Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 77, Number 1, 2009

2 IN THIS ISSUE

4

David Eccles and the Origins of Utah Construction Company — Utah International

By Thomas G.Alexander

“Too Much Noise in that Bunch across the River:” Ba’ál lee and the 1907 Aneth Brawl

By Robert S.McPherson 52 Health Care in Millard County:The Medical Career of Myron E.Bird

By David A.Hales and Dorothy Bird Killpack 67

Home Rule:The Struggle to Create Duchesne County and Its County Seat

By Craig Fuller 91 BOOK

REVIEWS

Jared Farmer. On Zion’s Mount:Mormons,Indians,and the American Landscape

Reviewed by Brian Q. Cannon

William P.MacKinnon,ed. At Sword’s Point,Part I, A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858 Reviewed by Richard W. Sadler

Philip L.Fradkin. Wallace Stegner and the American West Reviewed by Robert C. Steensma

Biography is an essential element of history.Indeed,for many there is little or no distinction between the two.Without an understanding of the lives of those who have preceded us,our history would lack the passion,the variety,and the humanness that enrich and instruct.Lloyd E.Ambrosius in his introduction to Writing Biogaphy:Historians & Their Craft, published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2004,writes that “…biography is an important form of historical analysis that can enable readers to transcend their own personal experiences and encounter another person from a different time and place.”Ambrosius argues that,“for that to occur,however,the biography must present the subject in such a way that ‘a living being walks off the pages.’”To accomplish this,the historian/author must have “…empathy to recognize both internal and external influences,both the psychological dimensions and the environmental circumstances that shaped a person’s life.”But with empathy and understanding,Ambrosius cautions,the writer must retain “…a certain detachment for the subject to achieve as much historical objectivity as possible,so as to distinguish fact from fiction,the biographer must see the world from that other person’s perspective”(viii-ix).

Three of the four articles in this first issue for 2009 are biographical treatments of three very different but contemporary individuals who resided in three different parts of Utah.

David Eccles,the subject of our first article,came to Utah in 1863 at the age of fourteen.His father,William,joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints in 1842 but poverty,poor health,and a large family delayed immigration to Utah for more than two decades until the LDS Perpetual Emigrating Fund provided the means.Like another poor but fortunate Scottish emigrant,

INTHISISSUE: These two photographs taken by

on October 8,1913,provide two different perspectives of the same railroad construction site.Note the Utah Construction Company work camp in the photograph above. UTAHSTATEHISTORICALSOCIETY.

ONTHECOVER: This 1899 photograph by George Edward Anderson shows a loaded wagon with a driver and his six passengers in front of the David Eccles Mercantile Store in Scofield. BRIGHAMYOUNGUNIVERSITYLEELIBRARYL. TOMPERRYSPECIALCOLLECTIONS.

Harry Shipler

Andrew Carnegie,David Eccles used his skills and persistence to become one of Utah and the West’s most successful businessmen.Although his enterprises ranged from banking and merchandizing to sugar,timber,and mining,this article focuses on Eccles’role as a founder of the Utah Construction Company and its emergence as a world leader in the construction industry.

In 1907,while David Eccles and his partners at the Utah Construction Company were involved with the economic challenges of the Panic of 1907,far to the south in the outpost of Aneth on the north bank of the San Juan River,the Navajo Medicine man Ba’álilee,The One With Supernatural Power,fought against Navajo policemen and soldiers from Fort Wingate,New Mexico.Our second article looks at the life of Ba’álilee and the changing conditions in the northern reaches of the Navajo Nation at the beginning of the twentieth century.

In 1929,on the eve of the Great Depression,Dr.Myron Bird and his wife, Romania,and children moved to Delta to take over the medical practice and small hospital established by Dr.Bernard Smith.Our third article recounts the career of Myron Bird and the fifty-four years he practiced medicine in Millard County.He delivered more than five thousand babies,set countless broken bones,provided medical service to Japanese-Americans interned at Topaz during World War II,and met the medical needs of residents of the area for more than a half century.

Our final article for this issue chronicles the birth of Utah’s twenty-eighth county—Duchesne County from Wasatch County,a process that began with the opening of the Uintah Reservation in 1905 and was not accomplished until 1914.As residents of the Uinta Basin and Wasatch County found,creating a new county was extremely difficult.Legal and constitutional obstacles had to be overcome.Strong willed individuals influenced the process.Transportation, education,and religion matters were important elements.Grazing and water issues complicated deliberations,and disputes about the accuracy of previous land surveys brought into question whether or not the city of Roosevelt was within the boundaries of the proposed new county.All of these elements remind us of the complexity and vagaries of history.

David Eccles and the Origins of Utah Construction Company — Utah International

BYTHOMAS G. ALEXANDER

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–Mormons– who succeeded in making an enduring mark on the history of Utah and the nation generally did so by several means.First,some succeeded in business:entrepreneurs like Charles W.Nibley in lumbering and sugar refining;Jesse Knight in mining;and Reed Smoot in various businesses come to mind.Others obtained higher education in the learned professions:John A.Widtsoe in science;William H.King in law;and Martha Hughes Cannon in medicine.Some like Nibley and Smoot also became Mormon religious leaders.Smoot,King,and Cannon also used their success in business or profession as a springboard into politics.Significantly, in contrast with religion and politics,polygamy or monogamy did not seem to matter in business.Charles W.Nibley was a polygamist,yet he rubbed shoulders with nationally and locally powerful investors and business associates.In the business world,only success seemed to matter.

David Eccles was not a prominent religious leader,but belonged to the business group who also succeeded in politics.Born to abject poverty, Eccles achieved the American dream of significant success and personal wealth through hard work,careful planning,and an uncanny ability to recognize and capitalize on significant economic trends.In doing so he helped to establish successful firms in the lumbering,banking,and construction indus-

Thomas G.Alexander is the Lemuel Hardison Redd,Jr.Professor of Western American History Emeritus at Brigham Young University.My thanks go out to Beverly Ahlstrom and Tracy Alexander-Zappala for their help in research as well as Brooke Ann Alexander.Thanks also to Utah International for the opportunity to present this paper and to Richard Sadler,Joan Hubbard,John Sillito,and the staff of Special Collections at the Stewart Library at Weber State University for their help.Thanks also to Brad Cole and the staff of the Arrington Archives at the Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University and Greg Thompson and the staff of special collections at the Marriott Library at the University of Utah.Thanks to Lynn Wardle for his help.

David Eccles

tries.In the latter field he became an organizer of one of the most internationally powerful Utah-based businesses–Utah Construction Company later renamed Utah International.

His story began in Paisley,Scotland,a market town and textile manufacturing center located about eight miles west of Glasgow that gave its name to a particularly attractive pattern of curved shapes woven into silk or cotton.In 1843,David’s father,William Eccles,then living in Paisley, married Irish immigrant,Sarah Hutchinson.1

A wood turner by trade,William Eccles moved with his wife to Glasgow in the hope of earning a better living.Astride the River Clyde,Glasgow was the major center in western Scotland and,at the time,Scotland’s largest city.During the mid-nineteenth century,the city grew 100 percent from 200,000 in 1830 to 400,000 in 1860.

William suffered from the growth of cataracts in his eyes,and to cope with his dimming vision,he learned to shape the products of his lathe by feel.Struggling just to survive in an age before modern medical care could have offered treatment for William’s disease,the Eccles family continued to grow.On May 12,1849,Sarah gave birth to David Eccles,who joined his older brother John among William’s and Sarah’s expanding family that eventually included seven children.2

Although laws in the United Kingdom required schooling for children, the need to keep starvation from the family’s door forced John,David,and their cousins James,John,and Stewart Moyes to labor from dawn to dusk.3 As a result,David had no more than a year of schooling in Scotland.4 For young David,schooling had become an unfulfilled dream.

Most people in Scotland heated their homes with coal,and lighted their fires with resin sticks.Seeing a means of support,the Eccles family began manufacturing resin fire lighters,and David became the family’s chief merchant.Driven by intense need and by an entrepreneurial spirit,David guided his burro cart far and wide from Glasgow,reaching Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital,forty-five miles east of his home.From the cart,he peddled resin sticks and the wooden kitchen utensils fabricated by his father.

Already,however,the family had begun to dream of a better life.Seven years before David’s birth and before William married Sarah,William and his mother,Margaret Eccles,had met Elder Andrew Sprowl a Mormon missionary.Following an introduction to the Book of Mormon,to Joseph

1 Unless otherwise indicated,the treatment of the Eccles family in Scotland and David Eccles’work and entrepreneurial activities and families is based on Leonard J.Arrington, David Eccles,Pioneer Western Industrialist (Logan:Utah State University Press,1976),5-106.

2 Sarah Eccles Baird,“Memoirs,”1,David Eccles Papers,Series 3,Box 8,fd 3,Special Collections Stewart Library,Weber State University,Ogden,Utah.Hereafter,Special Collections,WSU.

3 The cousins’names are from Baird,“Memoirs,”2.

4 Bertha Eccles,“Memoirs of Bertha Eccles as Concerns Her Husband,David Eccles,”15,David Eccles Papers,Series III,Box 8,fd 15,Special Collections,WSU.

Smith as God’s new prophet,and to the doctrine of gathering with the saints in America,William and his mother accepted baptism on February 5, 1842.In 1843,shortly after their marriage,William baptized Sarah.

Struggling to make ends meet,the family could not emigrate until 1863 when they received a grant of £75 (about $375) from the LDS Perpetual Emigrating Fund to travel to Utah.Arriving at Castle Garden,New York, the family traveled by rail and river boat to Florence,Nebraska,where they joined a wagon train bound for their new Zion.While on the trip west, John decided to return to Scotland,so David,at age fourteen,became the oldest child to accompany his family.

The family settled first in Ogden,then successively in Liberty and Eden in Ogden Valley.William again began turning utensils on the lathe,and David peddled the products from a pack in Ogden and Brigham City and points in between.

Because the Moyes cousins had trouble making a living in Utah,the two families moved to Oregon City,Oregon.William Eccles,David,now age eighteen,and his sixteen year-old brother,Stewart,found work cutting cordwood while the Moyes cousins worked in the woolen mills.The backbreaking labor of felling and sawing timber became David’s entrée into the business in which he grounded his fortune.5

After two years in Oregon,the Eccles family returned to Ogden in 1869 shortly after the joining of the Union and Central Pacific took place at Promontory Summit.Ogden soon became Utah’s transportation center and surpassed Provo to become the territory’s second largest city.

In the winter of 1869-70,David and Stewart sought additional work cutting and hauling hay and harvesting timber.David also contracted to freight goods to the Union Pacific railroad at South Pass,Wyoming,for a winter, and he returned to Eden where he worked on his father’s homestead.

The entrepreneurial spirit evident in his business ventures in Scotland, impelled him to disdain working for others.Capitalizing on the skills he had learned while in Oregon,he negotiated a contract to furnish logs for the Wheeler sawmill located at the confluence of Wheeler Creek and Ogden River just west of the present site of Pineview Dam.With his earnings he purchased a team of two oxen.To his great regret,an accident killed the oxen as they pulled logs for him.6

The death of his ox team forced him to return to work for others again. He worked for the Union Pacific’s Almy coal mine in Wyoming in 1871. Recognizing David’s industriousness,the boss gave him a job for which he had not qualified himself.Because of insufficient schooling he lacked sufficient arithmetic skills and soon lost the job as a bookkeeper for the company.Afterward Chinese workers,willing to work for much lower wages,replaced Euro-Americans in the jobs David could do.His boss fired

5 Baird,“Memoirs,”3.

6 Bertha Eccles,“Memoirs of Bertha Eccles as Concerns Her Husband,David Eccles,”23.

him,and David returned to Ogden Valley where he again was engaged in logging.

Recognizing the need for a better education to supplement his entrepreneurial skill, David,during the winter of 1872-73 and again during a later winter, enrolled in a private school in Ogden run by Louis F.Moench in Ogden’s old city hall. 7 Moench,a well-educated immigrant from Germany’s Rhineland,later became the first principal of Weber Stake Academy (now Weber State University).He is best known today as lyricist of a familiar Latter-day Saint hymn,written first in German,and translated into English as:“Hark,All Ye Nations!”Although attending only for two terms,David learned enough to develop the skill of adding a row of figures at what seemed to observers like lightning speed.

The winter of 1872-73 proved extremely busy for the ambitious David. In addition to attending school,he negotiated a freighting contract to take a load of coffins from Ogden to the mining town of Pioche,Nevada.

During the summer of 1872,David had taken a contract to furnish logs for a mill owned by Bishop David James on Monte Cristo forty-five miles east of Ogden.After he finished the contract,he reached an agreement with two colleagues to share the cost of establishing a mill during the summer of 1873.He used a loan and the money he had earned from the coffin freighting contract as his share of the capital for the mill.The firm of Henry E.Gibson,W.T.Van Noy,and David Eccles operated the mill,and the following year they opened a yard in Ogden to sell their lumber.

7 On the location of the school,see Eccles,“Memoirs of Bertha,”13.

David Eccles,standing on the far right in a Derby Hat,with employees at a lumber mill.

J. WILLARDMARRIOTTLIBRARY, THEUNIVERSITYOFUTAH

David managed the mill on Monte Cristo,but found time to come down the mountain to Huntsville in Ogden Valley to dance.There,he renewed his acquaintance with Bertha Marie Jensen,whom he had seen previously in Huntsville and had met at Moench’s school.8 In contrast with David’s impoverished family,Bertha,a native of Pannerup,Aarhus, Denmark,had relatively well fixed parents.In spite of their social differences,the two fell in love and married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City on December 17,1875.The marriage produced twelve children, six boys and six girls.9

After his marriage,David continued in the lumbering business.He logged and milled lumber on Monte Cristo first with Gibson and Van Noy, then just with Gibson.In 1881,after a dispute over Gibson’s trading of a span of horses that belonged to Eccles for some worthless oxen,he broke with Gibson and formed his own company.10

Convinced of the need to retail his own products,Eccles opened a lumber yard on the corner of 24th Street and Lincoln Avenue in Ogden which prospered,and which he always considered his main business.When he became bank president and president of Utah Construction Company, the lumber yard office remained his main office.Eccles soon moved his timber operation to Scofield,a coal mining area then in Emery County about forty miles northwest of Price.At the same time,he opened lumbering operations on the Wood River near Hailey and Bullion,Idaho.He also invested in an operation run by H.H.Spencer in Beaver Canyon,Idaho, near the Montana border.

While engaged in business with fellow Scotsman John Stoddard,who lived in Wellsville,Utah,David became interested in Ellen,one of John’s daughters.Ellen’s and David’s interest soon bloomed into love.Born in January 1867 and nearly eighteen years younger than David,Ellen was a couple of weeks shy of eighteen at the time of her marriage to David in the Logan LDS Temple on January 2,1885.Although the LDS church continued to encourage plural marriages,the federal government a year earlier inaugurated an intense campaign against polygamous Mormons,and David kept his marriage to Ellen secret.11 At various times she lived with her father’s family in Cache County,at Scofield,and in Oregon.The marriage produced nine children:five boys and four girls.12

Between 1884 and 1889 while continuing to run his lumber business, Eccles entered local politics.He served successively as an alderman,equivalent to a present-day combination city councilman and justice of the peace, and as mayor of Ogden.As mayor he bridged the gap between the

8 Eccles,“Memoirs of Bertha,”13-14.

9 The additional information on the children comes from www.Familysearch.org

10 Bertha Eccles,“Memoirs….,”19-20.

11 On the campaign against polygamy,see Thomas G.Alexander,“Charles S.Zane,Apostle of the New Era,” Utah Historical Quarterly 34 (Fall 1966):290-314.

12 Information on the children comes from www.Familysearch.org

Mormon and non-Mormon business communities,championing the organization of the Ogden Chamber of Commerce in April 1887.He also oversaw the construction of a new city hall.13 After he left the mayoral office,he and Thomas D.Dee sold the Ogden municipal water system, which they had previously purchased,to the city at a bargain price.Eccles believed that the culinary water should be a public utility rather than a private business.14

During his public service years in Ogden,David continued to expand his lumber operations,opening new timber stands in Oregon.The opportunity to market timber from these forests of the Mountain West and West Coast became part of the incentive for the construction of three more transcontinental railroads and a number of shorter regional lines.As a result during the 1880s,railroad logging boomed as entrepreneurs moved into the Rocky Mountains,California,and the Pacific Northwest to harvest evergreens.

Eccles had previously cut cordwood,logged,and cut timber for others in Utah.In the 1880s,however,he recognized that a large integrated lumbering operation situated on lush stands of evergreens and near a major railroad could supply ties the railroads needed.In 1883 he purchased a mill from John Stoddard to manufacture railroad ties at North Powder,Oregon. Organizing the firm of Spencer,Ramsey and Hall in 1887 with Thomas F. Hall,O.N.Ramsey,and H.H.Spencer,Eccles established sawmills at Viento,Oregon,and Chenowith,Washington.Fluming or floating logs to Viento,the company cut the logs into ties,loaded them on lumber cars, and shipped them out to the ever expanding web of railroads throughout the west.

In 1888,Eccles closed his Scofield operation and moved the mill to Telocaset,about thirty miles north of Baker,Oregon,and about eight miles from North Powder on the Union Pacific Railroad.Eccles’s loggers at Scofield had been cutting illegally on federal land,and after the inauguration of the Grover Cleveland administration in 1885,General Land Office Commissioner William A.J.Sparks began a sustained attack on illegal use of public resources.15 In addition,the GLO lumber inspectors had reportedly been extorting bribes from the company.

In 1887,Eccles began his association with Charles W.Nibley,and two years later Eccles and Nibley incorporated a larger company,encompassing Spencer,Ramsey,and Hall into the Oregon Lumber Company.Nibley,a

13

John Watson oral history interview,Ogden,Utah,September 20,1929,p 5,David Eccles Papers, Series III,Box 8,Special Collections,WSU.

14 Watson,oral history interview,p.6.

15 For more on the activities of William A.J.Sparks see Thomas G.Alexander, A Clash of Interests:Interior Department and Mountain West,1863-1896 (Provo:Brigham Young University Press,1977),90-95.On the complaints of Eccles’s operations at Scofield,see Alexander, The Rise of Multiple-Use Stewardship in the Intermountain West:A History of Region 4 of the Forest Service (Washington,D.C.:USDA Forest Service, 1987),9.

Two-wheeled,one-horse carts were a vital part in the early days of building railroads by the Utah Construction Company.

Scottish immigrant like Eccles,earned a fortune in lumbering and in the beet sugar business before and after accepting a call in 1908 as Presiding Bishop of the LDS church.Stockholders who held a controlling interest included Eccles,Nibley,Thomas D. Dee,N.C.Flygare,D.H. Peery,Joseph Clark,H.H. Spencer,Moroni Brown, Peter Minnoch,H.H. Young,and John Watson.16

In 1889,David moved Ellen’s family to North Powder,Oregon.A year later,Eccles and Nibley persuaded Union Pacific to use rails salvaged from other operations to construct a twenty-mile-long, narrow-gauge spur line from Salisbury,eight miles south of Baker,northeast through the Sumpter Valley to the town of Sumpter.Eccles invested in the new line.In addition,the UP contracted with Eccles’s firm to furnish five hundred thousand ties annually,which they shipped on the new line to railroad destinations.In 1891 the company shipped its first timber from Sumpter Valley and a year later,Eccles opened a saw mill in Baker.

By 1893,the company had operations at Hood River,Meacham,North Powder,Baker,and Pleasant Valley.During the economic depression beginning in 1893 and the years that followed,Eccles’s company managed to weather the financial collapse in Europe and the United States,which had a devastating effect on Utah and the West.17 The company retained their employees because they honestly told the workers about the potential danger of continuing operations under the adverse conditions while promising the company would treat them fairly.

During the first decade of the twentieth century the company continued to expand its operation.In 1902,Eccles opened a mill at Inglis,Oregon,

16 Watson oral history interview,6.

17 Leonard J.Arrington,“Utah and the Depression of the 1890s,” Utah Historical Quarterly 29 (January 1961):3-18;Ronald W.Walker,“Crisis in Zion:Heber J.Grant and the Panic of 1893,” Arizona and the West 21 (1979):257-78.

about forty miles northwest of Portland.The town lay on the Columbia River and on the railroad line.A year later,Eccles purchased the Lost Lake Lumber Company at Hood River,also on the railroad line and Columbia River,and consolidated it with the Oregon Lumber Company.In 1905, Eccles induced the Union Pacific to construct a spur line,the Hood River Railroad,from Hood River twenty-five miles south to Parkdale.This allowed Eccles access to lush stands of fir in the region.

In the meantime,Eccles had begun to invest in other businesses.He reluctantly bought stock in the Utah Sugar Company,the parent company of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company.His reluctance arose from his belief that the company would have a difficult time succeeding in the competitive sugar market.In spite of his reservations,his connection with U and I proved a godsend.Thomas R.Cutler,U and I’s vice-president and general manager,introduced David to Henry O.Havemeyer,president of the American Sugar Refining Company,often called the Sugar Trust.Eccles and Havemeyer became friends,and that friendship proved extremely useful after Eccles invested in the Utah Construction Company.

Eccles also began to invest in banking,and it was the banking business that offered him entrée into Utah Construction.18 In 1881 a group associated with Horace S.Eldredge,then president of Deseret National Bank and manager of ZCMI,chartered the First National Bank in Ogden.The bank’s offices were on the corner of Washington Boulevard.and 24th Street.At the time,the only Ogden stockholder was N.C.Flygare.19 Two years later First National Bank had increased its capital from $100,000 to $150,000. David Eccles soon was elected to First National’s board of directors and in 1888,the board elected D.H.Peery president of the bank.In 1889,First National constructed a new building on the corner of Washington and 24th.In 1892,the board elected Eccles vice president,and two years later he purchased Peery’s stock,and the board elected him bank president. Eccles became a director of the Deseret Savings and Deseret National banks in Salt Lake City in 1898.These banks later became the basis for the First Security system of banks,now a part of the Wells Fargo Bank system.

As a faithful Latter-day Saint,Eccles responded to calls to help his church.Although he never served a mission,his sons served missions.He made his initial investment in the Utah Sugar Company which the LDS church had promoted because of a request from Apostle Heber J.Grant, one of the company’s directors.20 When LDS Church President Lorenzo

18 The treatment of Utah National Bank,First National Bank,and Ogden Savings Bank is based on First National Bank and First Savings Bank:Fifty-two Years of Leadership,1875-1927 (Ogden:First National Bank,1927).

19 Watson oral history interview,10.

20 For more on the Utah Sugar Company and its successor,the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company,see Leonard J.Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West:A History of the Utah Idaho Sugar Company,1891-1966 (Seattle: University of Washington Press,1966);and Matthew C.Godfrey, Religion,Politics,and Sugar:The Mormon Church,the Federal Government,and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company,1907-1921 (Logan:Utah State University Press,2007). Lorenzo Snow served as the president of the sugar company in 1901,p.177.

Snow decided to issue bonds to satisfy the church’s creditors,Eccles subscribed two hundred thousand dollars in bonds,again,at the request of Heber J.Grant.Eccles also paid off a seven hundred thousand dollar debt of the Ogden Fifth Ward by convincing Lorenzo Snow to allow the ward to credit Eccles’s tithing toward the payment of the debt.21

While David Eccles was amassing a fortune from lumbering,the earnings from which he invested in other business,two other Weber County young men,Edmund O.and William H.Wattis had also begun to make their mark in business.E.O.and W.H.farmed together in Uintah, but they also began taking grading contracts,often with their uncles George L.,Charles J.,Amos B.,and Warren W.Corey.

In 1881,the Corey brothers and Warren’s father-in-law,Ira N.Spaulding, organized the private Corey Brothers Construction Company.In the following years,W.H.and E.O.worked frequently on railroad construction for their uncles.

In 1886,the Wattis brothers joined with their uncles and a half-brother, Ira E.Spaulding,and incorporated Corey Brothers. 22 The corporation constructed railroads in Colorado,Wyoming,Montana,and Oregon,and a canal in Utah.Sometime after incorporating,David Eccles offered to purchase a share of the company,but reportedly the opposition from Warren Corey kept him out.Clearly,the tie-hacking operations associated with his lumber interests in Oregon,would have meshed extremely well with railroad construction,especially on a railroad line from Portland to Astoria for which Corey Brothers prepared the roadbed.

Already,Corey Brothers was financing its operations by borrowing fifty thousand dollars from Eccles’s First National Bank.For the Portland to Astoria job for which Corey Brothers,Inc.contracted to grade the railroad line,the contract required the railroad company to pay the contractors after the completion of each twenty miles of roadbed.As they proceeded with construction,the company ran short of funds,in part because they had to front the cost of construction.Financial problems arose,in addition,because a mining company in Nevada failed to pay them for construction work it had done there and in part because of the failure of financial institutions following the national economic collapse of 1893.23 When they failed to find financing to complete the railroad contract,local authorities auctioned their construction equipment to pay their obligations.

In the meantime,when Corey Brothers reached First National Bank’s lending limit of 10 percent of their capital,Warren Corey went to the bank to try to borrow more money.Bank officials told him that they could not

21 Watson oral history interview,12-13.

22 Salt Lake Tribune, January 1,1886,in Leonard J.Arrington History Archives (hereinafter LJAHA) Series IX,Box 99,fd,8,Special Collections,Merrill-Cazier Library,Utah State University,Logan,Utah (hereinafter USU).

23 For details on this see Royal Eccles Interview with W.H.Wattis,September 1929,Utah Construction Company Papers,Special Collections,WSU.

trestle.

lend more because of the limit,but referred him to David Eccles,the bank’s president at his office at the lumber company.When Corey contacted Eccles,Eccles told him that he wanted to talk first with W.H.Wattis,the company’s superintendent of construction.David asked Wattis:“What’s the matter? Why do you need more money?”Wattis replied that nothing was the matter “if we could get rid of the Coreys.”He told Eccles that the “job is not good enough for seven families to live off of.”24

Unable to meet their obligations as the 1893 depression deepened,the company filed for bankruptcy in 1895.To settle their debts,the Wattises and Coreys sold a great deal of their property in downtown Ogden and on the city’s east bench to the First National Bank.As a bankrupt company,Corey Brothers,Inc.passed into receivership,and the receivers sold the company’s assets now totaling about seven thousand dollars to a new company incorporated on November 6,1895,with a capital stock of ten thousand dollars as Corey Brothers Company.25

24 Leonard Arrington interview with Marriner S.Eccles,Salt Lake City,March 23,1971,LJAHA,1, Series VII,Box 30,fd 3:4,14,21,26,USU.Marriner Eccles is clearly confused about the dates.He placed the events in 1910,which was ten years after the dissolution of the Corey Brothers Company and the assumption of its assets by Utah Construction Company.I think that he has conflated the 1895 reorganization and the 1900 founding of Utah Construction Company and placed the events fifteen and twenty years after they actually occurred.

25 Articles of Incorporation of Corey Brothers Company,November 6,1895,Series 96/6,Company Histories Rough Drafts and Notes,Box 53,fd 3,Rought Draft & Notes by John McInerny,1974,Utah Construction Company Papers,Special Collections,WSU.For more information on the contractors in Springville,see Jay M.Haymond,“A Survey of the History of the Road Construction Industry of Utah,” (MA thesis,Brigham Young University,1967).

Railroad construction workers for the Utah Construction Company pose in front of a partially completed

Significantly,in this new company,the Corey and Wattis brothers had a new set of senior partners,Thomas D.Dee,James Pingree,Joseph Clark, and David Eccles,all officers of First National Bank who now owned two-thirds of the Corey Brothers Company stock.Eccles held the largest block of shares with 36 percent,and Dee,Pingree,and Clark each held 10 percent.Among the Corey brothers,only Warren Corey and his wife Julia with 32 percent,and Amos Corey with 1 percent remained as stockholders. William H.Wattis also held only 1 percent.In what was an apparent effort to avoid a calamity similar to that experienced by the company in 1895, Eccles insisted that the company carry no long-term debt.

In a bow to the Corey-Wattis partnership,and because Eccles had confidence in William H.Wattis’s administrative and business ability,the new officers appointed him vice president and general manager.The new owners also elected Dee as president of the company and Pingree as secretary and treasurer.Since the company had come under the wing of the First National Bank,however,Eccles as bank president and largest stockholder became the major power in the company.

Soon,however,as Wattis had hoped,the new owners shut the Corey brothers out of management completely,and on January 8,1900,E.O.and W.H.Wattis together with their brother Warren L.Wattis incorporated Utah Construction Company.They subscribed stock worth $8,000 from an initial offering of $24,000.

A month later,on February 8,1900,David Eccles,Thomas Dee,James Pingree,and Joseph Clark met together with the Wattis brothers.Utah Construction had issued capital stock in the amount of $24,000,and the Utah Construction Company officers agreed to purchase Corey Brothers assets, except their books,for that amount.In the reorganization,the Wattis brothers and W.H.’s wife Marie held $8,000 in shares,the same number as David Eccles.Dee held $4,000 and Clark and Pingree $2,000 each.The directors reappointed W.H.Wattis as vice president and general manager and Dee as president.Wattis’s reappointment came on a motion from David Eccles,who had considerable confidence in the younger man’s ability.Eccles told his wife, Bertha,“that the Utah Construction Company was one business that he did not have to concern himself about and that Mr.Wattis knew the construction business and was competent to handle it.”He also had similar praise for E.O. Wattis whom he eventually placed in charge of the company’s San Francisco office.26 The one Corey relative they hired was Lester S.Corey,who served in various positions,and eventually became company president.

