Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, Number 2, 1984

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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0042-143X) EDITORIAL STAFF MELVIN T. SMITH, Editor STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing- Editor MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Associate Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS KENNETH L. CANNON n.Salt Lake City, 1986 INEZ S. COOPER, Cedar City, 1984 S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH, Logan, 1984 PETER L. GOSS, Salt Lake City, 1985 GLEN M. LEONARD, Farmington, 1985 LAMAR PETERSEN, Salt Lake City, 1986 RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden, 1985 HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1984 GENE A. SESSIONS.Bountiful, 1986

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah's history. T h e Quarterly is published by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-6024 for membership and publications information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Beehive History, and the bimonthly Newsletter upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $10.00; institutions, $ 15.00; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or over), $7.50; contributing, $ 15.00; sustaining, $25.00; patron, $50.00; business, $100.00.

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate accompanied by return postage and should be typed double-space with footnotes at the end. Additional information on requirements is available from the managing editor.

T h e Society assumes no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by contributors.

Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah.

Postmaster: Send form 3579 (change of address) to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101.

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Contents SPRING 1984/VOLUME 52/NUMBER 2

IN T H I S ISSUE

107

T H E BEST IN T H E WEST? CORINNE, UTAH'S FIRST BASEBALL CHAMPIONS

GERLACH

108

CANNON II

136

LEA NIELSON LANE

158

GARY TOPPING

165

BRADFORD BRADSHAW

179

LARRY

DESERETS, RED STOCKINGS, AND OUT-OF-TOWNERS: BASEBALL COMES OF AGE IN SALT LAKE CITY, 1 8 7 7 - 7 9

KENNETH

J O E T H E FISH LAKE GUIDE HARRY ALESON AND T H E PLACE NO ONE KNEW

R.

L.

T E N N I S IN U T A H — T H E FIRST FIFTY YEARS, 1 8 8 5 - 1 9 3 5

. . . AFTON

BOOK REVIEWS

197

BOOK NOTICES

208

T H E COVERyo^ Nielson, a guide at Fish Lake in Sevier County, Utah, for forty-five years, shows off a big catch.

Photograph courtesy of Lea Nielson Lane.

© Copyright 1984 Utah State Historical Society

Books reviewed

D. MADSEN. Gold Rush Sojourners in Great Salt Lake City,

BRIGHAM 1849

and

1850

.

.

. T O D D I. BERENS

R. GERLACH. Blazing Crosses in Zion: The Ku Klux Klan in Utah . . . . JAMES B.

197

LARRY

ALLEN

198

. JAMES H . LEVITT

201

CONWAY B . SONNE. Saints

on

the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration, 1830-1890

.

.

WALLACE STEGNER a n d

.

RICHARD W.

Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature . . . . POLLY STEWART ETULAIN.

W. L. RUSHO. Everett A Vagabond

202

Ruess:

for Beauty

GARY TOPPING

203

KARL E. YOUNG

205

E. YOUNG. Back Trail of an

PAUL

Old Cowboy

MICHAEL S. BERRY. Time,

and Transition Prehistory

Space,

in Anasazi ROBERT NEILY

206

In this issue

Even if "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton," historians have largely ignored sports and recreation, maintaining that they provide more grist for the anthropologist and sociologist than for the historian. Nevertheless, a number of present-day historians are finding leisure activities a fruitful area for research.

T h e sporting aspirations of Corinne add color to the history of a brash frontier town; moreover, a detailed look at the Corinne baseball team reveals almost as much about the town as a study of the freight traffic — its meteoric rise and fall, its transient population of young, single males, and its need to challenge the supremacy of larger, established towns. Similarly, the enthusiastic reception Salt Lake City gave baseball in the late 1870s demonstrates the tendency of more settled populations in the West to want to a p p e a r up-to-date by a d o p t i n g the latest fashions and cultural phenomena from the East, a tendency that has not abated much in a hundred years.

Following these major pieces on the national pastime come the stories of a remarkably successful guide at Fish Lake and the quixotic career of Colorado River r u n n e r and guide Harry Aleson. A fifty-year history of tennis in Utah rounds out the issue and brings to light the state's major contributions to this sport nationally.

Whatever one's opinion of sports, events like the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics capture the attention of millions, stimulate the expenditure of vast sums of money, and often provoke intense nationalistic feelings. No wonder historians are interested.

The Best in the West?

Corinne, Utah's First Baseball Champions

BY LARRY R. GERLACH

Corinne s baseball grounds lay northwest of town.

A. J. Russell photograph, courtesy of the Oakland Museum.

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Utah's First Baseball Champions

109

A s THE DISPERSION OF DISCHARGED SOLDIERS and the rapid extension of telegraph and rail lines carried base ball (two words then) across the country after the Civil War, Utahns eagerly adopted the national game. 1 T h e first recorded organized base ball games in Utah terriDr. Gerlach is professor of history and department chairman, University of Utah. A version of this paper was read at the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Utah State Historical Society in August 1982.

1 The best general histories of baseball in the nineteenth century are Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), and David Quentin Voigt, American Baseball: From Gentlemen's Sport to the Commissioner System (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,

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Utah Historical Quarterly

tory were played in October 1869 in Salt Lake City, an exhibition game between members of the Eureka Base Ball Club followed by a contest between the Eurekas and soldiers from Camp Douglas. 2 By the spring of 1870 there were nine clubs in the territory: Box Elder County boasted three clubs â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Corinne, North String, and a county team; Ogden, the Weber County seat, had two teams, the Junction No. 9 and the Red Sash; Salt Lake, the territorial capital and largest city between Denver and San Francisco, fielded four clubs â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the Eurekas, the Alerts, the Step and Fetchits, and the Camp Douglas team. In 1871, teams appeared in Brigham City, Willard, Plain City, Hooper, Ophir, and Stockton. T h e purpose of this paper is to examine the origin of baseball in Utah as an organized sport for adults by means of a case study of the Corinne Base Ball Club, the first territorial champions.

T h e quintessential frontier boom town, Corinne was an unlikely hotbed of baseball. 3 Founded in March 1869 where the Union Pacific Railroad crossed the Bear River, the tent-and-shanty town was hailed as the future "Chicago of the Rocky Mountains" and the "Queen City of the Great Basin" on the assumption that Corinne's location adjacent to the transcontinental railroad would make it the primary transfer point for freight and passengers headed to or from northern Utah, Idaho, and Montana. Within a year the bustling community became the second largest town in Box Elder County, its population of nearly a thousand residents swollen by itinerant throngs of teamsters, travelers, miners, and laborers. Struck by the rawness of a town filled with "whitemen a r m e d to the teeth, 1966). For the development of baseball within the framework of western expansion, compare Cecil O. Monroe, " T h e Rise of Baseball in Minnesota, Minnesota History 19 (June 1938): 162-81; Writer's Program of Iowa [WPA] "Baseball! T h e Story of Iowa's Early Innings," Annals of Iowa 22 (April 1941): 625-54; Harold C. Evans, "Baseball in Kansas, 1867-1940," Kansas Historical Quarterly 9 (May 1940): 175-92; and Duane A. Smith, "Baseball Champions of Colorado: T h e Leadville Blues of 1882,"Journal of Sport History 4 (Spring 1977): 51-71.

2 Deseret Evening News, October 8,14, 1869. T h e earliest printed reference I have found to baseball is the J u n e 12, 1867, edition of the Daily Union Vedette (Salt Lake City) which notes of editor P. L. ShoafFs visit to Fort Bridger: "He is said to be indulging in the game of base ball." Phil Margetts, Jr., one of Utah's earliest players, recalled at an advanced age that the Eureka club was organized on April 15, 1868, and played its first match game against Camp Douglas. Salt Lake Tribune, August 17, 1930.1 suspect the date is incorrect because (1) it is improbable that no newspaper account of organized ball would have appeared for eighteen months, (2) the reference is to games that occurred in October 1969, and (3) announcement of the matches of October 1869 are worded as invitations to novel events rather than advertisements. For the early baseball in Salt Lake City, see Kenneth L. Cannon II, " 'The National Game': A Social History of Baseball in Salt Lake City, Utah, 1868-1888" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1982).

3 T h e standard history of the town is Brigham D. Madsen, Corinne: The Gentile Capital of Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1980). See also, especially for economics, Jesse Harold Jameson, "Corinne: A Study of a Freight Transfer Point in the Montana T r a d e , 1869-1878" (M.A. thesis, University of Utah, 1951).

Utah's First Baseball Champions

111

miserable-looking Indians dressed in the ragged shirts and trousers furnished by the Central Government, and yellow Chinese with a business-like air and hard intelligent faces," a European visitor remarked that "no town in the Far West gave me so good an idea as this little place of what is meant by border-life, i.e., the struggle between civilization and savage men and things." Whether or not J o h n Hanson Beadle, one of Corinne's earliest citizens and editor of the newspaper, was quantitatively correct in placing nineteen saloons, two dance halls, and "eighty nymphs du pave" in the "thriving country village" soon after its founding, there is no question that in a community where almost two-thirds of the residents were male and 40 percent of those were single men over twenty-one, drinking, gambling, brawling, and wenching were popular pastimes. 4 So too, for a time, was baseball.

It is historically fitting that baseball was initially played in Utah with the greatest enthusiasm and expertise in Box Elder County in general, Corinne in particular. In July 1849 Alexander Joy Cartwright, the New York City bank clerk who four years earlier had drafted the rules that transformed traditional town ball into m o d e r n baseball, traversed the California Trail through the northwestern portion of what would later be Box Elder County, Utah, en route to the gold fields.5 Far more important than the overland perambulaAlexander Cartwright. tions of the "father of baseball" was the Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and passage through Corinne twenty years Museum. later of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team composed entirely of salaried players. After defeating the best teams in the Midwest and East, the 4 M. Le Baron de Hubner,/! Ramble around the World, 1871 . . ., 2 vols. (London: Macmillan and Company, 1874), 1:174. J. H. Beadle, The Undeveloped West; or, Five Years in the Territories . . . (Philadelphia: National Publishing Company, 1873), pp. 120, 123. C.C. Clawson counted 68 saloons in the town in late 1869. Madsen, Corinne, p. 70. Corinne's population was conservatively listed as 863 in the Census of 1870 and more accurately tallied at 1,004 by a city poll taken in 1872 in response to an obviously inaccurate county enumeration. See Corinne Daily Reporter, March 22, 28, 1872.

5 Harold Peterson, The Man Who Invented Baseball (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), pp. 154, 159-60. For the route of the '49ers, see George R. Stewart, The California Trail (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962).

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The Cincinnati Red Stockings passed through Corinne on the new transcontinental railroad in 1869, spreading "baseballfever" in the frontier town. Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Red Stockings in September headed for San Francisco, the bastion of baseball on the Pacific Coast, on a trip only recently made possible by the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10 at Promontory, some twenty-eight miles west of Corinne."

T h e publicity accompanying the first transcontinental road trip in the history of the sport was the catalyst that produced organized baseball in Utah. It is probably not coincidental that Salt Lakers, who read about the Cincinnati trek in the Deseret Evening News, organized the first club in early October shortly after the Red Stockings left California. And although there is no direct evidence that the train carrying the Red Stockings actually stopped in Corinne, it seems likely that the town would have been a logical, even necessary, point for resting and refurbishing; in any event, Corinnethians, as residents liked to be called, were surely aware of the team passing 6 Led by player-manager Harry Wright, the "father of professional baseball," the Red Stockings from late 1868 until an 8-7 loss in 11 innings to the Brooklyn Atlantics in J u n e 1870, won from 81 to 92 consecutive games depending on whether one counts exhibition games. For the early history of the team, see David Q. Voigt, "America's First Red Scare: T h e Cincinnati Reds of 1869," Ohio History 78 (Winter 1969): 13-24; Joseph S. Stern, Jr., "The Team T h a t Couldn't Be Beat: T h e Red Stockings of 1869," Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin 27 (Spring 1969): 25-41; and Harry Ellard, Baseball in Cincinnati: A History (Cincinnati: Johnson and Hardin, 1907); for the trip to California, see Brian McGinty, "The Old Ball Game," Pacific Historian 25 (Spring 1981): 13-25, and Robert Knight Barney, "Of Rails and Red Stockings: Episodes in the Expansion of the 'National Pastime' in the American West," Journal of the West 17 (July 1978): 61-70.

Utah's First Baseball Champions

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through on or about September 22 and October 10 and immediately adopted the national game. 7 During the winter of 1869-70 Corinne "ballists" informally organized a baseball club. As soon as weather permitted in early March they began "preparing the ground for coming sport with bat and ball" and formed a permanent organization by adopting bylaws and electing officers.8 T h e Corinne club had at least eighteen (enough for two teams) and probably twenty-five to thirty members. It was a wholly amateur enterprise in that the club neither paid salaries to players nor charged admission to games; membership dues and private contributions defrayed expenses of travel and equipment.

Although organized for the primary p u r p o s e of playing baseball, the Corinne Base Ball Club (OB.B.C.) was a social club, a voluntary association no different in spirit or function from fraternal orders, mutual benefit societies, or civic improvement groups.

T h e officers provide insight into the socioeconomic composition of the original club: President William W. Hull, 36, self-employed brickmason and plasterer from New York; Vice-president David R. Short, 36, real estate broker from Ohio; T r e a s u r e r Frank B. Hurlbut, 26, druggist and city councilman from Missouri; Secretary Edward M. Wilson, 22, printer from Oregon; and Captain J o h n Q. Harnish, 24, store clerk from New Hampshire. (Hull was soon replaced as president by Irish-born Dennis J. Toohy, 38, the town's leading lawyer and city attorney.) Each of the original prime movers of Corinne baseball hailed from a hotbed of baseball and thus presumably was knowledgeable about the game; each was engaged in a white collar occupation or skilled trade that afforded both the money and the leisure time to participate in "gentlemanly sport"; and each was a bachelor for whom the club provided social intercourse. As befitting a middle-class social club, the OB.B.C. upon formal organization changed its meeting place from Fitzgerald's Saloon to a private hall in Short's business building."

T h e first organized baseball game in Corinne, which took place on March 25 as the featured event of the Pioneer Day celebration 7 T h e News printed telegraphic reports of the trip and of some games in California on September 17, 20, 24, 27, October 2, 1869. T h e reaction of the Corinne residents to the appearance of the premier baseball team of the day is unknown; the earliest extant issue of the Corinne paper, the Utah Reporter, is October 16, 1869.

8 Utah Reporter, March 10, 15, 1870.

"Utah Reporter, March 10, 22, April 5, 1870; Daily Utah Reporter, July 22, 1870. Biographical information presented here and elsewhere in the paper has been drawn largely from the U.S. Census of 1870 and from information in the Corinne newspapers.

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held to commemorate the anniversary of the founding of the town, pitted the Corinne Base Ball Club against the upstart Pioneer Base Ball Club. T h e city artillery unit fired a one-gun salute at the end of each inning and a nine-gun volley at the end of the game. A local photographer halted the action to take a picture of the two clubs.

T h e Corinne newspaper attached enough significance to the event to publish the first description of a baseball game and the first box score in Utah history. T h e reporter who covered the game waxed enthusiastic about the historic contest: "The spectacle presented by these young men as they performed their manly sports, reminds one of the physical perfection of the ancient athletes." Although "the nines went at it in good style," the match was no contest: after three hours and ten minutes the final score was Corinnes 79, Pioneers 20.10 FIRST BASEBALL Box C O R I N N E BASE B A L L C L U B

Capt. J. Q. Harnish, c Alex. Wallace, p F. B. Hurlbut, 1st b Jas. McClay, 2d b A. D. Elwell, 3d b W. W. Rupp, ss C. S. Thomas, rf F. J. Taylor, If W. J. Priday, cf

Runs 6 10 9 9 11 11 8 10 5 Total 79

SCORE P U B L I S H E D IN U T A H * PIONEER BASE B A L L C L U B

Outs 5 3 4 2 1 2 3 3 4 27

Capt. Alf. Brewer, c D. Glascott, p S. Keephaver, 1st b A. Glascott, 2d b Dr. Walters, 3d b Jeo. Pace, ss Frank Tilton, rf W. Milliken, If C. C. Pace, cf

Runs 3 2 5 2 2 1 0 3 2 Total 20

Outs 4 4 1 4 0 4 5 2 3 27

* Utah Reporter, March 26, 1870.

As suggested by the Pioneer Day exhibition of sport as spectacle, Corinnethians were infatuated with the national pastime. T h e club laid out a ball grounds northwest of town, and J u d g e N. A. Woodbury donated "a spendid set" of official scorebooks. J. M. Langsdorf, captain of the Corinne "second nine," presumptuously dispatched a 10

Utah Reporter, March 26, 1870. T h e origin of the Pioneer Club is unknown. Madsen, Corinne, p. 228, may be correct in suggesting that members of the Corinne second team took the name Pioneer for the day. But the game was specifically referred to as a "match game," a term rarely used for intrasquad practices or exhibition games but instead reserved for official contests beteen rival organizations. Moreover, the captain of the Pioneer team was Alfred Brewer, whereas J. M. Langsdorf was the captain of the Corinne "second nine." Ibid., April 12, 1870. T h e n , too, Brewer later umpired a match game between Corinne and the Junction club of Ogden, an assignment that almost never went to a member of one of the participating teams. Daily Utah Reporter, J u n e 7, 1870. Finally, because the Pioneers were expressly designated a club with a slate of officers and none of them ever played for the Corinnes, the P.B.B.C. may have been organized by men excluded from the C.B.B.C. During the next two years numerous pick-up teams â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Crickets, Grasshoppers, McClellan's Nine, Short's Nine, and others â&#x20AC;&#x201D; were formed presumably from players outside the C.B.B.C.

Utah's First Baseball Champions

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challenge to the Cincinnati Red Stockings." More realistically, club members spent the spring developing their baseball skills. Acquiring athletic dexterity, particularly eye-hand coordination, was a difficult process that could be painful, as David Short discovered when his nose "for a moment or two resembled the eruption of a small volcano" after his "proboscis [came] in contact with a 'flyer' " during a practice game. Practices produced major alterations in the lineups. By the end of May, William A. Hodgman, 31-year-old owner of a harness and saddlery firm, took over as captain of the first nine; only three of the participants in the Pioneer Day game (Rupp, Hurlbut, and Elwell) remained on the first team. T h e discrepancy in talent became so great that to enliven practice games the first and second teams played "for a wager of value" with the first team giving the second stringers "the advantage of two or three outs." 12 Much of the improvement in playing skills was due to newcomer Harry Taylor, partner in the Chicago mercantile firm of Taylor 8c Wright, who spent as much time instructing the Corinnes in the fine points of the game as in conducting business. He participated as catcher in intrasquad games and "by his skillful play gave our boys some valuable hints as to how things ought to be done." 13 T h e lure of competition prompted the Corinnes to test their prowess against other clubs in the area. On three successive Saturdays beginning May 28, the Corinnes whipped the visiting Box Elder Base Ball Club 90-50, won their first road and extra-inning game by defeating the Junctions in Ogden 46-44 in ten innings, and notched a victory over the North String Base Ball Club that was "not much credit" to the home team because the visitors were without all of their "first nine.'" 4 Elated by the three wins, the C.B.B.C. in mid-June announced a game on July 4 against Box Elder "for the Territorial championship and a prize." 15 11

Aaron B. Champion, president of the Red Stockings, politely replied that he was "pleased to know that the national sport has extended as far West as Utah" and promised "should the Red Stockings ever again travel your way, they will try to arrange matters so they may meet the Corinne Club in the field." Utah Reporter, April 12, 1870. Challenges for match games were normally sent by the club secretary; that Langsdorf contacted Cincinnati suggests that he may have become personally acquainted with the team during their stop in Corinne, perhaps in his capacity as the local Union Pacific agent.

12 Utah Reporter, April 28, May 10, 14, 1870; Daily Utah Reporter, May 31, 1870. i3 Daily Utah Reporter, May 19, 24, 1870. Word of Taylor's expertise quickly spread throughout the area; he was called upon to umpire an important match game in Ogden, after which he received "great praise" for his thorough "understanding" of the game as well as his "fair and just decisions."

