day it was apparent that there were few survivors besides those who had reached the portals on their own Rescue teams had recovered 165 bodies

Enmity toward the Finns grew particularly venomous among some members of the rescue teams."If there was a way to get out the Americans and let the Finns go,they would stay there ten years before we could touch them," one said.33 The hostility increased when one of the rescue teams found the badly "burned and seared" body of Isaac Maki near the Pike's Peak area of the mine, the area where the large cache of explosives had been stored. For some of the angry miners, the recovery of Maki and the condition in which he was found was the needed proof that the Finns' carelessness and inexperience had caused the explosion.

It became apparent that nearly every family and all of the Finns in the three coal camps had experienced a loss.Mary Ann Aho was more fortunate than many other Finnish women in that by a stroke of good luck her husband Mat was saved from the explosion However, she lost five brothers and four nephews in the disaster. The newly settled Abram and Kaisa Luoma lost a total of eight family members; only one of their adult male children survived.34

Temporary morgues and charnel houses were located at the Winter Quarters LDS (Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) church, the public school,and severalboardinghouses. Here,grieving relatives and others were asked to perform the grim task of identifying the dead Name tags were placed on the toes of the victims,and the dead were then removed to individual cabins or boardinghouses. Families and friends held wakes over the bodies until the mass funeral, which was held at the Scofield cemetery on Saturday, or until the bodies could be shipped by rail to the miners' hometowns for interment

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Alone and -without a member of their own clergy, the Pleasant Valley Finnish community urgently sent word to Rock Springs for a Finnishspeaking Lutheran minister to come and conduct graveside services for their dead countrymen. Rock Springs, with its larger population of foreign-born Finns, served as the cultural and social center for most of the Finnish communities of northern Utah at the turn of the twentieth century. One of the earliest and strongest Finnish Lutheran congregations in the region was the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran National Church in Rock Springs. It was from this congregation that Reverend A. Granholm "would have caught a westbound Union Pacific train for Ogden, -where he could transfer to the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad line to complete his journey to Scofield to conduct the graveside services.35

Other clergy came from Salt Lake City to participate at the mass funeral—the largest funeral in the state's history—and to comfort grieving families. Representing the LDS church were Heber J. Grant, Seymour B. Young, Reed Smoot, and George Teasdale. Rev. Scott came from St. Paul's Episcopal church. Also present from Salt Lake City during the week following the explosion were Rev. George Bailey of the Westminster Presbyterian church, Rev. A. H. Henry of the First Methodist Episcopal church, and Rev.Edward G. Fowler of the American Association of Sunday School Union.The only congregation actually within PleasantValley at the time was the LDS church, headed by Bishop Thomas J. Parmley, the mine superintendent. In addition to these religious ministers,representatives from the Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias came to Scofield.36

Most of the Finnish graves, dug side by side in several long trenches, were located near the west entrance to the cemetery Volunteers from Utah Valley and railroad construction crews from the area had dug the graves in the rocky hillside The arrival of the dead Finnish miners was part of a steady cortege of makeshift hearses carrying pine coffins adorned with flowers provided by the schoolchildren of the Salt LakeValley As the eight coffins of the Luoma family were unloaded, Kaisa Luoma, speaking quietly through another Finn, asked that her family be buried side by side in the same row Her simple request was granted

Before the funeral service for the Finnish miners, Rev. Granholm spoke through an interpreter to express appreciation to all those assembled for the

35 For a discussion of the early activities of the Finnish Lutheran Church in Rock Springs, see Kirkollinen Kalenteri Vuodelle, 1905 (Ecclesiastical Calendar for 1905) and V Rautanen, Amerikan Suomalainen Kirkko (American Finnish Church) (Hancock, MI: Suomalias-Luteerilainen Kustannusliike, 1911), 255-57

There were two Finnish Lutheran churches in the United States: the Finnish Lutheran Church (Suomi Synod), which "regarded itself as the proper benefactor of all Finnish immigrants in America," and the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran National Church, a more "democratic, lay-centered" institution See Douglas J Ollila,Jr., "The Work People's College: Immigrant Education for Adjustment and Solidarity," in For the Common Good: Finnish Immigrants and the Radical Response to Industrial America, ed. Michael G Kami and Douglas J Ollila,Jr (Superior,WLTyomies Society, 1997), 90

36

Salt Lake Herald, May 5, 1900; Deseret News, May 5, 1900; Salt Lake Tribune, May 5, 1900

kindness extended to his fellow countrymen. "Say for me that we appreciate the efforts made for our people This calamity has shocked the whole world and my countrymen have suffered terribly. Sixty-one of them are in their coffins awaiting burial, and the colony here has been nearly wiped out."37

The services were simple. To the families Rev. Granholm provided in Finnish a brief but comforting message: "Look to God. He is your only help."He then proceeded down the several rows of coffins, stopping at each to offer a short prayer He was followed by the grieving women, some holding their babies, and other mourners from the Finnish community. Some of the Finnish children became restless and gathered on nearby piles of dirt to find a momentary place of refuge from the funeral services.38

The sorrowful task of burying the dead continued on Sunday, when seven additional miners were laid to rest. Those buried were Finns Erick Kleima,Alex Heikkia, and Maknus Niemi; brothers J. N. andW. O. Powell; William Paugh (Pugh); and George Wilson.39 The burial of these miners and one or two others later resulted in some confusion regarding the total number of miners killed. On the day of the mass funeral a Salt Lake Herald reporter claimed that at least "six bodies yet remain in the mine" and that Thomas Padfield, Edwin Street, and John Pitman were three of the six bodies yet to be recovered.40 Perhaps the Herald's three unrecovered bodies were the same three that the Deseret News reported as missing.

Then as well as now, the total number of dead remained uncertain Earlier in the week, checkers who were assigned to count the bodies as they were being removed from the two portals tallied 247 bodies. Later, undertaker S.D.Evans reported to company officials that he had used 232 coffins.41 On the other hand, state coal mine inspector Thomas recorded 197 miners killed.42

Among those who were troubled that not all of the miners had been

37 Deseret News, May 5, 1900 The Deseret News also reported that there were three unidentified Finns who were "supposed to be missing."

38 Ibid

39 Salt Lake Herald, May 7, 1900

40 Ibid., May 5, 1900.

41 Salt Lake Herald, May 5, 1900

42 "Accidents Cat'd [unreadable]," dated May 1, 1900, "Coal Mine Inspector Report," microfilm copy of holograph, Series 19605,Box 1, 126-27, Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City A much closer examination of all available contemporary lists and sources is needed to determine more accurately the number of miners killed. For example, resident J. W Dilley does not include on his list of victims the two Finns Erick Kleima and Maknus Niemi in his History of the Scofield Mine Disaster (Provo: Skelton Publishing, 1900) The Scofield Cemetery record, which has several pages missing, does not include Erick Kleima but does list M Niemi and A Heikkila.The Salt Lake Herald, Deseret News, and Salt Lake Tribune provide various lists On May 3, 1900, the Salt Lake Tribune reported 217 bodies recovered A day later, the newspaper reported that 223 had been recovered, and on the day of the mass funeral, it reported that 385 men and boys had been underground at the time of the explosion and, as an unnamed miner stated, "Not more than eighty-five escaped." On May 8, 1900, the Deseret News indicated that the total number of victims was 246 All of these numbers are much higher than the numbers of casualties—generally around 200—given in official sources.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

recovered were the surviving Finns. Folio-wing the mass burial, the Finnish community met to assess their losses and concluded that "six at least of their people are missing." One missing Finn -was found on May 9 -when a recovery team searching for unaccounted-for miners found the body of Nicholas Walkama. The recovery of Walkama perhaps reinforced the opinion of the Finns and others that additional miners still lay entombed in the Winter Quarters mines. The last Finn to be recovered, Walkama was buried on May 10.43

After the dead had been laid to rest, questions about who was to blame and questions about the cause of the explosion persisted Besides blaming the Finns,many miners were of the opinion that the coal company, in failing to prevent the Finns from storing too many explosives in the mine, was at fault Still others blamed the company for failing to adequately dampen the highly volatile coal dust And some pointed at the coal mine inspector, who had not conducted a complete inspection of the mine in the weeks before the explosion

Official testimonies and reports filed after the explosion seem to have exonerated the Finns The coroner's inquest determined that two explosions had occurred in rapid succession and that most of the miners died of asphyxiation from the deadly after-damp However, the three-person coroner's inquest "was unable to determine who caused the first explosion or what had ignited it In its findings, the three-person panel concluded that "no blame or intimation of blame [is] attached to anyone."44

Concerning the second explosion, the ignition of the dry and highly volatile coal dust, the state coal mine inspector placed partial onus on the coal company. In his report, Thomas indicated that there -was no mine regulation or law that required the company to keep the coal dust damp and thus safe. However,

Th e company should have had strict regulations about this Had there been no coal dust, this great flame would not have caught and there would not have been 200 dead miners An explosion of, say 100 sticks of giant powder, might suffocate many men, but there were not many near this place [Pike's Peak] If the company had sprinkled the dust with water, thus keeping it from rising, it could not have ignited But this was never done."45

Dick Sprague, a respected chemist in the state, was asked to make an independent study concerning the coal dust.After analyzing samples of the coal dust from theWinter Quarters mines, Sprague concluded that an accidental spark set off the initial explosion and that the excessive amount of coal dust in the mine magnified the explosion, resulting in a high loss of life.He explained,

43 Salt Lake Herald, May 10, 1900.

44 Ibid., May 7, 1900

45 Ibid., May 4,1900

I am not in a position to state any definite conclusion as to the cause of the explosion, but all that I have found so far goes to show that our original theory was correct. That is, that the dust was ignited by a burning of powder

On e thing is established beyond question—that the dust is not explosive of itself

There was no spontaneous combustion about it. There had to be some flame to set it off, I find, and a large flame at that The force alone of a giant powder explosion would not do it, and I am led to believe from -what experiments I have made that this powder taken into the mine "burned" rather than exploded, and the dust having been raised or suspended in the air by blasting, it is ignited everywhere by the flame coming in contact with it The effect left the mine without oxygen, and the men had nothing to breathe but carbon monoxide, or after-damp. This poisoned them.46

Some of the veteran miners held the same opinion. The loss of life would not have been ashigh if the company had taken the necessary steps to keep the coal dust damp."One thing would have prevented this explosion—sprinkling,"stated one miner."Ifthe mines had been thoroughly wet down every week, no ordinary disturbance could have lifted the dust into the air—there could not have been an explosion."47

The PleasantValley Coal Company, acting on these reports, set about to resolve the coal dust problem As work was begun to repair the damaged tunnels, the company installed at considerable expense a much-needed sprinkling system "The cost to the company to make this improvement and to operate the sprinkling system will be heavy,but expense isnot being considered," reported the Deseret News.4S

The state inspector's report and the coroner's findings did not resolve the animosity that continued to be directed at the Finns,however A number of coal miners refused to return to work if the PleasantValley Coal Company employed Finns In a petition they urged the company not to hire the Finns and to "dismiss all Finns from its employ[ment]."49 The company responded and refused to rehire Finnish miners, atleast for awhile.50

Soon after the explosion, a local relief committee was organized to provide comfort and to assist the grieving families One of the relief workers,aWinter Quarters schoolteacher named Miss Bent, recalled hearing the pitiful wailings of many of her young students as she walked the narrow road of the coal camp "Oh, sister, let's pray for poor papa," was a common refrain Among the other angels of mercy were Mrs William White and Elizabeth Silverwood from Salt Lake City During their short stay they provided compassionate service to many children who -were "suffering for the lack of attention."The mothers,"too much burdened with grief," -were unable to provide proper care for their own children.51

Unfortunately, the bitterness felt toward the Finnish miners was also

46Ibid.,May 13, 1900.

47 Deseret News, May 12, 1900

48 Ibid., May 18,1900

49 Salt Lake Herald, May 13, 1900

50 Deseret News, May 18, 1900

51 Ibid., May 13,1900

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

directed at their families. O. G. Kimball, head of the Scofield relief committee, was suspicious that undeserving Finns were taking relief that rightfully belonged to the fatherless and widows. A canvass of "Finland the poorest section of the camp" was taken "to prevent the possibility of undeservers taking the provisions out of the mouths of the needy. Such attempts may be expected, in view of the conduct of certain Finns heretofore. In all cases the Finns asked for something in the list, but few of them were in actual immediate want."52

However, mine production superintendent W. G. Sharp ignored the suspicions of Kimball and others and assigned a"committee of Samaritans" to continue to look after the needs of the Finnish families. The "Good Samaritans" found their work difficult among some of the Finnish families, however. Few of the women understood much English—or they knew none at all.Others were too proud to accept the assistance offered to them. Still other Finns were indifferent to or suspicious of the relief committee's efforts, and they too refused the comfort that was offered. One relief worker recalled finding a number of Finnish children "unkempt and dirty" with little or no attention given to them by their grieving mothers. Three Finnish children were left entirely without parents, older siblings, or other relatives to care for them. Bishop Lawrence Scanlan of the Vicariate of Utah and Eastern Nevada offered these children a home at St. Ann's Orphanage in Salt Lake City.53

A number of Finnish women quietly demonstrated the cultural trait of sisu. Ida Koski -was one such woman A newlywed of about a year with a month-old baby, Ida buried her husband, five of her uncles, and four of her cousins at the Scofield cemetery Despite the loss of so many family members and despite the hostility directed at Finns generally, Ida was among several Finns who remained inWinter Quarters following the disaster.54

Mary Kleimola (also spelled Kelomela and Klemola) was another Finnish woman who displayed extraordinary strength. A fifty-five-year-old widow of three years,she along with her teenage daughter Algo and her four adult sons had immigrated to Pleasant Valley, where her sons found plenty of work. The three oldest sons—Antti, Leander, and Vesteri—were buried in the Scofield cemetery with the dozens of other Finns on the Saturday folio-wing the disaster. The youngest, Albert, escaped death. Despite the difficulties, Mary seems to have carried on her duties as mother and breadwinner in traditional Finnish fashion, without any outward complaints.55

The Winter Quarters Mine explosion, which took the lives of at least 200 miners, was a tragic loss for the community and the state. For the

52 Ibid., May 8,1900.

53 Ibid., May 6 and 9,1900

54 In addition to Ida Koski, Mary Luoma, a family member of Kaisa and Abram Luoma, and Mary Korpi remained in Winter Quarters All of these women paid taxes in 1901 to the Carbon County assessor See Assessment Roll of Carbon County, 1901, Microfilm A-l 006, USHS

55 See United States Manuscript Census, 1900; microfilm copy at USHS

WINTER QUARTERS MINE DISASTER

elderly Luomas and the small Finnish community in Pleasant Valley, the Winter Quarters disaster was horrific Their loss "was extremely large—as many as sixty Finns died Further, the strong feelings manifested against the Finnish community sometimes withered even the distinct Finnish trait of personal and community fortitude.

Some Finns left the area and state following the tragedy Among those who were shattered with the loss of so many of their family were Abram and Kaisa Luoma.After much sacrifice,Abram and Kaisa along with their only surviving son,Leander, and daughter, Kaisa Matilda, decided to return to the land oftheir birth.56 Still other Finns ignored the anger,chose to stay, and eventually found work in the coal mines of Carbon County or in hard rock mines elsewhere in the state.

During the next few years, the Finnish population grew in Carbon County and in the state as a whole For example, the family of Matti and Aina Maenpaa Rauhala emigrated from Finland and settled in Carbon County in 1907. By 1910 there were enough Lutheran Finns in Pleasant Valley to establish their own congregation with their own pastor. They organized their own temperance society to combat the excessive consumption of alcohol and even built a sizeable hall -where they could gather for social and community activities.Still other Finnish miners participated with their fellow miners in the Carbon County coal strike of 1903—1904.57

56 R George Silvola to author, May 7, 2000, in possession of author

57 V Rautanen, Amerikan Suomalainen Kirkko, 263;Allan Kent Powell, The Next Time We Strike: Labor in Utah's Coal Fields, 1900—1933 (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1985), 66—67 Longtime Finnish resident of Clear Creek Lilly Erkkila Woolsey remembers that at one end of Finn Hall was a large curtain with a hand-painted scene of Helsinki, Finland; conversation with author August 10, 1999.