Under new management,Utah Construction still had to finish contracts that Corey Brothers had previously negotiated.27 Completing the Corey

26 Eccles,“Memoirs…,”34.

27 Utah Construction purchased “all Contracts,credits,debts,due or owing;All the grading outfits, Horses,Harness etc.”Thomas D.Dee,and W.L.Wattis,Agreement between Corey Brothers and Utah Construction Company,January 8,1900,Series 60/1,box 9,fd 10,Utah Construction Papers,Special Collections,WSU.

Brothers contracts,Utah Construction finished a number of other jobs including grading a road bed from Idaho Falls to St. Anthony,Idaho,for the Oregon Short Line,a subsidiary of New York railroad magnate Edward H.Harriman’s Union Pacific.

They also continued negotiating contracts for other small jobs.In 1900 Utah Construction contracted to grade a branch line of the Denver and Rio Grande to the booming Utah mining town of Park City.Afterward they graded a branch of the OSL from Blackfoot to Mackay,Idaho.At the same time they took a number of small contracts to change grades and curves or realign sections of the OSL line.Utah Construction hired a great many small subcontractors to work on these projects.28

In 1901,Utah Construction took a contract with the OSL to grade a line from its terminus near Modena in Utah to Las Vegas,Nevada.This construction project put OSL and Harriman’s Union Pacific system in competition with the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad owned by William Andrews Clark,a Montana banking,mining,and railroading entrepreneur who served in the United States Senate from 1899 to 1907.The Union Pacific had surveyed a line between southern California and Utah earlier,but Clark insisted that UP’s franchise for the rail line had lapsed because the company had failed to construct the railroad at the time.UP disagreed.This difference of opinion led to a frantic race between the two lines to complete construction through choke points–narrow canyons— where workers could construct only one line.

28 Lester S.Corey,“Utah Construction & Mining Co.;An Historical Narrative,”(San Francisco:Utah Construction & Mining Co.,ca.1964),8-9,LJAHAI,Series VII,Box 30,fd 1;3,47,50-82,Special Collections & Archives,Merrill-Cazier Library,Utah State University,Logan,Utah.(Hereinafter,Corey, “Utah Construction,”with page number).

A Utah Construction Company locomotive.

A Utah Construction Company rock quarry inTooele County photographed by Harry Shipler on May 25,1912.

Both Utah Construction and the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad sent crews into the breach.At the choke points,construction crews actually graded roadbed between places where competing crews had already laid tracks.Lester Corey served as Utah Construction’s forwarding agent,and in that capacity made sure “hay,oats and other supplies”reached the camps ahead of the construction crews.29

From this vantage point,Corey watched the progress and the confrontation as Utah Construction “sent men and teams overland to places as much as fifty or more miles ahead of the rail end.”Laying rails “at the rate of a mile per day,”the OSL people reached a choke point in Caliente Canyon, about sixty miles as the crow flies west of Modena,Utah,the last town before the tracks passed into Nevada.30 Crows,however,do not take the circuitous route that Utah Construction had to grade in order to pass down the canyon to Caliente on the Meadow Valley Wash in southeastern Nevada.

The Utah Construction crews reached Caliente Canyon before the LA & SL crews.Though the story is a bit unclear,Utah Construction must have already graded roadbed through the canyon since the OSL crews pulled in laying track on the way.When they got into the canyon,they found that the LA & SL crews had strung a wire fence across the roadbed. Behind the fence stood a squad of toughs armed with rifles aimed at the OSL track layers.OSL chief engineer,William Ashton ordered his men to

29

Corey,“Utah Construction,”9. 30 Ibid.,9-10.

push the construction cars up to the fence,where he dumped a small car of railroad ties across the fence.

In the face of the riflemen who had drawn their rifles to the firing position,Ashton jumped the fence “to call their bluff.”As it happened,the shooters were not bluffing–at least not exactly.As soon as he reached the other side of the fence,the riflemen greeted Ashton with a volley of shots.Fortunately, the shots were all bang and no lead because the shooters had loaded their rifles with blanks.Both sides laughed at the confrontation,and cooler heads prevailed.The Utah Construction crews packed up and returned to jobs in Utah and Idaho to carry out several “bank-widening”contracts.

The UP and LA & SL people took a year to negotiate an agreement. The line eventually became a part of the Union Pacific system,and Utah Construction returned to finish the road into Las Vegas.31 Significantly,one of the stations in Caliente Canyon is named “Eccles,”probably after David Eccles.

Eccles soon realized that Utah Construction would not really prosper if they continued to take small contracts for portions of railroad lines or for realigning completed lines as the Corey Brothers Company had done.He wanted to undertake a very large construction project,but needed help to negotiate it.His help came from Henry O.Havemeyer.As noted earlier, through the good offices of Thomas Cutler,Eccles had already met Havemeyer.(Cutler’s Utah-Idaho Sugar Company had sold a 51 percent interest to Havemeyer’s sugar trust.) In June 1902,after Cutler had introduced them,Havemeyer spent “most all day”in negotiation with Eccles.The wily New Yorker apparently thought he could wear Eccles down.Having cut his teeth on the rough and tumble of western business, Eccles held his own.Eccles recognized that he could not battle a powerful company like American Sugar Refining,so he bargained for the best deal he could.After having his fill of Havemeyer’s tactics,Eccles finally told him bluntly,“We don’t have to sell,we don’t owe a dollar—this is what we’ll do, this is my price and nothing under that.”32 Accepting Eccles’s proposal, Havemeyer purchased 51 percent of the Ogden,Logan,and Oregon Sugar Companies for more than the combined total value of the three companies,and he consolidated them into Amalgamated Sugar Company.33

Significantly,instead of detesting Eccles for his firm stand,Havemeyer found Eccles a capable and impressive businessman,and they became close friends.In Bertha Eccles’words,“Havemeyer didn’t lose any respect for him because he stood up for what he knew was right.”In fact,he kept Eccles on as company president.Later when Havemeyer sent one of his technical experts to investigate the Amalgamated Sugar Company plants,the expert returned with a complaint about the lack of advanced education of the

31 Corey,“Utah Construction,”10.

32 Eccles,“Memoirs…,”33.

33 Arrington, David Eccles, 246.

men Eccles had hired as superintendents.Havemeyer defended Eccles by responding:“Any man Mr.Eccles employs as a superintendent or to work around the mill is satisfactory,and you must not interfere with Mr. Eccles.”34

Havemeyer’s friendship with Eccles proved more than propitious. Following the death of Collis P.Huntington in 1900,Edward H.Harriman gained control of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company.He already owned a controlling interest in the Union Pacific,and now with control of the SP,he effectively monopolized all railroad access from Salt Lake City to California.Previously,SP had divided its patronage between the Denver and Rio Grande and Union Pacific,but with the acquisition of SP,the first rate monopolist Harriman began to squeeze the D & RG.35

In the meantime,ownership of the D & RG had passed from Jay Gould to his oldest son,George J.who owned a controlling interest in railroads stretching from Buffalo,New York,to Ogden,Utah,and intended to extend that railroad from Baltimore to Oakland.To accomplish the western leg of this dream,Gould turned to E.T.Jeffery,president of the D & RG,in which Gould held a controlling interest.Gould and Jeffery tried to conduct surveys in secret over Beckwourth Pass and down the Feather River Canyon to Oroville,but Arthur Keddie and Walter Bartnett,who had long planned for such a railroad,learned of these efforts.Pressing Gould with claims they had already staked the route,Bartnett negotiated an agreement with Gould on February 6,1903,to provide for a new company to build the railroad.

On March 3,1903,a month after the two had signed this agreement and less than a year after Eccles had negotiated the sale of a controlling interest in his sugar plants to Havemeyer,eleven men sat down at the California Safe Deposit Building on California Street in San Francisco to sign an agreement to construct the Western Pacific from Salt Lake City to Oakland by way of Beckwourth Pass,the Feather River,and Oroville.Beckwourth Pass lay more than two thousand feet lower than Donner Pass which Southern Pacific controlled.Virgil Bogue,whom Gould sent west to conduct surveys,found that they could construct a road over that route with a grade of 1 percent,making it much more efficient than the Southern Pacific’s grade over Donner Pass.After word of the new railroad reached Ogden,the company officers learned that the contract for the western leg of the line from Oakland to Oroville had gone to E.B.and A.L.Stone of San Francisco.No one,however,had won the contract for the eastern end of the road from Oroville to Salt Lake City,which would cross the Sierra Nevada and span Nevada and western Utah.

34 Eccles,“Memoirs…,”32-34.

35 The following is based on G.H.Kneiss,“Fifty Candles for Western Pacific,”www.wpr rhs.org/wphistor y.html (accessed October 8,2007),and “Western Pacific:Oroville to Salt Lake City:‘Feather River Canyon Route,’”Utah Construction Company Papers,Box 65,fd 2,1.2 Western Pacific RR,Feather River Canyon Route,CA:1905-1910,Special Collections,WSU.

No one in Utah Construction,except David Eccles,had an association with anyone with influence who could recommend them to Gould’s representatives.He was,in the words of Lester Corey,“the only one of our group who was known in eastern circles.” Moreover,Eccles firmly believed the company “could do the job,”so he agreed “to go to New York and see what could be done.” 36 Since he had a working relationship with Henry Havemeyer,Eccles went to see the sugar magnate

Because of Havemeyer’s confidence in Eccles’s business ability,he recommended Eccles to the WP officers.Eccles said Havemeyer “told [Gould and his associates] ...that anything that Eccles would sign his name to,they could be sure he would see it through.”37 Significantly,Eccles “personally obligated himself for the successful performance of the contract.”38

In what was probably the midst of these negotiations,Thomas D.Dee contracted pneumonia and died on July 11,1905.On August 7,vice-president W.H.Wattis called a meeting of the board of directors who elected David Eccles president of the company.

On September 30 Eccles met with the board to ratify the first of the results of his negotiations.The directors agreed to sign the first of what appear to have been six contracts and seven supplemental contracts that authorized Utah Construction to prepare road bed for the laying of rails from Salt Lake City to Oroville. 39 The first contract obligated Utah Construction to grade between Salt Lake City and Silver Zone Pass that led through the Tono Range about 110 miles west of Salt Lake City.

Eccles tasked Andrew H.Christensen to supervise the contract from the Salt Lake City end,and Edmund O.Wattis to superintend the Oroville end.Each section of this line had its own problems.In crossing the Bonneville Salt Flats near Wendover,the construction crews faced a vast expanse of water-soaked salt lying on a bed of mud.Crews solved this problem by laying lumber on the salt,laying tracks on the lumber,

36

Corey,“Utah Construction,”14.

37 Eccles,“Memoirs…,”37.

38 “Western Pacific:Oroville,to Salt Lake City…”

39 Sterling D.Sessions and Gene A.Sessions, A History of Utah International:from Construction to Mining (Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press,2005),17.

David Eccles,(left) and CharlesW. Nibley (right).

J. WILLARDMARRIOTTLIBRARY, THEUNIVERSITYOFUTAH

and hauling “trainloads of earth and gravel”until the roadbed would hold the locomotives and train cars.40

Before 1905,the company had used nineteenth-century technology. Workmen had prepared the roadbed with horse-drawn plows,scrapers,and dump wagons.Crews blasted through rock with dynamite,but horsedrawn equipment did virtually all the earth moving.Since pneumatic drills available in the nineteenth century were bulky and difficult to move,crews did almost all drilling by hand to place dynamite and nitroglycerine.41

On the Western Pacific job,however,Utah Construction adopted new twentieth-century technology.Crews began to use “Air compressors,power drills,small steam locomotives,dump cars of four to eight cubic yard capacity,and steam shovels.”42 Lester Corey even set up a gasoline engine to run an air compressor,presumably to power a pneumatic drill.Significantly, although Utah Construction hired subcontractors for “lighter work,”the company’s crews did “much of the heavy grading with its own forces.”43

As construction neared completion in 1908,Utah Construction opened what they anticipated would be a temporary office in San Francisco.Eccles sent E.O.Wattis to head this office which was located in the Flood Building on Market Street between Turk and O’Farrell.After completion of the Western Pacific job,the company began to secure contracts for work on the West Coast,and instead of closing the “temporary”office,left it open.E.O.and his associates Henry J.Lawler,John G.Tyler,and John Q. Barlow aggressively sought contracts on the West Coast.44

With the exception of the difficulties encountered on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats,Utah Construction crews had a relatively easy time completing the work through Utah and Nevada.However,the seventy-five mile Feather River Canyon in northwestern California between Keddie and Oroville seemed like something from another world.The canyon is so steep that the contour lines seem to lie on top of one another,and photographs from the canyon reveal a gloriously rugged landscape.In some places,surveyors had to hang by cables to drive in their center line and cut and fill stakes.45 Crews had to work hard to grade roadbed with only twenty degree curves.

Utah Construction crews blazed a trail and brought supplies by mule train,set up camps,and used these as bases for blasting out a wagon road to

40 Warren L.Wattis,Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Utah Construction Company,September 30,1905,Utah Construction Company Papers,Series 91,Box 40,fd 7,Special Collections,WSU;Minutes of Meeting of the Board of Directors of Utah Construction Company, November 23,1905,ibid.;“Agreement made and entered into this 31st day of October,1905…between Western Pacific Railway Company…and The Utah Construction Company,”ibid.;James Pingree, Resolution of Utah Construction Company,February 24,1906,ibid.

41 Corey,“Utah Construction,”15.

42 Ibid.,17-18.

43 Ibid.,15-16.

44 Ibid.,16.For the location of the Flood Building,see www.floodbuilding.com (accessed October 9, 2007).

45 Ibid.,19-20.

haul in provisions and equipment.Eleven men lost their lives working on a rope bridge and on the cliffs at Cromberg,five died in an explosion at Beckwourth Pass.At the confluence of Grizzly Creek,the crews had to raft around sheer cliffs.Utah Construction workmen blasted forty tunnels between forty and seventy-five hundred feet in length in addition to building bridges,trestles,cuts,and fills.E.O.Wattis moved his family to Oroville,just beyond the North Fork of the Feather River,and his daughter reported that they could hear the blasting from their home.

As construction proceeded,Utah Construction in general and David Eccles in particular faced a new problem caused in large part by the bank panic and recession of 1907.On October 22,1907,W.H.Wattis approached J.Dalzell Brown,WP’s treasurer,and asked him for payments due the company.Brown lied to Wattis insisting that the company did not have any money on hand,when,in fact,they had some Western Pacific deposits in the California Safe Deposit & Trust Company in San Francisco.Later,Brown, who was also treasurer,vice-president,and manager of California Safe Deposit sent Utah Construction and Wattis,who had returned to Salt Lake City,two checks totaling $236,735.28 drawn on California Safe Deposit.46

John Pingree,cashier of First National Bank of Ogden had left on business when the checks arrived,and James F.Burton,assistant cashier, received the checks and sent them to California Safe Deposit & Trust for credit instead of depositing them in the San Francisco clearing house in which First National generally did its business.Dalzell Brown and the other bank officers,however,knew something that neither Wattis nor Burton did. Throughout the month of October,California Safe Deposit was insolvent, perhaps as a result of the bank panic of 1907.In fact,only deposits of WP kept the bank from failing earlier,and the bank apparently tried to protect itself by paying only nominal amounts from the funds WP had deposited.Moreover, California Safe Deposit had not kept on hand the more than four hundred thousand dollars required by the State of California for its financial institutions.Thus,in an age before deposit insurance,First National stood at risk.

Employees at California Safe Deposit credited First National’s account for the checks on October 28,1907,but paid out no money.Safe Deposit proved quite an unsafe deposit,and it closed its doors on October 30.To compound the difficulty,and because of the recession,Western Pacific ordered construction curtailed to 40 percent of normal.In spite of WP’s curtailment,Utah Construction had obligated itself to pay its subcontractors their “retained percentages,”but WP did not have to pay Utah Construction.In effect,Utah Construction Company faced involuntary bankruptcy.47

46 G.H.Kneiss,“Fifty Candles for Western Pacific,”www.wpr rhs.org/wphistor y.html (accessed October 8,2007);and Sessions and Sessions, History of Utah International, 17-19.

47 The best source on these matter is the plaintiff’s brief in Utah Construction Company vs.Western Pacific Railway Company,in the Superior Court of the State of California in and for the City and County of San Francisco,No.298274,July 11,1912,Series 91,Box 40,fd 7,Utah Construction Company Papers,Special Collections,WSU.

David Eccles had guaranteed the contract with Western Pacific,so he felt personally responsible for the losses incurred by the California bank’s failure and the obligations to subcontractors.As a result,he negotiated a personal loan of $100,000 from Deseret Savings Bank which he gave to First National Bank.The remaining $125,000 came from Utah Construction’s undivided profits,80 percent in the bonds of two irrigation companies,and 20 percent in cash from the company’s coffers.Thus,Utah Construction and David Eccles absorbed the loss.Utah Construction,however,agreed to repay the bank for the losses,and though the documents on this matter are somewhat unclear,Eccles may have eventually recovered the money he advanced.48

After the completion of the contract,Utah Construction tried to recover its loss from Western Pacific.The railroad company insisted that since California Safe Deposit had credited Utah Construction with the two checks,it had incurred no liability.Since Safe Deposit was bankrupt,the checks were no good,Utah Construction’s officers believed that Western Pacific should repay.Officers of Utah Construction and Western Pacific agreed to submit their disagreement to arbitration and on April 29,1910, the two companies turned the dispute over to arbitrator Charles P.Ells.Ells ruled for Western Pacific,and in 1912 Utah Construction appealed to the California Superior Court in San Francisco.The California court also ruled in favor of Western Pacific and ordered Utah Construction to pay court costs and attorney’s fees to WP.Utah Construction appealed to the California Supreme Court,and on January 9,1917,five years after Eccles’s death,the Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision.49

In spite of this setback,Utah Construction had made its mark as one of the west’s major construction companies.The company received $22.3 million for a contract that kept its crews and subcontractors busy from January 2,1906 to November 1,1909.The company hired more than 7,700 workers on the project.It drew many of them from throughout Europe through an employment agency in Chicago.50

At about the same time that the company contracted to construct the WP line to Oroville,it also agreed to build a line for the Nevada Northern Railroad from Cobre,Nevada,on the Southern Pacific line southward to

48

Plaintiff’s brief in Utah Construction Company vs.Western Pacific Railway Company;Royal Eccles interview with Sumner P.Nelson,Ogden,Utah,September 23,1929,David Eccles Papers,Series III,Box 8,fd 27,Special Collections,WSU;“Life of David Eccles:An incident pertaining to:First National Bank,Utah Construction Company,California Safe Deposit & Trust Company,”Box 7,Business (Resolutions of Respect),fd 13:First National Bank of Ogden,Utah Construction Co.,California Safe Deposit & Trust Co.,“Life of David Eccles,”nd,Special Collections,WSU.

49 Plaintiff’s Brief in Utah Construction Company vs.Western Pacific Railway Company;Utah Construction Co.vs.Western Pacific Railway Co.,174 California Reporter 156,and 162 Pacific Reporter 631 (January 9, 1917).A Utah company did not stand much of a chance of beating a California company in a California court in 1912,but might have stood a better chance had they filed in federal court.Conversation with Lynn Wardle,October 10,2007.

50 Sessions and Sessions, History of Utah International, 17-18.

Ely.Mark Requa of the White Pine Copper Company projected the line to provide transportation for the products from the mine.For this project, Utah Construction planted telegraph poles and laid rails in addition to grading the roadbed.Construction of the 135 mile line took only a year–from September 1905 to September 1906 with fewer construction challenges compared to the Salt Lake Desert and the Feather River segments of the WP,but it added to the reputation of the company as a competent railroad builder.51

Eccles also purchased an interest in a large land and livestock company located in northeastern Nevada,which his son and the executor of his estate, David C.Eccles,sold to Utah Construction in 1913 to obtain money to pay his father’s inheritance taxes.At admission as a state,Nevada received a large allotment of land from the federal government.The terms of the grant allowed the state to select the land from the public domain,and since the state needed money immediately,it agreed to sell the land to Jasper Harrell and John Sparks,on favorable terms.In addition,Harrell and Sparks bought the holdings of homesteaders and purchased land scrip which they exchanged for more land.The outfit ran cattle herds on the land and on adjacent public domain.Sparks later became Nevada’s governor,and sold his interest to Harrell.After Harrell’s death,his daughter eventually obtained ownership of the vast land holdings and livestock operation but was uninterested and sold the land to a consortium consisting of David Eccles and the same associates who controlled Utah Construction and Utah National Bank. They incorporated it as “Vinyard Land & Stock Company.”52

Between 1908 and 1911 the company undertook a number of smaller projects which kept its construction crews busy.These included a $2.5 million contract for a line from Natron southeast of Eugene-Springfield to Oakridge on the Middle Fork of the Willamette in Oregon,and several small projects in Idaho,California,and Utah.

All of these activities proved extremely profitable.In 1900,David and the other incorporators had purchased the assets of Corey Brothers Company for $24,000;David had invested $8,000.Six years later the company increased the capital to $500,000 divided into 5,000 shares valued at $100.00 each.53 David Eccles died on December 5,1912,after suffering a heart attack while running to catch a train in Salt Lake City.At the time of his death the value of stock ($902,800) and undistributed profits ($1,415,315.81) of Utah Construction Company totaled $2,318,116.81.54

51 Sessions and Sessions, History of Utah International, 19.

52 Corey,“Utah Construction,”21-24;Arrington, David Eccles, 253.

53 William H.Wattis and James Pingree,“Certificate of Amendment to the Articles of Incorporation of The Utah Construction Co.’’March 19,1906,Utah Consrtuction Company Papers,Series 60/1,box 9,fd 12,Special Collections,WSU.

54 “Statement of Resources and Liabilities,The Utah Construction Company,December 31,1912,”MS 100,Box 33,fd 3,2.3 Financial Statements:1912-1919,Utah Construction Company Papers,Special Collections,WSU.

In 1971 when Leonard J. Arrington interviewed Marriner S. Eccles,a son of David Eccles and Ellen Stoddard Eccles,Marriner, then head of both the Utah Construction Company and First Security Corporation,told Arrington that Utah Construction was then worth in excess of sixty million dollars.“The Eccles family holdings,”he said,“in First Security are chicken feed compared to Utah Construction.”55 By today’s standards where billionaires seem to abound, his estate seems relatively small. David C.Eccles,administrator of the estate,valued it at $7,266,939.85, however,in 2007 dollars the estate would be worth more than $154 million. 56 Bertha received a widow’s share—one-third of the estate—and his children by Bertha and Ellen received equal shares of the remainder.As a plural wife,Ellen received none of the estate.His heirs paid an inheritance tax of $297,348.34.57

Eccles’s stocks in Utah Construction Company were valued at $235,000.58 This was the fifth highest valued block of stocks he owned, exceeded only by Amalgamated Sugar Company,Lewiston Sugar Company,Utah-Idaho Sugar Company,and Oregon Lumber Company.In effect,his $8,000 investment in Utah Construction in 1900 had grown nearly thirty fold in twelve years.

To what did Eccles owe his success? The origins of his fortune lay in his hard work and thrift.During 1872 while he ran the mill on Monte Cristo for David James he seldom slept in a bed.He worked until dark,slept wherever he could find a place to nestle himself and began work again at dawn.He spent virtually none of the money that he earned,saving it instead as an investment to improve his situation as a capitalist.59 Although he had accumulated some debt during the early years,shortly after his marriage to Bertha he paid that off,and he ordered his business affairs so that he carried no long-term debt.

To understand David Eccles’s later success we must understand his early

55 Arrington interview with Marriner Eccles,2.

56 I have used the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis,Minnesota’s data to calculate the comparative value which was $154,131,776.See www.Mineapolisfed.org/Research/data/us/calc/hist1800.cfm (accessed October 15,2007).

57 David C.Eccles to Jesse D.Jewkes,June 1,1914,Box 9,fd 25,David Eccles Papers,WSU.

58 Untitled list of stocks and bonds,March 11,1913,Box 9,fd 23,David Eccles Papers,WSU.

59 Eccles,“Memoirs of Bertha,”19-20.

Thomas Dee.

business efforts,and especially David’s enterprises in the lumber industry. His earnings in lumbering formed the basis for his fortune.Earnings in lumber provided the funds for his investment in the First National Bank of Ogden and in the sugar industry.His investment in the bank led to his investment in Utah Construction,and his investment in sugar led to Utah Construction Company’s first large contract.

He had excellent business acumen,and an extraordinary ability to recognize significant economic trends.He based his fortune on the lumbering business during a time of cheap or free land and a rapidly expanding market.Then,instead of carrying all his eggs in one basket,he diversified into eighty-three companies in a wide range of businesses ranging alphabetically from Adams Copper Mining & Smelting in Washington County,Utah,to ZCMI in Salt Lake City.

He was an excellent judge of the abilities of people with whom he associated and of opportunities that opened to him.He recognized the particular strengths of people like Thomas Dee,and William.H.and Edmund O.Wattis.

He knew how to cultivate the friendship of people who could help him. Without his association with Henry O.Havemeyer,it seems unlikely that Utah Construction would have obtained the large contract to construct the eastern leg of the Western Pacific Railroad Company’s grade.

Clearly Utah Construction Company owes much of the credit for the early success which provided a foundation for its future success to David Eccles.

Much Noise in that Bunch across the River:” Ba’álílee and the 1907 Aneth Brawl

ByROBERTS. MCPHERSON

The October moonlight turned the yellow cottonwood leaves silver as they drifted in the gentle current of the San Juan River. The black turbid water,low against the drought parched banks, was easily fordable along this stretch of river near Aneth.Known as Old Age River (S 3 Bitooh) and One with a Long Body (Bits’íísnineezí), the San Juan was northernmost of the four sacred rivers that protected Navajo land.Viewed as a powerful snake wriggling through the desert,a flash of lightning,a black club,the river protected those on its south side as a boundary of safety.1 Hogans,livestock corrals,and summer shades rested in the shadows under the now naked tree branches.Sheep bleating in the cool autumn air,the smell of juniper smoke and manure,the stomp of tethered horses’hoofs,and an occasional coyote’s bark were all that rose above the gurgle of the river to disturb the night’s peace.Everything was calm,everything protected.

Inside the hogan slept Ba’álílee,The One with Supernatural Power.2 Confident in his ability to remain safe,he lay next to the west wall,the place of honor.He had spent the

Ba’álílee,proud and powerful, confronted the forces of change in traditional Navajo practices at the turn of the twentieth century.

1 See,Robert S.McPherson, Sacred Land Sacred View,Navajo Perceptions of the Four Corners Region (Provo:Brigham Young University,1992):49-51.

2 Spelled in various primary sources as Bai-a-lil-le,Bah-leel,Be’élilee,Bia-a-lil-le By-a-lil-le,Bylillie, and Ba’ililii,the name has been translated as The One with Supernatural Power,He who Knows Many

“Too

UTAHSTATEHISTORICALSOCIETY

Robert S.McPherson teaches at the College of Eastern Utah—San Juan Campus and is a member of the Board of State History.He wishes to express appreciation to the Utah Humanities Council for the Delmont R.Oswald Fellowship that provided assistance for this research.

evening working against the sickness of a patient bewitched by a man and his family for winning a horse race.Through divination,Ba’álílee uncovered the evil,identified the culprits,and ceremonially returned the curse and healed the sick man.3 Now the weary medicine man slept,secure in the knowledge that he had done his best and that he,himself,was protected from harm.

Or so he thought.He was actually resting on a stage about to erupt in conflict derived from national as well as local events.Having lived through earlier tremors of change brought on by the 1887 Dawes Act and now subject to beliefs of the Progressive Era,this strong-willed medicine man had been dueling with a determined Indian agent and promoter of white culture,William T.Shelton.Across the nation,Indian tribes had reached the nadir of their existence as white laws and values gnawed at traditional culture.The Navajos had avoided much of this trauma due to isolation.The events about to play out in the next few hours heralded a shift in political control,fomenting greater change on the Utah portion of the Navajo Reservation.Ba’álílee rested,having no idea that federal troops were on the way.

Born of the Water Edge (Tábààhá) Clan and for the Salt (Ash 88hí) Clan around 1859 in Canyon de Chelly,his earliest recollections were of war and fear.4 His mother died shortly after his birth and little is known about his father,Happy Man (Báhózhóní).Caught in the clash of cultures,Ba’álílee had watched the United States military with its auxiliary forces of Utes, Hopis,and other tribes,as well as New Mexican citizenry,fight the Navajo during what they called the “Fearing Time”(Náhonzhood 33).Kit Carson’s foray into Canyon de Chelly with a large body of soldiers must have been part of his experience before he joined eight thousand of his tribal

Ceremonies,and The One with Magic Power.Using contemporary standardized rules,the name is spelled Ba’álílee.The basis for this name comes from the Navajo term “álílee k’ehgo”meaning literally “According to His Supernatural/Magical Power”referring to his ability to use unseen power for either good or evil.It is the force by which things are done supernaturally.For instance,Jesus walking on the water or a Navajo skinwalker (witch) running at superhuman speeds are examples of a divine ability to control this force.The power is not discussed or flaunted and its existence is recognized with reverence.Marilyn Holiday discussion with author,September 23,2007;Jim Dandy discussion with author,September 24,2007.