Deseret Evening News and Ogden Junction, May 25, 1870. '"Daily Utah Reporter, May 3 1 , J u n e 4, 5, 7, 12, 1870. '''Daily Utah Reporter, J u n e 17, 1870.

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Corinne's presumptuous arrangement of a championship elicited an immediate response from Salt Lake City. T h e Eurekas, the original club in the capital city, also had championship pretentions after first establishing local supremacy by defeating Camp Douglas 22-21 and the Alerts 35-27, and then, under the name "Ennea," humiliating the Junctions in Ogden 91-16 in the first intercity baseball game in Utah history. 18 As early as May the officers of the Eureka and Corinne clubs had without success engaged in "a diplomatic correspondence" to arrange home-and-home games. 17 But when the Corinnes defeated the Junctions and announced a match for the territorial championship with Box Elder, the Ennea on J u n e 23 proclaimed themselves "champions of the Territory" and "willing to meet any other club within the limits of the Territory who wish to dispute the claim and contest for the same." T h e very next day the Corinnes agreed to meet the Salt Lakers in a best-of-three series, traditional for championship competition. 18 It was appropriate that Corinne and Salt Lake City, bitter rivals in virtually every aspect of life in the territory, should meet in the first baseball championship and that the series should commence on July 4. By July 1870 Corinne, the lone non-Mormon town in Utah, was the self-proclaimed Gentile capital of the territory. T h e town newspaper — " T h e OFFICIAL PAPER of the City, County, Territory, and the United States" — was relentless in its attacks upon Mormonism in general and the leadership of Brigham Young in particular; to the Reporter, the Mormon church was nothing more than an un-American cult of polygamists, its prophet a veritable ]6 Deseret Evening News, April 28, May 7, 25, 1870; Ogden Junction, May 25, 1870. T h e name "Ennea" — derived from the Greek "Ennead" meaning a set of nine, especially groups of nine gods associated with the mythology and religion of ancient Egypt — may have been adopted to signify the creation of an "all-star" team to represent the city in territorial competition. Yet the Enneas were less a "picked-nine" than the Eurekas u n d e r a new name: nine of the eleven men who played for the Ennea had earlier performed u n d e r the Eureka banner, the lone newcomers being Arthur Pratt of the Alerts and one Badger. See Deseret Evening News, May 7, I 7 , a n d 2 5 , 1870; Salt Lake Daily Herald, July 27, 1870; Daily Utah Reporter, October 4, 1870. It was probably the carry-over in personnel, including secretary Charles Huey, that led the Deseret Evening News on J u n e 23-24 inadvertently to use the name "Eureka" instead of "Ennea" in printing the team's claim to the territorial championship. Whatever their origin, the Enneas replaced the Eurekas in Salt Lake baseball circles; originally described as the "Ennea Base Ball Players," the Enneas were subsequently regularly referred to as a base ball club.

"Utah Reporter, May 5, 2 1 , 1870. ,8 Deseret Evening News, J u n e 23, 1870, Salt Lake Daily Herald, J u n e 24, 1870. According to the Herald, the Enneas had received a challenge from the Union Pacific Railroad Club of Bryan, Wyoming, to meet for the championship of Wyoming and Utah; apparently the Corinne contest was seen as a step toward an undisputed territorial championship. Jameson, "Corinne," p. 234, states that Corinne played Box Elder for the championship on J u n e 18 and that the Enneas subsequently challenged the Corinnes; neither statement is correct — Corinne simply dropped Box Elder in favor of the stronger opponent. See Daily Utah Reporter, J u n e 24-25, 1870. T h e series is covered briefly in Madsen, Corinne, pp. 229-30, and Cannon, "The National Game," pp. 36-40.

Utah's First Baseball Champions

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theocratic despot. Moreover, the Corinnethean political establishment had initiated recent efforts to nominate a Gentile candidate for the post of territorial delegate to Congress, create the anti-Mormon Liberal party, and replace Salt Lake City as the seat of territorial government.'"July 4, 1870, was intended t o b e more than a patriotic commemoration of national independence in Corinne: locally dubbed "Gentile day," the Fourth was viewed as a celebration of civil liberties and federal authority in a land of ecclesiastical tyranny. 20 While the Salt Lake press made no mention of the upcoming contest, the Corinne newspaper referred daily to the game. T h e Reporter waxed eloquent in hyping "the day the covetous champions come together," and in anticipation of "a red-hot game," William Ellis and Franklin Winschell, "the beer king," agreed to supply the players "with the best of lager" during the game. 21 Unfortunately, the much publicized contest itself is a veritable mystery because of the unavailability of any issues of the Reporter for three days after the game; the Salt Lake Herald simply noted that Corinne defeated the Enneas by a score of 42-31 in a "closely contested" game in which the lead changed hands several times. 22 T h e triumph excited the nascent community striving for respect and recognition. With civic pride the Reporter proclaimed: "Base Ball is a popular game; aye, a national game, and a popular pastime, and Corinne, ever alive to her popular interests, is evidently taking a decided stand in the front rank of this popular, fashionable, national pastime." Worried that the "easy victory" over the Enneas would make the Corinnes "rather indifferent to the future efficiency," the paper soon exulted that the triumph had actually "awakened a lively interest among the boys of the bat" and that among the apparent champions of the territory "increased efforts to defeat any and everybody of the game's devotees are talked of, and not in a very modest manner either." 23 T h e braggadocio increased after the Corinne club massacred the previously undefeated team from the Thirteenth Infantry on July 13 by a score of 62-41 in a game marred by a "hurricane" wind and "dust so thick that fre'" For religious and political anti-Mormonism in Corinne, see Madsen, Corinne, esp. 14-18, 77-84,93-118, 193-203. See also Robert Joseph Dwyer, The Gentile Comes to Utah: A Study in Religious and Social Conflict, 1862-1890 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1941).

20 Daily Utah Reporter, July 4, 1870.

"Daily Utah Reporter, J u n e 25, 26, 29, 1870.

22 Salt Lake Daily Herald, July 6, 1870. T h e Deseret Evening News did not mention the game.

23 Daily Utah Reporter, July 8, 1870.

Utah Historical Quarterly

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The Thirteenth Infantry from Fort Douglas suffered defeat at the hands of the Corinnes. USHS collections.

quently the ball was lost when near by the fielders." Granting that the soldiers had the "disadvantage of arriving off of a four h u n d r e d mile march through the scorching sun and dust," the Reporter ungraciously justified running up the score in the middle innings: "we had to try and win the friendly game." 24 Not even a formal remonstrance from the Enneas reminding the Corinnes that they were "not the Champion Club of Utah nor the Pacific Coast, unless they win the next game" curbed the arrogance. Replied the Reporter: "We admit we were a little hasty . . . in claiming the championship until the next game is played, but does anyone doubt the Corinnes are the champions nevertheless?" 25 Corinne boosters should have known that the rematch would be no lark, for the Enneas would benefit from a decided home field advantage. Just as the first game was deliberately staged in Corinne on July 4, the second contest was intentionally scheduled in Salt Lake to coincide with the commemoration of the arrival of the main body of Mormon pioneers into the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847. (Because July 24 fell on Sunday, celebrations were held on Monday.)

Although the Corinne-Ennea game was not part of the official 24

Daily Utah Reporter, July 14, 1870.

'Daily Utah Reporter, July 12, 1870. T o accommodate Corinnetheans who wanted to witness "the great match game," Dennis Toohy, C.B.B.C. president, secured special half-price rates for the train trip to Salt Lake; to the surprise of railroad officials, Corinne fans filled three excursion cars instead of one as anticipated. Utah Daily Reporter, July 21, 26, 1870. T h e club traveled by rail after plans to charter the steamer Kate Connor for the trip to Salt Lake City via the Great Salt Lake fell through.

Daily Utah Reporter, July 8, 1870.

2:

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schedule of events, the contest was sure to attract the attention of the throngs drawn for the "Mormon Day" activities.26 Some 2,500 fans, including three excursion cars full of Corinnethians, gathered on the grounds north of the arsenal to watch the return match. T o the astonishment of all, the Enneas thrashed the Corinnes 74-23. According to the Herald: "The masterly playing of the 'Enneas' surprised even the expectations of their most ardent supporters, while the continued 'muffing' and wild play of their opponents caused more than one long face among their adherents." 27 T h e cocky Corinnethians were demoralized by the stunning reversal. Owen D. Huyck, publisher of the Reporter, could bring himself to print only the score of the game, observing that "base ball enthusiasm" was "below par" in the town. T h e community was "sort of old fogyishly quiet" partly because the Ennea victory had caused "several thousand dollars" to change hands. 28 T h e pallor was also due to the magnitude of the defeat. A visitor to Corinne a few days after the game noticed that a tombstone had been erected in the center of town, draped with a flag of mourning and inscribed with a sorrowful epitaph: "Base Ball Club No. 24 of Corinne, U.T. died July 24 [sic], 1870, at Great Salt Lake City, for the want of breath.

T h e members of this deceased club are requested to wear a badge of mourning for thirty days."2!'

A series of popular postmortem analyses testify to the depth of embarrassment caused by the Corinnes' first loss. Some residents, probably those who had lost wagers, were "prepared to make affidavit the game was thrown off." Other persons blamed "unfortunate circumstances" for the loss â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "bad ground, injured men, and general disadvantage at the beginning of the play." Still others were fatalistic: "the boys were too confident; they ought to have been beat; it will learn them better the next time." But according to Huyck, there was a simple explanation for the "remarkable odds in the 26 Pioneer Memorial Day, as the church-owned Deseret News reminded the faithful, was the commemorative event in Mormon Utah: "As citizens of the United States we all participate with zeal in the celebration of our nation's independence, the Fourth of July; but as members of the great latter-day Zion and Church of God, we recognize the 24th of July, as the day of all days worthy of being celebrated and honored." Deseret Evening News, July 23, 1870.

27 Salt Lake Daily Herald, July 27, 1870. The Deseret Evening News, July 26, carried only a brief note about the game.

28 Daily Utah Reporter, July 26, 27, 1870. Huyck himself apparently lost a bundle, for he editorialized: "We used to think a heap of base ball, and at one time seriously thought of advocating its adoption as the game of the period, but since the play made at Salt Lake on Monday we have concluded it won't do; there is too much margin, a man is liable to loose [sic] money on it."

2!)

Helena Daily Herald, August 2, 1870, quoted in Madsen, Corinne, p. 230.

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120

score" if not for the defeat itself. Harry Taylor, the Corinne catcher and "by common consent the best base ball player west of Cincinnati," had been forced to leave after a few innings because of "a felon on the middle finger of his right hand, which was painful and uncomfortable in the extreme." With Taylor on the bench, the Enneas promptly went on a scoring rampage after which the Corinne players "took but little interest in the game, except to entertain the vast number of spectators." 30 When the third game of the championship series, scheduled for neutral Ogden in early August, was postponed for nearly two months because of a smallpox epidemic in the Junction City, the Corinnes regrouped. 31 A decision was made to reorganize the club u n d e r the supervision of Taylor, but in early August "Harry of base ball notoriety" returned to Chicago.

Nevertheless, "quite a number" of personnel changes were made; throughout August the club held intrasquad games to sharpen skills, and in a tune-up for the upcoming championship game won two matches in September against the North Manual by Henry Chadwick, who String club, 41-40 and 58-38. 32 devised the box score. Courtesy of T h e Corinnes and Enneas met for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. the championship on Saturday, October 1. Despite the delay of nearly two months, popular interest in the title game remained high. A Salt Lake humor magazine in a rare note of seriousness remarked of the "considerable talk about base ball just now," and die-hard fans from Salt Lake and Corinne responded to pregame publicity by journeying to Ogden for the game. 33 T h e Corinne and Salt Lake newspapers held their presses until receiving telegraphic word of the outcome; upon receiving the 30

Daily Utah Reporter, July 28, 1870.

On July 23 Mayor Lorin Farr imposed quarantine regulations, established a quarantine ground, and launched a vaccination campaign. At least ninety-nine cases were reported before the epidemic broke in early fall. Ogden Junction, July 23, October 15, 1870.

32 Daily Utah Reporter, July 30, August 5, 9, 12, 15, September 8, 12, 26, 1870.

33 T h e Keep a Pitchinin, October 1, 1870; Deseret Evening News, September 29, 1870; Salt Lake Daily Herald, September 30, 1870; Daily Utah Reporter, September 30, October 1, 1870; Ogden Junction, October 1,1870. Suggestive of the prominence attached to "ballists," the Keep a Pitchinin staff claimed to be undefeated "at a regularly scientific game of Base Ball" and boasted that "if our editorial duties were not so urgent, nothing would afford us greater pleasure than to pass through the Territory and beat the various clubs now organized."

31

Utah's First Baseball Champions Box

121

SCORE O F C H A M P I O N S H I P G A M E BETWEEN E N N E A A N D C O R I N N E *

T h e Score CORINNES O R ENNEAS Stone, 3d b 3 2 McCurdy, c Barnard, If 2 2 Arick, p Robey, ss 3 1 Snow, 3d b Orme, p 2 2 White, c Valentine, 1st b 4 1 H. Pratt, 2d b Hodgman, 2d b 1 2 Wickizer, 1st b Loveland, cf 4 1 Pitt, If Young, c 3 1 A. Pratt, rf Miner, rf 5 0 Huey, ss Total 27 12 Total Umpire — S. Bennett. Scorers — W. T. Fields and Jas. Dawson.

Time of Game — One hour and forty minutes.

Fly Catches McCurdy, 2; Arick, 2; White, 1; H. Pratt, 2; Pitt, 1; A. Pratt, 1.

Total for Enneas, 9.

Hodgman, 3; Loveland, 2; Young, 5.

Total for Corinnes, 10.

Innings 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

O 4 4 2 3 4 4 1 3 2 27

R 1 0 1 1 0 0 3 0 2 8

Total Runs

Ennea 0 1 2 2 1 1 0 1 0 8 Corinne 0 0 4 2 1 0 3 1 1 12 *This is a composite box score. "The Score" is taken from the Daily Utah Reporter of October 4. T h e Ogden Junction of October 5 enumerated "Fly Catches." T h e line-score ("Innings") was tabulated from the account of the game in the Reporter.

desired wire — "Kill the fatted calf. Corinne walks away with the championship. Corinne 12, Enneas 8" — the Reporter exclaimed: "It affords us unspeakable pleasure to be able to chronicle a complete victory for the young men of our city and county who compose the Corinne Club, and we congratulate them on their triumph of skill in the national method of proving the superiority of physical strength and activity."34 T h e match was in every respect worthy of being the decisive game for the first territorial championship. Featuring excellent pitching and superb fielding, it was the lowest-scoring and best played game yet staged in the territory. With the lead changing hands five times and the score tied twice, the game, rated "even u p " by gamblers, was a nip-and-tuck affair until Corinne bolted ahead with three runs in the bottom of the seventh. Each team was "whitewashed" (held scoreless) three times, and no less than nineteen "fly catches," daring maneuvers without gloves, were recorded. In commenting on the "magnificent exhibition of science and skill in 34

Daily Utah Reporter, October 1, 1870. T h e Deseret Evening News went to press before the end of the game after receiving word that Corinne was ahead even before batting in the bottom of the ninth.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

base ball," the Reporter asserted that "the game is unequalled on base ball records west of Chicago to the Pacific, and the famous crack clubs of the East cannot boast of any superior games." T h e only discordant note came after the game when the Enneas, in an unprecedented display of poor sportsmanship, refused to congratulate the victors with "the accustomed tribute" or join the Corinnes in the traditional postgame dinner. Undaunted, the Corinnes returned home to a reception "that a successful army might be proud of."

Bonfires, fireworks, artillery blasts, and "cheer after cheer" accompanied the champions en route to the Uintah House and a victory banquet that lasted until after midnight. 35 T h e composition of the championship team reveals important changes had occurred in the nature and organization of Corinne baseball during the first season. Within six months the C.B.B.C. had been transformed from a social club intended to promote physical activity into a sporting association geared to athletic competition.

T h e membership changed dramatically as physical skills took precedence over social status: by October talented "outsiders" outnumbered townsmen on the first team. None of the charter members who played in the inaugural Corinne-Pioneer game in March participated in the championship game, and only two of the Corinnes who competed against Box Elder in May (Hodgman and Stone) played against the Enneas in October. More important, five members of the championship team were not residents of Corinne. That Herbert Orme, Lyman Barnard, Heber Loveland, Joseph Valentine, and James Young had played previously with the Box Elder and North String clubs indicates that the Corinnes added "ringers" from the county. 30 Although the championship series was played amid pervasive religious and political animosities, baseball was above bigotry. Of the Enneas' trip to Corinne the Mormon-owned Herald noted that "before, after and during the game, the Salt Lake visitors were treated with the utmost courtesy and kindness." Similarly, the anti-Mormon 35 T h e Daily Utah Reporter, October 4, devoted two and one-half columns to the game, including the first inning-by-inning summary published in Utah. The Ogden J unction of October 5 printed only a box score. T h e Salt Lake Daily Herald on October 2 did not include the score in a brief account of the championship series; the Deseret Evening News made no mention of the game other than to print the telegram on October 1.

3fi Utah Reporter, March 26, \870; Daily Utah Reporter, May 31, July 14, and October 4, 1870; Salt Lake Daily Herald, July 26, 1870. O r m e first appeared as a pitcher for Corinne in the game against the Thirteenth Infantry in mid-July, and it is known that Barnard played against the Enneas in Salt Lake City; Valentine, Loveland, and Young first appear in the championship game. T h e other newcomers were recent arrivals in town: N. F. Miner, clerk at Diamond Q Billiards, and Robey, a printer for the Reporter.

Utah's First Baseball Champions

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Reporter remarked of the return match in Salt Lake City that "the best feeling prevailed throughout the contest, and everything that could be done to make it pleasant for the Corinnes while in Zion was done." 37 And in sharp contrast to its braggadocio before and after the first game, the Reporter's account of the championship contest contained no boasts, no derogatory religious references, and no implication that the contest was a confrontation between Gentile Corinne and Mormon Salt Lake City.

T h e Corinne-Salt Lake series was above religious partisanship for three reasons. First, organized sport was in its infancy in Utah and, as suggested by minimal newspaper coverage, the traditional notion of sport as play still obtained — i.e., games were nonserious leisure activities separate from everyday life. Second, as the Reporter observed, there was a genuine interest among advocates of the national pastime in "building up and maintaining an honorable base ball reputation for Utah." 38 But it is difficult to believe that the Corinne paper, the pages of which were routinely filled with antiMormon invective, would not have tossed a few barbs at the Salt Lakers had it not been for the third factor: the majority of the Corinnes was Mormon. T h e C.B.B.C. was originally non-Mormon, but the five Box Elder men on the championship team — Barnard, Loveland, Orme, Valentine, and Young — were LDS as were second-teamers Joseph Whitworth and J o h n Welch. T h e Enneas were also religiously integrated. T h e four stars of the club — Arick, the pitcher; Charles P. Huey, later a director of the Gentile "Deserets"; Don Wickizer, son of Joseph H. Wickizer, special agent for the U.S. Postal Department; and William N. "Billy" McCurdy, son of federal j u d g e Solomon P. McCurdy — were not Mormon; George M. Snow was probably not LDS despite his traditional Mormon surname. 30 In sum, both the Corinnes and Enneas were more concerned with athletic performance than theological presumptions.

Undisputed territorial champions with a record of nine wins and one loss, the Corinnes hoped to extend their claim to baseball supremacy. But just as earlier efforts to arrange a match with the Bryan City, Wyoming, team for regional honors failed, late season 37

Salt Lake Daily Herald, July 6, 1870; Daily Utah Reporter, July 28, 1870.

Daily Utah Reporter, July 28, 1870.

3 " Information about religious affiliation has been obtained from newspaper obituaries, the Early Church Information File and Family Group Records in the Genealogical Society of Utah, and the Patriarchal Blessings Index in the Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City. I assume Arick was non-Mormon since that surname does not appear in any of the aforementioned LDS records. For Snow, see Cannon, "The National Game," p. 62.

