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Josh Williams ascends the Main Fork of Angel Cove Canyon in the Robbers Roost area.
Photo by Whit Richardson
Photos this page, from top: Scott Baxter, Howie Garber
Birders revel in this marshy oasis that beckons hundreds of thousands of feathered friends to an avian haven near Brigham City.
Allie Wisniewski
Intrepid canyoneers and hikers defy claustrophobia to discover some of Utah’s most elusive scenic grandeur.
Matt Masich
More than a century after his Salt Lake murder trial and execution, the labor activist and songwriter remains a powerful if divisive hero. By Matt Masich
This incredible 124-mile road between Torrey and Panguitch features two national parks, one national monument and three state parks. Story and photographs by Joshua Hardin
Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, p 16
Slot Canyons, p 24
Travel along an All-American Road with canyon overlooks, scenic valley vistas and a 502-foot dam.
Tickets $68. Full Day Bus Tour. Lunch Included.
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THE EXPRESSION “DULL AS A ROCK” might make sense in certain contexts, but I’ve never found it particularly apt when talking about Utah. Here, rocks are downright exciting. We’re proud of our rocks – we even put one of our most notable rocks, Delicate Arch, on our license plates.
In some places, geology is just an elective you took in college to fulfill your science requirements. In Utah, geology is something of a statewide pastime. From the arches of Arches National Park, to the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park, to the buttes of Monument Valley, Utah’s geology is its calling card.
Over the years, Utah Life has devoted a fair number of pages to celebrating our state’s diverse array of unique and beautiful rock formations. Starting with this issue, we are proud to introduce a new recurring feature called “Geologic Wonders,” which will highlight stunning geology from across the state – and not just the usual suspects.
For our first installment of “Geologic Wonders” on page TK, we venture to Tabbys Peak in the Cedar Mountains of Tooele County. This unusually shaped prominence formed when magma formed a large dike, which later fractured into a pattern of six-sided columns.
We plan to cover the entire state with our “Geologic Wonders” series. Do you have a favorite unsung geologic wonder that you think we should know about? I’d love to hear your suggestions for future sites to highlight – just send me a quick note at editor@utahlifemag.com.
The impressive geology in this issue isn’t limited to our new section. On page TK, we go on a journey down Scenic Byway 12, which spans 124 miles between Panguitch and Torrey. The byway passes through or near two national parks – Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef – a national monument and three state parks. Among the geologic wonders are the hoodoos and arches of Devil’s Garden and the monolithic stone spires of Kodachrome Basin.
Geology is fascinating for many reasons, not least of which for the way it makes us think about time in a vastly different way. The rocks in the formations we admire seem like they’ve been around forever – and, compared to human lifespans, they practically have been. But the rock wasn’t always there; it formed tens of millions of years ago. And while nothing seems more permanent than rock, formations like arches and hoodoos actually tell the story of impermanence, as they are formed by countless millennia of erosion.
Whether you appreciate Utah’s rocks from an aesthetic or scientific perspective, it is undoubtedly one of the most Utah things about Utah – and there’s nothing remotely dull about that.
MATT MASICH Editor editor@utahlifemag.com
May/June 2023
Volume 6, Number 3
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MAILBOX
Black powder at Buenaventura
I absolutely loved the article “Mountain Men Are Alive and Well at Fort Buenaventura” in the March/April 2023 issue of Utah Life. While attending elementary school in Bountiful in the 1960s, I got my first viewing of Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier starring Fess Parker, and also by watching Fess Parker in the television series Daniel Boone, I was fascinated with black powder guns, and in particular flintlocks. Ultimately, I wanted a gun just like Davy and Daniel had, lock, stock and barrel. So just before my 16th birthday, I acquired my first real flintlock pistol. This experience of firing a flintlock was not just a flash in the pan but started me on a lifetime interest in the hobby of black powder shooting, which I enjoy to this day. While I have participated in rendezvous before, most notably Fort Bridger, Wyoming, I have never been to Fort Buenaventura. Your excellent article has motivated me to fix that. Most people are not too fond of the sulfur smell of black powder smoke, but I love it! Keep your powder dry, and thank you for an excellent article and magazine.
Bryan Morris Orem
Forgotten history
I can always count on Utah Life to fill me in on the gaps in my knowledge of our state. In the March/April 2023 issue, the article on Fort Buenaventura was especially eye-opening. I know a fair amount about the pioneers of 1847, and I knew mountain men passed through here before them, but I hadn’t understood that there was an actual settlement that predated the “this is the place” moment. Kudos to
the Fort Buenaventura Mountain Men for keeping the memory alive and for sharing it with others. And thank you Utah Life for telling the forgotten history of Utah.
Stanley Freeman St. George
Walk on the wild side
I loved the wildlife photos by Daniel Lindhardt in your March/April 2023 issue (“Into the Wild”). I hadn’t really realized what a diverse mix of remarkable animals we have in our state. The baby foxes with their mother were especially darling. And what I found most impressive was that one person was able to get all these shots. I would think it is just by luck that someone is able to get so close to the animals to get a great photo. But now I realize it isn’t luck at all – it is just an incredible amount of patience. Thank you for taking us for a walk on the wild side.
Deb Peters Provo
Pretty as a picture
I had recently returned from a trip to check off the final box on my original bucket list when I opened my March/ April 2023 issue of Utah Life. I gathered pencil and paper in anticipation of ideas to note for an addendum to continue my explorations. I had just finished reading the “Mailbox,” turned the page and saw the photograph by Noah Wetzel of Reflection Canyon, and my heart skipped a beat (“Monumental Exposure”).
My husband and I had stood at much the same place high on the vantage point overlooking the canyon many years ago and found the view breathtaking. As an aspiring artist, I pulled that photograph from our travel albums and painted it recently. I am anxious to hear of the findings of Wetzel now that the water level has subsided and hope he will share his discoveries with your readers.
In the interim, I have attached a copy of my painting and made note of Fort Buenaventura, bus tours of Canyonlands and Bears Ears for possible road trips on the continuation of my bucket list. I was in awe at the many wildlife photographs by Daniel Lindhardt, and, as is my custom, I devoured the entire issue and will go back for a recap in a few days. Please continue providing your fine publication for all our enjoyment and education.
Kathy Tuttle Timber Lakes
Bryan Morris
Kathy Tuttle
One of the best yet
I have been a subscriber to Utah Life for many years, and the January/February 2023 issue is probably one of the best I’ve read. Three stories captured my interest. First, “There’s Snow Place Like Home,” because Utah is my home, and I was an avid skier for several years long ago. Then “Cowboys and Scientists” about the Dugout Ranch, a place I have wanted to go see but never have. It was so nice to read that Matt and Kristen have taken over the reins of keeping things going, plus The Nature Conservancy now preserving the ranch for all to see. Third, the so very interesting story of Chief Sagwitch – so educational and intriguing. Thanks to all involved in putting this magazine together. For the mere price of $8.95 a copy, this magazine is top notch.
Diane
Rollins Sandy, Utah
DulyNoted
In the answers to our March/April 2023 trivia section on Utah sports, we incorrectly stated that Alta is the only one of the state’s 15 ski resorts to ban snowboards. Alert reader Paula Winter pointed out that Deer Valley also bans snowboards. We regret the error.
SEND YOUR LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Thank you for reading and writing! We enjoy hearing from our subscribers around Utah and the world and hope this issue of the magazine inspires you to grace us with your words.
The deadline to send letters for the next issue of Utah Life is June 15, 2023. One lucky letter writer will be selected at random to win a free subscription renewal. This issue’s winner is Kathy Tuttle of Timber Lakes. Congrats! Send your “Letter to the Editor” by dashing off an email to editor@ utahlifemag.com or pen us a letter and mail it to the address at the front of this magazine.
Just minutes away from downtown, Red Butte Garden offers 21 acres of themed gardens, 5 miles of hiking trails, and spectacular views.
THE BUZZ AROUND UTAH
St. George’s oldest business is a candy store that serves soup
by MATT MASICH
From its weather-beaten wooden facade to the neatly hand-painted lettering on its sign, Thomas Judd’s Store Co. is the exact image you might conjure if asked to imagine the quintessential old-timey general store. Judd’s Store looks like it has traveled through time from more than 100 years ago – and in a way, it has.
Established in 1911, Judd’s Store is St. George’s oldest continuously operating business. With its bountiful stock of candy and soda, it could also stake a claim to being the town’s best-loved business. On any given day, gaggles of children peruse the sugary inventory with an unalloyed glee that proves true the proverb about kids and candy stores.
While some things at Judd’s have changed over the years – gone are the sheep supplies it sold back when founder Thomas Judd was proprietor – the spirit of its past has carried through intact into the present. And no one appreciates that spirit quite like owner Heather Graff. Her grandfather worked at Judd’s store in the 1940s, and Graff grew up just two blocks away, spending time in the store since before she can remember.
Tom Judd, a descendant of the founder, still worked there when she was an elementary schooler. A young Graff regularly popped in to chat with Judd and buy a Pepsi and a Twinkie. Though she always bought the same thing, she noticed the price varied -- $1 one day, 60 cents the next day, 35 cents the next. Eventually, she realized that, rather than charging her full price, Judd simply charged whatever small amount she happened to have on her.
“I thought he was the greatest guy ever,” Graff said. “I wanted to be like Tom Judd.”
As much as she admired him, she didn’t consider working at Judd’s Store until she was practically drafted into the job. When she was 19, Graff stopped into Judd’s one day during the St. George Art Festival to find the shop overrun with customers. Desperate for help, then-owner Tiffany _______ approached her and offered her a job on the spot, starting immediately. “It was crazy, chaotic and busy,” Graff said, “and I just loved it.”
Graff has been working there, on and off, ever since, becoming manager and eventually purchasing the store two years ago. In her 20-plus-year tenure at Judd’s,
she has put her own personal stamp on the store’s legacy: soup.
Each and every morning, Graff cooks three different kinds of soup from scratch to serve at the store. She has developed 21 recipes – enough to offer a different threesoup lineup every day of the week, though the southwestern chicken chili is so popular that she usually serves it two days a week. A self-described “control freak,” she doesn’t allow anyone else to cook the soup … except maybe the lasagna soup, which she permits her husband, Jared, to make. Whenever Graff takes a vacation, the soup goes on temporary hiatus.
Graff’s soup has won her a loyal local following. She has many daily customers, almost all of whom she knows by name. “I’ve built relationships with people that I think people really need nowadays,” she said. Those relationships extend beyond the store’s walls. “If we have customers who don’t show up for their soup on specific days – maybe they’re sick – I drop off their soup for them at the end of the day.”
With that level of commitment to the community, Judd’s keeps building on the goodwill it has been accumulating for 112 years and counting.
built in 1911, and its appearance has remained little changed.
Owner Heather Graff serves an ice cream cone at Judd’s Store in St. George. The store was
Joshua Hardin
Joshua Hardin
Moab painter explores special relationship with desert
by ALLIE WISNIEWSKI
Although explorers of the Utah desert may not recall having seen bright purple sandstone mesas streaked with sky blue, rest assured Moab artist Julia Buckwalter paints from feeling rather than sight. In her Impressionist-inspired renderings of the Southwest’s wide-open spaces, there’s a rich sense of peace and belonging – of curiosity, comfort and awe amidst the harsh desert’s stark silence.