3 Walter Dyk, A Navaho Autobiography (New York:Viking Fund Publication in Anthropology,1947), 138.Another explanation of what happened this night of October 28,1907,is offered by Jane Byalily Silas. Ba’álílee’s paternal granddaughter.She claims that he was assisting another medicine man named The One Who Sucks out the Evil The two sang songs and prayed to remove an object shot by witchcraft into a woman’s body by her jealous husband (Ats’--sí).At one point,a scuffle broke out between the medicine man and patient’s husband.They exchanged blows before the distraught husband left,allowing the ceremony to continue late into the night.Jane Byalily Silas interview with author,February 27,1991,in possession of author.Ba’álílee is Jane’s paternal grandfather;she was born the night before this incident. Her story is corroborated also by Son of Red House Clansman,who said that the two medicine men were “singing over a woman who was sick.”Red House Clansman,“The One with Magic Power,”in Robert W.Young and William Morgan, Navajo Historical Selections,Navajo Historical Series #3 (Lawrence,KS: Bureau of Indian Affairs,1954):35.

4 Silas interview;Florence Begay interview with author,April 29,1988,transcript in possession of author.Navajo society is matrilineal,emphasizing the mother’s clan for descent (born of) with the father’s clan (born for) as a secondary source of kinship ties.

members at Fort Sumner on the Pecos River in New Mexico.Still a child, he managed to survive the ordeal and return to the lands set aside by the government in what are today New Mexico and Arizona.

Fragmentary evidence that survives in the written record suggests Ba’álílee spent an errant early adulthood.Hastiin Klah (Left Handed— T [’ah),a policeman at the Northern Navajo Agency in Shiprock,New Mexico,testified that he knew him since he was a boy,“and he was always bad.”5 Klah recounted how Ba’álílee employed witchcraft to kill a sick woman by shooting hair into her body.His witchery led to four days confinement,perhaps at Rock Point,Arizona.6 Other Navajos spared his life after he confessed his guilt and promised to leave the reservation. Ba’álílee then spent a couple of years in “Mormon country,”presumably southern Utah,before returning to his people.Perhaps this is where he gained some proficiency in English,starting the rumor that he guided the Mormons to Bluff,Utah,in 1880.7 Shortly after returning to the reservation,he attended a dance with three friends,all of whom had revolvers and “witch knives,”which scared the participants away.8

Ba’álílee grew increasingly powerful as a medicine man.In traditional Navajo culture,a medicine man plays a prominent role in his community. Viewed as a person of wisdom,he is often the repository of religious learning and local history,as well as a spokesperson for those who adopt his point of view.Equally important is his control of supernatural powers which are dependent upon the number and type of ceremonies he practices.The more he knows,the more he controls,the more powerful the man.As a leader,his position may at times become politicized and the more power he wields, both in a spiritual and political sense,the greater his following.Ba’álílee was exceptionally powerful and did all he could to employ that power in a political agenda.Unlike most people in his position,he was not averse to claiming control of supernatural elements to both help and curse those about him.Normally,this type of aggression is not flaunted.

Most chanters might know two or three ceremonies,indicating a high degree of intelligence given the learning required just to know one.He knew six—Evilway (Hóchx == ’jí),Blessingway (Hózh == jí),Mountain Topway (Dzi [ k’ijí),Windway (Nílch’ijí),Shootingway (Na’at’oyee),and Night Chant (T [’ééjí).9 Navajos accepted his ability to see into the past and

5

U.S.,Congress,Senate, Testimony Regarding Trouble on Navajo Reservation,60th Cong.,2nd sess.,March 3,1909,Klah Testimony,43.Hereafter,information from this source will be cited as TRTNR.

6 Florence Begay Interview.

7 J.Lee Correll, Bai-a-lil-le,Medicine Man or Witch?, (Widow Rock:Navajo Historical Publications, Biographical Series #3,1970):4.

8 The reference to “witch knives”most likely refers to a ceremonially treated piece of sharpened flint, perhaps one that has been touched by lightning or a bear.This is “shot”through witchcraft into an individual.Cures for this include prayers that reverse the evil,sweating or sucking the object out,or with some kinds of witchcraft,induced vomiting.See Gladys A.Reichard, Navaho Religion,A Study of Symbolism, (Princeton,NJ:Princeton University Press,1950,1974):610-11,727.

9 Ibid.;Silas interview;Correll, Bai-a-lil-le, 49.

future through a form of divination called star gazing (déest’ 9í?) during which he perceived events in his mind’s eye.To control this much knowledge and power allowed him to use it against those he wished to intimidate.He also could use it to help those seeking aid.Among the Navajo,even the knowledge of witchcraft and that type of supernatural power is usually denied.10 Not so with Ba’álílee,who spoke openly of his ability.

There are numerous stories about Ba’álílee’s use of power,many of which do not suggest a chronological sequence.Still they give a flavor for the man,who at least by the early 1880s was living in what was later Aneth,Utah.On one occasion,Old Man Hat (Hastiin Sání Bich’ahii) summoned Ba’álílee to diagnose and cure his ailment after another medicine man failed.He began by star gazing and reported that he had seen his patient “sitting on a bearskin.The head of the bear was toward the east,and you were sitting on the skin,facing the east too.And this whole place was black.That means no hope.You’ve killed yourself with your own witchcraft.You tried to bewitch someone,but you witched yourself instead.... No one will cure you.”11 If Old Man Hat would admit to his involvement in witchcraft,then he could be healed.12 Otherwise,nothing could be done.The patient refused to recognize his practice of any such thing, although he intimated that a person some time ago had placed a curse on him.A medicine man presumably removed the evil and all the objects shot into Old Man Hat’s body.The witch had since died but there seemed to be some “bean”left that was causing more trouble. 13 There was no way to reverse the process.Within a day after Ba’álílee diagnosed the ailment,Old Man Hat passed away.

Old Man Hat’s son,Left Handed (T [ ’ah) benefited from Ba’álílee’s wisdom later,in the late 1880s.14 He had married a young woman who was supposed to be a virgin,but after sleeping with her,realized she was not. Left Handed raised a public outcry to which Ba’álílee,as a noted headman, sat in judgment.After hearing both sides,he chastised Left Handed,because he knew that he had other wives living in another part of the reservation. Declaring that the young woman and a young man had not done anything wrong by being together,he told the accuser,“You ought to have better

10 See Clyde Kluckhohn, Navaho Witchcraft (Boston:Beacon Press,1944,1970).

11 Walter Dyk, Son of Old Man Hat (Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press,1938):272-73.Bear is a powerful creature with supernatural abilities inherited during the creation to both protect and curse.

12 When a person knows they are being witched,they can obtain a medicine man,who through prayers and songs,establishes a protective shield around the victim.The shield turns the evil back on the originator who is then cursed by his own power.What Ba’álílee is implying is that this is why Old Man Hat is dying.

13 The “bean,”like the witch knives,was an object,probably a round smooth stone about the size of a piñon nut,shot into the victim.See Reichard, Navaho Religion,594,610-11.

14 There are two men named Left Handed (a common Navajo name) in this story.The two should not be confused.The man introduced later was a judge who worked for Shelton,while this man was primarily a farmer and shepherd and had few dealings with the agent.

sense than that.If you want to say something bad about it,I will see what can be done.I will take all of you to Fort Defiance [Arizona],and there I will turn you over to the headman,and he will see about it.However,I know that he won’t like it.He will keep you there in jail,and he will let these two young ones get married.”15 Because the woman and young man belonged to the same clan,it was best that they not marry and so she stayed with Left Handed.Considering later events,it is significant that Ba’álílee offered to take the three to the agent at Fort Defiance.

In October 1881,another opportunity arose for him to use his ability in a positive way.A posse of five Mormon settlers issued forth from the newly established community of Bluff in pursuit of two horse thieves.Arriving near Hall’s Crossing,the groups exchanged gunfire with Joseph “Jody”A. Lyman receiving a wound that shattered his femur and totally incapacitated him.Retreating up the trail from the water’s edge and onto the desert,the posse camped and tried to dress and care for the wound while one man rode to Bluff a hundred miles away for a wagon.Ba’álílee and some Navajo friends happened upon the scene and inquired what was being done to help Jody.He learned that the men had traveled a long distance for water and were having a terrible time keeping maggots out of the wound. Ba’álílee took a bucket and in a short time returned with water secured from “tanks”or depressions in solid rock nearby.He ordered the men to gather prickly pear cactus,burn off the spines,and mash the fleshy part of the cactus into a poultice,which he applied to the wound.Instantly the infection and maggots disappeared.The pain remained,accentuated by the ride in the bouncing,jolting wagon,but Ba’álílee had saved the young man’s life.16

Three years later Ba’álílee almost lost his life.By 1884 the area of Aneth, then known as Riverview,had a small community of non-Mormon settlers who arrived from Colorado to live along the San Juan River and McElmo Creek.There were at least three trading posts in the vicinity that plied their trade with local Navajos and Utes.Henry L.Mitchell,a cantankerous,hardbitten man,owned one of the stores.17 On April 15,Ba’álílee,whose home was approximately four miles east of the post,with three other men and two women,entered the store to trade.One of the Navajos took an unloaded gun and aimed it at a calf outside,then at a boy,then at one of the white customers inside.Another white man saw the move and drew his pistol,believing a threat existed.A Navajo seized the rifle from the one pointing,showing it was unloaded.The disarmed Navajo called to Ba’álílee

15 Walter and Ruth Dyk, Left Handed:A Navajo Autobiography (New York:Columbia University Press, 1980),389.

16 Albert R.Lyman,“History of San Juan County,1879—1917,”26-27,unpublished manuscript,in possession of author.See also Albert R.Lyman,“The Old Settler,” San Juan Record,November 30,1972,3, 11.

17 See Robert S.McPherson,“Navajos,Mormons,and Henry L.Mitchell,” Utah Historical Quarterly 55 (Winter 1987):50-65.

outside,saying,“These Americans are going to kill me.”Ba’álílee strode towards the store,gun in hand.The threatened white men drew their weapons and opened fire.The Navajo who had done the pointing died instantly. Sound of gunshots brought Mitchell’s son and another man from the nearby fields and seeing the problem, one of them fired hitting Ba’álílee in the forehead,knocking him unconscious.The Navajo men rushed out of the store with the whites following after,firing in all directions, and hitting one Indian in the elbow as he jumped a fence.Mrs.Mitchell assisted the two Navajo women trapped in the store to escape out a back door.Although fired upon while running,neither was hit.Ba’álílee revived then escaped as did the remaining Navajo man.18

This rough-hewn cottonwood log cabin belonged to Heavyset Man (Ayóó Ndíílí),who at age thirtyfive lived next to Ba’álílee and used this dwelling at the time of attack.In 1911,a flood scoured everything in the flood plain, removing all structures.This cabin was small enough to take apart before the waters inundated the entire area.Heavyset Man and his family moved it to a prominent hill where it rests above “A Place Reserved.”

This incident is important for two reasons. First,the Navajo scout,Herrero Segundo, reporting his investigation of the incident, said that when Ba’álílee started toward the store,he uttered,“All right,that is what I want.”No doubt,this was in response to the strong-willed personality of Mitchell,who seemed to grate on everyone’s nerves.According to Left Handed,“After this shooting,the good Indians tried to give Ba’álílee good advice,but he wouldn’t listen to them and was always making trouble.”19 The issue of who followed Ba’álílee and who opposed him (the “good Indians”) became increasingly magnified over the years.The second point to draw from this incident is how fast the Indians mobilized,once news spread.They seized twenty-nine horses belonging to Mitchell,which were later returned through the efforts of another trader,and ransacked a vacated post up river.In a land of isolated settlements and little rule,problems quickly escalated.

18 Report of Herrero Segundo submitted to Agent D.M.Riordan,April 29,1884,Letters Received by Office of Indian Affairs—New Mexico Superintendency,1884,Record Group 75,National Archives, Washington,D.C.Hereafter cited as Letters Received—NM.

19 TRTNR—Klah Testimony,43.

Other confrontations occurred.In 1900 Ba’álílee broke into a store owned by Howard Ray Antes,an independent Methodist missionary.20 He stole a silver belt from which he fashioned bracelets and other merchandise. Antes,fearing repercussions,refused to press charges.21 Shortly after this, James M.Holley,owner of the Aneth Trading Post from 1899 to 1905,who remained there as a government farmer,went to a Yé’ii Bicheii dance at Ba’álílee’s camp.Many spectators were drinking whiskey,waving bottles over their heads,and yelling,“‘Where are the police? Where are the chiefs? Where is the agent? Where are the soldiers?’saying they [were] not afraid.”22

Soon thereafter,the Indian agent from Fort Defiance visited Ba’álílee’s camp demanding that they send some of their children to school.Ba’álílee, as a local spokesman,refused,telling the people that if the reservation police or soldiers came after the children,his men would kill them as fast as they came.The agent balked and did nothing.It did not take long,however,for the federal government to answer the questions of “Where is the agent? Where are the police?”much to Ba’álílee’s chagrin.

In 1903 Superintendent William T.Shelton established the Northern Navajo Agency in Shiprock—a little over thirty miles from Ba’álílee’s camp—where he instituted an aggressive policy of change.Espousing the ideals of Progressive reform prevalent at the turn of the century,the agent enforced the mandate to improve the Navajo economy,provide education for the children,remove vices on the reservation,and create stability in a region prone to lawlessness.Shelton called Tall Leader (Naat’áanii Nééz as he was known among the Navajos),was a man of sobriety,strong religious convictions,bordering on puritanical,and heavy-handed in enforcing government programs.As he surged forward on all fronts he faced an almost overwhelming task.Speaking of the agency’s early years,Shelton recalled taking a thirty-five mile trip to Farmington,New Mexico.During this travel he met “eighteen drunken Indians”coming from Durango.There were also those selling liquor to the Navajos,while everyone seemed involved in gambling.He noted that “fifteen to twenty,and sometimes more,would congregate at each of the trading posts during the day and waste their time and money gambling.At some of the posts the traders kept a ‘tin horn’gambler at their store for the purpose of getting a crowd together and beating them out of their money.”23

By the end of 1905,Shelton claimed to have put a lid on this activity by gaining the “cooperation of the older and more influential Indians,

20 See,Robert S.McPherson,“Howard R.Antes and the Navajo Faith Mission:Evangelist of Southeastern Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 65 (Winter 1997):4-24.

21 Statement by James M.Holley,Government Farmer—Aneth,n.d.,J.Lee Correll Collection,Navajo Nation,Window Rock,Arizona.Hereafter cited as JLC Collection.

22 Ibid.

23 William T.Shelton to Commissioner of Indian Affairs,December 5,1913,Letters Received—NM; Major James McLaughlin Papers,Assumption Abbey Archives,Microfilm #5,Denver Public Library, Denver,Colorado.

convincing them that gambling was bad business and detrimental to the best interests of the reservation.”For battle trophies from the war against gambling,he collected more than three bushels of playing cards.As for the whiskey traffic,he slowed it by assigning a first-time offender ten days of work at the agency,a second offense twenty days,with an additional ten days for every other infraction.In the next ten years agency police brought in only eleven drinkers for punishment,leading Shelton to boast,“I doubt if there is a community in the United States more free from whiskey, drinking,and gambling than this reservation.”24 This claim may have been naive,but his control was something that had not been possible before the government established the agency to quell the liquor traffic on the northern boundaries of the reservation.

Four years of progressive change brought substantial alteration in many aspects of traditional Navajo life.Briefly,Shelton’s jurisdiction extended over approximately three thousand square miles of territory spanning parts of New Mexico,Arizona,and Utah.He was responsible for the welfare of an estimated eight thousand Navajos,twenty-five hundred of whom were school-age children between the ages of six and eighteen,and one hundred of whom attended the Shiprock School.25 He supervised government farmers hired to improve crop production,expand irrigation systems,issue all types of farm equipment,construct and maintain roads,increase the quality and production of wool,eliminate diseases such as scabies through sheep dipping,and provide individualized agricultural counsel.The agent worked with traders to insure fair practices,encourage blanket weaving,quality silversmithing,and improved lifestyle.

A quick glimpse in the daily life of Old Mexican,a Navajo resident of Aneth in 1904,shows the intensity of the government program and the effect of subsidy.Old Mexican’s mother received three rams to increase the quality of sheep in her herd;his older brother earned a scraper,scythe,and pitchfork for farming.Later,the government agent wished to improve the road system and told community members,“If any of you want a wagon, you have to work forty-five days,and for a shovel,one day,and for an ax, one day,and a saw,one day,and a pitchfork one day,and for a scraper five days.”26 For those who preferred a group effort,there was a different pay scale.Also instituted at this time was the precursor of the Shiprock Fair, where competition for everything,from the best woven rug and garden produce to the cleanest baby were rewarded with food,clothing,tools,and other prizes meant to encourage industry and white values.27

Changing values,however,is not always easy or pleasant.Social issues such as the practice of polygamy,the abolition of Indian hairstyles,

24 Ibid.

25 William T.Shelton,“Report of Superintendent of San Juan School,”July 23,1907;Shelton to Commissioner of Indian Affairs,July 23,1907,JLC Collection.

26 Dyk, A Navaho Autobiography,97-98.

27 Ibid.,86.

consumption of alcohol,and general law enforcement proved more problematic than incorporating material goods.This effort struck at the heart of cultural practices or aberrant behavior that had not been challenged,in some cases,for centuries.28 The three Navajo policemen initially assigned to the agency were far too few.Shelton bemoaned the fact that “crimes such as wife beating,whiskey selling,horse thieving,and even murder have gone unpunished. ...But one of the worst things we have to contend with is, that when a man dies his relatives come in and rob the widow and children of all their belongings and leave them homeless and destitute.One case has been brought to my attention where the woman resisted and was murdered.”29 Armed with this type of justification,he requested funding for two more Indian judges,a captain of police,and eight additional policemen bringing his force to twelve.He received five more.

Many Navajos approved of his practices and liked Shelton.Maimi Howard,who worked for him,felt he was a “very helpful man who understood the Navajo language and was generous.”30 Old Mexican also worked for him in a variety of endeavors such as farming,law enforcement,road building,and freighting and thought Shelton fair.He also disagreed with the agent.Old Mexican,under Shelton’s direction,did not like serving as the spearhead of change while having to live within a Navajo community that was not always accepting.31 A general impression from the Navajos at this time is that they respected and liked him,but he could also be a stern, no-nonsense disciplinarian when faced with recalcitrance.

The white communities,in general,supported him.For instance,trader June Foutz noticed the “great changes that had come since Shelton’s influence had been felt among the Navajos.They were driving teams,producing more and better wool and stock,all as a result of this influence.” 32 Superintendent H.F.Coggeshall commented that the first thing he noticed at the agency was that everyone was busy.“He felt that this accomplishment could only have come thru great executive ability,accompanied by the cooperation of the surrounding communities.He had found the best spirit of cooperation here [Shiprock] of any school he had ever known in the Indian service.”33 Kumen Jones,a member of the Mormon community in Bluff,a group who had often been at odds with federal agents,said of Shelton’s appointment,“It was a streak of good fortune for the Mormons as well as the Navajos.He proved to be a real friend towards the latter and absolutely free of prejudice towards the former.He understood the Indians’needs.”34

28 Ibid.;George W.Hayzlett to Commissioner of Indian Affairs,July 25,1902,JLC Collection.

29 William T.Shelton to Commissioner of Indian Affairs,October 20,1903,JLC Collection.

30 Maimi Howard interview with author,July 19,1988,transcript in possession of author.

31 See Dyk, A Navaho Autobiography for a yearly,sometimes daily,account of life in Aneth at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.

32 “The Shelton Reception,” The Farmington Times,May 4,1916.

33 Ibid.

34 Kumen Jones, The Writings of Kumen Jones,30,unpublished manuscript,Special Collections,Brigham Young University Library,Provo,Utah.

“Soldiers/Police

Move Across”

(Siláo Ha’naa Niníná) was the crossing point of the cavalry near Ba’álílee’s camp.The site offered a natural ford with a low spot on the river,a gravelly bottom,and a north shore restricted by steep slopes.Picture taken from south side looking west;tamarisk not present in 1907.

There were those in surrounding towns and at the agency who had their own agendas and did not like Shelton.A former clerk at Shiprock filed seven charges against him through the Indian Industries League based in Boston,Massachusetts.Complaints included treating Navajo people rudely,hiring questionable policemen,being influenced by his “friends,”lying,and breaking promises.An investigator,Charles H.Dickson,after interviewing many people at the agency and in surrounding communities,fully exonerated Shelton on all seven counts.35 Sworn testimony gathered during this time paints a picture of an administrator who was very involved in events and with people.He was no saint,by any stretch,but he worked hard and enforced unpopular policies.It was also not the last time he would be investigated.

Ba’álílee was the antithesis of Shelton and what he stood for.Much of what follows is reconstructed from personal testimony obtained by the government in sworn statements from Navajos and whites alike.They paint a highly negative picture of this medicine man.There is sufficient testimony from unofficial sources,both Navajo and white,not given under government direction,that indicate Ba’álílee was very much a power broker.While the sworn statements may not be exaggerated,they are also at times uninformed as to traditional Navajo practices.Nevertheless,all accounts provide a telling story that shows Ba’álílee did all he could to resist government intervention and consolidate his power.More than just a clash of personalities between him and Shelton,his resistance forced a final answer as to who controlled the lives and future of hundreds of Navajos in the Aneth area.

35 Charles H.Hickman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs,January 9,1905,JLC Collection.

PHOTOBYAUTHOR

Many local Navajos believed Ba’álílee controlled rain and lightning.He charged a fee to bring showers to the parched earth and threatened to withhold them if his terms were not met.According to Holley,Ba’álílee was “a medicine man of the worst type,[making] the Indians believe that he has power to cause rain to fall at his will and has made the greater part of his living requiring the Indians to pay him for singing.”36 When it did not rain,he blamed it on the Navajos who followed Shelton’s advice and patterned themselves after the white man.He also threatened to kill those who opposed him with lightning,especially any soldiers who dared attack him and those who worked for Shelton.As for their bullets,they could not touch him.Ba’álílee threatened The One with Muscles (Dohii) and Left Handed—both Navajo judges—warning that he would kill them with “darts”shot into their bodies by witchcraft.Shortly after,Dohii died while Left Handed spent seven hundred dollars for a protective ceremony.37

Even after Ba’álílee’s death,stories about his powers persisted.Mary Blueyes remembers,“My grandfather said he performed a prayer for a Mud Clan woman.Sometime while performing the prayer,he saw Ba’álílee in a brief flash.The supernatural spirit probably said this is the person that is doing this [witchcraft].The prayer ended and he told of what he had seen. He said,‘I saw Ba’álílee.’”38

There were plenty of other,more tangible,things that directly opposed Shelton’s plans.Not only was Ba’álílee involved in excessive drinking, gambling,and bootlegging on the reservation,but he also stole livestock from the Utes at Towaoc,cowboys in Colorado,and Mormons from Bluff. Saloons and individual entrepreneurs in Cortez supplied his whiskey trade which provided a handy profit when charging up to eight dollars a bottle. His polygamous marriage to two wives was a common Navajo practice,but bothered the puritanical Shelton,who espoused the Indian Bureau’s belief of monogamy.39 On many occasions,Ba’álílee told anyone within earshot, that he would have as many wives as he pleased and the agent had no say in the matter.There were also charges laid against him and his cohort of selling wives and young girls to older men.In fairness to Ba’álílee,this may have been confused by Shelton for certain legitimate marriage practices found in traditional Navajo culture.These include marrying at the young age of thirteen or fourteen,honoring the practice of bride price in

36 Holley Statement,JLC Collection.

37 William T.Shelton to Commissioner of Indian Affairs,March 29,1907,cited in Report on Employment of United States Soldiers in Arresting By-a-lil-le and Other Navajo Indians, 60th Cong.,1st sess.,May 25,1908, 7.Hereafter,information from this source will be cited as ABONI;Harry O.Williard to Adjutant General, October 30,1907,17 ABONI;Shelton to James M.Holley,September 3,1907,JLC Collection;Williard to Adjutant General,November 3,1907,JLC Collection;TRTNR,Frank Mitchell Testimony,49;Dyk, A Navaho Autobiography,134;Klah Testimony,April 25,1908,44,TRTNR.The One with Muscles was also known as Black Horse (L99[ izhin7).

38 Mary Blueyes interview with author,March 20,1992,transcript in possession of author.

39 Sworn Testimonies from Sisco,By-a-lil-le Bida,Mele-yon,Frank Mitchell,Pit-ce-cote,and Att-city, March 19,1909,JLC Collection.

recognition of losing a family member,marrying both a mother and her daughter to the same man,and dissolving relatively fragile marriage bonds common in matrilineal societies.Shelton wanted it all stopped.

Ba’álílee gathered about him a growing circle of followers who basked in his power and gave legitimacy to his being leader and spokesman.Estimates vary,but most sources suggest that he had between thirty and forty men to call upon for support.40 There is no mistaking that at least a dozen of them appropriated some of his power and reputation to create their own,becoming law unto themselves.Short Hair (Bitsii’Agodí) was such a man.41 In the spring of 1906,he came upon a young Navajo girl,Hattie,herding sheep. Seizing her horse’s reins,he dismounted,tied her hands behind her back with a quirt,and assaulted her.Hattie eventually untied herself and went home,where she remained sick for several months before going to the agency for help.Soon after this incident,Short Hair raped her sister,too.42 Many of the law-abiding Navajos were shocked and intimidated by these criminal activities.

The San Juan Agency School at Shiprock opened its doors on February 8,1907,to 106 students.43 Traders,government farmers,Navajo police,and community leaders helped in the recruiting efforts for this new experience. Some families willingly sent their children;others were coerced into filling an established quota.Ba’álílee refused to send his children and raved against what he saw as loss of Navajo rights.He threatened to harm or kill anyone who gave their children over to the government.He proffered as a reason that when children had been sent to the school at Fort Defiance,many died from disease but the government kept requesting more children.This would not be repeated in his region.44 Parents needed children at home to herd livestock,help with sheep shearing,haul wood and water,and perform a myriad of other camp chores.Turning them into whitemen was undesirable at best.Navajo police and Holley,who was now the government’s “Additional Farmer”in Aneth,received the brunt of Ba’álílee’s antagonism. Fourteen children waited at the Government Station ready to travel to Shiprock when Ba’álílee and a heavily armed contingent arrived and “persuaded”all but four that they had better head home.45

Equally disturbing was his refusal to have Navajo sheep dipped to remove and prevent the debilitating livestock disease called scabies.Shelton placed fifty vats of medicine throughout the Northern Navajo Reservation to eradicate the disease.Many of the people in Aneth welcomed the program,but Ba’álílee refused,and threatened others not to participate.A

40 R.S.Connell to Commissioner of Indian Affairs,April 6,1907,9,ABONI.

41 Short Hair was also known as Ba’álílee’s Son in Law (Ba’álílee Bidá’í).

42 Hattie Testimony,51,TRTNR.

43 Shelton,“Report of Superintendent,”July 23,1907.

44 James R.Garfield to Commissioner of Indian Affairs,November 22,1907,26,ABONI;Dyk, A Navaho Autobiography,111-12,124.

45 Shelton to Commissioner,March 29,1907,7,ABONI.

vat arrived in the fall of 1906 and dipping commenced,but not without threats and refusal.Shelton also provided better breeding stock to improve herd quality.He admonished the recipients to not sell these animals, warned the traders not to buy them,and encouraged the Navajos to not slaughter them for food.Ba’álílee sold his for a song and told the agent that he would do whatever he wished because they were his.46 Others in his group did likewise.

With a final burst of bravado,he and his followers armed themselves heavily against any kind of intervention.Ba’álílee had never seen soldiers in his part of the reservation and was quite sure that Shelton did not have the nerve or the ability to order them to his location.If he did,however,there would be a fight.47 Shelton,Holley,and the Navajo police had received death threats earlier at different times.Local traders were also put on notice.Four Navajo friends approached Hambleton B.Noel,trader at Teec Nos Pos,and warned him that if trouble arose and soldiers appeared, Ba’álílee would rob and burn the post,kill Noel,and take everything he could on his way to the hinterlands of Navajo Mountain.48 With his armed force in Aneth,Ba’álílee controlled a formidable position not to be taken lightly.

Shelton measured his response to these challenges.Realizing that Ba’álílee had clan relations with another dissident group around Black Mountain who were also opposed to change,Shelton approached the Aneth situation carefully.49 He sent local Navajo leaders and police on a number of occasions to invite Ba’álílee to the agency to discuss the problems.He refused.Shelton also dispatched other messengers and worked through Holley to convince Ba’álílee that he and his followers would benefit from what the government was providing.He strenuously resisted.

To determine what progress was being made Special Agent R.S. Connell and Shelton set off on March 30 to tour the area.Connell’s report is an interesting example of agent-hype,providing a graphic picture of their encounter with the medicine man.The two unescorted agents went to Ba’álílee’s “stronghold”where they found him with thirty-six warriors.

46 Dyk, A Navaho Autobiography,122-26.

47 Nah-ki-Den-Na Testimony,TRTNR,50;Statement of Jimmie Noland,March 19,1909,JLC Collection.

48 Frank McNitt, The Indian Traders (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press,1962),344.

49 In 1905,Agent Reuben Perry,reacting to a rape incident,traveled from Fort Defiance to Winslow, Arizona,where two Navajos met and forced him to sign a pardon for the accused man,Black Water (Tó [ ízhiní).Perry returned to the agency,requested soldiers from Fort Wingate,then marched with Captain Harry O.Williard and K Troop to Chinle to make the arrests.Eventually seven Navajos went to Alcatraz then Fort Huachuca,Arizona,to serve their sentences.Williard is the officer who will arrest Ba’álílee,who will also be sent to Huachuca.The seven men arrested from the Black Mountain area left others behind that resisted encroachment by the government.This region,like southeastern Utah,was isolated from the main population of Navajos.Many of those living in these locations had never known the chastening lesson of Fort Sumner.For a synopsis of the incident,see Bill Acrey, Navajo History,The Land and the People (Shiprock,NM:Department of Curriculum Materials Development Central Consolidated School District No.22,1988),171-75.

