Settle into a season of luxury at Deer Valley – where our signature service and commitment to detail enhance every experience. From pristine grooming and unforgettable ski runs to indulgent dining and après-ski celebrations, winters here continue a legacy of difference you can feel in every moment.
DEPARTMENTS
FEATURES
16
24
Photos this page, from top: A Fremont pictograph at Nine Mile Canyon by Randy Langstraat; Etta Place Cider by Austen
A World Apart on the Green River
A group of strangers quickly bond as they paddle and explore Labyrinth Canyon on the Green River in autumn.
Story and photographs by Mike Shubic
Wendover and the Atomic Bomb
Under a veil of extreme secrecy, Wendover played a crucial role in developing the technology that helped end WW II.
Story by Valerie Phillips
Photographs by Chris and Azelan Amundson 32
Torrey’s High Altitude Orchard
In a region where water is scarce, a couple leave their careers behind to plant an orchard and delight visitors.
Story by Rachel Fixsen Photographs by Austen Diamond 42
Rock Art Mysteries of Northeast Utah
In the second installment of our rock art series, a longtime Utah state archeologist’s first encounter with rock art shaped how he views etchings of headhunters and lizards.
By Tom Hess 52 Park City’s Kind-Hearted Madam
Rachel Urban provided her “soiled doves” with education, etiquette lessons and regular doctor visits, helped out-ofwork miners and donated to local schools.
By Brandi Christoffersen
Rock Art of Northeast Utah, p 42
High Altitude Orchard, p 32
Wendover
Rockville
Torrey
Diamond.
SOAR ON CA MPUS, ,
O R ON A CLIFFTOP W IT H SUU’S
STUDENT-CENTERED APPR
Leaving our mark
I’M NO PICASSO, but my stick figures get the job done on family Pictionary night. If I were alive 2,000 years ago, I might have been that guy etching sun circles and family portraits into the sandstone walls along Utah’s Green River. Some of the largest concentration of intact rock art in the world can be seen in Utah. Experts who make their life’s work studying this stuff struggle to say exactly how many distinct pieces of rock art – called panels – there are.
The 46-mile-long Nine Mile Canyon has “hundreds upon hundreds” of panels, says Kevin T. Jones, former Utah State Archaeologist. And Nine Mile Canyon is just one of hundreds of rock-art sites in our state.
Senior Writer Tom Hess visited with Kevin for Part II in our rock-art series that appears in this issue. All these thousands of years later, what were those sandstone scratchers and painters trying to tell us?
Are the lizards on page 46 metamorphosising into a human, or are they about to have a delicious mansnack? Who knows, but it sure is fun to speculate and talk about it.
Art does that. It gets our imagination going. It lets us daydream and maybe even learn something. It stimulates conversation.
A good magazine is a lot like rock art. It’s been five years, 34 magazine issues and “hundreds upon hundreds” of stories since my family, staff and I launched Utah Life in 2018, and we’re just getting started. But what do all those stories mean?
In my first Utah Life editor letter (“Issue No. 1: A portrait of Utah,” March/April 2018), I said we would forego covering the issues of the day and instead take a “long-term look” at the people, places and stories that define life in Utah.
Taken individually, each story is an entertaining little snapshot of some aspect of life unique to Utah. Put them together and we begin to see larger themes of life in Utah. Like the rock art, how each of us interprets those stories might be a little different. Hopefully, they stimulate conversation around our favorite subject: Life in Utah.
At the five-year mark, we thank you for coming along on this journey as a subscriber to Utah Life. We look forward to many more years of publishing with you as our patrons and muse.
Now, where’s my Pictionary marker? I have a game to win.
CHRIS AMUNDSON Publisher & Editor editor@utahlifemag.com
Fall 2023
Volume 6, Number 5
PUBLISHER & EDITOR
Chris Amundson
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
Angela Amundson
ADVERTISING SALES
Marilyn Koponen
PHOTO COORDINATOR
Amber Kissner
DESIGN
Karlie Pape, Julia Bohan
SENIOR WRITER
Tom Hess
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Lea Kayton, Katie Evans, Janice Sudbeck
Utah Life Magazine
c/o Subscriptions Dept. PO Box 270130 Fort Collins, CO 80527 (801) 921-4585
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How many pioneers?
Question number 9 in the July/August 2023 issue Trivia should read “While a few Mormon Trail pioneers in the 1850s used handcarts …,” not many.
According to the web page “Mormon Pioneer Emigration Facts” (tinyurl. com/2p52jrwn), there were 250 organized emigration companies coming to Utah. Only 10 of them were handcart companies. 60,000-70,000 people came by wagon train. Only 3,000 people came by handcart. I look forward to Utah Life and read it from cover to cover. It’s my go-to gift for the hard-to-buy-for friends and family.
Nila C. Briem American Fork
Progress at Taylor’s old town
Hell’s Backbone celebs
I was little Jenny Castle’s first grade teacher back in the late 1970s at Whittier Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Little did I know then that I had a future celebrity in my classroom. Kudos to Jen, Blake Spalding and Tamara Stanger’s success at Hell’s Backbone Grill as described in your article in the July/August 2023 issue (“Gourmet restaurant thrives in one of nation’s most remote locales”).
every Thursday. I am the librarian and help patrons with our 50,000 pioneer histories, resource files and books. A man came in and wanted to read the history of his ancestor, John Crane Witbeck. I pulled the histories and he read them.
Then he told me his ancestor brought the first honeybees to Utah. Since my grandfather had beehives and I have a beehive, I wanted to know more about Witbeck. I read his histories as well.
We have Ackley’s Western Town on our property in Taylor. Utah Life ran a story about us in September/October 2020 issue (“All aboard for Taylor Old West escapades”).
Much has changed since then with the addition of a fully restored railroad caboose that is now a bed and breakfast, restored covered wagon, restored railroad baggage cart, railroad museum, bicycle museum, tipi and several Western structures.
We now have acquired an 1857 cabin and moved it fully intact from Hooper. The owner, Kathryn Penrod, was born in the cabin along with nine siblings. We have built a new roof, floor, two windows and a porch. In the spring we will do the chinking. Our passion is restoring history and sharing it with the public.
Michael and Sharyl Ackley Taylor
I have visited the Grill several times since Jen first reached out to me on Facebook asking if I was indeed the same Kathy Grossman who taught her those many years ago. I haven’t yet had the Jenchiladas or the Spicy Cowgal Chipotle Meatloaf, but I hope to go again soon. I do wonder what she thought of Whittier’s cafeteria lunches back in the day.
Kathy Grossman Moab
How we became beehive state
When your magazine arrived, I read it immediately but did not write this to you sooner as I was busy entering my jams, pickles and fruit in the Utah State Fair.
I was reading your Trivia (July/August 2023) and I was doing great but question 15 was serendipitous. This asked about bees brought to Utah.
I am sharing what I learned: I volunteer at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum
John Crane Witbeck was born 1827 in New York and was a pioneer of 1853. He married a widow with one son and moved to Springville. He served a mission to Australia, and his wife died. He remarried. He helped with the 1856 handcart rescue company. He freighted goods to San Bernardino, California, with his three wagons and teams with a friend, Sam Gulley, and his sons John and Dan.
Among the products they took were beehives. They brought 20 hives, and two made it alive to Utah between 1857 and before 1870.
They ran a post office and mail station in Levan. He homesteaded at Chicken Creek. He moved the stage station to Juab County on the railroad route, which was completed in 1879. He built a hotel by the railroad terminal. In 1885 he built a ranch at Little Salt Creek. They moved to Manti in 1889. He visited the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893.
Wikipedia says, “By 1871 significant
Ackley’s Western Town
colonies of bees began arriving by railway in what would soon be known as Utah, and by 1874 the first mention appeared of the Utah Beekeepers Association. Utah would no longer have to import honey, as colonies of bees were now arriving from the East and the West.”
Pam Carson Salt Lake City
Inspiration in every issue
I was struck by the fantastic article in the July/August 2021 issue “Eccles Dinosaur Park.” Dinosaurs are popular with my grandchildren, and the park is a fantastic place to take visitors from out of state who are thrilled to walk along the pathways of a bygone era. Such visits have set the stage for us to travel to Dinosaur National Monument and Red Rock Country.
Elizabeth Keswick Eden
Never tire of Utah beauty
As I look out at the towering red rock cliffs through the windows of my home, just below Snow Canyon in Ivins, on a perfect Labor Day, it is easy to remember what brought me to Utah 25 years ago.
I’m also reminded of the endless beauty of this state each time I read articles like the account of the trek into The Maze in your July/August 2023 issue (“Braving the Maze District”).
Over the many years I subscribed to Arizona Highways, and I often complained to anyone who would listen that no one had done a Utah Highways magazine, considering the even greater wealth of landscapes to be photographed in Utah. Thus, it was with considerable glee that I became one of your charter subscribers, and I have not been disappointed.
Michael Jenkins
Ivins
SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Thank you for reading and writing! We enjoy hearing from our readers 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 Dec. 10. One lucky letter writer will be selected to win a free subscription renewal. This issue’s winner is Pam Carlson of Salt Lake City.
Email your “Letter to the Editor” to editor@utahlifemag.com, or drop us a line and mail it to the address at the front of this magazine.
THE BUZZ AROUND UTAH
Fourth grader’s poem helps save Rockville’s historic bridge
by REUBEN WADSWORTH
The citizens of Rockville did everything they could think of to raise money to rehabilitate their town’s historic bridge. They sold T-shirts, put on art shows and even held rubber ducky races as fundraisers, but it was a fourth grader’s poem about the bridge that netted the final $400,000 needed to save it.
Spanning the Virgin River near the south entrance to Zion National Park, the Rockville Bridge has been a symbol of outside-the-box thinking from its conception. The National Park Service built the bridge in 1924 to shave 33 miles off the drive between Zion and the Grand Canyon – one of the few times the agency spent outside a national park’s boundaries for a park’s benefit.
Today, the 217-foot Parker through truss bridge is the last one of its kind in Utah. Age was unkind to the one-lane bridge, and in 2012, the Utah Department of Transportation downgraded its weight capacity from 25 tons to 14 tons. The bridge needed to be replaced or rehabilitated, and Rockville residents spoke loud and clear that their choice was rehabilitation. To them, it was more than a bridge – it was the center of the fabric of their community.