The desert, to most visitors, is just that – harsh – so it feels like a feat that Buckwalter is able to evoke such a lush fluidity in her work. There’s a softness that cuts through the rigidity of a place so dominated by unyielding rock, creating a welcoming environment atypical of the desert’s characteristic desolation.
Buckwalter has always felt welcome in Utah, and especially in the desert, but it hasn’t always been home for her. She was born in Cairo, Egypt, where her father studied Arabic linguistics, before moving to Indiana, and then to Utah, where she lived with her family in Provo and Orem for 11 years. Then, it was high school in
Seattle and college in Pennsylvania to study art, before she finally returned to Moab, hopefully for good, in 2012.
“I’ve floated around a lot, and because of that, I really have a deep understanding of where I feel like I belong,” she said.
She was born in the desert, grew up vacationing in the desert, and even spent time at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, where Georgia O’Keefe lived and worked.
But Utah has always been the one. No doubt, though, those early inspirations traveled with her into adulthood, helping to solidify her characteristic style: dramatic landscapes on large, dramatic canvases, which feel to her like the only real way to capture her favorite part about being in the desert.
“For me, it’s the feeling of open skies. Wide, wide, vistas – being able to see for miles,” Buckwalter said.
True, she said, you can see for miles in places like Kansas, but it doesn’t have Utah’s kaleidoscope of reds and oranges and smell of sagebrush.
“The desert is the visceral feeling of open space, of peace and quiet,” she said. “It’s a very sensual experience. The smell,
the earthiness of the landscape. Your throat being parched. It’s an epic joy, what you can feel where you’re on a mesa somewhere. You feel so bonded to the land.”
Capturing everything from juniper trees to deep canyons to desert storms, Buckwalter’s work is a true celebration of the sublime beauty of southern Utah. At this point, for her, there’s no turning back.
“I’m so head over heels with the landscape, it’s hard to imagine myself without Utah,” she said. “I don’t know how to untangle it from my identity.”
Moab painter Julia Buckwalter creates images that capture the open skies and wide vistas of the Utah landscape.
Julia Buckwalter
Julia Buckwalter
Julia Buckwalter
Water connoisseurs fill their jugs from natural spring in Salt Lake park
by MATT MASICH
Sprawling across 80 acres, Liberty Park is one of Salt Lake City’s largest parks. Just one block north is one of the city’s smallest parks, the quarter-acre Artesian Well Park. Occupying the footprint of a typical single-family home at the southwest corner of 500 East and 800 South, the park is accurately dubbed a “pocket park.”
While Artesian Well Park lacks picnic tables or pickleball courts, it has, as its name suggests, something no other park in Salt Lake has: a natural artesian spring that produces fresh, aquifer-fed mineral water.
The water goes through an arching pipe with spigots that flow continuously. People from the neighborhood and beyond come to the park to fill their water bottles, with some even bringing 5-gallon jugs.
The spring was originally a watering hole used by oxen as a rest stop while traveling between the granite quarry in Little Cottonwood Canyon and the construction site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Salt Lake Temple. The aquifer that feeds the spring comes from a large recharge area that extends from Red Butte Creek underneath the University of Utah, though it likely takes as long as 15
years for water to percolate that distance underground.
No one is sure when a well was drilled at the spring, but people have been coming to gather water here for more than a century. The site became a public park in 1979 and was updated with a new spigot and landscaping in 2020. Many people fill up jugs weekly, relying on the spring for their everyday drinking water. Some are drawn to the purported curative properties of the water’s mineral content; some like that it lacks chemicals like chlorine; and some simply prefer the taste over city tap water.
Joshua Hardin
A visitor to Salt Lake City’s Artesian Well Park fills her water bottle from the spigot connected to the park’s natural artesian spring. The mineral water here is not connected to the city’s water system and lacks chemicals like chlorine that affect the water’s taste.
Ute captive worked in the house of Brigham Young
by LISA TRUESDALE
As the head of the kitchen, Sally was required to prepare three meals a day for the family. That included setting the table, clearing it all away after, then washing all the dishes and scrubbing piles of pots and pans.
Sounds fairly normal for a housekeeper, until you learn that Sally worked for a son-in-law of Brigham Young, and that the family was 50 members strong.
But “worked for” is being generous. Sally was a Pahvant Ute, captured and enslaved in 1847 near present-day Salt Lake City, in what was then Mexican territory.
Sally’s life. It was no easy task, since there are no personal accounts from the young woman who was taken from her family, given a new name and forced to spend the next 30 years as a servant. Instead, Kerns spent the better part of a decade piecing together the story from a variety of sources, including early settlers’ journals and memoirs, newspapers, federal census records and transcripts of Young’s public addresses.
As she tells Sally’s story, Kerns also explores relevant themes – the American West and Native American history, yet she does it without judgment: “It is not my aim to deprecate or to celebrate the settler-colonists.”
In her book Sally in Three Worlds: An Indian Captive in the House of Brigham Young, writer, teacher and cultural anthropologist Virginia Kerns reconstructs
Instead, she writes as an anthropologist, telling the captive’s life story as an evidence-based narrative that lets the facts speak for themself.
-native plants & birds -dark skies -bees -bears -fireflies -permaculture design -and so much more
Sally in Three Worlds By Virginia Kerns University of Utah Press 372 pp., paperback, $35
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WATER IN UTAH
Test
by LUCAS McFARLANE
desert in The Dig
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1 What aptly named section of Zion National Park has tight passages and non-absorbing stone lining its walls, creating a high probability of flash flooding?
2 Frequent storms and cold mountain temperatures couple with the Great Salt Lake to create Utah’s “Greatest Snow on Earth.” Name the “precipitation enhancing” phenomenon about the Great Salt Lake that annually contributes 5-8 percent of Utah’s snowpack.
3
What typically urban landscaping practice replaces traditional grass with rocks and native plants/ turfs, helping Utahns conserve water, increase biodiversity and decrease fertilizer consumption?
5
The massive reservoir that formed in southern Utah after the creation of the Glen Canyon Dam was named after a New York- born geologist famous for exploring and surveying the Green River, Colorado River and Grand Canyon. What is the full name of that geologist?
4 This meteorological term was coined in 1994 and has become increasingly popular since 2015, with Utah experts frequently using it for modern-day weather forecasting. Name this term that delivers an airborne “firehose” of moisture in a long, narrow corridor from tropical regions to higher altitudes.
TRUE
OR FALSE
MULTIPLE CHOICE
6
The Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake and Lake Sevier started as a huge freshwater lake that formed 32,000 years ago, covering nearly a quarter of present-day Utah. What was the name of this original lake?
a. Lake Mohave
b. Lake Havasu
c. Lake Bonneville
7 Three major rivers contribute water and nearly 1.1 million tons of mineral deposits into the Great Salt Lake each year. Which of the following is not one of these rivers?
a. Bear River
b. Uinta River
c. Weber River
8 Utah is home to the longest U.S. river that does not reach the sea. What is the name of this 451-mile-long river, which is home to a bird refuge providing habitat for millions of migratory birds?
a. Bear River
b. Uinta River
c. Weber River
9 During the 1983 floods, when Salt Lake City streets were used as aqueducts to divert the rising water, what downtown street was transformed into a temporary river with kayakers and fishermen, as well as bridges built across it?
a. West Temple
b. State Street
c. Main Street
10 In 1959, the Great Salt Lake was split into two halves, creating the South and North Arms of the lake. What separates the two halves of the lake?
a. Highway
b. Canal
c. Railroad
No peeking, answers on page 57.
11
In the first week of April 2023, Utah broke its previous record snowpack of 28.8 inches snow water equivalent set in 1952.
12
The Great Salt Lake is the eighth largest terminal lake basin in the world.
13
Utah has the second greatest U.S. water usage per capita, with 178 gallons used per person per day, and nearly 80% of our annual water usage is used for agricultural purposes.
14 A huge, $60 million pump was built in the 1980s to extrude water from the Great Salt Lake further into the desert. This pump was used between 1987 and 1989 but is still maintained and on standby today.
15
The Great Salt Lake is 16 times saltier than the ocean (on average).
Inge Johnsson / Alamy
NORTHERN UTAH’S
Avian Haven
Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge beckons hundreds of thousands of feathered friends to this marshy oasis
by ALLIE WISNIEWSKI
Black-necked stilts forage for crustaceans and snails in the shallow water of Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge near Brigham City.
Scott Baxter
DRIVING UP BUSTLING
Interstate 15 from Salt Lake City, passing industrial factories and suburban neighborhoods, one would hardly guess that just off exit 363 lies 80,000 acres of wild marshlands, an indispensable natural sanctuary for wildlife native to Utah and beyond. Every year, more than 250 species of birds pass through Bear Lake Migratory Bird Refuge to mate, feed and raise their young, drawing thousands of enthusiastic human visitors hoping to observe their majesty in action.
In the mid to late 1800s, the marsh surrounding Bear River, near Brigham City, was teeming with life. But as industrial-era civilization in northern Utah began to expand rapidly, freshwater wet-
lands adjacent to the Great Salt Lake were draining at the same pace.
Latter-day Saint settlers were arriving in the area, establishing small agrarian communities with a high demand for irrigation infrastructure. Pumping water from the marsh, their agricultural settlements thrived, but those natural ecosystems suffered, and suddenly vast expanses of mud littered with bird carcasses replaced the vibrant scene that had existed in the area just decades earlier.
Things looked grim at best for Western bird populations. The lack of water and steamy summer temperatures created the perfect conditions for disease to spread, and by 1910, an avian botulism outbreak had killed more than 7 million waterfowl.
Disturbed by the grisly sight, ornithologists, hunters, conservation organizations and residents rallied together to better understand avian botulism and formulate a solution to the devastation on display. Determined to protect the birds and the northern Utah land and water they depended on, they urged Congress to take action. Finally, in 1928, Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge was established by presidential proclamation.
There are now 560 refuges in the National Wildlife Refuge System, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But Bear River was one of the first, a sort of milestone catalyst in the growing national movement to set aside land specifically for wildlife.
The Wellsville Mountains dominate the view to the east of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. The 80,000-acre expanse of wild marshlands serves as a sanctuary to more than 250 species of birds.
Scott Baxter
A western grebe acts as a floating nest. After the young hatch, their mothers carry them on their backs as they forage for small fish at the refuge.
Scott Baxter
BEAR RIVER REFUGE
BEYOND ITS HISTORICAL significance, Bear River is special for several reasons. A mix of open water, mudflats, marshes and uplands allows both a staggering variety and number of birds to find temporary homes inside its boundaries. It’s part of the Great Salt Lake ecosystem and provides a critical habitat for upwards of 500,000 waterfowl and 200,000 shorebirds during spring and fall migration seasons. More white-faced ibises breed at Bear River Refuge than anywhere else in the world, and the refuge hosts one of the three largest American white pelican breeding colonies in North America.