Shelton spoke tactfully and encouraged friendly relations. Fortunately,Mr.Shelton and the agency doctor had at one time cured the mother of one of By-lil-le’s warriors,who had a boil on her neck,and who was under By-lil-le’s treatment until she got maggots into her head and face and was a terrible sight even to the Indians.This Indian was the first to take our side,and Shelton,recognizing another Indian whom he had helped,got them over and called all the Indians’attention to the improvements on the roads,etc.,that he had made.Working along this line,we got the band divided,and finally By-lil-le had only three left on his side and then I went after By-lil-le rough;told him he was sick in the head and proved it to the other Indians. The sweat just rolled off his face,and I thought possibly he would try a gun play,but he stood the truth as long as he could and then he went off with only two friends following him and the rest of the Indians giving him the laugh;then we had a horse race,and the Indians left with a different feeling toward the Government and the Government’s officials.50

This eyewitness account by Connell flies in the face of every other indication of how Ba’álílee would react in such a situation,but it does indicate the feelings of superiority that at least one agent felt.He summarized his sentiments by saying Ba’álílee and some of his followers,including the Black Mountain group,were on the “edge of the worst district of bronco Indians in the Southwest”and that as long as the government is “slack with these Indians and it does not interfere with their raping,stealing,and depredations upon the friendly Indians,there will be no open hostilities.”51

While Shelton appreciated Connell’s report,he was not fooled.The meeting did not produce the desired effect with Ba’álílee being as troublesome as ever.The agent again sent some of the most influential Indians he could muster to visit Ba’álílee’s camp to quiet the unrest,only to have the medicine man emerge from the brush,demand a fight,and challenge everything the leaders said or offered.While the two groups parleyed, Ba’álílee’s men remained close by shooting pistols and rifles for an intimidating effect.

Holley did not fare much better.He sent word that a Navajo judge and policeman were coming to talk to Ba’álílee,who announced his intent to kill them both.The medicine man arrived at the Aneth Trading Post with thirty-five heavily armed supporters.The judge and policeman never appeared,so Holley staged a horse race for a purse that he generously provided to the winner.Following the contest,the group disbanded.There were still other peacemakers who traveled to Ba’álílee’s camp but had no success.52

Shelton,frustrated at these several attempts,removed his velvet gloves. Realizing that his Navajo police force was woefully outnumbered and unprepared for a confrontation,he fired off a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs on September 18 requesting two troops of cavalry be sent to

50 Connell to Commissioner,April 6,1907,9,ABONI.

51 Ibid.

52 William T.Shelton to Commissioner of Indian Affairs,September 18,1907,11,ABONI;Statement by Holley,n.d.,JLC Collection.

either arrest Ba’álílee or remain in the vicinity of his camp to suppress his activities.He recommended that the soldiers come from Fort Wingate, New Mexico,150 miles away.By October 15,the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,the Secretary of War,the regional Commanding General,and the Commander of Fort Wingate had signed off on the plan.A week later at 8 a.m.,Captain Harry O.Williard with Troops I and K of the 5th Cavalry began their march to southern Utah.53

Williard’s force,comprised of four officers,seventy-four enlisted men,a surgeon with two medics,and three Indian scouts arrived at Shiprock four days later.The next morning,October 27,the force moved again before word could be spread amongst the Navajos that the military was present. Shelton and Williard devised a plan that capitalized on speed of movement, secrecy,and a night march,to decrease the probability of detection.Shelton let slip a rumor that the troops were in the area to control the unruly Utes and Paiutes in Bluff,masking the real intent.54 All excess baggage remained at the agency.The quartermaster issued each man one hundred rounds of rifle ammunition and twenty rounds for his revolver.Wagons loaded with six days of rations and additional equipment rumbled toward their first stop at the Four Corners Trading Post,estimated by Williard as thirty-two miles distant.55 The cavalry accompanied them on the first leg of the journey.

At this point,a basic understanding of places and distances is helpful. Many of these historic locations are no longer identified on maps.Using estimates given by Shelton and Williard,one gets a sense of the route taken and sites encountered.The road from Shiprock was an improved dirt road, having been built by Navajo labor.The first stop along the route was at Charles Fritz’s Four Corners Trading Post,a rock structure on the north bank of the San Juan River.Approximately ten miles down the road and midway between the Four Corners and Aneth posts,sat another trading post run by M.R.Butler.56 From there the road continued roughly three and a half miles downstream to the vicinity of Ba’álílee ’s camp which was then four miles to the Aneth Trading Post run by J.A.Hefferman.The Government Station,recently built by Holley,lay on the flood plain below

53 Shelton to Commissioner,September 18,1907,12,ABONI;Adjutant General to Commanding General,Department of Colorado,October 15,1907,13-14,ABONI.

54 Correll,, Bai-a-lil-le,20.

55 Unless otherwise noted,the information concerning the movement and attack on Ba’álílee’s camp is taken from Captain Harry O.Williard’s report to the Adjutant General,Headquarters Department Colorado,October 30,1907,14-20,ABONI.

56 The post was most likely located on the flood plain at the mouth of Marble Wash and along the San Juan River.On a 1903 map located in the Wetherill—Grand Gulch Archives,Edge of the Cedars Museum,Blanding,Utah,the old road from the Four Corners Post to Aneth is shown following the river on its north side.Mid point is a trading post called Berlin.This is most likely the post operated by a man named Spencer as well as where M.R.Butler traded at the time of the Ba’álílee conflict.The site is now called Burned House (Kin Díílidí) by the Navajo.Mary Jay in an interview with the author said “A trader named Silver (Béésh[igai) used to live there until he got mad at some people who threw him out.This store was located by the river below the gray hill.”Florence Begay noted that the Utes used to trade there, too.

the post.The road continued to follow the general course of the river along the north side to Montezuma Creek,ten miles away, thence through the washes and over the rolling hills to Bluff.

This two-and-a-half mile long flood plain is the site of Ba’álílee’s camp.The stand of cottonwood trees on the right is its approximate location,the plateau in the center is where many Navajo women and children fled during the attack,and to the left is Rough CanyonWash.

Ba’álílee’s camp sat in a sandy flood plain extending approximately two-and-a-half miles on the south side of the river.57 Two washes— the larger being Among the Rocks (Tsé Bitah—on today’s map—Tsitah) and the smaller Rough Canyon (Tségi Hóchx ==’jí)— feed onto this flat where groves of cottonwood trees grew interspersed along the banks.58 Both canyons wend their way south, away from the river. Large surrounding hills create a cove-like space known as A Place Reserved or Set Aside (T’áásahdii Náhásdoon).To the north of this flat,the San Juan River flows against the base of a hill channeling access.It received the title of “Close against the Rock”(Tsé Nitah).Over a dozen hogans,corrals, agricultural fields,irrigation ditches,and heavy log fences around two of the larger camps sat against a backdrop of rough ridges and boulder strewn hills.One of Ba’álílee’s wives had a hogan on the north side of the river near a ford opposite the main camp.59

57 Today the flood plain is covered with tamarisk and has been scoured by the San Juan River during the past years so that nothing remains of its historic buildings The entire flood plain bench is now known as “Soldier Crossing,”coming from the Ba’álílee incident.

58 Tségi Hochx==’jí is a difficult term to translate.The first word means a narrow canyon that is a defile through high rock walls.The second term means evil,but in this case such rough terrain that it is very difficult to pass over.In English,one might say,“It is a devil of a canyon to pass through.”James Benally conversation with author,November 19,2007.

59 As one travels downstream there is a collection of ruins atop a mesa and along the bank which is called Scattered Anasazi Remains (Bits’iil).Opposite Aneth is the prominent Tall Mountain (Dzi [ Ninééz) sitting on the south side of the river.Leading to its plateau-like top with its truncated appearance,is Reclining Rock (Tsé Biyaají),a long ridge that inclines from the flood plain.Baxter Benally conversation with author,September 24,2007;Florence Norton interview with author,March 6,1991;Mary Jay interview with author,February 27,1991;Isabel Lee interview with author,February 13,1991,all transcripts in possession of author.North of this mountain lies Aneth,called at this time,The One with an Open Mouth,having been named after a trader.Howard Ray Antes was the first to apply the name Aneth,a Hebrew word meaning “The Answer”,in 1895.There were other Navajo names given to Aneth and Montezuma Creek,many of which are tied to traders operating there at the time.It is not clear if One with an Open Mouth refers to Holley or Hefferman or another person.

Ba’álílee’s camp was large,with relatives living in or near his home.He enjoyed a log and a stone house as well as a number of hogans next to his fields that were serviced by an irrigation ditch.There was also a “medicine lodge”that was perhaps a male hogan in which he performed ceremonies.60 Around his camp and sectioning off parts within was a heavy log fence that kept his livestock out of the gardens,confining them to the corrals where they belonged.

So it was here,that October night,following the healing of a man sickened by witchcraft,that Ba’álílee rested peacefully.The month of October, in Navajo is Gh 22j8’,which means more than “parting of the seasons”or “back to back.”When the Holy Beings created the twelve months—six of summer and six of winter—Coyote the Trickster spoke up,reserving October,the first winter month,for himself.Gh 22j8’fills the space between the ending of one way (summer planting,harvest,and ceremonies) and the beginning of something new (winter activities and ceremonies).61 It is a time of change,being both summer and winter and with them comes confusion.Ba’álílee’s life this October soon experienced confusion and change on a scale he had not felt possible.

Shelton,his police,and a contingent of Navajo leaders,reached the Four Corners Trading Post before the military force arrived.There Shelton had any local Navajos secured until the next morning at 11 a.m.Security and surprise were paramount.Among those detained was Sisco,one of Ba’álílee’s followers and a persistent troublemaker.(He remained in custody and eventually joined the group that was sent to jail.) Shelton ate lunch then moved on to Aneth to determine the exact location of Ba’álílee’s camp.According to the plan developed earlier,he would inform Williard as to the medicine man’s whereabouts,but if he could not,the soldiers were to proceed on their own to arrest Ba’álílee.The captain arrived in the afternoon,shortly after Shelton had departed.Williard and Fritz discussed the situation at Ba’álílee’s camp,agreed that a night march offered the greatest chance of surprise,and felt that a direct assault rather than a diversion through Aneth would net the best results.At 1:30 a.m.on October 28,the command awakened its soldiers,who ate a hurried breakfast,quietly saddled their horses,and started down the road under the light of a half moon. Navajo police and headmen took the lead.The logistical trains remained behind with orders to break camp at daybreak and move to Aneth.The

60 The difference between a male (hooghan a[ ch’9adeez’3) and female (hooghan nímazí) hogan is determined by the shape of the structure,not who uses it.The male hogan has a passageway that leads into the area where people live.The main space is constructed by using three forked poles that interlock at the top where the smoke hole is located.There is not as much space in the male hogan,due to the conical shape of this tepee-like structure.The female hogan is more prevalent today.It is round,more spacious in height and width,constructed with a cribbed roof,and has a greater seating and storage capacity.Both hogans have doorways that face east.The male hogan,because it was the first to be created by the holy beings,is said to have more efficacy for ceremonial purposes,although either male or female hogans are acceptable for ceremonies.Ba’álílee’s “medicine lodge”could possibly have been a large male hogan.

61 Jim Dandy conversation with author,October 29,2007.

cavalry horses trotted rapidly over the fourteen miles to a spot near Close Against the Rock where the San Juan River was fordable. 62 Known as “Soldier/Police Move Across”(Siláo Ha’naa Niníná),this place was still some distance from Ba’álílee’s camp,but inhabited by a number of Navajo families.Once across the river,the troopers pressed forward,and a half mile from the objective,the formation fanned out to surround Ba’álílee’s hogan.

Dawn was breaking when Williard,Navajo interpreter Robert Martin, and some of the soldiers rushed inside the hogan.Ba’álílee,Polly (also known as The Man from Spreading Water Who is Tall—Tó Háálíinii Nééz)—a staunch supporter—and a third man stumbled to their feet.A scuffle ensued with increasing numbers of soldiers piling into the fray. Several women,a child,and a sick man avoided involvement,but in Williard’s words,“The Indians strenuously resisted arrest and capture to such a degree that it was necessary to use considerable force before they were overcome,secured,and handcuffed.”63 Navajo accounts verify this statement but focus on different aspects.Old Mexican reported that once the soldiers took Ba’álílee outside,he refused to stop growling like a bear. “They tried to make him stop,but he wouldn’t,so one of the soldiers took his six-shooter and hit him over the head with it three times and knocked him cold.They then tied him up.He was covered with blood.”64 Polly was able to knock down three soldiers before they subdued him.65 According to Son of Red House Clansman Ba’álílee’s medicine pouch had been carelessly discarded and “Rattles and feathers and many other things were lying scattered out there.”66

By now,people in the community were gathering.Surrounded by relatives’camps,Ba’álílee was sure to draw assistance.Some came with weapons,others armed only with curiosity,but Williard took no chances; he arrested everyone and “all resisted.”Finding eight hogans in Ba’álílee’s camp alone and other Navajo homes spread over a larger area than he had planned,the captain directed Martin,the Indian police,and Troop I to secure the more distant parts of the objective.Within minutes gunfire erupted in their direction.Little Warrior (Naabaahii Yázhí) also known as “Smarty,”Ba’álílee’s son-in-law,opened fire and received a shot through the torso.Although the soldiers dressed his wounds,by noon the next day,he was dead.J.A.Hefferman,the trader,buried him in a shallow grave where he fell. 67 A detachment from Troop K spurred their horses toward the sound of firing,followed in a short while by Williard,who had remained behind to insure all the prisoners were secured.The shooting lasted for only a few more minutes,then silence.On his way to Troop I,the captain

62 Lee interview.

63 Williard to the Adjutant General,October 30,1907,16,ABONI.

64 Dyk, A Navaho Autobiography,131.

65 Ibid.,132.

66 Son of Red House Clansman,35.

67 Ba’álílee’s Wife Testimony,April 22,1908,19-20,TRTNR;J.A.Hefferman Testimony,April 22,1908, 32,TRTNR.

heard a cry for help and dispatched soldiers to investigate.They found the first sergeant afoot,without his rifle which had disappeared on his wounded horse that had been shot out from under him.The Indian assailant,Little Wet One (Dit [éé’ii Yazhí) Ba’álílee’s son-in-law,was out of range of the first sergeant’s revolver,but another sergeant drew his rifle and shot the man in the head,killing him instantly.

Ba’álílee’s camp continued to buzz with activity.In some of the hogans women and children wailed while the soldiers were taking their men and moving them across the river.Others fled into the brush nearby,behind the rocks on the hills,or up the slopes,taking what they could with them.68 Soldiers pursued Ba’álílee’s nephew (Ba’álílee Bidá’í) also known as Fuzzy Hat (Ch’ah Dit [oii),a medicine man.He fired two shots from his Winchester,the soldiers returned fire,wounding him in both legs,before he escaped into the brush and fled through Among the Rocks Canyon. Friends provided a horse and helped him over the rough terrain.69 Thus ended the last cavalry charge against hostile Indians in the United States. News spread quickly to the other camps.Florence Norton recalls,“My father was extremely upset over the incident.He planned to encounter and kill the troops who were on their way up there [Aneth].He had a big shotgun ready.But a woman showed up on her horse and pleaded with him and some others to please leave the place before the troops arrived.... He said he had really wanted to shoot all the troops.”70

Williard returned to the ten prisoners,moved his force a half mile to a ford on the river,and sounded assembly.Following roll call,the officers reported that they had met resistance from some of Ba’álílee’s followers. They had opened fire on the police,not noticing the approach of the soldiers.The fifteen- to twenty-minute battle resulted in the death of Little Warrior,Ba’álílee’s son-in-law,and the cessation of all opposition.The command crossed the river with its walking prisoners and by 7:30 a.m. arrived back in Aneth.The soldiers established camp near the trading post, secured the prisoners in a log house,purchased three sheep for lunch,and waited for the supply trains to arrive later that afternoon.

Captain Williard took the opportunity to explain to local Navajos why he had come.

Supernatural Power spoke as though he could lick anybody.We heard that he said that whenever the soldiers came after him they were going to get struck by lightning and be killed all at once.That was the reason I came,to see if he was right.I have been looking forward to being struck by lightning.Now we are going back to see if anybody is going to take a shot at us again.71

He and Shelton then discussed the morning’s events and were pleased with

68 Lee interview;Son of Red House Clansman,35-36.

69 Florence Norton interview;Dyk, A Navaho Autobiography,132;Mikinly Chinee Nez Testimony in TRTNR,45.

70 John Norton interview with author,January 16,1991,transcript in possession of author.

71 Dyk, A Navaho Autobiography,131.

Sketch of Ba’álílee’s camp,drawn the day after the battle.

the results that no soldiers or policemen had been hurt and that resistance was light with few Navajo casualties.That afternoon the two men and part of the force returned to Ba’álílee’s camp to search for the wounded Fuzzy Hat and to allay fears.Williard reported that the Navajos he talked to were relieved of the threat that Ba’álílee had imposed.

Rumor of a night attack faded with the dawn of a new day.At 7:30 a.m. the command rode towards the Four Corners Trading Post with prisoners in tow.The next day they arrived in Shiprock.Word from the field filtered back to the agency.The disgruntled remainder of Ba’álílee’s group insisted that the troops had fired first,there was indiscriminate killing,and property had been wantonly destroyed.Those opposed to Ba’álílee breathed a sigh of relief.Hefferman and Holley reported calm along the San Juan that had not existed for years.

Jim Joe,a Navajo living near Bluff,related that he was supportive of the action and encouraged others to be peaceful.John Wetherill,trader in Kayenta,visited the Navajos in his area after collecting all of the facts of the

incident.He,along with Williard,Shelton,and others were concerned that the Black Mountain Navajos might force a confrontation,but it never materialized.Charles Goodman,a photographer living in Bluff,wanted Williard to bring the troops there and tackle some of the Ute,Paiute,and Navajo issues that community faced;Will Evans,a trader in Farmington, New Mexico,wrote a lengthy article dispelling rumors and false allegations against the military action.72

By the middle of November Williard had received orders to return to Fort Wingate with his prisoners who,in December,continued on to Fort Huachuca,Arizona,to serve their sentences.His recommendation was that Ba’álílee and Polly spend ten years at hard labor and the rest of the group two years.The ten slated for prison were:Ba’álílee,Ba’álílee’s nephew (Ba’álílee Bidá’í),Silversmith (Atsidii),Many Goats Son (T[ízí [ ání Biye’),Mister Coat (Hastiin Éé’tsoh also known as He Who Smells Himself),No Teeth (Biwoo’ádinii),Polly (also known as Big Tangle People Clansman [Ta’neeszahnii Tsoh]),Son of Mexican (Naakaii Biye’),Sisco,and Mele-yon.73 Shelton felt that Mister Coat was too old to withstand the rigors of prison life,so he was released from Fort Wingate to return home.The agent was apparently right.By the time Mister Coat arrived at One with an Open Mouth (Aneth),he was exhausted.(Navajos changed their local name for this settlement,from that of a trader to one that honored the returning elder— Barely Enough Pep to Make It.) In January 1908,the government also released Mele-yon from Fort Huachuca because of his advanced stage of tuberculosis.74

Everyone seemed to be at peace with the settled issue except for Howard Ray Antes,minister of the Navajo Faith Mission in Aneth.He seized upon the opportunity to wage a crusade against Shelton.Why their relationship had deteriorated is not entirely clear:perhaps it was because of the disagreement over building a riprap dam to protect the mission property,perhaps Shelton had lost interest in purchasing this site,perhaps it was a growing misunderstanding over an adopted Navajo boy,or perhaps because Antes received inaccurate information from biased sources.Whatever the reason,the missionary sent vehement letters to H.M.Teller,a senator from Colorado,and the editor of the Denver Post .In his communication,he charged the soldiers with opening fire on “the poor,defenseless,people,” abusing the prisoners,shooting the Indians in the back,destroying crops,

72 James A.Holley to William T.Shelton,November 5,1907;Shelton to Jim Joe,November 7,1907;Joe to Shelton,November 20,1907,JLC Collection;Frances Gillmor and Louisa Wade Wetherill, Traders to the Navajos (Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press,1934),136-38;Charles Goodman to Holley, November 1,1907,JLC Collection;William Evans,“The Actual Situation,” Farmington Enterprise , November 29,1907.

73 Navajos often had more than one name,which explains how the list of the ten men who went to jail differs between eyewitness native speakers.Most of the names presented here are confirmed,but there are still two or three that are best guess or left as found in the historic record.

74 Son of Red House Clansman,37;Commander Thomas telegram to Adjutant General of the Army, January 29,1908,JLC Collection.

stealing corn,scaring the Navajos into the hills,and withdrawing the troops while leaving “the settlers to the mercy of bloodthirsty Indians coming from Cortez.”75

Within six months after the incident,Colonel Hugh L.Scott, Superintendent of the United States Military Academy and investigator for the government,was ordered to Utah to determine the truthfulness of the charges.He arrived in Aneth on April 19,1908,and sent for Antes who was on his farm in McElmo Canyon,Colorado.Two days later,the investigation started in the mission school house with Captain Williard,Agent Shelton, Navajo interpreter Robert Martin,Colonel Scott,and Reverend Antes present.The burden of proof rested with the minister,who first called forth Navajo witnesses.Many of them had trouble understanding what it meant to be sworn in.Antes clarified the procedure through Martin,saying,“Does he [the witness] know God heard what he said and is strong enough to punish him if he told a lie?”which received the reply,“He does not think so.”76 Eventually some of the witnesses understood enough to be acceptable to all concerned;with others,the panel just agreed to let them speak.

Old Mexican told of his experience before the court.He was in the midst of lambing season when a man approached him and his older brother to attend the hearing.Although reticent,he relented and met with “an old man with white hair,dressed up in a uniform with an eagle on his shoulder.”Two Indians,one an Apache,the other a Kiowa,“dressed up all in feathers,”plus five Navajo policemen and Shelton comprised the group.He then commented on how the agent and the missionary argued long and hard,and how he was reluctant to say much of anything about Ba’álílee because he did not know him that well.As far as he was concerned,the matter was already settled.He blurted out a stronger reason when Shelton asked him if he was still afraid of Ba’álílee,to which Old Mexican replied, “I’m afraid of him all right....That’s all I’m going to tell you.No more.”77

Antes then requested the session adjourn to Mancos,Colorado,where a white witness named Oliver lived,but Scott denied the request,saying that this man had been summoned,had not shown up,and so was “unwilling.” The investigation dragged on until almost midnight.The colonel closed with a question to Antes,asking if the missionary had the right to talk to Indians,even if a government agent forbids it.Antes said he had the right to talk to anyone he pleased when his home was off the reservation,and even though a recent boundary change had encompassed his property,it did not change this right.Scott disagreed and believed that the whole problem resulted from this type of attitude.

The following day Williard and Shelton built their defense.For nine

75 Court Proceedings,29,TRTNR.

76 Ibid.,11.

77 Dyk, Autobiography,133-34.

hours the two men systematically destroyed the allegations brought against them and proved that previous Indian testimony was inconsistent and inaccurate.Williard summarized his position in a detailed statement showing the absurdity of the claims that the Navajos carried high powered rifles but supposedly had no ammunition;that one of Antes’s witnesses was too sleepy to recall certain details,but could conveniently recount specific information when necessary;that Indians had been shot in the back;that the soldiers had not taken steps to bury the dead;that his men stole things; and that the crops,purportedly destroyed during the fight,had not already been harvested.Summarizing his feelings,Williard spat out,“that those statements made by him [Antes] were willfully and deliberately false and malicious,groundless,based on hearsay of the flimsiest character,without an iota of truth. ...[and that Williard] had been made the butt and scapegoat of a personal feeling of animosity between Mr.Shelton and Mr. Holley on the one hand and the Reverend Mr.Antes on the other....”78

The captain next offered testimony that shed surprising light on attitudes concerning the minister.He asserted that he had made an inquiry as to Antes’s character “all the way from Gallup,New Mexico,to Aneth,Utah, and failed to develop one person who spoke well of him.”Dr.W.F.Fish, whose statement Antes cited as part of his defense,said that he had been misrepresented.Even after the doctor made clear the misunderstanding of events,the minister retorted,“…`but I will make them a whole lot of trouble anyhow;I will write every paper and magazine in the country.’He said something about doing all he could to get Shelton and Holley fired.”79 Fish also caught Antes lying about a supposed police force coming to arrest the minister.

The reverend was defeated.Lack of evidence disproved his charges,his witnesses had either not testified or were shown unreliable,and his motives were questionable.Rather than struggle further,he tried to back out gracefully,scraping together as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. Using the guise of protecting his witnesses from the ravages of an irate Shelton,Antes chose “to suffer the humiliation of falling down on this prosecution personally rather than let any injury come to them [i.e., witnesses].”80

Meanwhile,still in prison,Ba’álílee garnered more attention.The Indian Rights Association (IRA) sprang to his defense once Antes’s efforts died, arguing that the use of troops was illegal,that the Indians were arrested for questionable crimes,and that they had not been properly charged. 81 The Commissioner of Indian Affairs,Francis E.Leupp,sustained direct attack for

78 Court Proceedings,31,TRTNR.

79 Ibid.,40-41.

80 Ibid.,24-25.

81 For an excellent review of the political fracas surrounding the Ba’álílee incident,the Indian Office, and the Indian Rights Association,see Donald L.Parman,“The ‘Big Stick’in Indian Affairs,The Bai-a-lille Incident in 1909,” Arizona and the West 20 (Fall 1978):343-60.

Opposing forces after the“brawl.” Standing fifth from left,Robert Martin (interpreter),sixth—Agent WilliamT.Shelton (with badge), seventh—Captain Harry O. Williard.Seated fourth from left— Ba’álílee with Polly immediately to his right.

his handling of the situation and accepted the recommendation of Captain Williard in determining the jail sentences.Part of his defense is found in an article he penned entitled “Law or No Law in Indian Administration.”In it he argued that the incident was well handled and that there were not a lot of options in dealing with the recalcitrant medicine man.82 The IRA fought back and managed to have the case tried before the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court.They argued that an Indian person has a right to a fair trial,the government overstepped its legal bounds,the prisoners were unfairly incarcerated,and they should be freed. On February 4,1909,the government released six of the eight prisoners, and on March 20,1909,the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously voted to return Ba’álílee and Polly to the reservation.The federal government abandoned the appeal process and in June ordered a noncommissioned officer to escort the two Navajos to Shiprock where they were released to go home.83

Ba’álílee returned a changed man.He continued with his medicine practice,but there was no more head-butting with Shelton.Two years later, the medicine man was dead,drowned when crossing the San Juan River on his way to conduct a ceremony.Even in death,he attracted controversy.He had become embroiled in a fracas with a man named Cream Colored Horses (Bi [99 ’Yisht [ izhii).Ba’álílee resorted to his previous tactics

82 Francis E.Leupp,“‘Law or No Law’In Indian Administration,” The Outlook,January 30,1909:26163.

83 Interior Department to Secretary of War,June 25,1909,JLC Collection.

saying,“You are going to be struck by lightning.I have mastered witchcraft and am filled with it up to here (gesturing to his throat),and according to this witchcraft you are going to be struck by lightning.”Cream Colored Horses replied,“You aren’t in command of lightning.You,Ba’álílee,are going to be swallowed by a big snake,and I place the San Juan River as the Big Snake.”84

Accounts vary as to exactly what happened next.In May 1911,when the river ran exceptionally high even for flood stage,he crossed with another man,He Hunted It near Those Rocks (Tsét’ah Neiskah).The boat capsized,the other man swam to shore,but Ba’álílee,wearing his cartridge belts and pistol,never surfaced.Some say that he was chanting a witchcraft song as he crossed,but family members believe he was not involved in it. Some say that his body was never found,others testify it washed ashore at Rock Nose (Tsé Ach 99h) downstream.“There was a little bit of him showing and two buzzards were there.They [Navajo searchers] got him out and washed him and took him back.”85

Jane Byalily Silas,his granddaughter who was born the night before the attack,believes her grandfather has been falsely accused of practicing witchcraft.Her family tells of stories shared by those captured by the government.For instance,the troops challenged Ba’álílee to use his powerful songs.At one point,“he prayed for rain and it rained until the camp was nearly washed out;he had to pray again to stop it.Moving on to another camp,he was asked to pray for a bear to come to it.He prayed,and sure enough,a bear showed up.Ba’álílee asked one of the white men to wrestle the animal,but he was afraid.The soldiers paid Ba’álílee to call it off.”86 After performing other miracles,the troops let him go because they realized “the natives truly had a powerful God.”Another person told of Ba’álílee’s resistance against government programs and Shelton.When the cavalry pursued the medicine man and his people,he used his powers to part the rain swollen river so that his followers could safely cross.87 These stories,and others,say as much about the people sharing them as they do of the man.

What can be learned from events one hundred years ago? There is no missing the rapidity of cultural change that challenged traditional Navajo beliefs and practices.When physical powers overwhelm,spiritual solutions become an obtainable means to address challenges.Ba’álílee was adept at playing upon the deeply religious nature of the Navajo people to resist

84 Cited in Correll, Bai-a-lil-le,47.The San Juan River has many teachings and specific sites that are connected to Big Snake,a powerful Navajo deity who participated with other holy beings during the creation of this world.He is not a benevolent god,but rather one connected with protection and conflict.