An Explosive Lesson: Gomer Thomas, Safety, and the Winter Quarters Mine Disaster

By NANCY J TANIGUCHI

Castle Gate Mine foreman

Frank Cameron, Winter Quarters

Mine superintendent T. J. Parmley, and Clear Creek Mine superintendent H. B. Williams confer after the Winter Quarters explosion. Photos are from USHS collections; most if not all were taken by George E. Anderson.

On May 1, 1900, the Winter Quarters Mine exploded On September 1, 1912, former Utah State Coal Mine Inspector Gomer Thomas died. His obituary read,"He had not been well since the Winter Quarters Coal Mine disaster eleven years ago, when two hundred and one miners were killed He was not injured by the explosion, but undermined his health in the rescue work by inhaling the poisonous smoke and gases."1 These noxious gasses and the practices and substances that caused them became the focus of the Winter Quarters Mine disaster investigation and Thomas's ongoing crusade for mine safety. The primary problem atWinter Quarters was

1 (Price) Eastern Utah Advocate, September 5, 1912 (hereafter Advocate).

Nancy J Taniguchi, professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, has been studying Utah's coal industry for more than twenty-five years She lived in Price, Utah, from 1976 to 1989 and taught at the College of Eastern Utah In 1996 she published Necessary Fraud: Progressive Reform and Utah Coal.

explosives—the amount, how used, by whom, with what results—all of -whichwere reported byThomas long before their effects finally took his life

Gomer Thomas, as the second state mine inspector (the first had served only amatter of months),was the government official most intimately concerned with coal mining The position itself dated back to late territorial days when western commercial coal mining was in its infancy A federal law passed in 1891 mandated a mine inspector in each territory with coal mines; Utah appointed one the following year. 2 Robert Forrester, the first territorial mine inspector and a trained geologist, filed a report in 1893 (based on 1892 data) In it he summarized the industry's haphazard condition with a list of serious deficiencies First, he noted, "with one or two exceptions, the mines have been worked in a very primitive and incompetent manner." Second, the typical mine superintendent "has been chosen, not because of his knowledge of Coal Mining, but because he was an influential friend of the most prominent shareholders; or he may have had a large amount of the shares himself."Third, unsafe practices included "an insufficiency of pillars [of uncut coal] to support the roof [of the mine tunnels, rendering the coal in them]...irrecoverable, and thus thousands of tons of coal are lost to the mine-owners." Finally, he minced no words regarding safety: "Such a miserable apology for mining presents almost insurmountable difficulties in circulating a current of fresh air sufficient for the needs of the miner at the working face [the exposed area at the end of the tunnel where the coal ismined]."3

Not only were the mines themselves generally in dismal condition but also practical knowledge, particularly regarding fires (often of deadly consequence in a coal mine), was in its infancy. In the context of a"gob fire" or continued smoldering in the Union Pacific Mine in Pleasant Valley, Forrester detailed the two prevailing theories of coal combustibility: "The spontaneous combustion of coal in the past has been attributed to Iron Pyrites, and more lately to the oxidation of the carbon of the coal." In the older view, the decomposition of iron pyrites, particularly when found in marcasite,was believed to cause sufficient heat to start a coalfire.The more recent theory (as of 1892) held instead that extant gasses absorbed by the coal would bring "the carbon into closer contact with the oxygen...and the heat developed by this action, under favorable circumstances [would cause] inflamniable particles actuallyto ignite."Forrester,in his own analysis, combined these two theories to opine that the existence ofmarcasite in the coal generated sufficient heat to drive off natural moisture while speeding the breakup of the coal,which could then more readily absorb oxygen and ignite.4

2 "Annual Report, Robert Forrester, U S Mine Inspector 1892, filed March 27, 1893," Secretary of Utah Territory/Territorial Executive Papers, Series 241, Reel 13, 13500-507, Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah.

3 Ibid., 13,459-60

4 Ibid., 13,468-71.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

After filing this report, Forrester apparently left (or was removed from) the position of mine inspector for Utah Territory. In the report filed for 1896, at the beginning of statehood, his immediate successor was described thus: "The last incumbent of that position under Territorial government failed entirely to compile annual reports covering the years of his incumbency [and] he left no reliable data...."5 Consequently, when Gomer Thomas assumed the position of state coal mine inspector in 1897, he had very little except his own extensive practical knowledge to go on. His task would be to establish and enforce most of Utah coal mining's initial safety procedures His own awareness of the urgency of his task was suddenly shared by people throughout the state following the explosion at Winter Quarters,which brought repeated calls for mine safety.

Fortunately for Utah, Gomer Thomas -was a professional mining man with lifelong ties to the industry. Born inWales in 1843,he immigrated to the United States in 1864, working first in Pennsylvania, then Ohio, and finally in Utah in 1878, always in coal In Utah, he was first employed by the Utah Central Railroad in Scofield, moving a year later to the Union Pacific Coal Company, or U. P.He superintended the U. P.'s Grass Creek Mine in Summit County until it closed in 1887,after which he continued with the company until his appointment as state coal mine inspector ten years later His duties then included an annual or more-frequent visit to each of the state's coal mines employing more than six men and an occasional inspection of smaller enterprises as well.When hydrocarbon mines opened, he also inspected them.6

As required by law, every year the state coal mine inspector made an official report to Utah's governor; the reports were published biennually Each report typically began -with aletter of summary and tables of statistics then continued with a narrative report on each of the significant coal mines, their owners and officers, tonnage produced, amount of explosives used, brief overviews of the hydrocarbon mines, individual accounts of the deaths and injuries occurring that year, and, usually, a summary statement. Thomas's official "Reports of the State Coal Mine Inspector" also detail the nitty-gritty side of theWinter Quarters development and disaster

Not surprisingly,when Thomas assumed his official post, one of his main concerns was theWinter Quarters Mine, then one of the leading producers in the state His first, typically detailed, report of theWinter Quarters No 1 Mine (the only one then operating) was based on his first official visit on October 27, 1897.He noted 267 men inside and outside, along with eighteen horses,a Guibal exhaust fan (-with full particulars as to its capacity and

5 Report of the Coal Mine Inspectorfor the State of Utah from April 6th to December 31st, 1896 (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Publishing Company, 1897), 3, 4

6 Advocate, September 5, 1912; Union Pacific Coal Company, History of the Union Pacific Coal Mines, 1868 to 1940 (Omaha: Colonial Press, [1940]), 103;"United States v C M Freed et al., [1910] Vol 2," Records of Utah State Land Board, Utah State Archives, 419-29 Hydrocarbons are other carbon-based substances, specifically asphaltum, gilsonite, elaterite, and ozokerite

performance), electric hoists (also with full mechanical details), "escapement ways,"and coal production of 210,693 tons,with complete chemical analysis.Thomas was a thorough man. Despite the use of the fan, he also warned about an insufficient "current of air...on account of the friction in the return airway,which is smaU,being driven some considerable distance in the rock."When he complained about this to management, he learned that steps to widen the airway would begin on November 1,just two days after his visit. Subsequent reports followed up on Thomas's concerns. In 1898 he reported, "I found great improvement from my last [visit]...and a great deal larger amount of air traveling through the mine." He added, "There is no gas in this mine and dust is not very dangerous, but management sprinkles traveling roads."7 His views on gas, dust, and sprinkling would all change dramatically after the explosion

Thomas's 1899 report began with the proud assertion that "this has been the most successful year in the history of the coal mine industry in the State of Utah."There had been no fatal accidents, and total production had increased 204,825 tons over 1898,with 407 more employees.Thomas continued, "All suggestions and requests that I have made during the year, for the safety, comfort, and health of the employees,have been cheerfully complied with on the part of the employers."To prepare this report, Thomas had inspected the now much-larger Winter Quarters No. 1 seven times, noting variances in numbers of miners working and complaining about the amount of water in the man-way,which was being sprinkled at his suggestion. He brought these issues to the attention of Superintendent Thomas J. Parmley, who promptly supervised amelioration. As always,Thomas had checked the ventilation, saying (on visit six) that it was"fairly good considering the amount of powder used in the mine." He noted, "All shots are fired in this mine by the miners at any time." He also reported on "a new mine... one of the most difficult mines to open in the State": Winter Quarters No 4 "The graders who were grading for a tramway to the mine, put in a big blast which cracked the rock and earth at the mouth of the tunnel, causing abig slide of thousands of tons ofrock and dirt, making it very difficult to timber and drive."The tunnel mouth consequently "had to be secured with rock walls and cribs,which was done, and in a manner creditable to the mine foreman, [Thomas Parmley's brother] William Parmley"8 Both the Parmleys,likeThomas, were experienced mining men, a far cry from the "big shareholders" Forrester had excoriated in his first territorial report.They sawto it that their mines ran in aprofessional manner.

At the nearby Clear Creek mine, also new that year, the dust was deemed highly explosive, and a sprinkling system was installed at Gomer Thomas's suggestion. Another sister mine, Castle Gate, had recently

7 State Coal Mine Inspector's Report (hereafter SCMIR) 1897, Utah State Archives, 2; ibid 1897, 23; ibid 1898, 52-53

8 Ibid 1899, 4, 17-19.The man-way is the tunnel through which the miners travel

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

modernized under the direction of superintendent Frank Cameron. Not only was the mine sprayed with water but also the coal was dug "by being first undermined and shot off with Hercules powder [dynamite], of which they used 38,450 pounds during the year 1899.All shots are fired by electricity,when all men are out of the mine,-which I think is the safest way to mine coal where dust is explosive." In his report,Thomas then highlighted Utah's superior coal deposits, availability of timber for mine uses, and gentle mountain grades for tram and rail-way accessibility, opining that "all that is needed to make these fields superior to others [in theWest] is organized capital to operate them on a large scale."9 Everything seemed ready for continued growth in the industry

At that time, coal was in great demand Especially in the arid stretches of theWest where wood was scarce, coal was the fuel of choice for factories, home heating, and, most of all, locomotive power. Not surprisingly, the great western railroads, such as the Denver and Rio Grande Western (D&RGW), opened the first commercial mines in the West Nearby, they built company towns or allowed miners to build their own homes on company land at the mouth of the mines.As a result, these commercial giants regained much of what they paid the miners by insisting that they buy their supplies—fuses, lanterns,blasting powder, and daily necessities—at the company store The D&RGW, through interlocking directorates, controlled the Pleasant Valley Coal Company (PVCC), which opened the Winter Quarters Mine. In the same canyon where these mines penetrated the earth stood theWasatch Store, the mercantile arm of the PVCC, again bound to the same commercial behemoth by an interlocking directorate In essence, one huge industrial empire tried to control virtually every aspect of the miners'lives.10

The labor of these men was necessary for the commercial giant to grow. They first carved the portals then drove tunnels deep into the earth, supporting the ceiling (with -wooden timbers at Winter Quarters instead of pillars of unmined coal) and removing the coal as they -went A coal mine consisted of a -web of passageways; in the case of Winter Quarters Four these rose from the main entry and -were labeled for the direction: First Rise, Second Rise, and so on, to the Farrish Level, which was above the Third and Fourth rises Off the passageways, or rises, -were rooms where men dug the coal at the face.This mine, being new, was small; the tunnels penetrated only 1,600 feet from the surface, and it had four cross entries

9 SCMIR 1899, 20,33

10 "Articles of Incorporation, Wasatch Store Company," no page, listing David Dodge and William E Colton, both of the D&RGW, as two of the initial incorporators, and "Articles of Incorporation, Pleasant Valley Coal Company," listing W F Colton as the largest shareholder (100 shares; all others owned one share), no page, College of Eastern Utah Special Collections, Price, Utah For an extended description of mine acquisition, see Nancy J. Taniguchi, Necessary Fraud: Progressive Reform and Utah Coal (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 10—42. For a complete description of the company town system, see James B.Allen, The Company Town in the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966)

and twenty-six rooms. 11

Mines were full of dangers.With the exception of Castle Gate, where company men supervised the use of dynamite and detonated it by remote electrical charges, each miner blasted out his own coal to loosen it before picking out more and shoveling it into cars Typically, the miner drilled a hole horizontally into the face, filled it partly with blasting powder, laid down alength offuse, tamped the hole shut with a"dummy" (a cylindrical sack filled -with earth) or with wet wood pulp, lit the exposed end of the fuse and moved away from the harm of the ensuing blast Occasionally there was a missed shot—a charge that did not fire—which could kill a man if he hit it with his pick.A windy or blown-out shot—one that was improperly tamped—could create a life-threatening explosion. Another danger was the "bounce"—the motion of the earth abruptly settling itself, causing choking dust and small bits of coal to shoot out as cracks snapped shut. Sometimes the tunnel roof would start to collapse.Then, the -wooden pillars that supported it twisted with the pressure, and the small -wooden wedges driven in at the top,where posts met the ceiling, shot out to warn the men to run for their lives Bounces,roof falls,explosions,and daily wear and tear all raised a fine mist of coal dust, which was not necessarily considered flammable by itself.Some coal mines,due to the chemical composition ofthe coal,had the added danger of flammable methane gas,called fire damp, oozing out of the coal The Winter Quarters mines, however, were not gassy and-were considered some ofthe safest in which to work.12

Then came that disastrous day of May 1, 1900 A book written shortly afterward by Scofield school principal and town clerkJamesW Dilley was published free ofcharge by the Skelton Publishing Company ofProvo and sold to raise money for the bereaved families. From it comes this account:

May Day or Dewey Day, dawned bright and clear, when about two hundred miners left Scofield for the mines in the miner's coach that is run back and forth at the change of shifts.... Each one was looking forward to the evening when there was to be a dance in the new Odd Fellow's Hall, and their children were to have a celebration in honor of the Hero of the Battle of Manilla [sic]... Nearly every man was at his post of duty in the mine, when from some cause or other, a most terrific explosion took place... [Nf] early everyone [in town] supposed that the noise was from some one setting off a blast in honor of the day.. Reports came down that Number Four had exploded, but this -was not believed as this mine in particular was supposed to be the safest mine [of all].13

As the news spread, some people rushed up the incline to the mouth of Number Four Mine, where they encountered several men severely injured by the escaping blast.At the mouth ofthe mine,"one horse wasfound dead but his driver [of the mine cart the horse had pulled] could not be seen

"SCMIR 1900,67

12 See the testimony in ibid., 68—80

13 J.W Dilley, History of the Scofield Mine Disaster (Provo: Skelton Publishing, 1900;privately reprinted by Paul and Linda Helsten for the 100-year commemoration of the Winter Quarters Mine disaster, May 1, 2000), 47-48

A rescue team at the Winter Quarters Mine.

until someone looking down the gulch saw the form of...the driver [who] had been blown eight hundred and twenty feet, by actual measurement."The first relief party, headed by mine superintendent Thomas J. Parmley "started for the levels of Number Four through Number One, there being inside connections, but were driven back by the terrible after-damp [carbon monoxide] that had by this time reached the lower levels of Number One."14

It took about twenty minutes to clear away the dead horse and the tangle of mine timbers that had been blown out to the mouth of Number Four,blocking the entrance Then,"the relief committee was able to follow the air and the actual work of rescue began.The first one to be met was Harry Betterson, supposed at the time to be John Kirton, and being still alive was brought [out of the smoke-filled tunnel] to the surface where he was found to be burned beyond recognition."As men set up canvas barriers (called brattices) to force the air into the mine one level at a time, clearing the smoke and dispelling some of the after-damp, they discovered horrible carnage."Men were piled in heaps as there were not enough men [on the rescue squads] to carry out the dead as fast as found." The groups pressed into Number One and found more bodies.After miners arrived from Clear Creek to help,"The dead began to arrive at the mouth of Number One by the car load, sometimes as many as twelve bodies having been loaded upon one mine car."