In addition to its ecological diversity, the refuge located right in the migratory sweet spot, on the eastern fringe of the Pacific Flyway and the western fringe of the Central Flyway – two geographical channels that birds migrate through every year. For birds, Bear River is where the party’s at.
But it hasn’t always been fun and games – avian botulism wasn’t the only challenge to plague the Refuge.
For tourists, one of the highlights of visiting Bear River Refuge has always been its auto tour, a 12-mile route through the marshes that guests can drive to view wildlife in a unique, up close and personal, sort of way. The refuge’s original buildings and offices were located near the start of this tour, but high waters in the early 1980s brought catastrophic flooding, destroying the structures.
Once again, it was up to the community to band together and save the refuge. Employees, government officials, volunteers –it was all hands on deck to get things back up and running when the flooding finally died down in 1983. By 2005, after a long restoration journey, the new Wildlife Education Center was completed just down the road from the original headquarters location. This is the visitors’ center guests see today, complete with educational exhibits, a gift shop and bookstore, and a soon-to-be outdoor classroom and play area. Right outside this building are walking trails, perfect for ranger- or self-guided tours of the resident critters’ digs.
Karleen Vollherbst, visitor services manager at Bear River, wasn’t around for the infamous floods of the ’80s, but she’s been with the refuge long enough to know
A black-crowned night heron takes flight. A ranger leads a program where kids learn about wildlife species at the refuge, with youngsters catching, identifying and releasing insects, tadpoles and more.
Cindy Costa
Marc Piscotty
it takes a lot of helping hands to keep everything running smoothly.
She credits the Friends of the Bear River Refuge, a nonprofit organization that helps the refuge fundraise and strategize to uphold their mission statement, with playing a major role in their modern success. By helping write grants to fund infrastructure like their new outdoor children’s play area and the observation tower along the auto tour route, the Friends are instrumental in connecting the community to the wildlife who call Bear River Refuge their seasonal home.
Coincidentally, or perhaps not so, Vollherbst’s own mission is similar – she’s the link between the people and the birds, coordinating everything at the refuge from public hunting and fishing to giving tours and managing volunteers.
“My real passion is connecting people with nature,” she says. “Getting them outside, getting them to love, appreciate and value the outdoors.”
Tooele Pioneer Museum
AT BEAR RIVER Refuge, there is no shortage of natural wonders to appreciate, with many species of birds to admire every month of the year. Throughout the winter, a hardy contingent of waterfowl, including tundra swans and mallards, remains in the refuge when open water freezes, joined by raptors like bald eagles and red-tailed hawks. By March, tundra swans that overwintered in California’s Sacramento Valley return to join their nearly frozen friends.
The dawn of spring brings a variety of migrating ducks, plus the first summer birds to arrive to the refuge: cormorants, pelicans, sandhill cranes. In April, the shorebirds gather. May is peak nesting season for herons, gulls and ibises. June offers the best chance to see the spectacular mating ritual of grebes, which run across the water in dramatic courtship dances. Ducklings hatch in July, and August is the height of the shorebird migration. Throughout the fall, summer birds begin to leave the safety of the refuge, heading for warmer weather. But the
real autumn drama is thanks to swans and ducks, which gather in astonishing numbers of 10,000 and 120,000, respectively.
There’s no bad time to visit Bear River, but even with such a detailed seasonal guide, guests to the Refuge never quite know what they’ll see. Vollherbst, scrolling feverishly through her camera roll, is eager to show off a striking photo from a winter stroll around the marsh. Pictured is the massive, distinct imprint of a raptor’s wing in the snow, where it seemingly pounced on its rodent dinner, leaving a gory splatter of blood in the aftermath. The contrast of red on white is surprisingly beautiful – primal, even, which is a testament to the truly natural environment that the refuge takes such care to cultivate, unspoiled by the manmade chaos than can come with human intervention. It’s a place, put simply, where birds can be birds.
“Me getting to walk out there on the trail and see something like that makes me so happy,” Vollherbst gushes. “It’s the combination of me getting to have that ex-
Forester’s
terns nest on the refuge before migrating to coastal regions in the fall. An American white pelican catches a fish for dinner, which the light of the setting sun makes visible inside the bird’s gular pouch.
Scott Baxter Scott Baxter
perience and then nerding out with other people about it.”
Vollherbst’s enthusiasm is infectious, too. The more she talks about the evolution of her own interest in birds, the more it all starts to make sense. Before one comes face to feathers with these kinds of fantastic displays, it’s hard to fathom just how incredible and unique these creatures are.
Bear River Refuge is determined to bridge the gap between the human and avian worlds, and Vollherbst says they’re working on generating creative solutions to help make nature accessible to everyone. The refuge hosts several online educational events that are suited for bird enthusiasts with any level of knowledge. Swan Day, Eagle Day and Owl Day celebrate their respective birds of honor with stories, crafts, games and ranger programs. The City Nature Challenge encourages participants to “discover the nature of their backyards.”
For beginner birders who can make the trip, the ideal way to learn is to get out in the wilderness, on one of multiple walking trails or the auto tour route. The refuge is an ideal place to start, due in part to the abundance of waterfowl. Compared to many other types of smaller birds, waterfowl are larger, easier to spot and not as prone to flying away quickly.
Once hooked, pop inside the Wildlife Education Center, where visitors can walk through a museum-style exhibit with extensive information about many of the birds that travel through the refuge, including interactive, hands-on sensory experiences. Rangers also occasionally lead in-person programs, which are posted online in advance at fws.gov/refuge/ bear-river-migratory-bird.
Pausing to glance outside her office window, Vollherbst notices a kestrel atop a lamp post, eliciting a giddy chuckle which communicates their familiarity – a friend she says has been visiting her daily for the past few weeks.
Whatever’s been said about birds – that they’re unintelligent or uninteresting in comparison to their mammalian counterparts – is just plain myth. They’re beautiful, powerful, with unimaginable intuition that continues to guide them home, every year, to the peaceful and expansive sanctuary that is Bear River Refuge.
SLOT CANYONS
Intrepid canyoneers and hikers defy claustrophobia to discover some of Utah’s most elusive scenic grandeur.
by MATT MASICH
Some 15 feet above the canyon floor, Eric Odenthal uses stemming and bridging techniques to traverse the East Fork of
White Roost Canyon.
Whit Richardson
THE OFFICIAL NAME of the slot canyon in the North Wash region near Hanksville is the Middle Fork of the West Fork of Butler Canyon. That moniker is a tad cumbersome for most of those who explore it – they know it simply as Shenanigans Canyon.
One of the narrowest slot canyons in Utah, Shenanigans Canyon is just 10 inches wide at its narrowest stretch. The rule of thumb is that no one heavier than 180 pounds should attempt to traverse it. With such little leeway for sunlight to penetrate, anyone who attempts to navigate it would do well to wear a headlamp. And at its narrowest, even the slenderest explorers must breathe out to slide sideways through the claustrophobic passage.
Southern Utah is home to the greatest concentration of slot canyons on Earth. There is no strict definition for what makes a canyon a slot canyon, but many who frequently explore them consider any canyon that is at least 10 times taller than it is wide to be a slot canyon. Some slot canyons can be a relatively spacious 40 feet wide; other slot canyons are so narrow that no human can pass through.
Outdoor adventure photographer Whit Richardson’s first experience with Utah’s slot canyons was the Black Hole of White Canyon in Bear’s Ears National Monument. It is a non-technical canyon, meaning that it doesn’t require rock-climbing knowledge of ropes, anchors and rappelling to explore. That doesn’t mean it was easy – in one section, Richardson had to drop down into a section that was flooded, requiring a drysuit and many hours in the cold water to make it through.
The cold and wet of slot canyons make them a novelty in the hot and dry desert, he said. “Some are really filled with water, and some are really tight,” Richardson said. “Exploring them is an excuse to go explore a part of the desrt you never would have gone to otherwise.”
When venturing into slot canyons, there is a distinction between canyon hiking and canyoneering. People who go canyon hiking venture into non-technical canyons, which, though quite narrow, still have enough leeway to allow hikers to walk on the canyon floor. Canyoneering is a whole other endeavor, requiring can-
Jeff Crystol and Josh Williams descend into water in Miner’s Hollow or Knotted Rope Canyon in the San Rafael Swell. This pool features a long metal pipe that bygone Uranium miners used to extract water.
Whit Richardson
The hike through Paria Canyon near Kanab is spacious by slot canyon standards. Eric Odenthal descends through the direct start of the Left Fork of Great West Canyon, aka the Subway, in Zion National Park.
Whit Richardson Whit Richardson
SLOT
yoneers to use rock-climbing skills to get through technical canyons.
Canyoneers often have to use stemming and bridging techniques to get through the narrower canyons. Stemming is when canyoneers put their right foot and hand on one wall of the canyon and their left foot and hand on the other wall; bridging is when they put their feet on one wall and hands on the opposite wall.
The physical challenge is just one component of what makes canyoneering so special, said Tom Jones, president of Utah-based Canyoneering USA. “Canyons are great because they’re always different,” Jones said. “Some of them have technical challenges; a lot of them don’t. But you never know what’s going to be around the next corner.”
Jones reckons he has 1,200 canyon days under his belt, spent in about 400 canyons, most of them in Utah. Our state’s reputation for canyons is well-earned, he said, thanks to its Navajo sandstone. This formation is unique because of its depth –
Canyon explorers use bridging techniques in a narrow section of Ding and Dang Canyon in the San Rafael Swell. Robert Cob rappels on a steep stretch in Birch Hollow just outside of Zion National Park.
Whit Richardson
Noah Wetzel
Farland Fish descends through the middle of the West Fork of Butler Canyon, better known as Shenanigans, in the North Wash area.
Whit Richardson
The
traversible
Paria River is shallow and easily
in Paria Canyon near Buckskin Gulch.
Whit Richardson
up to 2,000 feet – and its softness, which allows canyons to form more easily than most sandstone.
He began rock climbing in Utah in 1974 but didn’t start canyoneering until 1999. He is glad he got so much climbing experience before venturing into the more challenging canyons, but he was wise enough not to attempt his first canyon until taking a canyon-specific training course.
One of the key differences between traditional rock climbing and canyoneering is that in canyons, especially the less heavily trafficked ones, it is imperative that climbers be able to make their own anchors for ropes, as it is never guaranteed that permanent anchors will be available.
Jones’ first canyon was Pine Creek in Zion National Park. He recently canyoneered down Pine Creek for perhaps his 40th time. “It’s deep and dark, and you’re 100 feet below the rim in this slot canyon,” he said. “There’s swimming, rappelling, and magical light coming down in places.”
There are other canyons so dangerous he doesn’t publicly mention their names, as he doesn’t want to be responsible for sending others in his footsteps. The hardest canyon he ever navigated not only had climbing problems, it also had huge potholes as much as 30 feet deep and just as wide. Potholes like that are known as “keepers,” as they will keep unwary canyoneers in them indefinitely if they are unprepared for the challenge of traversing them.
Anyone venturing into a slot canyon should come prepared with adequate knowledge of the technical skills the given canyon requires and the proper equipment. If it is a technical canyon requiring canyoneering techniques, those entering it should always wear a helmet.