85 Silas interview;Mary Blueyes interview with author,March 20,1992,transcript in possession of author;Florence Begay;Martha Nez interview with author,August 10,1988,transcript in possession of author;John Joe Begay interview with author,September 18,1990,transcript in possession of author.

86 Silas interview.

87 Jerrold E.Levy, In the Beginning,The Navajo Genesis (Los Angeles:University of California Press, 1998),229-30.

both physically and spiritually.How much of it was self-serving or justified remains for the reader to determine.But Holley,who spoke Navajo,reported that “Ba’álílee repeatedly had told his people,‘We are Navajos;we are Navajos;we want nothing to do with the agent,the Government,or the whites but want to stay away from them;’but to continue all their old Indian customs.”88 It was an uphill climb that the tribe is still addressing today—how does one maintain the values of traditional culture in a sea of contemporary change.

Shelton,on the other hand,represented the Office of Indian Affairs during the Progressive Era.When he bemoaned Ba’álílee’s presence and negative impact upon the Indians trying to follow the agency’s lead, Shelton viewed the struggle in terms of diametrically opposing forces— there was no gray.The conflict was “between the two classes,the progressive and the unprogressive”and for the latter “something more than kind talk and persuasion would have to be used.” 89 It was after the troops returned to Fort Wingate that the government increasingly intensified making changes:the regulation of trading posts,further dependence on federally sponsored Navajo government,more programs to assist in agriculture and livestock production,additional boarding schools with greater enrollments,oil and mineral exploration,the nascence of the wage economy,heightened desire for consumer goods—the list goes on.Shelton took the first step of introducing change in an isolated and heretofore ignored area of the vast Navajo reservation.Conflict soon arose.

There is another way to look at this struggle.Historically,Aneth has seemed to attract people with strong personalities.Henry Mitchell, Ba’álílee,his followers,William Shelton,Captain Williard,James Holley, Howard Ray Antes,and others were distinct in their approaches and did not hesitate to speak their minds.In an area where people did not have many restrictions placed on them,it had not been necessary for them to feel bits in their mouths and the pull of restrictive reins.Once enforcement of change began,personalities took over,playing prominent roles in issue resolution.Shelton wanted peace and quiet,Ba’álílee thrived on confrontation.His power came from magnifying conflict and enlisting,either willingly or otherwise,his followers to oppose the government.Shelton refused to accept intimidation and drew the line.Mexican Man (Naakaii Diné),a resident of Aneth,summarized the situation succinctly when he testified that “There was too much noise in that bunch [Ba’álílee] across the river.”90 Shelton quieted it.

88 Holley Testimony,47,TRTNR.

89 Shelton to Commissioner,8,ABONI.

90 Nah-ki-Den-na (Naakaii Diné) Testimony,50,TRTNR.

Health Care in Millard County: The Medical Career of Myron E.Bird

ByDAVID A. HALES AND DOROTHY BIRD KILLPACK

Night has fallen on the small rural community in west Millard County and four people have gathered in a home including Myron E.Bird,M.D.,attending physician;a neighbor woman who is there to assist in the administering of ether;the mother who is about to deliver her baby;and the father who is holding the kerosene lamp to provide light for the room.Dr.Bird recalled,“The father was holding the lamp over my shoulder and the baby was almost there when I noticed the light swaying.The father fainted and,when he fell,the lamp broke and set the floor afire.There I was delivering the baby with one hand,waving the woman with the ether can away with the other hand,and trying to stamp out a fire with my feet.”1 Fortunately,the ether failed to explode,the fire was quickly controlled,the father regained consciousness,the mother recovered,and a healthy baby was

Myron Bird in hisWorldWar I Uniform 1917-1918.

David A.Hales is a librarian,Westminster College,Salt Lake City.He was delivered by Dr.M.E .Bird in Oak City,Utah,at the home of his maternal grandparents,Abe Roper and Rachel Rawlinson Roper.His aunt,Mable Roper Schick,was the attending nurse.She worked for Dr.Bird in the Delta Hospital for several years.Dorothy Bird Killpack is the daughter of Dr.M.E.and Romania Bird.She graduated from the LDS Hospital School of Nursing and assisted her parents at the Delta Hospital for many years.The authors wish to thank Michele Swaner for her editorial assistance.

1 Steve Hale,“A-`Bird’-of a Team,” Utah Medical Bulletin, March 1974,2.

ALL PHOTOGRAPHSCOURTESYOFDOROTHYBIRDKILLPACK

delivered into the world without complications.This is one of many experiences Dr.Bird had while providing medical care and community service to the people of west Millard County,Utah,for more than fifty years.

In the early days of his practice,Dr.Bird delivered most babies in the homes of his patients—as many as nine during an unusual twenty-fourhour period.As Dr.Bird recalled,“Two were in Oak City,two were in what we called South Tract,two were in the hospital in Delta,and the others were born at Sutherland and Sunflower,and all those places are several miles apart.”The exhausted Dr.Bird arrived home about 9:00 a.m.on a Sunday morning after the deliveries just in time to receive an anxious telephone call from someone asking if he was going to sing with a quartet at a church meeting.Dr.Bird responded,“Nope! I just had nine babies and I’m going to bed!”2

Myron Evans Bird was born in Manti,Utah,on June 25,1896,the last of the nine children born to Charles Heber Bird and Alice Ann Evans Bird. His father worked as a freighter until his leg was amputated due to complications resulting from a skating accident when he was a teenager.Charles then took dental instruction and supervised training sessions from a dentist traveling through the area and from two dentists in Salt Lake City before hanging out his own shingle.During the summer months,young Myron helped his father with his dental practice,loading the dental chair in the wagon and traveling with his father visiting the small central Utah rural towns along present Highway 89.3

Myron remembered with fondness the many times his entire family would gather around the old piano in the parlor and sing together for hours.Such sessions helped establish a strong bond between Myron and his brothers and sisters,which lasted throughout their lives.The family singing sessions also established his understanding of and love for music.4

Myron received his early education in Manti.When he was in the eighth grade,he developed appendicitis.At that time appendicitis was difficult to diagnose and required major surgery.When his appendix ruptured,he was transported to Salt Lake City for emergency surgery on the snail-paced Sanpete train that stopped at every community.According to the then proper medical procedure,a patient was not allowed to have any food for ten days following the surgery,and then they were to have a little gruel and soup for a few days,gradually building to larger amounts and more substantial meals.Following Myron’s surgery,a nurse mixed the dietary orders and brought Myron a tray filled with everything from soup to nuts. Famished,Myron thought it was providence and over-ate.By nightfall he had developed a full-blown case of peritonitis.“I was in the most severe

2 Ibid.,3.

3 Dorothy Bird Killpack, A Man of Great Service:Dr.Myron Evans Bird (Delta:n.p.,1983),2.

4 “Autobiography:Myron Evans Bird,”1959,1;typescript in the possession of Dorothy Bird Killpack, Delta.

pain imaginable and every two minutes for two weeks,when a peristaltic wave tried to force stool past a complete stoppage in my small bowel,I would scream until I about emptied the L.D.S.Hospital.”5

For two weeks the attending doctors did not understand why Myron was not dead.The preservation of Myron’s life came when a humble orderly stepped into the room where Myron was lying semiconscious with his mother holding his hand and asked:“Sister Bird,I feel I must give your son a blessing.Do you mind?”According to his mother,Alice Ann,the orderly gave Myron an impressive blessing in which he said,“You will not die.You will live to be a healer of men.”6 Later that evening,Myron felt a jerk throughout his entire body.He opened his eyes and asked for a drink of water.In time he regained his health.

After high school in Sanpete County,Myron attended LDS Business College in Salt Lake City where he became highly proficient,typing ninety words a minute,and where he studied bookkeeping.While attending school,he worked part-time operating an elevator at the Hotel Utah and delivering telegrams for Western Union.The Western Union job also included delivering dinners from local cafes to whoever called requesting a meal.He often delivered dinner trays,balancing them on his head while riding his bike.Most of the dinner clients were local madams.7

After graduating from the LDS Business College,Myron found employment as a bookkeeper in a granite quarry in Little Cottonwood Canyon. When World War I broke out in Europe,Myron volunteered for military service.Before he reported for duty on Monday,August 5,1917,he spent his last few days of civilian life in Manti with his family and friends.He spent most of the time courting Romania Westenskow.

Romania,born January 6,1898,was the oldest of the six children born to Peter Westenskow and Frances Ann Bench Westenskow.She and Myron had known each other all their lives and during his short visit home they decided to marry.The marriage ceremony was hurried.Sunday morning, August 4,was conference in Ephraim for the members of the Sanpete Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.They wanted their bishop to perform the marriage,and word was sent to Ephraim for him to return during the break between sessions of the conference.Romania and Myron were married at the Westenskow home and then caught the evening train to Salt Lake City.

The following Monday morning Myron was inducted into the U.S. Army,145th Field Artillery,where he was assigned to play the tuba in the unit band and to his regiment’s first-aid unit.He was sent to Camp Kearny near LaJolla,California,for training where Romania joined him two months later.During the next few months,they rented various places

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Killpack, A Man of Great Service, 2.

around the area.Myron was able to spend most weekends with Romania.8

In July 1918,the 145th Field Artillery Band was detailed to make a trip to Utah to perform concerts in various towns to raise money to support the war.Romania,who was pregnant with their first child,traveled with him.While in Utah they were sealed in the Manti LDS temple.

The Charles Heber Bird Family. This photograph was taken in Manti in November 1898.Two year-old Myron is standing between his mother,Alice Ann Evans and his father,Charles Heber Bird who are seated.Other family members include—back row,left to right,Harriet,Blanche, Charles,and Charlotte.Front row, Kenneth,Myron,Heber,and Ephia.

A month later Myron crossed the country on a troop train to New York where he and hundreds of other American soldiers boarded ship and sailed first to England,then to France,where the war was raging.9 Myron was stationed at Base Hospital No.6,just east of Bordeaux.There he wrote, “This is a mighty fine camp,good straw ticks and wooden bunks,some relief from what we have had since we left the U.S.A.There is a hot and cold shower bath,oh what bliss,we have not seen one on this side of the pond until this.The eats are fine too and a mess hall to eat in.”10

8

“Autobiography,”2, 9 Ibid.

10 Myron Bird.“Diary Written While in France WW I”,2.Transcribed and in the possession of Dorothy Bird Killpack,Delta,Utah.

His regiment was a reserve first-aid unit,which assisted wounded troops and soldiers suffering from the Spanish influenza epidemic.On Wednesday, September 25,1918,he wrote,“We went down and carried stretchers and believe me it is some job.We worked from midnight until 4:30 a.m. and handled 450 patients.Most of them were sick with influenza and pneumonia.One of them had died and I had the experience of helping lay out my second stiff in my life.They were passing away and being buried so fast that sometimes they were buried only in blankets without coffins.”11 Myron was also stricken with the deadly flu but again his life was spared and he recovered.12

It is estimated the five years of grinding war killed approximately twenty million people while worldwide twenty to fifty million people died from the Spanish flu.Deaths among Utah soldiers during World War I totaled 633—of those 219 died in combat and 414 by disease including the flu.13

Myron’s regiment was preparing to rotate to the front lines when the armistice was signed on November 11,1918.His regiment was then sent to Bassens,France,where they worked as dock hands on the wharves at Gradingnon on the Bay of Biscay.On Christmas Eve they boarded a ship for the United States and home.“I will never forget the time we had trying to navigate our way out of the bay,which was heavily mined….The wind was blowing a gale and the boat almost laying on its side.”14 Myron finally arrived safely in New York Harbor on January 4,1919.There he and the others were deloused and spent two days in quarantine before resuming their journey home.

Prior to leaving France,Myron did receive some good news.“We arrived at camp just at supper time and you can imagine my delight at receiving a cablegram from my wife telling of the birth of my son.The cable had been delayed several days in Paris and had been held in camp for me for sometime so it was nearly a month old when I received it but it was mighty welcome news never-the-less.”15

After the war,Myron and Romania settled down in Salt Lake City where he worked for a short time as an auditor for the LDS church and then for Mount Nebo Marble Company.For a brief time he and his brother Heber operated a small grocery store on Third Avenue just east of F Street.The business,however,was not successful.A barber,whose shop was in the same building as the store,convinced Myron that he was not cut out to be a merchant and suggested that he turn his energy to the study of medicine.

As a twenty-six year-old father of two children and afflicted with

11 Ibid.. 12 “Autobiography,”2. 13 Noble E.Warrum, Utah in the World War (Salt Lake City:Utah State Council of Defense,1924),160. 14 “Autobiography,”2. 15 Bird,Diary,3.

hemorrhaging ulcers,he was able to obtain funding and enrolled in the University of Utah.Romania made hats and took in sewing providing much needed income.Myron graduated from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree on June 9,1925,with anatomy as his major and mathematics and music as minors. 16 Myron and his family then moved to Chicago,where he enrolled in the University of Illinois Medical School. He worked part-time selling shoes at Marshall Fields Department Store while Romania cared for boarders and continued to make hats and take in sewing.Times were lean for the young family.Romania’s family in Utah sent the family eggs and butter whenever possible;Myron’s family sent a dollar now and then as well.They managed to survive.While in Chicago they became good friends with other Utah couples,including Herbert and Florence Maw,Scott and Adele Matheson,and Elmo and Rhea Eddington as they all struggled to complete their studies in Chicago.17

Myron graduated in July 1927,and immediately began a residency at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago.After completing his residency he was offered a position in Chicago for three thousand dollars a year—a good salary in those days.However,as originally planned,the family moved back to Salt Lake City,where Myron worked as a general practitioner with Herond N. Sheranian,M.D.in the Murray Hospital.For various reasons,he was not happy in this practice.His brother,Charles William Bird,a dentist, introduced him to Dr.Bernard Smith from Delta,who was looking for a physician to buy his practice and hospital so he could move to California.

Myron and Romania,who was pregnant with their third child,traveled to Delta to look over the situation.Myron was uncertain with the financial situation,but Dr.Smith promised to pay Myron for his assistance on twenty tonsillectomies Smith had scheduled.Myron could then use his pay for the down payment on the practice,hospital,and home.With that settled, Dr.Bird,Romania,and two children,Evan and Dorothy,moved to Delta on February 5,1929.Their third child,Don,was born a month later on March 7.Romania was content.She knew this was the place they were intended to be because she had seen it in a dream.18

Before the arrival of Myron and Romania to Delta,west Millard County farmers had mixed financial success.During and immediately after the Great War,county farmers doubled the number of acres under the plow. The additional land yielded a good quantity of alfalfa seed and sugar beets. Taxes increased and farmers borrowed heavily to buy more land and seed. But both crops required large quantities of water.Added irrigation coupled with poor drainage resulted in much of the farm land becoming water

16 Myron E.Bird,”Story of Dr.M.E..Bird.”In the possession of Dorothy Bird Killpack,Delta,Utah.

17 Killpack, A Man of Great Service, 4.Herbert Maw,Utah’s eighth governor,received a M.A.degree and a J.D.degree from Northwestern University in Chicago.Scott Matheson and Adel Adams Matheson are the parents of Scott Milne Matheson,twelfth governor of Utah.Scott M.was born in Chicago,Illinois,on January 8,1919.Elmo Eddington was a medical doctor who practiced in Lehi for many years.

logged and impregnated with alkali,radically reducing crop yields.To solve this serious problem,local irrigation companies issued bonds to construct expensive drainage ditches even as farm prices dropped dramatically. Coupled with the Great Depression,farmers in Delta and elsewhere experienced a prolonged and serious drought.19

Heavily in debt and with little money in circulation,people in Delta during the Great Depression frequently paid their medical bills with produce,meat,bags of alfalfa seed,and even a thoroughbred race horse.20 Years later Dr.Bird received some payments for his earlier medical services,often with a note apologizing for being so late and also thanking him for not pressing them for the money.21

Soon after moving to Delta,Dr.Bird came to realize that life was hard in this part of the world and that he needed to step outside his medical role to help the area survive and be successful. Romania also understood their unique role and was supportive in their involvement in the community.People of Delta had a lot of confidence in Dr.Bird and his ability to get things done.They elected him to the town board and within two months of his election the town board appointed him mayor when the elected mayor moved away. Shortly after Dr.Bird was appointed mayor,the Delta State Bank closed leaving Delta without funds to operate.However,both Dr.Bird and the city council continued to serve without pay.At the end of his appointment as Mayor,Delta voters elected Dr.Bird as their mayor for a full term.22

As the area’s only doctor during the decade of the 1940s,Dr.Bird saw a broad range of ailments.During a two-month period he attended twenty-five patients with pneumonia,more than two dozen of them were simultaneously afflicted with typhoid fever.He performed countless appendectomies,gall bladder surgeries,hernia repairs,tonsillectomies,and pelvic surgeries.He saw innumerable cases of childhood measles,mumps, and chicken pox,and,of course,set many broken bones.The Bird children were often called to assist in providing the traction for setting bones.One apparently successful method Dr.Bird used to set broken bones was to use

18 Killpack, A Man of Great Service,4,5.

19 Edward Leo Lyman and Linda Newell King. A History of Millard County (Salt Lake City:Utah State Historical Society and Millard County Commission,1999),280-82.

20 Killpack, A Man of Great Service,5.

21 Fifty Years of Practice.Unpublished;in the possession of Dorothy Bird Killpack,Delta,Utah.

Myron Bird at the time of his marriage—August 4,1917.

old window sashes as weights to put fractured legs in traction.23

In the course of his career,he delivered more than five thousand babies and was proud that less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the babies and fewer than six mothers died, due to birthing complications for which medical interventions were not available.24

He also comforted the bereaved.Often,the last request of his patients was for Dr.Bird to speak or sing at their funeral.For many years, he was the only doctor many patients in west Millard County ever knew.It was not unusual,toward the end of his medical career for Dr.Bird to treat four generations of family members.

Once when a sheepherder accidentally shot himself in the palm of his hand with a rifle splintering the bones,Dr.Bird did what he could to fix the splintered hand and suggested that the shepherd see a specialist in Salt Lake City.Years later,the sheepherder confessed that he had never gone to the specialist.“He reached out to grip my hand,”reflected Dr.Bird,“and showed me that the hand that had been injured really worked well.”25 Another time,a patient was brought in with a broken back. Dr.Bird hung the man from the doorframe to put a cast on his back.

Eldon Poulsen,a former Delta resident,recalled a time when his father was operating a new disc with a team of horses on a field in Sugarville. Poulsen’s six-year-old brother,Don,jumped on the disc for a ride but fell and the sharp disc edge sliced through his foot,making a diagonal cut between the heel and the ankle bone that nearly severed the boy’s heel.The family rushed him to a doctor in Delta located about fifteen miles away. The doctor there said,“The only thing I can do is cut the heel off and he will be a cripple for the rest of his life.”Poulsen remembered that his dad said,“No! Not by a damn sight.We will go see another doctor.” 26 The senior Poulsen took little Don to Dr.Bird,who said since there were no broken bones he would try and save the foot.“He put Don out and worked for over four hours sewing and repairing the foot.He put over 132 stitches in the foot to put it back together.They kept Don in the hospital

22 Killpack, A Man of Great Service, 6. 23 Hale,“A-“Bird”-of a Team,”4.

24 “Autobiography,”4.

25 Killpack, A Man of Great Service, 6.

26 Eldon Poulsen,“A Tribute to a Great Man,Doctor M.E.Bird,” Millard County Chronicle Progress, October 9,2003.

Romania Westenskow Bird at the time of her marriage.

for a couple of days,and then let him come home.Dr Bird taught mom how to care for the injury and after a few weeks Don healed up and was as good as new....He never suffered from a limp until he was 65.”27

On another occasion he saved two small grandchildren of Mrs.Clarence Prestwich,Michael and Daryl Tureson.Mrs.Prestwich had left the house to feed the chickens and when she returned the children had opened a bottle of Black Leaf “40”,an insecticide.One boy had stains of the poison around his mouth.While she was wondering what to do one boy toppled over on the floor and passed out from the poison.She rushed them to Dr.Bird who worked on one of the children while his nurse,Shirley Harris,worked on the other clearing their stomachs with stomach pumps.The quick action of Mrs.Prestwich and the immediate attention the two boys received at the hands of Dr.Bird and Shirley Harris saved the boys,both eventually fully recovered.28

Dr.Bird went beyond the call of duty to help others.Barbara Ashby recalled that,when her sister’s husband died of a heart attack,Dr.Bird called Barbara at her home to tell her of the death and sent her to be with her sister so she wouldn’t be alone.29

Lois M.Maxfield remembered that during the Great Depression,Dr. Bird “dispensed much needed hope and encouragement along with the medicine....Dr.Bird was a man who made a great difference in the rough years!”30 When her little daughter pushed a chair to the coal range and tipped a pan of hot water over herself,“Dr.Bird came as soon as we notified him and began treating her severe burns.He came daily to dress her wounds.She did not scar as a result of this treatment.”31

He was wonderful with children and would take the time to examine their dolls,if they had one with them.When he was dictating his hospital records,he would always finish with a joke.When talking to a boys’health class at school,someone asked,“Can you get syphilis from a toilet seat?” Dr.Bird answered:“I think that would be a crazy place to take a girl.”32

During the Great Depression the Works Progress Administration (WPA) established three camps in the Delta area.As mayor,Dr.Bird was influential in getting WPA funds for a recreation hall (later called the Palomar),and an adjacent ball park.These facilities were the center for church,school and community activities for many years and are still in use.The energetic camp workers did an impressive range of other much needed projects such as rainwater catchments,erosion repair,dead tree removal,road grading, camp-site construction in the canyons,and sidewalks and street lights

27 Ibid.

28

“Infants Swallow Poison:Saved After 3 Hours,” Millard County Chronicle,May 11,1944.

29 Dorothy Bird Killpack,Letter to David Hales,June 15,2006.

30 Lois Maxfield,“A Few Steps of my Journey:An Autobiographic Account of the Life of Lois Evelyn Melville Maxfield,”(2006).Possession of Dorothy Bird Killpack.

31 Ibid.

32 Dorothy Bird Killpack to David Hales,June 15,2006.

installation.The government supplied doctors for the three camps,but the Delta hospital was the only hospital in the western portion of Millard County that could handle major medical problems and surgeries.The influx of new patients stretched the six-bed hospital to the limit.Often patients were placed on cots in the hallways;and as soon as surgeries were completed cots were placed in the operating room.

During World War II,the federal government built Topaz,a Japanese American internment camp,sixteen miles northwest of Delta.At the time,about four thousand people lived in west Millard County.The population of Topaz soon reached 8,130,making it the fifth-largest city in Utah.Early in its existence,the internment camp was without any doctors or hospital and,as a result,Dr.Bird’s practice tripled. Often the Delta hospital became too crowded with patients.Examining tables were used as patient beds and cots were put in the halls for the same purpose.34 Shorthanded,Dr.Bird hired a young Japanese woman to help with the medical work and stated that she was “the most efficient employee we ever had.”35 He believed that hiring her built rapport between him and the people interned at Topaz.

Dr.R.H.Merrill from the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City came to Delta once a month to do eye surgery.Eventually,the federal government provided doctors and built a hospital at Topaz.The camp hospital’s facilities and supplies were far superior to those that Dr.Bird offered in Delta.

Dr.Bird spent time with his patients to explain their medical problems and to listen to their concerns.He believed listening was a large part of patient care.He was known as being “the most patient and impatient man alive.”He would listen to his patients for hours,even when the waiting room was filled with other patients.This greatly annoyed Romania.

33 Lyman and King, A History of Millard County, 286-87.

34 Leonard J.Arrington: The Price of Prejudice:The Japanese-American Relocation Center in Utah during World War II,2nd ed. (Delta:Topaz Museum,1997),17;and Killpack, A Man of Great Service, 7.Although Japanese American patients were allowed in the hospital,local prejudice during World War II prevented serving deceased residents in the same mortuary.Nickle Mortuary,which handled burial arrangements for Topaz residents,built a small facility fifty feet from the main building where the morticians prepared the Topaz residents for burial.Kathy Walker.“Four Generations Provide Services as Funeral Directors,” Millard County Progress, January 10,2002.

35 Hale,“A –“Bird”-of a Team,”5.

Doctor Bird’s office and hospital in Delta.

However,when he wanted something done, it had to be done immediately.

The Bird Residence in Delta at 108 South 200 West was built in 1915.

During his career,Dr.Bird developed a practice of grouping elective surgeries in surrounding communities for greater efficiency.For example,he would travel to Oak City,to perform tonsillectomies on a group of children usually with the kitchen of a local family serving as his operating theater.Mirrors were positioned to direct light from kerosene lanterns to the operating (kitchen) table.As his practice became more established,he required patients to come to the hospital in Delta.

He was also creative and innovative in other ways.He devised a bed for women in labor:the patient used a belt to hold her legs aloft.For those patients who had pneumonia,he rigged up a system that bubbled oxygen through a flask of water to keep the patients’airways from becoming desiccated. 36 To control a diarrhea outbreak at Topaz,he put together ingredients in a concoction so effective that he used it until the end of his practice.He also developed a salve for burns and a prescription for ulcers.

For many years,Dr.Bird gave student athletes free physicals and was supportive of all school and community events.He also started the first school immunization program in the Delta area,traveling to the seven different schools and giving the shots himself without pay.He wanted to make sure that those who could not afford the immunizations would be able to receive them anyway.

The development of pharmaceuticals greatly enhanced medical treatment.Dr.Bird recalled in an interview in 1983 that the greatest progress that impacted his medical practice was the number of new drugs that became available.“When I first started practicing medicine,there were three or four drugs [I] relied on.”37 The first dose of penicillin in Millard

36 Killpack, A Man of Great Service, 7. 37 Guy Boulton,“Looking Back over 54 Years of Medicine,” Millard County Chronicle, February 17, 1983,8.

County cost thirty dollars because the antibiotic was so scarce.Dr.Bird felt that the greatest breakthrough in surgery was in anesthetics.Only ether and chloroform had been available when he started practicing,and it was common for a doctor to lose a patient from an overdose.

Dr.Bird made many improvements to his hospital to meet the changing health codes through the years.When he first purchased the hospital,the fluid discharges from the laboratory sink drained through the wall directly into an open cesspool.The toilet facilities were outside and there was no central heat.He made all the improvements with his own money until 1963,when the community voted to build a new hospital supported by tax money.He donated his own equipment to the new facility.38 When the current hospital was built in 1984,he helped with the planning and again made a sizable financial contribution to the building fund.

Dr.Bird experienced some close calls during his long and distinguished medical career.During the winter of 1949,he and his wife were caught in a blizzard south of Eureka where their car became hopelessly buried in deep snow drifts.Hours later they were rescued.On one occasion he fell downstairs while calling at an unfamiliar house.While Dr.Bird was making one of thousands of house calls,a tire blew on his car causing him to lose control ending up in a nearby irrigation canal.Returning from Hinckley where he was called to delivery a baby,he dozed off at the wheel as he approached the busy railroad tracks immediately west of Delta.Fortunately, the train engineer blew the train whistle and Dr.Bird managed to stop his car before reaching the tracks.

During his practice of more than fifty years,Dr.Bird was sued only twice.In both cases there was no merit and his insurance company settled out of court.In the first case,a young boy’s parents took him home prematurely from the hospital,concerned that they would not be able to pay the hospital bill.The medical problem became more serious and could have been treated had the boy remained under the doctor’s care in the hospital.

In the second case,a man and woman were brought to the hospital from an automobile accident west of Delta.The woman had been pinned beneath an overturned car and complained of severe shoulder pain at the hospital.She refused to let Dr.Bird take an x-ray and without the x-ray he was unable to properly diagnose or treat her injury.The couple went on their way but later returned with an x-ray showing that the shoulder was indeed broken.They filed suit for the lack of treatment and again Dr.Bird’s insurance settled the matter.The couple was later arrested in the Midwest where they were making fraudulent claims for false accidents and injuries.

Dr.Bird was involved in many other activities.He was an avid hunter and fisherman and was still hunting deer at age eighty.Fish Lake was one of his favorite retreats.He was a painter who painted winter or Christmas 38

Killpack, A Man of Great Service, 7.

scenes each year on his home’s picture window.He found time to plant and care for a flower and vegetable garden around his home and had a farm outside Delta.Working in the soil was very therapeutic for him.