Then it was that the people realized that it was impossible to expect anything but the burned or mangled body of the loved ones that had entered the mine so light hearted that morning... O n account of the many caves and falls the work of the rescuing party was greatly retarded, as many of the bodies were buried and had to be dug out from under tons of dirt. As the bodies were carried down from Number One, the women and children waiting at the boarding house, moaning and crying out the names of their loved ones, would rush frantically to the stretcher to see if they could recognize the face or form of him for whom they were waiting.15

Among the first outside rescuers on the scene was former Utah

Territorial Coal Mine Inspector Robert Forrester, now the geologist for the Pleasant Valley and Utah Fuel Coal companies He plunged into Number One, where according to the Los Angeles Times "he was found [unconscious from after-damp] near the mouth of the tunnel, having just gone in, and was quickly rescued.As soon as he recovered, he "went right back in the mine to aid the relief party and was again brought out in an unconscious condition He was carried to his room, and upon recovering, once more returned to aid in directing the work."16

An astonished rescue party entering Number One mine found David Uro still working in Room 11 on the Eighth Rise.He was unaware that an explosion had occurred, and, as later reported by Gomer Thomas, "There being sufficient air in his place his life was saved All the other men on this level, hearing the explosion, ran [toward Number Four, the shorter way out] trying to make their escape,and encountered the after damp to "which they succumbed." Uro and one other man were brought to the surface three and one-half hours after the explosion, the only two saved above the Fourth Level of the Eighth Rise and the only survivors from an extensive area in -which eighty-three men died.17

Another rescue party going into Number One was led by William G Sharp, general manager of the PleasantValley Coal Company

By the time Gomer Thomas arrived in early afternoon, fifty bodies had been recovered, and Sharp was exhausted.Thomas relieved him so he could get afew hours sleep Sharp returned at 8 p.m tojoin a party led byThomas that included James Harrison and Frank Cameron, superintendent of the Castle Gate mine,in probingWinter Quarters Number Four.18

Thomas stayed involved in rescue work almost continuously throughout May 2 but had to hold back on the afternoon of May 3 until the back of the connected mines, where the fire had been hottest, was cleared of most of the charred and mangled bodies Superintendent Thomas Parmley's brother,William Parmley, the mine foreman at Winter Quarters Number Four, was among those bodies there recovered and identified. The confirmation of his death extinguished all hope that the victims would all be found SinceWilliam alone knew -where all the men had been working and since several rooms had caved in,blocking passage-ways and burying bodies, questions remain to this day whether all the miners -were recovered.19

By then, word of the disaster had spread widely.The mounting toll from Winter Quarters revealed that this explosion was the worst in the United

16 Los Angeles Times, May 3,1900

17 "Report of Explosion atWinter Quarter[s] Mines, May 1st. 1900," attachment to Gomer Thomas to Governor Heber M.Wells,June 1, 1900, in Dept.: Industrial Commission, Div.: State Coal Mine Inspector, Series: Reports 1900—1916, Box B106gl, "Reports by State Mine Inspector to Governor and Various Organizations 1902-1904," Utah State Archives, 2 (hereafter Disaster Report) This report has a blank to represent the name of the other rescued miner See also SCMIR 1900, 64

18 SCMIR 1900, 61; Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1900

19 Allan Kent Powell, The Next Time We Strike (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1985), 231 n 10

Workers bring a body from the mine.

States to that date. Condolences and assistance poured in. Locally, the Pleasant Valley Coal Company provided free coffins and burial clothes, the Wasatch Store Company wiped out the debts of the dead miners, and mine officials delivered the victims' full paychecks privately to each bereaved family Superintendent Welby of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway, a sister corporation to the PleasantValley Coal Company, provided free railroad transportation for flowers gathered by Salt Lake City schoolchildren to adorn the graves of the dead. Utah's Governor Wells received a cable from PresidentWilliam McKinley expressing his"intense sorrow...and deep sympathy with the wives, children and friends of the unfortunate victims." Foreign governments also responded For example, President McKinley received condolences from France's President Loubet, delivered by the French ambassador inWashington The London Daily Telegraph rated the international outpouring of sympathy on a par with that caused by the explosion of the Maine.20

Meanwhile, relief supplies began arriving, and a way had to be found to manage them Governor Wells appointed a committee, chaired by Utah secretary of state James T. Hammond, to receive and distribute contributions Committee members included E.W.Wilson,William F Colton, Ezra Thompson, A.W. Carlson, Arthur L.Thomas,William Iglehart, Mrs. O. J. Salisbury, Mrs George M Downey, Mrs A R Haywood, Lafayette Holbrook, John Jones, O. G. Kimball, and the busy Winter Quarters superintendent,ThomasJ Parmley.21 However, while private donors proved generous, requests for both state and federal aid were turned down by the

2,1 Ibid., 32, 33; Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1900

According to Powell (231 n 1), the Winter Quarters

Mine disaster is the fourth most severe coal mine disaster in the United States and the worst to that point in history. The others with larger loss of life were: December 6, 1907, 362 killed at Monongah, West Virginia; December 19, 1907, 239 killed at Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania; October 22, 1913, 263 killed at Dawson, New Mexico

21 Noble Warrum, ed., Utah Since Statehood, 4 vols (Chicago and Salt Lake City: S.J Clarke, 1919), 1:267

A boardinghouse was used as a washroom for the dead and wounded. The clothes of the dead miners were thrown in a pile on the porch.

respective legislatures.22

While government faltered in providing monetary aid, state officials— particularly Inspector Gomer Thomas—worked overtime. Rescue teams supervised byThomas continued probing both mines, corridor by corridor and room by room, until May 12, bringing up more of the dead.A subsequent inspection attempting to identify the explosion's cause also proceeded room by room through Number Four Mine. In this painstaking analysis,Thomas was aided by Superintendent Thomas J. Parmley, Assistant Superintendent H. G. Williams, Utah Fuel geologist Robert Forrester, and mining engineer George W. Snow. This investigation resulted in a fifteen-page, typed, legal-size report and a five-page summary (thelatter later included inthe inspector's annual report),which were submitted tothegovernor onJune l.23

The dynamics of the explosion had been extraordinary. For example, some rooms experienced the force of the blast; others, the fire; some had signs ofboth. In Number Four Mine, theexplosion's force apparently traveled inward onthethird level andback onthesecond level,asindicated by smashed steel mine cars in each location. "Theforce of the explosion on these levels wasvery strong and [there were] butlittle signs of fire," added the report.24 Atthemouth ofRoom Five,Level One, theblast ofair wasso strong andhotthat some ofthe coal in thewalls coked AtRoom Oneon the first level, a toolbox, clothing, paper, andmine props were all scorched and burned, but a keg of powder, although scorched on top,did not explode. In some cases,huge tongues offlame flashed into rooms but halted short of complete destruction For example, at Room Two, First Rise, two-thirds of a kegofpowder, not exploded, still rested 100feet into the 160-foot-deep room, some thirty feet beyond the fire limit as shown by

23 Disaster Report

24 Ibid.,5.

G E ANDERSON

22 Powell, The Next Time We Strike, 32 A partial list of individual, fraternal, mercantile, and municipal donors canbe found in Dilley, History of the Scofield Mine Disaster, 197-98

Body of H. A. Miller being placed in a car at the boardinghouse, probably in order to be taken to the Scofield School.

ashes on the props. Jacob Anderson hadbeen working there alone andwasbrought out alive, apparently because fire, not force, had hit his work area and not all the oxygen hadbeen consumed. At the top of the First Rise there was no sign of fire or blast; in fact, in the Third Level off the First Rise "a keg of powder intact is found in asack; also seventeen andone-half sticks ofgiant powder [dynamite] andsome [blasting] caps...were found intact." In other places, superheated airfrom theblast caused horrific results.Forexample,"The 4th Rise below the Farrish Level is badly caved and the men taken out here were badly burned and blistered with heat, but had no fire on their clothing." Up at the Farrish Level (beyond theThird and Fourth rises), two blasts traveling in opposite directions apparently met.Upon reaching the endof the Farrish Level, H.G.Williams dryly remarked that "agreat deal more air tried to get through that hole than could." In the last room ofthe Farrish Level, Room Fourteen, aunique array ofevidence showed that the heated blast had come from the face itself. No black powder or dynamite could possibly have caused this result.21

Finally, although the heat dissipated with distance, the after-damp (carbon monoxide) did not AsThomas noted, most of the miners in the back ofNumber One"were warned ofthe explosion but they stopped to put their tools away and lock up their boxes, and some went so far asto finish load[ing] their cars andput up props Ifthey hadrun right out they could have come right out in fresh air most of the waybut they didnot think there wasmuch danger forthey didnothurry asthey knew the mine did notgive offany explosive gasandwas notknown tobeadusty mine."26 By the time many left, taking the short-cut through Number Four, the after-damp had risen and killed them. This poisonous gas eventually reached the mouth of both mines, where it repeatedly struck down res2:1 Ibid., 9, 11,12, 15.Only a very hot fire could cause coal to turn to coke. This process was usually performed in beehive-shaped ovens under controlled conditions Coke was used largely for smelting throughout the West

SCMIR 1900,62

cuers such asRobert Forrester,aspreviously noted Gomer Thomas spent almost the -whole of May in Scofield, bringing out the dead,ventilating theWinter Quarters mines, and compiling his exhaustive report. His concluding "official visit of inspection of No. 4 mine, Winter Quarters, on this 25th day and night of May" found it sufficiently damp and ventilated to be reopened on the twenty-sixth.27 While his investigative report had located virtually every keg of powder, dynamite stick, tool box, horse carcass, mine prop, lunch box, and dented mine cart remaining after the explosion, it had not definitively pinpointed the cause of the explosion. However, Thomas offered a personal assessment. On the first page of his fifteen-page report to the governor, submitted June 1, he wrote:

It seems, from all the evidence available, that some person accidentally ignited a keg of powder which caused the dust to rise and ignited the same; carrying the flames from room to room from a point known as "Pike's Peak" and the immediate vicinity thereof

I find that nine (9) kegs of powder were exploded near this place Fourteen (14) kegs of black powder exploded in other parts of the mine, making a total of twenty-four (24) kegs of black powder exploded, and fifty-six (56) sticks of giant powder were burned, thus adding great force to the explosion.28

The phrase "and fifty-six (56) sticks of giant powder were burned" was crossed out when the missing sticks of dynamite were later located.29

Others had their own theories of the explosion's cause.Initially, an angry Superintendent Thomas Parmley, whose younger brother, foreman William Parmley, was then among the missing (later a confirmed casualty), was reported as stating that "some of the Fins [sic], recently imported, secretly took giant powder [dynamite] down into the mine to assist them in their work. They were exceedingly anxious to make a good showing, and as much money aspossible,and it is thought that when the giant powder was touched off, it ignited some of the dust, of which every coal mine in the country has more or less."30

While some voices tended to blame the Finnish miners,31 toThomas and other mine officials the explosives themselves,not who wielded them, were a major issue. In 1900, dynamite -was new in Utah's coal mines. In 1899 only Castle Gate had used it—38,458 pounds—electrically firing all of the shots when the men were out of the mine.32 That same year, all other mines in Utah relied solely on kegs of powder, numbering 4,400 at Winter Quarters and 1,164 at Clear Creek, just to the west. By 1900, however, these proportions had changed dramatically. Castle Gate still used dynamite exclusively (32,147 pounds);Winter Quarters Number One used only kegs

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

of powder (4,730), but Winter Quarters Number Four, where the explosion occurred, used 2,290 kegs of powder and 1,100 pounds of dynamite Like-wise, Clear Creek had shifted to partial dynamite use,about one pound to every three kegs of powder.33

Using black powder in kegs versus sticks of dynamite raised a touchy issue in coal mining The packaging could make a significant difference in the effect of the explosives.The drilling, loading, and tamping process previously described took longer than using a prepackaged dynamite stick, but the amount of explosive could be tailored to the work area and the type of coal The issue of explosives—their type, amount, use, and effect—became key in analyzing the Winter Quarters explosion. While some, like Superintendent Parmley, blamed over-eager Finnish immigrants, some other miners were "exceedingly bitter in their denunciation of the company Others took a more conservative view of the matter, and said it -was one of those things over -which no man has control and no man or men should be held responsible."34

The task of identifying the source of the explosion in a reputedly safe, non-gassy mine preoccupied many experts for months. The state hired a chemist to make an official analysis of the composition ofWinter Quarters coal to try to determine if the coal itself had caused the explosion, but results proved negative. After spending virtually all of May at Scofield, Gomer Thomas returned on August 9 and found the missing body of John Pitman, the last of the dead to be brought out During his stay, Thomas took testimony from some of the survivors, virtually all of them experienced miners who had emigrated from the British Isles.He included a verbatim transcript of the testimony of eight men in his annual report. Some of the examinations were conducted by a Mr McNeil, the former mine inspector of Colorado The main points at issue were whether Winter Quarters was considered a gassy mine (it was not); if the air was good (it was); if there was much coal dust in the mine (no); whether the men -were always cautious in handling powder (they -were not; some would bend over their kegs and set charges "with lighted lamps on their heads); and whether the company encouraged safe mine practices (uncertain). Questions about the value of sprinkling with water to settle coal dust received a wide range of responses; one man simply noted that it had been tried but had not become general practice.35

These questions about mining practices pointed toward a new avenue of investigation. If the mine itself did not threaten an explosion, human error must have been to blame But whose error -was it—the company's, the miners', or the government's, through insufficient oversight? By stressing the role of kegs of powder, -which each man had to fire individually, the

investigators obliquely accused the miners of being the sole agents of their own destruction Ifdynamite,sold in pre-packaged amounts at the company store,were to blame,the company would be more atfault for the explosion.

The local judicial system reached essentially the same conclusion. Carbon County convened a grand jury that spent three days investigating the cause of the mine explosion It issued its report onJune 13 after taking the testimony of ten employees, and it attached no blame to the coal company.A coroner's inquest agreed—or at least could not determine a cause. 36 Some survivors disagreed, however, and sued the Pleasant Valley Coal Company These suits were so numerous that Carbon County found it economical to have forms printed that set forth all specifics of the disaster and the company's response.The forms detailed the events of the explosion, the company's contentions that the deceased were experienced miners,and the safe reputation of the mine.The company apparently harbored concerns about explosives, for the printed document continued, "No dynamite was used in said mine except in excavating for openings in rock, and the small quantities in the mine, at the time of the explosion did not burn or explode;that the miners were not allowed to take in,and did not take in, or have in the mine, at the time of the explosion, more powder than is customary and allowed in other mines considered free from gasand explosive dust...." The only blanks on the form accommodated the names of the plaintiffs, the amount for which they were suing,the name of the deceased and the date.A typical form, used by survivors ofJoseph Maio, was filed on February 11, 1901, claiming damages of$5,000.37 The company won allits cases

Gomer Thomas reached his own conclusions regarding the human cause of the disaster. Sidestepping specifics, he reported: "This explosion -was either due to carelessness in handling explosives or to awindy or blow-out shot,thus igniting the dust,in air free from fire-damp." Up to this point, the existence of fire-damp, or methane gas, had been considered the main danger in a coal mine; coal dust by itself was not considered highly flammable.Thomas had learned otherwise.He continued:

Here we have the proof that an explosion can take place without the presence of firedamp... I am of the opinion that the part played by coal dust in mine explosions is much more disastrous than the part played by fire-damp, under the conditions in favor of the belief that coal dust is often the main agent of destruction in mine explosions, and of the view that explosions might originate from and be propagated by coal dust under certain conditions in air free from fire-damp

Unde r these conditions it is safe for me to say that no mine is safe without a

36 Ibid 1900, 95

37 "In the District Court, of the Seventh Judicial District, Carbon County, Utah, and , Plaintiffs, v. Pleasant Valley Coal Company, Defendant, Answer.... Dated 1900"; Carbon County Recorder's Office, Price, Utah; copy in possession of the author. In this case the suit was brought by "Fortunato Maio, Joseph Maio, Humbert Maio, by Guardian ad [sic] Venturas Maio and [unintelligible] John Maio."The date has been altered; it reads February 11, 1901,with the final printed zero crossed out to represent 1 The practice of assigning blame to the miners was common throughout the industrial United States at this time

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

sufficient amount of moisture to keep the dust damp No w if the dust is an agent in explosions it is most dangerous when it is dry.38

In essence,since coal dust by itself had been proven explosive by the disaster atWinter Quarters, it made little difference who used which explosives or where they were obtained. For mine safety, the coal dust had to be damp.

After this disaster,Thomas believed more firmly in sprinkling and insisted that it be increased, even in so-called safe mines likeWinter Quarters. On June 9, about two weeks after the mine reopened, he found the sprinkling system in good order and the mine working fulltime.39 He stressed other safety precautions in the introductory letter to his 1900 annual report, -where he recalled recommendations made at Clear Creek the year before Then, he had foreseen "the danger of taking too much powder into the mine at one time."He continued:

I suggested to the [Clear Creek] management, in November 1899, that they furnish the miners with cans that would hold 6 1/4 [sic: 6 1/2] pounds of powder, equal to 1/4 of a keg, as I thought that a keg -was too much for each miner to take into the mine -where there was so much of it used The company furnished these cans, but the miners refused to use them; there being no law on this I could not enforce it, and the cans were not used until the middle of May after the Scofield disaster, when the miners realized that there was danger in taking too much powder into the mine All the P V [PleasantValley] Coal Company's mines use these cans. 40

Naturally, the Winter Quarters Mine disaster spread Thomas's concern for safety procedures.