Though slot canyons are found in some of the driest parts of the desert, drowning in flash floods is biggest danger adventurers face. When the forecast calls for rain, there is no reason in the world anyone should be in a slot canyon.
The risks are real, but so are the rewards. There is just something about the intimacy and the special light of Utah’s slot canyons that keeps canyon trekkers hooked, always to discover the next.
Season of the Sandwich
Warm weather means it’s time to pack picnics with these delicious sandwiches
Jrecipes and photographs by
DANELLE McCOLLUM
OHN MONTAGU, the fourth earl of Sandwich, invented the sandwich so he didn’t have to leave the card table to eat his meals. These days, sandwiches have moved well beyond the card table. The picnic might be where it shines brightest – the convenient handheld meal is ideal for enjoying outdoors. Here are three sandwiches perfect for packing in picnics.
Cucumber Tea Sandwiches
Herbed cream cheese is layered with thinly sliced cucumbers in these beautiful little sandwiches that bring a bit of class to any occasion.
Thinly slice cucumber using mandolin or very sharp knife. Place slices on paper towel-lined baking sheet and pat dry with additional paper towels. In medium bowl, combine cream cheese, mayonnaise, herbs, lemon juice, garlic powder, and salt and pepper, to taste.
Spread 1-2 Tbsp of cream cheese mixture over 16 slices of bread. Layer cucumber slices over half of bread slices, then top with remaining bread slices, cream cheese side down. With serrated knife, cut off crusts, then cut sandwiches into quarters. Cover and refrigerate until serving.
1 Tbsp lemon juice 1/4 tsp garlic powder Salt and pepper, to taste
Ser ves 16
Pressed Italian Sandwiches
Italian meats and cheeses are layered with pesto and fresh basil, then wrapped and pressed in these flavorful sandwiches.
Slice ciabatta loaf in half horizontally. Spread pesto over bottom half of bread. Don’t oversaturate bread. Layer Italian meats over pesto. Top with sliced cheese. Layer spinach, basil or other greens over cheese. Optional toppings can be added to either top or bottom of sandwich.
Place top half of loaf over sandwich fillings. Wrap sandwich thoroughly with plastic wrap. Place heavy cutting board or other flat object on top of sandwich and weigh it down with 2- to 4-lb weight, such as cast-iron skillet or six-pack of soda. Let sandwich sit for at least 6 hours, but preferably overnight. Unwrap, cut into 8 pieces and serve.
Melted provolone cheese and shredded Buffalo-style chicken are piled into sub sandwich buns, then topped with green onions and blue cheese in this quick and easy meal.
Place rolls in 9x13-inch baking dish. Place two slices provolone cheese in each roll. In medium skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add onion and bell pepper and cook until tender, 3-5 minutes. Stir in shredded chicken and Buffalo sauce. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Divide chicken mixture between rolls. Sprinkle with blue cheese. Bake until cheese is melted and sandwiches are toasty, about 10 minutes. Garnish with additional blue cheese and sliced green onions, if desired.
4 sub sandwich rolls, split lengthwise
8 slices provolone cheese
1 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup diced onion
1 red bell pepper, diced
4 cups cooked, shredded chicken
1/3 cup Buffalo sauce
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
Sliced green onions, for garnish
Ser ves 4
What’s in Your Recipe Box?
The editors are interested in featuring your favorite family recipes. Send your recipes (and memories inspired by your recipes) to editor@utahlifemag.com.
THE LOVE UTAHNS have for their pets is seemingly limitless, the relationships we have with our animal friends often bring out the best in we humans. In this issue, our Utah poets celebrate the state’s pets, from cats, to chickens, to lambs.
A Tribute to E. D. Cope; 1840-1897
Norman R. Fertig, Tremonton
These two unlikely “pets” are now protected; Strict laws brook no disturbance in the wild. Though long ago, betimes, they were “collected” By those who – tastes inclined so – were beguiled.
With naught to recommend them in appearance (The one is dull, the other shunned and feared) And no reciprocation of endearments, ‘Tis hard to see how they could be endeared.
Came Edward Drinker Cope to Western states, when –The “Bone Wars” at their apex – dinosaurs Were claim-jumped, pilfered, jumbled loose in crates, then Expressed by cart and rail to Eastern shores.
Prolific of his pen and energetic, He dashed-off nomenclature by the yard. Such pace, unwisely set, proved too frenetic; It pressed his frail health to drop its guard.
Cope died impoverished, pain-racked, weak with illness, Yet lectured from his sickbed to the end; Tame Gila monster, tortoise, at death’s stillness, Beside him: cherished “pets” … Nay! Each his friend.
Changing the Sheets
Kathy
Grossman, Moab
On top of the mattress pad, under, then above a fitted sheet, behind, then into pillowcases, beneath, then atop a new top sheet.
I didn’t realize this little bitty stripey kitty from the shelter had brought with her a fuzzy headful of prepositions.
Among, underneath, around the quilts Amid throw pillows, beside lap blankets Between the duvet buttons.
Making trouble is hard work, and she falls asleep under the comforter. I sit down and – SQUEAK! – there she is; Below me, then beyond, down, away: My quick, wild, cunning little grammarian.
Farm Pets
David Rosier,
Spring City
When we were children in the lower grades the man who farmed just next to ours gave us some lambs that had no mothers. “Raise them” he advised, “and in the fall you’ll get some cash, but do not make them into pets.”
We raised those lambs as best we could. We watered them and gave them food. We played with them and gave them names. “Don’t make them into pets,” our father warned, but we went on the same.
One autumn day, just home from school, we found a man from town there slaughtering the lambs. At last we understood: “Don’t make them into pets.”
Cultura Creative RF/Alamy
Hens, Early Spring
Matt Beatty, Provo
The low light comes earlier. A slant in the gray-blue morning, a brightening of shadowed snow. Sheltered near the river, four huddled hens blink. Squat bodies of sleek feather rise and stretch down notched wooden slats to the dirt.
Their heads angle and observe the bleak quiet. They bark rifle fire impatience, alarms of desperation. A towering form will come – they know. It must come. It is comfort.
(Are they aware? Are they trained, instinctual? Or are they somehow, strangely at peace with this – content.)
I, too, rise. My body congeals upright. I am not like them.
Their timeclock precision contradicts me. I shuffle drowsy in winter boots and the day is young and beautiful – they know already. Chill nibbles my fingers but the ground is thawing, green finding its way into crevices. The chirping ceases as I near and they freeze, statues formed as chickens.
Then I’m through the gate and unlatch the door and they spill from coop confines into brown pine needles and wet half-mud to seek water and scratch and peck through the season’s detritus.
They eye me, tolerant but curious. (Do they recognize me? Would they tolerate a stranger less?)
I raise the lid of the nesting box – three eggs. Two shades of brown, one dusty mint green. All warm. Hardly food for a person, but they are treasure. I palm them, admire their heft and minute perfection, and cradle them into my coat pocket.
This is a routine, but not routine. This is each morning, but not a chore.
Grand, imperceptible joys accompany the work and love that produces tiny, perceptible results.
A man walks his faithful canine companion through Zion National Park. A woman and her doggie friend take in a sweeping vista.
This Moggy
Lorraine Jeffery, Orem
The neighbor’s cat, definitely the neighbor’s cat. She has three – three too many I contend, but I don’t see much of the other two as they slink along my fence their Siamese wail chain-sawing my forehead.
But this one with her scruffy bedhead fur is almost quiet as she circles the sparrows and house finches at my feeder, who know she’s there. This one
curls up on my front porch as if she belonged, as if she owned it –but she doesn’t, and scampers off when I approach, to strut the protruding bricks outside my window where she watches me write. In the garden
she is my sultry sunwarmed familiar and she brushes my pant leg while my hand, of its own accord, strokes her silky back.
This one, this moggy.
WE INVITE YOU to submit poems inspired by Utah. The July/August 2023 theme is “Sunshine,” deadline June 1; the September/October 2023 theme is “Change,” deadline Aug. 1. Visit utahlifemag.com/poetry-submission to submit your poems, or email to poetry@utahlifemag.com.
Cavan Images/Alamy
J. Willard Marriott Library
THE LIFE, DEATH AND AFTERLIFE OF JOE HILL
The labor activist and songwriter’s Salt Lake City murder trial electrified the nation. More than a century after he was shot by firing squad, Joe Hill remains a powerful if divisive hero of the labor movement.
by MATT MASICH
ON THE EVENING of Saturday, Jan. 10, 1914, John G. Morrison was getting ready to close his downtown Salt Lake City grocery for the night. At just past 9:45 p.m., Morrison was dragging a sack of potatoes through the store, while his 17-year-old son, Arling, swept the floor; his 13-year-old son, Merlin, was in a rear storeroom.
Suddenly, two men with red bandanas obscuring their faces burst through the front door. “We’ve got you now!” they yelled. A shot rang out. A bullet hit Morrison in the right side of his chest, dropping him to the floor. Arling grabbed a revolver from the ice chest. As he attempted to fire, he was shot three times – twice in the back. Neighbors who heard the commotion saw the two men flee the building. Some said one of the men was clutching his chest and stooping over. One witness said they heard the man call out, “Hold on, Bob, I’m shot.”
Young Merlin emerged from his hiding place in the rear storeroom, from which he had seen at least some of the confrontation, to find his brother already dead and his father breathing his last breaths.
About 5 miles south, sometime before midnight, a 34-year-old Swedish immigrant known as Joe Hill staggered into the doorway of Dr. Frank M. McHugh’s home office in Murray.
“Is that you, doctor?” Hill called out.
“Yes, what is it?” McHugh replied.
“I’ve been shot, doc, and want you to do something for me.”
Hill explained that another man had shot him in a quarrel over a woman. As Hill said he was as much to blame in the matter as his shooter, he asked the doctor to keep it quiet.
Dr. Arthur Bird, passing in his car, noticed his colleague’s lights on and went to see if he needed assistance, arriving just as McHugh was finishing bandaging Hill. The shot was a lucky one – it passed completely through his body, puncturing his lung but missing his heart; the wound would not require hospitalization. As they tended to him, the doctors noticed that Hill carried a pistol in a shoulder holster.
Headlines about the Morrisons’ murders splashed across local newspapers in the following days. Gov. William Spry announced a $500 reward for information leading to the conviction of their killers. Hoping to get the reward, McHugh reported Hill’s gunshot wound to the Murray police department.
In the wee hours of Wednesday, Jan. 14, Hill was arrested as he lay on a cot in the house where he was staying. The jumpy arresting officer shot Hill through his right hand, saying he thought he was reaching for a gun.
When the newspapers found out about Hill’s status as the foremost writer of propaganda songs for the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labor union with socialist ties, they wasted no time declaring him guilty of the murders. Overnight, Hill became a symbol – representing, depending on one’s ideology, either the violence inherent in the labor movement, or of the wickedness of the capitalist ruling class in perverting justice to crush union opposition.
JOE HILL WAS born Joel Hägglund in Gävle, Sweden, in 1879. He grew up in a musical family that sang together; as a boy, Hill learned to play the violin and began writing his first songs about his family. When he was 8, his father died of injuries sustained on the job as a railway conductor. Hill left school at age 12 to work in a rope factory, then worked at the local port. When he was 22, after his mother died, he and his brother Paul caught a steamship to America. Upon arrival, Hill changed his name to Joseph Hillstrom, though he became best known by the shortened version: Joe Hill.