Although a member of the Mormon church,he was inactive as a young adult,but later became active serving as Sunday School Superintendent in the Delta First Ward,on the Deseret Stake High Council,and as bishop of the Delta First Ward for six years beginning in August 1949.39 During his time as bishop,he spent countless hours overseeing the plans and construction for the new Delta First Ward chapel,pitching in to do some of the carpentry work,shingling the roof,and painting.He and his counselors conducted many successful fund-raising parties including Saturday night square dances that became known throughout the valley.40

Music was always a means of personal expression for Dr.Bird.He sang as a soloist,in quartets,and with the Deseret Sentinels,a local men’s choir,and directed the Delta First Ward Choir.41

In January 1951,Dr.Bird,as bishop,organized the “Sunshine Club”to provide fellowship and meaningful activities for the many widows in the Delta First Ward.Each club member was responsible for making regular contacts with other members and encouraged members to participate in various activities.They made and sold quilts to support LDS missionaries and servicemen at Christmastime,repaired the church song books, purchased cooking utensils for a member who lost everything in a fire,and gathered clothing for the patients at the Utah State Mental Hospital.These activities helped club members feel needed and kept them in contact with other church and community activities.42

Dr.Bird was a charter member of the Delta Lions Club,founded in 1931,and was actively engaged in a number of Lions Club community projects.Through the Lions Club,he helped convince state and federal government officials to route Highway 6 through Delta and helped to raise funds to construct the highway.Dr.Bird and others felt that having the road through Delta would bring tourists and other economic development to the area.He made trips to Chicago and Washington,D.C.,and neighboring states,and called upon his college friend,former Utah Governor Herbert Maw,for assistance.As a Lions Club member,he also helped start the Millard County Junior Livestock Show.In 1978,he was the recipient of the prestigious Utah Lions Humanitarian Award presented “For a lifetime of service and giving of his time,talent and material means for the betterment of his community,his state,and his nation.”43

In the 1980s,Utah Governor Norman H.Bangerter appointed Dr.Bird 39

“Autobiography,”4. 40 Killpack, A Man of Great Service, 6,7. 41“Autobiography,”4 42

“Sunshine Club”in the possession of Dorothy Bird Killpack. 43 “Utah Lions Humanitarian Award”(1978),in the possession of Dorothy Bird Killpack.

to serve on the first Utah Council for the Aging,and he helped establish the Millard County Senior Citizen group.The senior citizen building in Delta, constructed in 1978,is named after him.44

Millard County residents praised Dr.Bird for his lifetime of service.Bud Huff reflected,“There is an old saying,‘If you want something done,find the busiest man in town.’That was Dr. Bird.He was a good doctor and busy,but he still found time for others.”45 Eldon Poulsen wrote,“Dr. Bird was a great man,a dedicated doctor and a servant to his fellow man.We are all a little better people because he was here with us.” 46 Roberta Lovell Dutson summarized his contribution, noting:

Millard County has many outstanding citizens,but I don’t know of anyone who has given as much of their talents and financial resources to all aspects of this area—schools, community,church,individuals,groups,and people from all walks of life,than Dr.Bird. In my opinion,he played a pivotal role in making west Millard County what it is today. Without the infrastructure,which he played a major role in creating,Delta and the surrounding area would be a much different place today.For example he played a major role in the beginnings of the medical facilities,the Jr.Livestock Show,the routing of Highway 6 through Delta,the construction of the Palamor and surrounding facilities, the Senior Citizen Center,and much more.47

Romania was always at Myron’s side,a great supporter of all his activities including full participation in his medical practice.She became the receptionist for his office and the hospital,kept the medical records,served as vital statistics registrar for birth and death certificates,and acted as surgery scrub nurse,surgery assistant,and x-ray technician.She also helped sterilize the instruments and linens used in surgery and obstetrics—using a pressure cooker during the early years.She planned the meals for the hospital patients,ordered the food and medical supplies,collected fees for services, and paid the bills.48

44 Killpack, A Man of Great Service, 6. 45 Dorothy Bird Killpack.Letter to David Hales,June 15,2006.

46 Poulsen,“A Tribute to a Great Man,Doctor M.E.Bird,”2.

47 Roberta Lovell Dutson to David A.Hales,June 15,2006.

The Delta Hospital.

She was also very active in the LDS church,and the Women’s Relief Society was one of her favorite organizations.A member of the Lady Lions,she supported her husband in his civic responsibilities as well.She was an active member of the Fidelity Club—a local literary club, and she always enjoyed playing bridge and rook.

Dr.Bird officially retired from his medical practice in October 1983 after fifty-four years of practice,but continued to see patients almost until the day he died in Provo,on December 30,1984.Near the close of his life he said,“Practicing medicine was to me a God-given privilege,and I felt obligated to do the best I could to help humanity the best I know how.”49

Romania survived him by almost nine years,suffering from rheumatoid arthritis in later years.She died November 20,1993,and is buried in the Delta City Cemetery next to her husband.

The world they left in the late twentieth century was very different from the world they entered.At least part of the changes for good experienced by the people of west Millard County between 1929 and 1984 and even today came as a result of the commitment and compassion of Myron and Romania Bird.

48 “Short Sketch:When R.W.B.Received Area Giant Award,”typescript,in the possession of Dorothy Bird Killpack.

49 Boulton,“Looking Back over 54 Years of Medicine,”8.

Myron and Romania Bird on their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary— August 1982.

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Home Rule:The Struggle to Create Duchesne County and Its County Seat

BYCRAIGFULLER

During the later stages of struggle between residents of Heber Valley and recent homesteaders on the former Uintah Indian Reservation to carve out a new county from the eastern portion of Wasatch County,Heber City’s Wasatch Wave editorialized in 1914 in support of the creation of Duchesne County:“Counties are created for the convenience of the people residing within their territorial boundaries in the transaction of civil business and to facilitate local self-government.”1 The creation of Duchesne County and the location of its county seat would take years of meetings and discussions among Heber Valley residents,Uinta Basin homesteaders,local leaders,Wasatch and Uintah County officials,and involve several legislative enactments and state-wide plebiscites.Several important issues brought Utah’s attorney general,state engineers,county surveyors,and others,to help broker compromise among interested parties.Mixed in were cultural differences among the homesteaders on the former Indian reservation and a power struggle to control the county through the location of the county seat.This paper will review the

Craig Fuller is associate editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly.

Main Street,Myton,Utah.Former sub-Indian agency contends for county seat.

1 Wasatch Wave, June 26,1914.In the late summer of 1905 the federal government opened thousands of acres on the former Indian reservations in the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah to would-be homesteaders.Much of the former Uintah Indian Reservation and a small section of the former Uncompahgre Indian Reservation were part of Wasatch County with the seat of county government in Heber City.For more on the opening of these two Indian reservations to white settlement see Craig Woods Fuller,“Land Rush in Zion:The Opening of the Uncompahgre and Uintah Indian Reservations”(Ph.D.diss.,Brigham Young University,1990).

background and reasons why Uinta Basin residents sought to establish a county of their own,and the issues and problems they faced in the creation of Duchesne County. 2

Wasatch County,the mother county for both Uintah and Duchesne counties,was created in 1862,and included most of the expansive Uintah and Uncompahgre Indian Reservations.Following the settlement of Ashley Valley,the territorial legislature in 1880 created Uintah County from the extreme east end of Wasatch County and designated the 110th Meridian as the Wasatch-Uintah county boundary.3 Twenty-five years later in August 1905,following the federal government’s policy of converting Indian reservations into individual Indian farmsteads and opening the balance of the land to white homesteaders,Utahns and others participated in the largest land grab in the state’s history.Thousands of would-be homesteaders rushed to takeup land on the former Uintah Indian Reservation.4

Within months,following the opening of the Uintah Indian Reservation,homesteaders began clamoring for “home rule.”In January 1906,George W.Emerson and forty-two other homesteaders petitioned the Wasatch County Commission for a schoolhouse in Myton.The commissioners acted quickly and instructed the county attorney to prepare an ordinance for a new school district to “embrace all that part of the county formerly embraced within the Uintah Indian Reservation.”5 The operation

2 For a discussion of earlier counties and their boundaries see James B.Allen,“The Evolution of County Boundaries in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 23 (1955):261-78.Territorial boundary changes were the prerogatives of Utah’s territorial governors and legislature.However,when Congress made changes to the size and shape of the Utah territory,county boundaries and their configurations were dramatically altered.For a discussion of changes made to the Utah boundaries see William P.MacKinnon, “`Like Splitting a Man up His Backbone’:The Territorial Dismemberment of Utah,1850-1896,” Utah Historical Quarterly 71 (Spring 2003):100-125.Following statehood,citizens in other counties also wanted to establish their own counties or alter the existing county boundaries.Citizens in western Juab County, for example,in 1908 demanded “Tintic for the Tinticits,”and those living in western Millard County wanted their own county and suggested various names for their new county.See Edward Leo Lyman and Linda King Newell, A History of Millard County (Salt Lake City:Utah State Historical Society and Millard County Commission,1999),226-28.Only one other group,however,were successful in obtaining selfgovernment and that was Daggett County.See Michael W.Johnson,Robert E.Parson,and Daniel A. Stebbins, A History of Daggett County (Salt Lake City:Utah State Historical Society and Daggett County Commission,1998),154-58.

3 In 1875,federal government surveyor Charles DuBois surveyed parts of the eastern boundary of the Uintah Indian Reservation.See Charles L.DuBois,Survey Field Notes of the Survey of the Base Line and Uintah Special Meridian of the Uinta Basin in the Territory of Utah,contract no.64,August 30,1875, T1N,R1W,Uinta Special Meridian,microfiche,Bureau of Land Management library,Salt Lake City.

4 For a discussion about the Uintah and Uncompahgre Indian reservation and white settlement,see Gustive O.Larson,“Uintah Dream:The Ute Treaty,Spanish Fork,1865,” BYU Studies 14 (Spring 1974): 361-81;Floyd A.O’Neil,“A History of the Ute Indians of Utah until 1890”(Ph.D.diss.,University of Utah,1973);and Fuller,“Land Rush in Zion.”In the space of ten years,Wasatch County’s population increased from 4,736 to 8,920 people,a number of these homesteaders were non-Mormon and from other parts of the country.

5 Wasatch County Commission minutes,January 15,1906,Utah State Archives,series 83875 microfilm reel 2.George Emerson’s petition set in motion the eventual organization of more than a dozen school districts in eastern Wasatch County.Between 1902 and 1909,the school population in Wasatch County nearly doubled,from 1,539 to 2,809 students.See “Fourth Report of the Superintendent of Education,” 1902,Salt Lake City,439.

of the new school district, serving grades one through eight,brought heavy financial demands for the homesteaders in the Basin as well as on the other residents of the county.

High schools by state law were limited to the several large cities in the state but in 1909 the state legislature expanded the establishment of high school districts throughout the state with several restrictions,one of which was a minimum population of five hundred students.Wasatch County had the minimum number of students and soon the Wasatch County commissioners created the countywide Wasatch High School District with the building located in Heber City.6 The establishment of a high school district in Wasatch County failed, however,to resolve east-end parents’desires for education for their older children.Distance and poor roads,especially during much of the school year,prevented older students from attending the high school.One option for Basin parents was to board their children in Heber City during the school year.However,for most east-end families this added to an existing financially encumbered family condition.For settlers already faced with establishing their homesteads and the financial panic of 1907,boarding their older children in Heber City meant the loss of critical labor,very much needed on Basin farms.The east-enders heavy financial burdens were so desperate that Governor John C.Cutler requested an exceptional appropriation from the state legislature in 1907 to assist Uinta Basin homesteaders.7

The homesteaders’financial woes continued with a poor fall harvest in1908,followed by an extremely hard winter.“[I]t is reported that there is great suffering among the settlers from hunger and cold,and that hundreds of people there are on the verge of actual starvation,”warned John Moffitt, a member of the Wasatch County Commission.“[V]ery little was raised last

6 For Wasatch County’s efforts to create a high school in Heber City see Jesse Embry, A History of Wasatch County, (Salt Lake City:Utah State Historical Society and Wasatch County Commission,1996), 104-105.

7 Utah,House Journal,7th Session of the Legislature,1907,43.Nationwide,there was economic uncertainty in 1907,which restricted credit to rural America and greatly increased financial difficulties for homesteaders in the Uinta Basin.

Homesteaders take up land on the former Uintah Indian Reservation,circa 1906.

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Wood bridge across Duchesne River at Myton,1907.East enders requested additional funds for road and bridge improvements.

season on the newly made farms….Hundreds of people there have no money with which to buy food and clothing…and unless aid is extended to the settlers in some way the results are going to be serious.”The county commission received another $7,500 in relief funds from the state legislature to aid the needy east-end homesteaders.8

Determined to educate their older children and facing continued financial hardship,east-end parents petitioned the county commission for a second high school district to serve their end of the county.The county commission,acting on recommendations from county school superintendent David A.Broadbent,recommended that a second high school district be created with its boundaries to include all of the territory between the county’s eastern boundary and “God [’s] established line”—the Wasatch Mountain Range.9 A countywide vote was necessary for the new high school district to be created and William Buys,editor of the west-end Wasatch Wave newspaper,urged property owners to cast their votes favorably for the new high school district.There would be no additional taxes for residents living in the west end of the county,the burden to build the high school and pay the teachers rested on the shoulders of the citizens in the east end of the county.Citizens gave their approval for the high school district

8 Wasatch Wave, March 12,1909;John D.Barton, A History of Duchesne County, (Salt Lake City:Utah State Historical Society and Duchesne CountyCommission,1998),175-76.

9 Duchesne Record, January 27,1911;Wasatch County Commission Minutes,May 3,June 7,1911,Utah State Archives,series 83875,microfilm roll 2.The so-called “God’s established line”would prove to be a difficult issue when it came to determining later the Wasatch-Duchesne County line.

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and a second election,limited to residents of the second high school district,was held to select the location for the second high school.

New steel bridge across Duchesne River at Myton,1910.

Campaigning for the high school building was intense between the two leading communities of Roosevelt and Myton.Religious persuasion and moral standards were important issues as Myton and Roosevelt town folks campaigned to win the approval of the voters for the new high school building.Even more was at stake,as the town that secured the high school would be favored to become the county seat if an attempt was made to create a new county out of eastern Wasatch County.

Myton,a former Indian sub-agency community with an existing nonMormon population,had a thriving commercial base and accommodations for the thirsty,hungry and tired travelers on the Nine-Mile Road between Price and Vernal.William B.Smart,president of the newly formed LDS Duchesne Stake,was opposed to locating the high school in Myton as were members of the Roosevelt Commercial Club who cautioned,“that owing to local conditions at Myton it would be unwise for the school to go there,”adding it would be our “duty to work for it here [in Roosevelt] in our cleaner moral government.”10

By a slim seven-vote margin,east-enders selected Roosevelt for their new high school building. 11 To insure a victory for Roosevelt,William

10 William Smart Diary,volume 23,October 4,1911.William Smart diaries are in Special Collections, Marriott Library,University of Utah,and in the Family and Church History Department,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

11 Voters favored Roosevelt with 198 votes,Myton received 191 votes,followed by Duchesne with 90, and Boneta 84 votes.The results of the votes cast were unclear since Roosevelt received only a plurality rather than a majority of votes cast,as required by state law.State attorney general A.R.Barnes when asked his opinion of the validity of the vote wrote:“I am of the opinion that a plurality vote be sufficient… It might be impossible to have a majority of the electors determine upon the particular place.” Wasatch Wave, December 15,1911.

Smart earlier agreed to sell a choice parcel of land to the high school district for the high school.Securing the high school was an important step for Smart and others to make Roosevelt the center of commerce and education.12 The vigorous campaign for the high school building portended an equally energetic struggle among residents over county boundaries and the location for local government.

Good roads,like education were an important factor for the region’s economic vitality.The lack of good roads and bridges was another problem between east- and west-enders.The first roads on the former reservation were built by the U.S.Army to connect Fort Duchesne with the newly established railhead at Price.A second but less traveled road especially during winter months was through Strawberry Valley—the Daniels Canyon road.13 East-enders who used the Fort Duchesne to Price road to travel to Heber City to conduct county business required several days travel each way by wagon,horseback or stage to the railhead at Price,then by rail to Provo and a transfer to the Heber City rail line.

Travel to Heber City was time consuming and costly and frequently the complaints from the east-enders were that the county had not adequately funded for road and bridge improvements on the former reservation especially through Strawberry and Daniels Canyon.Limited financially,the county commission appealed to the state legislature for assistance and in 1907 the county received a special sixteen thousand dollar appropriation for roads and bridges on the former reservation.Even with this special appropriation,loud howls from east-enders continued as they felt the county had not shared the funds as the legislature intended.Disturbed from the continued crying from the east end of the county,the Wave defended the commission’s actions:“There ought not to be any petty sectional jealousies among the people of this county;they cannot afford it.”The newspaper added that the east-enders had received more than their fair share of county funds for roads,bridges and other expenses. 14 East end residents remained dissatisfied and the state legislature funded another special appropriation in 1908 of eleven thousand dollars for roads and bridges for the east end of the county.15 While road improvements were being made,the real underlying issue that festered among the east-enders was their geographical isolation from the seat of power.

12 For more on the role of William H.Smart in the development of the former Indian reservation see Kristen Smart Rogers,“William Henry Smart:Uinta Basin Pioneer Leader,” Utah Historical Quarterly 45 (Winter 1977):61-74.

13 For a discussion of roads see Barton, A History of Duchesne County, 131-34;Edward A.Geary,“Nine Mile:Eastern Utah’s Forgotten Road,” Utah Historical Quarterly 49(Winter 1981):42-55.

14 Wasatch Wave, August 21,1908.The newspaper reported for the previous year east-enders had paid $1,171 in taxes but had received $3,130 for roads and bridges in the east end of the county as well as funds for health and quarantine service in Theodore (Duchesne),and for legal services.

15 East-enders continued complaining that the special legislative appropriation of eleven thousand dollars for roads and bridges was used inappropriately.The Wasatch Wave in October 2,1908,responded that all but thirty dollars of the appropriation was used for roads and bridges on the former reservation.

Changes made by LDS church leaders in Salt Lake City to ecclesiastical administration on the former Indian reservation contributed to the widening breach between the two ends of the county.In 1906 a dozen newly organized LDS wards and branches were separated from the Wasatch Stake and placed in the Uintah Stake headquartered in Vernal.16 William Smart was released as president of the Wasatch Stake and installed as the stake president of the enlarged Uintah Stake.Four years later,Smart recommended to LDS church president Joseph F.Smith that a new stake of wards and branches located on the former Indian reservation be organized.Apparently following the recommendation of Smart,the church created Duchesne Stake in 1910.Smart was released as stake president of the Uintah Stake and sustained as president of the new Duchesne Stake with its headquarters in Roosevelt. 17 (The new stake’s boundaries, uncertain as they were,would be a factor when it came to locating Duchesne County’s boundaries.) For Smart and others,selecting Roosevelt as the religious center was yet another reason to locate the local civil government in Roosevelt. 18

16 Generally,LDS stake boundaries in Utah were closely aligned with county boundaries at the turn of the twentieth century.For more on LDS stake and ward organization see William G.Hartley,“The Priesthood Reorganization Act of 1877:Brigham Young’s Last Achievement,” BYU Studies 20 (Fall 1995): 3-36.

17 Smart diary 20,p.156.William Smart understood the boundary line between the Uintah and Duchesne Stakes were the “bad lands”(often identified as Asphalt Ridge) with the former Indian reservation boundaries marking the rest of the Duchesne Stake.When Smart was searching for a suitable location for headquarters of the new stake,Myton resident,non-Mormon and editor of the Duchesne Record Fred Watrous suggested Myton but Smart politely declined the offer.“I told him that when such is done [when the selection is made] the invitation will be treated with due respect and will be given the careful consideration that it deserves.”See Smart diary volume 21,69.Years later Bill Peatross,son of William Stewart Peatross,who was involved with the Myton Free Press remembered the invitation differently.Watrous’s offer was opposed by non-Mormons in Myton who “fiercely shouted Mormon leader [Smart] down telling him that if he even tried to establish the stake in Myton they would tar and feather him and ride him out of town on a rail.”See Uintah Basin Standard (Roosevelt),April 30,1996,quoted in Barton, A History of Duchesne County,162.

18 William Smart following a church meeting wrote:“I walked west …[and] felt that it [Roosevelt] would be a leading governmental city of the saints in this basin…and may have a co.house…”See Smart diary,18,pp.89-91.

Theodore (Duchesne),Utah,1910, contends for county seat.

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Main Street,Vernal,1910,county seat of Uintah County.

Even as the LDS stake headquarters and the high school were being located in Roosevelt,Smart and other east-end community leaders were laying plans for the temporal affairs for the former Indian reservation.Smart envisioned the eastern portion of Wasatch County divided into four civil districts,each with two representatives to aid in governing the Uinta Basin portion of Wasatch County.19 Smart believed that each of these districts would eventually be transformed into counties, dominated by Mormon church members.(It is unclear whether Smart intended to include Uintah County in his multi-county plan.)

Developments for the creation of new county in the Uinta Basin were moving on another front.Representative John T.Giles from Heber City introduced a bill in the state legislature in 1907 to permit the creation of new counties.20 His bill failed in committee but a substitute bill,House Joint Resolution 10,passed,which would have given the legislature the “power to enact laws creating new counties out of territory taken from one or more of the existing counties”and would have defined the “duties and obligations of any such new county between itself and any county from which territory is taken.”The legislature,somewhat cautious about granting itself too much power without the support of the voters and without including in the county making process the will of county residents,voted against this bill as well.A third resolution,Senate Joint Resolution 4,to authorize the state legislature to create new counties,was placed before the voters on the November 1908 ballot for their ratification.

Here was the first opportunity for Basin residents to secure home-rule.

19 Ibid.,17,pp.14-15.

20 The Utah State Constitution did not include legal provisions for the creation of new counties.It did, however,provide for voters to separate themselves from one or more existing counties and join another existing county.The state constitution also included a provision that voters by a two-thirds majority vote could relocate their county seat within their existing county.Of some interest,neighboring state constitutions did provide provisions for the creation of new counties but under certain criteria such as size of new and old counties,minimum population for both new and old counties,and a minimum tax base for old and new counties.

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As the statewide campaign began,the Uintah Chieftain (Myton) urged voters to approve the amendment.It pointed out that it would give the residents of eastern Wasatch County “something to say regarding the management of public affairs in Wasatch County.”And,it re-emphasized the long complaint that it often took from “four to ten days”and distance from “100 to 300 miles over very bad roads”to travel to Heber City to conduct business.For the Myton newspaper editor the choice was clear—create a new county or relocate the county seat to the Uinta Basin.21 The Wasatch Wave responded angrily to the Myton newspaper’s apparent threat that “If anyone from this end of the county [Heber Valley] has been abusing them [east-enders],he should be called to account at once.”And then it added that the east end of the county was “prov[ing] to be rather an expensive luxury…”for the rest of the county.22

To build local support for home rule and approval of the constitutional amendment,a political meeting was convened in Myton to urge voters to support the amendment and “to take some action that would result in giving the reservation its just proportion of political power”in the county.23 West-enders increasingly were growing weary of the snipping and threats that they dominated Wasatch County politically.“We west-enders,”wrote the Wasatch Wave, “are now more than willing to help the pioneers of the Uintah Basin in every way possible….[We] do not appreciate the threat to take control of the affairs of the county,financially and politically and tax this end of the county to build up the reservation end,without even asking their permission”24

Concerned with a growing “diversity of opinion[s],”about the upcoming election and how the new county should be organized following passageof the constitutional amendment,Smart was anxious to gain support from all local church leaders in the Basin.25 At a meeting with the Uintah Stake high council,all but two of its members supported the amendment and the idea of creating a new county.Smart,along with Joseph R.Murdock, Reuben S.Collett,Edward Clyde,Alva M.Murdock,Dan Lambert,and Harden Bennion,also met with church president Joseph F.Smith and other church leaders to encourage their approval for the amendment and their efforts to create a new county.Smith “heartily endorsed”their efforts and presumably the constitutional amendment as well.26

As the November election drew nearer,the proposed amendment generated much discussion in the county and elsewhere in the state.William Buys,editor of the Wasatch Wave cautioned county voters not to give too

21 Article from the Uintah Chieftain quoted in the Wasatch Wave, June 26,1908.Some labeled the Uintah Chieftain as a paper full of “clique socialistic agitators.”

22 Wasatch Wave, June 26,1908.

23 The Uintah Chieftain quoted in the Wasatch Wave, September 11,1908.

24 Wasatch Wave, September 18,1908.

25 Smart diary,18,p.40.

26 Smart diary,18,p.64.

much power to the legislature in such matters.

[O]ur constitution should provide for the creation of new counties.We believe it absolutely necessary for the best welfare of the people….[but] if the creation of new counties is solely in the hands of the legislature as well as the state legislature having sole power to determine county lines,without asking the consent of the residents of the county,[then] no power of this kind should be given to the legislature but should be in the hands of the people.27

The larger Salt Lake City daily,the Deseret News, urged voters to support amendment three:“the new Uintah Settlements [should] enjoy a county government of their own.”28 The Salt Lake Herald,however,opposed the amendment.It,like the Heber City newspaper,feared that too much power would be placed in the hands of the state legislature and clearly identified what would happen if the legislature had sole authority to create new counties.“The proposed amendment is objectionable because it would pave the way for `gerrymandering’in the future.[And] of political manipulations of boundaries is so strong that the constitutional provision now existing should be retained and the proposed amendment voted down.”29 Weighing in on the amendment,one eastern Utah citizen penned:“I think it would be well to remember that the people should rule and where the majority of the people living in a particular territory are opposed to the slicing up of counties no legislature should have the right to override their wishes.”30 The Salt Lake Tribune joined the chorus and urged voters to vote “No on the proposed constitutional amendments.”31

Statewide,the amendment failed by a wide margin:16,222 to 9,770,but Wasatch County voters approved the amendment by a narrow six vote margin:420 to 414.However,Heber Valley voters,apparently heeding the cautionary voice of William Buys authorizing the state legislature the sole power to create new counties,opposed the amendment,386 to 162 votes. East-enders,on the other hand,overwhelming supported the amendment with a count of 258 for and 28 against.32

East-enders faced a significant setback as a result of the state voters rejecting the amendment.Leaders in the Basin remained determined,and set to work organizing new committees including a committee in Heber Valley to formulate a new proposal to secure the legal means to divide the county.During the 1911 session of the state legislature a delegation of commercial clubs from the Basin met with some of the legislators to convince them that a new county was wanted and needed in eastern

27 Wasatch Wave, October 2,9,1908.

28 Deseret News, October 27,1908.

29 Salt Lake Herald, November 1,1908.

30

Emery County Progress, October 31,1908.

31 Salt Lake Tribune, November 3,1908.

32 Secretary of State Election Papers,1908,Series 00364,microfilm roll 34,Utah State Archives.There were two other amendments on the ballot that permitted taxation of mines and mining property,and fixing the rate of taxes for state purposes.Voters approved the first and defeated the second amendment.

Altonah commercial district, contends for county seat.

Utah.33 Strong support for their plans came particularly from Uintah County representative Byron D.Nebeker.Nebeker understood any power to create new counties must be derived from the state’s constitution.“That a new county should be made is a fact that none can reasonably dispute…and I feel certain that it will be done even though an amendment to the constitution is necessary.”34

Responding to Nebeker’s suggestion,Representative James B.Wilson from Midway was successful in getting passed a proposed constitutional amendment,which would be placed before the voters again.This time there were several provisions in the amendment,which were not included in the previous constitutional amendment:the new county residents would remain proportionally responsible for existing county debts of the older county,and the new county would have to be approved by two-thirds of the qualified property owners in the new and old counties.Here,then,the residents of the proposed new and existing counties would have to approve the creation of a new county.The constitutional amendment was placed on the November 1912 ballot.

For the next months residents of both sections of Wasatch County faced numerous difficult tasks,including establishing the boundaries for their

33 Representatives from the several commercial clubs included:Alva M.Murdock,John A.Fortie,John Moffitt,Oscar Wilkins,Charles W.Smith,Dan Lambert,Clarence Johnston,Ed Harmston,John Merkley, David Bennion,Nelson Merkley,Enos Bennion,Wallace Calder,L.W.Curry,John K.Bullick,Edward Samuels,James Shaffer,Byron O.Kalton Jr.,Charles DeMoisy,John Glenn,Joseph McKee,R.S.Collett, and Fred L.Watrous.William Smart continued to cultivate support from the church leaders in Salt Lake City.

34 Salt Lake Herald, January 7,8,1911.

USEDBYPERMISSION, UINTAHCOUNTYLIBRARYREGIONALHISTORYCENTER, ALLRIGHTSRESERVED

new county and selecting a county seat.For some the county lines matter was simple:the new county lines should mirror the boundaries of the newly established Duchesne Stake.However,when the stake was established its boundaries were ill defined and uncertain.To clarify these ecclesiastical boundaries,Smart met with Don B.Colton,president of the Uintah Stake to discuss their mutual stake boundaries and both agreed that the common boundary line between the two stakes should be “three miles east of the Uintah special meridian or the first section line west of the west boundary of the Fort Duchesne Military Post.”35 Smart,however,wanted confirmation of the stake boundaries from church headquarters.The opportunity for clarification came in September 1911 when the quarterly stake conference of the Duchesne Stake was held with visiting church official,apostle Francis Lyman,officiating.Lyman clearly outlined Duchesne Stake boundaries.36

The Uintah County Commission,learning of the plans of Smart and others to use the ecclesiastical boundaries for the county’s boundaries,opposed the plan.They insisted that Uintah County’s western boundary should include the territory known as “The Strip,”which was rich in gilsonite as well as some of the better-irrigated land along the Uinta and White Rocks rivers.Some such as Charles B.Bartlett,a resident in the west end of Uintah County,had their own ideas of where the Uintah-Duchesne County line should be located.He suggested that the Duchesne County line be located as far east as the Asphalt Ridge,“where the Creator intended it should be.”37

As the statewide elections drew nearer the issues of the location of the county lines and the location for the county seat remained unresolved. Elsewhere in the state,there was growing concern about the amendments. The Deseret News urged voters to cast their votes against the amendment as well as the other three amendments on the ballot.Since,“some of …the opinions of those fully qualified to judge are divided,and therefore furnish no guide to the laity.We believe the generalimpression is that it is safest under the circumstances to vote `No’this time.”The Heber City newspaper urged its readers to vote for the amendment.“[I]t will mean much to Wasatch County,for…both ends of the county will be benefited in many

35 Smart diary,21,p.146.

36 According to Smart’s recollection the ecclesiastical boundary began “on the west boundary line of Uintah County,at a point where the northeast corner of Wasatch County intersects the same reaches the Whiterocks creek;thence following the main channel of the Whiterocks Creek to its junction with the Uintah River;thence down the main channel of the Uintah River to the southern boundary of the Fort Duchesne military reservation;thence on the section line south between sections 34 and 35 township 2 and 3 south range 1 east,U.S.M.,to the Duchesne River;thence following the Duchesne River to the Green River;thence following the Green River south to the boundary line of Uintah and Carbon Counties.See Smart diary,Vol.23,p.9-10,and William H.Smart to President Joseph F.Smith,November 20,1911,photostatic copy,Joseph F.Smith Stake Correspondence,Family and Church History Department,The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Hereinafter cited as LDS Church History Department.