Some changes came only through repeated requests, however. On September 26, during Thomas's fifth inspection since the explosion, he found that Winter Quarters Number One had "too much smoke in the levels off the eighth rise," a condition that persisted into his two October visits. He brought this ventilation problem to Superintendent Parmley's attention, and when it had not been corrected by November 1,he wrote a letter demanding improvements On November fifth, they had apparently been made.41

The smoke generally came from the use of explosives.After the Winter Quarters disaster it,too,was recognized as creating a significant health hazard In his 1900 discussion of"Powder Consumed in the Mines of the State During 1900,"Thomas cautioned, "Intimately connected with the subject of ventilation is that of the explosion of powder in displacing the coal.The fumes thus liberated highly impregnate the air with carbonic oxide, or white damp, -which is a most deadly gas.This, spreading through the mine, vitiates the air."While efficient ventilation could reduce the risk,he recommended that companies "regulate the hours for shooting, so that the

employees of the mine could withdraw to currents of fresh air while the blasting -would be done."Thomas added, "I have had complaints in regard to the excessive quantities of smoke created by the discharge of powder in the mines, and my belief is that the evil complained of is largely due to the employment of unskilled miners who use the powder in excessive quantities."42

Largely through Thomas's pressure, the state legislature, when it next convened (it met every other year), took an interest in coal mine safety improvements. In 1901 it passed a law mandating dust-control measures, one of only two such laws in the country.The statute also contained new regulations for mine ventilation, explosives, and supervision Specifically, mines had to be sprinkled up to the face in all working rooms; abandoned areas had to be ventilated and abandoned crosscuts sealed off. No explosives could be stored inside the mine.Thomas's suggestion of limiting miners to 6 1/2 pounds of powder was also adopted as law. Large mines had to be subdivided and each division ventilated separately; the workforce in each section could not exceed seventy-five men. Rooms had to be inspected daily for gas, and air currents had to be measured weekly. Amount and extent of timbering was also mandated; any hazards had to be reported immediately to the mine boss Perhaps most important, foremen had to ensure that all men using explosives knew how to handle them. No longer could unqualified men become bosses; instead, a committee consisting of an operator, aminer, and the mine inspector would certify mine bosses, and the coal mine inspector himself certified fire bosses, the men most intimately involved in preventing explosions.43

In his next report, Gomer Thomas approvingly remarked,"I -was pleased to see that the management [ofWinter Quarters Number Four] had made such great changes in compliance with the new law."44 Mine Number 1, however, was drier in part than it should have been;management made the required improvements, including instructing "the water-men to -water the mine twice a week."45

The following year, Thomas again made repeated inspections of the Winter Quarters mines,periodically demanding better airways,less smoke, and more -watering. He repeatedly championed better safety legislation and new, less dangerous inventions, such as the Safety Blasting Cartridge, used successfully in Pennsylvania in 1902 He urged its adoption, saying,"If this cartridge could be introduced and used successfully in the mines ofUtah, it would be nothing short of a God send to the miners of this state."46 In 1903, always particularly concerned -with Winter Quarters, he wrote a

42Ibid., 56

43 James Whiteside, Regulating Danger (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 70—72 The other state with dust-control laws was Montana.

44 SCMIR 1901,19

45 Ibid., 17

46 Ibid 1902,78

glowing letter to H. G. Williams, general manager of the Utah Fuel Company noting,"The [Winter Quarters] mine in general is in good condition, better than I ever saw it before."47 Whether coincidence or not, Henry Parmley, another brother of Superintendent Thomas Parmley, had just been put on as foreman.48

Meanwhile, the coal industry reeled under the acrimonious strike of 1903—1904,which drew governmental attention from issues of safety to socalled issues of law enforcement.49 Thomas continued calling for increased safety measures, but he was largely ignored in the confrontational climate Furthermore,Thomas's health was deteriorating In February 1906 the governor dictated a sympathetic letter offering "his sincere regrets on account of your ill health and to say that he is not at all concerned over your absence in trying to regain your health... [T]he men you have in charge will be able to do justice to the work."50 Some local pundits disagreed, however, and a Carbon County editorial scathingly insisted that "Thomas has simply outlived his usefulness, if he ever had any"51 In fact,Thomas was even unable to get up to the Winter Quarters mine that May because his doctor had advised avoiding high altitudes for at least another month Instead, he admonished his replacement, "As you go around the mine, I wish you would take notice as to the amount of powder [that] is used in each shot and the kind of tamping used, as they must not use coal slack for tamping I would also like you to take notice as to the timbering in rooms and pillars."52

In 1906 the faltering Thomas wrote in his final report of an unmet concern resulting from theWinter Quarters explosion:

In my report of 1905 I suggested to the honorable legislature of Utah which meets in Jan 1907, that they make an amendment to the coal and hydro-carbon laws of Utah, as follows: That it shall be unlawful for any miner or any employee in the coal or hydrocarbon mines of the State to use or set off any high explosives for the mining of coal or taking down of rock during the working hours, as all the shots must be fired after the men are all out of the mine excepting those that -will be needed to fire the same. 53 This practice,in use at the Castle Gate Mine since 1899,had been championed by Thomas with added urgency ever since the Winter Quarters explosion Ironically, however, it was not mandated by the state of Utah until 1924,after the major mine explosion at Castle Gate.54

47 Ibid 1903,19

48 Ibid., 18.

49 For a full description, see Powell, The Next Time We Strike, 51-80.

50 N P.Wilson, secretary to the governor, to Gomer Thomas, February 12, 1906, in State Coal Mines Inspector's Correspondence; original at American West Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; copy in possession of the author

51 Advocate, April 26, 1906

52 Gomer Thomas to Andrew Gilbert, May 7, 1906, in State Coal Mine Inspector's Correspondence; copy in possession of the author.

53 SCMIR 1906, 46.

54 Whiteside, Regulating Danger, 151—52.

AN EXPLOSIVE LESSON

By that time,Thomas was dead. As his 1912 obituary noted, he had retired as state coal mine inspector in 1907 due to failing health. It continued,"He -wassaid to be one of the best informed men in Utah on coal and coal mines... He belonged to no church, but was broad in his religious views and tolerant of the views and beliefs of others."The obituary could also have added that he never forgot the lessons ofWinter Quarters. He consistently stressed safety, always trying to temper the explosive potential of Utah's coal.55

55 Advocate, September 5, 1912 In modern times, the explosive potential of coal dust has been harnessed In coal-fired electricity generating plants, coal is powdered and the dust exploded under controlled conditions to create a fireball that reaches up to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit The fireball turns water to steam, which is used to turn the turbines The turbine shafts connect with generators that produce electricity

Infant Deaths in Utah, 1850-1939

By LEE L BEAN, KEN R SMITH, GERALDINE P. MINEAU, ALISON FRASER, and DIANA LANE

Of all the health revolutions that have taken place in the United States tsince 1850, the reduction of infant mortality is arguably the most dramatic andfar-reaching. Because of the incompleteness and unreliability of surviving vital records, we will probably never know precisely the rate of infant deaths a century ago. But an informed estimate would be that somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of all American infants born in the second half of the nineteenth century died before they could celebrate theirfirst birthdays. It also seems probable that in some large cities and industrial towns, as well as in certain areas of the South, the rates were considerably higher, ranging upward to 30 percent.1

The United States' records of births and deaths are certainly incomplete and unreliable for the last half of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of An unidentified child.

Lee L. Bean is professor emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of Utah. Ken R. Smith is professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah Geraldine P Mineau is a research professor, Department of Oncological Sciences, and director of Population Sciences, Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah Dr Mineau is also director of the Pedigree and Population Research, which has the responsibility for maintaining the Utah Population Database Alison Fraser is the database manager, Utah Population Database, Huntsman Cancer Institute Diana Lane is a program manager and nosologist, Department of Family and Consumer Studies and the Department of Population Sciences, Huntsman Cancer Institute The authors wish to thank the Pedigree and Population Research, funded by the Huntsman Cancer Foundation, for providing the data and valuable computing support The work -was supported by National Institutes of Health grant AG 12748 (Kinship and Socio-Demographic Determinants of Mortality)

1 Richard A Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1919 (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 1

the twentieth century Nevertheless, increasing evidence supports two conclusions: First, there was a continuous, yet erratic, decline in mortality rates beginning roughly in the mid-nineteenth century not only in the United States but in western Europe as well This long-term decline of death rates and increase in life expectancy is often referred to asthe mortality transition. Second, central to the mortality transition was the control of infant and child mortality.2

Given the fact that the mortality transition was greatly influenced by reduced deaths among children, several historical demographers in the United States and Europe have undertaken studies to document more explicitly where and when infant and child mortality came under control

In the United States these studies include analyses of vital records from states, cities, and counties that maintained vital records prior to the development of a national registration system.3 Similar types of records are being organized and analyzed in Europe. 4 Studies of changing mortality and especially changing infant mortality do not, however, depend exclusively on the availability of some form ofvital registration. In Europe there are an increasing number of village demographic histories based on reconstitution, or collating and linking birth (or baptism) and death (or burial) records from parish registries, family histories, and genealogies. In North America somewhat similar historical data sets have been compiled in Quebec and Utah.5

The Utah data set is identified as the Utah Population Database, UPDB

The structure of the database is described in more detail below It includes, among other records, an unusually large and accurate set of individual records of births and deaths linked into families and pedigrees The record of births and infant deaths among the UPDB population provides an opportunity to add to the increasing understanding of the infant mortality component of the mortality transition, making available data for an

2 Schofield and Reher report, "It was not until the latter part of the nineteenth century that mortality once again declined sharply in most areas of Europe Child mortality, and somewhat later, infant mortality were responsible for much of this decline"; Roger Schofield and David Reher, "Introduction," in The Decline of Mortality in Europe, ed Roger Schofield, David Reher, and Alain Bideau (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 1 JaquesVallin, referring to a much earlier period, provides a more telling illustration:

"In pre-industrial Europe mortality during the early stages of life, infant mortality was very high, and had a considerable effect on life expectancy at birth Thus, in France in 1740—44, the chances of dying within the first five years of fife were nearly one-half (0.474) If this mortality could have been eliminated by the touch of a magic wand, life expectancy at birth would have immediately increased by 21 years from 24.2 to 45.7 years. The principal feature of the first stage of the mortality transition, therefore, was the reduction in mortality at early stages of life."JacquesVallin,"Mortality in Europe from 1720 to 1914: LongTerm Trends and Changes in Patterns by Age and Sex," in Schofield et al., The Decline of Mortality, 49

3 For an exhaustive summary of historical estimates of levels and changes in infant and child mortality in the United States, see Samuel H Preston and Michael R Haines, Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991),52—57

4 See Alain Bideau, Bertrand Desjardins, and Hector Perez Brignoli, eds., Infant and Child Mortality in the Past (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997),91

5 George Alter, "Infant Mortality in the United States and Canada," in Bideau et al., Infant and Child Mortality, 91.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

American region for which there are few complete and accurate late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century official records UPDB records allow us to study the fate of many children born in Utah from 1850 to 1939, and the data make it possible to extend the study ofinfant mortality beyond the measures used in almost all historical demographic studies of infant mortality.6

Infant mortality is measured by the number of deaths of children under the age of one divided by the number of births occurring during the same interval of time—a year or a combination of years—standardized for purposes of comparison for each 1,000 births.The infant mortality rate may be divided into two components The neonatal mortality rate is the number of deaths in the first month oflife (formally, the first twenty-eight days of life) divided by the number of births during the year.The second component is the post-neonatal mortality rate, in which the numerator is the number of deaths during the second through twelfth months of life It is important to include an analysis of all three measures.These infant mortality rates are the standard measure and the basis for comparing the historical record of Utah with other reports.

Improvements in infant mortality rates reflect various interventions. Neonatal mortality is primarily due to premature births, birth trauma, or congenital anomalies, and improvements in these rates depend, in part, on improved prenatal care, delivery systems, and medical intervention Postneonatal mortality rates,on the other hand, are more often due to infectious and parasitic diseases; a decline in these rates is usually the result of improved public and family health measures. Consequently, there are differences in the rates of improvement in these two components of the infant mortality rate For example, a 1912 report concludes,"In all quarters greater significance is being attached to the fact that the greatest reduction in infant mortality so far has been in the digestive and respiratory diseases and that little headway has been made in cutting down the appalling death rate in the first few weeks of life."7

In addition to showing general trends of early child mortality the data available in the Utah Population Database (UPDB) provide the detail necessary to approach the history of child-loss in Utah from 1850 through 1939 from a different perspective. The traditional measures of infant mortality may have provided stimuli and guidelines for public health and

6 The development of UPDB began in 1974 Initially the project involved the selection and data entry of family group sheets These in turn were to be linked with the computerized records of the Utah Tumor Registry consisting of diagnosed cases of cancer primarily in Utah The basic purpose was to identify the clustering of specific forms of cancers within families For a summary of the development of UPDB see Mark Skolnick,"The Utah genealogical data base:A resource for genetic epidemiology," in Banbury Report No. 4: Cancer Incidence in Defined Population, ed. J. Cairns (New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1980), 285-97 and Mark Skolnick, Lee L. Bean, Sue M. Dintelman, and Geraldine P. Mineau, A Computerized Family History Data Base," Sociology and Social Research 63 (Fall 1979), 601-19

7 Report of the Executive Secretary, Transactions of the American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1912 (Baltimore:AASPIM, 1913), quoted in Meckel, Save the Babies, 160

medical programs, but these measures provide little information on the experiences of families. Was the loss of children common across many families or concentrated among a few?We address this question by looking at the changing proportion of mothers experiencing the loss of a child as well as calculating when multiple deaths among brothers and sisters occurred within a single year as a means of evaluating historical references to epidemics.

Because UPDB does not include a record of every individual birth and death in Utah, we begin with a summary of -what official records are available and subsequently compare the UPDB rates with those available from other sources.Second, we summarize our reading of family and county histories that reflect on the deaths of children in Utah.Third, we present the trends in infant, neonatal, and post-neonatal mortality followed by an analysis of the frequency of child loss and the temporal clustering of infant deaths among families Finally, -we conclude by placing our analysis in a broader context of historical change.

Th e Official Statistical Recor d

From 1850 through 1900, death records were collected at the time of each decennial census in the United States These are valuable but incomplete resources because they depend on fallible retrospective reporting by community representatives, medical personnel, and family members Early in the twentieth century, the federal government assigned responsibility to the Census Bureau to collect and summarize mortality records for states and cities that had in place an official registration system guaranteeing "at least a fair degree of completeness."Any state or city accepted into the system was identified as part of the Death Registration Area (DRA); initially, the DRA included only ten eastern states and the District of Columbia. 8 The Census Bureau became a permanent agency by act of Congress in 1902, and its first annual report of mortality statistics covered the period 1900-1904. These reports did not include Utah or Salt Lake City.

Beginning in 1905 Salt Lake City was included as a DRA, but Utah at large was not included until 1910.9 Utah began to collect death statistics statewide in 1904, but from 1904 through 1909 the state still did not meet the criterion of"reasonable completeness"in the registration of deaths.

8 Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1908 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1910), 9.The Death Registration Area had come into being before the turn of the century Therefore, some volumes of the 1900 census report mortality rates for the initial group of DRA states.