3S

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challenges to teams in Nevada, California, and Oregon to play for the Pacific Coast championship came to naught. 40 T h e C.B.B.C endured the winter of 1870-71 by meeting frequently around the hot stove to plan for the upcoming season. T o show themselves "to good advantage," the club ordered "a splendid style" of gray flannel uniforms and caps from the leading manufacturer of baseball apparel in Philadelphia. T h e members also voted to adopt the name "Queen City Club," a "royal appelation" fitting for a team that intended to "carry off the laurels of a continent," but later decided to retain the more precise if less elegant "Corinnes." More substantive was the administrative reorganization of the club. Dennis Toohy, recently named editor of the Reporter, was reelected president, but the other officers were elected for the first time: Vice-president William H. Glascott, life insurance agent; Treasurer George T. Miles, co-owner of a hardware store; and Secretary Clarence M. White, merchant. Chosen to serve as a Board of Directors were Frank B. Hurlbut, city councilman and owner of a d r u g store; William T. Fields, head cashier of the Bank of Corinne and the city recorder; and J o h n E. Stone, proprietor of Diamond Q Billiards.

Hodgman was again selected to captain the first nine, while Glascott was charged with supervising the second team. 41 Close connections with the business community ensured that the club would not lack financial support; nor, given Toohy's twin passions of Mormonbaiting and baseball, would the club want for publicity.

Indicative of the C.B.B.C.'s prominence in the community was its sponsorship of the social event of the year, the grand ball held at the Opera House on March 24 to launch the annual Pioneer Day celebration. T h e highlight of the evening was the presentation to the club of a banner sewn during the winter by the women of Corinne.

T h e ensign, of "standard army size" attached to a "a splendid staff with a spear head in gold," was made of Emerald green silk accentuated by "heavy silver bullion fringe and tassels." Inscribed on the front in golden letters was "Corinne" Base Ball "Club," the two middle words "expressed allegorically, with the implements of our national sport." T h e acclaimed "Base Ball ball" brought community

40

Negotiations to play the Wyoming champions apparently were handled by brothers Charles Stone of Bryan and J o h n Stone of Corinne, while Toohy formally offered "the gage of battle" to West Coast teams after the Corinnes defeated the Enneas. Daily Utah Reporter, March 10, July 8, October 4, 10, 1870.

4 'Daily Utah Reporter, January 26, February 1, 2, 9, March 6, 29, 1871.

Utah's First Baseball Champions

125

prestige to the team and a profit of $86.10 to the club treasury. 42 Sporting new uniforms and a club banner, the Corinnes eagerly awaited the 1871 season. After the club took to the "ball grounds" in March for the initial practice session of the year, Toohy chortled: "The boys have not forgotten how to do it." Actually, the team was stronger than the previous year, with two excellent players from Salt Lake City â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Adam Aulbach, who had recently purchased the Reporter, and Charles P. Huey, former secretary and shortstop for the Enneas, who upon moving to town was promptly elected secretary of the Corinnes. T h e best of the North Stringers again joined the club, and the decision not to hold practices on Sunday may have been a concession to the Mormon members. And much to the relief of all, Herbert Orme, the "celebrated Pitcher," returned from Nevada just in time for the baseball season. 43 Hoping to start the new season where it had left off, the C.B.B.C. invited the Enneas of Salt Lake to a match game on Pioneer Day. But when the Enneas declined the invitation, the Corinnes treated "a vast assemblage of ladies and gentlemen" to an intrasquad "display of physical culture." Although the first team bested the second nine 34-19, the Reporter boasted that the skill of both squads demonstrated that the Corinnes "can hold in reserve a force sufficient to keep the rear well protected in case the champion nine should ever meet with a reverse â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a thing most unlikely this side of the Atlantic Ocean." 44 Toohy's desire to "pit Boxelder [sic] county against the world" in baseball was genuine. On March 7 Secretary George Miles sent a letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle proposing that the Corinnes travel to the Golden State during the summer to meet the California champions for "the championship of the coast." T h e Corinnes soon received a letter from the "Wide Awakes" of Oakland expressing "a hope to see the two organizations more intimately acquainted." 45 T h e determination to achieve supremacy in the West was so keen that the Reporter began printing reports of California matches, and the C.B.B.C. in early May sent Aulbach to San Francisco to represent the club at the annual meeting of the Pacific Base

'Daily 3 Daily 4 Daily 'Daily

Utah Utah Utah Utah

Reporter, Reporter, Reporter, Reporter,

March March March March

7, 10, 13, 23, 25, 29, 1871.

4, 16, 22, April 6, 1871.

16, 17, 20, 27, 1871.

12, 22, 30, 1871.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Ball Association, the first time a Utah team had been involved in the regional organization. After watching the California championships, Aulbach commented: "I believe the Champion Nine of Corinne are the Champions of the Pacific Coast, and would make good that title in any game the so-called champions of the coast might see fit to engage in." Accordingly, he filed "the claims of the Corinnes to contest for the championship bat to be considered by the Pacific Base Ball Convention in July." 40 Meanwhile, the C.B.B.C. commenced its defense of the territorial title. T h e season opened with a pair of easy wins (28-13 and 21 -9) over the Willard City club. So great was community support for the team that "quite a number" of Corinnethians on horseback along with a Concord coach, a large hack, and six buggies "freighted with base bailers, and a merry party of ladies and gentlemen" traveled fourteen dusty miles to watch a game played on grounds which were "in primeval state, the diamond only having been cleared of sagebrush, and that was quite uneven." 47 T h e Corinnes then defeated the North Stringers 17-10 despite letting O r m e pitch for the opposition to increase the competition. 48 A trip to Ogden on May 27 failed to test the team; Orme, pitching brilliantly and hitting an unprecedented four home runs, led a 81-9 rout of the Junctions, termed "a repetition of the merciless manner in which the champions walk away with the laurels." 40 With baseball virtually abandoned as an organized sport in Salt Lake City, the Corinnes found themselves without competition. 50 Consequently, the self-proclaimed "best in the West" were reduced to playing exhibition games against pick-up teams in town. In early J u n e the Corinnes played two games with the C.B.B.C. Juniors, the first youth club in Utah. T h e teenagers provided the stiffest challenge of the season, and the future for baseball in Corinne looked 46

Daily Corinne Reporter, April 24, May 9, 15, 22, 1871; Corinne Daily Journal, May 16, 1871.

Daily Corinne Reporter, April 24, May 5 , 8 , 187'1; Corinne Daily Journal, May 6,7, 19,21, 1871.

4S Corinne Daily Journal, May 19, 2 1 , 1871. Daily Corinne Reporter, May 22, 1871.

4!)

Daily Corinne Reporter, May 22, 25, 29, 1871; Corinne Daily Journal, May 28, 1871; Ogden Junction, May 27, 3 1 , 1871.

50 Cannon, "National Game," p. 4 1 , terms the abrupt decline of baseball in the capital city "inexplicable" and surmises that the decline stemmed either from the embarrassment of the Corinne victory in 1870 or from a normal ebb in interest in a sports fad. Whatever the case, none of the three Salt Lake newspapers mention match games in the city in 1871; the only references I have found to Salt Lake baseball for that year are to the Ennea-Corinne game of July 4 and the Ennea-Ogden game of July 24. Salt Lake Daily Tribune, J u n e 21, 1871; Salt Lake Daily Herald, July 4, 1871; Ogden Junction, July 22, 1871; Daily Corinne Reporter, July 24, 25, 1871. Interest in organized baseball in Salt Lake did not revive until September 1873.

47

Utah's First Baseball Champions

127

bright; as Toohy remarked of the youthful nine: "We have seldom seen the skill of some of them excelled." 51 Later that month the Corinnes played the Alkali Blinders, composed of prominent middle-aged businessmen and professionals. T h e town fathers played with reckless abandon but minimal skill: Frank Evans "caught a fly in his mouth," Gumpert Goldberg took a "short hop in the region of the belt," and William Patterson, following a badly "muffed" throw, left the field "to get some beer." 52 But baseball was more than fun and games to the Corinnes, and the club desperately sought respectable competition during the summer. An empty challenge from Savannah, Georgia, typical of telegraphic boasts that publicized a club without the danger of an actual test on field, was dismissed as the Corinnes endeavored to enhance their regional reputation at the expense of Nevada clubs as a prelude to contesting for the West Coast championship. After more than two months of seeking a match with clubs from Carson City, Reno, Virginia City, or "any nine that Nevada can muster," the Corinnes dispatched a formal challenge to the reigning Nevada champions, the Silver Stars of Carson City, to meet in Elko (relatively equidistant between the two cities) "to decide the championship of the Great Basin."53 But the Stars would do no more than "consider" the challenge, leaving the Corinnes to d r u m up local competition.

Desperate for games, the C.B.B.C. eagerly accepted an invitation from the Enneas to participate in "a friendly game" in Salt Lake on July 4 and delighted the "large number of ladies and gentlemen" who attended the "social match" by coming from behind to win 28-21.54 T h e Corinnes then endured a month of inactivity when the anticipated meeting with the Ophir club failed to materialize because the Silver Heels were unsuccessful at "screwing u p their courage to challenge the Corinne cusses to a strife for the belt." 5

51 Daily Corinne Reporter, J u n e 3,9, 12, 187'\;Corinne Daily Journal, J u n e 11, 1871. Presumably the Corinne Junior Base Ball Club was patterned after the junior clubs first organized in Ohio in 1867. T h e junior clubs, comprised of boys 15 to 20 years old, were essentially youth auxiliaries. T h e boys were divided into two teams based on age, wore uniforms identical to those of the parent club, and played scheduled games against other juniors. See Ellard, Base Ball in Cincinnati, p. 68-75.

52 Daily Corinne Reporter, J u n e 26, 29, 1871; Corinne Daily Journal, J u n e 27, 29, 1871.

53 Daily Corinne Reporter, May 24, 31; J u n e 13, 21, July 13, 20, 22, 24, 1871.

54 T h e line-up for the Ennea club was the same as in 1870. Corinne Daily Journal, J u n e 20, 1871; Daily Corinne Reporter, J u n e 20,26,30, July 5, 1871; Salt Lake Daily Tribune, J u n e 21, 1871; Salt Lake Daily Herald, July 4, 1871.

55 Corinne Daily Journal, J u n e 2 1 , 1871; Daily Corinne Reporter, June 24,July 8, 11, 17, August 17, 1871.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Finally, in early August a match game was scheduled with the Echoes of Ogden, an all-star team drawn from the Junction and Red Sash clubs. Toohy had earlier scoffed at rumors of such a challenge, suggesting that a victory of the Ogdenites over "the champion base ball players of the West" would be "the wonder of the nineteenth century." That the Corinnes took the game lightly is understandable after stalwarts Hodgman and Stone, who played for the Enneas in a July 24 contest against the Echoes, brought back reports of the "exceedingly poor game" won by the hosts 55-54. Consequently, Captain Hodgman's appeal to the "championship nine" to report for nightly practices so that "they may not be caught napping" was to no avail. On August 12 the Echoes stunned the home team and a "large crowd" of spectators by whipping the Corinnes 46-38. T h e defeat could easily have been worse: T h e Echoes had tallied 15 runs in the top of the ninth inning when, with two outs, the game was called to allow the Weberites to catch a train back to Ogden. Chagrined, Corinnethians took solace from the fact that their club was without the services of three of its best players â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Orme, Huey, and Miles.56 While the Corinne players "took their defeat with a very good grace," Dennis Toohy did not. Outraged that the game had produced "a 'foul' blot on the hitherto untarnished record of our invincible players," Toohy argued that the absence of the three stars was no excuse for not having "made a better showing," and he was furious that "the old story of want of practice, no time to go out and play," was being offered as an excuse. 57 That the club president's stinging rebuke had an immediate effect is evident from the subsequent announcement in the Reporter: "Practice of the Base Ball Club this evening at 6." T o demonstrate that they were ready for the rematch, the Corinnes a week later traveled to Northampton and whipped the North String club 47-18 in a game that "the [Brooklyn] Eckfords or [Philadelphia] Athletics might be proud to emulate."

Once again seized by "a fit of baseballomania," Corinne was ready for the showdown with the Ogdenites. 58 T h e return match took place on August 26 in Ogden. Excitement in Corinne was so great at the prospect of the locals winning â&#x201E;˘Daily Corinne Reporter, June 2, Ju\y 24,25, August 4, 5,11, 12, 1871; Ogden J unction, August 16, 1871. T h e Reporter posted the score as 54-38, but I have accepted the more detailed account of the game, including a box score, in the Ogden Junction; whatever the official tally, the Corinnes would have faced an insurmountable lead had they received their last bats.

5 ''Daily Corinne Reporter, August 14, 1871.

5S Daily Corinne Reporter, August 16, 23, 24, 1871.

Utah's First Baseball Champions

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C O R I N N E S VS. O G D E N E C H O E S *

CORINNES Hodgman, c Stone, s.s Barnard, c f Orme, p Hurlburt, r.f Harnish, 3rd b Huey, 2nd b Valentine, 1st b Aulbach, l.f

1

2

O 2 1 1 0 4 4 5 6 4

R 8 9 10 9 6 6 6 5 6

27

65

3

ECHOES Burns, s.s Davis, r.f McCarty, l.f Keller, p George, 1st b Calhoon, 3rd b Elmer, c f Provost, 2nd b Young, c

Runs in Each Inning 4 5 6 7 8 9

O 1 5 2 4 5 3 3 2 2

R 4 2 4 2 2 4 4 4 4

27

30 Total

Corinnes 3 1 3 14 19 20 1 4 0 65 Echoes 1 1 0 7 2 2 6 8 3 30 Home Runs: Corinnes — O r m e 2, Huey, 2, Valentine, 1. Echoes — Young, 2 Umpire, Mr. Lowe Scorers: Corinne Club, Mr. Glascott Echo Club, Mr. Hobart * Composite box score drawn from the Daily Corinne Reporter, August 26, and the Ogden Junction, August 30.

back their "lost laurels" that the Central Pacific railroad offered special excursion rates to fans, and the Reporter dispatched a special correspondent to file an on-the-spot telegraphic report at the conclusion of the game. With O r m e and Huey back in the line-up and the experienced Valentine substituting for Miles, the Corinnes scored three runs in the top of the first inning and were never headed en route to a 65-30 victory. T h e C.B.B.C. put on an awesome display of hitting, but the Ogden paper identified the major difference in the two teams: "From the start it was easily seen that the pitching of Mr. Oram [sic] . . . was too much for our boys."50 Unfortunately, Corinne's supremacy in 1871 was more selfproclaimed than demonstrated despite a 7-1 record. First, the Ogden Junction denied that Corinne was the Utah champion. Contending that the Corinne-Ogden game of May 27 was a "social" exhibition instead of a match game, the paper argued that a third game was necessary to decide the titlist. But the Corinnes, considering themselves champions because they had twice defeated Ogden, declared the season at an end. 60 Both sides were technically correct: the first game was staged in conjunction with a Methodist church social, but ™ Ogden J unction, August 23, 26, 30, 1871; Daily Corinne Reporter, August 25, 26, 1871; Salt Lake Herald, August 27, 1871. T h e Daily Corinne Reporter credited the Echoes with 31 runs, mistakenly crediting McCarty with 5 runs; I have followed more detailed scoring in the Ogden Junction. ™Ogden Junction, August 30, 1871; Daily Corinne Reporter, August 25, 26, 1871.

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the Corinnes did defeat the all-star squad that eventually became the Echo club. Although the Corinnes were decidely superior to the Echoes, the caveat tarnished their claim to the territorial title. T h e n the Nevada Register chided Toohy for declaring the Corinnes the champions of the Pacific slope because the Carson City club "would make the Corinnethians see (Silver) Stars." After Carson City, which had steadfastly refused to accept Corinne's "declaration of war," was defeated 67-30 by the nondescript Social Base Ball Club of Virginia City, the C.B.B.C.'s claim to superiority in the Intermountain region was bolstered if unproven on the field.61 When word arrived in late August that the Chicago White Stockings might extend their western tour to California, the Corinnes began to dream of national recognition. Ecstatic about the prospect of meeting the professional powerhouse, Toohy was confident the Corinnes would "knock the snowy hose off the shins of the Suckers" and demonstrate the superiority of the "athletes of Utah" over the "dandy base-men of the East." "If Corinne does not walk away with Messrs. White Stockings," he crowed, "then Joe Smith was no prophet." But the Chicago team failed to cross the Missouri, and in mid-September Toohy announced: "Our champions of base ball have put away their armor for the year, no club in the country daring to pick up the glove."62 Ironically, just when C.B.B.C. reached the zenith of success â&#x20AC;&#x201D; strong community support, abundant financial resources, two consecutive territorial championships â&#x20AC;&#x201D; interest in the national pastime abruptly dissipated in Corinne. As if to presage the demise of the club, the "entire pavillion" was "stolen" from the ball grounds during the winter. Spring saw the "juveniles" breaking out the bats and balls, but no club was organized. Pioneer Day and Independence Day passed without the traditional ball game. And while it was reported in early July that "base ball is revived here," the summer passed without an organized game being played. 63 T h e following spring a baseball club was organized, largely at Toohy's insistence, and on May 17 the first practice game in almost two years was held.

61 Daily Corinne Reporter, July 24, August 31, September 4, 1871; (Carson City) State Register, August 3 1 , September 1, 1871.

62 Daily Corinne Reporter, August 29, 30, September 13, 1871. As repeated references to the White Stockings indicate, the Chicago club was the favorite professional team of the Corinnes, perhaps because of the influence of Harry Taylor. T h e Reporter occasionally carried news of Chicago's triumphs, and on one occasion declared "the pale shins have the sympathy of the champions of America." Daily Corinne Reporter, July 13, August 7, 1871.

63 Daily Corinne Reporter, March 12, 13, 25, 26; July 5, 6, 1872.

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"Of course the 'flies' were muffed and poor playing was consequent," commented the Reporter, "but taking into consideration the very long time that has elapsed since a game has been played, they did remarkably well." T h e n , with characteristic braggadocio, Toohy exclaimed: "Before the season is over a better and more athlete [sic] club will not tread with manly firmness the green playgrounds of the Pacific slope." At first such optimism seemed justified, as the club staged a "lively" intrasquad game later that month u n d e r the auspices of Captain Short. But by early J u n e Toohy lamented that "the base-ball fever, which at one time threatened to envelop the youth and vigor of Corinne in an overwhelming sea of glory has 'gone glimmering through the dream of things that were.' "64 That baseball remained dormant in Corinne during 1874 is suggested by renewed efforts to form a club in the spring of 1875.85 In announcing plans to organize participants in ad hoc games into a formal club, the Corinne Daily Mail reminded residents that the town "in former times had a Base Ball Club that was the acknowledged champion of the Pacific coast." But hopes of forming a club that would "equal the reputation of the former ones of the city" were illusory, for there is no evidence of any organized competition during the summer. 66 However, some of the former members of the 1870-71 club in early September arranged for a game against soldiers stationed near the town. A "large crowd" witnessed first-hand just how far Corinne baseball had deteriorated. After "a desperate effort" by the civilians for eight innings, the Mail remarked that "the score according to our account stood 1 to 888 in favor of the soldiers." Although the margin of victory was surely meant to be taken figuratively, the Mail's assessment of the Corinne team was accurate: "All the spectators present except those religiously inclined, were of the opinion that the newly organized club, instead of playing base ball, had played h â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1 with their reputation." 67 By the spring of 1877 Corinnethians were struggling to no avail to recapture lost baseball glories. On the eve of Pioneer Day, the Corinne Record proclaimed: "Our base ball club holds itself in readiM

Daily Corinne Reporter, April 5, May 12, 15, 19, 20, 24, 26; J u n e 4, 1873.

T h e r e was no newspaper published in the town from November 1873 to September 1974. See J. Cecil Alter, Early Utah Journalism: A Half Century of Forensic Warfare Waged by the West's Most Militant Press (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1938), pp. 55-59.

