DISCOVERING THE LIMITS,1900-1920
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other major investors in the Castle Valley Fuel Company. In March he sold the company to the Boston-based United States Smelting, Refining, and Mining Company, which operated metal mines and smelters in the Salt Lake Valley. The USSR&M acquired the Black Hawk and Consolidated companies at about the same time. All three coal mines were absorbed into a USSR&M subsidiary named the United States Fuel Company in 1915. United States Smelting also incorporated the Utah Coal Railway and constructed a new line along the foothills from the mouth of Price Canyon to Mohrland, thereby avoiding the steep grade below Hiawatha. Little or no heavy freight traffic passed over the Castle Valley-Southern Utah Railway after the completion of the Utah Coal Railway, but passenger service continued until 1917 when the bridge across the Price River was destroyed by the Mammoth Reservoir Improvements at Mohrland continued under the new ownership. By the early 1920s, there were more than two hundred houses, a large amusement hall, a small hospital, a four-room school, and a population near one thousand. Because space was limited in the narrow canyon, Mohrland grew into several distinct neighborhoods, which tended also to divide along ethnic lines. The main part of town, on a relatively level site at the mouth of the canyon, was largely populated by people of British or Scandinavian stock, many of them coming from other Emery County towns. "Silk Stocking Row," where the mine officials lived, extended from this area into a small sidecanyon to the south. Another cluster of houses stood on a hill to the west known as "Gobblers Knob." "Tipple Town," at the mouth of Ben Johnson Canyon north of the tracks, was occupied mainly by residents of Italian, Slavic, or Finnish extraction. Two additional housing clusters farther up Cedar Creek Canyon toward the mine were occupied by Japanese, Greeks, and African-Ameri~ans.~~ Much community pride in the coal camps was vested in the local baseball team, and there were always jobs available for good players. In the spring of 1915, the Mohrland team, as champions of the Carbon County league, was selected to play the Chicago White Sox in an exhibition game at Price. A crowd estimated at more than 10,000 turned out to see the game, which was won by the major league team by a score of 17 to 1.99