Locals banded together to raise the $169,250 in matching funds they needed to secure a federal grant. The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation and the Simmons Family Foundation supplied additional grants, and the Utah State Legislature appropriated $100,000 toward the cause.
Nearby Springdale Elementary held a 2016 writing contest centered on the bridge’s restoration. One of the winning entrants was fourth grader Romy Thom-
as, who lived a few houses down from the bridge on Bridge Road and whose grandmother is a former Rockville mayor. Thomas wrote a poem beginning and ending with the couplet, “People come from all around/just to see this bridge in our town.”
Thomas read her poem at an April 2016 meeting of UDOT’s Joint Highway Committee, which controlled the federal funding that would ultimately be the main source of restoration capital. After hearing the poem, the committee decided to increase its promised funding from $2.1 million to $2.5 million.
“It was a shocking and proud moment for all of us,” said the poet’s mother, Alyson Thomas, “to know that the words that came from Romy helped to strike an emotion strong enough to inspire the Joint Highway Committee to approve and increase the funding.”
Three years later, when the bridge’s res-
toration was complete, Alyson Thomas read her daughter’s poem at the dedication ceremony.
Watching the community come together to save the bridge was an incredibly gratifying experience for Rockville Mayor Pam Leach, who guided the town through the bridge’s funding and restoration process. Even though the bridge is only one lane, she’s never heard any complaints about it – people love it for what it is.
Eventually, there will be a new bridge built in Rockville. A planned project will construct a new two-lane bridge on the west end of town.
For now, the town is looking forward to celebrating the original bridge’s centennial next year, probably as a part of the town’s annual Rockville Daze in October, Leach said. Not only will it be a celebration of the bridge, but the community’s togetherness in preserving its revered historical icon.
Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock
Native Utah fish sheds its ‘trash’ status
by TOM HESS
Chance Broderius fished with his grandfather beginning age 6 in northern Utah, including Big Creek – an ambitious name for a small, scenic tributary to the Bear River. Chance and Grandpa, the late Ron VanMeeteren, cast their hooks for trout, bass, walleye, even catfish – all of them nonnative fish.
Utah does have 32 native fish species, and over time, with plenty of education, it began to bother Broderius that anglers tended to dismiss them as “trash fish.” Now that he is native fish coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources in Salt Lake City, Broderius makes it his mission to bring attention to the original swimmers of the state’s streams.
Someday soon, he’ll head southeast to the banks of the San Rafael River near the town of Green River in Emery County. There, he’ll cast his line for the roundtail chub – a long overlooked native species that the state recently designated as a sportfish.
“We’re trying to get the public more interested in native fish,” Broderius said. “They thrive in stressful situations, in Utah’s harsh climates.”
Until Jan. 1 this year, it was illegal to catch and keep roundtail. Due to the introduction of nonnative fish and habitat alteration, the roundtail chub had received special protection from the state. That didn’t matter much to anglers, though, because they preferred imported bass and walleye, plentiful back East, where many had once dined on them.
The nonnatives gave them a good fight hooked to their line and rewarded them with a great-tasting meal over an open fire with a dash of Old Bay seasoning and a little lemon in the body cavity.
The roundtail’s behavior is like that of the cutthroat trout, another native Utah species. Both linger in deep pools next to flowing water. They feed on what passes by. Roundtail can grow up to 18 inches, no match for Broderius’ biggest catch – a 35- to 40-inch tiger muskie.
Anglers can catch only two roundtail each along the Green River, from the Sand Wash Boat Launch to the Green-Colorado confluence at Canyonlands National Park. The two roundtail limit also applies to the San Rafael, and along the White River from the Colorado state line to a tribal land boundary.
Roundtail chub bodies are streamlined, and they have olive-colored backs and silver sides. Like other chubs, they are minnows and do not have teeth. Individuals typically live 10-15 years and can grow to 20 inches long.
Broderius recommends that anglers looking to fish for the roundtail chub go online and download the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources Fishing Guidelines at wildlife.utah.gov/fishing-regulations.
Broderius said he won’t eat the roundtail he catches – he still prefers bass and walleye – but he’ll position his roundtail lengthwise on his forearm, and not by its tail, and take a photograph to record his engagement with Utah’s native natural world.
Anglers display their catch – the roundtail chub, a Utah native sportfish – for a photograph to recall their adventure fishing along the banks of the Green and White rivers.
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
by MATT MASICH
How a Utahn became world’s top corn maze guru
For many Utahns, it isn’t officially fall until they’ve gotten lost in the corn maze at Cornbelly’s. Primarily operating in the weeks between Labor Day and Halloween, Cornbelly’s has all the classic elements of a fall harvest festival, from hayrides to pumpkin patches.
While the two locations at Thanksgiving Point and Spanish Fork have a combined 90-plus games and attractions, it all started with a single corn maze that Cornbelly’s founder and owner Brett Herbst built nearly 30 years ago.
Herbst’s career path couldn’t have been clearer when he graduated from Brigham Young University with an agribusiness degree in 1995: He immediately started work as assistant manager of a big farming operation and was soon making better money than his parents ever had. That’s why his father was dumbfounded when
Herbst informed him he planned to quit his job to pursue his dream of becoming a full-time corn maze impresario. “Son, you’ve got rocks in your head,” his father told him.
The modern corn maze phenomenon had just been invented a couple of years earlier; Herbst read about it in a farming magazine and decided to try making one himself in 1996. For his first maze, Herbst planted a field with corn, waited for the cornstalks to grow 6 inches high, then went out with some friends to mow the maze’s path.
That first year, Herbst and his crew used weed whackers fitted with circular saw blades to mow their maze. After a buddy’s wayward weed whacker sliced off the end of Herbst’s leather boot, they switched to using rototillers.
Herbst’s first corn maze – one of just half a dozen nationwide that year – was such a resounding success, drawing 18,000 visi-
tors, that he felt confident enough to quit his farming day job. The following year, he designed three corn mazes, as his sister and a buddy each wanted one of their own. In the years after that, he designed seven, then 13, then 25, then 50.
Today, Herbst helps build 300 corn mazes a year as owner of the Spanish Fork-based MAiZE Inc., the world’s largest corn maze consulting firm. Yet his heart remains in Utah at Cornbelly’s, where he can watch families having fun in his creation. He notices that children often make it through the maze faster than their parents, because “the adults second-guess themselves.”
Sticking to your gut-level convictions is essential, he said, whether you’re trying to solve a maze or taking a risk starting a business venture like Cornbelly’s.
“Think like a kid,” Herbst said. “Live like a kid. Don’t let fear scare you away from everything in life.”
The father of the man who created this massive corn maze once told his son “you’ve got rocks in your head” for dreaming of such a feat. That son, Brett Herbst, now runs the world’s largest corn maze consulting firm from Spanish Fork.
Cornbelly’s
Today’s Utah is replete with fossil remains and was once home to some of the most amazing creatures of the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth
Show your witty sense of style and zest for science with an Exquisite Eons® silver dinosaur brooch, desk piece, or bronze bibelot. They’re the ideal gift, and sure to delight the discriminating dino in your life.
Test your knowledge of Utah’s companies and entrepreneurs.
by LUCAS McFARLANE
Owner: Flagship Publishing, Inc., Christopher Amundson, President. (11.) Known bondholders, mortgages and other security holders: None. (12.) For completion by nonprofit organizations authorized to mail at special rates (section 23.12 DDM only). The purpose, function and non-profit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes: Has not changed during preceding 12 months. (13.) Publication Title: Utah Life Magazine (14.) Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: Nov 1, 2023. (15.) Extent and nature of circulation: First column: Average no. copies each issue during preceding 12 months. Second column: Actual no. copies of single issue published nearest to filing date. 1 2
A. Total no. copies (net press run) 7,370 8,759
B. Paid and/or requested circulation
1. Paid/requested outside-county mail subscriptions. 5,169 6,161
2. Paid in-county subscriptions.
3. Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales. 765 1,263
4. Other classes mailed through USPS 217 344
C. Total paid and/or requested circulation (sum of 15b. 1, 2, 3 and 4). 6,151 7,768
D. Free distribution by mail, carrier or other means, samples, complimentary, and other free copies.
1. Free distribution outside county. 969 741
E. Total free distribution. 969 741
F. Total distribution (Sum of C and E). 7,120 8,509
G. Copies not distributed. 250 250
H. Total sum of F and G. 7,370 8,759
I. Percent paid and/or requested circulation (15c. divided by 15f. times 100). 86 91
1 Salt Lake City native Whitney Wolfe Herd was vice president of marketing for Tinder before founding what dating app – now the most popular in North America – with a name that seems perfectly tailored to the Beehive State market?
2
What Brigham Young University graduate used some of the money he made as co-founder of Qualtrics, a multi-billion-dollar experience management company with co-headquarters in Seattle and Provo, to purchase the majority stake in the Utah Jazz in 2020?
3
4
Drive-through soda chains have opened at breakneck speeds in Utah, following the trend of what original “dirty soda” shop that opened in St. George in 2010?
5
Host of the wildly popular “Will it Blend?” videos that went viral in the early 2000s, Utahn Tom Dickson invented the “five-sided WildSide blending jar.” What is the name of Dickson’s company?
A. Paid electronic copies 0 0
B. Total paid print copies (15c.) plus paid electronic copies (16a.) 6,151 7,768
C. Total print distribution (15f.) plus paid electronic copies (16a.) 7,120 8,509
D. Percent paid both print and electronic copies (16b.) divided by 16c. times 100). 86 91
(17.) I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete. Angela Amundson Associate Publisher (16.)
Southwest of Salt Lake City lies the world’s largest and deepest open-pit, man-made surface mine, which has produced more copper than any other mine in history at more than 19 million tons. Though locals usually call it the Kennecott Copper Mine after the company that operates it, Kennecott Utah Copper refers to the mine by what official name?