66 Corinne Daily Mail, April 16, 17, 21, 1875. ^Corinne Daily Mail, September 3, 6, 1875.

65

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ness to accept a challenge from any nine that can be scared u p in Utah. Who wants to give them a rattle?" 68 T h e r e were no challengers, baseball in Corinne having long since gone full circle from organized sport to sandlot game.

T h e demise of organized baseball in Corinne is attributable initially to socioeconomic conditions prevalent in the boom town. By 1872 Corinnethians increasingly had little time for systematic play as "scarcity of labor" was a constant complaint. T h e demand for workers both in town and on the railroad undoubtedly kept many men on the job and off the playing field.60 Moreover, the unstable, highly transient population took its toll on club membership: by 1872 ten Corinnes â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including Aulbach, Huey, Robey, Orme, Stone, and Elwell â&#x20AC;&#x201D; were gone, and when Toohy moved to Salt Lake in 1873 baseball lost its principal booster. T h e n , too, rapid community growth produced numerous social and athletic alternatives to a baseball club. Competition for the leisure time of ball players came not from fraternal organizations such as the Odd Fellows, Good Templars, and Masons, but from other sport clubs.70 During 1872 croquet matches sponsored by the West End Croquet Club replaced baseball games as the sporting passion. Although Toohy railed against "that anti-muscular pastime," there was no curtailing the popularity of "Presbyterian billiards"; by 1873 he admitted that "croquet has broken out all over town" and that the game was "the leading sport of youngsters." 71 By the summer of 1873 regattas were the rage, with "many" rowing and yachting clubs vying for aquatic honors; for landlubbers, the Lacrosse Ball Club promoted the latest team sport. 72 T h e reason baseball so suddenly lost its popularity in Corinne is uncertain. But whether because of the departure of key players or simple lack of interest, middle-class Corinnethians moved after 1871 toward other recreational pursuits and formed clubs for virtually every local sport including fishing, swimming, ice skating, roller skating, and gymnastics.

68 Salt Lake Herald, March 24, 1877. T h e r e was no newspaper in Corinne from October 1875 to the founding of the Reporter in February 1877; xhe Reporter lasted only ten months, and no copies are extant. See Alter, Early Utah Journalism, pp. 60-62, and Madsen, Corinne, pp. 202-3.

6!, See, for example, Corinne Daily Reporter, J u n e 22, 26, 1872.

70 No Corinnes are listed among the more than fifty members of the Masonic order. See S. H. Goodwin, Freemasonry in Utah: Corinne, and Corinne Lodge No. 5 (Salt Lake City: Grand Lodge of Utah, 1928), p. 23.

7 'Corinne Daily Reporter, June 20, July 9, 1872, March 29, April 11, J u n e 10, July 3, 1873.

72 Corinne Daily Reporter, March 17, April 23, May 9, 3 1 , 1873.

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Local conditions notwithstanding, baseball in Corinne would have declined because of problems associated with organized sport on the frontier. First, as the infatuation with other sports suggests, baseball was a fad. Baseball lacked staying power in burgeoning western communities in part because early settlers, in an effort to achieve instant status and respectability, whimsically embraced the activities and behavior patterns of urban communities. T h u s in nascent towns as diverse as Topeka, Kansas, and Salt Lake City, initial enthusiasm for the national pastime was followed by a period of waning interest in the sport. 73 More important, it was difficult to maintain a team sport like baseball in a rural environment. Given the absence of formal leagues and the difficulty of traveling to distant towns, match games were played sporadically; without regular competition, baseball clubs could not sustain themselves on intrasquad games. Intercity competition in Utah virtually ceased for a decade after 1871, and no championship series was held until two Salt Lake City teams competed for the title in 1877.74 Corinne never experienced a baseball revival as did Ogden and Salt Lake City because the Burg on the Bear went bust. Organized baseball is an essentially urban activity, and Corinne never became more than a frontier boom town. T h e chronological parameters of organized baseball in Corinne are instructive: the C.B.B.C. was formed in 1869 soon after the completion of the transcontinental railroad, and the last match game was played in 1875 against soldiers sent to protect the community from a bogus "Indian scare." 75 T h e beginning of the end for Corinne came in 1871 when the Mormons began building a narrow-gauge railroad north from Ogden through Cache Valley to Franklin, Idaho; the death blow came in 1877-78 when the Union Pacific took over the Utah Northern and extended the line north to the Montana Trail, thereby removing Corinne's raison d'etre. T h e town, already a shadow of its former self, was virtually abandoned: only 277 inhabitants, mostly LDS, were enumerated in the 1880 census. Within a decade the commercial Gentile capital of Utah had become a pastoral Mormon village.76 Baseball, symbolized by the C.B.B.C, played a brief albeit important role in early Corinne. That several h u n d r e d spectators, 73

Evans, "Baseball in Kansas," p. 180; Cannon, "The National Game," p. 41.

Cannon, "The National Game," pp. 63-65.

75 See Madsen, Corinne, pp. 281-85.

76 See Madsen, Corinne, pp. 299-316.

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mostly ladies and gentlemen, regularly attended home and away games demonstrated that the national pastime was regarded as a fashionable social event; that the newspaper gave the sport unusually extensive, often hyperbolic, coverage indicates that the club was a major source of civic pride. Corinne became obsessed with baseball because the team met important community needs. Participation in the national pastime fed the town's self-image as the outpost of national culture and authority in parochial Mormon society. T h e success of the C.B.B.C. fostered civic pride and brought positive publicity to an upstart community desperately seeking recognition and respectability. T h e club itself gave impetus to preferred community values â&#x20AC;&#x201D; social stability amid transiency, wholesome physical recreation amid leisure-time debauchery. Finally, the C.B.B.C, the first formally organized social club in Corinne, set the pattern for a secular organization of social and recreational activity that contrasted with the church-directed social life of Mormon Utah. In short, the C.B.B.C. fostered community cohesion and chauvinism, fundamental but often ephemeral commodities in nascent frontier towns.

Although the C.B.B.C. caught the fancy of the entire community, a socioeconomic analysis of thirty-two players reveals that baseball most directly met the needs of a specific segment of the population. Because most Corinne males were engaged in bluecollar occupations (freighters, construction workers, day laborers), one would expect a blue-collar ball club in the frontier town. But a majority, twenty-one or 66 percent, of the C.B.B.C. held white-collar positions. T h e occupational profile shows the following class orientation: nine or 28 percent of the Corinnes were high white collar (businessmen, professionals); twelve or 38 percent were low white collar (clerks, bookkeepers); three or 9 percent were skilled blue collar (brickmasons, carpenters, printers); two or 6 percent were semi-skilled blue collar (painters); and six or 19 percent were unskilled blue collar (miners, farm laborers). If one excludes the five Box Elder County players, each of whom was a farm laborer, the white-collar level increases to 78 percent. T h e marital status of the members was also at variance with community norms. Whereas 62 percent of the Corinne males over twenty-one were single, a reasonable percentage for a frontier town, 78 percent of the ballplayers (25) were bachelors. Ethnically, the C.B.B.C. conformed to the gen-

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eral Utah profile: twenty-two or 69 percent of the Corinnes were natives of the United States, while the foreign-born members had a decidedly Anglo-Saxon configuration with five Britons, three Canadians, a Dane, and a South African. None of the Corinnes was a Utah native. 77 T h e Corinnes were young adults, the average and median ages being twenty-five and twenty-four years respectively; almost one-third of the members (11) were twenty-four years old at the time of the 1870 census. In sum, the Corinne Base Ball Club was a middle-class organization that met the social and recreational needs of the town's rising mercantile and professional bachelor subculture. 78 Because the ultimate measure of a baseball club is performance, the question remains: How good were the Corinnes? Judging from the scores of their games, they would probably not have fared so well against better teams in the Midwest or East where single- or low double-digit tallies were the norm. But as Aulbach maintained after observing the California championships, the Utahns may well have been the best in the "bush leagues" of far western baseball. That the Corinnes were especially talented is suggested by their consistent domination of local opponents compared with the erratic performances of top teams in Nevada and California. Certainly Herbert Orme, the "Sampson of Box Elder," was one of the premier players in the region. Arguably the best in the West, the Corinne Base Ball Club unquestionably deserves historical recognition as the first territorial champions and the progenitors of the national pastime in northern Utah. 70 77 For Utah demographics, see Richard D. Poll et al., eds., Utah's History (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1978), pp. 690-91.

78 Dennis Toohy, who never actually played baseball, and three members of the second team (William Glascott, William Munro, and David Short) were the only Corinnes identified with the community elite; Toohy was the lone Corinne to be a stockholder in the local opera house, the focal point of high society. See Rue C. Johnson, "Frontier Theatre: T h e Corinne Opera House," Utah Historical Quarterly, 42 (Summer 1974): 285-95. However, the C.B.B.C. was well connected with town government in the personages of Mayor Munro, City Attorney Toohy, City Recorder William T. Fields, Councilman Frank B. Hurlbut, and Marshals}. M. Langsdorf and J o h n Q. Harnish.

7!l As the "county" team, the Corinnes had a major impact on Box Elder baseball. Local tradition has it that "when the railroad came through and Corinne was established, the Corinne men introduced the games common in the East." T h e major eastern sport was baseball, and Herbert O r m e in particular is credited with helping organize teams in Brigham City, Honeyville, T h r e e Mile Creek (Perry), and Willard. Lydia Walker Forsgren, History of Box Elder County (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1937), p. 185.

Deserets, Red Stockings, and Out-of-Towners: Baseball Comes of Age in Salt Lake City, 1877-79

BY KENNETH L. CANNON II

Salt Lake City, late 1870s. Washington Square, where baseball was played, was then on the edge of town, four blocks south of the Gardo House in distant right of center of this C. R. Savage photograph, USHS collections.

1 HE LAST THREE YEARS OF THE 1870s witnessed a flowering of baseball in Salt Lake City with the first professional players in the city, the largest crowds to view local games in the nineteenth century, and controversy over the game that increased through the period.

Baseball was the center of summer conversation for many Salt Lakers, and nearly everyone knew about the two best local clubs, the Deserets and Red Stockings. Religious affiliations increased local interest. T h e number of spectators attending games sometimes equalled 25 percent of the city's population, and more teams were fielded than ever before. These years and the two principal clubs Mr. Cannon is an attorney in Salt Lake City and a member of the Advisory Board of Editors of Utah Historical Quarterly.

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were long remembered in the city's lore. In short, the period was the golden age of baseball in nineteenth-century Salt Lake City. Somewhat paradoxically, however, events during the period also undermined the local sport.

Baseball had been introduced into Salt Lake City shortly after the Cincinnati Red Stockings traveled through Utah Territory in 1869 on the new transcontinental railroad. After a brief period of popularity in the early 1870s, interest waned in the "national game."

Slowly a more mature community interest in baseball developed, and by the mid-1870s one club, the Deserets, dominated the local game and a diamond had been laid out on Washington Square. 1 By 1877 the Deserets were ready to take on clubs from rival Intermountain cities.

In mid-May 1877 the Deserets met "to organize a representative club for the Territory and place it upon a permanent footing." T h e club had earlier elected officers, leased the east half of Washington Square, and hoped to improve the field so that outside teams could be attracted to play in Salt Lake City. T h e desire for outside competition seems only natural because the Deserets had found no local clubs that could hope to match them. Over eighty people had joined the club by the time of this initial meeting, including prominent local businessmen who threw their financial support behind the team. 2 Games reported in Salt Lake newspapers in April indicated there were at least seventeen teams in the city playing baseball. T h e reason, to the Tribune, was evident: "Salt Lake City has for a number of years fostered the game of base ball. In fact, our city would not be up in modern ideas did she not do so." 3 This was a theme local newspapers were to repeat for the next three years â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that Salt Lake City was as modern and up-to-date as any other city in the West and probably the country, and one manifestation of this was the interest in and support for baseball. 4 T h e newspapers were, according to urban community theory, attempting to draw on community pride to provide support for local baseball. T h e papers seemed to be

1

For a discussion of the earlier period see my " 'The National Game': A Social History of Baseball in Salt Lake City, 1868-1888" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1982), pp. 18-48; and Larry R. Gerlach, "The Best in the West? Corinne, Utah's First Baseball Champions," in this issue. Washington Square is where the Salt Lake City and County Building now stands.

2 SaltLake Tribune, May 15, March 18, 23, 1877.

3 Salt Lake Tribune, April 18, 1877. T h e Tribune continued, "In these times base ball clubs are almost an imperative necessity."

4 Salt Lake Herald, August 21, 1877, Salt Lake Tribune, September 6, 1877.

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telling local residents that if they wanted their city to appear modern they needed to support baseball. 5 T h e Deserets e x p e n d e d several h u n d r e d dollars in improvements for the ball park. T a m e grass was planted on the square for the first time, and a new grandstand and bleachers were constructed. By late April the Deserets' games were attracting as many as fifteen h u n d r e d spectators, even though scores were rarely close because of the Deserets' superior playing skills.6 T h o u g h many people attended games, baseball had problems in establishing its respectability in Salt Lake. Betting was indulged in at the ball park; crowds, especially on the sunny east side where the cheap bleacher seats were located, were often loud and sometimes offensive; and such activity as smoking and drinking (which many Mormons found offensive, at least in public) were often seen. 7 Because of this, the baseball clubs, with the help of the newspapers, tried to gain more respectability for the sport. "Ladies" were encouraged to attend and were provided with covered seats and free admission. 8 For one game the Tribune of July 22, 1877, promised: "Ladies may rest assured that nothing improper will be permitted on the grounds." Betting and boisterousness also undermined the game's respectability in other parts of the country, and similar attempts to attract women to the games were made: ". . . Experience has shown that nothing tends so much to elevate the game, to rid it of evil influences, to lead to proper decorum and to gentlemanly contests than the countenance and patronage of the ladies." 0 Campaigns to woo women to the contests were sometimes successful, but there is no indication that the presence of the "fair sex" made crowds less boisterous or hindered betting.

Some prominent Salt Lake businessmen supported the baseball teams, and the newspapers were quick to point this out. In addition, the management of the ball park announced that "Disreputable characters will not be permitted on the grounds." Although the 5

Claude S. Fischer, The Urban Experience (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Janovich, 1976), pp.

102-103, 121.

6 Salt Lake Tribune, April 19, May 15, April 20, 1877.

7 Ibid., May 16, September 2 1 , 1877; Salt Lake Herald, J u n e 1, 1877, July 14, 1878. T h o u g h many Mormons at the time did not adhere strictly to their Word of Wisdom in private, most at least condemned public smoking and drinking.

8 Salt Lake Tribune, July 15, 1875, April 19, May 6, J u n e 1, 1877, J u n e 15, 1879; Salt Lake Herald, July 15, 1875, May 10, 1877. â&#x20AC;˘'American Chronicle of Sports and Pastimes, May 28, 1868, p. 172, as quoted in J o h n Rickards Betts, America's Sporting Heritage, 1850-1950 (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1974), pp.

218-19. For further treatment of the influence of women on sports, see Betts, pp. 218-31.

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Tribune and the Herald regularly reported odds that bettors were making on the game, neither paper approved of betting on "manly sports." Both papers also urged spectators to be polite. T h o u g h loud cheering might be condoned, offensive yelling would not. 10

By July 1877 an out-of-town team had been signed to visit Salt Lake City. T h e Cheyenne Red Stockings were coming, and the series between the Deserets and the Cheyennes was one of the chief topics of conversation in the city. It was reported that the Cheyenne team was the champion of Wyoming and further that it had beaten the best Denver team. Tickets for reserved seats were sold prior to the game at twenty-five cents for general admission and fifty cents for seats in the grandstand. By the time of the first game with Cheyenne seats were available for as many as two thousand. 11 T h e Cheyennes came into town for three games to be played over the Pioneer Day holiday. T h e initial game on July 23 was the first contest between a Salt Lake team and an out-of-territory club.

T h r e e thousand spectators were present, which meant that many were forced to stand around the periphery of the playing field. T h e final score of 3-2 for the Deserets indicated the improvement in play from earlier days when both teams might score close to a h u n d r e d runs in a single game. Never had there been such a low-scoring game in Utah. T h e Tribune proudly reported: "The very small score of two to three has never been equalled before by any club west of Omaha." 12 Again, the newspapers were attempting to attract local interest by showing the Salt Lake players were as good as any in the West. Both the Tribune and the Herald published full reports of the game and included extensive box scores similar to those used now.

T h e box scores recorded at-bats, outs, runs, total bases, put-outs, assists, errors, doubles, triples, runners left on base, called balls, strikes, strikeouts, out on flies, and flies missed for each team. This represents Salt Lake's growing sophistication in understanding baseball and also the newspaper readers' growing interest in the statistical data of the game." 3 More people than ever before in Utah turned out for the game on July 24. T h e Tribune reported that five thousand spectators were l0

Salt Lake Tribune, April 18, June 12, September 23, 1877; Salt Lake Herald, July 22, 1877, May 24, July 14, 1878, June 22, 1879. u Salt Lake Herald, July 22, 1877; Salt Lake Tribune, July 21, 22, 1877. i2 SaltLake Tribune, July 24, 1877.

13 Ibid.; Salt Lake Herald, July 24, 1877. Some historians believe statistics are an important component of modern sports. See Allen Guttman, From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports

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present, while the Herald estimated the attendance at between five and six thousand. 14 These figures, if correct, were equalled several times later in 1877 and 1878 but were only rarely approached again until the twentieth century. Salt Lake City at the time had approximately twenty thousand residents so that the equivalent of 25 percent of the local population attended the game. T h e game was long and finally had to be called for darkness. T h e score stood at 18-18, and the Deserets kept their two-year unbeaten string of victories alive. Five thousand spectators also showed up for the third and final game on July 25, won by the Deserets 17-11. 15 T h e series excited a great deal of talk in town: Nothing since the exposure of the stealings of the City Hall ring by that immortal Grand Jury, has caused so much talk among all the classes.

Judges, lawyers, Grand Jurors, Federal officials, merchants, ministers, tradesmen, and everybody else deserted the business part of town to go and witness the three successive matches, and still base ball is the chief topic of conversation.

Having a local team made u p of local players beat clubs from other Intermountain cities was a major source of pride. Residents now spoke of players on the Deseret club "As 'our pitcher, our catcher, our fielders,' etc." 16 Shortly after the Cheyenne series, two occurrences rocked the Deseret organization and undermined its unified support. T h e first of these was a charge made by the Cheyenne team that their pitcher had been paid by the Deserets to throw the games. This brought an immediate denial from the Deserets, who told the Herald that their club was organized to foster the national game in the territory and "to afford its members a means for physical culture,. . . and not as a medium for trickery and fraud." Charges of bribing opposing players were fairly common in the early days of baseball. Many believed the charges and objected to the game as a result. 17 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), pp. 109-10; Roger Angell, The Summer Game (New York: Viking Press, 1972), pp. 4, 303.

14 Salt Lake Tribune, July 25, 1877; Salt Lake Herald, July 26, 1877. A later reminiscence recalled the "exciting home games that used to deplete Main Street" (Salt Lake Herald, September 28, 1884). l!

-Salt Lake Tribune, July 25, 26, 1877; Salt Lake Herald, July 26, 1877. ,R SaltLake Tribune, July 27, 1877. T h e Deserets at this time were made up of both Mormons and Gentiles, and so those interested in baseball from both groups probably supported the club. Gunther Barth argues that city people discussed games at work as a diversion from work, and thus sports provided an important socializing function in this way also. See his City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 151. n Salt Lake Herald, July 31,1877. See also David Quentin Voigt, American Baseball: From Gentleman's Sport to the Commissioner System (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), pp. 17, 20, 6 1 .