37 Vernal Express, February 10,1911.

ways by the division.”38 The Salt Lake HeraldRepublican ran a paid political ad supported by both state political parties,which supported the amendment. 39 The amendment appeared to be a sure thing,but statewide voters soundly defeated the amendment by a rather substantial margin:22,132 to 12,966. Wasatch County voters,however,overwhelmingly supported the amendment,1,827 for and only 59 against it.40

Disappointed once again with the outcome,east-enders resumed their efforts to secure home rule.Early in 1913 as the state legislature met for its biennial session,Smart met with Governor William Spry,and members of the First Presidency of the LDS church,and “some of the ablest attorneys in the state”to drum up support for another constitutional amendment.From these meetings Smart learned that an amendment to the constitution was not necessary,but a well-written law was all that was needed.However,LDS church attorney F.S.Richards cautioned Smart that such a law would likely be tested in court.41

With this advice carried back to the Uinta Basin,voters this time requested Representative William L.Van Wagoner from Midway and Senator L.B.Wight from Park City to draft a law to create new counties. Their bill,“Manner of Creating a New County out of an Existing County,”required 25 percent of registered voters from the proposed new and existing county to petition the county commission to hold a special election in July 1913 for the purpose to divide Wasatch County.Unlike earlier legislative efforts,this bill required that the new county’s boundaries had to be agreed upon by a majority of citizens of the new and existing counties before the special election.Further,the bill outlined that all obligations and indebtedness which had been incurred prior to the division of a county or counties,would be shared with the new county.And the bill stated that expenses incurred for holding special elections and recording necessary records would be paid for from the state’s general funds,and that all existing sub-divisions and boundaries within the new county would remain unaltered.

38 Deseret News, November 2,1912, Wasatch Wave, September 5,1912.

39 Salt Lake Herald Republican, November 3,1912.

40 Deseret News, November 28,1912;Secretary of State Election Papers,series 000364,microfilm reel 34,Utah State Archives.

41 Smart diary,25,pp.112-13; Vernal Express, January 17,1913.

William Henry Smart,civic,religious leader and promoter of the Uinta Basin.

UTAHSTATEHISTORICALSOCIETY

As the various boundary proposals were put forth for discussion,all proposals ignored the legal line established by the territorial legislature in 1880,the110th Meridian surveyed by federal land surveyor Charles DuBois in 1875.Further,there was some question about the location of the 110th Meridian.

Years earlier in 1907,at the behest of the Wasatch County Commission, Ed F.Harmston,a surveyor,was asked to examine the DuBois 1875 calculations.Harmston determined that the DuBois survey line was 2.2 miles shy of the 110th Meridian or at 109 degrees,57 minutes,30 seconds west longitude.The re-examination of Harmston’s 1907 calculations and that of the DuBois survey raised another question:Was Roosevelt actually in the proposed new county?

The location of Roosevelt and its residents’desire for it to be the county seat added to the problem of locating the county’s eastern boundary as well as the would-be county’s western boundary.

The two leading contending communities for the county seat location were Myton and Roosevelt neither centrally located geographically,a highly desirable factor many Basin residents reasoned.Even though Roosevelt had secured for itself the high school and the LDS church’s stake headquarters,the Myton Commercial Club contended that Myton was the town of commerce and businesses,had served as an Indian sub-agency on the former Uintah Indian Reservation,and now with the new steel bridge across the Duchesne River in place Myton was accessible from all parts of the Basin.42

Smart was strongly opposed to Myton and viewed H.C.Means,head of the Myton Commercial Club and many of the club’s members as being highly “intoxicated with a desire to rule.”Reflecting the growing cleavage between Mormon homesteaders and others,Smart wrote about Means and members of the Myton Commercial Club as “not Utah men.[M]y soul is…against this new section of Utah being un-righteously governed and controlled by them,and God being my help it shall not be so.”43

For a brief time,the cleavage between “Utah men”and non-Utah men was set aside as the county line issue became more pressing.For years west-end farmers and ranchers had been grazing as many as two hundred thousand head of sheep and hundreds of head of cattle in Strawberry Valley and the nearby mountains.Irrigators from Heber Valley had for three decades diverted water from the Strawberry River to their thirsty farms in the Lake Creek area.44 Water and grazing land were important resources for many Heber Valley farmers and ranchers and it was their desire to maintain control of these and other resources.

42 For further discussion about Myton,see Barton, A History of Duchesne County, 157-60.

43 Smart Diary,22,p.185.

44 Craig W.Fuller,“Development of Irrigation in Wasatch County”(M.S.Thesis,Utah State University, 1973),112-15.

To hammer out the Wasatch-Duchesne County line,committees from Heber City and the Uinta Basin were organized.Dr.H. R.Hatch,Chase Hatch,J.R.Murdock,and George Barzee,members of the Heber Development League,represented the interests of the west-enders.The east-end committee included William Smart,Alva M. Murdock,and John A.Fortie with H.C.Means of Myton serving as the chair of the joint committee meetings.Among the several east-end proposals presented to the joint boundary committee was that the WasatchDuchesne county line be located nine miles west of present-day Fruitland. A second east-end proposal located the boundary even further west to what many called the “snow barrier”—the summit of the Wasatch Mountains.The west-end committee,following the instructions from the Heber Development League,flatly refused the second proposal.The west-end committee was adamant that it would,“not … take less than the territory embraced within the boundaries of the Wasatch County High School District No.1.”45

Fearing that no agreement would be reached and that an impasse would preclude holding the approaching election to divide the county,Smart once again met with Mormon church president Smith,apostle F.M. Lyman,and church patriarch Hyrum G.Smith and asked them to take the matter “before the Lord.”46 Meanwhile,the west-end committee met with Wasatch Stake president Joseph R.Murdock and others.Murdock proposed a compromise line which would divide the disputed territory equally and that a compromise county line would be drawn down the

45 Wasatch Wave, April 18,1913.

46 William Smart to Joseph F.Smith,F.M.Lyman and Patriarch Hyrum G.Smith in Smart diary 25,p.173.

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center of Range 9 West of the Uinta Special Meridian.His proposal would ensure that the west-enders would remain in control of large deposits of coal,that livestock men would remain in control of much of the summer grazing land in the Strawberry Valley and surrounding mountains,and that farmers on the east side of Heber Valley would remain in control of diverting water from the upper Strawberry River to their thirsty land.

The joint boundary committee agreed to Murdock’s proposal.The Duchesne-Uintah County boundary seemed also settled as stated earlier by the 1880 territorial legislature,which was the 110th Meridian.A petition was then circulated to place the issue of creating Duchesne County on the special July 1913 ballot.47 The editor of the Wasatch Wave expressed the prevailing sentiments of the voters of Heber Valley:“Let the matter be decided peaceably and when decided let it stand as the will of the people no matter which way it goes.We await the verdict of the people.”The Vernal Express urged the east-enders to “Vote in favor of the new county it is a necessity.”48

The outcome of the vote,however,was far different than what was expected.West-end voters rejected the proposal:721 votes against and 474 votes for division.East end voters overwhelmingly supported the division and the compromise boundary line by a plurality of 518 votes (651 to 133).Of the thirteen voting precincts in the east end of the county,voters in three east end precincts voted against the proposal—Stockmore precinct 14 for and 20 against,Fruitland 6 for and 8 against,and Myton 62 for and 67 against.49

East-end community leaders were at a loss to explain the rejection by most west-enders as well as from some of their own.The Vernal newspaper proffered a possible answer,at least for the Myton voters.50 Myton residents feared that they would not likely secure the county seat,which was being hotly contested by Roosevelt and themselves.The few Fruitland farmers and ranchers in the district were opposed to the possibilities of owning land in two counties and wanted to protect their interests.One unidentified Fruitland resident gloated:“Isn’t it surprising that Fruitland should all at once be so valuable? Long have the sheep men kept the value of our

47 Utah,Secretary of State Election Papers,series 00364,microfilm reel 34.

48 Wasatch Wave, June 23,1913; Vernal Express, June 27,1913.Duchesne County’s western boundary began “due North of the center line between the East and West range lines of Range nine West of the Uintah Special Meridian;thence South intersecting and thence follow the said center line of said Range nine West of Uintah Special Meridian to a point where it intersects with the second standard Parallel South,Salt Lake Base and Meridian Survey….”Duchesne County’s eastern boundary was identified as the 110th Meridian of West Longitude.For the entire description of Duchesne County see State Archives, “Calling Special Election,”Secretary of State Election Papers,series 00364 microfilm reel 33.

49 Utah,Secretary of State Election Papers,series 00364,microfilm reel 34,Utah State Archives; Wasatch Wave, July 4,11,1913.Myton residents were opposed to the proposal even before ballots were cast.Only fourteen voters signed the petition to place the proposition on the ballot.

50 Vernal Express, July 18,1913.There continued to be lingering friction in the Basin over the location of the new high school.Residents in the county did not approve issuing construction bonds until a year later with strong opposition coming from residents of Myton,Duchesne,and Boneta.

Roosevelt’s Main Street,important commercial and religious town on former Uintah Indian Reservation,1910.Contends for county seat.

precinct in the dark but now that they are ready to bring it to the light.If you want to know what those values are call around ‘seeing is believing.’”A government report supported Fruitland’s claim.“[T]he Uinta Forest this season has had the best grazing range.At the time sheep enter forest grazing land,the feed in some parts is so rank that it covers the backs [of sheep] and they are so hidden by the grass and weeds upon which they feed that it is impossible to get a photograph of them.”51 Other government reports estimated eight million tons of coal near Fruitland,and potentially four thousand acres of irrigable land—all taxable.

For most Heber Valley voters their reason for rejection was wanting to maintain control of as much of the Strawberry Valley and territory as far east as possible.However,voters in the two Midway voting precincts,dominated by dairy farmers,were less concerned with Strawberry Valley and more concerned with preserving their claims to water from Snake Creek.52

Some west-enders believed that the division of the county would diminish state appropriations to their county.However,in the case of road funds, Charles J.Wahlquist revealed otherwise.Using appropriations from the state to the counties for road and bridge construction and maintenance for 1913,he calculated that Wasatch County and every other county in the state would have received $3,600 from the state legislature.Divided equally between the two ends of the county,each would have received only $1,800 for roads.However,if Duchesne County were in existence in 1913, each county would have received $3,471,or nearly doubling the road

51 Wasatch Wave, July 25,September 26,1913,April 10,1914; Vernal Express,March 13,1914.

52 Midway farmers were more concerned with holding on to their water rights from interlopers from Utah Valley than squabbling over water from the Strawberry River drainage.See Craig Fuller, “Development of Irrigation in Wasatch County,”92-107 for Midway farmers’fights over water with Utah Valley water users.

appropriation to both counties.He also pointed out that the proposal was the best that could be achieved and if the division did not occur now it would be much more difficult for the county to be divided in the future.53

There was also some misunderstanding at both ends of Wasatch County that neither it nor the new county would have adequate taxes to operate their respective counties.However,the Heber City newspaper reported that the probable property taxes to be collected after the division would be at least $1,899,000 for Wasatch County,and in excess of $1,284,000 for the new county,adequate for each county.54

Of more concern for east-enders than the lingering questions over taxes, boundary lines,and the struggle for power in the east end,was that the legislature might repeal the law authorizing the creation of new counties. To be successful,east-enders came to the conclusion that it was best to “Unite to Divide.”55

By spring of 1914 there was evidence from the west end of the county that voters there were willing to accept a compromise line.56 Once again a petition was submitted to the county commission to place the creation of Duchesne County on a special election for July 1914.This time the results were what the east end wanted:the east end overwhelmingly supported the proposition by an 8 to 1 margin—783 to 98 votes—and the west end supported the division with a narrower 2 to 1 margin—851 to 425 votes.

There remained yet one more important task for the residents of Duchesne County—the selection of a county seat.In September representatives from the county’s nine voting precincts met to hold a straw poll to select their county seat.Prior to the meeting,William Zowe,Myton’s chairman of the campaign committee to win support for Myton,suggested that,“It would be fatal for the county [to] have a county seat not located in the county.”57 Zowe’s message was that Roosevelt was not in the county

53 Wasatch Wave, June 26,1914.

54 Wasatch Wave, June 19,1914.Neither the state constitution nor subsequent acts passed by state legislatures regarding the annexation of territory from one county to another addressed the important criteria of insuring an adequate property tax base for existing counties following territorial separation (or in the case of creating a new county).

55 Vernal Express, March 13,1914.

56 Wasatch County Commission Minutes,July 20,1914,series 83875 microfilm reel 3,Utah State Archives.The compromise line commenced “at the intersection of the one hundred and tenth Meridian of West Longitude with the summit of the Uintah Range;thence Southwesterly along the summit of said range to a point due North of the center line between the East and West lines of range nine West of the Uinta Special Meridian;thence south intersecting and thence following the said center line of said Range nine west of Uintah Special meridian to a point where it intersects with the second standard Parallel South,Salt Lake Base and Meridian Survey (which point is also an extension East from the Salt Lake Base Line of the line between Township ten and eleven South of Salt Lake Meridian);thence East to the line between Range nine and ten East of Salt Lake Meridian,thence South to the Township line between Townships eleven and twelve South of Salt Lake Meridian;thence East along said Township line to the one hundred and tenth Meridian of West Longitude;thence North to the place of beginning.”

57 Duchesne Record, October 9,1914.Two other prominent citizens—H.G.Clarke of Myton and Judge L.A.Hollenbeck—also raised the same issue.See Roosevelt Standard, September 28,1914,and Duchesne Record, October 23,1914.

but that the Duchesne/Uintah county line was just west of Roosevelt. Roosevelt residents were dismayed and charged Zowe and others with a political “trick [to] win votes for Myton”for the county seat.58

Zowe’s argument rested on the DuBois survey.To counter Zowe’s argument surveyor Ed F.Harmston at the request of the Wasatch County Commission in 1907 re-calculated the DuBois survey.He discovered that DuBois’s survey line was about 2.2 miles shy of the 110th Meridian and both the Uintah and Wasatch county commissions approved Harmston’s calculations,which placed Roosevelt just within the new county.59

Through a series of straw ballots Lakefork,Banner,Bluemesa,and Altonah were eliminated leaving Myton and Duchesne in the running.The community of Duchesne was chosen to be the county seat by those holding the straw vote.60

H.G.Clarke of Myton following the outcome of the meeting requested Heber City attorney Charles J.Wahlquest for his legal opinion about the location of the Duchesne/Uintah boundary.Wahlquist in-turn asked state engineer W.D.Beers for his opinion.Beers’response was that the state engineer’s office recognized Harmston’s survey of the then Wasatch/Uintah line to be accurate,as did the state legislature in 1907 when it confirmed the Wasatch/Uintah county line to be the 110th Meridian.61

The debate in Duchesne County of whether Roosevelt was or was not in Duchesne County and which line was the Duchesne/Uintah county boundary drew in residents from Uintah County.Some Uintah County residents feared that they would be annexed to Duchesne County.We are “not interested in the county seat fight…neither [do we] care which town is successful in securing the county seat but we are opposed to having a ten mile strip cut off the western side of Uintah County….”62

As the election to select the county seat drew nearer,rhetoric over the location of the county seat grew heated.The Roosevelt newspaper charged

58 Roosevelt Standard, October 24,1914.William Zowe and his committee also pointed out that if the residents of Roosevelt,which made up the Roosevelt voting precinct,were indeed in Uintah County then all previous elections were invalid.

59 For a detailed explanation of Ed Harmston’s calculations see the Vernal Express, September 11,1914. Some questioned his calculations.In a response Harmston challenged,“any other competent civil engineer or professor of mathematics to check [my]…statement and calculations…Let the truth prevail.”Ed F. Harmston was a resident of Roosevelt when people from Myton and elsewhere raised the question about the location of Roosevelt.To add to the confusion,E.M.Douglas,a Washington D.C.geographer,provided yet another federal map that placed the 110th Meridian “one half mile west of the center of the town of Roosevelt.”See Vernal Express, October 30,1914.

60 In the first straw ballot,Myton received thirteen votes followed by Duchesne with twelve votes; Altonah ten votes;Lakefork three;and Banner,Midview and Bluemesa receiving one vote each.The second ballot the results were:Myton sixteen votes,Duchesne thirteen votes,Altonah ten votes,Lakefork and Banner each with one vote apiece.The third straw ballot resulted in Myton receiving thirteen votes, Duchesne twenty-two votes,Altonah three,Lakefork two,and Banner one vote. Duchesne Record, September 25,1914.

61 Roosevelt Standard,October 19,1914.For a complete description of Uintah County at the time of its creation in 1880,see Laws of the Territory of Utah,1880,Chapter X,“Creating Uintah County.”

62 Vernal Express, September 28,1914.

that neither “malicious rumors”nor “political attacks”from the people of Myton or from any other “government”town would deter Roosevelt from being selected as the new seat of county government.Campaign literature urged,“A vote for Roosevelt…means a vote for economic and immediate good county government.”63

Returns indicated that county voters had selected Roosevelt as their county seat.However,Duchesne town resident Rock Pope was dissatisfied with the tally and requested the Heber City judge to order the Wasatch County Commission to conduct a recount.Pope believed that many of the ballots from his town of Duchesne had not been counted.Pope’s suspicion was confirmed and the recount of all of the ballots overturned Roosevelt’s victory in favor of the community Duchesne City.64

All now seemed to be in order for the legislature to designate Duchesne County as Utah’s newest county and the county seat to be the community of Duchesne.However,the question over the location of the Duchesne/Uintah boundary lingered.Early in January 1915 the Vernal Express received a report that Uintah County surveyor Nile Hughel had been at work resurveying the new Duchesne/Uintah line.His survey indicated that the county line was one mile further west than where it was supposed to have been.If his survey proved to be accurate,this would mean a loss of tax revenue to the new county,which it could ill afford to lose.

To resolve the boundary question,newly elected representative from Duchesne County,William O’Neil introduced a bill in the 1915 legislature to “fix the line so that Roosevelt will be definitely within the lines of [Duchesne] county.”His bill not only placed the county line further east and went in the opposite direction than Hughel’s survey,but it placed the boundary on the Sand Ridge,which added thousands of taxable acres to Duchesne County and deprived Uintah County by the same amount.His bill was defeated.65 The boundary question delayed further action by the state legislature to establish the Uintah/Duchesne boundary.

In the meantime,landowners residing in the disputed strip of land were concerned which county they should pay their property taxes.Since the tax levy was less in Uintah County they chose to pay their property taxes to Uintah County.66 To resolve the tax question and the boundary the

63 Roosevelt Standard, October 19,November 2,1914.

64 Vernal Express, November 20,1914.The tally was 1,067 votes for Duchesne followed by Roosevelt with 812 votes,Myton with 381 votes,and Lakefork with 163 votes.See Wasatch County Commission Minutes (County Board of Canvassing Election Returns),November 9 and 19,1914,series 83875,microfilm reel #3,Utah State Archives;and Barton, A History of Duchesne County, 201.Barton used the Vernal Express report which showed Duchesne receiving five fewer votes,Roosevelt receiving five more votes, and Myton receiving fifty fewer votes.

65 Vernal Express, February 12,1915.

66 Roosevelt Standard,September 3,1915.The tax levy in Duchesne County was sixty-three mills while the mill levy in Uintah County was nearly half that or thirty-three mills.In the event that the disputed territory was in Duchesne County,the state auditor insured Duchesne County that he would make good the taxes paid to Uintah County.

Uintah County Commission ordered its county surveyor to work with the Duchesne County surveyor Craig Harmston,to resurvey the disputed line. The two surveyors concluded that much of the disputed territory was in Uintah County.

Concerned with the possible loss of school funds,Duchesne County school district clerk Ed Harmston asked attorney general A.R.Barnes for a legal clarification of the statute identifying the 110th Meridian as the county line.Barnes confirmed that the Uintah-Duchesne county line was what the legislature said it was in 1907 and that regardless what any county or state surveyor says it might be,only the state legislature had the legal authority to establish county boundaries.67 Barnes’letters failed to mollify the concerns of those residing along the disputed county line or the Uintah County Commission.

Late in October the two county surveyors Nile Hughel and Craig Harmston met with the state attorney general and state engineer to settle the location of the disputed county line.The meeting failed to satisfy Hughel who remained adamant that the county line was west of Roosevelt.68 Seeing the issue being unresolved,Governor William Spry called for “what you might call a practical decision”for the county line to be located east of Roosevelt.He reminded all that Duchesne County had issued bonds and to have the county line “adhere to the 110th meridian … would not [have] left enough taxable property,”to meet expenses of Duchesne County.69

Uncertainty was in the minds of the voters.The disputed strip accounted for more than $460,000,slightly more than 8 percent of the total assessed valuation for Duchesne County.If the strip of land remained in Uintah County,it would deprive Duchesne County of much needed revenue and according to the state board of equalization would leave the county with insufficient revenue to operate for the upcoming year.70

The Uintah County Commission remained dissatisfied with the governor’s solution.The county commission turned to its attorney Charles DeMoisey for his opinion about Spry’s solution and the uncertainty of the county line.His response was that state engineer Beers earlier in his recognition of the Uintah/Duchesne county line had failed to follow the provisions in the 1907 law,which outlined the procedures to be followed when there was a boundary dispute between counties.71

67 Roosevelt Standard, September 15,1915,and Roosevelt Standard, January 26,1916.

68 Vernal Express, October 29,1915, Roosevelt Standard, October 27,1915.

69 Duchesne Record, January 19,1916,quoting from the Herald-Republican.

70 Duchesne Record, July 22,and November 4,1916.

71 Charles DeMoisy,county attorney,to the Honorable Board of County Commissions,January 24, 1916,in Vernal Express, January 28,1916;and in the Roosevelt Standard, February 2,1916.To add to the confusion,DeMoisey in early November 1915 received a telegram from assistant state engineer C.J. Ulrich stating that state engineer Beers was of the opinion that the issue of the county line would have to be settled in a court of law.See Deseret News, November 4,1915; Roosevelt Standard,November 10,1915.

George Madden,a property owner on the disputed Roosevelt Strip, reminded the Uintah County Commission “that it is a long,long way to Duchesne,”the new county seat,longer than it was to Vernal.Further,he and others living on the disputed strip favored paying taxes to Uintah County,as the levy was much lower than in Duchesne County.He suggested that the best solution for him and the others in the disputed territory was to hold a plebiscite of those living on the disputed territory including voters in Uintah County.72

R.S Collett a prominent church and civic leader in Uintah County favored Madden’s suggestion.However,others countered that the best solution would be in a court of law.Collett and those wanting a public vote argued that a court case would be too costly and lengthy;neither county commission seemed anxious to initiate a legal case.73

The Roosevelt Chamber of Commerce concluded that a vote on the matter was the best solution and felt confident that a majority of landowners on the disputed territory favored being part of Duchesne County.The chamber began circulating a petition to put the question on the November ballot.74 However,Duchesne County Attorney Ray E.Dillman argued that such a vote was not in the best interest of Duchesne County,and further the names of the twelve petitioners that been collected were not legitimate property owners.

Concerned with the legality of the petition,the Uintah County Commission requested an opinion from state attorney Barnes who reported that the petition was legal but noted that property owners in Uintah County as well as those on the disputed land and in Duchesne County should vote on the annexation question.75 The annexation question was placed on the November 1916 ballot.

The Duchesne Record published in Duchesne just before ballots were to be cast “Advised Against Annexation.”The newspaper argued that the description of the changed county line would take “a good slice”of

72 Vernal Express, February 4,1916.

73 Vernal Express, April 14,and 21,1916.

74 The petition outlined the county boundaries as follows:“The line as at present contemplated will be the section line running north and south between sections 2 and 3 of the Uintah special survey,thru townships one west of the Uintah Special Meridian.The Uintah Special Meridian does not tie exactly with the Salt Lake Meridian,so that when the south boundary of the reservation is reached the line will have to drop back west about a quarter of a mile in order to follow the section line thru the portion of the county of the Salt Lake Meridian.Thus thru the reservation portion of the county Uintah county would be yielding 62 rods of territory to Duchesne county while thru that portion of the territory south of the reservation line Duchesne county will be yielding about the same amount of territory to Uintah so that on the whole,with the line following the section between sections two and three of range one west thru the reservation country and the line between sections two and three of range 17 east of the Salt Lake survey thru the reservation country from the line established by Mr.Harmston will just about be returned by Duchesne in following the section line last named thru the balance of the county following the Salt Lake Meridian.”See the Duchesne County Commission,Minutes,June 10,1916,Utah State Archives,series 10216,reel 1.L.A.Hollenbeck and others initiated a counter petition,which protested Roosevelt Chamber of Commerce’s petition.The county commission rejected Hollenbeck’s petition.

75 Vernal Express, August 18,1916.

Duchesne County and put it in Uintah County.76 Uintah County voters overwhelmingly opposed the proposal,864 against and only 198 for annexation.Duchesne County voters,however,supported annexation by a margin of slightly more than a two to one margin,1,080 to 462.77 The voters in both counties had spoken but the problem remained.

Unable to resolve the boundary dispute locally,newly elected state representative G.V.Billings from Duchesne County introduced a bill in the 1917 legislature that would authorize the state legislature to clarify the 1880 legislation establishing the 110th Meridian as the Uintah-Wasatch county line as well as subsequent state law identifying the DuchesneUintah county line.78 Billings’bill placed Duchesne County’s eastern line one and a quarter miles east of the 110th Meridian and two and one fifth miles west of the Uintah Special Meridian placing most of the disputed “Roosevelt Strip”in Duchesne County.Billings’county line proposal was substantially the same line as that of Ed Harmston’s 1907 survey.

For nearly all concerned the problems that faced the creation of Duchesne County were finally resolved,or so it appeared.For a number of years Roosevelt Realty had paid to Duchesne County property tax on property located on the disputed Roosevelt Strip,which it maintained was in Uintah County.(The property tax assessment for the Roosevelt Realty property in question was $7.64.) The realty company took its tax case to the Fourth District Court in Provo.The realty company’s attorney argued that the law creating Duchesne County was flawed,that no “official survey”had been conducted in 1880 to ascertain the location of the Uintah-Wasatch County line,and the county line established by the state legislature had ignored the “well known”and “well defined”existing boundary,and that the legislature had acted without the residents voting on the location of the county line.

The plaintiff’s attorney Ernest H.Burgess argued that if the county boundary as established by the legislature was allowed to stand,as many as eighty-two square miles would be sliced from Uintah County and would add a great deal of wealth to Duchesne County while the state legislature had “wholly disregard[ed] the statutory provisions…defining [the] line.”Further, the Harmston survey line conducted in 1907 was “wholly contrary to law and did not conform to the true boundary line as described in the statute.”79

76 Duchesne Record, November 4,1916.

77 The Vernal Express, November 17,1916;Duchesne County Commission Minutes,November 14, 1916,Series 10216,microfilm reel #1,Utah State Archives.

78 G.V.Billings sought legal advice from the new state attorney general,Dan B.Shields about the constitutionality of his bill.Shields indicated that according to a recent state Supreme Court decision regarding the constitutionality of a law passed by the state legislature in 1913 fixing the boundary between Juab and Sanpete counties,Billings’bill would be constitutional.See Roosevelt Standard, February 7,1917. Shields’opinion rested on a state supreme court decision in Barton v.Sanpete County,(1916) that the legislature has “the sole power to define and determine the boundary lines between counties….”

79 For a full discourse of this case see ,Civil Case 726,Fourth Judicial District (1924),District Court Civil Cases,microfilm,Series,06620,Utah State Archives.

After two years of filings,amended complaints and responses,motions and amended responses,Judge Elias Hansen on January 25,1924,“ordered, adjudged and decreed”that the line “running north and south at a distance of 2.2 miles (2 miles and 64 rods) west from the intersection of the Uintah Special meridian with the Base Line,being the line calculated and determined by Ed F.Harmston,in 1907,as the location of the 110th Meridian of west longitude,is the common boundary line between Uintah County, Utah,and Duchesne County,Utah.”He further ruled that the property owned by the realty company was in Duchesne County and therefore subject to taxes levied by Duchesne County.80

The judge’s decision upheld Ed Harmston’s 1907 calculated line,which both Uintah and Wasatch counties had confirmed as their common boundary and which the territorial legislature had established in 1880 and the state constitution identified as the Uintah-Wasatch county line.This decision along with Billings’bill,which was affirmed by the state attorney general to be constitutional,ended the long and difficult struggle by citizens on the former Uintah Indian Reservation to secure home-rule. Creating new counties,altering or modifying county boundaries or any legally established boundaries such as school district boundaries proved to be much more difficult in twentieth century Utah than in the previous century.Economic interests,local political interests,payment of property taxes,and social concerns came into play in wanting to create Duchesne County and in the selection of Duchesne City as the county seat.The creation of Duchesne County was easier said than done as the residents on the former Uintah Indian reservation learned.Today,those interests wanting to create new public entities with commonly held assets and boundaries might well learn from the difficulties Duchesne County residents faced nearly a century ago.