Alamy
MULTIPLE CHOICE
6
Utah industries made $185.2 billion in gross state product last year. What was 2022’s largest Utah industry by revenue, bringing in $20.9 billion?
a. Petroleum refining
b. Online auctions and e-commerce
c. Drug, cosmetic and toiletry wholesaling
7
Founded in Logan by cousins Sawyer Hemsley and Jason McGowan in 2017, Crumbl Cookies’ wild success has attracted its fair share of competitors in the cookie business. In 2022, Crumbl took two fellow companies to court with claims of those companies having a “confusingly similar marketing and business model.” Which of the following cookie companies is included in that lawsuit?
a. Chip Cookies
b. Crave Cookies
c. RubySnap
8 Which of the following is not one of Utah’s three largest companies by number of employees?
a. Intermountain Healthcare
b. Amazon
c. Walmart
9 Utah’s fried chicken obsession began with which fried chicken restaurant that opened its first ever restaurant in Salt Lake City in 1952?
a. Chick-Fil-A
b. Kentucky Fried Chicken
c. Popeye’s
10 Of the following Utah-based video game developer companies, which delivered the smash-hit role-playing video game, Hogwarts Legacy, in 2023?
a. Avalanche Studios
b. Eat Sleep Play, Inc.
c. WildWorks
11 Utah ranks fifth in the country in gross domestic product with $973 billion
12
There are two electricity providers for the state of Utah: Rocky Mountain Power and Xcel Energy.
13
Utah is tied for the highest employment rate out of the 50 states with South Carolina at 97.7% employment.
14
Utah does not levy a corporate income tax.
15 Utah’s minimum wage is $8.25 per hour, or a dollar higher than the federal minimum wage.
No peeking, answers on page 58.
TRUE OR FALSE
Sugar and Soul
As the golden hour paints the sky, two canoes glide gracefully along the Green River, viewed from the vantage point of Two Mile campsite.
Canoe trip through Labyrinth Canyon reveals hidden landscape miles removed from modern life
Story and photographs by MIKE SHUBIC
he sky was still dark when I awoke on the first day of an eight-day mid-October canoeing adventure down the Green River in southern Utah. With my tent’s rainfly removed and the sandman subdued, I rolled onto my back to see the moon overhead shining through the mesh of my shelter. The diffused stars twinkled, still glowing bright as the sun was far from shining its light.
We launched our canoes from Ruby Ranch, a private homestead 30 miles south of the city of Green River and Interstate 70. Our group of 16 camped at Ruby Ranch the night before, the first of four campsites along a 45-mile journey through Labyrinth Canyon.
Our first paddle day was filled with exuberance. Our three guides gave us safety instructions, then paired us up into teams and assigned us to one of eight two-person canoes. With our camp gear weighing down the boats, it didn’t take long for us to discover that any abrupt movements needed to be communicated with our partners, or else we could find ourselves floating in the river without a canoe.
Heartbeats soon slowed, and the escape from our chaotic lives began to set in. As the red canyon walls first appeared, it was as if we were entering a new world – one with no distractions, no cell service, no demands other than avoiding the occasional sandbar.
LATE IN THE SEASON, with snow melt long gone, the river was placid, flowing just 2 ½ mph. There were no rapids or sounds, save for the paddles breaching the surface on the occasional stroke to straighten the canoe.
Our boats were packed to the gills, full of food, camping gear, groover (a camping toilet), kitchen supplies and more. One of our guides, Lauren Bond of The River’s Path, wanted to share her favorite camping spots on the Green River with us. Our paddle days were planned short so that if another group was occupying the campsite, we would have time to paddle to an alternate.
We came to our first camp, Three Canyons. The embankments were laden with
mud – thick molasses quicksand that envelopes you to your waist, which Lauren discovered when she went ashore.
Lauren quickly came up with a plan that if we cut willow branches and laid them on the mud, we could make it up the embankment with all our gear to build our camp. This endeavor required all hands on deck. Despite knowing each other for less than 24 hours, we came together as a team.
Several times during “Operation Willow Branch,” Lauren proclaimed our efforts would not be in vain.
We were dubious, but after two hours of reinforcing the mud and hauling our gear to the campsite, it was evident she had not led us astray. We trusted our leader.
While most people set up near the
campsite, a few of us wanted to explore before committing to a sleeping spot for the next three nights. I chose to set up my tent in front of what I dubbed the “Tree Arch,” a phenomenon where a Fremont oak split but refused to die.
Exploring past Tree Arch transported me into a portal of rarely visited backcountry wilderness. Petroglyphs peppered the canyon walls, telling stories known only by those of ancient times. Otherwise, the land is unspoiled and untainted by human hands – a welcome respite from the modern world from which we escaped.
I hiked to the end of one canyon, where I traversed boulders up dry waterfalls with pools punctuating the way. The rush of water during eons of wet seasons created
Camp kitchen at Three Canyons (opposite page) offers dramatic views. Adventurers serenely drift along the slow waters of the Green River in their sturdy canoes.
Under the vast tapestry of a star-studded night, canoes rest undisturbed. A fireside gathering of fellow travelers is a lasting memory.
smooth curves and arches, which are revealed during the dry season.
At the end of the canyon, I came to a monolithic wall in an amphitheater. I sat on a stone, contemplating this amazing place while nibbling on a turkey, tomato and avocado sandwich.
All alone, I decided to test an echo by sending out a loud bellow that boisterously made its way back to me. Later at camp we came together for a mealtime ceremony called the friendship fire circle. We gathered around, sang a song, shared our thoughts of the day and gave thanks for our meal.
The silence during the night was exceptional, broken near dawn by the soft sound of a flute played by Monica, one our tour guides, followed by the shallow, rhythmic beat of a drum.
AFTER THREE DAYS in Three Canyons, it was time to continue our adventure downriver. We paddled 12 miles through more majestic terrain, then arrived at our home for the next two days, Keg Spring campsite.
On our second day at our new campsite, Lauren took us on a hike to show us an area with petrified wood. I broke off from the group when I saw a spot where I could navigate up the canyon wall to a mesa. I got to the ledge just below the mesa, secured my daypack and decided to push to the top.
Sandstone is grippy and easy to scale when dry. I made it to within 75 feet of the peak when an impassible ledge halted me from going higher. A bit dejected, I began my descent and eventually made it back to the group.
Our next paddle day would be a big push, nearly 20 miles, and would take six hours. We stopped halfway to break for lunch at a sandy bank. Some explored, while others threw a frisbee. It was much-needed relief from sitting in the canoe for so long.
Later that afternoon, we arrived at Two Mile campsite. With a sandy beach, it was perfect to set up the kitchen and friendship fire circle.
I hiked to a higher ridge, and in short order found an incredible spot for my tent overlooking both directions of the river and directly down on our camp. My only
disappointment was that there were no trees to hang my hammock.
Soon after arriving, a group of pack-rafters (packable kayakers) landed at the same campsite. They hiked up the hill past my tent to camp on the other side of the bluff. Unbeknownst to us, their leader spoke with Lauren and shared some unsettling news.
That evening, the bells rang, signaling dinner was about to be served. As usual, we formed a circle, sang thanks for our meal and moved over to the ring of chairs around a fire on the beach. After sunset, the air on the river usually cooled rapidly, but not this evening – it was unusually warm and pleasant.
As we finished our meal, Lauren announced housekeeping items. She told us that the river guide who had come ashore informed her there was a significant storm front coming, likely the reason for the warm evening air. This is an area with no cell service. However, in case of emergencies, Lauren has a satellite phone. She contacted her mother, who verified the coming weather front.
Lauren made the difficult decision to cut the trip short by a day. We were all disappointed, especially since we hadn’t had the opportunity to explore this camp area. We understood and agreed with her decision for our safety.
Our final night on the river was a lovely evening perched up on the cliff. I laid awake in my tent with the fly off and the door open so I could take in the extreme dark skies and bright stars.
Jupiter was bright, as it had not been this close to Earth in nearly 60 years. I felt so far removed from society, full of peace and tranquility.
WE WERE ON the water by 9 a.m. the next day. The river was calm, and the sky bright blue. As a precaution, Lauren instructed us to lash our canoes in pairs to give us more stability in case the river turned turbulent.
Fifteen minutes later, the wind picked up. The water became choppy. Thirty minutes later and around the next bend, headwinds hit us and forced us to do serious paddling just to move forward and stay straight. The river had transformed itself from a loving and docile creature into an angry animal.
Pitched alongside the Green River, this secluded tent is high enough to overlook Two Mile campsite and spot an approaching group of packable kayakers.
GREEN RIVER: LABYRINTH CANYON
Lauren, with ukulele in hand, serenades the wilderness with her heartfelt melodies. A bird’s-eye glimpse of the inviting entrance to Three Canyons.
The entrance to Three Canyons is picturesque, but the hike through it can be too difficult and technical for some. A ledge with an ancient petroglyph overhead offers those who make the morning climb a quiet moment in the sun.
We were experiencing the full range of emotions from this living river.
We did not have many miles to cover, but it was clear it was going to take us a while to reach Mineral Bottom, the take-out point. The wind and waves continued to pick up. Our boats were filling with water; our feet became submerged and chilled.
My hands ached and were blistered from holding and stroking the paddle so hard. Around one bend, the winds pushed the boats against the embankment, and we started to pile up. The lead boat became stuck, pinning the other boats in place. Adrenaline was running high, but we stayed in fair spirits as we dislodged and continued downriver.
One more obstacle came into view as we made the last turn to Mineral Bottom. The river had shifted from a storm several weeks earlier, and now a massive sandbar blocked our exit.
Lauren got out of her boat onto the sandbar to have a closer look. Thankfully, there was a narrow passage of water on the other side of the bar. To access it, we continued downstream, then turned 180 degrees and paddled upstream into the narrow estuary that took us to the end of our paddling journey.
The pitter patter of the rain started about the time I got to my hotel in Moab. After six days on the river, a hot shower never felt so good. By that evening, a fullblown thunderstorm was raging. The hill
out of the canyon from the take-out point is very steep, and had we not left when we did, we might have been stuck camping in the rain and muck for a couple of days.
Our journey, like that of a river, changes course over time. No matter how hard we fight the current, we will never go back to the point where we started – the only way we can change our situation is to move forward.
Escaping the pressure of everyday life for a week – with no outside influence or distraction – is a prescription for well-being. And giving ourselves time for self-reflection is imperative for a life well-lived. The bonds created and the collective consciousness shared during this canoe trip is something I will treasure for a lifetime.
story by VALERIE PHILLIPS photographs by CHRIS and AZELAN AMUNDSON
TO MANY PEOPLE
, Wendover is the gateway to the glittering gambling casinos just across the Nevada border. They drive past the dilapidated rows of buildings near the airport south of Interstate 80 with no idea this was once the Wendover Army Airfield – where crews trained to drop the world’s first atomic bombs.