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Although this charge made the Deserets uneasy and forced them to defend themselves to the city, the second accusation had a more divisive effect. In a letter to the editor of the Tribune, "Consideration" (as the writer signed the August 3 letter) objected to the name of the local team because of the strong overtones of Mormonism included in the word "deseret," especially now that the team was predominantly non-Mormon. Many of the writer's friends believed the club to be largely Mormon because of the name and were reluctant to support the team for that reason. "Consideration" had no objection to Mormon baseball players, nor even to a team composed primarily of Mormons. Such a team, however, "would have to look for sympathy and assistance in a different direction to that from which the Deserets club receive the sinews of war." T h e writer believed that one might as well have "an apostle for a pitcher, 'Holiness to the Lord' on the bat and an 'All seeing eye' on the ball," as be called the Deserets. He concluded his epistle by stating that he would not personally withhold his "sympathy or support from the Deserets on account of their objectionable name," but felt that many others might.

T h e directors of the club admitted that their support came largely from the Gentile portion of Salt Lake City (and therein told an important story), but they felt that it was only because "the Mormon classes are mainly foreign to the sport, and must be in a measure educated to it." Of the starting nine of the Deserets, four were Mormons, and they were good players who were respected by the club. T o the directors, " T h e question of religion is a subject which in social life should have no bearing." With respect to the name of the team, "The word 'Deseret' is the motto of the territory of Utah, and we certainly see no reason for changing the name.'" 8 T h e controversy did not end there; it had hardly begun. Two responses in the next day's Tribune came from Deseret players. G. W. Snow and W. George wrote that they were two of the four classed as Mormons in the first nine of the team by the directors and they objected "to any such classification. Please state that we belong to the non-Mormon element, and that the proportion of Gentiles to Mormons is seven to two, and not five to four." T h e other letter came ,s Salt Lake Herald, August 4, 1877. T h e statement that the major support for baseball came from the Gentile community is important, especially when it is understood that a large part of the Mormon population was made up of foreign-born or children of foreign-born. T h e sentiments of the directors were especially broad-minded considering the period in which they were written.

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from Charles P. Huey, one of the directors of the club. He protested the letter signed jointly by the directors of the club and objected strenuously to the statement that religion should have no bearing in social life. He highly regarded the Mormon players on the team but could not support so sweeping a social statement.

These controversies caused the four players classified initially in the Herald as Mormons to leave the team and necessitated a reorganization of the Deserets. T h r e e of the four players — William George, Richard P. Morris, and Joe Barlow —joined the new Red Stocking club which had recently been organized out of the best players of the Deserets' two major rivals: the Metropolitans and the Rough and Readys. 10 With the addition of the three former Deserets to the team, the Red Stockings were almost as strong as the Deserets.

What might have been disastrous for baseball in Salt Lake — the forced reorganization of the Deseret club — actually turned out to be a very healthy development. T h e Deserets were marginally weakened and the newly formed Red Stockings were strong enough to challenge the territorial champions.

A series of games was arranged between the two teams. Soon people were talking about the upcoming August 25 game as "the sporting match of the season," and it was "the principal topic on the streets and in the parlor." 20 T h e Deserets were entirely Gentile after the reorganization, and the Red Stocking club was almost completely Mormon. T h e Gentile Tribune and the Mormon Herald favored the team each would be expected to, though both papers were generally pro-baseball. 21 T h r e e thousand enthusiastic spectators turned out for the game. It is probable that more were not there only because the pride Vi Salt Lake Tribune, September 9, October 7, 1877. Snow and George, the two who disavowed affiliation with the Mormon church, left the Deseret club along with the two acknowledged Mormons, Morris and Barlow. Morris was later a Democratic mayor of Salt Lake City in the early twentieth century (DeseretNews, April 3, 1925). Barlow's full name was Joseph Smith Barlow, and it is clear that he was a Mormon, as he was endowed in the Salt Lake Temple in 1874 (Family Group Records, Deseret News, March 25, 1919).

20 Salt Lake Tribune, August 24, 1877.

2 ' Of the nine Red Stockings who played in 1878 when they won the territorial championship (the lineup was only slightly different from the 1877 team), eight of the nine starters, Heber Grant, Dick Morris, Aflie Barker, Joe Barlow, Gronway Parry, Ollie Bess, Alexander Watson, and David C. Dunbar, were clearly Mormons. Only William George, who was at least seen as belonging to the "Mormon element" until he disavowed his church affiliation in his letter to the editor, could possibly not be classified as a Mormon. See Patriarchal Blessing Index, Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City; Family Group Records, Obituary Index, LDS Genealogical Society; Deseret News, March 25, 1919, April 3, 1925, November 21, 1938, March 11, 1943. It should be noted that the father of the Red Stocking player David C. Dunbar was one of the founders and owners of the Salt Lake Herald and thus that paper had added reason to favor the Reds.

See Deseret News, November 21, 1938.

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of the city was not directly at stake and because many still felt that the Deserets were invincible and believed the game would be one-sided.

T h e Deserets lost, however, by a score of 22-14 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; their first loss in several years. 22 No longer did Salt Lake have only one "crack" (to use the then-popular term) team; it now had two clubs that would contest for the territorial championship.

T h e second game was played on September 8 before a crowd estimated at four thousand by the Herald and twenty-five h u n d r e d by the Tribune. T h e Deserets returned to their winning ways by scoring a 6-3 victory in a closely contested game. 23 T h e Herald's reporter would have been happier with this score than with the first game's total, despite the outcome, because he had earlier written that he hoped the games would be low scoring so that local spectators could see "that Utah is not behind other states and territories in turning out good players of the national game." 24 T h e stage was set for the third and concluding game of the first real contest for the territorial championship in several years.

Both teams had practiced daily in preparation for the first two games, and now they redoubled their efforts. Community interest was running higher than ever. Five thousand turned out for the third game. "Considerable sums of money" were wagered, and one Reds supporter put up $250 in bets. T h e more experienced Deserets won decisively by a score of 12-4, making some bettors very happy while others "seriously meditated upon the fleetness of riches and the mutability of h u m a n affairs." T h e Tribune regretted the gambling but felt that "In all out-door sports betting is a propensity that will ever be apparent, and it would be an exceedingly difficult matter to wean men from indulging in these occasional." 25 T h e 1877 season was to have ended with this series, but both teams agreed to play once more during the Mormon conference in October to give their "country cousins" a chance to see a good game of baseball. T h e teams were consciously trying to introduce the game to the hinterlands of Utah and thereby expand its appeal. T h e Deserets again won, 11-4.26 A number of new developments in baseball had been seen in Salt Lake during this season. Scores were lowered, indicating im22

SaltLake Tribune, August 26, 1877; Salt Lake Herald, August 26, 1877.

Salt Lake Tribune, September 9, 1877; Salt Lake Herald, September 9, 1877.

24 Salt Lake Herald, August 21, 1877.

25 SaltLake Tribune, September 23, 1877.

26 Ibid., October 6, 1877.

23

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proved skills on the part of the teams. Alston, the catcher for the Deserets, who rarely completed a game without being knocked senseless by a foul ball or dislocating fingers or splitting thumbs, tried out a new wire mask like the one introduced the same year in the East.27 Alston's numerous injuries and his use of the mask provide further clues to why scores were going down: changes in pitching. Pitchers in Salt Lake introduced the fast ball into the local game in 1876, and in 1877 the best local pitchers }JC M, added curve balls to their repertoire (though they were still throwing underhand). These new and faster pitches W. A . C A N D Y C U M M I N G S made the catcher's job more hazardous PITCHED F I R S T CURVE B A L L IN BASEBALL but also lowered the scores. Both the fast HISTORY. I N V E N T E D CURVE A S AMATEUR ball and the curve came to Utah within a ACE OF BROOKLYN STARS IN 1 B 6 7 . E N D E D comparatively short time after these LONG C A R E E R AS H A R T F O R D P I T C H E R IN 28 NATIONAL L E A G U E ' S F I R S T Y E A R 1 8 7 6 . pitches gained wide usage in the East.

C o m m u n i t y interest was high in 1877 because early in the season the DesW. A. "Candy" Cummings erets had defeated a club from a rival plaque at Cooperstown, N. Y Intermountain city. Salt Lake was still Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and cohesive e n o u g h to feel c o m m u n i t y Museum. pride in such an accomplishment. T h e city was, however, growing rapidly, and much of the population may have been losing its interest in making Salt Lake appear up-to-date.

As cities grow such broad community interest diminishes, but as it does residents begin identifying with smaller groups within the city.

According to the subcultural theory of urban sociologists, the gathering of large numbers of people in a city produces new groups or subcultures that are not possible in areas with smaller populations. Sheer numbers increase the chances of finding enough people 27 Salt Lake Herald, August 21,1877; Salt Lake Tribune, July 26, September 23, October 7, 1877. T h e catcher's mask had been introduced in 1877 by Thayer, the captain of Harvard's team, who had James Tyng, his catcher, wear one. Voigt, American Baseball, p. 85; Will Irwin, "Baseball II â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Working Out the Game," Collier's, May 15, 1909, p. 15.

28 Arthur Cummings, a pitcher for the Brooklyn Stars, introduced "curved pitching" in 1867, but he had few imitators for a number of years, Will Irwin, "Baseball III â&#x20AC;&#x201D; T h e Art of Pitching," Collier's J u n e 5, 1909, p. 11; Voigt, American Baseball, p. 13; Seymour R. Church, Base Ball: The History, Statistics, and Romance of the National Game from Its Inception to the Present Time, 1902; reprint ed. Princeton, N.J.: Pyne Press, 1974, pp. 33-34.

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with similar interests in the city. Thus, many subcultures found in a city are not found in the country. Residents of cities tend to identify with these subgroups rather than with the city itself as the city grows.

Most people, of course, are affiliated with a number of subcultures in the city, and there is much overlapping of groups. 20 It is evident that the series between the Deserets and Red Stockings attracted the support of several subcultures in the city: the baseball community, those interested in betting, and groups of Mormons and Gentiles who supported the two clubs and felt vindication at the victory of the "Mormon" team or "Gentile" team.

At the end of the 1877 season, the Tribune published the Deserets' record for the year (13 wins, 1 loss, 1 tie) and announced that the team hoped to secure their own playing field and be reorganized on a "corporate basis" â&#x20AC;&#x201D; apparently meaning that there would be professional players. 30 T h e 1878 season opened, as the previous season had, with much public interest. T h e r e were now two "crack" teams in Salt Lake City, and many people wanted to see the Red Stockings and Deserets play.

T h e Deserets had evidently been unsuccessful in obtaining their own park, for they once again petitioned the city council to lease the Washington Square field to them. However, a counter petition stated that a public area such as Washington Square should be used "for the public good, and not granted for private speculation."

Later, another petition from cricket players and other baseball players also asked that the Deseret petition not be granted. These opposing players did not want one team to have a monopoly on the field as in the previous year. This apparently struck a resonant chord with the city council, because it denied the Deseret petition. That the council's opposition was due to reluctance to giving only one team control over the field and not opposition to "private speculation" (in the form of charging admission for games) soon became clear when the Deserets joined with other baseball and cricket clubs to form the Salt Lake Base Ball and Cricket Association and again submitted a petition. This time the petition was granted, and the grounds were leased to the new association. T h e terms of the lease included the right to charge for match games (twenty-five cents was to be the normal charge, but it could be raised to fifty cents for games involv211

Fischer, The Urban Experience, pp. 68-151.

'Salt Lake Tribune, September 26, 1877.

u

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ing out-of-town teams) and some control over the field in order to protect the improvements to the park. 31 In May the association improved the ball park by resodding the field, extending the bleachers, and constructing a new grandstand.

In J u n e another grandstand was built, enlarging the seating capacity of the ball park. 32 Both the Deseret and Red Stocking clubs began playing teams in preparation for the inevitable championship series between them. After one such contest between the Red Stockings and the Mill Creek team, the Salt Lake Herald wrote that "The increasing interest in base ball is evident from the size and nature of the crowd that witnessed the game, many prominent citizens being among the most interested spectators." 33 T h e first game of the Reds-Deserets series took place on the first holiday of the summer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Decoration Day (May 30). Interest was high in the game, and precautions were taken so that no one could enter the game without paying admission. Two policemen patrolled the fences and the grandstands to guarantee an orderly game. Fully five thousand people watched the game from the bleachers, grandstands, and grass a r o u n d the diamond and from buggies and treetops outside the park. T h e Red Stockings gave the Deserets their second loss in as many years, 11-3. TheHerald noted that the crowd's "sympathy was by large odds with the Reds." It is unclear if this was due to the fact that the Reds received their support from the Mormon population, which was numerically dominant in Salt Lake, or because the Reds were the underdogs. (The Reds had a new second baseman in 1878, future Mormon apostle and president Heber J. Grant. 34 ) Some suspected the Deserets of throwing the game to create greater interest in subsequent games, something that was denied emphatically by the Deserets. 35 T h e second match game, played almost two weeks later, also drew an "immense crowd" and again resulted in a win for the Red Stockings by a score of 9 to 6. T h e 31

Salt Lake City Council Minutes, March 19, 26, April 9, 23, 30, 1878, microfilm copy, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; Salt Lake Herald, March 20, 27, April 10, 24, May 1, 1878.

32 SaltLake Tribune, May 7, J u n e 22, 1878. When this grandstand was completed it is probable that more grandstand and bleacher seats were available at Washington Square than would be again offered at a baseball park in Salt Lake until the twentieth century.

33 Salt Lake Herald, May 24, 1878.

34 Ibid., May 30, 1878; Salt Lake Tribune, May 30, 1878. Grant had played in 1877 for the Metropolitans, probably the third best team in Salt Lake; see Salt Lake Herald, April 19, 1877.

35 Salt Lake Herald, May 30, J u n e 1, 1878; Salt Lake Tribune, May 30, J u n e 1, 1878. Actually, the Deserets publicly offered (with their tongues firmly in their cheeks) to throw the game for $5,000 per player.

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The champion Salt Lake Red Stockings team of1878: Alexander Watson, Richard P. Morris, David C. Dunbar, Gronway Parry, HeberJ. Grant, Oliver Best, Joseph Barlow, Allie Barker, and William George. Improvement Era, November 1936.

Herald was disappointed with one of the Reds who wasted "fully fifteen minutes over a call by the umpire." 36 T h e Deserets played the third game on J u n e 29 with an "imported first baseman" who was probably the first professional player in Salt Lake, but he did not do well and made no difference in the game. A "tremendous crowd" had assembled at "the square" to witness what many had thought would be the last of the three-of-five games series, but the Deserets won by a big margin â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 22-6. 37 Now the two local teams were ready for outside competition and the Denver Browns arrived for a series of games against both the Deserets and the Red Stockings. These games attracted a "great deal of attention throughout the territory, and the railroad companies have made arrangements to run excursion trains, tickets for which will give general admission at the ball grounds." 3 8 Not only were Salt Lakers proud of their two "crack" teams, many in the territory also were, and they all looked forward to matches with "outside" teams to see how good their local clubs really were.

'Salt Lake Herald, June 16, 1878.

1 Ibid., June 29, 30, 1878; Salt Lake Tribune, June 29, 30, 1878. l Salt Lake Herald, June 28, 1878.

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Although Otero, the Denver pitcher, was the best hurler yet to play in Salt Lake with a "very swift ball" and "all the curves," the Deserets won the first game 13-6. They beat the Browns again on July 4 before another "immense" crowd, and the Reds beat them on July 5. T h e Browns finally won a game against the Deserets on July 6 but were again defeated by the Reds on July 7. This was the first time Salt Lake had seen a number of match games on successive days, and it taxed local interest. One man who wanted to form a quoits league found that "the continual cry" for baseball "is becoming confoundedly monitorious." T h e Herald was relieved to see the series finished. Fewer spectators had shown up at the park each day because "five consecutive games on consecutive days are rather more than the admirers of this amusement can endure." 3 0 T h e following Saturday the fourth game of the series between the Reds and Deserets was played, with the Deserets winning 13-3 before the noisiest crowd yet seen in Salt Lake City. Not only was the normally noisy east side loud, the west was "not at all backward in giving evidence of its loyalty by vociferous applause and not infrequent yelling," which was, however, "devoid of these idiodic and extremely insulting remarks which characterize the utterances from those on the sunny side." 40 T h e local spectators were becoming what would now be known as "fans" and what were called "cranks" in nineteenth-century America. 41 T h e arrival of a n o t h e r out-of-town team, this time from Cheyenne, was greeted with some fanfare because the Wyoming club reportedly had added several professional players from the East to its roster. T h e two Salt Lake teams made quick work of the Cheyenne Reds, however. T h e Deserets won by large margins in successive games, and then the Salt Lake Reds beat them by a score of 14-12, which appears quite close until it is realized that several Deserets played for the Cheyenne club.42i Finally the highlight of the season approached â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the deciding game in the territorial championship series. T h e Salt Lake Tribune reported that the games between the Deserets and Red Stockings 3!

Tbid., July 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 1878; Salt Lake Tribune, J u n e 30, July 3, 6, 7, 1878. City fathers, upset during the series because the management of the ball park had begun to charge seventy-five cents for seats in the covered grandstand, forced the admission price for the covered seats to be lowered; Salt Lake Tribune, July 4, 1878.

40 Salt Lake Herald, July 14, 1878.

41 Robert Smith, Illustrated History of Baseball (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1973), p. 28.

42 Salt Lake Herald, July 19, 23, 25, 27, 28, 1878; Salt Lake Tribune, July 23, 25, 27, 28, 1878.

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were far more interesting than the match games with teams from without the territory. Betting was light; there were few takers at three-to-one odds for the Deserets to once again take the territorial pennant. However, the Reds won 11-10 before "a tremendous and excited crowd." This game, when added to all the others of the year, had "broken the back of base ball for the season," according to the Herald. T h e r e had been enough baseball for one summer. After the game both teams had their pictures taken by pioneer photographer C R. Savage. At least the photo of the Red Stockings survives. 43 T h e 1878 season was probably the most successful year for baseball in nineteenth-century Salt Lake City. T h e city had two excellent teams that were well matched and that could beat other teams in the Intermountain West. Financial support was strong enough that both the Deserets and Red Stockings probably played on a semi-professional basis.44 T h e two teams apparently derived much of their support from different subcultures in Salt Lake and so provided not only a source of pride in the town and territory but also created a spirited rivalry in the city. This type of rivalry between Mormons and non-Mormons may have had a healthy effect on the everyday relations of the two groups by allowing them to take out some of their frustration with each other on the playing field.

Baseball expanded a great deal on a more informal level in 1878. Teams made up of co-workers in stores and crafts played against each other on numerous occasions, and even such groups as the local yacht club split into two teams to play.45 It is likely that one could see a baseball practice or game on Washington Square every day during the summer except Sundays. 46 Such informal baseball

43 Salt Lake Tribune, August 3, 4, September 12, 1878; Salt Lake Herald, August 4, 1878; T h e photograph of the Red Stockings was published in an article on Heber J. Grant in xhe Improvement Era, November 1936, p. 663.

44 T h e r e are some oblique references in the papers to players receiving some compensation for playing. For example, when the Deserets played the Brown Stockings once in August, several of their players were unable to play and the team's roster was "padded out" with amateurs (Salt Lake Herald, September 1, 1878). Also, on July 3 a letter to the editor of the Herald referred to the players of both teams as "professionals" (ibid., July 3, 1878). An informal history of the local game written in 1884 stated that "there was a time in the history of the National Game in this city, when its devotees made as much from following it, as the average actor made from following the stage" (ibid., September 28, 1884).

4 *Salt Lake Herald, July 18, August 2, 1878; Salt Lake Tribune, August 1, 2, 1878.

46 Sunday baseball was outlawed and ordinances banning Sunday play were strictly enforced (Salt Lake Herald, May 26, 1874, J u n e 4, 1879). Later, when baseball was regularly played on Sunday in Salt Lake, the Deseret News strongly opposed such play (DeseretNews, October 12, 1891). Sunday play was a continuing source of conflict in baseball around the United States in the late nineteenth century (Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years [New York: Oxford University Press, 1960], pp. 9 1 , 135, 139, 149, 211, 261).

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also provided an avenue for would-be Deserets and Red Stockings to develop skills and display their talents.