BOOKREVIEWS

On Zion’s Mount:Mormons,Indians,and the American Landscape

By Jared Farmer.(Cambridge and London:Harvard University Press,2008.xvi + 455 pp.Cloth, $29.95.)

THIS SPLENDID VOLUME is a tour-de-force of historical scholarship that all lovers of Utah history will want to read.The author is Jared Farmer,a native of Provo and an assistant professor of history at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.Ambitious,imaginative,theoretically sophisticated,and highly engaging,this volume tells the story of the creation of Mount Timpanogos as a cultural landmark and the concomitant fading of Utah Lake and the Lake Utes from most Utahns’historical memory.Three sections comprise the book.

In Part I,Farmer describes Utah Lake at the time of the founding of Provo as an abundant landscape teeming with fish and capable of supporting more than one thousand Utes.Rough-and-tumble Mormons,largely natives of the western frontier and the southern states,settled along the Provo River where they soon clashed with the Utes and murdered one of them.Tensions mounted,culminating in the Battle of Provo River and the subsequent slaughter of at least eleven Ute men on the frozen surface of Utah Lake near Table Rock.Drawing upon a rich array of archival sources,Farmer recounts the awful tale vividly.Farmer greatly exceeds other scholars’more careful estimates of both the number of Utes who inhabited the valley and the number who died in the Provo River battle. Dismissing contemporary counts of “about forty”as “deliberate undercounting” he readily accepts a much higher estimate reported by a non-combatant,Epsy Jane Williams,in a later reminiscence (76).

The author demonstrates the importance of Utah Lake as a source of fish for the first generation of Mormon settlers and then charts the ecological changes that occurred as streambeds were channelized,river water was withdrawn for irrigation,and at least two dozen non-native aquatic species were introduced. Over time,Anglos recast the landscape that greeted the first white settlers as a desert and they reduced the Utes to a handful of stereotypical good and bad Indians,epitomized by Walkara and Sowiette.

In Part II,Farmer examines the symbolic importance of mountains for early Mormons and argues that in the nineteenth century Mt.Nebo “accumulated far more symbolism than any other alpine summit in Utah”;by contrast,locals did not perceive or celebrate the entire massif of Timpanogos as a single mountain until early in the twentieth century (163).A key factor in distinguishing the peak was the tradition of yearly group hikes to the summit begun by Eugene Roberts in 1912.By the 1990s,the naming of the LDS Church’s Mount Timpanogos Temple seemed natural because “the mountain meant too much to ignore”(236). Farmer’s creative narrative of the cultural construction of Timpanogos as a twentieth-century phenomenon invites debate.As he acknowledges,the Stansbury

Expedition of 1849-50 identified a “Timpanogos Pk”as did federal surveyor Clarence King in 1869.But it is true that the label Timpanogos in nineteenthcentury writing usually refers to a river (the Provo) rather than a mountain. Moreover,early Utah artists rarely focused upon individual peaks as landmarks, aside from an 1865 painting of Mt.Nebo by C.C.A.Christensen.

In Part III,Farmer traces the origins of pseudo-Indian legends surrounding Mt.Timpanogos to Eugene Roberts,Boy Scout leaders and William Hanson,who composed an Indian opera called The Bleeding Heart .Farmer effectively compares the legend of Timpanogos to other pseudo-Indian legends of lover’s leaps.Ironically,Farmer notes,in popular memory these fictive Indians and “their” mountain supplanted the real Utes and the lake that sustained both them and the Mormons.

A charming sense of humor graces the book.For instance,following his discussion of the paving of access roads to Aspen Grove in the 1930s,Farmer quips that the annual hike up Mount Timpanogos “had become a well-oiled event” (205).

This book’s breadth,wit,eloquence,and creative reinterpretation of local history in light of key developments in American cultural history make it a must-read.

BRIANQ CANNON Brigham Young University

At Sword’s Point,Part I:A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858. Edited by William P.MacKinnon,Vol.10 of Kingdom in the West:The Mormons and the American Frontier Series.(Norman:The Arthur H.Clark Company,2008.544 pp.Cloth, $45.00.)

FOR THE PAST HALF CENTURY,William MacKinnon has been immersed in the Utah War and nineteenth-century American politics while living in the twentieth century and being engaged in a successful career in business. At Sword’s Point, Part I is a major contribution to Utah history and particularly the study of the Utah War,and as the title indicates is the first of a two volume set of documents concerning the Utah War.MacKinnon’s energy and his love for this period of history is evident in his careful writing and his selection of documents in this volume.Volume 1 carries the Utah War story from the beginning of Mormonfederal conflicts in Utah in 1849 with emphasis on 1857 and ending on the last days of that year.The eighteen chapters of the book are filled with narrative and interpretation by the author including the introduction of the documents. MacKinnon’s volume II will deal largely with the events of 1858.

Others have studied this era in detail including the earlier documentary collection

Mormon Resistance edited by LeRoy and Ann Hafen.In some histories,the Utah War and its most tragic chapter the massacre at Mountain Meadows were pushed off the historical stage by the all-encompassing Civil War in the United States and then later by some who felt the war unimportant and those who didn’t like the characterization of Mormons as rebels and wanted early Utah to fit into mainstream patriotic America.Although not often portrayed by many historians of the decade of the 1850s as a major episode of the Buchanan administration,the Utah War,MacKinnon would have us believe,“began the destruction of James Buchanan’s presidential reputation and accelerated the nation’s descent into disunion and financial insolvency”(37).

MacKinnon describes in detail James Buchanan and Brigham Young including a look at their management styles,their advisors,and notes that both suffered from serious illness during the winter and spring of 1857,which may have led to some of the problems of the conflict.In this discussion,a comparison made of actions of Young and Theodore Roosevelt thirty years later,seems not to be analogous.A relationship that is not made is that Buchanan was a bachelor and Young was one of the most married men in America.MacKinnon notes that he believes that correspondence from Judge W.W.Drummond to Senator Stephen Douglas led to Douglas’anti-Mormon stance in 1857.Professor Kenneth Stampp,historical authority on the 1850s,is identified as being from Stanford University but spent his entire career at the University of California,Berkeley.

MacKinnon dispels the myth that the Utah War was a “bloodless”conflict and asserts that the atrocities of the Utah War may have approached the 157 fatalities that earned the conflict in Kansas the label “Bleeding Kansas.”For MacKinnon the Utah War atrocities include the Mountain Meadow massacre,the pre-war Ambrose-Betts affair and the Parrish-Potter murders,the Richard Yates murder, the death of Private George W.Clark,the death of Henry Forbes,and the deaths of the Aiken Party.MacKinnon suggests that the atrocities of the war came about in part because of the nature and tone of the communications Young had with his church and military subordinates,and the poor communications and experience of Buchanan.He further asserts that the Utah War atrocities were not isolated incidents,but were,in fact,acts and intertwined events linked to the active guerilla-like operations of the Nauvoo Legion.

The documents of this volume are well-chosen and represent well a variety of view points.The assignment to Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston to command the Utah Expedition came late in 1857.As Colonel Robert E.Lee,Johnston’s Executive Officer in Texas wrote on August 1 to Johnston about the new assignment,he noted:“Tell Mrs.Johnston wives are a perfect drug [drag] out there,& if I was her I would not go.Besides Brigham’s 50 female saints will look upon her as a poor imposed on sinner,& she will not be appreciated in that community.I fear too the season is too far advanced for her to venture.However,you will be able to see when you reach Washn & things may be better than they do appear.Wherever

you go Colonel I wish you every happiness & success,& may all happiness attend you and yours”(379).

First Sergeant James Stewart described the difficulties the army faced and detailed the weather in western Wyoming in early November 1857 by noting that the snow fell deeply,the thermometer fell to 45 degrees below zero,and six hundred horses died in one night as a result of the cold and starvation.James Parshall Terry who rode with Lot Smith into Wyoming in early October 1857 noted that after a train of twenty-six wagons was surrounded on October 4: “…We placed guards around the wagons and got the men all up of which I (never) saw a scarederlot in my life until they found that they was not going to be hurt. Then they laughed and said they was glad the wagons was going to be burnt as they would not have to bull whack any more,as they called it.The teamsters was permitted to take their private clothing and guns out of the wagons and then they were burnt.Capt.Smith was very (happy) to see that there was no ammunition or anything to explode to cause axidents.There was one wagon loaded with tar rope ostensibly,as it was said to hang Brigham Young and his danites.But suffice it to say the tar rope made a grand light”(348).

At Sword’s Point is an apt title and an accurate description of this important narrative and documentary contribution to the study of the Utah War.

RICHARDW. SADLER Weber State University

By Philip L.Fradkin.(New York:Alfred A. Knopf,2008.xiv + 369 pp.Cloth,$27.50.)

Wallace Stegner and the American West

FROM HIS APPEARANCE on the western American literary landscape with his first novel, Remembering Laughter (1937),until his death in April 1993,Wallace Stegner stood tall as a writer of fiction,history,and biography and as a prominent voice on conservation and ecology.As the author of thirty-five books and several hundred essays,reviews,and short stories,Stegner was one of the most prominent figures in American literature of the second half of the twentieth century.

Philip Fradkin is a distinguished historian of the American West,having produced important books on Wells Fargo,the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906,the Colorado River,and Alaska.His latest is the second full-length study of Stegner’s career.The first was Jackson Benson’s Wallace Stegner:His Life and Work (Viking,1996).Before Benson’s book there had been two earlier works,which covered Stegner’s career but only through the mid-1970s. WallaceStegner by Forrest G.and Margaret G.Robinson (Twayne,1977) devotes one of its six chapters to Stegner’s biography.Merrill and Lorene Lewis’s brief Wallace Stegner was published in 1972 as the fourth volume in Boise State University’s Western

Writers Series.Thus at the present only Benson and Fradkin cover the whole of Stegner’s life and work.

In his introduction Fradkin says that “this is a book about a man and the physical landscapes he inhabited and how they influenced him.Within that framework it is also the story of a quintessential westerner who eventually could not deal with the wrenching changes that are a constant of the American West”(xi).

Fradkin’s text,framed by a prologue and an epilogue,consists of four major sections:“Unformed Youth,”“Talented Teacher,”“Reluctant Conservationist,”and “Prominent Author.”Each section contains three to five chapters.Thus Fradkin uses Stegner’s life as “the vista from which to gaze upon the panorama of the American west in the twentieth century from the prairie frontier to Silicon Valley. Stegner inhabited all of the West’s different landscapes physically,emotionally,and mentally,as well as in his writings.The prairies,mountains,deserts,rivers,coast, remote villages,small towns,and cities of the West were intimately known to him”(xi).These excellent and detailed discussions of Stegner’s years in Saskatchewan,Montana,Utah,New England,and California give the reader good insights into the influence that each of these places had on the man and his writing.

Fradkin’s research is meticulous,but there is one error of fact:Hilda Stegner died on September 27,1933,according to her grave marker,not in November,an error to which Stegner himself contributed in his “Letter,Much Too Late,”when he says that after her death “I walked blindly out into the November darkness.”

Especially valuable is his fair and balanced treatment of the charges of plagiarism made against Stegner for his use of sources in Angle of Repose.For Fradkin, the issue is complex and slippery with no simple answers,but he sees Stegner as somewhat naïve,but not criminal in his use of sources.

In his conclusion Fradkin is right when he says that “What Stegner chose in the end was a return to his beginnings.What he found in Vermont,as he had in Eastend,was a convergence of nature and human history”(323).It is this convergence that continues to attract readers to Stegner’s fiction,essays,histories,and biographies fifteen years after his death.

Fradkin’s biography is a fine addition to the library of Stegner criticism and biography and with Benson’s book,which provides in-depth readings of Stegner’s fiction and nonfiction,gives us a complete coverage of Stegner’s career.

ROBERTC.STEENSMA University of Utah

BOOKNOTICES

Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest.Edited by Deborah L. Nichols and Patricia L.Crown,(Tucson:University of Arizona Press,2008. 273 pp.Cloth,$60.00.)

To paraphrase George Armelagos in one of the essays in this volume,the prehistoric Southwest has been viewed both as a peaceful place and as a cannibalistic hell.Lately,popular archaeological news has focused on the latter; with sensational stories of dismembered bodies discovered in the Four Corners region.This volume is a long-needed,reasoned scientific study of the evidence for and possible causes of violence in the Southwest between A.D.1000 and 1300. Intended for an academic audience,the essays examine what is in fact diverse evidence for a wide variety of violent acts.These acts probably had many causes—witchcraft,slavery,terrorism,and warfare due to scarce resources—rather than any single,sensational explanation.The volume contributes to a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the Ancestral Puebloan world and sites such as Hovenweep,Mesa Verde,and Chaco Canyon.

The Trans-Mississippi West,1804-1912:A Guide to Federal Records for the territorial Period Part IV,A Guide to Records of the Department of the Interior for the Territorial Period,Section 3,Records of the General Land Office. Compiled by Robert M.Kvasnicka.(Washington,D.C.:National Archives and Records Administration, 2007.Volume I,xix + 656 pp.,Volume II,Appendix,vi + 448 pp.Paper,$49.)

An indispensable guide for researchers and others interested in textual,cartographic,and photographic records (Group 49) of the General Land Office,the federal agency for surveying,managing,and disposing of the public domain during the territorial period,1804-1912.The guide provides historians of the nation’s westward expansion and family historians “the nature of available Federal records”and their locations in Washington,D.C.,or in regional offices of the National Archives.Sample records of special interest pertaining to Utah are land entry records for 1869-1908;abstracts of mineral applications including coal land abstracts;abstracts of military bounty warrants;cartographic records including maps of Big Cottonwood Canyon Mining District,Deep Creek Indian Reservation,Payson Forest Reserve;canal and reservoir files,1891-1929;reclamation files;townsite and reservation files.

Best of Covered Wagon Women. Edited by Kenneth L.Holmes.(Norman:University of Oklahoma Press,2008.304 pp.Paper,$19.95.)

The eight accounts of women travelers on western overland trails are taken from an eleven volume Covered Wagon Women series originally published by the Arthur H.Clark Company.Selections include Keturah Belknap en route to Oregon in 1847;Margaret A.Frink to California in 1850;Amelia Hadley to Oregon in 1851;Twin sisters Cecelia Adams and Parthenia Blank to Oregon in 1852;Amelia Knight from Iowa to the Columbia River in 1853;Ellen Tootle,bound for the Colorado mines in 1862;Elizabeth Elliott on the Oregon Trail in 1863;and Mary Ringo to California in 1864.

The Billy the Kid Reader By Frederick Nolan.(Norman:University of Oklahoma Press,2007.400 pp.Cloth,$29.95.)

Although “Billy the Kid”is a household name,the most difficult task for historians in researching Kid has been separating the myth from the fact, as Kid’s legendary status has led to gross exaggeration and fabrication regarding his actual exploits.In response to this problem,author Frederick Nolan attempts to synthesize information available on Kid into a definitive work that can be used by scholars and novices alike to understand the life of the legendary bandit.Widely regarded as the eminent authority on Billy the Kid,Nolan delivers a biography that is both engaging and informative,appealing to all students of one of the West’s most famous outlaws.

The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke:Volume Three,June 1-1878-June 22,1880. Edited and annotated by Charles M.Robinson III.(Denton:University of North Texas Press,2007.ix + 555 pp.Cloth,$55.00.)

The third volume in a projected eight volume series of the 124 manuscript volumes of the John Gregory Bourke diaries that he kept from 1872 until his death in 1896,this book covers two important years that include the Bannock Uprising of 1878 in Idaho and the White River Ute Uprising in western Colorado in 1879.The diary includes an account of the recovery and burial of the body of Major Thomas Tipton Thornburg and his men.

In Search of a Lost Race:The Illustrated American Exploring Expedition of 1892. Compiled by James H.Knipmeyer.(Philadelphia:Exlibris Corporation,2006.160 pp. Cloth,$30.99,paper $20.99.)

This book is a collection of fourteen articles published in 1892 in the New York City periodical The Illustrated American. The articles were written by members of a scientific expedition led by Warren K.Moorehead,an archeologist who had worked at the Smithsonian Institution,sent to the Four Corners Region to study the “Cliff Dwellers’country”of Utah,Colorado,and New Mexico.The articles were written while the expedition was in the region during the late spring and summer of 1892,and shortly after its return.The articles report on the expedition activities in Hovenweep,on the San Juan River,Bluff,Comb Wash, Butler Wash,Allen Canyon,and other Utah locations.Each article is followed by commentary by James Knipmeyer and includes useful photographs by Mike S. Ford of many sites noted in the articles.

Josephine Foard and the Glazed Pottery of Laguna Pueblo. By Dwight P.Lanmon, Lorraine Welling Lanmon,and Dominique Coulet du Gard.(Albuquerque:University of New Mexico Press,2007.xx + 245 pp.Cloth,$39.95.)

Surprised to find early twentieth century Indian pottery with glazed interiors,American art aficionados Dwight P.and Lorraine Welling Lanmon became intrigued by the story of Josephine Foard,the woman responsible for this Anglo technique appearing in Southwest Indian pottery.Foard traveled West in 1899 as “an artist,potter,and entrepreneur,”hoping to volunteer her advanced pottery-making techniques to Indians living in the area.The biography details Foard’s work among the Indians in Laguna Pueblo,New Mexico,and includes Foard’s letters to family and friends,further shedding light on her more than ten year experience among the Indians.As the Lanmon’s discovered at multiple art exhibits throughout the country,Foard’s influence on Western pottery is extensive,and stands as the legacy for this ambitious woman.

Insights Gained from Events Remembered:Personal Encounters with a Meaningful Moment. By Paul W.Hodson.(Midvale,UT:self published,2008.70 pp., Paper,$15.00.)

Paul W.Hodson’s long association with the University of Utah as an administrator and later vice-president provided encounters between the university and leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.In this short book of interesting anecdotes the author provides insight into the personal relationships that usually resulted in expressions of mutual respect between the two institutions.

LETTERS

Editor,

As an archivist-historian with an interest in late nineteenth century Utah history and a Utah Historical Quarterly subscriber for almost 40 years,I was disappointed to find the Spring 2008 lead article on the legal prohibition of racial intermarriage marred by major errors of fact.The errors are sufficiently substantive to affect the author’s conclusions regarding the origins of the ban on racial intermarriage in Utah.I’m bringing this matter to your attention in the hope that the Quarterly will review and strengthen its procedures for vetting articles and thereby minimize the risks of any recurrence of such errors.

The errors begin with the author’s misunderstanding of the provisions of the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act (“Interracial Marriage in Utah,”p.117).He states, incorrectly,that the legislation declared plural marriage a felony,disenfranchised polygamists,and barred those who practiced or believed in plural marriage from jury duty or holding public office.Rather,the Morrill Act of 1862 made polygamy a felony.And it was the Edmunds Act of 1882 that disfranchised polygamists and barred them from holding public office,creating the Utah Commission to administer these provisions.

This misconstruction leads the author to state,incorrectly,that the EdmundsTucker Act “changed the face of Utah politics”and filled the 1888 territorial legislation “with non-Mormon legislators who took the seats of polygamists displaced by Edmunds-Tucker”(p.118).Soon after arriving in the territory,the Utah Commission’s application of a test oath vacated territorial and local offices held by polygamists.Their positions were filled by monogamous Mormons who could take the test oath and thereby vote and hold public office.As a result,the Utah territorial legislature continued to be dominated by the People’s Party, which represented the Mormon community.The Liberal Party,which represented the Gentile community,never came close to controlling the legislature at any time during the territorial era,though it gained a small foothold in the 1888 legislature from redistricting mandated by the Edmunds-Tucker Act (the 1886 legislature,as I recall,had a single Liberal Party representative).

Misconstruing the political composition of the 1888 territorial legislature leads the author to claim that anti-polygamist non-Mormons were the authors and primary backers of the 1888 legislation banning interracial marriage (pp.118-19). They supposedly sought to enjoin various forms of undesirable marriages and pass territorial legislation paralleling Federal anti-polygamy legislation.Throughout his discussion he repeatedly describes the measure as the product of mostly nonMormon legislators (p.121).The political composition of the legislature and the final vote in each house (footnote 36) suggest otherwise,namely,that the measure could not have become law without substantial support from the People’s Party.

Finally,the author states that the Liberal Party-dominated territorial government “sought legitimacy”(p.119) through statehood,polishing its anti-polygamy credentials and mounting a campaign to gain admission to the Union.While a statehood effort did take place,it was exclusively a Mormon-backed effort,as my

research on the 1887 convention that produced the constitution (“A Reexamination of the Woodruff Manifesto in the Light of Utah Constitutional History,” UHQ,Fall 1971,328-49) and that of Edward Leo Lyman on Mormon efforts to achieve statehood in the late 1880s and early 1890s (Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood ) demonstrated many years ago.I don’t believe in playing gotcha with scholarship.Minor errors can creep into any published work,and an occasional misspelling or incorrect reference is understandable.Similarly,historians can differ in their interpretation of events.But the errors in this article are neither minor nor simply matters of interpretation.For a Utah historian to confuse the provisions of the Edmunds Act with those of the Edmunds-Tucker Act is like an historian of modern America confusing the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 with those of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.And to claim that anti-Mormons controlled the 1888 territorial legislature demonstrates nothing less than a basic misreading of Utah political history. These factual matters could have been easily checked and the errors caught. Federal legislation for that period can be referenced in the GPO publication, Statutes at Large,and Firmage and Mangrum’s Zion in the Courts:A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,1830-1900 usefully summarizes the provisions of each major piece of Federal legislation affecting the Mormons during the territorial era,including the Edmunds and Edmunds-Tucker Acts. Election results are a matter of public record,as well as local newspaper reports.

Unfortunately,the appearance of “Racial Intermarriage in Utah”in your journal has given it the patina of scholarly accuracy,and the author’s factual account of the origins of the ban on intermarriage may well be cited by future researchers. This will only compound the initial errors.While nothing can be done in this instance,I hope you and the staff of the Quarterly will reexamine your procedures for reviewing proposed articles and catching substantive errors of fact prior to publication,thereby minimizing the chances of similar problems occurring.

Sincerely Henry Wolfinger

Editor,

I am grateful that the Utah Historical Quarterly editorial staff has given me this opportunity to respond to Henry Wolfinger’s letter concerning my Spring 2008 article,“The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah,1888-1963.”I thank Mr.Wolfinger for his detailed examination of the article,and hope that I can satisfactorily answer his critiques.Such exchanges between authors and readers only enhance our quest for historical accuracy and understanding,so I welcome this in the best tradition of scholarly debate.

Wolfinger’s first criticism is of my admittedly brief treatment of the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act,particularly when I state that the act “finally put teeth into federal anti-polygamy legislation by declaring plural marriage a felony,disenfran-

chising polygamists,and barring those who practiced or believed in plural marriage from jury duty or holding public office”(117).This,of course,is an oversimplification of a much longer series of events in Utah and federal legislative history.Wolfinger correctly points out that earlier statutes,in particular the Morrill Act of 1862 and Edmunds Act of 1882,were actually responsible for making plural marriage a federal offense and then disenfranchising polygamists and barring them from holding public office.The Edmunds-Tucker Act,which in many ways helped sound the death knell for Mormon plural marriage,was drafted and passed precisely because these previous laws were deemed insufficiently rigorous or effective;thus my statement that the act “put teeth”into federal law. Nevertheless,like any student of Utah or Mormon history,I am fully aware of the essential precursors to Edmunds-Tucker,and the wording of my sentence,which was intended primarily to provide a bit of historical context for the 1888 Utah marriage law,was not sufficiently precise.

That leads to Wolfinger’s more substantive critiques concerning the provenance of the 1888 law that first outlawed most (but not all) forms of interracial marriage in Utah.Essentially,he interprets my article to argue that by 1888 non-Mormons, organized in the Liberal Party,had overtaken Utah politics to the point at which they could pass punitive anti-polygamy legislation that also included an antimiscegenation component.If this is an accurate reflection of his reading,then I believe that Wolfinger has misinterpreted the basic thrust of my argument.

The 1888 territorial government,as Wolfinger notes,was still dominated by Mormons organized in the People’s Party,albeit monogamous ones in accordance with the strictures of the Edmunds and Edmunds-Tucker Acts.The non-Mormon Liberal Party had begun to make inroads,winning five seats in the territorial legislature that year.Although a fusion ticket did unite some Mormons and Gentiles in local elections in the late 1880s,for the most part the political battle lines were clearly drawn along the boundaries of religious identity.The sixth petition for statehood,drafted along with a new constitution in 1887,was spearheaded by LDS politicians and church leaders,as historians such as Gustive Larson,Edward Leo Lyman,and Wolfinger himself have shown,and most non-Mormons were wary that statehood would permanently enshrine Mormon political power.

Although it is not a detailed treatise on this era in territorial politics,and therefore subject to some of the problems of generalization,I do not believe my article represents a gross “misconstruction,”in Wolfinger’s words,of the political scene in Utah in 1888.I stand by my claims that the Edmunds-Tucker Act “changed the face of Utah politics,”and that the new territorial legislature did include “non-Mormon legislators”who filled seats previously held by polygamous (or pro-polygamy) Mormons (118).I do not argue for Liberal Party dominance,but I do assert the relatively greater (but still minority) voice and influence of non-Mormons in Utah politics in 1888.The two phrases I regret—and retract— along these lines come on pages 119 (“the deposed Mormon majority”) and 121 (“the mostly non-Mormon legislators”).These statements can potentially be read

as an affirmation of a Liberal Party majority in the legislature,which of course was clearly not the case.I agree with Wolfinger that these phrases can be misleading— though not intentionally so—and I apologize.

Wolfinger’s most significant critique cuts to the heart of my argument regarding the ban’s origins:that Utah’s anti-miscegenation legislation originated in tandem with the anti-Mormon crusade to regulate marriage in Utah Territory in 1888.Wolfinger believes I falsely argue that “anti-polygamist non-Mormons were the authors and primary backers of the 1888 legislation banning interracial marriage.”It is here that I think he protests too much.As I demonstrate,the 1888 “Act Regulating Marriage”was proposed in the House by Representative E. D.Hoge of Salt Lake City,a noted member of the Liberal Party and a committed anti-Mormon.Hoge’s original draft of the bill did not mention race,but when it came back from the judiciary committee with the amendment “to prohibit miscegenation,”Hoge did not register any objection that his bill had been somehow corrupted.Indeed,the public record reveals nobody—neither Liberal nor People’s Party representatives,nor the non-Mormon governor Caleb West— who complained about the newly added proscriptions on interracial marriages.I never claim that the marriage act was passed without the necessary support from the majority People’s Party,only that it was originated by an avowed Liberal Party member who sought further punitive measures,on a territorial level,against the Mormon practice of polygamy.In light of all the evidence,I uphold my argument that the anti-polygamy campaign opened the door for the creation of anti-miscegenation law in Utah,or,as I state in the article,“The confluence of anti-polygamy and anti-miscegenation legislation thus came as the new territorial legislature drafted bills targeting plural marriage and then extended the law by adding language prohibiting all ‘unacceptable’forms of marriage”(119).

I also want to emphasize that my article does not privilege either Mormons or non-Mormons in the contest for moral high ground.Quite the opposite — my research convincingly demonstrates that Mormons and non-Mormons alike,from church and political leadership to ordinary citizens,were directly involved in efforts to restrict the right of black and Asian Utahns to marry whites (and vice versa).Anti-miscegenation legislation,it seems,was something that virtually all (white) Utahns could agree upon from its inception in 1888 until its repeal in 1963,regardless of their religious or political affiliation.

In sum,I appreciate Mr.Wolfinger’s close reading of my article,and acknowledge a handful of phrases that lack the standard of precision I strive for in my research and writing.I do not,however,believe these minor glitches add up to,in his words,an article “marred by major errors of fact.”Any errors that do exist are entirely mine,and should not be attributed to any fault of the UHQ editors or staff.In regard to its treatment of the origins and development of antimiscegenation law in Utah,I stand by my article as an honest and accurate history.

Sincerely, Patrick Mason American University in Cairo

Editor,

The article “‘It was Very Warm and Smelt Very Bad’:Warm Springs and the First Bath House in Salt Lake City,”(Summer 2008),makes mention in footnote 28,p.217,of an apparent transcription error in An Intimate Chronicle:The Journals of William Clayton ,edited by George D.Smith (Salt Lake City:Signature Books/Smith Research Associates,1993).However,the entry cited as having the “erroneously copied”text (July 26,1847,pp.367-68) does not contain any such error.In fact,the reported misreading does not appear anywhere in the version of Clayton’s diaries edited by Smith and published by Signature Books/Smith Research Associates.

Gary James Bergera Director of Publishing,Signature Books,1985-2000

Editor,

The erroneously copied reference to William Clayton’s journal as noted in footnote 28 is found in Clayton Family Association, William Clayton’s Journal:A Daily Record of the Journey of the Original Company of “Mormon”Pioneers from Nauvoo,Illinois,to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. (Salt Lake City:The Deseret News,1921),22.The authors acknowledge that the footnote is incorrect in attributing the reference to George D.Smith,ed., An Intimate Chronicle:The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City:Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates,1993).

Darrell E.Jones W.Randall Dixon

UTAHSTATE

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