9 Salt Lake City created a vital statistics reporting system in 1895, preceding the state system by nine years The earlier establishment of the Salt Lake City system allowed the city to meet the "reasonably complete" standard earlier than the state as a whole Therefore, Salt Lake City mortality data are included in the federal DRA reports from 1905 onward. See, for example, Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, Special Reports: Mortality Statistics 1900 to 1904 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1906), and Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1908 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1910)

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Early official records, then, are sporadic, making comparisons over time difficult. In the case of Utah, there are mortality statistics associated with the censuses of 1850 through 1900 and then a set of annual records from 1910 onward. In the case of infant mortality—children dying in the first year of life per 1,000 births in the same year—accurate measures require complete counts of the number of infant deaths as well as the number of children born during a given year. However, information on births was not routinely collated and reported by the federal government until 1915, and Utah did not meet the "reasonable completeness"standard until 1917.10

According to official records, Utah would seem to have had a lowerthan-average rate of infant mortality Data collected in the decennial census of 1880 indicate that the infant mortality rate for the United States in that decade was 110.9 male deaths for every 1,000 male births and 90.5 female deaths for every 1,000 female births;for Utah, the rates were 87.2 for males and 71.6 for females Using the Bureau of Census enumerations, Henry Hibbs calculated infant mortality rates for 1910 from the number of infant deaths relative to the number of children under age one counted in the 1910 census He found that Utah had the lowest rate of infant deaths (82.3) among the twenty-two states reporting the number of infant deaths in 1910." Of the states included in DRA in 1917, the records indicate that Utah again had the lowest infant mortality rate By 1919, as other states were included in DRA, four had lower rates than Utah, but Utah's rate remained considerably lower than the national rate for the white population: 68 infant deaths per 1,000 births versus 91 These official records certainly suggest that mortality risks for infants and children may have been lower in Utah than in the earlier-settled, more densely populated areas of the eastern United States However, these low rates conflict with historical references to frequent child deaths in Utah

Historical References to Infant and Child Mortality

There have been a few remarkable community-level studies in Utah that give estimates of infant mortality for various periods in the nineteenth century using censuses, genealogies, and other records. Larry Logue used a

10 Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Birth Statistics for the Registration Area of the United States: 1915. First Annual Report (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1917); Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Birth Statistics for the Registration Area of the United States: 1911 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1917)

11 In 1910 the calculation for Utah was based on the number of children under the age of one enumerated in the 1910 census The result is quite different from the procedure that uses the number of births as the denominator Using the enumerated children under age one results in an "infant mortality rate" for Utah of 82.3, or a rate higher than the 1900 and 1920 rates. In only seven states and two cities were births accurately recorded, allowing for computation of the infant mortality rate using both procedures The differences are, in some cases, substantial The traditional computation yields a rate of 127 for Connecticut, but using the number of enumerated children under the age of one as the denominator yields a rate of 143.7 See Henry H Hibbs, Jr., Infant Mortality: Its Relation to Social and Industrial Conditions (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1916; reprint New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1987),4—5

variety of records to construct a life table for St. George, 1861—80. He writes,"Nearly 150 of each 1,000 newborns died before their first birthday, and mortality worsened in the next four years [of life]." Dean May employed an LDS church census of Kanab for 1874 and found an infant mortality rate of 10 percent, or about 100 deaths per 1,000 births. In addition, a 1985 analysis of the Utah Population Database using a variety of methods to adjust for missing deaths calculated a range of estimates of infant mortality rates for males born in 1880—89: 77.4 for the low and 104.4 for the high.These studies suggest higher infant mortality rates than those reported in either the 1880 or 1890 censuses. 12

More qualitative and individualized historical studies note the relative frequency of deaths among children. For example,Ed-wardA. Geary's history of Emery County reports that -when LDS apostle Francis M Lyman visited the county in 1880, he was told that in one community there had been "but three deaths, and they were of children." Diphtheria epidemics appear to have taken a frightful toll on children, often resulting in the deaths of several children in the same family within hours or days of one another. Geary continues:

Even if there had been more trained physicians in Emery County, nineteenth-century medicine had little to offer against the epidemic diseases that periodically ravaged the region. During a diphtheria epidemic in 1886, there were twenty-seven deaths in Huntington, thirteen of them occurring in a single week between Christmas and Ne w Year Thirteen children died in one week in Ferron and Molen.The Duncan family lost four children within a few hours.13

A family history from Davis County yields the same story of multiple deaths in the same family.

Whe n Ma's oldest son, Nelse, was twelve years old, diphtheria swept over the area Ma's four children contracted the disease in October, 1878 The baby was the first to succumb Th e same night Annie, the eight year old, died; the next mornin g Anto n breathed his last Nelse, an exceptionally intelligent boy, was full of faith, and Ma and Grandfather kept high hopes for his recovery, but five days later he too died.14

Among the volumes appearing in the recent Utah Centennial County History Series,diphtheria appears to be the second-most frequent epidemic after influenza. These county histories detail the spread of diphtheria throughout a wide range of counties, including Beaver, Carbon, Emery, Garfield, Kane, Millard, Morgan, Tooele, Uintah, Utah, and Wayne Other

12 Larry M. Logue, A Sermon in the Desert: Belief and Behavior in Early St. George, Utah (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988): 94; Dean L May, "People on the Mormon Frontier: Kanab's Families of 1874," Journal of Family History 1 (1976): 183; Katherine A Lynch, Geraldine P Mineau, and Douglas L Anderton, "Estimates of Infant Mortality on the Western Frontier: The Use of Genealogical Data," Historical Methods 18 (Fall 1985): 155-64

13 Edward A Geary, A History of Emery County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Emery County Commission, 1996), 151,153.

14Ardelle Hogan Mills, ed., The Knud Nelson Family from Denmark to America (Bountiful, Utah: Carr Printing Company, 1962), 239

sources identify diphtheria epidemics in Davis and Salt Lake counties,15 and epidemics may have occurred in other areas aswell.

The 1918—19 influenza epidemic is the most frequently cited epidemic in the county histories, but this epidemic disproportionally resulted in the deaths ofyoung adults and especially males.16 The histories also make references to other diseases typically associated with infant and child deaths. "Outbreaks of scarlet fever and smallpox also took a toll.Typhoid fever, usually contracted from polluted drinking water,was endemic in the county, claiming several lives each year Pneumonia -was also a constant threat, especially to young children."17 Throughout much of the state there was the problem of contaminated -water supplies, which resulted in the recurrence of typhoid and infant diarrheal diseases.

The negative picture of disease and early deaths noted in family and county histories corresponds to the high estimates of early infant mortality produced in the studies by Logue,May,and Lynch et al.Nevertheless, there may have been some advantage to living in Utah, away from the more densely settled eastern states where contagion was more likely, especially in the urban areas. In addition, there were some resources that may have reduced very early infant deaths. Many historical references indicate an extensive network of Utah midwives -whose reported record of mother and infant care is remarkable For example, the daughter of Ellen Meeks Hoyt claims,"If my memory and those of others who live here serve, she never had awoman or a baby die out of the seven hundred cases she cared for."18 In the case of Patty Bartlett Sessions, "of the 3,977 babies that she brought...[in only two] cases [did she have] cause to note any particular difficulty"19 If the network of midwives was as successful as these two examples suggest,their work should be reflected in fewer deaths during the

15 Dr Ralph T Richards analyzed data from various sources, including hospitals, cemeteries, and the Salt Lake City Board of Health to estimate the numbers of deaths from various types of diseases in Salt Lake City Records from the Salt Lake City and Mt Olivet cemeteries between 1848 and 1894 indicate the burials of 2,715 children under age two for which the recorded cause of death was diarrheal disease From 1895 to 1948 there were 1,550 deaths from diarrheal diseases recorded by the Salt Lake City Board of Health Dr Richards's examination of city cemetery books finds 1,240 deaths between 1863 and 1894 attributed to diphtheria, with especially heavy concentrations in 1878, 1879, 1880, and 1891 See Ralph T Richards, Of Medicine, Hospitals, and Doctors (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1953).

16The 1918 flu epidemic had an age-related mortality pattern different from any other influenza epidemic Recent studies report that in contrast to the traditional "U" shaped curve with high mortality among the young and old, the 1918 flu epidemic followed a "W" curve with especially high levels of mortality among young adults and especially males; see Gina B Kolata, The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999); Andrew Noymer and Michel Garenne, "The 1918 Influenza Epidemic's Effects on Sex Differentials in Mortality in the United States," Population and Development Review 26 (September 2000): 565—81 Referring to a family history, Lyman and Newell quote in reference to the flu,'"Most of those who have fallen victim have been big, hearty men, with the best part of life ahead of them'"; Edward Leo Lyman and Linda King Newell, A History of Millard County (Salt Lake City: Utah Historical Society and Millard County Commission, 1991), 253

17 Geary, A History of Emery County, 153.

18 Claire Noall,"Mormon Midwives," Utah Historical Quarterly 10 (1942): 125

19 Ibid., 109

first month of life (neonatal mortality). The detailed data from the Utah Population Database allow for the analysis of neonatal mortality rates as well as post-neonatal mortality rates, although these measures did not become available in official statistics until 1920.

Th e Utah Population Database

To provide another view of the levels and changes of infant mortality we return to the Utah Population Database.As stated, a 1985 study by Lynch, Mineau, and Anderton made use of the UPDB in an earlier form.20 Since that original study, the database has been expanded in a number of ways. For example, the grant acknowledged in this paper provided funding to enter Utah death certificates dating from 1904 until the present into the database.These records eliminated many cases of unknown death dates.

UPDB contains approximately 1.5 million genealogy records of individuals among families identified on selected "family group sheets" from the Family History Library of the Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) The family group sheets were selected if one or more family members experienced a demographic event—-birth or death—in Utah Further details regarding the selection and quality of records have been described in a number of previous publications. 2 1 The representative nature of the genealogy file has been demonstrated in a variety of demographic studies that include fertility,22 birth spacing,23 adult mortality,24 and households.25 Since the analysis by Lynch, Mineau, and Anderton using the Utah Population Database, perhaps the most important extension of the database has been the entry and linking of Utah death certificates from 1904 to the present.26 The files now more accurately confirm dates of death from 1904 onward and show which children born in the nineteenth century survived to older ages

20 Lynch et al.,"Estimates of Infant Mortality."

21 See, for instance, Lee L Bean, Geraldine P Mineau, and Douglas L Anderton, Fertility Change on the American Frontier (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) The selection involved a review of all family group sheets in the "Patron" section in 1975-76 Additional sheets were added following a review of the "Main" section in 1978-79

22 Ibid., 109-138

23 Douglas L Anderton and Lee L Bean, "Birth Spacing and Fertility Limitation: a Behavioral Analysis of a Nineteenth Century Frontier Population," Demography 22 (May 1985): 169-83

24 Lee L. Bean, Geraldine P.Mineau, and Ken R. Smith, "The Effect of Pioneer Life on the Longevity of Married Couples," in Nearly Everything Imaginable: The Everyday Life of Utah's Mormon Pioneers, ed Ronald Walker and Doris Dant (Provo:BrighamYoung University Press, 1999), 386-403

25 Geraldine P.Mineau, Lee L. Bean, and Douglas L.Anderton, "Description and Evaluation of Linkage of the 1880 Census to Family Genealogies: Implications for Utah Fertility Research," Historical Methods 22 (1989): 144-57

26 Most demographic analysis of UPDB has focused on fertility change The recent addition and linkage of the death certificates to the genealogies provide new opportunities to study mortality in Utah. See, for example, Ken R Smith and Geraldine P Mineau, "Effects of Childbearing Patterns on Parental Mortality for Marriages during 1860-1919," paper presented at the 1996 annual meetings of the Population Association of America; and Geraldine P Mineau, Ken R Smith, and Lee L Bean, "Historical Trends of Survival amongWidows and Widowers," Social Science and Medicine, 54 (2002): 245-54

This study limits analysis to asubset ofthe files. In the first analysis,we restrict ourstudy to infants born in Utah between 1850and 1939 where the exact dates ofbirth anddeath were recorded. Inthesecond twoanalyses—mothers'losses ofchildren and theclustering offamily deaths within a specific time interval—-we usedata where children arelinked to mothers. In these cases theanalysis isrestricted tomothers -who married only once, gave birth to atleast twochildren, andsurvived inanintact marriage until the mother reached theageoffifty,typically theupper limit ofthe age of childbearing

There are some data limitations. Because the original core data setof UPDB consisted of family group sheets from the LDSFamily History Library, the records aremore likely to represent members ofthis church, although they docontain substantial numbers ofindividuals with no affiliation with the church. In addition, place of death is often missing among children whodied during the late nineteenth century, although place of birth is generally well recorded Therefore ouranalysis is based on infant and child deaths among those whowere born in Utah; some relatively small number mayhave died outside of Utah. Other constraints are also necessary intheanalysis ofthe data, andasthese affect aparticular form of analysis they are detailed inthefollowing sections asneeded.

Neonatal, Post-neonatal, and Infant Mortality, 1850 to 1939

Table 1presents estimates ofneonatal,post-neonatal, and infant mortality rates for the period 1850through 1939in five-year groups.Table 1 also includes data from federal statistics— censuses and vital statistics—as the basis for identifying differences between these two sourcesof data for selected years. The UPDB data are combined into five-year intervals to "smooth" the minor year-toyear fluctuations

Therefore, comparisons with nineteenth-c entury federal estimates

Table 1 Neonatal, Post-neonatal, and Infant Mortality Rates from UPDB and Federally Reported

estimates represent five years of events,while the federal estimates are for a single census year.

The major difference between the federal and the UPDB estimates is for 1850. The census reports an infant mortality rate of 203.3, but UPDB reports 44.9 for 1850—54 This difference may well reflect the fact that our UPDB analysis is limited to infants who were both born and deceased in Utah. The federal statistics would include infant deaths among migrants after their arrival in Utah even though some of the children may have been born outside of Utah Therefore, the number of births—the denominator of the rate—used in the calculation of the federal rate in Utah may be underestimated.

There are several reasons why the UPDB rates for 1850—54 and 1855—59 may be low First, the low rates may represent inconsistent recording of both births and deaths during the difficult early years of settlement Second, given the low population density, contagion may have been less of aproblem than it would be later on. 27 Third, given the difficulties of migration as well as the high rates of mortality in the sites from "which the settlers migrated, the earliest settlers and their infants may represent a robust group of survivors.28 Unfortunately there is no information allowing one to conclude that any one reason is more important than others, and indeed all three may,in combination, account for these low rates.

With the exception of 1850-54, UPDB rates for the last half of the nineteenth century are higher than the federal estimates,suggesting that the census collection procedures may have been incomplete.29 In the twentieth century, federal counts of post-neonatal deaths are higher than the UPDB estimates.These lower UPDB rates in the twentieth century may be due to the fact that the UPDB population is dominated by members of the Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints These mothers may have had access to more resources—church and community—to provide assistance in the case of childhood medical crises.In spite of the differences in levels, it is clear that there is a close correspondence between the two estimates in terms of trends

There is an advantage gained from separating the neonatal from the post-neonatal mortality rates.As noted above, the post-neonatal mortality deaths (from age two months through twelve months) are generally due to

27 Morrell notes, "Diseases were relatively rare in the early days of the settlement because the country was uncontaminated Refuse had not had time to accumulate As time went on and contamination increased, the population also become more dense, disease became more prevalent"; Joseph R Morrell, Utah's Health andYou:A History of Utah's Public Health (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1956), 32

28 Richards believed that while early migrants may have been infected with diphtheria, the disease ran its course over the time it took to migrate from the Midwest to Utah The surviving migrants were thus "disease-free." Consequently the first death attributed to diphtheria among the Salt Lake City Cemetery burials was not recorded until 1863; see Richards, Of Medicine, Hospitals, and Doctors, 151

29 In our judgment the UPDB is more likely to reflect the actual level of infant mortality The census procedure of sending retrospective questions and questionnaires to medical practitioners—with a low response rate—appears to yield incomplete counts Questions regarding the accuracy of the census have a long history.

infectious and parasitic diseases and especially diarrhea Post-neonatal rates generally decline from 1865—69 onward, but it is not until the turn of the century that the post-neonatal death rate falls below the neonatal death rates.A decline in neonatal mortality generally depends on improved preand post-neonatal care aswell as medical intervention These improvements apparently did not become widely available until the early decades of the twentieth century.Thus, the neonatal rate does not begin to drop until after WorldWar I.