Hill worked his way west, arriving in San Francisco by the time of the 1906 earthquake there. He and a friend hoboed their way up to Oregon, where by 1908 he had joined the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, whose members were known as “Wobblies.”
The IWW was known as the “one big union.” Whereas other unions were specific to certain trades – miners, millworkers, engineers, conductors, etc. – the Wobblies welcomed all workers.
The idea was that if one trade went on strike, the rest of the trades would, too, increasing their bargaining leverage.
The IWW had been founded in Chicago in 1905, with one of the founders and key leaders being Salt Lake City native Big Bill Haywood. Wobblies espoused many socialist ideals, marching under a red banner and exhorting the “workers of the world” to join them. In the eyes of industrialists and members of the ruling class, the IWW was a menace and threat to the social order.
Songs were one of the key methods the Wobblies used to win hearts and minds. By 1911, many of the most popular Wobbly songs were those written by Joe Hill. One of his first big hits was called “The Preacher and the Slave.” The song made fun of religious leaders who tell impoverished workers that they shouldn’t bother seeking fair treatment on earth – that they will get their reward in heaven. In the chorus, a “long-haired preacher” says: You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky.
Work and pray, live on hay, You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
In addition to introducing the phrase “pie in the sky” to the lexicon, the song resonated with workers impatient for better working conditions.
Each year, the IWW published its Little Red Songbook, compiling the most popular Wobbly anthems. In the 1912 edition, four out of seven songs were written by Hill; in the 1913 edition, he wrote 10 out of 12 songs.
His songwriting success didn’t make him much money, however, and Hill continued to drift from job to job. By 1913, Hill was employed as a dockworker at Los Angeles Harbor. There, he and friend Otto Appelquist befriended a pair of fellow Swedes, brothers John and Ed Eselius. The brothers were about to return to their family home in the Salt Lake City suburb of Murray, and they encouraged Hill and Appelquist to join them in one of the plentiful smelting and mining jobs there.
In August 1913, after spending 30 days in a Los Angeles jail on vagrancy charges, Hill hopped a boxcar bound for Salt Lake City. As it happened, Utah had recently been the scene of some intense Wobbly activity.
The IWW opened its first Salt Lake City union hall in 1910; in July 1913, just a month before Hill arrived in town, the IWW orchestrated a strike among workers building a grade for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad near Tucker. Strikers demanded that their employer, the Utah Construction Co. – the state’s largest contractor – provide adequate food and bedding, sanitary bathing and laundry facilities, and a raise of 25 cents per day.
The company conceded to the strikers’ demands, but officials vowed revenge on the union. A month later, on Aug. 12, 1913, the company sent 20 armed thugs to violently break up an IWW meeting in Salt Lake City.
Hill arrived in town just days later. His friend Appelquist had already arrived in Utah, and both stayed with the Eselius brothers in Murray while lining up work. Within a month, Hill and Appelquist took jobs in Park City’s Silver King Mine. When Hill fell ill in December, he and Appelquist returned to stay with the Eselius family as he recovered over the Christmas holiday.
Arling Morrison, arms crossed, and his father John, behind him, were killed at their Salt Lake City market. Gov. William Spry received tens of thousands of letters and telegrams about the Joe Hill case.
Morrison Family
Harris and Ewing, Library of Congress
THE ESELIUS HOUSE was a bustling place, with much of the brothers’ extended family living there. A 20-year-old niece, Hilda Erickson, who boarded in Salt Lake City, was a frequent visitor. She and Appelquist became an item, and by Christmas, they were engaged to be married. However, just a few days into the new year, Erickson called off the engagement.
According to a letter written by Erickson – which author William Adler published for the first time in his 2011 book The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon, the source for much of this story – Appelquist “got very angry and asked me if I liked Joe better than him.” Erickson told him no, but that didn’t stop Hill from teasing his friend that he was going to take her from him.
Despite this tension, Hill and Appelquist continued to room together at the Eselius house. On Jan. 10, 1914, the day of the Morrison killings, the pair spent most of the day at the house trying to fix a motorcycle. That evening Erickson, Appelquist and a friend went to see a 7:30 p.m. vaudeville show. They left a note for Hill, who joined them at the theater before parting ways after the show.
Erickson next saw Hill the following morning, as he lay on a cot in the Eselius house. When she asked him what was wrong, he “told me that Otto shot him in a fit of anger,” adding that Appelquist “was sorry right after, and carried him to Dr. McHugh’s office.” Appelquist had disappeared into the night shortly after Hill returned from the doctor’s, never to be heard from again.
JURY SELECTION FOR Joe Hill’s murder trial began on June 10, 1914. The scales of justice seemed tipped against Hill from the start, as presiding Judge Morris L. Ritchie and the lead prosecutor, District Attorney Elmer O. Leatherwood, were friends belonging to the same clubs and fraternal organizations. When Ritchie deemed the defense attorneys were taking too long examining potential jurors, the judge simply appointed the last three of 12 jurors himself. One of those jurors was Joseph Kimball, a friend of the judge.
The first prosecution witness was Merlin Morrison, the 13-yearold son who had survived the shooting hiding in the storeroom. He testified that Hill looked like the man who shot his father. (Hill was being tried only for the elder Morrison’s murder; prosecutors theorized Appelquist shot the other son.)
Hill’s attorneys scarcely cross-examined the boy for fear he may start crying and upset the jury. Hill was furious with his attorneys, and the next day in open court, he fired them, demanding to represent himself. The judge allowed Hill to do so, but he also kept his fired lawyers on to provide defense as “friends of the court.”
“The main thing the state has against Hill is that he is an IWW and therefore sure to be guilty.” – defense lawyers Ernest D. MacDougall and Frank B. Scott
When Hill was arrested several days later, he simply told them he had been shot after arguing over a woman, but he refused to name the shooter or the woman. Hill didn’t want to sully the honor of Erickson – and, stubbornly idealistic, he believed in the presumption of innocence, and that the burden lay on prosecutors to prove his guilt. As he knew he was not guilty, he had faith he would eventually be exonerated.
As Hill awaited his trial, Utah newspapers ran articles about Wobblies causing chaos. “Work is the last thing in the world that an Industrial Worker of the World desires. His principles are based on the ‘general strike’ and the ‘social revolution,’ ” the Salt Lake Tribune wrote. “It is a challenge to society that can be met only with retaliation. The IWW makes war upon society … and society can only defend itself by warlike measures.”
The newspapers and civic leaders behaved as though the IWW were being put on trial alongside Hill. The IWW, in their own publications, began depicting Hill as an icon of capitalist oppression. Wobblies held protest rallies across the nation, and tens of thousands of letters and telegrams on Hill’s behalf flooded the governor’s office.
“The main thing the state has against Hill is that he is an IWW and therefore sure to be guilty,” wrote Hill’s pro bono defense lawyers, Ernest D. MacDougall and Frank B. Scott, a few weeks before his trial began.
The next key witness was Phoebe Seeley, who said she had walked past two men – one tall, one short – wearing red bandanas on the street outside the grocery store just before the murders. At the preliminary hearing, Seeley said she couldn’t be sure that the taller man was Hill. At trial, however, she said she thought he looked similar, but that the tall man had different hair – lighter, bushier. The judge interjected, proceeding to feed her lines to make it seem as though she were positively identifying Hill.
After Seeley’s testimony, the Deseret Evening News ran a story about the trial, accompanied by an editorial about the IWW, which said, in part: “They are revolutionaries. They believe in a violent overturning of the established institutions.”
Virginia Snow Stephen, daughter of former Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Lorenzo Snow, read about the case and believed Hill was innocent. She got expert lawyer Soren Christensen to join the defense; the IWW paid his legal fees.
The prosecution rested its case having presented no motive for the shooting. Hill clearly did not know the Morrisons, and not a cent had been taken from the till, ruling out robbery. When the defense presented its case, Hill’s attorneys presented evidence suggesting an alternate suspect, along with a motive: revenge.
Criminals had attempted to rob Morrison twice in the decade before he was shot. Both times, he had foiled the would-be robbers by firing his pistol at them, sending them scurrying away. His most recent shootout had been just a few months before he was killed. He told a newspaper reporter at the time that he thought he knew who his attacker was, and that he feared he would be back.
The defense had a theory about who this mystery bandit was. Witness Peter Rhengreen testified that as he was walking to his overnight shift as a railroad machinist about 90 minutes after the shooting, he saw two men standing on the street a mile west of
the crime scene. The men split up. The taller man then either lay down or fell on the snowy sidewalk, moaning and shutting his eyes. Rhengreen stopped and looked at him for a minute. Then the man got up and boarded a streetcar. The streetcar operator testified, too, and both witnesses identified the man they saw as Frank Z. Wilson.
Wilson was a career criminal who had spent his adult life in and out of jail. He had lately been on a crime spree, robbing railroad cars and attempting to burn down a brothel after a failed jewel heist. Wilson, it turned out, was law enforcement’s original prime suspect. Police had arrested him in a dragnet as he was walking without a coat in the freezing cold near Morrison’s store around 1 a.m. the night of the shootings. Wilson gave a false name and lied about where he lived; he said he was out taking a walk before bed. A search revealed no weapon. Still, he was jailed, and a later search turned up a bloody handkerchief.
Yet, for reasons unclear, police determined Wilson was not involved. Instead, he voluntarily confessed to a robbery in Nevada and was sent there to be tried.
The final witness was Dr. F.M. Beer, who made two salient points. First, the bullet that struck Hill was jacketed in hard metal, whereas the Morrisons’ gun fired unjacketed, soft lead bullets. Second, the bullet holes in Hill’s coat were 4 inches lower than the holes in his body; the only way they lined up was if Hill had been holding his arms above his head, lifting the coat – hardly the posture of a brutal attacker.
The jury began deliberating at 4:45 p.m. on Friday, June 26, 1914. The next morning, just before 10 a.m., they notified the judge they had a verdict. The foreman, the judge’s friend Kimball, announced that the jury found Hill guilty of murder in the first degree.
Court, so as not to drain the IWW’s resources on his account.
The last option was to appeal to the Utah Board of Pardons. The board urged Hill to say who had shot him to prove his innocence. Hill refused. After a short recess to confer with his client, Hill’s attorney Hilton returned to the board and said, “It seems he wants to be considered a martyr.” Hilton recalled Hill saying, “Gentlemen, the cause I stand for, that of a fair and honest trial, is worth more than human life – much more than mine.”
Popular demand for a new trial reached a new pitch. Influential supporters even prevailed upon President Woodrow Wilson to twice ask Utah Gov. Spry to stay the execution to consider more evidence. Spry halted the execution both times but ultimately ordered it to be carried out on Nov. 19, 1915.
That morning, deputies marched a blindfolded Hill to a chair outside the Utah State Prison’s blacksmith shop. They strapped him into the chair and placed a paper target over his heart. A curtain with five slits hung on the long blacksmith shop window. Five rifles appeared through the slits.
A deputy gave the commands.