T h e newspapers, which had played an important role in the popularization of baseball before, played an even more significant role in 1878. Upcoming games were heavily publicized and informal histories of the game in Utah were included in the papers. Extensive reports of games were published, indicating an increasingly sophisticated reading audience educated in part by the local newspapers. Detailed box scores showed a growing interest in the statistics of the game, further evidenced by the offer of a prize for the best batting aver47

age.

By April 6, 1879, negotiations had been entered into by the Base Ball Association to have teams from Denver, Laramie, San Francisco, and Chicago visit Salt Lake. 48 T h e Chicago White Stockings had just two years earlier been A. J. Reach, a celebrated champion of the National League in the National League player of the league's first year of existence. 40 For once 1870s, later became an (and the unusual nature of this must be equipment manufacturer. emphasized), teams from each of these Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and cities actually did play in Salt Lake City.

Museum.

T h e outside teams were being courted because "The manifest intention of the interested parties is to produce this season a better grade of playing than has ever been seen in this city." In addition, the Herald noted "a more friendly feeling between the local rivals . . . Every endeavor will be made to secure harmony between them, and the result will probably be more interesting games and better order." 50 T h e Salt Lake baseball fraternity was doing everything it could to make the 1879 season even better than the previous season.

T h e Deserets and Red Stockings resumed their rivalry on April 12. A parade was staged before the game to advertise it and to give it 47

Salt Lake Herald, August 29, 1878.

Ibid., April 6, 1879.

4!)

Hy Turkin and S. C. Thompson, The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, 6th ed. rev. (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1972), p. 43.

50 Salt Lake Herald, April 6, 1879.

48

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a little more "pomp." T h e Deserets won 9-5 in a game shortened to five innings because of inclement weather. After the game it was announced that the 1879 territorial championship would consist of a five-of-nine game series to be begun in two weeks.51 After the first Deserets-Reds game the Herald reported that "The outlook is such as would indicate a revival of last year's base ball fever." T h e Deserets won the first game of the championship series 12-8. It was clear that both teams had firm financial backing. T h e reorganized Red Stockings had new uniforms, the game was played for stakes of $250, and the Deserets once again fielded a paid player, this time a genuine professional. 52 R. E. McKelvey, the Deserets' new captain, catcher, and sometime pitcher, was only the first of several "imported" players the Deserets brought to Salt Lake in 1879.

McKelvey had the year before played sixty games for the National League team in Indianapolis a n d was thus a g e n u i n e major leaguer. 53 In spite of the Deserets' new professional player (and possibly players, even this early in the season), the Red Stockings won the next game 11-9 in extra innings, once again before a large crowd.

For some reason dissatisfaction was manifested with the Reds, because soon there was talk of getting the previous year's full team together to play the Deserets. This is difficult to explain in light of the fact that only three games had apparently been played between the two teams and the Red Stockings had won one of them. Perhaps other games had been played that went unreported because the Herald noted that "The failure of the Red Stockings of this year has brought their friends out, and they propose to see the best nine put forward." Much of the city was undoubtedly interested in seeing local players beat a team partly composed of imported professionals.

Soon a game was arranged between the Deserets and the Red Stockings of 1878. "Barker, Morris, Grant, Watson, Barlow, McLain, George, Dunbar, and Bess" were all set to play the Deserets.

51 Ibid., April 13, 1879; Salt LakeTribune, April 13, 1879. T h e tradition of advertising the game by a parade continued in 1879 and in the 1880s after baseball was revived in the city. h2 Salt Lake Herald, May 1, 2, 1879; Salt Lake Tribune, May 2, 1879.

53 T u r k i n and Thompson, Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, p. 278. It is unclear whether the professional players were paid for playing baseball or were instead paid for no-show jobs. One of the primary sources for the fact that there were professionals in Salt Lake in 1879, an 1884 reminiscence, states that "McKelvey . . . [and others] had been paid regular salaries." However, the same article also states that the players were "provided with easy positions," indicating that they were not paid directly for playing baseball (Salt Lake Herald, September 28, 1884). If they were in essence paid u n d e r the table for playing baseball, this would mirror the early practice in the East, where for various reasons the first professionals were not paid openly (Smith, Illustrated History, pp. 23-24).

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T h e Tribune reported that "Friday's game continues to attract attention and in sporting circles it is the only thing of comment, in fact, a season of ball sport is now at hand that really promises well." T h e Deserets won 17 to 15 before a crowd that approached the size and enthusiasm of those of the previous year, but they had to rely on luck.54 T h e old Red Stockings had gotten together for only one game and had been defeated. T h e new Reds were apparently never to play as a team again. T h e Deserets were once again viewed as invincible.

T h e Tribune hoped that "We of Salt Lake" would take pride in the Deserets as the city's representative in the baseball world and provide the support they needed to do well against other teams in the West.55 No longer would religious rivalry play a role in local baseball.

Now the support would have to come largely from a sense of community pride. T o maintain its support the local club would have to be very successful against outside teams.

In early J u n e the team from Laramie arrived. Actually the team was made u p of players from Laramie, Cheyenne, Green River, and Evanston and reportedly had once again a number of players from the East. An arrangement had been worked out among the Denver, Laramie, and Salt Lake teams to crown a Rocky Mountain champion based on games the three clubs would play against each other. On the day of the first game with the Wyoming team the grounds were filled "quite a while before the hour of commencement in anticipation of the finest base ball game ever witnessed here." Instead, the team was the poorest that had ever visited Salt Lake and lost 16-2.

T h e Herald believed that at least six teams in Salt Lake could defeat the Laramie club. T h e Deserets won the second game by a score of 24-2, and the Herald reported "when we see a game we like to see it played by persons slightly acquainted with the game at least."5 Baseball observers in Salt Lake were no longer content to watch second-rate play.

T h e next important development of the season came in late J u n e when the San Francisco Athletics, the first fully professional team to play in Salt Lake, arrived. Hopes were high that the local championship club could beat a professional nine. T h e Deserets brought in two more "imported" players: Funkhouser, who had ">4Salt Lake Herald, May 11, 25, 1879; Salt Lake Tribune, May 11, 28, 31, 1879. ^Salt Lake Tribune, J u n e 4, 1879.

56 Ibid., J u n e 4, 6, 1879; Salt Lake Herald, J u n e 6, 10, 1879.

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probably played with the St. Louis National League team the previous year, and C L. McKelvey, probably the captain's brother. T h e California team was alternately identified by Salt Lake papers as the California League champion and as the "best and most successful team in the West." Betting was heavy, and local gamblers had become sophisticated e n o u g h t h a t they s p e n t time watching the two clubs practice. T h e upcoming games were the talk of the territory: "Everything is base ball, and parties here are expecting friends from all parts of the Territory to visit them and spend a week, which will be one of pleasure ind e e d , unless s o m e t h i n g u n f o r e s e e n happens to mar it."57 On J u n e 28, the day of the first game, the ball grounds at Washington Square saw the biggest crowd ever. T h e c San Francisco club won a very close game « 13-12. T h e Herald, always desirous of gentlemanly conduct on the diamond, Player Harry Wright designed objected to the Athletics' "kicking" at the the standard baseball uniform. u m p i r e and the crowd's s u b s e q u e n t Courtesy of the National 58 hissing of the San Francisco players.

Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Another large crowd was on hand for the second game in which the Deserets led until the ninth inning when the Athletics scored several runs and won 20-19. T h e Deserets had played with sore hands, one of the liabilities of playing without gloves in the 1870s. In addition, the Herald reporter found the game — exciting and close as it was — "tiresomely long." 50 But on July 2 the Deserets won 23-15, on the 4th they won by the low score of 5-3 before an "immense concourse of people," and on the 5th they won 18-7, thus taking three of five games from the professional Athletics. T h e Herald immediately proclaimed the Salt Lake club to be the champion of the West.60

S7i?

"Salt Lake Herald, J u n e 1 4 , 2 2 , 2 6 , 2 7 , 1879; Salt Lake Tribune, J u n e 13, 19,22, 1879; Turkin and Thompson, Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, pp. 176, 250. T h e entire west stands were covered and extra bleacher seats were added for the series. ™Salt Lake Herald, J u n e 29, 1879.

5!

Tbid., July 1, 1879. See also Barth, City People, p. 151.

60 Salt Lake Herald, July 3, 6, 1879; Salt Lake Tribune, July 3, 6, 1879.

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When the San Francisco club left, they took with them the former Red Stockings' pitcher, Allie Barker. Barker, who was to r e t u r n to Salt Lake and remain prominent in baseball circles throughout most of the 1880s, was only the first of many home-town boys to be lured away from Salt Lake City by teams that could offer salaries and a chance to see more of the world. Barker was soon lauded by the Alta California for his fine pitching. 61 T h e next team to visit Salt Lake was the Omaha club, professionals in the Northwestern League. After Omaha won the first two games by close margins, it was decided that a championship series would be established among the California League teams, Omaha, and Salt Lake. Each team would play each of the others five games to determine the champion of the West. This fell through when Salt Lake beat Omaha in the third game. According to the Salt Lake papers, Omaha feared that they might actually lose to the Deserets and therefore left before playing all five scheduled games. Salt Lake's hopes of a grand league and a championship series were dashed. This was only one of many attempts by a Salt Lake club to form a league. Even when leagues were later established, few lasted through a season. 62 Denver suddenly got the urge to contest the Deserets in their claim for the supremacy of baseball in the Intermountain West: T h e Salt Lake Deseret club occupies too high a position in base ball circles to remain unmolested, they have scooped everything of a local nature there this year, bounced Laramie from the track, corraled the pets of San Francisco, scared out the Omahas, and made arrangements to tackle the champion Chicagos in October.

T h e n the Denver paper asserted that their local team was the best ever, "and if Denver cannot capture the laurels from the Deserets this season, she may as well give it up forever." 63 For the Denver series the Deserets signed Allie Barker, who had recently returned from San Francisco, and Bob Addy, who was an old professional. Addy was probably the third sometime major leaguer on the 1879 Deserets and the one with the most impressive 61

Salt Lake Herald, July 17, 1879; the Herald quoted Alta Californian, July 14, 1879.

Salt Lake Herald, July 26, 27, 1879; Salt Lake Tribune, July 26, 1879.

Even as late as 1905 leagues that Salt Lake teams were members of were unable to successfully complete a season (Salt Lake Tribune, J u n e 19, 1905). T h e Deseret News in 1906 divulged that through that year professional leagues in which Salt Lake teams had been involved had almost always gone bust (Deseret News, August 3, 1906).

63 Denver Tribune, August 2, 1879, as quoted in Salt Lake Tribune, August 19, 1879.

62

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Chicago White Stockings, 1876-77. The White Stockings traveled to Salt Lake City in 1879 for a series with the Deserets. Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

credentials. He had played in the old National Association from 1871 to 1875, was a member of the champion Chicago White Stockings in 1876, and was player-manager of the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1877. T h e Deserets beat the Denver team four out of the five games. 64 T h e Rochester H o p Bitters arrived in September and were the first genuine eastern professional team to play in Salt Lake City. T h e Herald wrongly believed that the club was a member of the National League, but the team was very good nonetheless. Crowds of over one thousand turned out to watch the Deserets lose to the H o p Bitters 17-5 and 28-3. T h e Tribune expressed surprise at the skill of the Rochester team: "It was simply bewildering the way the Empire State club sailed in and sent the leather shooting to all points of the compass." 65 T h e Deserets then went to Denver for a return series with the Browns. A complaint that was to become common emerged during 64 Salt Lake Herald, August 21, 1879; Turkin and Thompson, Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, p. 74.

Addy is credited with being the originator of the practice of sliding into base, though at the time his "act was largely thought a clownish one" (Smith, Illustrated History, p. 28); Salt Lake Herald, August 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 1879; Salt Lake Tribune, August 24, 26, 28, 29, 3 1 , 1879.

65 Salt Lake Herald, September 10, 1879; Turkin and Thompson, Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, p.

43; Salt Lake Tribune, September 19, 1879.

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this first road trip and indicates once again the increasing sophistication of baseball observers. T h e Deserets were losing to the Denver team they had so recently beaten, and "no one is surprised because they left many of their best players." 66 Time and again this same complaint was repeated against future Salt Lake teams that traveled elsewhere to play.67 T h e papers were apparently trying to salvage respectability and support for the local team by in essence saying the Deserets were better than Denver but were losing only because of poor management. T h e Herald reported the score of the first game as 10-6 in favor of the Denver club, and none of the Salt Lake papers reported the scores of the other games. Although the team lost every game in Denver, they received a warm greeting when they returned to Salt Lake City.68 Finally, the Chicago White Stockings of the National League arrived in town for three games with the Deserets. Chicago won 24-4 in the first game and 14-0 in the second (although McKelvey, who pitched for the Deserets in the second game, allowed only one earned run â&#x20AC;&#x201D; indicating the lack of defensive support a club might be expected to give). For the third contest the two teams split up, and the game ended 14-9 with neither club being able to claim victory or defeat. 60 T h e summer of 1879 had brought several new developments to the local game. For the first time clubs had visited that were entirely professional. Salt Lake had enlisted several "imported" players, who were being paid u n d e r the table if not openly, enabling the Deserets to play on equal terms with all but the professional teams from the East. Another first was also seen during 1879. Although Salt Lake teams had earlier planned road trips, they had never been able to take such trips. Their first road trip (to Denver) had been unsuccessful, but it was significant that a Salt Lake team had ventured out to play.

Other developments would soon undermine baseball in Salt Lake City. No longer was there a brisk local rivalry to stimulate support. Thus, "subcultural" support for the game was weakened.

Salt Lakers were now called upon to support a team made up increasingly of outsiders. "Cranks" had no close relationships with 66

Salt Lake Tribune, September 26, 1879.

See, e.g., Salt Lake Herald, July 23, August 2, 1885.

68 Ibid., September 23, October 1, 1879.

6!, Ibid., October 11, 12, 1879; Salt Lake Tribune, October 10, 11, 1879. fi7

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these outside professionals, and thus support for the team had to be derived largely from a sense of community pride. T h e club had to be successful to insure such support.

T h e 1879 season ended on an ambivalent note for baseball in Salt Lake City. T h e period of 1877-79 had seen a flowering of baseball in the city. Fan interest was often intense and baseball filled an important recreational need for players and spectators alike.

Players' skills improved considerably to meet intense intracity and intercity rivalries. Salt Lake was proud of its "crack" teams, especially those made up of local players. Spectator interest soared during part of 1877, all of 1878, and part of 1879 for games between the Deserets and Red Stockings, which had strong religious overtones.

T h e subcultural interest in the game was added to community interest to create the greatest support of baseball nineteenth-century Salt Lake City saw.

Commercially, the sport was successful enough to enable the Deserets and Red Stockings to play on a semi-professional basis in 1878 and to enable the Deserets to attract genuine professional players in 1879. T h e addition of these new professionals led, however, to the dissolution of the Red Stockings, who found it impossible to compete. Support continued for the new Deserets as long as they were winning, but local spectators found it difficult to support players they did not really know when they represented Salt Lake and lost.

Other aspects of the game weakened support for baseball in Salt Lake City. Widespread gambling was criticized in some quarters.

Rumors of "thrown" games were often circulated. Loud, boisterous crowds worsened the reputation of the sport and did not endear baseball to those who lived close to Washington Square. Because of these problems the city council refused to relet Washington Square to the Deserets in 1880, and no high caliber baseball was played in the city for several years afterward. 70 T h e period of 1877-79 was the golden age of nineteenthcentury Salt Lake baseball. T h o u g h some developments encouraged local supporters of the game who looked forward to the 1880 season, other developments presaged the end of this golden age and a dim period ahead for baseball in Utah's capital city.

70

game.

See Cannon, " 'The National Game,' " pp. 97-118, for an account of the decline in the local

Joe Nielson hoists an impressive catch from Fish Lake.

Courtesy of the author.

Joe the Fish Lake Guide

BY LEA NIELSON LANE

1 HE MAN WHO "NEVER GOT SKUNKED, "Joe Nielson, my father, was a professional guide on Utah's Fish Lake for forty-five years. Getting skunked meant not catching a fish, and he was well known for finding the big ones.

Mrs. Lane, a daughter of Joe Nielson, lives in Provo.

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It has been more than seventy-five years since Joe and a friend traveled on horseback up the hogback trail to the lake that had seldom been fished by white men. On a bright J u n e day in 1908 they came to the legendary lake like mountain men of an earlier age, packing their bedrolls, their grub in saddlebags, and a scrap of canvas for shelter. Early the next morning Joe and his friend built a raft and went out onto the lake's dazzling blue-green surface. T h e air and the water were as pure as they had been the first day of creation. As Joe later described it, "In the shadows of the east bank mackinaws lay and looked as big as logs."

"There was no one else on the lake," he had continued his tale; "I was so eager I snarled my line the first cast." In the sparkling sunlight and glittering ripples they could see the small # 2 Colorado spinner touch the surface and the fish would come up to it. "In those days it was no trouble to catch the eastern brook," he said. He was a man of few words, but his eyes would light up when he talked of fishing with his friends and mentioned the steelheads, natives, and rainbow trout. "It was a great day," he said. "It didn't take long to get a box full."

How big is a box full? How many pounds could a man eat and salt down to take home? T h e r e were no ice chests or refrigerators in those days. At night they strung the fish from a tent pole to a high tree to keep them safe from bears and other wild animals; in the day they hid them in their bedding to keep the fish cool and safe from flies. Or they put the fish in a gunny sack and anchored it in the cold, running spring water.

Joe started fishing when Fish Lake was a wilderness area. Soon after his first trip to the lake, people from more distant parts than the next ranch to Grass Valley, Joe's home, started coming to the lake for vacations â&#x20AC;&#x201D; people with money in their pockets. And so my dad and my uncle, Sisson Hatch, decided to go professional. They put up a tent on the southwest edge of the lake near what they later named Doctor Creek, near Doc Easton's newly completed cabin. They h u n g out their shingles much the same as a lawyer or doctor did in those days: "JOE T H E GUIDE." This simple sign was destined to hang for forty-five years at one of the resorts that grew up around Fish Lake.

Sometimes he would explain to us, as we clustered around him, that he went to the lake to make money to pay the taxes on our home and farm, but I know that he loved to go and loved the people he met, and so he worked for more than just money.

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As soon as the melted snows would let him through, Joe would haul his camp equipment u p the twenty-mile-long hogback trail, set up camp, then take the team and wagon back home as he needed to put in the crops on the small farm in Grass Valley. He would ride Old Bishop, one of our big work horses, back to the lake, then turn him loose to come home by himself. In a few weeks or a month, when Joe could no longer stand being away from his family, he would walk the twenty miles home. I remember when he would arrive in the night with a pack of dirty clothes on his back, and mother would get u p and cook a big meal for him no matter how late it was.

After eating, he would turn out his pockets for us kids to see the small gold pieces with which his services had been paid. I remember him telling us that some rich man he had taken out carried his gold in a leather bag around his neck, and I visualized the bag as being huge.

He would count his currency and silver, then give us a few coins saying: "Take care of that, it's hell to be poor when it snows." He might when it was morning send us racing to the store to buy penny-pieces, or chocolates, or even ice cream, always with the admonition to "bring back the change."

When wagons and buckboards were being replaced by cars, the state built a dugway to Fish Lake to replace the old trail. From the valley we could see the dynamite blasts and, finally, the straight line cut into the steep mountainside. When we took our first ride to Fish Lake in a car we found the road was not straight as it appeared from the valley. It was full of curve after curve â&#x20AC;&#x201D; hairpin hair-raising curves â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a single lane of dirt, and if two cars needed to pass, one of them would have to back up to an inner curve that was a little wider. I was carsick and terrified. T h e dugway has long since been replaced by a modern highway, but the scar it left can still be seen from the valley.

During the roaring twenties Joe bought a second-hand Model T Ford to drive to work and back. He seemed to have a lot of trouble with a leaking radiator, and he tried to stop the leaks with cornmeal, eggs, potatoes, or anything else anyone might suggest. When the old car would heat up on the steep hogback road that he still used, the steam would blow several feet high and spew forth a noxious mixture smelling like rotten eggs. He had trouble starting the car, and if he used it in winter it was the devil's own problem. I remember him building a fire u n d e r the engine and cranking like mad. He put wheat in his tires instead of using inner tubes and air. He would

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mount the wheat-filled tires and pour them full of water so the wheat would swell and tighten them up, making them blowout-proof. I remember one wild ride down when the brakes gave way. Rocks, scrub pine, and underbrush made a poor road as we screeched by, and only gravity held us on the earth. T h e wheat-filled tires did not blow out!