The sharp increase in the rate of neonatal deaths from 1850—54 to 1865—69 may be due to the incorrect recording of early deaths as stillborns in the earlier years The slight increase from 1865—69 through 1905—1909 may be the result of two factors -widely identified with increased risks of neonatal mortality.These are, first, the initiation of childbearing at relatively young ages and, second, relatively brief intervals between successive births. As we have shown elsewhere, there is a decline in the mean age of marriage across successive cohorts. Our earlier analysis of fertility change showed that, of those -women who eventually married, 48.4 percent of those born in 1835—39 married before age twenty and 58.2 percent of those women born in 1850—54 married before age twenty These women -would have commenced childbearing approximately between 1850 and 1865.Women "who married before age twenty began childbearing early and gave birth, on average,to nine children.30 In the absence of an unusually large number of multiple births (twins, triplets, etc.), an average of nine live births would suggest that the time between births would be relatively brief. Consequently, the increasing proportion of early marriages leading to early childbearing as well as successive short birth intervals may have increased the risk of neonatal mortality

Examination of post-neonatal deaths suggests that there may have been a significant impact from diphtheria epidemics but little impact from the 1918 influenza epidemic.The post-neonatal deaths began to decline after 1865—69 but then increased during 1885—89 and 1890—94 This increase corresponds to several county history references to diphtheria These include Beaver County in 1891, Carbon in 1891,Emery in 1886, Millard in 1889,Morgan in 1889, and Tooele in 1884. Diphtheria "was also reported at later dates in several counties, but it appears that the 1880s and 1890s represented crisis periods If diphtheria itself did not actually increase postneonatal mortality, it may have slowed down the pace of improvement in infant mortality.

There is no evidence that the 1918—19 influenza epidemic disproportionately increased the number of post-neonatal deaths, but it does appear to have slowed the pace of improvement. The rates and numbers of postneonatal deaths declined significantly from 1905—1909 to 1910—14. From

'Bean, Mineau, and Anderton, Fertility Change on the American Frontier, 125—32

1910—14 to 1915—19 thenumbers andrates continued tofall butataslower pace.The 1918—19 influenza epidemic didnotdramatically affect infant mortality because ofthe relationship between ageandmortality unique to this particular fluepidemic;itwas remarkable because ofits great mortality among young adults andespecially men. 31

Loss o f Children i n Families

UPDB provides opportunities to analyze data in ways notpossible with vital statistics systems These files, within "which husbands and wives are linked with children in afamily unit, make it possible to answer questions of how many families experienced the loss of one or more children and when this trend changed In this study we analyze sequential groups of mothers classified by the date of the mother's first childbirth in Utah The data presented in Table 2 begin with mothers -whose first birth was in 1850-54 and end with mothers -who began childbearing in 1935-39. In Table 2 we summarize these data, looking at whether women lost one child, one ormore, or twoor more children We also include a column with the average number of children born to mothers To eliminate various confounding factors, -we limit the analysis to once-married women whogave birth to at least twochildren, who survived to ageforty-nine, and whose husband didnotdieuntil after she reached age forty-nine

Among thewomen whocommenced childbearing in Utah during the period 1850through 1854, more than 40percent -would lose at least one infant. More than 25percent lost oneonly,but15to20percent lost twoor more infants.This high number of infant deaths coincided with a period

31 In 1918 only 5.1 percent of the 926 deaths of children under the age of one was attributed to flu. In the age group twenty to twenty-nine, 49 percent of the 955 deaths were due to flu, and in the age group thirty to thirty-nine, 45 percent of the 892 deaths were due to flu; Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Mortality Statistics, 1918 (Washington, D.C : Government Printing Office, 1920),Table 8, 411

Table 2 Once-Married Mothers Losing One or More Infants Under Age One

when -women typically ended childbearing having given birth to an average ofslightly more than nine children.This isnotto suggest that the data indicate a causal connection between having many children andthe death of infants There isarelationship,butwithout further analysis onecanonly assume atthis time that themore children atrisk,thegreater thelikelihood of atleast one (andperhaps more) dying.32 The likelihood of experiencing multiple deaths (twoor more) begins to fall after 1880; the chances of losing only onechild begins to decline systematically only after 1890 The rate falls to approximately onein ten mothers losing one or more infants for those whobegan childbearing during 1935—39.

Tempora l Clusterin g o f Death s i n Families

Mothers Who Lost Two or More Children

For who once

The rules used inthis study toidentify theclustering ofchildren's deaths were relaxed to allow for those cases that might result from continuous exposure to poor health conditions rather than discrete epidemic events, such as the diphtheria epidemics that resulted in multiple deaths within a short period, women married and -who survived in an intact marriage until theageof forty-nine, we have calculated the proportion who lost two or more children under the age of fifteen

To be counted as a clustered event foranyreference child, abrother orsister hadto diewithin oneyear after thedeath ofthe reference child.Data presented inTable 3 arefor only those women who lost atleast onechildyounger than age fifteen.

32 There is a possible two-way causal relationship between the number of children born and infant deaths On the one hand there is evidence of a greater risk of infant loss at very high parities (number of births), yet women also may be motivated to "replace" a child who dies

Table 3 Clustered and Independent Loss of Children by Mothers Experiencing the Loss of a Child Under the Age of 15

Our data indicate that there is considerable variation in the percent of clustered cases among women who began childbearing during the period 1850 through 1894,but it is evident that clustering of deaths was not a rare event More than 10 percent of the mothers beginning childbearing in 1860-64, 1865-69, 1875-79 and 1880-84 lost two or more children within a year.The numbers drop during the next two five-year intervals; nevertheless,roughly one of twelve mothers still lost two or more children within a brief period The high rate of clustering also appears to coincide, approximately with the relatively early periods of settlement and the periods when highly contagious diphtheria was amajor cause of death.

Summary and Conclusions

As Meckel stated in the paragraph quoted at the beginning of this article, our knowledge of the increasing control of infant and child mortality in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century is incomplete because of the absence of reliable and accurate records.A number of recent efforts have provided better understanding of these changes through the development of historical data sets from census records, genealogies, parish records, and other sources Complementing these sets of data specifically developed for demographic analysis is the Utah Population Database (UPDB), which was developed for purposes of medical research UPDB provides detailed demographic information and the opportunity to study changes in infant and child mortality from the time of early settlement through the early decades of the twentieth century.

UPDB is not a completely accurate representation of changes in infant and child mortality in Utah, but it is certainly representative of trends. In the nineteenth century, UPDB shows infant mortality rates that were higher than those based on mortality statistics collected during the decennial censuses (with the exception of 1850) In the first half of the twentieth century, asmore effective registration systems were developed state by state, the UPDB shows rates that are slightly lower than the vital statistics reports Yet the trends remain the same.

Despite the many historical references to epidemics and catastrophic loss of young children, the "official" record indicates that infant mortality in Utah during the second half of the nineteenth century was lower than the national average. In both records, however, losses were high by today's standards If epidemics -were responsible for heavy loss of children, our data indicate that it was essentially the diphtheria epidemics of the 1870s, 1880s, and early 1890s that either slowed down improvements in infant mortality or increased post-neonatal mortality rates.These periodic outbreaks of diphtheria also appear to account for increases in the loss of two or more children within the same family.

Post-neonatal mortality rates began to decline systematically around 1890—that is, near the time when diphtheria epidemics became less

frequent, less widespread, and more responsive to methods of isolation and treatment There is little basis in either UPDB or vital statistics to indicate that the great 1918 flu epidemic dramatically reversed the decline in infant mortality The decline in infant mortality from the late nineteenth century continuing through the immediate post-World War I period -was due almost entirely to a fall in post-neonatal deaths Improvements in neonatal mortality did not occur until after World War I Our data therefore suggest that, despite anecdotal evidence of their skill, the extensive network of midwives developed in the late nineteenth century had little or no impact on neonatal mortality rates

Infant mortality rates in Utah may have been lower than the national average, and this may reflect the more rural,more -widely dispersed population. In their analysis of 1900 census data, Preston and Haines showed that, after race,the most important discriminating variable in the explanation of difference in infant mortality was location—large cities versus all other communities.33 Utah did not have large cities,and even in the most densely settled community, Salt Lake City, population density did not approach the levels found in eastern cities.

The 1890s fall in infant mortality in Utah preceded the development of effective public health programs, including the continuous disputatious efforts to improve water supplies and establish compulsory immunization.34 It may have been at the level of the family that health measures were adopted, reducing the risk of infant mortality This argument is consistent with Preston and Haines, who cite the following as plausible reasons for infant mortality differences in the United States in 1900

Individual parents had access to many new, or newly justified, methods for reducing death risks in the home: boiling milk and sterilizing bottles, methods first introduced in the 1890s; washing hands before preparing meals; protecting food from flies and other sources of contamination; isolating sick family members; and so on They also had access to physicians wh o were better equipped to deal with the hazards of the birth process and to render sensible advice on health maintenance.35

If a major reason for the decline in infant mortality was action in the home, parents had major stimuli to adopt health measures. The common loss of a child was one stimulus. Our data indicate that more than 40 percent of women surviving in an intact marriage to age forty-nine and beginning childbearing before 1895-99 would lose at least one infant. Multiple losses began to decline earlier, among women initiating childbearing in 1875—79,but the percent of women losing two or more children in infancy did not fall below 10 percent until the turn of the century.

If the loss of children motivated women to take action to reduce the risk

'Preston and Haines, FatalYears, 97—102 'Morrell, Utah's Health and You, 45-46, 100-101 'Preston and Haines, FatalYears, 209

of infant mortality, what information resources were available?36 The Society of Health was established in Salt Lake City in 1849 to teach principles of health, although at that time the prevalent thought was much influenced by Thomsonian medicine, -which emphasized the use of herbs and plants for the treatment of illness.Later,physicians created a short-lived publication, the Salt Lake Sanitarian (1888—90), which republished articles and letters dealing -with personal and public health.37 Nineteenth-century midwives also became advocates for simple sanitary measures. Hannah Sorensen, a physician and convert from Denmark, began teaching her hygienic and obstetrics course in 1895 The course emphasized cleanliness, knowledge, and proper diet For childbirth Sorensen stressed strict septic measures. Her course reportedly attracted midwives from throughout the state.38 Mid-wives may have had little impact on neonatal mortality,but they probably contributed to the decline in post-neonatal mortality as they taught principles learned in such instructional programs

As difficult as the process of settlement and colonization was for the Utah pioneers,in terms of infant mortality the population fared better than the population in the more densely settled eastern states.According to standard measurements, Utah in the nineteenth century had lower rates of infant mortality than populations elsewhere. Nevertheless, the population endured major epidemics such as diphtheria, resulting in the loss of many children and often multiple losses.A majority of mothers escaped the loss of an infant, but more than 40 percent did lose one or more children.These frequent losses may well have provided the stimulus to adopt procedures that produced improvement in infant mortality late in the nineteenth century Asimportant aspublic health programs -wouldprove to be in continuing the decline of infant mortality in Utah during the first decades of the twentieth century,initial improvements predated the formal organization of public health programs,including the initial appointment of apublic health officer in Salt Lake City in the 1890s and the creation of the State Board of Health in 1898 and the Division of Child Hygiene in 1907.39 Informal community programs and the adoption of early family health actions appear to have stimulated an early decline ofinfant mortality

37Morrell, Utah's Health andYou, 49

1999), 330—34.

39Morrell, Utah's Health andYou, 78, 92-93.

36 Preston and Haines argue that "lack of know-how rather than lack of resources was principally responsible for foreshortening life in the United States in the 1890s"; ibid., 209

38 Miriam B. Murphy, A History of Wayne County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Wayne County Commission,

BOOK REVIEWS

Edward Abbey:

A

Life By James M. Cahalan (Tucson: University ofArizona Press, 2001 xv + 357 pp $27.95.)

FO R ME AT LEAST, it is a lot less easy to read Ed Abbey nowadays than it was in those innocent years before Oklahoma City and the World Trade Towers To be sure, Abbey only advocated terrorism against property, not people, but he recognized the difficulty of keeping people completely out of it, and we have lately learned how slight a shift of logic is required to begin regarding human casualties as "collateral damage" or even the primary goal. Abbey's pessimism regarded the political process as impotent and terrorism as the only recourse for those who "wish to defeat the conspiracy of politicians and developers whose goal is the destruction of wilderness. But political environmentalists have had their successes as -well as their failures, and if the recent tragedies have taught us anything (if indeed we had ever forgotten it), it is that resolution of conflicts in a civilized society has to take place through politics.

Ho w timely, then, is Cahalan's new Life, the first exhaustively researched and scrupulously accurate biography, for it reveals an Abbey much more complicated, conflicted, and contradictory than we find in his writings alone and in the cult image Abbey created for himself It is Cahalan's thesis that Abbey constantly manipulated the facts of his life as though he were living in a selfcomposed novel and that in some ways the truth behind the manipulated reality is even more interesting than the Abbey image

But sometimes not. Cahalan is as fascinated as Abbey was with place names and their literary potential, and he makes much— perhaps too much—of the fact that Abbey was not born, as he claimed, in Home, Pennsylvania, nor did he ever live in Wolf Hole, Arizona, nor Oracle, Arizona, though he maintained a post office box in the latter community to receive fan mail. Writers, of course, are always on the search for fresh names for characters and settings, and Abbey's attraction to such colorful place names is to be expected, but it is easy to make too much of his minor warping of reality in claiming residence in such places. After all, he was born near Home, Pennsylvania, and lived for years in Tucson, of which Oracle is a rural neighbor If such literary license is part of Abbey's self-created myth of himself—and it is—then it is surely a minor transgression against history.

Much more significant is Cahalan's exploration of the inner

Abbey beneath the well-publicized image of the environmental terrorist who wrecked bulldozers building Highway 95 through San Juan County, Utah, rolled old tires into the Grand Canyon (an act whose meaning eludes even Cahalan), shot his television set with a high-powered rifle, and antagonized the grazing industry in reckless speeches. Abbey's diaries and letters, which Cahalan has read closely and interprets empathetically, reveal a man -wracked with insecurity about his literary ability and especially about his apparent incapacity to be a faithful husband and effective father. Abbey's sexual adventures, particularly after The Monkey Wrench Gang made him a celebrity in the mid-1970s and the lecture circuit became an opportunity for multitudinous extramarital liaisons, are symptomatic of his insecurity and need for acceptance.

Cahalan's tireless research reveals other complications in Abbey's personality as well While Abbey's radical followers were dismayed at his support for immigration restriction and his apparent lack of interest in Indian rights, Cahalan points out that Abbey once edited a bilingual Spanish-English newspaper and spoke at Indian rallies Even his publicized misogyny -was more complicated than his readers generally realized O n the one hand, he could write a famous letter to Ms. magazine poking fun at the women's movement ("Dear Sir," it began) while on the other hand enjoying warm and supportive friendships with women writers like Ann Zwinger and Terry Tempest Williams, who found him tender and even genteel in his manners

In the end, Cahalan gives us an Abbey who was "very seriously flawed" in his personal life but -was nevertheless "a -writer of the first rank, one of the most underrated in American literature." It is his hope that "when all the shouting is done about the man himself and his various causes, readers will return more quietly to Abbey's writings, discovering artistry and delight" (276). Whe n they do, they will find Cahalan's biography an indispensable guide.

GARY TOPPING Salt Lake Community College

QUARTERLY

Worth Their Salt, Too: More Notable but Often Unnoted Women of Utah

Edited by Colleen Whitley (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000 x + 322 pp Cloth, $39.95; paper, $19.95.)

THIS COLLECTIO N MIGH T HAVE BEE N subtitled "back by popular demand," acknowledging that the editor and several of the authors have been busy on the Utah lecture circuit since the first volume was published in 1996 This very -welcome sequel introduces us to another fascinating group of wome n in Utah history who , according to the editor, "had been overlooked, neglected, or misrepresented in the past."

The authors, themselves noteworthy women (and one man), have taken a variety of approaches to presenting these sixteen profiles, including autobiography, annotated interview, oral history, and traditional biographical sketches. Some are painstakingly researched, as reflected in notes gathered at the end of the book (the most extensive series of footnotes numbers 153, for a piece -written by a historian and archivist) Others rely on interviews, family stories, and journals. It is, as the preface to the first volume confesses, "a highly eclectic set of snapshots," yet the different styles, and even the various levels of professional polish, are appealing, inviting us to get to know these intriguing -women better As the editor reminds us, "the defining factor of this -work is the emotional as well as the intellectual commitment of the writers"; each chapter begins with a note about the author, often revealing very personal reasons for his or her choice of subject

Thirteen of the sixteen subjects are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by birth or conversion; only one woman of color is featured. This focus reflects, perhaps, the LDS church's encouragement to members to keep personal journals and to write family histories, which offer an undeniable head start to biographers (In contrast, the first edition offered a greater variety of backgrounds, including Native American, Jewish, Greek, Japanese, and African American, not to mention Park City's most notorious madam.)