“Ready … Aim …”
Hill yelled out the final command: “Yes, aim! Let it go! Fire!”
Witnesses saw Hill smile as the bullets tore into his chest.
“Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? Don’t want to be found dead in Utah.” – Joe Hill
A week and a half later, Hill returned to court for his sentencing. He had a choice: death by firing squad or hanging.
“I’ll take shooting,” Hill said. “I’m used to that. I have been shot a few times in the past, and I guess I can stand it again.”
HILL’S EXECUTION WAS put on hold while he appealed his case. All through the appeals process, Hill wrote at a feverish pace – both letters to supporters and new songs. He wrote one of his best-loved songs, “Workers of the World, Awaken,” while in jail. The song begins:
If the workers take a notion, They can stop all speeding trains.
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains.
Meanwhile, Hill had become something of a celebrity and a hero of the Wobbly movement. Gov. William Spry received some 40,000 letters urging a new trial for Hill.
The Utah Supreme Court heard Hill’s appeal on May 28, 1915, with Denver attorney Orrin Hilton representing him. Hill had high hopes he would get a new trial, but those were dashed when, a little more than a month later, the court unanimously affirmed the guilty verdict. Hill decided not to appeal to the U.S. Supreme
Thousands viewed his body at a Salt Lake City funeral home, but Hill wouldn’t be buried in Utah. He said in a telegram to Big Bill Haywood: “It is a hundred miles from here to Wyoming. Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? Don’t want to be found dead in Utah.”
Rather than Wyoming, his body was transported via railroad to Chicago, where 5,000 people packed the auditorium for his funeral, and another 30,000 jammed the streets around for three blocks. Haywood read one of the final telegrams Hill sent: “Goodbye, Bill. I will die like a trueblue rebel. Don’t waste any time in mourning – organize.”
Shortly before his death, Hill composed a will in verse form: My Will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kin don’t need to fuss and moan –‘Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.’
My body? Oh! If I could choose, I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flowers then Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my Last and Final Will, Good Luck to All of you, Joe Hill
His friends followed his instructions and cremated his body the day after the funeral. The next year on the anniversary of his death, Haywood distributed 600 packets of Hill’s ashes to 150
IWW delegates from across the globe, instructing them to scatter his ashes as they wished. The ashes were eventually distributed over five continents and 47 of the 48 states – all but Utah.
HILL’S LEGACY IS hard to assess. The IWW, to which he devoted his life, saw its power and influence significantly curtailed in 1917, when the United States entered World War I, and the federal government cracked down on the union’s activities, deeming them “treasonable conspiracy.”
Yet many of the principles Hill fought for have become more accepted since his time: the right to due process under the law, the right to freedom of expression, the right to a living wage, safe workplace, affordable healthcare and housing.
At the 1969 Woodstock festival, singer Joan Baez closed out the first night of performances by singing a song called “Joe Hill.”
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, Alive as you and me.
Says I, “But Joe, you’re 10 years dead,” “I never died,” said he, “I never died,” said he.
“The copper bosses killed you, Joe, They shot you Joe,” says I. “Takes more than guns to kill a man,”
Says Joe, “I didn’t die,”
Says Joe, “I didn’t die.”
And standing there as big as life, And smiling with his eyes, Says Joe, “What they can never kill Went on to organize, Went on to organize.”
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Hill’s death in 2015, Josh and Heidi Belka, members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union, painted a mural of Hill on the side of their Salt Lake City union hall. The mural lasted only eight days before someone came in the night and painted over it with an American flag – proof that Hill’s beliefs remain as controversial as ever.
Ken Sanders, owner of Ken Sanders Rare Books, offered one of his shop’s walls for the Belkas to paint a new version of the mural. Hill’s portrait is ringed by the slogans “Educate. Agitate. Organize,” “Fire Your Bosses” and “Abolish the Wage System.”
“The mural was painted over because some people think Joe Hill and the movement and his lyrics are un-American,” Heidi Belka said. “Since the advent of labor organizing, the bosses have been trying to tear down the labor movement. They’ve convinced people to go against their own best interests, thinking one day they’ll be middle management – ‘pie in the sky,’ as Joe put it.”
Sanders is proud to have the mural on his store, and he plans to put a new one up at his new location at The Leonardo.
“Joe Hill … and the other great IWW labor leaders fought on behalf of working men and women against the low wages, putrid working conditions and the malfeasance of the robber barons of the gilded age,” Sanders said. “We need to learn the lessons of the past to confront the sins of the present.”
Hill’s legacy lives on in a Salt Lake City mural, his songs like “The Rebel Girl,” art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the 1971 film Joe Hill starring Thommy Berggren as the titular hero.
Joshua Hardin
Mildred Baldwin
Wikipedia
12 Sights to See Along SCENIC BYWAY 12
Driving from Fairyland to Panoramaland
story and photographs by JOSHUA
HARDIN
DRIVERS HAVE THEIR choice of routes when traveling between Torrey and Panguitch in south-central Utah. Automobiles can bolt between State Highways 24 and 62, and U.S. Highway 89 and make the trip in less than two hours – but the fastest way isn’t always the most enjoyable. An alternate, twisting traverse through the heart of canyon country has captured the imaginations of travelers and earned the state’s only All-American Road designation – one of less than 60 in the nation.
Scenic Byway 12, known as “A Journey Through Time,” traces more than 200 million years of natural and human history. The 124-mile road can be driven in less than three hours, but most travelers will be compelled to take their time exploring its subtleties and miles more of adventurous sideroad diversions.
A simple passenger car is the time machine that connects drivers to two national parks, a national monument and three state parks, each with its own claim to archaeological or geological fame, from Devil’s Garden, dotted with delightful stone formations, to a magnificent Grand Staircase to heaven. We drove the byway to discover a dazzling dozen of its most significant sightseeing opportunities that will undoubtedly demand a few more ticks of the clock than your everyday commute.
Cars drive through the stone arches of Red Canyon at the western end of Scenic Byway 12.
1 Red Canyon
Traveling west to east, Highway 12 begins southeast of Panguitch at its terminus with U.S. Highway 89. Within only a few miles of this intersection, the road scales the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau, and drivers notice the formations of Red Canyon rising mightily above a forest of evergreen trees in the distance. The canyon’s pinnacles are mostly limestone deposited from a lake that existed here 35-50 million years ago. The maroon and pink rock tones appeared when iron within the limestone rusted.
Dramatic human-bored arches are cut into two of the rocks, allowing the highway to pass. In 1925, during a 315car caravan to celebrate the opening of modern-day Bryce Canyon National Park, Gov. George Dern traveled to a flower-covered gate at the second tun-
nel, where a banner declared “Welcome to Utah’s Fairyland.” Children dressed as fairies tied flowers and long ribbons to the bumper of the governor’s car. “One little fairy hopped upon the running board and asked Gov. Dern if he believed in fairies. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Then,’ said she, ‘enter into Fairyland,’” a Daughters of Utah Pioneers article recounts. A band perched atop the tunnel played as two children dressed as elves opened the gates and the car passed underneath. The Red Canyon tunnels have served as a magical entry into Red and Bryce canyons ever since.
2 Bryce Canyon National Park
While Red Canyon’s formations are unique to southern Utah’s geologic show, Bryce Canyon’s hoodoos are the region’s true rock stars. Hoodoos are totem pole-
shaped rock pinnacles named for their bewitching looks. Hoodoos seem to glow like fiery flames illuminated by the warm tones of early morning or late afternoon sunlight, especially when viewed from the park’s overlooks like Fairyland Point, Sunrise Point and Inspiration Point above the canyon’s north “Amphitheater,” where the eroded formations are abundant.
The canyon’s high elevation (up to 9,100 feet) means the landscape goes through dramatic temperature fluctuations. Annually, the park has about 170 days where temperatures reach both above and below freezing daily. This freeze-thaw cycle breaks the rocks apart into angular shafts with ambiguous forms. Visitors have nicknamed some hoodoos “Thor’s Hammer,” “Queen Victoria” and “The Alligator” because of their resemblance to the namesake shapes.
Hoodoos glow like flames in the light of the rising sun at Bryce Canyon National Park, where the spectacular Thor’s Hammer formation is visible at the bottom of the image just right of center.
A storm approaches at Kodachrome Basin State Park, home of monolithic spires known as sedimentary pipes. A petrified log lies along the Petrified Forest Trail at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park.
3
Tropic, Cannonville and Henrieville East of Bryce Canyon is the Paria Valley and a grouping of historic ranching communities. Late 19th century pioneers drawn to the favorable climate and abundance of fertile lands for crops and grazing created a 10-mile-long canal called Tropic Ditch, which brought life-sustaining water into the valley. A frothy waterfall cascades from the ditch and is reachable by an .8-mile trail in the Mossy Cave section of Bryce Canyon National Park.
The cabin of the park’s namesake –Ebenezer Bryce – still stands in Tropic, while other historic buildings – including a one-room schoolhouse built in 1881 – still stand in the valley’s original settlements of Henrieville and Cannonville. A visitor center administered by the Bureau of Land Management in Cannonville also serves adventurers looking to learn more about the surrounding weird and wonderful rock formations and slot canyons of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and other parks that lie ahead.
4 Kodachrome Basin State Park
South of Cannonville, Kodachrome State Park preserves 67 rare, monolithic stone spires called sedimentary pipes, which stand amongst a backdrop of dramatic cliffs banded with multiple hues of scarlet, orange and ivory. Sedimentary pipes, many of which are seen along the park’s popular 6-mile Panorama Trail, remain like stone columns standing as the surrounding soil and rock has weathered away with every breath of wind and drop of rain that has passed through the park over millennia.
The 170-foot-tall Chimney Rock is the tallest of the basin’s pipes. The park’s vivid geology prompted a 1948 National Geographic Society expedition to name the area Kodachrome after a popular Kodak color photographic film. A spur on the Cottonwood Canyon and Last Chance Creek Roads leads to Grosvenor Arch, a high span named after the first full-time National Geographic magazine editor Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor. Both roads can be bumpy and are most suitable for high-clearance vehicles.
5
Escalante and Escalante Petrified Forest State Park
Northeast of the town of Escalante is Escalante Petrified Forest State Park. The park sports two major recreational features. The first is Wide Hollow Reservoir, a fisher’s paradise stocked with rainbow trout and bluegill, and a favorite with water sports enthusiasts like standup paddlers. The second is a pair of hiking trails that lead into an ancient tree stand.
The Petrified Forest Trail is a 1-mile loop winding up the side of a mesa where fossilized wood logs two feet or wider in diameter have been revealed as the mesa’s conglomerate cap has eroded.
The multicolored crystalline logs are believed to be of conifers that were transported by a river before being buried and later fossilized as agate. There is an optional .75-mile loop extending from the trail called Sleeping Rainbows that is much steeper and requires scrambling and rock climbing. Once a site for eager rockhounds, collecting petrified wood in the park is now prohibited to protect the site for the enjoyment of future generations.
6 Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument: Hole in the Rock
A way to sample a sliver of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’s vast 1.87 million acres diverts south from the highway just east of the town of Escalante. The Bureau of Land Management Road 200, also called Hole-in-the-Rock Road, loosely follows a trail established by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints pioneers who traveled from here to Bluff, 120 miles away.
