Wallace Stegner

His Lasting Legacy at the University of Utah

By Amiee Maxwell

This year, Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Angle of Repose” turns 50 years old, thrusting him once again into the spotlight as one of the American West’s greatest writers. His nomadic childhood led him to form a deep bond with Salt Lake City, as he spent much of his adolescence here hawking hot dogs at Saltair resort, adventuring in the wilderness with his LDS Church Boy Scout troop (although he was a Presbyterian himself), and playing tennis on the University of Utah team.

Despite spending much of his adult life teaching creative writing at Harvard and Stanford universities, Stegner willed his entire collection of papers, letters, and other memorabilia to the University of Utah, which Gregory Thompson, historian and Associate Dean of Special Collections at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library, calls the library’s most important collection. “His papers are just wonderful,” says Thompson, of Stegner’s archives, and he enjoys seeing the many people who comb through them hoping to gain some insight and a deeper understanding of the life of this literary giant.

Young Wallace Stegner

Stegner was much more than a novelist and writing professor. His nonfiction books and essay collections take a critical look at the cultural and natural heritage of the American West, and his work as an early conservationist has left a powerful and lasting influence on the West. His respect for the natural world was a theme in all of his writings and was central to who he was as a person.

For those having never read Stegner, Thompson recommends starting out with Angle of Repose, or one of his semiautobiographical novels such as Big Rock Candy Mountain or Crossing to Safety.

Those more interested in the history of things will enjoy Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, which Thompson says has never been more relevant. “This book has a lot to say to us as we struggle with water issues today.” He also highly recommends listening to the audio version of the essay “Genesis” while driving through the southern Utah landscape.

One of his most notable works is a short essay entitled The Wilderness Letter, which was instrumental in the passing of the Wilderness Act of 1964. “Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in,” lamented Stegner in this passionate and poetic essay.

His plea for the preservation and protection of wilderness helped bolster support for the Wilderness Act, and many credit his essay for its eventual passage — a landmark victory for the conservation movement that has since set over 100 million acres aside as protected wilderness areas.

I personally enjoy his collections of essays for the glimpses they provide into what southern Utah was like before the main throughways were paved, when the Colorado River still flowed freely through Glen Canyon, and when the dirt road over Fishlake High Top was “so paved with flowers that a man could walk twenty miles and never set his foot down without trampling them.”

Thompson met Stegner several times through his role at the library, and when I asked him what it was like sitting down with Stegner, he said it was one of the experiences that sticks out in his life. “It is something I think about quite often,” Thompson said.

“As the repository of the work of this great author, teacher, and conservationist, we have a responsibility to not only preserve Stegner’s legacy, but to celebrate it and to offer it up to our students, the community, and the environmental thinkers of our time.”

Granite Mills

By Nicole Anderson

In the spring of 1907, the city of Salt Lake had only eight miles of paved roads, leaving the rest muddy, boggeddown, and at times, almost impassable. The automobile was gaining a foothold in the area, and with such rough road conditions, some brave drivers would take a chance by driving along the railroad tracks. This was fine until a train came along.

The joining of the Intercontinental Railway in 1869 made it possible for hardwoods like oak and maple from the east coast, and softer woods like redwood from the west coast, to be shipped into Utah from lumber mills across the United States for planing. The wood made its way to the Granite Planing Mill, owned and operated by Frederick Sandberg, a Swedish immigrant who brought with him an elite set of carpentry skills and snickagleda (the joy of the carpenter), and bric-a-brac (curves and turnings) from Scandinavia.

Upon his arrival, Sandberg served as an engineer and craftsman, working on intricate creations and carvings like the spiral staircases in the Salt Lake Temple. After the temple’s dedication in 1893, Sandberg worked on other structures throughout the state. In fact, all the ornate woodwork in the area, from the LDS temples and the Stations of the Cross at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, to

carvings and restored lighting in the First Presbyterian Church next door, and many homes in the avenues of Salt Lake City, have Granite Mill’s stamp on them. In 1907, after 35 years in South Salt Lake, Sandberg moved the Granite Planing Mill to the historic Sugarhouse district where the Frederick Sandberg Memorial Bridge remains near Wilmington Avenue, and where a stream once ran through the property.

Two short years later, in 1909, the building burned to the ground. After the fire reduced the mill to rubble, Sandberg joked with his friends and family that he “didn’t have enough money to get out of town, so he would have to stay and rebuild”, and rebuild he did.

Sandberg rebuilt the property which remained in Sugarhouse for decades. It stood behind the old ice storage building and cooling tower alongside a watermill, where a pulley system harnessed the energy from the water to pull the lumber through the planer. The watermill wasn’t dependable, and when the water wasn’t flowing at its highest, it simply broke down.

Sandberg purchased a Carlos Steam engine in Oregon and brought it home. He built a line shaft — a power-driven rotating shaft for power transmission — strung with pulleys and lines, thus beginning the process of getting away from hand-planing each individual piece.

Over many years, Granite Mill completed many intricate woodworking projects. In fact, this family of craftsmen has their fingerprints almost everywhere across the state. Gary Sandberg, son of Frederick, shared his memories with me during a recent conversation about structures throughout the state, such as the Governor’s Mansion, with its Botticelli carvings. The Alta Club, the Huntsman Cancer Institute, the woodwork

restoration in the Salt Lake City & County Building, and the Matheson Courthouse across the street are just a few of the family’s many artistic contributions.

When I asked Gary which was his favorite, he couldn’t narrow it down, explaining that pride by nature isn’t a good attribute. But after some convincing, he shared one of his most memorable endeavors: Abravanel Hall. “It wasn’t necessarily the most difficult to construct, but perhaps the most educational. The company brought in Dr. Cyril Harris, an acoustical engineer responsible for the sound in the most prominent concert halls in the country, including the Metropolitan Opera and Avery Fisher Hall,” and our own Abravanel Hall. Gary remembers creating the curves of the walls and balconies, bending and shaping the white oak, and making certain that the space behind the wood was of a certain thickness as if the hall itself was one giant sound chamber.

It was the learning and doing that made Sandberg’s career so interesting. His personality and storytelling quality is one that you could enjoy for hours as he explains the intricate details of fine craftsmanship and premium dovetail grade joints instead of what you often find in stores now. Gary mentioned that one of his first jobs was unloading logs from railcars in the 1960s. “It was an opportunity to earn some money,” he said. “I crawled into the railcar on my hands and knees — I was scrawny back then — and pushed the carload of 18 x 24” wide, 3” thick, and 30’ long planks, rough and full of slivers that were stacked all the way to the top of the car for them to be planed.”

Gary’s sense of family pride and the uncommon stability found at Granite Mill is a special perk of the business. Three out of four of his boys have followed in the family’s footsteps. His son, Wayne Gary Jr., known as Sandy to friends and co-workers, is now the president of the company. Matthew is the vice-president and C.F.O., and the second to the youngest, Christopher, is now the C.O.O. The youngest son, Stephen, is taking a different route into real estate law. It’s all about line shafts, steam engines, hard and softwood joined together by a railway, premium dovetail joints, and a 114-year family legacy. As Gary said, “It is an honor to walk into structures all over the valley and all across the Intermountain West, and knowing that my grandfather, or my father, or my son was there, touching that very wood, is a blessing.”