Some of the airfield has been restored to those World War II days, when it bustled with 17,500 soldiers and 2,000 civilian staff. Here, the top-secret 509th Composite Group helped finetune the world’s first atomic bomb and trained B-29 flight crews to deploy the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
The ensuing destruction led to the end of the war.
More than 1,000 B-17 and B-24 bomber crews trained at the airfield ended up conducting combat missions around the world during the war, including bombing Germany and supporting the D-Day invasion.
“In my personal opinion, the airfield is one of the greatest assets in the state of Utah to commemorate our involvement in World War II,” said Teryl Hunsaker, a former Tooele County commissioner who helped support the airfield’s ongoing restoration.
Visitors venturing here today can see the hangar that once housed the Enola Gay and Bockscar, the two aircraft that dropped the bombs. The John T. Brinkman Service Club houses
a museum with artifacts such as flight uniforms, equipment, weapons and a replica of the Little Boy atomic bomb, signed by the Enola Gay flight crew that dropped it over Hiroshima. People can take a stool at the bar and imagine young airmen toasting each other, or check out the entertainment hall, where soldiers once danced to big-band music with young women bused in from Salt Lake City.
“Wendover is the most original training base left in America,” said Tom Petersen, historian for the Historic Wendover Airfield Foundation, which spearheaded the restoration. “There are parts and pieces elsewhere around the country, but Wendover really gives a visitor the complete picture. The amount of national and state history here is incredible, and it’s right here in your backyard.”
The airfield has become a destination for tourists and a gathering place for community events in this town of 1,500, said Mike Crawford, Wendover’s former three-term mayor.
Growing up in Wendover, Crawford remembers sneaking through the base’s barbed wire fence to play hide-and-seek in the abandoned buildings, and racing his Corvette on the old runways.
Now when he comes to the airfield, he’s more likely to be presiding over the city employee Christmas party in the Brinkman Club or a “Wings and Wheels” car show in the Enola Gay hangar.
Airmen pose in front of a B-17 bomber at Wendover Army Airfield. The crews of more than 1,000 B-17s and B-24s trained here during World War II – and so did the crews of the B-29s that dropped the war-ending atomic bombs on Japan.
B-17 crews at Wendover receive rigorous training in formation flying in November 1942. This preparation would prove vital in a few months, when American bombers flew their first raids over Germany.
A BUSTL NG WENDOVER
Wendover was a small railroad town of around 100 residents when the Army began construction on the base in 1940. Its biggest claim to fame was its proximity (10 miles) to the Bonneville Salt Flats, where racing enthusiasts were setting land-speed records.
Wendover’s isolation – about 120 miles from Salt Lake City – plus its excellent flying weather and railroad service made it a choice base location. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought America into the war in December 1941. A few months later, Wendover was activated as a heavy bombardment training base.
Helen Hutchinson Wahlstrom remembers the sudden influx of people during her childhood. “Wendover really changed when the soldiers came,” she said. Her father, Lind Hutchinson, worked for the Western Pacific Railroad. Her mother, Myrtis, taught at the town’s only elementary school.
to stay, and some of the wives occupied my bedroom and my brother’s bedroom for a time.”
Some military wives weren’t prepared for rural living. When one of the officer’s wives moved into a nearby house, Wahlstrom and her mother taught her how to use a coal stove.
Despite the worries of war, the base brought a wealth of recreation to isolated Wendover families.
“I had a pass to go on the base, and they had a bowling alley, swimming pool and a movie theater, and they brought in different shows to entertain the troops,” said Wahlstrom, who now lives in Sacramento, California.
“I got to see Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Wendover was a different kind of town, there were so many people coming and going that it was actually pretty diverse, and I absolutely loved it growing up.”
They were told not to discuss their assignment with anyone.
Because of Wendover’s desert climate, few houses had lawns and flower beds, so the Hutchinsons’ well-kept yard became an oasis for soldiers. “I think they were homesick for some greenery, and they would come over and sit on our lawn because there wasn’t that much to do,” Wahlstrom said. “My mother would make cookies for them. I still remember a lot of their names, and I often wondered if they ever came home from the war.”
Married soldiers’ families began arriving before accommodations were completed, she said. “They were desperate for a place
The base, with thousands of single men, also boosted the gambling industry, which was legal across the Nevada border and thrives to this day. The first casino was the Stateline, which straddled the border between Utah and Nevada. As clubs and casinos sprang up, so did a new town, West Wendover, Nevada.
Sandi Hughes Kimbrell and her teenage girlfriends sneaked into a Halloween dance at the Stateline, where she met Staff Sgt. Cletus Kimbrell, whom she married almost a year later in the base chapel. The couple traveled the world with the Air Force and stayed happily married for 56 years, when Cletus passed away.
“There were only eight or nine boys and girls in my school class, and five of us girls married GIs,” Kimbrell said.
Above: Utah State Historical Society Illustration: Julian Amundson
TOP SECRET
The top-secret nature of some of the base’s operations hit home for Mary Ila Anderson Flinders when she and several other teens were driving an old jalopy around one night and apparently wandered onto the base’s property.
Above the roar of the jalopy, they thought they heard someone calling “Halt.”
“We didn’t stop, and then we heard a second ‘Halt!’ ” she said. Suddenly, bright lights were flashing on them, as soldiers with guns surrounded the car. “They told us that after the third ‘halt,’ they were to fire,” she said.
At the time, the townspeople had no idea that the base’s activities involved atomic bombs. The project was even a secret to most of the soldiers who were working on it. Jack Widowsky, now 95 and living in New Jersey, remembered when his squadron got orders for Wendover. “I’d never heard of it until we got there,” he said.
Everyone assembled in the base’s theater, and their new commanding officer, Col. Paul Tibbets, announced they were now part of the 509th Composite Group, and that they were going to
help end the war. They were also told it was top secret and not to discuss their assignment with anyone – even wives, parents, siblings or girlfriends.
At Wendover, the 509th Composite Group practiced releasing bomb models that mimicked the atomic bomb’s unique shape and weight. Those practice bombings helped engineers refine the real bomb’s ballistics, electrical fusing, detonators and release mechanisms.
Brent Palmer tells the story of his father, John W. Palmer, who also was part of the 509th Composite Group, being picked up while hitchhiking from the base to Grantsville.
The driver asked a lot of questions about the base, but Palmer kept mum. The driver, it turned out, was an FBI agent assigned to make sure the base’s secret mission remained that way. “The agent told him, ‘You’re a good soldier, you kept your mouth shut,’ ” Brent Palmer said.
Widowsky participated in several bombing missions over Japan, and then on Aug. 6, 1945, his crew was ordered to fly to Iwo Jima with the bomber Big Stink and wait with heavily armed guards. They didn’t know it, but the Big Stink was the backup plane in case the Enola Gay encountered flight troubles.
After hours of waiting, Widowsky’s crew was ordered back to the small island of Tinian, and that’s when they heard President Harry Truman’s radio announcement that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later, Widowsky navigated one of the weather reconnaissance planes during the bombing mission to Nagasaki. “To this day, I am honored and proud that I participated in that,” he said. “I feel we did the right thing because it saved thousands of American lives.”
The bombers at Wendover used belts of .50caliber ammunition in their Browning machine guns. The restored B-29 hangar at Wendover once housed the Enola Gay.
The original control tower overlooks the airfield. Below, servicemen from across the country enjoy meeting Utah women at a Wendover USO dance in August 1942; many local girls ended up marrying GIs. The original entertainment hall has been restored.
AFTER THE WAR
John Palmer took a job with the base’s fire department after the war ended, becoming the assistant fire chief. During his 33 years there, the base downsized its operations, leaving many of the buildings vacant. Young Brent explored many of them.
“The buildings were all under the protection of the Air Force and locked up, but I would sneak the keys that were under the stairs at the fire station,” he said. “I’d go into the telephone exchange building, with all the rows of the switchboards still there with headsets, and I’d sit and pretend like I was one of the operators. All the beds and the medicine cabinets were still sitting in the old hospital complex. It was a neat place to explore.”
Brent Palmer followed his father’s footsteps and became a firefighter, and he served as the airport’s fire chief for a time. He now volunteers in restoring the airfield’s old fire station.
The base was used off and on during the Cold War for weapons development and gunnery and bombing practice. It was declared surplus in 1976 when most of the field, including the water system, was turned over to Wendover as a municipal airport. For many years, the airport manager and a handful of Wendover’s World War II veterans talked about creating a museum.
When Wendover native Chris Melville became the airport manager in 1991, he took it a step further by collecting memorabilia for a small hall of honor. In 1995, Col. Paul Tibbets and the former
Enola Gay crew spent a week at the airport filming the documentary The Men Who Brought the Dawn.
“So we were able to get firsthand knowledge about the history from Col. Tibbets and some of the crew members,” Melville said. During Melville’s tenure, the Wendover Airport became certified for commercial service.
B RTH OF A MUSEUM
Melville left when Tooele County assumed airport operations in 1998. Jim Petersen co-organized a reunion for the 509th Composite group at Wendover in 2001 and founded the Historic Wendover Airfield Foundation. He took over management of the airport in 2003.
The group began seeking donations, volunteers, artifacts, photos and oral histories. To date, it has raised about $2 million through grants, government funding and private donations, which has been used to restore buildings on the base.
“Soon, people began finding us and asking to donate their pictures and memorabilia,” said Petersen’s eldest son, Tom Petersen, historian for the foundation.
When the collection outgrew the airport space, they looked to the run-down service club building next door. Volunteers shoveled out piles of pigeon nests, broken window glass and trash. Texas businessman Jon Nau donated a substantial amount of money to restore the building in honor of his father-in-law, John T. Brinkman, who trained at Wendover as a B-17 ball turret gunner. Intrepid Potash owner Hugh Harvey also provided significant funding to ensure the project would be completed.
The building’s entertainment hall is often booked for community events, from the high school prom and dinners for shooting and Bonneville Speedway racing clubs, to company luncheons and elegant weddings. “It was once a safety hazard, and now it’s turned into quite the jewel,” Crawford said.
Utah State Historical Society
The airfield foundation also is restoring the B-29 hangar that housed the Enola Gay and Bockscar. The new exterior is a huge improvement over its former weather-beaten appearance.
The airfield has been a backdrop for movies such as Con Air, Independence Day, Hulk and The Core. After filming Con Air, the moviemakers donated the cargo plane used in the movie, and visitors can go inside this movie prop.