The modern but washboard unpaved road leads to Devil’s Garden, where fantastical rock hoodoos resembling strange creatures coexist with natural arches like the spindly Metate Arch. The monument is named for a series of topographic benches, plateaus and terraces that rise progressively up in elevation from south to north. Beginning at the highest bench of the Grand Canyon, each of the five “steps” has eroded, revealing a rainbow of rock layers ranging from 65-200 million years old.
Crystal works as a barista at Kiva Coffeehouse along the Hogback. A visitor views artifacts at Anasazi State Park Museum, which contains ruins from a large Ancestral Puebloan settlement.
7 The Hogback
From Boulder, Highway 12 hugs narrow curves through canyons seemingly bleached of color except for ribbons of lush olivine cottonwood trees following the area’s rivers and creeks. Motorists can stop to marvel at the highway’s serpentine path at Head of the Rocks Overlook. An unusual octagon shaped structure perched along the precipitous road shelf appears as the route drops under a canyon rim. Local resident Bradshaw Bowman built Kiva Coffeehouse using ponderosa pine logs and other natural materials into a shape resembling a Native American pit house or “kiva” that blends harmoniously into the landscape.
Construction of Bowman’s longtime dream (he started sketching plans in the late 1980s) took five years and was completed in 1998. While the coffeehouse became an oasis for travelers looking to fill up on a tasty pastry or freshly brewed beverage, family members completed a “kottage” with rentable rooms in 2004, four years after Bowman’s death. Farther beyond the coffeehouse, an overlook on the west side of the highway peers over layers of stacked sandstone into a creek bed. Concealed below this very spot is one of the state’s most visited landmarks, Lower Calf Creek Falls, though it is not visible from the parking area. A trailhead accessing the falls, via a sandy 6.7-mile, three-hour out-and-back hike, is north of the Escalante River crossing nearby.
Jillian
8
Boulder and Anasazi State Park Museum
Though its population is only 236, Boulder is famous as a foodie destination. Restaurants Hells Backbone Grill and Farm, a frequent James Beard Award finalist, and neighboring Burr Trail Grill source local ingredients, so their menus can change frequently but delectably depending on the availability of “farm to table” desserts scratch-made with fruit freshly picked from local organic farms and grass-fed beef provided by local ranchers.
Nearby, Anasazi State Park Museum contains ruins from the Coombs Site, one of the largest Ancestral Puebloan villages found west of the Colorado River. Archaeologists believe the community may have housed as many as 200 people from approximately A.D. 1050-1200. Paved walkways lead to two groups of ruins showing about 30 rooms, a partially restored pit house and
a fully replicated six-room dwelling. The museum also houses arrowheads, pottery, tools and other artifacts, many of which are from a collection of more than 10,000 artifacts a local landowner discovered on his property and donated.
9 Burr Trail: Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monument
The Burr Trail Road is a spur from Highway 12 beginning just south of the namesake restaurant. The road turns to gravel and drops into an assortment of canyons before joining the Notom-Bullfrog Road along the masonry wall-like Waterpocket Fold. The route can be used as a scenic loop toward Capitol Reef National Park and Torrey but is a rougher, longer adventure that may take several hours.
Though the road is graded and suitable for passenger cars, spring and summer
rains may make it impassably slick. A quicker option than touring the full “LoopTo-Fold” route is an out-and-back trip to Singing Canyon, a small slot canyon dotted with emerald-colored trees that complement the surrounding narrow maroon walls. The location is aptly named – voices and other sounds reverberate as in an echo-chamber when hiking the canyon.
10 Boulder Mountain & Dixie National Forest
Beyond the town of Boulder, the temperature drops as the highway ascends from the arid desert environment into lush, forested lands. Drivers are treated to sensational views as the highway enters Dixie National Forest and ascends Boulder Mountain, the edge of the highest forested plateau in North America, the Aquarius Plateau. The road meanders through
Cattle graze in a meadow surrounded by aspen trees looking toward the Capitol Reef area, as seen along the stretch alongside Boulder Mountain. Capitol Reef National Park is just east of the byway’s terminus.
quaking aspen stands whose leaves seem to sparkle in the breeze.
Pullouts lead to the Larb Hollow, Sheep Creek and Homestead overlooks, showcasing panoramic views that seem to pancake the plateau’s contrasting rolling green forested hills with the alabaster sheen of the sandstone canyons below. Meadows that shelter early summer wildflowers from the sweltering sun sprawl along many of the road’s switchbacks as it climbs. Driving below the speed limit is advised in this 30-mile stretch to not only allow time to observe the plentiful vistas but also to pass through open range, where languorous cows lollygag along the asphalt.
11 Torrey
Highway 12 ends at its intersection with State Highway 24 near the town of Torrey. Though its population is only 242, Torrey is hardly a sleepy outpost. Festivals like
Apple Days, celebrating the region’s pioneer history of fruit farming held on Independence Day weekend, and its captivating curio shops, restaurants and hotels keep visitors busy during daylight hours. However, the location comes alive in a very different way after sunset. Torrey’s International Dark-Sky Association certification, made possible by residents’ commitment to lighting the town with downward-facing fixtures and minimizing other light pollution, makes staying up late to watch the stars a memorable experience. The Milky Way is usually clearly visible on summer nights, to the amazement of amateur astronomers.
12 Capitol Reef National Park
One of Utah’s “Mighty Five” national parks lies just to the east of the byway’s terminus but is close enough that it is worth visiting on any Highway 12 trip. Capitol Reef
is named for its white Navajo sandstone cliffs, resembling the domed construction of capitol buildings and the rocky reef-like barrier of the Waterpocket Fold, which made traversing the rugged area on land an arduous experience for the area’s early explorers.
Contemporary visitors have more accessible choices. Among many hikes that can be daytrips in and of themselves, the park’s notable sights include the orchard-filled Fruita pioneer settlement, walls displaying Native American rock art and the Scenic Drive, which snakes down a narrow and verdant canyon. Some call this region “Panoramaland,” and it’s easy to see why. At Sunset Point, the low-angled last light of day paints a prismatic palette over a sweeping view of the park’s uplifted rock layers and the snowcapped Henry Mountains in the distance. It’s a picture-perfect way to cherish the completion of any time-traveling journey.
Shoppers peruse the wares of Torrey Trading Post in Torrey, where the whimsical decor includes a large metal Tyrannosaurus rex. In addition to selling souvenirs, the trading post rents furnished cabins.
forms during
A rainbow
a passing storm, as seen at sunset from Sunset Point in Capitol Reef National Park.
MUSIC
UTAH BLUES FESTIVAL
JUNE 16-17 • SALT LAKE CITY
While blues music originated in the American South, it has a devoted following in Utah – that much is evident from the mass of blues fans that converges on the Gallivan Center every year for two days of music at the Utah Blues Festival.
Festival Producer Tripp Hopkins is a lifelong fan of the blues and has worked at blues events with groups all over the country, including the National Blues Foundation. He knows the history, revels in the music, and now he’s committed to sharing it with the next generation.
“That’s our big mission,” Hopkins said, “to pass this music on to younger people so that they can appreciate it. It’s a really unique experience that once a year we can get people together and have a day and a half of all things blues.”
The Utah Blues Festival draws visitors who travel from coast to coast to attend. Boasting a world-class lineup of blues legends and up-and-coming stars, this year’s Blues Festival is an authentic celebration of blues music and its undeniable influ-
ence on American culture.
by ALLIE WISNIEWSKI & MATT MASICH
In addition to the music itself, the event is hosting educational workshops at the Marriot City Center, adjacent to the Gallivan Center, which is the center of the action all weekend long.
“Our workshops teach people about blues history,” Hopkins said, “how the African American experience is so connected to blues and almost all music.”
With a lineup including Ruthie Foster, Sugaray Rayford, Danielle Nicole, Altered Five Blues Band, and more, visitors are guaranteed to see something that resonates with them with multiple subgenres of blues represented throughout the festival. Tickets are $50 for Friday, $60 for Saturday or $100 for both days.
The workshops are free, including a perennially popular harmonica workshop where the first 150 attendees get a free Hohner Bluesband harmonica. Other well-loved past workshops have included a seminar on making your own cigar-box guitar. utahbluesfest.org
The lineup at the Utah Blues Festival is a world-class mix of blues legends and up-and-coming stars.
WHERE TO EAT RED IGUANA
Since 1985, Red Iguana has boasted a wide variety of Mexican recipes, with many using house-made corn tortillas and mole sauces. The restaurant famously appeared on the TV show Diners, Drive-ins & Dives. 736 W. North Temple St. (801) 322-1489.
WHERE TO GO HOGLE ZOO
Featuring hundreds of animals, large and small, the Hogle Zoo has species and exhibits representing the far corners of the world: lions, giraffes and zebras from the African savanna, great apes, polar and grizzly bears and Asian big cats. 2600 Sunnyside Ave. (801) 584-1700.
Utah Blues Festival
CULTURAL
PAYSON SCOTTISH FESTIVAL
JULY 7-8 • PAYSON
Bagpipers, singers, dancers and other traditional Scottish performers take over shady Memorial Park for the Payson Scottish Festival. There is also Scottish food, vendors and the dramatic competition of the highland games. Admission is free at the 39th annual event, which drew an estimated 10,000 people last year.
“It’s like a little piece of Scotland in Utah, with the mountains in the background,” said Bill Elrick, president of the volunteer board that organizes the festival. Elrick is a native of Aberdeen, Scotland. Like many Scots living in the United States, he became more in tune with his Scottishness after he left his home country. “I think we expats become much more involved in the Scottish scene here in Utah than we ever were in Scotland.”
The main act on the bandstand is Teton Skye, which plays traditional Scottish songs with guitars, fiddles and singing. Elsewhere, more than a dozen different bagpipe bands play throughout the festival. A highlight comes during the opening ceremony down Main Street, when all the pipe bands play at once. “The sound of the bagpipes is great,” Elrick said, “but when you get 15 pipe bands all playing together, the sound is quite remarkable.”
This year, the festival expands beyond Memorial Park to the Parkview Elementa-
ry playing fields, where the bagpipe competitions are held. This leaves more room for the heavy athletics of the highland games, which includes competitions such as the caber toss, where athletes heave enormous wooden poles.
Food vendors sell such Scottish food as fish and chips, sausage rolls, meat pies and the infamous haggis. Other vendors sell kilts, jewelry, leatherwork and more. paysonscottishfestival.org.
WHERE TO EAT CHUBBY’S CAFE
This all-American eatery serves some of the best burgers around, and the beer-battered fries are just as delicious as they sound. Other surefire hits incude the reuben, chicken sandwich, and macaroni and cheese – and Chubby’s also makes a mean milkshake. 855 Turf Farm Road. (801) 658-5566.
WHERE TO GO GROTTO TRAIL
Seven miles up Payson Canyon, this hiking trail is short and easy – perfect for all ages. The trail follows a stream through the forest until ending at a beautiful waterfall cascading into a pool of water that’s perfect for wading in. 14926 Nebo Loop Road. (801) 798-3571.