Resorts grew u p a r o u n d the sapphire blue lake and the sportsmen came from farther and farther away. People from every financial level came and asked Joe to take them fishing, from Wallace Berry to the service station attendant. Both movie stars and service station attendants were new kinds of jobs, and Joe's was a new kind of job, too, all with new skills. Such men were signs of a new age.

In 1922 Joe moved his guide service to Skougaard's Resort a few miles north and lived in a cabin with two small windows that had no glass but sliding wood shutters, two built-in beds, a few rough wooden shelves, and a small wood-burning iron stove. T h e r e was a porch where they could hang their fish high enough to be safe in the night. Surrounding the cabin were quaking aspen, wild roses, gooseberries, and icy streams.

When I was old enough to go and spend an enchanted week with Dad, he had a nine-foot, flat-bottomed wood boat that he had made himself, a small Johnson outboard motor, and two buckets with holes in them like sieves. They were tied to the gunwales ready to be thrown over the sides in order to slow the boat down to the right speed for trolling. At this time he was using a Davis spinner. After buying the first one he made some of his own; after all, they were not patented, or if they were, no one knew much about such legalities. I have seen him cut the spoons from sheets of brass and hammer them into the right shape to make them spin. He used at least three sets of red glass beads alternating with several spinners. I can almost see them yet as he lowered them with loving care into the clear greenlooking water; in the sun's brilliant rays they cast their reflections in a whirlpool of light. I have seen him make other lures with feathers, colored threads, hand-carved wood â&#x20AC;&#x201D; painted and daubed, all combined with beads and metals. He was an artist with these lures, and they were big secrets for a long time, the assurance that Joe the Guide would catch fish when none of the other guides who came later and tried to imitate him could find any.

Every summer, when my brother and sisters became old enough, each child would get a week's vacation at the lake with our

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dad. Although I was a girl, my father called me his Danish Boy, or Tick-Miern which meant fat Mary. I was treated like a boy until the boys started to follow me around and someone â&#x20AC;&#x201D; my parents together, probably â&#x20AC;&#x201D; decided I was too old to sleep with my dad. I remember many nights sleeping with him on the thick straw mattress u n d e r several wool-filled camp quilts. At the almost 9,000 foot altitude, it got very cold at night. Even now, so many years and miles away, I can still, almost, hear my uncle talking about the day's fishing. He talked all night, it seemed to me; he talked as fast as he ate dried-up chocolate cake soaked in milk. He would still be talking when I would hear my father say "Um-hum" a few times, then start to snore.

I remember pleasant days of wandering around the resort alone, or finding a new acquaintance, or entertaining myself by following the creeks to their source and going through the small fish hatchery on one of the Twin Creeks. Sometimes, if my father was late in returning, I would worry about him. (After all, several men had drowned in the lake's icy waters. I would recall such tales â&#x20AC;&#x201D; stories my own dad had told and I knew he would not lie if it killed him.) I would want to do something for him, so I tried repeatedly to make a fire in that cute little stove that never worked for me. I remember hearing people say, "That's Joe the Guide's girl; he sure couldn't disown her," and I'd almost burst with pride.

Occasionally, if Joe the Guide had only one or two people to take out, he would let me go on a trip with him. I seldom fished, preferring to watch the clouds and their reflections in the water, or look for the tantalizing gold and red Davis spinner and be the first to see the fish at the end of the spinner as the line was pulled in. I had never heard the word boredom. Sometimes I would row the boat, and then Father would not use the motor or the buckets. I loved the motion and rhythm of rowing and the speed I could make this isolated, minuscule world move across the water. At times Dad allowed me to take the boat out on the lake alone. T h e n I would feel like the center of the universe. I loved the silence and mystery of being by myself and in control of my life on the lake, but I knew he watched me because once a storm came up suddenly. I rowed as hard as I could, but I could not move the boat shoreward. T h e waves slapping against the boat terrified me. I could see little people on the pier, waving their arms, and I supposed they were trying to help me; but all I could hear was the wind and the splash of the whitecapped

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waves all around me that drove the boat harder than I could row. In spite of my greatest effort, I seemed to be drifting farther and farther out. T h e n I remembered the talk about the men who had drowned in the lake, "Got a cramp and went down like a rock . . . ," or my dad saying, "You can't swim in that icy water â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I've never tried" or "He stood up in the boat, must have been drunk. . . ."

Before I lost control of myself and stood up in the boat or went down like a rock, I saw my dad. He had j u m p e d into someone else's boat and rowed out to rescue me.

In the 1920s when I vacationed with my dad at Fish Lake, he charged $3.50 for a limit, or so much an hour â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I do not remember the hourly rate. If the fish were not biting he would stay out as long as his customers could take it, trying to give them their money's worth or even agree to try it again tomorrow for the same price. T h e price was always agreed upon in advance, Size of catches at Fish Lake and he never reneged on an agreement. diminished over the years.

T h e resorts flourished d u r i n g the Courtesy of the author.

1920s and my father did well. Sportsmen came from far and near and told their friends about my dad and his intuitive ability to catch fish. Joe the Guide became famous. Not only did old customers come back, but new ones were swelling his list all the time. T h e fish in the lake were rapidly being reduced in number and becoming harder to catch. T h e Utah legislature passed laws to protect the fish, reducing the limit and forbidding the guides to fish.

My father had a great respect for the laws of nature and the nation, and in particular for the Utah Fish and Game laws. When the fishing and guiding law was changed, forbidding guides to fish, my dad accepted the restriction. He talked about it, so we all knew of the change. He did not like it as it made his job harder, but for the survival of the fish he felt it was right. He was ahead of his time as an environmentalist and was careful to catch no more fish than the limit in pounds and length. Honesty was his religion.

I was married and living away from home when I heard that Joe had been arrested for fishing while guiding. I said I did not believe it and became angry when I was laughed at. Joe was taken to court. He pleaded innocent and explained that from time to time it was neces-

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sary for him to touch a customer's line in order to know what was going on. Sometimes the fisherman would not know if he had caught a fish and might drag it to death, or he might get moss on the hook and drag that. I knew it was true, for I had seen him do that very thing many times. Simply by taking the line in his big, calloused hands he would know if there was a fish on the hook. T h e j u d g e believed him too, and Joe the Guide won the case.

Tourists and fishing enthusiasts continued to come even during the Great Depression, and Dad never missed paying his taxes on our home and farm.

Nowadays foreign cars, mixed with Chevrolets and Fords and all manner of recreation vehicles, overrun the Fish Lake Forest.

Fishermen come with all kinds of lures and bait imaginable. Fish are planted regularly in an effort to fill the public's appetite. Some of the fingerlings may be hooked the very day they are released, and it is rare for one to survive many seasons or grow to a remarkable size.

Old cronies and their sons came occasionally to visit Joe the Guide in the last years of his life, and they still talked about the "big ones" he had helped them catch. A sign has been posted in his memory beside a bush he used as a mark for the beginning of the mackinaw run, "Joe's Bush." Watch for it next time you are driving around Fish Lake.

Not once, and I would wager more than my income tax rebate on this, did he ever take someone fishing who did not have a Utah license, or ask an unlicensed kid who had not fished to carry some of the fish as if they were his because the adults had caught far more than their combined limits allowed. Not once did he ever use this ploy to fool a game warden if they chanced to meet one. Sometimes I went on trips with another guide, a distant relative, and he set up this trick â&#x20AC;&#x201D; having me carry some of their fish. I never trusted that guide again, and I wondered if he might not have been the one who suggested to the game warden that Joe was breaking the law by fishing.

"If I don't hit a stump, I'll be up there next year," I can hear my dad say, as I dream today u n d e r the twinkling leaves of the quaking aspens. "I'll be up there next summer. Come up and say 'Hello,'" he reminisced in 1954. He guided two more years, forty-five in all, and died when he was eighty-six, still remembering and still remembered. He outlasted all the guides.

Harry Aleson and the Place No One Knew

BY GARY T O P P I N G

1 HE W E S T AS A SCENIC LURE for tourists is a well known fact, a fact that accounts for the existence of entire libraries of guide books, travelers' accounts, novels, and downright propaganda. Although the veracity of that literature varies widely, nearly all of it makes good reading, and it shows that the scenic West is and always has been, in various ways, big business.

Among the western states Utah ranks high in scenic resources; perhaps only Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon National Parks possess scenic beauty and tourist appeal equal to or greater than the canyonlands parks in southern Utah. This is not to say that Utah has ever tried to realize fully its tourist potential; and one of its most magnificent resources, Glen Canyon of the Colorado River, has come to be known, through Eliot Porter's photographic essay of 1963, as "the place no one knew." 1 Whether Glen Canyon was generally unknown is a debatable point to which this essay will offer relevant data but does not pretend Dr. Topping is curator of manuscripts for the Utah State Historical Society Library.

Eliot Porter, The Place No One Knew (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1963).

1

Harry Aleson's boat near the mouth of Lost Eden Canyon, right, in Glen Canyon of the Colorado River, October 1955.

Wk Courtesy of Dick Sprang.

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to resolve. It is true that few white men, with occasional exceptions like Cass Hite, Bert Loper, and Arthur Chaffin, had chosen to linger in Glen Canyon during the three-quarters of a century after Maj. J o h n Wesley Powell's first description of its beauties in his 1875 report. 2 Prior to the 1940s most of the human activity in the canyon resulted from three classes of people: prehistoric cliff-dwelling people who found the canyon's remoteness, its gentle climate, and plentiful supply of wildlife much to their liking, cattlemen, and various mining entrepreneurs who, singly and in groups, were lured in the years around the turn of the century by the idea that Glen Canyon's gentle currents and sandy river bottoms were "nature's sluice box," trapping all the gold washed out of the Rocky Mountains by the Colorado River. Glen Canyon had its gold, but it was much too fine to be practically recoverable, and more money by far was spent than earned on gold mining there. 3 H u m a n activity in Glen Canyon accelerated rapidly in the 1940s as entrepreneurs of a different kind began to mine the less tangible but more productive resources offered by tourism. Guides like David Rust and J o h n Wetherill had offered trips either on or around the river thirty years and more earlier, but it remained for Norman D. Nevills, operating from his Mexican Hat Lodge on the San J u a n River, to demonstrate the solid business potential of regular river trips for tourists on the San J u a n , the Green, and the Colorado rivers. T h r o u g h off-season advertising and recruitment of famous a n d articulate passengers like Barry Goldwater and Wallace Stegner, Nevills built a reputation as a knowledgeable and skillful river guide that no other individual, perhaps, has since been able to equal. From the late 1930s until the 1949 airplane crash that ended his life, Norman Nevills, in the minds of some, owned the Colorado River.

Few seem to realize, though, that Nevills was far from alone on the river, for his success quickly bred imitators. T h e decade of the 1940s saw the birth and growth of a number of other firms, and the 1950s witnessed such growth in commercial river traffic that it was unlikely that one could take a trip through Glen Canyon during the 2

See the expanded version of Powell's report reprinted as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (New York: Dover Publications, 1961), pp. 227-34.

3 T h o u g h it only concerns directly the Stanton-Stone venture, C. Gregory Crampton and Dwight L. Smith's edition of The Hoskanini Papers: Mining in the Glen Canyon, 1897-1902, by Robert B. Stanton, University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 54, is a good introduction to the entire history of mining in Glen Canyon.

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tourist season of April to October without encountering several other boating parties. Among those who joined or followed the Nevills expeditions were the Hatch, Wright-Rigg, and HarrisBrennan firms and the parties of Georgie White, Ken Sleight, and several others. However, the most frequent trips through Glen Canyon were probably those guided by one of Utah's most colorful yet least known characters, a redoubtable Norwegian river boatman named Harry Leroy Aleson.

Waterville, Iowa, where Aleson was born in 1899, was an auspicious name for the birthplace of a future riverman. T h o u g h he altered the family name of Asleson to the more manageable Aleson, he was fiercely proud of his Nordic heritage, a feature that he had in common with several other outstanding Colorado River explorers such as Amos Burg and Haldane Holmstrom. World War I interrupted his education after two years of high school and very nearly destroyed the rest of his life, for he was gassed in France , which left him with a severe chronic stomach ailment and entitled him to a total disability pension.

For roughly twenty years after his return from the war, Aleson was adrift, unable to find a stable role in life. He completed high school and took a few engineering courses at Iowa State University which resulted in several insignificant jobs with geophysical exploration teams searching for oil in the Southwest. By the end of the 1930s, though, he had discovered the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon, and he quickly gave u p any desire for a life apart from the river. His love for the river cost him his marriage; after twelve years together, he and his urban-oriented wife separated in 1940. "So you want to go live at Meade [sic] Lake," his wife wrote, "Of course I don't have to tell you how I feel about it. T o make a success of my life I will have to live in a city, and I guess you know that." 4 Aleson had taken up residence at a tent camp in Quartermaster Canyon on upper Lake Mead. T h r o u g h the knowledge he had gained of the upper reaches of the lake and the lower Grand Canyon, he had secured sporadic employment by the Bureau of Reclamation and Grand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours, the National Park Service-sanctioned concessionaires for tours on the lake. Since the firm knew little of the area in which Aleson was operating, he was useful to them in extending their tours.

4 Thursa Arnold Aleson to Harry Aleson, March 4, 1941. Harry Aleson Papers, Utah State Historical Society. All citations to Aleson documents are from this collection.

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It was not long before Aleson's penchant for offbeat activities on the river came to the fore.

O n e of these was his love for hair-raising upriver motorboat runs, one of which cost him his job. One evening he borrowed a boat without authorization and r a n it u p t h r o u g h several big rapids where it eventually capsized. As he stood u p on t h e overturned hull of the boat to signal his fellow workers on the way back down, one of them sarcastically likened him to Christ walking on the water, but Aleson's employer failed to see the humor in Aleson repairing an outboard motor. the waterlogged motor and unPhotograph by James Tallon, USHS necessary risk to his boat. 0 collections.

Aleson accomplished several other daredevil feats in the company of Georgie White, later famous (and still active though past eighty years of age) as "the woman of the river." Together with herpetologist Gerhard Bakker, Aleson and White hiked most of the intended route of the three ill-fated members of Powell's 1869 expedition from Separation Canyon to St. George, much of which Bakker covered while carrying a live specimen of a rare species of rattlesnake in a muslin bag on top of his backpack. 6 On another occasion Aleson and White hiked down Parashont Wash to the river and attempted unsuccessfully to build a raft in a reenactment of James White's supposed pre-Powell trip down the river. Unable to move their driftwood raft out of backcurrent eddies into the main river, they eventually inflated a small rubber raft they had fortunately brought along and completed the trip. 7 T h e most celebrated of their expeditions, though, were the two long life-preserver runs they made on the lower river in 1945 and 1946. In later years, 5 Jay M. Haymond and J o h n F. Hoffman, interview with Otis R. "Dock" Marston, May 28, 1976, Utah State Historical Society Oral History Collection, p. 105.

"Georgie White Clark and Duane Newcomb, Georgie Clark: Thirty Years of River Running (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, n.d.), pp. 26-37.

7 Aleson, "Adventure on the Colorado," Beehive History 7 (1981): 15-18. This posthumous publication of Aleson's own account of the trip was edited by Miriam B. Murphy.

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responding to an inquiry from a man who wished to make a similar trip, Aleson remembered his experience with little enthusiasm: I can recommend it — ONLY — if you wear woolen long-handles and full rubberized suits. Otherwise, damnably cold on the water, — hour after hour. It is a 119V2 mile river trip. Some 16 years ago, Georgie White and I rode 60 Mi in lower Grand Canyon — Life preservers.

Damnably cold.

Aleson's entry into the commercial guide business came about through a daring, though nearly disastrous, exploit. River trips through the Grand Canyon as late as the early 1940s were such an event that the Park Service, often accompanied by reporters, would send a large cutter up the lake to meet each expedition and tow it down to Boulder Dam. Knowing of the estimated time of arrival of the 1940 Nevills expedition and of the Park Service's reluctance to venture very far into the upper lake, Aleson and Louis West decided to surprise Nevills by meeting him with a motorboat in Separation Canyon and win his favor by towing his party through the still water of the upper lake. Arriving at the rendezvous point a few days early to explore the side canyons afoot, the surprisers were themselves surprised one morning to find that a rise in the river during the night had carried their boat away. Fortunately the Nevills party, which included Barry Goldwater and Aleson's future p a r t n e r Charles Larabee, saw their signal and took them down about ten miles to where the motorboat was lying adrift in a backwater. 0 In spite of Aleson's improper mooring of his boat, Nevills saw the advantage of a partnership with him that would save many miles of hard rowing each trip. T h e eventual agreement reached by the partners was ambitious and ambiguous in conception and erratic in practice. Aleson was either to meet each expedition or arrange for a motor to be left at a prearranged site in the lower canyon for a fee of thirty dollars. In addition, he was to recruit passengers for Nevills for a commission, which would be either a free trip for himself or 10 percent of the profit. Aleson was encouraged to build a permanent cabin at Bridge Canyon for tourist accommodations, evidently along the lines of Dave Rust's Phantom Ranch midway through the Grand Canyon. Finally, the two partners were to travel together, mainly in

8

Aleson to Robert F. Gardiner, August 6, 1962.

The Aleson-West trip is documented by elaborate photographs and captions in the Aleson photographs at the Utah State Historical Society. See also Barry Goldwater's Delightful Journey (Tempe: Arizona Historical Foundation, 1970), pp. 178-82. !,

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, .,*â&#x20AC;˘

+ 'M. ,J*gj*- â&#x20AC;˘

'it?* Aleson explored lower Moki Canyon, eight miles from its mouth in Glen Canyon, October 1952. Courtesy of Dick Sprang.

the East, during the off-season to show movies of the Nevills trips and recruit passengers for the next year.10 T h e Nevills-Aleson partnership could not have lasted long, and in fact it was over by 1943, with most of the fruits of the association and all of the larger ambitions coming to naught. Both men had complex and capricious personalities, so much so that one might wonder that their association endured as long as it did. T h e two saw little of each other from then until Nevills's death. But one important result of the association was that Nevills introduced Aleson to the possibilities of river trips in Glen Canyon.

Aleson's first river trip through Glen Canyon seems to have been on a Nevills run down the San Juan-Colorado from Mexican Hat to Lee's Ferry in 1941. Given the predominance of Glen Canyon in Aleson's later river trip business, the Nevills expedition must have had a profound influence on him. T h e documents, however, show no unusual interest until the following January when he suggested that Nevills might want to place special emphasis on Glen Canyon during his longer runs. "What are the chances," he asked, "for 'Norman D. Nevills to Aleson, November 29, 1940; January 16, 1941; December 16, 1943.

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adding a week for side canyon exploring by geologists, botonists [sic], etc.?'" 1 Aleson's early Glen Canyon trips, which began in 1944, were relatively unbusinesslike affairs that show that he had not yet completely made the transition from stunt man to tourist guide. For one thing, they were mostly upriver motorboat runs from Lee's Ferry as far upriver as he could get â&#x20AC;&#x201D; either to Mille Crag Bend or Dark Canyon Rapid. Also, his rates were not yet established at a reasonable amount. In recruiting for his river trips, Nevills seems to have charged whatever the traffic would bear, quoting as much as nearly sixty dollars per day per person (though only actually charging eleven), for example, for roughly a sixty-day trip over the route of Powell's 1869 expedition. Partly reacting against such high rates, partly aware of his own inexperience, Aleson charged only six dollars per day per person on his early Glen Canyon trips. 12 Eventually his prices would settle at something less than twenty dollars per day per person.