Today, the museum welcomes about 10,000 visitors per year. Some may be coming to race at the Bonneville Speedway, for gambling, concerts and all-you-can-eat buffets in West Wendover, or passing through on I-80 on the way to California.
For many others, however, the museum is a destination.
In 2017, Yuji Sasaki visited from Japan and donated a rare “Sadako peace crane” to the Wendover Airfield. His aunt, Sadako Sasaki, survived the bombing of Hiroshima, but developed leukemia at age 12. She heard a Japanese legend that if she could fold 1,000 cranes, her wish for world peace would be granted. Sadako folded 1,000 paper cranes by the time she died in 1955, and her story gained worldwide attention.
Most of the cranes were buried with Sadako, and her family has presented cranes at only five other American landmarks: the 9/11 Memorial, Pearl Harbor, the Truman Library, the Museum of Tolerance and the Japanese American National Museum.
The plaque, displayed in the airfield museum, says the crane presentation is “neither as an apology nor condemnation of actions by either country during World War II, but rather a hope for nations to resolve conflicts without having to resort to wars and the inevitable devastation.”
A retired F-86 Saber fighter jet is stored in an original WW II-era hangar. This ammunition bunker has a blast wall opposite its door to stop flying debris from potential explosions.
High Altitude Orchard
Couple finds ‘zen’ among Torrey apple trees
Story by RACHEL FIXSEN
Photographs by AUSTEN DIAMOND
LONGSIDE UTAH Highway 24
run cliff bands and domed buttes, leading visitors into Capitol Reef National Park, the town of Torrey and Etta Place Cider.
Husband and wife couple, Robert Marc and Ann Torrence, left their home in Salt Lake City and their careers –he worked in neuroscience, and she was a writer and photographer – for what they had thought would be a vacation home where they could eventually retire.
Their Torrey property came with “use it or lose it” water rights. Water is a valuable resource in the desert, so Robert and Ann brainstormed worthy uses for theirs.
“We wanted to do something interesting and meaningful with the land,” Robert said. They gravitated to the idea of growing heritage apples, but Torrey is not an ideal place to grow fruit. At 7,000 feet in eleva-
tion, the town endures cold winters; the bright sun can scorch tree bark and the climate overall is drier than optimal.
Nevertheless, there is a precedent for orchards in the region. Just down the road, the historic town of Fruita at 5,400 feet, now part of Capitol Reef National Park, is known for its 19th century, pioneer-planted orchards of apricots, cherries, peaches, pears, plums – and apples. The park has about two dozen varieties of apples, including the Capitol Reef Red, recognized in 1994 as a unique variety found only in the park.
An adverse climate didn’t dissuade Robert and Ann, so they began planting trees in 2012, eventually expanding to 500 trees. “I never do anything small,” Ann said.
Their vacation home was becoming a business and new career.
The couple arbitrarily chose to lay out their 90 varieties of apples in alphabetical
Ann Torrence and husband Robert Marc toast their success in making cider from apples. With 90 varietals, they have their choice of flavors – raw or processed.
order, an arrangement that almost guaranteed each tree to have a neighbor of a different variety.
Apples need to cross-pollinate with different varieties to produce a robust crop. Bees are an important pollinator, and when a mass die-off drastically reduced bee populations last year, the orchard layout allowed the trees to be wind-pollinated in the bees’ absence.
At first, the couple’s decision to plant an orchard was “all about the fruit – the romance of growing rare heritage apples,” Robert said. But they knew some of the varieties they wanted to grow were coveted by home cider-makers, so they investigated that craft, too.
They visited cideries in Virginia and New York, and then met cider-makers across the West, including Colorado-based Shawn Larson.
The couple told Larson their plan to grow heritage apples: They would juice the fruit and sell the product to home-brewers.
“What is wrong with you?” Robert recalled Larson asking them. Cider is much more valuable than apple juice – if they were already going to grow the apples and press the juice, it just made sense to go ahead and brew the cider themselves.
They took a course on cider-making through Cornell University, which has a world-class apple genetics program.
They also found a welcoming and collaborative community in Torrey. Local farmers and gardeners have been generous with insights and advice, as well as bucketsful of fruit from backyard trees.
Eventually, they hired their head cider-maker Travis Nelson, a professional beer brewer from Salt Lake City who dabbled in cider-making at home. They met Nelson after he showed up at the orchard “to beg for apples,” Robert said.
ROBERT’S SCIENCE background gives him a keen interest in the chemistry of flavor. Diagrams of flavor molecules cover a chalkboard in the fermentation facility, a large, high-ceilinged room that is also the bottling facility. Robert describes how subtle variations in similar molecules can result in different flavors.
When ripe apples are harvested, they’re processed through a grinder; the resulting mash is pressed to extract the juice. The juice is fermented in huge, heavy-duty plastic bags fitted with valves. Part of the fermentation process is done in barrels, which can impart interesting essences to the finished beverage. When the fermentations are ready, they’re mixed to nuanced blends and carbonated before being bottled.
Thousands of varietals of apples have been cultivated over the thousands of years since the fruits originated in central Asia, creating a huge range of flavors and properties. Some are table apples, best for eating fresh; others are ideal for making cider.
“Some varieties are not good for eating – too bitter, lots of tannins, astringent,” Robert said. “They’re only good for fermenting.”
For example, Robert described the Kingston Black apple as “very funky; very
Robert tends to one of 500 heritage apple trees he and Ann began planting in 2012. The couple sort their apples by variety before processing.
astringent and bitter. But,” he added, “it makes world-class cider.”
The Kingston Black comes from the United Kingdom and by the 1800s was popular for cider-making. Today, Robert said, it’s “irreplaceable in the cider canon.”
The couple also loves the Dabinett apple, even though it’s particularly difficult to grow. They make a single varietal cider from the Newtown Pippin apple. One of Ann’s favorite varietals is the Redfield, which has bright red flesh under its red skin. In Robert’s opinion, Ashmead’s Kernel is the “best apple in the world.”
By now Robert knows these varieties by sight and can point them out on a stroll through the orchard.
Though their intended retirement turned into a full-time job, there are many upsides to their new lifestyle.
“There’s something pretty zen about going out in the wintertime to prune your tree,” Robert said. “I’m not sure I would give it up to someone else.”
The co-owners of Etta Place Cider press and process their apples to make cider which they bottle and sell from their tasting room in Torrey.
TA Time for Every Season
Cindy Fowlkes, Orem
The dark, frigid stillness of winter’s short days and long nights seem endless.
Outside the trees are bare, and the snow is falling – silently I surrender to the bleakness.
And I wait for change.
Almost suddenly, the spring melt begins and fills the rivers and streams.
Trees begin to leaf, tulips and daffodils appear and the world begins to green. And I wait for change.
I relish the riot of color in the garden and softness of the summer air. I breathe in the subtle fragrances and enjoy the beauty of yards tended with such care. And I wait for change.
All too soon, the nip of the morning air signals that leaves will change to vibrant color... then fall.
Activities slowly move indoors, gardens are put to bed, bidding a good winter’s rest to all.
A yearly cycle complete.
I note these seasonal changes as I stroll through my yard and nearby wood. And acknowledge that I, too, am changed – if not for the better, but certainly for good.
A Line of Pines
Vaughn Neeld, Cañon City, Colorado
In the distance, pines arrow into the cloudless sky looking for all the world like feathered Indians lining a ridge in an old-time movie.
Beneath the rankled escarpment, jagged slabs of fissured red rocks litter the ancient scree along with the remains of splintered trees.
Yet, somehow, small pines find footing, root, and thrive in this hardscrabble realm –change inevitable.
HE CHANGING COLORS of the autumn leaves remind Utahns of the inevitable changes affecting their own lives. In this time of transition from one season to the next, our poets reflect on what those changes mean to them.
Autumn on the Virgin River with yellow box elder trees in Zion National Park.
Howie Garber
Noah Wetzel
A Drastic Change
Jim Garman, Richfield
These days they don’t believe marriages will last, but for almost 56 years to this woman I held fast. August the 27th would have been 56 years, through it all we shared joy, pain and also tears.
There were three children for us, if you didn’t know, they all were aware of and watched our love grow. A short time ago, on the 21st of June, my love left this world way too soon.
She had numerous craft skills until that day, never charging anyone, she gave them away. There to help anyone in need, with her loving heart, it will be a rough go for me now that we’re apart.
But there’s great memories Judy, to remind me of you, and everyone who knew you can surely say that, too. Free of pain and sickness now beyond Heaven’s door, I’m awaiting the day that we’re together once more.
Change
Terry Thompson, Centerville
Summer’s been a-doggin me. The days are long and hot. I know that change is comin’. I feel it in my heart.
As a kid I’d play all day, sweat drippin’ down my spine. I’d stay out till the sun would set, then the moon would rise and shine.
I worked tough jobs to pay my way and have a little fun. I took my girl for evening rides. I knew she was the one.
Life is always changin’. Seasons come and seasons go. Winter, spring and summer, heat and wet and snow.
Fall’s always been our favorite, that’s when the labors chart. Changes upon changes as our kids run through the yard.
The wife and I are wide awake, our kids and grandkids, too. With all the changes pushed today, we can’t say they’re good for me or you.
Let’s just pray it changes.
What the Future Holds
L.J. Christensen, Bountiful
Dawn sets aside what now is yesterday; It’s an awakening to see the change. Culture tempts one to follow new day’s crowd, But the wise wait to find truth in the change.
History is what constructed our fabric; Our shape is molded by the experiences. Without first treading upon its stepping stones None of us would have entered what is today.
The future is fraught with the unknown; Expectations morph into that unseen. Secure footing may shift and then stumble For those without a defined foundation.
Hold precious the constants of life’s formula; They are the equation in knowing the truth. It is this insight that will help you discern The guided pathway through changes yet to come.
In confidence one can pursue onward, Knowing which change to discard or embrace. Life has but one direction to select, And that is a constant that will not change.
WE INVITE YOU to submit poems inspired by Utah. The Winter 2024 theme is “Resolutions,” deadline Dec. 1, 2023; the Spring 2024 theme is “Traditions,” deadline Feb. 1, 2024. Visit utahlifemag.com/poetry-submission to submit your poems, or email to poetry@utahlifemag.com.
A freshly fallen maple leaf resting on the sand of a dry wash in Zion National Park.