Still, every woman profiled is multi-dimensional, several having profound influence in multiple areas. A typical introduction (from Patricia Lyn Scott's essay on Sarah Ann Sutton Cooke, born in 1808), begins, "For 34 years, [she] resided in Salt Lake City, where she taught music, acted, and became the widow of Utah's first police officer killed in the line of duty. She was a recognized club woman, lecturer, and leader of women's opposition to polygamy."

Each of these -women was or is a leader or innovator in her own realm This volume includes the founders of Utah's first kindergarten program, BYU's dance department, and Utah's Christian Science movement Some made names for themselves nationally, such as Esther Eggertson Peterson, wh o spent much of her adult life on the East Coast as a consumer advocate, union organizer, and national lobbyist Others' contributions were recognized largely within their own communities, such as Ada Duhigg, a Methodist missionary and teacher in Bingham and Copperfield, towns that disappeared wit h the expansion of the Bingha m Copper Mine These portraits also serve as a history of some of Utah's venerable institutions, such as the Ladies Literary Association of Salt Lake City, organized in 1872 and still going strong Because one of the desired results of such an undertaking is to promote new work in the field, the inclusion of a number of chapters featuring wome n of our ow n time , still vital and contributing to Utah's educational and cultural communities, reminds us of the importance of capturing the stories of our contemporaries rather than relying, years later, on the often incomplete historical record As the editor points out, "in far too many cases, no one takes the time and effort to make such a record of themselves or of their family members." Since the preface lists a number of diverse women proposed for future profiles, perhaps we can hope for a Volume 3 of Worth Their Salt, giving voice to more of the fascinating stories lingering all around us

DURIN G A RECEN T TOU R of our nation's Capitol, with all its fine art, frescoes, and statuary, our guide explained that each state had been given permission to place in the Capitol two statues honoring famous persons from that state. Being Utah born and raised, I glanced around Statuary Hall and quickly found the larger-than-life-sized statue of Brigham Young—who else? I wondered who m the other statue from Utah honored. What person besides Brigham Young did Utah feel to be that important? As we passed through the Hall of Columns and the Senate/House corridor, the guide pointed out the bronze likeness of the ever-so-lean

CYNTHIA BUCKINGHAM Utah Humanities Council

Philo T Farnsworth: The Father of Television By Donald G. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2001 xviii + 307 pp $30.00.)

QUARTERLY

Philo T Farnsworth and introduced him as "the inventor of television." This -was Utah's second honoree.

Since the statue stood on a pedestal, its feet "were just about waist-high, and I could not help but notice that they -were shiny, the patina having been removed by the hands of countless passersby I smiled, recalling a bust of Abraham Lincoln on the mezzanine of the Uta h State Capitol, its nose as bright as those shoes. Folklorist that I am, I asked a staff member the reason for the bright nose. "It is said that if you -will rub President Lincoln's nose," the staffer told me, "good luck -will come to you." "What comes to one who rubs the feet of Philo T. Farnsworth?" I now wondered "Better television reception?"

In his book Philo T. Farnsworth: The Father of Television, Donald G Godfrey uses his own vast knowledge and experience in telecommunications to put together an enlightening, professional, and perhaps definitive presentation of Farnsworth in his times In his preface, the author proposes that the purpose of his book is not "to argue technology or to trace Farnsworth's technological developments in television," but he also recognizes that he is writing about a man married to his "work, a man whose life was his work; the two are inseparable. The story Godfrey tells is galvanized by the work ethic Farnsworth exhibited throughout his career, and ultimately the book deals mostly with the relentless cadence and drill that made up the push for excellence that drove Farnsworth to his great discoveries and dragged him through court battles, hard times, and the marketing strategies that are so much a part of big business.The man himself, however, is not fully there.

It is not that Godfrey does not relate many fine accounts of Farnsworth's youthful exploits and culminating achievements; he does, and he skillfully engages the reader in the story. But laced through this narrative are numerous facts—dates, issues, patents, and laws—that are building up to one point, and that point is to be made -with authority After presenting a factual, concise, and fast-moving history of Farnsworth's life in a very readable 187 pages, Godfrey goes on to present another thirty pages of material, couched in eight appendices, elucidating various aspects of Farnsworth's life All this information is thoroughly corroborated by sixty-one pages of notes and an eleven-page bibliography. Scattered throughout the book are seventy-five family photos, research notes, and technical drawings that both validate and personalize the inventor for the reader. In this -well-organized book, Godfrey has created an authoritative one-stop narrative and resource/reference -work on the life of Philo T. Farnsworth.

The book is aimed more at an audience having an interest in technology development than at those interested in Farnsworth the man. This is not a book about the feelings and thoughts of Philo T Farnsworth as much as it is an exuberant last word in the "Farnsworth as father of television" debate. Whatever other writers may have done in their works to give Farnsworth that acclaim, Godfrey has turned the periods at the ends of those declarations into exclamation points

Self-defined and accepted as one of Utah's own, and worthy of the title "father of television," Philo T Farnsworth -will more accurately live on in the memory of Utahns and people everywhere, thanks to Godfrey's work

H BERT JENSON Utah State University

Navajo Trading: The End of an Era

By Willow Roberts Powers

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. xiv + 282 pp. $29.95.)

NAVAJO TRADIN G POSTS. The words conjure a vision of high, wide counters worn smooth by the sliding of blankets and silver, sacks of Arbuckle coffee and flour, hardware and cloth In the "bullpen" squats a pot-bellied stove burning juniper logs to warm the customers who have traveled for hours to sell their eight-foot-long sacks of wool to the white trader. The transaction about to ensue is filled with the cultural values that infuse this barter system so familiar to "The People."

While this scene is stereotypical in the literature about trading posts, it has become that way for good reason At the height of the trading era that started in the late 1870s, this was all a familiar practice But it is certainly not like that today in the stores that dot the land on and off the reservation in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Why and how it changed is the topic and much-needed discourse provided by Willo w Powers He r boo k is a solidly researched sequel to the classic work of Frank McNitt's The Indian Traders, which spans the earlier era. Powers brings the reader to the twenty-first century.

Navajo Trading has two parts. The first, "The Way Trading Was," establishes the historical and cultural scene of how posts operated from the traders' and Navajos' perspectives The system of pawn that allowed for delayed payment, the introduction of new types of goods and technology, the impact of events such as World Wars

QUARTERLY

I and II, the influenza epidemic (1918), and the formation (1931) of the United Indian Traders Association (UITA) "for the perpetuation and protectio n of handmad e Arts and Crafts" (75) are discussed. Ne w and useful information in this section takes a broad view of the complexity of this far-flung trade system, which thrived in isolation.

However, Powers's most important contribution comes in the second part, "Th e End of an Era." N o other author has achieved her depth of understanding of how this successful system came to a close over a comparatively short period of time. Amon g the most importan t reasons, all of "which "were intertwined, were increased mobility in transportation, the activism of the 1960s and 1970s, th e formatio n of th e legal organizatio n Dinebeiin a Nahiiln a Be Agaditahe (DNA ) heade d by the firebrand Ted Mitchell, and the growth of highly competitive commercial enterprises on and off the reservation. These and other phenomen a culminate d in th e Federal Trad e Commissio n hearing s of 1972—73, which gave rise to increasingly restrictive regulations in governing the posts While traders continued to operate after these hearings, the pursuing DN A fostered a climate of lawsuits and "victimization" among the Navajos Eventually, few traders desired to continue. Today, what had been a thriving institution (albeit -with a few "bumps" and foibles) has all but disappeared, only to resurface in the guise of convenience stores and Thriftway shopping centers

Powers's view in telling this story is balanced. Even though she was commissioned by the UITA to write from its perspective and the boo k depends heavily on trader oral histories (housed at Norther n Arizona University), there is no feeling of unfairness in her presentation. In the concluding chapter, she recognizes that there are other views, but she has presented her material clearly and calls a "-wart a wart" without apology. While there are a few statements that could be disputed, the text is insightful and well written. There is only one baffling omission in an otherwise flawless work Given the scope and depth of her presentation and the space allotted for topics tangential to the trading experience, I find it difficult to understand ho w the livestock reduction period (1930s) can have only two to three pages spread throughout the text For the Navajos and the traders, this was a milestone event Loss of as much as 50 percent of the herds in some areas and the adoption of the current grazing permit system had a huge impact on the Navajos and what they brought to the counters of the posts Th e loss of this way of life soon drove more and more people off the reservation and into the -wage market economy of the

dominant society, as dependence replaced independence Why this fact has been downplayed—especially considering that many traders were just as disappointed with the results of reduction as the Navajos -were—is hard to understand

Still, this book is highly recommended as an important work that tells "th e rest of the story" of trading on the Navajo Reservation For the Utah reader, it contains specific information on the Oljato, Aneth, and Navajo Mountain posts.The book is well written and suitable for both a general and scholarly audience.

Healing Ways: Navajo Health Care in the Twentieth Century By Wade

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001 xv + 248 pp $39.95.)

Davies

U.S. INDIAN POLICY DURIN G TH E PAST century has gone through a series of far-reaching ideological changes. From the extermination policies of the nineteenth century to the Indian Ne w Deal of the 1930s to the termination policy of the 1950s and the enterprise zone strategies of recent decades, the only constant seems to have been change itself. While much of the literature discussing these changes has focused on the political and economic consequences for various tribes, Wade Davies instead examines the effect these changes had on the medical care available to the Navajo In particular, he looks at how changing policies allowed for a greater tolerance (and even acceptance) of traditional Navajo medicine by the government medical system.

Davies begins with a very brief overview of traditional Navajo medicine, which emphasizes a much more holistic and spiritual approach than Western medicine. The Navajos believe that the physical and psychological aspects in a person overlap (although they do not use these terms) As a result, an individual can manifest physical symptoms in response to a psychological conflict (such as breaking a cultural taboo) even if it is years later and the individual is not fully aware of having made the mistake

Davies divides the rest of his book into six chronologically defined chapters covering the period from 1864 to the 1990s

These chapters trace the changing medical conditions available on the extensive Navajo reservation in the Four Corners region of the Southwest. Throughout the book the author tends to focus, at least briefly, on four different groups: federal health care providers, missionary medical helpers, traditional medicine practitioners, and

ROBERTS MCPHERSON College of Eastern Utah, San Juan Campus

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Native American Church members.

Prior to 1920, the only sources the Navajos had for Western medicine "were the doctors affiliated "with the different Christian missionary efforts on the reservation. While Western medicine was often used as a tool to promote assimilation, traditional Navajo health practitioners did not completely reject it, instead viewing it as a companion to their own medical efforts This attitude -was also largely, if passively, reciprocated by the federal government beginning with the New Deal.

The years 1955—69 saw the advent of a large federal Indian Health Service presence on the reservation Traditional medicine declined during this time as many Navajos converted to evangelical Protestant churches (which condemned the practices) or came to view the rituals as more of a social/cultural phenomenon rather than a religious one However, despite the growing federal health care system, man y Navajos gre w increasingl y frustrated Complaints steadily increased about long "waits, language barriers, and culturally insensitive doctors.

Changes finally started in the 1970s when the tribal government began to wrestle control of the health care system away from the federal government. Another significant change occurred as increasing numbers of Navajo doctors and nurses began to work in reservation hospitals Traditional medicine also experienced a renaissance, in part due to the efforts of the federal government to help gather and preserve information on various native practices.

While this book offers a solid overview of its subject matter, it does have some drawbacks One is that, due to its relatively short length, the reader never gains more than a passing knowledge about the individuals mentioned, and certain discussion threads, such as the Native American Church, tend to remain largely on the narrative periphery The second is that, while Davies claims his book recounts the struggle by traditional Navajo medicine to be accepted by the federal government, the text itself seems to suggest the government never "was very hostile to traditional practices in the first place Instead, what Davies's book really seems to be about is the struggle by the Navajo to reform a large, impersonal, and inefficient health care system, a struggle with -which all Americans can readily identify.

STEPHEN C STURGEON Utah State University

Mexican-Origin People in the United States: A Topical History

By Oscar J

Martinez (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001. xxvii + 244 pp. Cloth, $45.00; paper, $17.95.)

I N OSCA R J MARTINEZ' S NE W WORK , Mexican-Origin

People in the United States, the author uses the rosebush as a metaphor for the history of people of Mexican descent in the United States. Th e plant's flowers, he argues, symbolize material progress and advantages available in the economic colossus of El Norte , while the thorns epitomize the impediments to the acquisition of such benefits by Mexicanos. Like this metaphoric blossom, Martinez's work flowers with a myriad of advantages, although it does have a few prickly thorns

Martinez divides the wor k into eight chapters based on a chronological approach (primarily twentieth century) to specific topics Th e first two chapters provide an overview of population dynamics and Mexican migration into the United States. Chapters 3 and 4 supply a synopsis of social and cultural interaction with the majority society and detail how Mexicanos resisted discrimination while in many ways adapting to life in the United States Th e next three chapters focus on labor force participation, the growth of the middle and professional classes, and political experiences. Finally, Chapter 8 provides a synopsis of the text as well as a spotlight on contemporary issues such as affirmative action and bilingual education

Th e strengths of the work are many and significant Martinez incorporates much new research that reveals the existence of colonias (communities) in various parts of the nation, thereby presenting Mexicans as a national, not just regional, minority group. In addition, he provides a balanced view on a variety of topics. On e example of this is his treatment of Mexican repatriation during the Great Depression (Chapter 2), wherein he focuses both on the racism and prejudice that drove between one-half and one million people of Mexican descent out of the United States and on the obstacles they faced after their return to Mexico Another is his handling of "the impulse toward integration" by discussing issues such as military service and intermarriage patterns in locations throughout the country (Chapter 4). Finally, Martinez does an excellent jo b in subdividing Chapter 5 into sections detailing conditions and labor activities in agriculture, railroad work , mining, and urban -work

Although loaded with blossoms, the book carries some thorns. Chapter 6, which provides information on a mostly neglected sector of Mexican life in the United States, entrepreneurship and the professional class, could have been improved by more extensive

use of the Census Bureau's Survey of Minority-Owned Business Enterprise Additionally, Martinez entitles the section dealing -with economi c improvemen t amon g peopl e of Mexica n descent "Upward Mobility for the Fortunate." Is fortune the only (or primary) cause for a rise into middle-class or higher status? Finally, while many topics are covered in a balanced manner, the same cannot be said of bilingual education O n this topic Martinez abandons the equilibrium he demonstrates elsewhere.

Overall, however, this is a well-researched and well-written book that provides an effective tool for covering a variety of the most recent topics and themes of Mexican American history It is a fine additio n to the growin g historical literature in this important field

JORGE IBER Texas Tech University

Riding the High Wire: Aerial Tramways in the West By Robert A.Trennert

(Boulder: University of Colorado, 2001. vii + 140 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

DRAWIN G O N HIS EXPERIENC E as a mining historian, Professor Robert Trennert has -written a comprehensive history of aerial tramways in -western North America, particularly those in Colorado, Utah, and the desert areas of Arizona and California.

H e has written in a clear manner the story of the development and use of the aerial tramways, describing in a vivid -way the difficulties of construction and operation in the rugged mountain and desert terrains. He explains the various phases of development and engineering as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each variation in use at the different locations His telling of the tasks of building towers in the rugged country of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado fills the reader with awe and wonderment at the tenacity and ingenuity of the workers and engineers

While the book does not enumerate all the aerial tram-ways in western North America, it covers enough of them to show all the varieties of the early tramways and the terrain in which they were erected. Professor Trennert effectively develops his thesis that the aerial tram-way made mining operations possible under the most adverse topographical conditions Students of mining history will find this story an invaluable tool in their studies However, the author could have made it more interesting to the non-historian by telling some of the tales associated with aerial tramways, such as this popular one from Park City: After attending a circus in Salt

Lake City and watching the tightrope act with Dick, her nineyear-old son, Mrs F W Smith was shocked to see that Dick had climbed the ladder on an eighty-foot tower and, holding on to the overhead cable, was carefully walking the three-fourths-inch cable across the 180-foot expanse between two towers of the Silver King Coalition bucket line Mrs Smith was frantic but wise enough not to shout at Dick until he had descended What happened next remains speculation Maybe this story is true and maybe not, but it has appeal

A true story involving one of the tramways described in the book -was told to me by Charlie Chase, wh o was manager of the mine at Silverton, Colorado, when it happened. The tramway was built by Chase in 1929 to connect the Sunnyside Mine to the Mayflower Mill of the Shenandoah Dives Minin g Company. During the depression years of the 1930s most of the miners lived at the boardinghouse at the Sunnyside Mine. There -was no way to get to and from the site except by the tramway. O n Saturday nights when the miners -would hold dances at the boardinghouse, their wives and other ladies of Silverton, along with the band members and their instruments, "would climb aboard the buckets for the airy trip to the mine. After the dance they would all ride down in the starlight. Sometimes the weather was such that they were snowed o n going bot h directions. Once , the tramway stopped and they were left dangling for a short period.