The Payson Scottish Festival boasts a bounty of bagpipers and traditional food like the legendary haggis.
events you may enjoy
JUNE Other
Ogden Music Festival
June 2-4 • Ogden
Every year, Ogden kicks off the summer season with this celebration of acoustic music, arts and local culture. Fort Buenaventura provides a beautiful and historic outdoor venue, and in addition to musical performers, it will host artists, vendors, a petting zoo and crafts. Guests can even camp onsite for a truly immersive experience. (385) 240-0994.
Desertscape International Film Festival
June 21-24 • St. George
St. George, home to some of the most iconic and breathtaking desert landscapes in the country, is the perfect location for this fifth annual film festival, which features dozens of multi-genre films from creators all over the world. Awards are presented at the end of the weekend. (435) 632-1795.
Utah Arts Festival
June 23-25 • Salt Lake City
The Utah Arts Festival is committed to promoting regional contemporary fine art that pushes creative boundaries and brings people together, representing a wide variety of artistic mediums in a fun, outdoor setting. With more than 70,000 attendees annually, it’s the biggest multi-disciplinary arts event in Utah. (801) 322-2428.
Cache Valley Cruise-in
June 29-July 1 • Logan
Classic cars congregate at the Cache County Fairgrounds for an epic car show. On Friday, June 30, there’s a 40-mile scenic cruise from Logan to Bear Lake. The Beach Boys perform a concert Thursday, June 29; concert tickets are sold separately from Cruise-in admission, which is $10 for adults and free for children under 18. cvcacruisein.com.
Payson Scottish Festival
PATRIOTIC
AMERICA’S FREEDOM FESTIVAL
JULY 1-4 • PROVO
America’s Freedom Festival is a patriotic extravaganza that combines a multitude of separate festivals into one star-spangled event. The lineup includes Balloon Fest, Colonial Heritage Fest, Military History Days, Fine Art Show, concerts and more.
Balloon Fest is one of the most popular events, drawing 25,000 spectators annually to experience 25 hot air balloons, which take flight each morning on July 1, 3 and 4 from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. Those who arrive early in the morning can walk around the balloons as they inflate. Once aloft, balloon pilots compete in challenging competitions in which they attempt to drop bean bags
At the Colonial Heritage Festival, at-
tendees can visit the village apothecary shop, blacksmith, cooper, broom maker, gunsmith, potter, baker and many other old-time tradespeople. Children can learn and play colonial games while honing their skills in the daily chores of the period.
Military History Days lets visitors walk through authentic displays of World War II-era tents and workspaces, including hands-on experiences with real artifacts. At the Fine Art Show, people can meet nationally acclaimed artists, see live art demonstrations and purchase original artworks from the 22 invited artists participating in this year’ show.
One of the most eagerly anticipated events is the Altabank Stadium of Fire con-
A hot air balloon festival, fireworks display and
America’s Freedom Festival
cert featuring the classic rock band Journey on July 1. Following Journey’s performance in Levell Edwards Stadium is an enormous fireworks display and a thrilling flyover of F-35 jet fighters from Hill Air Force Base. Concert tickets range from $40 to $270. freedomfestival.org.
WHERE TO EAT COMMUNAL
Fresh, local and sustainable ingredients take center stage in Chef Matt Eckelmann’s cuisine. His dishes include pork belly with charred salsa verde, chicken pot pie tortellini and a tantalizing pairing of duck and pancakes. 102 N. University Ave. (801) 373-8000.
WHERE TO GO BEAN LIFE SCIENCE MUSEUM
This free natural history museum draws 100,000 annual visitors to see more than 2 million specimens of plants, reptiles, fish, shells and birds. Especially popular is the taxidermy liger – half lion, half tiger. 645 E. Phillips Lane. (801) 422-5050.
JULY
Western Stampede
July 1-4 • West Jordan
This long-running event brings rodeo excitement, along with carnival rides, a grand parade, fireworks, food trucks and more. The PRCA rodeo has a record number of contestants this year. Videos are shown on the Jumbotron, where spectators can watch rodeo, mutton bustin’ and more. The vendor fair features many Utah-made products. (801) 569-5160.
Utah Midsummer
Renaissance Faire
July 12-15 • Cedar City
At this extravaganza celebrating the Renaissance era, vendors sell food and handicrafts, while magicians, singers, belly dancers and more entertain attendees. Of particular interest for many are the lessons on chainmail-making and demonstrations of knights fighting. New this year are performances by children. Admission is free. umrf.net.
Bryce Canyon Geology Festival
July 14-15 • Bryce Canyon National Park
Park rangers lead guided hikes and other activities. Past festivals have included guided hikes to Mossy Cave and Queen’s Garden Trail; free hike tickets are available at the Visitor Center. (435) 834-5322.
TRIVIA ANSWERS
Questions on p 14-15
1 The Narrows
2 Lake Effect
3 Xeriscaping
4 Atmospheric River
5 John Wesley Powell
6 c. Lake Bonneville
7 b. Uinta River (the other is the Jordan River)
8 a. Bear River
9 b. State Street
14 True
15 False. (The Great Sale Lake ranges from two to nine times saltier than the ocean.)
Trivia Photographs
Page 14 A houseboat on Lake Powell. John Wesley Powell meets a Native American. Page 15 The North Fork of the Virgin River flows in The Narrows in Zion National Park.
TABBYS PEAK GeologicWonders
by MATT MASICH photograph by NOAH WETZEL
MANY REGIONS OF Utah are famous for their spectacular geological formations. Though the West Desert is not one of those regions, it still has some wonders of its own.
At 6,921 feet, Tabbys Peak is the most prominent peak in the Cedar Mountains, which separate the West Desert from Skull Valley in Tooele County. Tabbys Peak, named after the Goshute chief Ta’bi, looks unlike the other summits in the range, looking purplish rather than brown.
The peak began its story 40 million years ago, when magma intruded to form a large dike. As the magma cooled, it shrank and fractured into a hexagonal column pattern, giving the resulting andesite an oddly blocky appearance.
It is possible to climb to the summit of Tabbys Peak, but the elevation gain – more than 1,000 feet up over the last half-mile – can be intense and involves a lot of boulder hopping. On the peak’s north side, the summit drops abruptly in a tall, sheer cliff. The view from the top is impressive, offering vistas of the Great Salt Lake, the sand dunes of the Knolls Off-Highway Vehicle Special Recreation Area, as well as many different mountain ranges, including the distant Toano Range in Nevada.
story by KERRY SOPER illustrations by JOSH TALBOT
Are Utahns too nice?
AT THE RISK of offending someone, can I suggest that we Utahns are often too worried about offending someone? Whole generations of us were raised to be pleasers, to avoid contention at all costs.
There are upsides, of course, to this collective niceness: Neighbors will lend you stuff, like food or power tools (maybe even a vital organ). But there are downsides, too: Passive aggressivity is a fine art form in many Utah families; we have a hard time saying no to things, like multiple church callings or tedious social events; and opportunists, like summer sales bros and multilevel marketing hucksters, take advantage of that chronic friendliness.
Finally, Utahns sometimes tell dumb, white lies just to avoid awkward conversations. These fibs of convenience sometimes spiral out of control, however, as I learned in this cautionary tale.
Back in the mid-1990s, when we moved out of state to attend graduate school, I had to furnish an apartment in an unfamiliar city before the arrival of my wife and toddler. I started this project by responding to a newspaper ad from a young woman selling bookcases. Our transaction began well: a pleasant chat over the phone – a landline, since this was pre-cellphones – during which I received directions to her apartment.
But then I got lost on the way over and had to call back several times from pay phones. She must have misheard me during one of those calls, because when I arrived at her door, she said, “Hi, Jesse!”
I should have just corrected her: “Sorry, my name is actually Kerry.” But the Utahraised pleaser in me hesitated, not wanting to embarrass her or to make things awkward, so I just went with it, thinking it would be easier to accept this new identity for the short duration of our interactions.
The first glitch in my plan arrived when I tried to pay her by check. Freezing, I realized I can’t sign a fake name on a check, Apologizing, I excused myself and sped to the nearest ATM.
When I returned, she discovered that some pieces for the bookcases were missing, but she promised to call me when they turned up. This led to another tense moment as I wrote down my phone number, hesitated briefly, then scrawled “JESSEE” above it with a flourish, impulsively adding the extra E. I sighed in relief when I finally left her apartment.
A week passed, my wife and child arrived, and my brain was happily repressing the whole alternate identity situation. Then one afternoon, the anxiety came rushing back as I played the following message on our answering machine: “Hey Jessee! I found those missing bookcase pieces!”
In a panic, I realized this recording might confuse my wife. Trying to act calm,
I whispered, “Hey, honey, just a heads up: I’ll be using a different name for this phone call. It’s no big deal.” She watched as I mumbled into the receiver, “Uh, yeah, this is … uh … Jessee, calling you back?”
The young woman responded breezily: “Hey, Jessee. Sorry for the hassle. My boyfriend and I can swing by your place in about an hour to drop off those pieces.”
I sheepishly explained the situation to my wife. Already familiar with my habit of telling complicated white lies, she enjoyed a good, five-minute laugh. She sobered up quickly, though, as she realized that she would now be an accessory to whatever pointless long con I was trying to pull.
When the couple arrived, it was my wife, weirdly, who overdid it. She kept overusing my new name (“Jessee’s really excited about the new bookcase”), and getting too interested in their personal lives (“So how many nieces and nephews do you have?”).
My throat was too dry to add anything to the mix. I just sat there with a goofy smile,
praying for the ordeal to end.
Finally, the young couple got up to leave. I could feel the anxiety lifting from my shoulders. The stress rushed right back in, though, when the boyfriend, who must have been charmed by my wife’s weird hospitality, suggested, “Hey, maybe we could all go out to dinner sometime?”
I tried to kill this idea as nicely as possible: “Yeah, sounds fun … maybe we could check back in a few months?” Confused by this tepid response, the couple wandered toward the front door, which I was eagerly holding open. As they passed over the threshold, though, disaster finally arrived: The boyfriend abruptly turned back and asked, “Hey, what was your name again?”
My brain must have prematurely let its guard down, because I automatically responded without thinking, “Kerry.”
A jolt of panic ran through me as the young woman whipped her head around and said, “What?” I slowly tried to close the door on her as she walked back. She
stopped me though, asking, “What was that? What did you say your name was?” Keeping my eyes fixed on her forehead, like I was solving a magic eye puzzle, I replied, “Kerrryyy?” almost like a question.
Chuckling incredulously, she responded, “No it’s not – it’s Jessee.” I just repeated in a robotic monotone, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s Kerry.”
Looking worried about her own sanity, she begged me, saying, “But wait – haven’t you been calling yourself Jessee? Didn’t you write down your name as Jessee?”
I gave a noncommittal shrug, raised my eyebrows at her boyfriend, like “What are you gonna do?” and closed the door.
My wife, who had been listening in, was now on the floor, convulsing. She’s the rare type of Utahn who didn’t inherit the excessive niceness gene, and thus she had no problem laughing hard at my expense. And now, years later, all she has to say to get me to shudder and wince involuntarily is, “Hey, Jessee …”
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