Brett Edge
Granola
Sweet Grains of Goodness
recipes and photographs by DANELLE McCOLLUM
HIKING BOOTS? Check. Water bottle? Double check. Granola?
Triple check. These three recipes are easy to follow and offer extra energy for strenuous Utah adventures – like hiking Zion trails, skiing Snowbird blues and greens, or ice fishing at Bear Lake.
Fast Skillet Granola
This recipe takes 15 minutes – no joke. The skillet brings out a toasted, nutty flavor in the oats, sunflower kernels and pecans. Enjoy straight from the skillet, with milk, or as a topping for yogurt or fruit.
Melt butter in a large skillet or sauté pan over medium heat. Stir in the honey, brown sugar and vanilla.
Add the oats, nuts, coconut, sunflower kernels and sesame seeds to the pan and stir until well coated with the butter/sugar mixture. Continue cooking, stirring frequently until granola is a dark golden brown, 10-15 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in dried cranberries or other dried fruit if using. Pour onto a cookie sheet to cool.
1/2 cup butter
4 Tbsp honey
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups rolled oats (not quick oats)
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup sunflower kernels
2 Tbsp sesame seeds
1 cup dried cranberries (or other dried fruit, optional)
Makes 2 quarts
Slow Cooker Tropical Quinoa Granola
A snowy winter in Utah can leave us dreaming of the islands. Mac nuts, pineapple and coconut roasted in a slow cooker make this an easy and dreamy granola recipe.
In a lightly greased slow cooker, whisk together the honey, brown sugar, oil and cinnamon. Stir in the oats, quinoa, coconut and nuts. Cover and cook on high for 1-1½ hours, stirring well every 20-25 minutes.
Stir in the dried fruit, then spread granola on a parchment-lined baking sheet to cool. Store in an airtight container.
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 tsp cinnamon
4 cups rolled oats
1 cup uncooked quinoa
1 cup flaked coconut
1 cup macadamia nuts or almonds, chopped
1 cup chopped dried tropical fruit (pineapple, apricot, mango, etc.)
Makes 2 quarts
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Energy Bites
Made with oats (and peanut butter, chocolate chips and honey) these tasty morsels sure seem like they’re healthy. An alternative to granola, they’re packed full of energy to get out on the slopes – or scoop after that first winter storm.
Add oats to a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped. Add flaxseed meal, 3/4 cup peanut butter, honey, vanilla and salt to food processor and mix until mixture comes together in a soft ball. If too crumbly to shape into balls, add more peanut butter, one tablespoon at a time, until mixture comes together.
Place the mixture in a large bowl and mix in chocolate chips with your hands until evenly combined.
Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Place on a parchment-lined baking tray and refrigerate until firm. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week, or freeze for up to two months.
Makes 1-2 dozen bites
What’s in Your Recipe Box?
The editors are interested in featuring your favorite family recipes. Send your recipes to editor@utahlifemag.com.
State’s former archaeologist offers his idea of how to look at and appreciate the mysterious artwork near Vernal.
by TOM HESS
Editor’s note:
This is the second installment in a Utah Life series on ancient rock art. The first story about southeast Utah rock art appeared in the November/December 2022 issue.
Bob Maynard
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD
Kevin T. Jones rode with his National Park Service ranger dad James along a dusty two-track road on the Utah-Colorado border in Dinosaur National Park. Just across the state line in Colorado, the car stopped for an encounter that would enchant Kevin for the rest of his life.
After that encounter, Kevin would look forever more at rock art and see that it is as open to interpretation as any art from any era in any other culture. That’s especially true of the mysterious, decapitated body and crawling lizard rock art of northeastern Utah.
Kevin remembers that it was a warm day in Dinosaur all those years ago, and
that he was wearing high-top Chucks –Converse Chuck Taylors – a T-shirt and Levis. He scrambled up to the foot of a cliff to get a better view of a canyon as it opened along the Green River.
That’s when he noticed, three or four feet from him, the etching of a person, only about the size of Kevin’s hand. The person looked like a hunter holding a bow-and-arrow, and from the arrow a slender, meandering line led to what appeared to be a bighorn sheep. The image mesmerized Kevin.
“I felt drawn to it and enveloped by it, moved by it,” Kevin said. “I have described the feeling as like entering hyperspace. When I look at rock art, I lose sight of what’s around me.”
Kevin grew up living in national parks with his dad, including Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Blue Ridge Parkway and Badlands, but he would never forget standing where rock artists had stood 1,000 or 2,000 years earlier, carving into stone images of their lives and imaginations that would endure for centuries.
Kevin served 17 years as Utah state archaeologist. As state archaeologist, he worked with State Senator David Hinkins and others in 2017 to get Native American rock art named as Utah’s State Works of Art. It is only fitting for a state that takes its name from the Ute tribe, which inhabited much of the region before settlers drove them from their traditional lands.
Kevin’s dad is now 101 and living in Moab. He has watched his son’s career blossom to include authoring the book Standing on the Walls of Time: Ancient Art of Utah’s Cliffs and Canyons, published in 2019 by The University of Utah Press.
What Kevin understood as a 12-yearold, and still does today, is that rock art raises more questions than it answers:
Did the artist who etched the hunter Kevin saw record an event that happened nearby – a hunt that killed a bighorn sheep? Or was the artwork aspirational? Did the artist hope to kill a bighorn sheep? Or was it allegorical, depicting an event that took place in a dream, or a traditional story, or in a song or a religious teaching?
The difficulty of interpreting what rock artists intended is that there is no record of it. There are no captions accompanying their work. Archaeologists cannot dig up their stories. They cannot dig up beliefs. Their homes, tools, or bones offer no clues.
The living do not offer much help either. Kevin has visited with elders from regional tribes, and they pointed out symbols in
Opening spread: The Owl Panel, with the bear claw petroglyph, is 35 miles up Nine Mile Canyon. Left, the Clock Panel petroglyph with a red semicircle at McConkie Ranch is a Fremont message frozen in time. Another McConkie figure –wide shoulders, narrow waist – appears to be holding a severed “trophy” head.
Randy Langstraat (below), Rod Martinez (right)
rock art they recognized as being similar to ones they use to represent cultural elements, such as clans, human and animal figures that may depict elements of traditional teachings, and physical features such as mountains and streams.
Kevin cautions that native people may be reluctant to divulge the significance of the symbols to non-natives for a variety of reasons. And many of the elements in rock art date to the deep past, before the ancestors of the modern regional tribes arrived in the area.
“We will always be wrong. Always,” Kevin says. “Even in trying to show that
a figure has an astronomically significant placement, we are imposing our own way of thinking on ancient works, and we are likely to be wrong.”
If that doesn’t help, Kevin suggests thinking of viewing the Sistine Chapel in Rome – with its hundreds of images depicting humans and angels in many flowing poses and activities, flying, toiling, suffering – without knowing the first thing about Catholicism.
So don’t stress over your interpretation of rock art, Kevin says. Don’t worry that whatever you think you see, it’s likely within the limits of your experience, and
might be related in no way to the ancients who drew it, other than that the artist was human.
And that’s Kevin’s ultimate point. All artists are human, and their work is subject to interpretation: Michelangelo’s sculptures, Banksy’s graffiti, Bob Dylan’s lyrics, J.M.W. Turner’s impressionism.
Artists give viewers the freedom to imagine what they see; there is no right or wrong answer. Would ancient artists be any different? That freedom allows for people to choose imagination of tradition.
MUCH OF THE ROCK art in northeastern Utah is considered the product of the so-called Fremont people, a moccasin-wearing, sometimes nomadic people who farmed corn, built structures to store it, hunted, made pottery. They resided in much of what is now known as Utah approximately A.D. 1-1300. Archaeologists named them for the Fremont River in central Utah.
Likewise, some rock art in northeast Utah bears names given by modern archaeologists. What Utah likes to say is the world’s largest art gallery, Nine Mile Canyon, is actually a 46-mile display of hundreds upon hundreds of Fremont and other rock art. The canyon is an 81-mile drive east of Price.
One famous panel of rock art in Nine Mile is Family Panel. Did the Fremont people consider family a unit of society? That’s a good guess.
Another Nine Mile Panel is called Backpack. Did the Fremonts make and wear backpacks?
“We really don’t know,” Kevin says. “As people, we do our best to interpret things we may not understand.”
McConkie Ranch is a privately owned ranch in Dry Fork Canyon 19 miles northwest of Vernal. Its owners protect their petroglyphs in ways that unattended rock art on public land often isn’t. They suggest a $5 donation per vehicle.
McConkie Ranch petroglyphs draw hikers to its Three Kings Trail, a mile-long round-trip hike that is safe for families. Panels include Trophy Head, a picture about what might have taken place here – though there are no skeletal remains below the panel.
James St. John/Flickr
Lizards abound on the Cub Creek Lizards Trail in Dinosaur National Park. A hiker at McKee Spring, near the Island Park Overlook, keeps a safe distance from Fremont petroglyphs. Bottom right: Family Panel appears in Nine Mile Canyon.
Witold Skrypczak/Alamy (above), Jim Shoemaker (below)
so-called
gets its
because
and researchers can find no other insight
The
Y Man at McConkie Ranch
name
modern-day visitors
– no Fremont Rosetta Stone, no ancient scroll – and instead call him what the symbol resembles: a letter in our alphabet.
Randy Langstraat
The Prehistoric Museum creates understanding and appreciation of natural and cultural processes that formed the geologic, fossil and prehistoric human records found in eastern Utah. We do this through educational and interpretive programs based upon our academic research, preservation programs, authentic exhibits, and the creative efforts of our staff and community.
Photos are taken by Utah Geological Survey employees in some of Utah’s most interesting and unique locations.
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Edge of the Cedars State Park Musuem
Less haunting images include a romantic panel now called The Couple, and The Clock. The humans portrayed on the walls above the ranch are typical of the Fremont style, with exaggerated features – broad shoulders, narrow waist – seeming to form a trapezoid.
That gives rise to all kinds of speculation: Where these especially fit males, or males who wanted to look bigger, more puffed up, than they were in real life? Or some other nonhuman or subhuman species?
Ask questions, speculate, fantasize, wave your arms, point your finger, but don’t touch. Federal law protects all such artifacts.
McKEE SPRING, site of more Fremont-style trapezoidal people, is an 18mile drive on the unpaved Island Park Road from the Quarry Visitor Center in Dinosaur National Monument. The road is impassable for most vehicles when muddy.