As Professor Trennert points out, very few of the tramways exist today. I may have been partially responsible for closing down the last one. The nickel mine at Riddle, Oregon, crushed the ore at the mine and sent it to the processing plant 1,500 feet below and 400 feet distant by an aerial tramway. Due to market conditions it became necessary that the owners increase the grade of the feed to the electric furnace. As consulting metallurgist, I -was able to achieve the goal, but it became impossible to continue to use the tramway because the ore was now in the form of a slurry, which had to be transported by pipeline.

The many pictures and drawings are a pleasure to see, and they tell much of the story. On e of the most revealing about the conditions under -which these tramways were constructed is the picture of sixty-five mules loaded -with cable headed to a mine high in the San Juan Mountains.

This book belongs in the library of every student of western mining It shows evidence of very thorough research It is -well documented and indexed It might be more convenient to have all the notes on the page of the text instead of in the back, but the

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choice to use endnotes does not detract from the value of the work

FRANK W MILLSAPS Salt Lake City

Hell or High Water: fames White's Disputed Passage through Grand Canyon, 1867

By Eilean Adams (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001 viii + 220 pp Cloth, $39.95; paper, $19.95.)

DURIN G MUC H O F TH E nineteenth century, the Colorado River flowed from known lands into terra incognita, disappearing from view into the mysterious "Big Canyon," as the Grand Canyon was first called. Furthermore, the canyon was rumored to contain huge "waterfalls and even underground channels "where the river roared beyond human hearing. Considering the canyon's reputation, John Wesley Powell achieved hero status after his successful 1869 river trip through the canyon, as he and his men appeared to have done the impossible Robert Brewster Stanton knew that his 1889-90 party was not the first, but he always wanted to believe his was the second such voyage After their trips, both Powell and Stanton emphatically declared that boating the Grand Canyon was extremely difficult and hazardous and that only skilled boatmen could be successful

Powell later rode his prominence to a leadership role in government science, culminating his career as head of both the U.S Geological Survey and the Bureau of American Ethnology. Robert Brewster Stanton's two trips were basically engineering expeditions aimed at determining the feasibility of building a water-level railroad along the banks of the Colorado River While Powell lost no men to the river itself, three men drowned on the Stanton trips After investors declined to finance his proposed railroad, Stanton turned his attention to river history, finally compiling a two-volume opus that has been only partly published, as Colorado River Controversies.

Yet what were either Powell or Stanton to make of the story of James White, who, on September 7, 1867, showed up slowly floating on a crude driftwood raft toward the small Mormo n station of Callville, Nevada—on the Colorado River below the Grand Canyon? White, when pulled from the raft, was almost without clothing, terribly sunburned, emaciated from lack of food, and half crazed. After being rescued by James Ferry, Callville's mail agent, White was nursed back to a condition in which he could relate his story.

White, a semi-literate but intelligent man, told how he had been prospecting with two other men, Charles Baker and George Strole, in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. Finding little gold, they decided to prospect along the San Juan River, which runs west past the Four Corners and into Utah, joining the Colorado in Glen Canyon White said that the trio, riding horseback, followed the San Juan to the point where "it canyoned up" then left the river by turning overland to the north After traveling about fifty miles, they were attacked by Indians Baker was shot and killed instantly; White and Strole hastily grabbed some provisions and ran into the confines of a side canyon, leaving the Indians behind to plunder the horses and supplies White further said that he and Strole reached the Colorado River then built a raft by tying driftwood logs together with a lariat. Under a moonlit sky, they floated out onto a placid river

For three days, White related, the two men rode the smooth Colorado past the mouth of the San Juan River, eventually reaching rapids of intense violence In one of the first big rapids, Strole was washed overboard and was not seen again. White then continued his now-solo voyage, clinging to his makeshift raft on down the river He tied himself to the raft with a fifty-foot rope so that when he was repeatedly thrown into the river he could, each time, laboriously pull himself back.

White recounted his harrowing 1867 trip not only to the men at Callville but also to a newsman in Hardyville, Arizona, who sent the story to a newspaper in Prescott, Arizona, from which it was picked up and reprinted virtually nationwide It was a truly sensational account, attracting great interest, although most readers were probably skeptical of its veracity.

Powell learned of the story and may have briefly considered hiring James White as a boatman for the 1869 trip, but he never contacted White. Still, the White story, if true, would have been evidence to Powell that the Grand Canyon contained no conjectured waterfalls or underground river channels Powell apparently never mentioned White in his writings.

Stanton, however, as an engineer-turned-historian, took great interest in determining the actual facts of the White trip. In hindsight, it is fairly obvious that Stanton refused to believe that White could possibly have floated through the Grand Canyon on a crude driftwood raft After all, in 1889 Stanton had witnessed three men, all much better prepared than White, drown in the swirling rapids. Therefore, more than a tinge of bias contaminated Stanton's inquiries into the details

Stanton researched available accounts of White's raft trip then undertook to interview White in 1907 at the latter's home in Trinidad, Colorado, where White was working in the drayage

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business. Apparently, Stanton was readily able to confuse White, "who knew little about the geography of the Colorado River No r could White remember details of his terrifying trip, such as what the Grand Canyon looked like at various areas—a point Stanton used to discredit him

At least one man, journalist Thomas F. Dawson, did believe White, and in 1916 he -wrote articles in national publications affirming the story. Dawson also had one of his articles published by the United States Senate as Senate Document 42 in 1917

Although he must have been livid upon reading Dawson's article, Stanton's written criticism did not appear until 1932, when his book, Colorado River Controversies, "was published Th e book has influenced river historians ever since—that is, up until the recent publication of Adams's more authoritative analysis

In this fascinating account of White's adventures, Eilean Adams, his granddaughter, details how river historians have repeatedly tried to refute White's claim. Adams first exposes previous misconstructions, either inadvertent or deliberate, attributed to White and then compares his account to actual geographic features to show that he probably did just what he said he did

This book, Hell or High Water, is a lively, well-written account Whether or not one fully believes White's story, any reader would be fascinated with Adams's search through the labyrinth of garbled accounts, prejudices, and geographical possibilities for truth about her grandfather and his incredible journey.

W L RUSHO Salt Lake City

BOOK NOTICES

The Pioneer Camp of the Saints: The 1846 and 1847 Mormon Trailfour nals of Thomas Bullock Edited by Will Bagley (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000. 400 pp Paper, $24.95.)

First published by Arthur H Clark as the first volume in the series Kingdom in the West, this invaluable chronicle of the initial Mormo n pioneer experience has been reissued in paperback at a more affordable price by Utah State University Press

Bullock, clerk and personal secretary to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young,

was named "Clerk of the Camp of Israel." His was the official journal of the pioneer trek Oddly, William Clayton's trail guide and journal was published early and has been far more widely known, while Bullock's more detailed and interesting journals languished in the LDS Church Historical Department archives

This volume includes Bullock's account of the struggles of the "Poor Camp " across Iowa to Winter Quarters in 1846, the 1847 trek of the Brigham Young Pioneer Company to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, the early settlement efforts in the valley and the return trek of Brigham Young and a few others in the fall of that year Footnotes help the reader relate Bullock's journal entries to modern-day locations along the trail, though one could wish the editor had been more generous in this regard.

City of Diversity: A History of Price, Utah

$24.95.)

By Ronald G.Watt

(Price: Price Municipal Corporation, 2001. 232 pp.

This richly illustrated and nicely designed boo k about one of Utah's most interesting and, at times, infamous communities covers more than a century of history from the initial settlement in 1879 up to the present The eight chronological chapters include a variety of topics and events. Amon g the most interesting are the different religious and ethnic groups found in Price; the role of sports, music, education, social clubs, and fraternal organizations in -weaving the social fabric of the community; the impact of major -world events including the Great Depression and the world wars; J. Bracken Lee's terms as mayor from 1936 to 1948; and the establishment, preservation, and growth of Carbon College, which became the College of Eastern Utah in 1965

Mormonism Unveiled, or Life and Confession offohn D. Lee and Brigham Young (1877; facsimile reprint, Albuquerque: Fierra Blanca Publications, 2001 421 pp Paper, $17.95.)

Th e title page of this facsimile pointedly reveals the book's thrust: "Mormonism Unveiled; including the remarkable life and confessions of the late Mormo n bishop John D Lee; (written by himself) and complete life of Brigham Young embracing a history of Mormonism from its inception down to the present time, with an exposition of the secret history, sign, symbols, and crimes of the Mormo n church. Also a true history of the horrible butchery know n as the Mountain Meadows Massacre."

As interesting as the contents are, they are here not much more than a curio, for this edition lacks anything to set the "writings in a scholarly context—no current introduction, explanations, or annotations The publisher's only comments are

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

in a back-cover blurb suggesting that what is actually a nineteenth-century artifact is straight history to be taken at face value.

The Flock By Mary Austin; afterword by Barney Nelson (1906; reprint, Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2001 320 pp Paper, $17.00.)

Austin crafts observant descriptions of sheepherders, sheep, and landscape in a sympathetic portrayal But as appealing as her prose is, it becomes far more than a pastoral reminiscence in the light of Nelson's astute afterword (which readers would do well to peruse before reading the main text). According to Nelson, a social, philosophical, and political statement underlies The Flock. Austin, after all, writes about immigrant sheepherders, me n disdained by California's white majority. By showing their intelligence, skill, and cultural lifeways as well as by showing the intelligence of sheep—a metaphor, Nelson -writes, for the common people—Austin argues against class-based hierarchies She calls for respect for the "working person

She argues, too, that the Sierra should remain primarily the province of sheepherders, actual people in relationship with the land, not the domain of tourists The philosophy no doubt annoyed John Muir His My First Summer in the Sierra, published in 1911, may have been his answer to The Flock, and Nelson's fascinating analysis of the two viewpoints shows Muir's arrogance toward the immigrant sheepherders At least some recent scholarship appears to support Austin's views on the ecological value of sheepherding But it was Muir's views that won the sympathies of the American people, who remember his remark that sheep are nothing but "hoofed locusts"; today, tourists, not sheep, overrun Yosemite.

Edited by Larry Evers and Barre Toelken (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001 264 pp Cloth, $39.95, paper, $19.95.)

Native American Oral Traditions: Collaboration and Interpretation

Historically, the scholarly investigation of native cultures has involved an outside researcher extracting information from informants and producing from live traditions a scholarly product such as a transcription, monograph, or catalogue. In the case of oral traditions, "Gone are all of the performance parameters (voice, music, gesture), gone is the interactive audience and its participatory influence, gone is the network of indigenous-culture knowledge and belief that informs and quickens any verbal event by implication" (viii).

This book points the way to different strategies Here, Native American scholars collaborate with non-Natives in collecting and interpreting the oral traditions of their own tribes. The collaborations are as diverse as the tribes themselves.

Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848—1880

By Rodman Wilson Paul.

A revised, expanded edition by Elliott West (1963; revised ed., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001 xx + 340 pp Paper, $21.95.)

The original classic by Paul offered a groundbreaking look at mining as a major force in the Euro-American development of the West An excellent supplement by Elliott West explores more deeply issues raised by a 21st-century consciousness, with chapters titled "Breaking and Building Communities," "The World's Convention" (about diversity), and "Worlds ofWork."

In discussing work, for instance, West writes about how the economic labors of native families required the kind of environment that minin g and settlers destroyed. Natives had to adjust to changed realities, living "as best they could in the cracks of the new society" (258). Meanwhile, the whites altered the landscape and social systems, "oblivious to the calamity they brought" (258—59). West explores the -working days of prospectors, placer miners, and lode miners in fascinating detail, as "well as the work of "women and children and those whose labors supported the mining economy. In the final analysis, West writes that the upheaval of mining served to magnify the values of the industrialized American culture of the time. These values impacted various groups. For instance, "Native Americans, marginalized and confined, stood as stark examples of the government's lengthening reach and its hardened insistence that people outside the mainstream be absorbed or pushed aside" (283).

The Far Southwest, 1846—1912: A Territorial History By Howard R Lamar (1966; revised ed., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000 xviii + 526 pp Paper, $24.95.)

Lamar has focused his study of the Ne w Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona territories on political aspects of the territorial system: political parties, federally appointed officials, elected territorial delegates, the territorial assembly, and probate judges These topics, which could become dull in some hands, come to life as Lamar asks incisive questions about how politics and people shaped the territories, exploring each territory's political development in engaging narratives His treatment of Utah Territory is balanced and insightful—and it creates a coherent story out of the complex territorial period, "with its maneuvering, controversies, and federal appointees who seemed to come and go almost as often as the days of the "week

The major addition to this revision is an excellent up-to-date bibliographic essay.

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Westward

Expansion: A History of the American Frontier; sixth edition — an abridgement. By

Ray Allen Billington

and

Martin Ridge

(Albuquerque:

University

of New Mexico Press, 2001 xii + 444 pp Paper, $24.95.)

This book's first sentence refers to the "TV-Western-oriented American of today" and his or her mistaken but "happy visions of painted Indians, gaudily-dressed hurdy-gurdy girls, [and] straight-shooting cowboys" (1) But TV "westerns did not exist in 1949, "when the original edition of the book appeared, and they hardly exist today, except in reruns Certainly the TV-western-oriented American has all but vanished So in what context does this book belong?

A revision of Billington's benchmark Turnerian-based history of the frontier, the new edition states that it does not seek to reinterpret the original material. Ridge has greatly abridged the east-of-the-Mississippi chapters and given full attention to the sweeping history of expansion west of the Mississippi. The authors describe the land and its indigenous inhabitants then present chapters on the various frontiers of the West, from the Spanish-Mexican frontier to the farmers' frontier. Well-written and ambitious, the book does not avoid error. In one instance, for example, the book perpetuates the myth that the Mormo n pioneers faced a bleak Salt Lake Valley in 1947: "At their feet was a barren plain, cracked by the searing sun, dotted with a few struggling sagebrush plants" (182).

The American West Reader Edited by Walter Nugent and Martin Ridge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. xvi + 335 pp. Cloth, $39.95; paper, $19.95.)

Primarily intended for college classroom use, this collection of essays (and a useful timeline) also serves as a valuable resource for those interested in the West generally. Arranged chronologically, the seventeen essays, authored by a group of well-respected historians, represent more than thirty years of scholarship, exploring familiar themes while simultaneously considering new topics. While all have been previously published in journals running the gamut from the American Quarterly to Labor History, having them gathered together in one volume is very helpful. Also useful are the editor's introductions for each selection. Taken as a "whole, the articles in this collection raise key questions facing scholars "while exploring the diversity of the American West, the ways in "which it connected -with larger patterns, and the hold it continues to have on our imagination.

UTA H STAT E HISTORICA L SOCIET Y

Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History

BOAR D O F STAT E HISTOR Y

RICHARD W SADLER, Ogden, 2003, Chair

PAM MILLER, Price, 2003, Vice Chair

GARY N.ANDERSON, Logan, 200 5

PAUL ANDERSON, Salt Lake City, 200 3

KENDALL W BROWN, Provo, 200 5

MAXJ EVANS, Salt Lake City, Secretary

MICHAEL W HOMER, Salt Lake City, 200 5

KIM A. HYATT, Bountiful, 200 5

JOEL C JANETSKI, Provo, 200 5

ROSS PETERSON, Logan, 200 3

PAUL D.WILLIAMS, Salt Lake City, 200 3

WALLY WRIGHT, Salt Lake City, 200 5

ADMINISTRATIO N

MAXJ. EVANS, Director

WILSON G MARTIN, Associate Director

PATRICIA SMITH-MANSFIELD, Assistant Director

STANFORD J LAYTON, Managing Editor

KEVIN T.JONES, State Archaeologist

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 National Park Service, under provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended.

This program receives financial assistance for identification and preservation of historic properties under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 The U S Department of the Interior prohibits unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, or handicap in its federally assisted programs If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office of Equal Opportunity, National Park Service, 1849 C Street, NW, Washington, DC , 20240