At the cliffs bearing petroglyphs, look for a short hiking trail that splits into a loop. A panel of concentric circles may have been used as a solar calendar. The trophy head theme shows up here, too, with a wife and child joining in the panel. The art seems to be explicit in other ways, too.
Nearby boat launches along the Green River in Island Park and Rainbow Park ensure that “river rats” add to the crowds at McKee Spring. The National Park Service suggests a visit to the much quieter McConkie Ranch instead.
Cub Creek Lizards Trail, 15 miles east of Vernal, leads visitors up a quarter-mile trail to a sandstone cliff with 5-foot-long lizard petroglyphs. The National Park Service dates the etchings back a thousand years, scratched and chiseled by ancestral, indigenous people.
Or were the artists Lizard people from another planet? That’s your call, and no one else’s.
Fremont rock art portrays the sun using concentric circles, as shown in this panel in Dinosaur National Monument near Rainbow Park. Over the shoulder of the larger headhunter is a smaller headhunter appearing to hold the sun.
Nov. 24-25
Nov. 24-25, 27
Nov. 25
Dec. 1-2, 6-9
Dec. 2-30
All through Dec.
Randy Langstraat
Park City’s Kind-Hearted Madam
by BRANDI CHRISTOFFERSEN
IT WAS SPRING 1925, and the muddy sidewalk bustled with rugged frontiersmen, jovial children and soil -covered miners. A woman of nearly 200 pounds, with a peg leg and a parrot perched on her shoulder, pushed her way down Main Street, Park City. Her walking cane guided her past boarding houses, saloons and stables until finally reaching City Hall. With kind, intense eyes, the woman pulled out a roll of cash from her extravagant handbag, and handed it to the town clerk. She amiably paid her monthly “fees” – $15 for herself and $7.50 for each of her “doves,” and politely thanked the cashier with a “good day.”
Park City Historical Society & Museum, Raye Ringholz Collection
Decades earlier, Rachel Beulah Hayden had been born to Irish immigrants in Cleveland, Ohio. The Haydens had fled the Great Potato Famine of 1845-1855, and had made the harrowing journey to the United States. The newcomers struggled to make a living in the harsh Cleveland docks and were forced to live in crowded tenements. Young Rachel suffered through hunger-filled days, bitter nights and rampant exploitation. Although this feisty Irish girl was bright and curious, schooling was an unattainable dream, and her future seemed as dark as the waters in Lake Erie.
Then in 1889, Rachel caught wind about a settlement in Utah that had recently discovered silver, lead and zinc. Although only 25 years old, she was already a divorced single mother and was down to her last dollar. Hoping to make a better life for herself and her daughter, Florence, the determined young woman packed what few belongings she had, placed her child on her hip and bravely boarded a train headed west.
As the locomotive pulled into the small station, Rachel could see bright lanterns shining boldly nearby. Like many mining communities, Park City had a bustling “red-light district,” strategically placed next to the train depot. The lanterns were used as open signs and lit up the streets all day and night. It soon became apparent that prostitution was one of the only ways a single woman could make a living in the rough and tumble town.
Rachel recognized the potential of becoming a “soiled dove” – what the working girls were called – and quickly embraced the scandalous lifestyle. With a sparkling personality and can-do attitude, Rachel worked her way from a lowly dove to parlor madam. Patrons enjoyed her wit and banter, and her girls adored her loving and caring nature. The generous madam was unique amongst her fellow mistresses as she provided her doves with education, etiquette lessons and regular doctor visits.
One day while strolling through town, Rachel was introduced to George Urban, a successful mine owner and skilled car-
penter. The two appreciated each other’s personalities and ambitious drives, and began courting. In 1899, they filed for a wedding license and were officially married. George continued to manage his mining company, and Rachel continued to manage her doves. Soon she was being referred to as Mother Urban.
In 1907, the townsfolk forced the redlight district to move farther east, away from Main Street and downtown. Rachel seized upon the opportunity, and with George’s contracting assistance, built 16 side-by-side rental properties located on what is now Deer Valley Drive. This string of buildings was soon called “the row,” and the infamous lane was quickly bustling with miners, trainsmen, scoundrels and prominent locals.
As Rachel ensured Park City profited substantially through a collection of taxes and fines, the city council tacitly accepted the houses of ill-repute. Rachel also charmingly reminded mine owners and managers that without a red-light district, the large population of single miners would
The Gateway Center, located on the corner of Heber Avenue and Swede Alley, is where the notorious “Purple Parlour” was once located. The extravagantly designed “house of ill-repute,” was also Madam Rachel Urban’s home residence and boarding house.
In 1907, Park City’s red-light district was moved to “The Row” to ensure a respectable distance from the townsfolk. At the same time, the Park City Miners Hospital was accepting financial donations from Urban and her soiled doves.
This would force them to take the long trip down the canyon to Salt Lake City, which would increase absenteeism and would result in the owners losing profits.
cane to get around.
Rachel’s own house on 346 Heber Ave., was called the Purple Parlour. The lavish home was decorated with lace curtains and expensive furniture. The main living area entertained guests with music and a wet bar. The doves would read aloud from classic literature and help illiterate miners’ pen letters home to their loved ones, according to the book Selling Sex in Utah by Eileen Hallet Stone.
There was no charge for guests to mingle on the first floor; however, to move upstairs, patrons would pay $2.50 “per encounter,” or $10 for the entire night. A miner would earn $2.50 to $3 for a ninehour shift, so the doves always prepared for a busy night following payday.
During warmer months, the madam would sit on the front porch with her favorite pet parrot and other furry friends. The lively bird would shout obscenities to passersby, while dogs and cats crowded around the steps. Rumor has it that during this time, the proud lady lost her limb to
Surprisingly, it wasn’t Rachel’s scandalous lifestyle that made her a local celebrity. Instead, she was known around the community for her generous and charitable nature. The townsfolk called her “the kind-hearted madam,” as her endless philanthropic endeavors were legendary. If a local worker was injured on the job, they could count on financial and medical aid to be offered to them. She also supported out-of-work miners and struggling small businesses and donated large amounts of money to Park City’s public schools and culture center.
During the notoriously harsh, blizzardy holidays, Rachel served the volunteer firemen a bountiful spread of turkey sandwiches, desserts and hot drinks. She
Urban mingled with miners and prominent leaders when Park City was a young mining town. Permanent exhibits and archives tell their story at the Park City Museum, located downtown next to gift shops, galleries and trending restaurants.
beguiled the local switchboard operators with delightful stories and gifts of candy. Single miners and railroad workers especially looked forward to the Purple Parlour’s annual Christmas party, where food, festive toddies and good cheer were bestowed to all who attended.
Year after year, the kind-hearted mad-
Brandi Christofferson
Park City Historical Society & Museum, Raye Ringholz Collection
am greeted guests at her front door and sent salutations to fellow Parkites. Rachel would check in on those less fortunate and always paid her respect at wakes and funerals. Then one morning in 1933, the local doctor was called to the Purple Parlour. The elderly gentleman was welcomed into the madam’s bedroom and the door was softly closed.
Soon a solemn quiet began to pass from floor to floor. In a hushed whisper, the words stomach cancer broke the silence. Within days, endless vomiting started, and blood began to appear. With stubborn resolve, the Irish girl battled against the sickness. Sadly, however, at the age of 69, Park City’s most famous madam lost her war against the disease and passed away.
The funeral was said to be one of the most impressive in Park City history. It cost a staggering $515, a small fortune for the time. As a true legend to the local townsfolk, Mother Urban’s colorful life, endless generosity and civic contributions were honored and celebrated, with no apologies or regrets.
Rachel Beulah Urban was buried in the Park City Cemetery next to her husband. Park City Museum’s “Dreams and Reality: Behind the Romance of the West” exhibit revisits the infamous red-light district, and her cemetery plot 27 can be viewed today, honoring the resilient, notorious and kindhearted woman.
Brandi Christofferson
MUSIC CHRISTMAS WITH MARIE
DEC. 2 • SALT LAKE CITY
As frost kisses the light posts and a soft chill nips at your nose, an undeniable excitement fills the air in downtown Salt Lake City. It’s the holiday season, and Eccles Theater has a special treat for its music-loving enthusiasts.
On Saturday, Dec. 2, Utah’s homegrown legend, Marie Osmond, delights audiences with her angelic voice and dynamic showmanship. Featuring accompaniments by David Osmond and the Lyceum Philharmonic at American Heritage School in American Fork – one of the nation’s premier youth ensembles – Marie performs Christmas favorites like “Come All Ye Faithful” and her personal classics.
As part of the popular Osmond family, Marie has spent her entire life in the public eye. She made her first television appearance at the tender age of 3 on the Andy Williams Show and debuted her first single at
CULTURE. ADVENTURE. HISTORY.
by BRANDI CHRISTOFFERSEN
14. Her country ballad, “Paper Roses,” shot to No.1 on the Billboard Music Charts and catapulted Marie to immediate stardom. After joining her brother on the popular Donny and Marie variety show, her fame continued to skyrocket.
During the 1990s, Marie was a constant headliner on the Broadway stage, including playing Anna Leonowens in The King and I and Maria in The Sound of Music
The 2000s brought new television opportunities, and she continued to belt out award-winning albums and musical specials. Today, with a career that is hotter than ever, she is spreading holiday spirit and cheer.
With her jaw-dropping vocals and charismatic presence, Marie is sure to make this “the most wonderful time of the year” for her Utah audience. artsaltlake.org, (801) 355-2787.
Utah’s darling daughter of song returns to the stage for special holiday concert.
WHERE TO EAT
CHRISTOPHER’S PRIME
Established in 1995, Christopher’s serves hormone-free beef and sustainably sourced seafood. An appetizer of spicy plum-glazed ribs and entrée addition, Oscar-style crab cakes, are menu favorites. The restaurant partners with local vendors and growers and is known for its exceptional wine selection and impeccable service and ambiance. 110 W. Broadway. (801) 890-6616.
WHERE TO STAY
KIMPTON HOTEL MONACO
SALT LAKE CITY
Inspired by the elegant and timeless beauty of Monte Carlo, this hotel has a chic and bold feel. Enjoy sweeping views of the mountains and the quiet luxury of the naturally lit guestrooms. Continually ranked as a top hotel in Salt Lake City, the Monaco remains a wellkept secret of downtown. 15 W. 200 South. (801) 595-0000.
Marie Osmond
DECEMBER
Breakfast with Santa Dec. 2-3, 9-10, 16-77, 23-24 • Midway
Make the perfect holiday memory with Santa Claus at Zermatt Resort and Spa. Enjoy a fun-filled two-hour dining experience while you take festive pictures, ask Santa questions and tell him your Christmas wish list. Receive a complimentary cookie decorating kit to work on at home. To book, call (435) 709-9573, or visit zermattresort.com.
Hanukkah Candle Lighting Ceremony
Dec. 7-15 • Snowbird
Snowbird Ski Resort celebrates all eight nights of Hanukkah with its traditional candle-lighting ceremony. Everyone is welcome, and guests can bring their personal menorahs. Participants meet at The Cliff Lodge front desk at 5 p.m., and the lighting will take place at sundown. (801) 933-2222.
Lights at the Homestead
Dec. 20-24 • Cedar City
Sparkling lights, festive decorations and warm sweet beverages delight your senses as you stroll through the Frontier Homestead State Park Museum. This interactive collection recreates the pioneer and early industrial time of Cedar City, Iron County and southwest Utah. Each historic building has its own individually decorated tree that tells its own unique story. (435) 586-9290.
Midnight Madness 5K
Dec. 31 • Salt Lake City
Bring in the New Year with an exhilarating 5K race at Sugarhouse Park. Participants choose their start time between 11:15 and 11:40 p.m. and run around the park to cross the finish line before midnight. Prizes and light refreshments will be provided. To pre-register, visit https://tinyurl.com/ fjd7hr2r.
JANUARY
‘SIX’ the musical
Jan. 9-21 • Salt Lake City
Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. This musical playing at Eccles Theater is the winner of 23 awards, including a Tony Award for best original score and the Outer Critics Circle Award for best musical. The global sensation follows the six wives of Henry VIII as they take over the microphone and remix their tragic lives into a celebration of girl power and triumph. nowplayingutah.com.
St. George Golf Championship
Jan. 12-13 • St. George
Who will make the winning shot at the St. George Amateur Championship? Watch the area’s best amateur men and senior golfers compete in the 36-hole stroke play tournament at St. George Municipal Golf Course. Players receive gross and net pay
Aaron Lewis Concert
Jan. 18-19 • West Wendover
Former lead singer for the alternative metal band Staind, Aaron Lewis’ solo career has been inspired from his childhood days of listening to his grandparent’s country music 8-tracks. His latest album is Frayed at Both Ends, with the hit single “Everybody Talks to God.” Lewis performs two nights at the Peppermill Concert Hall in West Wendover. 1-800-217-0049.
Bear Lake Monster Winterfest
Jan. 26-28 • Garden City/Bear Lake
The Bear Lake Monster Winterfest is Bear Lake’s biggest winter gala. With sightings dating back to when Native Americans roamed the area, the annual festival honors Bear Lake’s notorious monster, “Isabella.”
Events include the Monster Polar Plunge, where contestants dive into the frigid lake water wearing costumes, the Monster Cisco-Disco fishing contest, the Monster Chili Cookoff, Cardboard Regatta, Monster Winterfest Social and more. bearlakemonsterwinterfest.com.
TRIVIA ANSWERS
Questions on p 10-15
1. Bumble
2. Ryan Smith
3. Bingham Canyon Mine
4. Swig
5. Blendtec
6. c. Drug, Cosmetic and Toiletry Wholesaling
7. b. Crave Cookies
8. b. Amazon
9. b. Kentucky Fried Chicken
10. a. Avalanche Studios
11. False. Utah is ninth
with $230 billion.
12. False. Rocky Mountain Power is the only one.
13. True
14. False. Wyoming and South Dakota are the only states with no corporate income tax.
15. False. Utah’s minimum wage is $7.25, the same as the federal minimum wage.
Trivia Photographs
Page 14 Utah Copper Bingham Canyon Mine is world’s largest mine. Tom Dickson was an early YouTube celebrity.
Page 15 One of many combinations of Dirty Soda contains Coke, coconut simple syrup, lime juice and heavy cream.
Your Gateway to the National Parks inspire joy be inspired,
EDITORS’ CHOICE
PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM TILL
NIKON 850, 1/500 sec, F/5.6, ISO 200, NIKON 14-24MM lens
ASQUALL IS casting storm light over the Henry Mountains in the background, to the west. Named for the first Smithsonian secretary, the range was the last one to be added to maps of the lower 48. In the foreground, golden-hour sunrise lights up the east face of 6,302-foothigh Factory Butte. The closest town is Hanksville, pop. 219, to the north.
Photographer Tom Till captured his image of Factory Butte and the storm-clad Henry Mountains from an airplane, at about 7,000 or 8,000 feet, higher than the 300 feet the average drone will go.
“A lot of times you have to fly when the weather is good, with fewer clouds, but this one was great, with a seasonal storm coming in, with the monsoons we get,” Till said. “The storm made this one extra special.”
Till departed for the Upper Blue Hills in a Redtail Air Adventures Cessna in Moab at 4:30 a.m. – “Zero Dark Thirty,” Till said. He shot his image through the opening that had been a door but didn’t hang out the side. “I stayed in my seat in shelter of the airplane. The slipstream will move the camera or rip it out of my hands.”
In each issue, Monumental Exposure features a reader’s photograph of Utah – landscapes, architecture, attractions, events, people or wildlife.
Submit your best photographs for the chance to be published in Utah Life. Send digital images with detailed photo descriptions and your contact information to photos@utahlifemag.com or visit utahlifemag.com/contribute.
story by KERRY SOPER illustration by JOSH TALBOT
Utah Families Perfect the Art of Frugality
At what point does compulsive penny-pinching become pathological?
ARE THERE other Utahns out there recovering from the lowgrade trauma of having been raised by parents who were extremely frugal? I’m not talking about people who were genuinely poor; I’m referring to a generation of folks who practiced frugality for frugality’s sake, like a hobby or religious credo. Their extreme commitment to saving small amounts of money could sometimes result in embarrassing public spectacles, family drama and even, occasionally, the breaking of some laws – sort of.
Penny-pinching parents often displayed their craft on those rare occasions when they took the family out to eat at a real –but usually cheap – restaurant. My friend’s extra-frugal mother took her five kids to McDonald’s about once a year, usually when there was an extreme promotion going on, like two burgers for $1.
Her kids knew better than to ask for anything frivolous to go with that burger, like fries. On one isolated incident, when this mom was feeling unnaturally generous, she allowed her kids to scrounge through her purse to locate an extra 30 cents. The littlest brother was so excited by this miraculous development that he yelled to the other customers in line, “Yess! This time we get to share a SODA!!”
Another friend recalls the “Great Orange Juice Fight of 2001,” when her stepdad refused to buy a glass of orange juice for her sister in a nice restaurant as they were celebrating her high school graduation. The debate ended when he loudly offered/threatened to go across the street and buy four times the amount of juice for the same price at a grocery store. Everyone was fine with “just water” after that
and enjoyed the rest of the festive meal in awkward silence.
As an adult, I’m still so deeply scarred by the childhood experience of eating out with frugal parents – only twice a year, with a rigid $2 limit – that I still stress out when ordering at restaurants. I either economize unnecessarily (“Maybe we order one less entree and split things, family-style?”) or go into “what the heck!” mode (“Let’s get five appetizers!”).
The first time I ate in a nice restaurant on a conference trip, paid for by my employer, I ended up losing my head and selecting the lobster seafood tower, which, I found out later, feeds four people. Halfway through this ridiculous meal, I noticed the waiters and kitchen staff spying on me
as I struggled to open up the crustacean –and then accidentally ate the wrong part of its internal goo.
MANY OTHERWISE law-abiding Utah parents were even willing to break a few societal rules to save a few dimes.
My mom, for example, was a Houdini at sneaking large quantities of homemade popcorn into movie theaters, sometimes using the lining of her coat like a Chicago bootlegger from the 1920s. My friend reports that his mom regularly smuggled entire meals – including paper plates, utensils and Dixie cups – when she took her eight kids to see the latest Disney flick.
My wife’s sweet grandma, who came from a relatively wealthy background,
made it her life’s mission to flout the rules at Chuck-A-Rama. Her primary tactic was to pretend, straight-faced at the cash register, that her grandchildren – even when they were about to graduate from high school – were still 12 years old, thus barely qualifying them for the child’s rate.
She was also adept at breaking the buffet’s rule about not taking any food as you left; like a practiced ninja, she would surreptitiously sneak a dozen dinner rolls –and maybe a slice of roast beef – into her oversized purse as she departed. The server’s attention was usually misdirected by the mints or hard candies she left behind as a generous tip.
Road trips were another arena for frugality gone wrong. Many of my friends report that their parents were adept at sneaking an entire household – parents, babies, multiple kids, maybe even a pet –into a single motel room. The younger kids in those clans probably never experienced sleeping in a motel bed, rather than on the
floor, until they got married and left home.
My cousin had a co-worker back in the 1980s who took his large Utah family to Disneyland for the cost of gas, admission and a cooler full of peanut butter sandwiches. He left Friday evening, drove through the night, shuffled his kids through a half dozen rides on Saturday, and then drove back all night, making it home on Sunday morning in time for church.
ACTS OF EXTREME
economy weren’t reserved just for special occasions in these families; they also ran through everyday life. Most of my friends wore hand-medowns, for example, that were five or six years out of fashion. As a preteen, I once got teased for wearing an old winter parka that was designed for small women. The puffy pink stripes and fancy zipper should have been dead giveaways, I guess.
My radically frugal grandparents, who were shaped by the Great Depression, were so worried about wasting toilet pa-
per that they gave demonstrations to their grandchildren, when we stayed at their trailer home, on how you could wipe with just two squares.
In closing, what do the representatives of these earlier generations have to say in their defense? Usually just a laughing admission that it was “what you did to get by back then.” One of my neighbors, a woman in her late 60s, for example, admitted that when she was a young mother in the 1980s, she was asked to bring cooked rice to a church activity. When she opened up her food storage, though, her rice was filled with “little black critters.” With no money in the bank, she picked out all the critters, cooked up a big bowl and served it at the party.
Sure, we can applaud her resourcefulness, but count me out at any future church potlucks. I’ll be at home, eating fresh rice and studying the proper way to order and consume one of those dang lobsters.