Aleson's management of his early trips, too, elicited occasional criticism. One proposed two-week trip in 1945 lasted less than half a day, ending with a fierce altercation on a Glen Canyon beach when a passenger, complaining of Aleson's filth, lack of organization and proper drinking water, and general physical and mental unfitness, demanded to be returned to Lee's Ferry. Aleson demurred, protesting that eight food caches up the river would be lost to spring floods. When the passenger demanded immediate return, refusing to let Aleson leave the party to rescue his supplies, Aleson extorted a cancellation fee of ninety dollars â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in the form of a check on which the passenger promptly stopped payment as soon as they reached Lee's Ferry. 13 Overt conflicts of that kind were mercifully infrequent, but milder criticisms were common enough that Aleson must have realized that he had some lessons to learn. Randall Henderson, editor of Desert magazine, who was to become one of Aleson's closest 11

Aleson to Nevills, January 20, 1942.

Aleson to Robert Sensibaugh, September 14, 1944; Aleson to Herbert MacEwen, October 4, 1944. Nevills to Aleson, November 28, 1939, warns of rates of from $2,500 to $3,000 for future trips, though he quotes $650 for the sixty-day trip that Goldwater took in 1940. In a letter to Aleson of April 15, 1941, he indicates that he was quoting prices as high as $3,500 (almost $60 per day) for the 1942 expedition. In a letter of July 8, 1942, he says he has signed a party of nine for the trip from Lee's Ferry to Boulder Dam at $500 apiece. T h u s the 1940 trip of about sixty days works out to almost $11 per person per day, while the 1942 trip of about eighteen days was about $28 apiece.

13 Frank J. Giloon to Aleson, April 29, 1945. See also Isabella M. Kays to Aleson, J u n e 27, 1945, and A. Reynolds Morse to Aleson, November 3, 1949, for other dissatisfied patrons' comments.

12

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friends, was a persistent critic in those early years. "You and Norman have chosen a fascinating vocation," he wrote in 1945, "and I anticipate that both of you will have more passengers than you can take care of when the war is over. My only suggestion is that you get together and improve your overnight camps — put in grills and garbage pits and keep 'em spic and span." As Late as 1948 Henderson was not yet convinced that the Aleson trips were being run well enough that his magazine would want to risk its reputation by accepting advertising: I have encountered some criticism of the organization of some of your previous trips. Under the circumstances I feel that until you get the new enterprise well organized and established on a basis that will be generally satisfactory to your patrons, we would prefer to remain on the side lines. . . . You have made a rather amazing record as a stunt navigator on the Colorado. I sincerely hope your public service plans work out as well.

T h o u g h H a r r y Aleson often humorously emphasized his Norwegian stubbornness — a fact of his personality remembered by friends to this day — he was able to learn from his mistakes, and his business steadily grew. One factor that may have helped him, as he mentioned in a 1944 letter, was the Second World War, which 14

Randall Henderson to Aleson, J u n e 26, 1945; October 25, 1948.

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Aleson and A. L. Chaffin boated visitorsfrom San Juan County to Garfield County on September 17, 1946, when the Hite ferry opened. USHS collections.

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The Place No One Knew

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restricted access to gasoline and spare parts for motors. Grand Canyon-Boulder Dam Tours, Aleson's previous employer and now competitor for tours on Lake Mead, was virtually driven out of business by such restrictions. Evidently Aleson, though he was subject to the same difficulties, did not have the overhead in his business that would cause him the problems experienced by bigger firms. As he shifted to oar-powered downriver trips in Glen Canyon, he could use his precious gasoline entirely for the Lake Mead tours. 15 Experience, then, and reduced competition were two factors giving Aleson's river business impetus as the country emerged from World War II. T h e r e were also other developments about that time that helped his postwar trips. One was his partnership with the financial backer Charles Larabee, his friend since the 1940 Nevills expedition. For interesting reasons, the exact nature of the partnership with Larabee is obscure. As a friend and supporter of Barry Goldwater, Harry Aleson fit comfortably into the right wing of the political spectrum. He went much further than even Goldwater in his opposition to big government, however, and often boasted that he refused to pay all taxes except those on his automobile and sales taxes, both of which could hardly be avoided. He doggedly refused to file income tax r e t u r n s , and somehow managed to evade, throughout his entire life, the tentacles of the Internal Revenue Service. A curious fact of Aleson's papers, then, is that while he kept, compulsively, records on the most trivial matters of his daily life, he studiously avoided keeping records of taxable transactions, including the Larabee partnership.

It seems reasonable to assume, though, that the sudden acquisition in the late 1940s of a fleet of Navy surplus ten-man inflatable landing craft for the Aleson river tours was one product of the Larabee partnership. T h e boats were a giant step forward in comfort, safety, and off-stream portability; and they were a major factor in the success of Larabee 8c Aleson Western River Tours. T h e practicality of inflatable craft was a well-known fact after Amos Burg's historic 1938 expedition down the Colorado with Haldane Holmstrom, but the easy availability of the surplus boats after the war brought them within reach of anyone, and their obvious advantages have made them all but universal today. Larabee 8c Aleson's advertising literature was not backward in proclaiming the boats' virtues: '"'Aleson to Robert Sensibaugh, September 14, 1944.

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Utah Historical Quarterly These craft have now been used for three seasons on the San J u a n and five years on the Colorado and have proved to be the safest and most comfortable of all river boats. Each has 9 air-cells, making them virtually non-sinkable. They are 10-man boats but we allow only four passengers and a boatman to each craft so they will ride high in the water, with generous space for passengers and dunnage.

Besides the safe, comfortable boats, Aleson's cuisine no doubt accounted for much of the popularity of his trips. Aleson had learned the importance of food on river trips from the criticisms of Randall Henderson and others, and partly, no doubt, from bad experiences with Nevills. Experience belied Nevills's claim, in one of his early letters to Aleson that O u r food is from cans, and is plentifull [sic] and very well ballanced [sic].

I long ago found that good meals of a carefully prepared menu are great assets in making an expedition of this kind a success, in [sic] the old days, bacon, beans, biscuits, etc. were the main staples. It resulted in inevitable food shortage and upset stomachs. 17

Aleson once quoted with obvious pleasure a comment by Dock Marston, one of Nevills's boatmen, that he "could never quite figure out what [the Nevills menus] were supposed to balance, unless it was the Nevills budget." 18 Aleson made no such mistake. Although examination of his actual provision lists disclose a certain exaggeration in his advertising claims that he carried one h u n d r e d different foods, the lists reveal, nevertheless, that his passengers ate extremely well. Forced for most of his life by his World War I injury to restrict his own diet to baby food and other bland fare, Aleson poured his gastronomic fantasies into his river guests' meals. One provision list for a twoweek trip in Glen Canyon in 1955 shows that he carried eight different fruit juices, four different soups, six different dinner meats, seven different dinner vegetables, and five different varieties of canned fruit, candies, jellies, jams, and cheeses. Every meal, furthermore, was served on real china dishes â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no paper plates on an Aleson trip. 10 Glen Canyon soon became the favorite haunt of Harry Aleson.

T h o u g h he varied his schedule somewhat with trips down the San Juan, the Green, the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, and Far 16

Advertising flyer for Larabee & Aleson Western River Tours, 1950 season.

Nevills to Aleson, November 28, 1939.

18 Aleson to Charles Larabee, May 2, 1952. '"Provision list for Glen Canyon run of J u n e 6-18, 1955.

17

The Place No One Knew

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Dick Sprang, left, and Harry Aleson planned explorations in camp at mouth of Fourmile Creek, Glen Canyon, October 1952. Note Utah Historical Quarterly in helmet at right. Courtesy of Dick Sprang.

North expeditions on the Peace, Slave, and Mackenzie rivers, he spent most of every river season in Glen Canyon: as early as 1947, he was offering two-week trips from Hite to Lee's Ferry every third week during the season April to October. 20 An Aleson Glen Canyon trip was a memorable experience, not only because of the comfortable boats and good food. Dick Sprang, one of Aleson's favorite boating partners, remembers that many of Aleson's passengers were attracted to him by his highly idiosyncratic behavior and mysterious sense of humor, characteristics that "drove everybody insane, but as their insanity increased, their love for him swelled by a multiplying factor often." 21 Elizabeth Sprang, who also knew him well, says that on the private trips he would put on clothes over his pajamas on a cold morning, then strip back to his pajamas during the heat of the day.22 Of course the canyon itself was the great attraction on such a trip; one could hardly name another trip anywhere in the West that 20

Aleson to Harry Miller, Utah Magazine, January 25, 1947.

Dick Sprang to the author, December 6, 1979.

22 Elizabeth Sprang, Good-bye River (Reseda, Calif.: Mojave Books, 1979), p. 20.

21

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would expose the visitor to an equally varied concentration of scenic, geologic, archaeological, and historical features. Hole-in-the-Rock, the Stanton Dredge, Hidden Passage, the hike to Rainbow Bridge, Music Temple, Crossing of the Fathers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; these were only a few of the more memorable sites that met one's gaze on every hand.

Besides being blessed with a high degree of innate curiosity, Harry Aleson considered it his responsibility, as an effective river guide, to be as thoroughly informed about the canyon's points of interest as possible. In addition to exchanging voluminous correspondence over the years with other students of the river, especially Dock Marston, Aleson used many days of his off-season time every year to explore, by boat and on foot, as much of the side canyon and plateau country as he could reach. In 1952 Aleson, Dick Sprang, and Dudy Thomas organized a group called Canyon Surveys to explore, research, film, and record systematically one-tenth of a mile at a time, every aspect of possible human interest in Glen Canyon.

T h o u g h they made a valiant start on the project, the joys of relaxed river life soon overcame the researcher in all three; and the task of surveying Glen Canyon eventually fell to C Gregory Crampton, a more disciplined student of the river.

This is not to say that the accomplishments of Canyon Surveys during the 1952 and 1953 seasons were insignificant, and only their laxness in reporting the discoveries recorded in their journals and on the U.S. Soil Conservation Service aerial photographs they used in lieu of maps has kept them from receiving considerable scientific recognition. No doubt their most dramatic discovery was Sprang's sighting, on October 23, 1952, of the Anasazi ruin known today as Defiance House, which they called "Three Warriors Ruin" after the now-famous pictographs. T h e canyon in which the ruin appears was unmapped in 1952, and Thomas's suggestion of the name "Forgotten Canyon" was accepted by later mapmakers. Spring and fall expeditions in 1953 accomplished a thorough survey of historical and archaeological sites along the Mormon road from Hermit Lake through the Clay Hills Pass, and of the lower twenty-five miles of Grand Gulch. 23 23 Canyon Surveys was first proposed by Dick Sprang to Aleson, March 17, 1952. C. Gregory Crampton, Historical Sites in Glen Canyon: Mouth of San Juan River to Lee's Ferry, University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 46; Historical Sites in Glen Canyon: Mouth of Hansen Creek to Mouth of San Juan River, University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 61; Historical Sites in Cataract and Narrow Canyons, and in Glen Canyon to California Bar, University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 72. T h e record of Canyon Surveys' 1952 and 1953 activities consists of aerial photograph tissue overlays and still photographs in possession of Dick Sprang, and of Aleson's motion pictures and 1952 journal.

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Where was the man who knew Glen Canyon when "the place no one knew" was consigned to the depths of Lake Powell? T h e question is worth asking, though one might more reasonably expect some of his over one thousand passengers to whom he introduced the canyon, many of whom were wealthy, articulate, and politically sagacious â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all qualities Aleson lacked â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to lead a protest against the Glen Canyon Dam. Aleson's strategy for fighting the Glen Canyon Dam proposal was complex, partly well conceived and partly bizarre. T h e bizarre part consisted of strong support for the alternative project to Glen Canyon, the Echo Park Dam, which would have flooded a part of Dinosaur National Monument. Aleson hoped that his support would entitle him to be called as an expert and favorable witness before the Congressional hearings. Once on the stand, he planned to deliver a fiery denunciation of the Glen Canyon project. This, of course, did not occur. 24 Aleson was rowing upstream against an irresistible political current by that time anyway, for the Sierra Club had already decided to sacrifice Glen Canyon to save Dinosaur.

Much more promising was his attempt to enlist support from Sen. Barry Goldwater, his friend from the Nevills days and his only high political connection. But Aleson failed to realize that it was political 24

Aleson to George W. Clyde, January 11, 1954. T h e substance of the statement Aleson intended to make was contained in a document titled "Home Made Trinitrotoluol," dated February 16, 1955. T h e story of Aleson's plans for his "Homemade T N T " is told in a tape-recorded statement from Dick Sprang to the author, July 12, 1982.

Aleson, left, and companions drift down Glen Canyon of the Colorado River. USHS collections.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

suicide for any Arizona politician to vote against a water development project. "Just between us river rats, I wish they would leave the Colorado River alone," Goldwater wrote to him; "however, it is my duty and responsibility to see that the river is utilized for the benefit of most people and the U p p e r Colorado River Project at this time seems to be the answer." 25 During the 1960s Aleson conducted a few desultory exursions on Lake Powell, but with none of the enthusiasm or significance of the old Glen Canyon trips. With most of the old sites of tourist interest now u n d e r water and convenient access to the others by self-guided charter boats available at several marinas, Harry Aleson had become as expendable as Glen Canyon itself. An irreplaceable canyon and an irreplaceable man were both gone forever.

25

Goldwater to Aleson, February 27, 1956.

Tennis in Utah — The First Fifty Years, 1885-1935

BY AFTON BRADFORD BRADSHAW

a wide variety of games and recreational activities, tennis is not one of the sports usually associated with the frontier. Horse racing, pugilism, cricket, baseball, skating, hunting, and fishing were all popular in early Utah and the West, but tennis was considered the pastime of the eastern elite. After all, tennis began in England on the gracious lawns of estates and clubs of the well-born and wealthy. After the game was introduced to the United States in 1874, it remained mainly the sport of urban socialites until after World War I. A L T H O U G H WESTERN PIONEERS ENTHUSIASTICALLY EMBRACED

Mrs. Bradshaw earned a master's degree in history at the University of Utah in 1983. Many people have provided information for this study, but particular thanks are due David L. Freed, Utah's "Mr. Tennis," for valuable information and insight.

Salt Lake Tennis Club at its Forest Dale location was the site of USLTA National Clay Court Championships in 1947. Photographfrom official program, courtesy of David L. Freed.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Given the cultural elitisim of early tennis history, it is remarkable that the sport gained extraordinary popularity in the isolated valley of the Great Salt Lake only a decade after the game came to America (surprising testimony of the elan of the early Utahns). T h e fascination with tennis was no passing fancy, for Utah has maintained throughout its history an identification with the sport much greater than the population and climate of the state would suggest.

T h e initial circumstances of the sport's introduction to Utah are unclear. T h e game may have been introduced by military personnel from Fort Douglas, since tennis was invented by an English army major and spread around the world through military people; it may have been brought from the East by recent arrivals on the new railroad; or it may have been introduced by M. H. Walker, a wealthy Salt Lake pioneer who hosted the first tournament. Regardless of who played the first game, tennis gained such rapid popularity that

by J u n e 1885 a tournament was held in Salt Lake City. T h e matches were played on the court at the Walker Block, an area extending from Main Street to West Temple, from Fourth South almost to Fifth South. Glenn Walker Wallace, youngest and only surviving member of the M. H. Walker family, remembers the tennis court, greenhouse, stables, flowers, and green lawn that made the Walker Block seem "like a park." 1 It is not surprising that Utah's first recorded tennis tournament took place at the residence of one of the area's wealthiest families: Although new, or at least comparatively so in this city, and the knowledge of the game confined to but a few, yet the idea has already taken a firm hold upon large numbers of our society people.

T h e game's reputation in the nineteenth century as the pastime of the elite was evident in Utah, and tennis then, as now, reflected the socio-economic status of the times. 3 T h e "gay company of ladies and 1 Interview with Glenn Walker Wallace, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 19, 1983. When Glenn was six years old, her family moved from the Walker Block to South Temple and Sixth East (later the Aviation Club), and one of their first priorities there was to build a tennis court.

2 Salt Lake Herald, May 3 1 , 1885, p. 2.

3 T e n n i s generally was not played by the public until the 1920s, the golden age of sports. During the depression, tennis, like other sports, provided a release from difficult times. Tennis was scarce during World War II â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Wimbledon was turned into a civil defense center, and chickens enjoyed the shade of Centre Court; Roland Garros Stadium in Paris became a concentration camp. In the 1950s tennis became a mechanism for social integration, and Althea Gibson became the first black person to play in the U.S. Open at Forest Hills. It was not until the 1960s that tennis became part of a boom, when the counter-culture turned off team sport in favor of individual sports. No sport has undergone a more dramatic change in its character than tennis during the past fifteen years. Shaken from its clubby consciousness by the introduction of the open era that united amateur and professional in 1968, tennis moved from the classes to the masses. Only the wealthy could afford to learn tennis in the beginning, but it is difficult on today's courts to tell the mailboy from the president of the company.

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gentlemen" who were present when "the popular pastime was ushered in notably yesterday on the grounds of Mr. M. H. Walker" included a mining magnate (W. B. Conover), a jeweler (Boyd Park), a lawyer (J. M. Zane), two doctors (S. O. L. Potter and a Dr. Hall), a druggist (Bolivar Roberts, Jr.), five army personnel (Lt. Taggart, Lt. Burnham, Maj. W. H. Eckles and his clerk, C. B. Eckles, and "Miss McCook, of the Fort"), eleven "clerks" of various companies (Union Pacific, Auerbachs, Wells Fargo Bank, etc.), and one student (Samuel Park). T h e r e were no farmers or blue-collar workers.

T h e r e was apparent religious diversity in the group, for the list included two employees of ZCMI (T. Hull and D. L. Murdock) and the bishop of the Episcopal church (D. Tuttle). T h e tournament also included "several members of the Walker families too numerous to mention," probably the wealthiest family present. Matthew H. Walker and his brothers, Joseph, Samuel Sharp, and David F., started Walker Dry Goods Company, a prosperous mercantile business that bought and sold buffalo robes, whiskey, wire, dolls, tobacco, and railroad and mining supplies. When Camp Floyd closed in 1860 the Walker brothers purchased surplus goods from the army for resale at a very lucrative figure. T h e Walker family also started Walker Bank (now First Interstate Bank). 4 T h e tournament at the Walker Block was not the only tennis action in Salt Lake Valley in 1885. A follow-up article reported that the "Tuesday match on the Walker Block court produced . . . the most perfect piece of tennis playing witnessed in the city," implying there was tennis to be witnessed at locations other than the Walker Block in 1885. The Daily Tribune account of the tournament includes the surprising fact that "competition was between the six Salt Lake clubs," an astonishing figure for a frontier town of about 30,000. 5 These early club players were concerned about tennis fashions.

Late nineteenth-century Utah newspapers included many feature articles showing tennis attire. Men wore white flannel trousers, long-sleeved white shirts (sleeves were never rolled in the presence of a gallery), dark belts, high collars, ties, sometimes vests, and white shoes with dark stockings. Women wore regular street clothing: ground-length skirts, leather shoes, and wide-brimmed hats. 6 4 Salt Lake Herald, May 3 1 , 1885, p. 9; R. L. Polk, Salt Lake City Directory, 1884-85 (Salt Lake City: R. L Polk & Co., 1884); Walker Brothers Papers, 1860-1875, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

'Salt Lake Herald, J u n e 4, 1885, p. 2; Daily Tribune, May 31, 1885, p. 4. fi For an example of tennis attire see Salt Lake Herald, July 9, 1893, p. 15.

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Initially, this cumbersome apparel seldom handicapped the players â&#x20AC;&#x201D; little movement was involved in playing the game. T h e high net (four and a half feet in the center, seven feet at the wings) prompted a very slow game, and players gently lobbed the ball back and forth over the lofty net. T h e net was soon lowered to its present height of three feet, but the play remained genteel. Most women players stayed safely and demurely at the baseline rather than risk hooking their heeled shoes on their voluminous skirts when they moved quickly Fashionable "tennis belt" to make a stroke or up to the net for a pictured in the Salt Lake volley. A woman who participated in the Herald of July 9, 1893. men's [!] doubles of the Deseret Club tournament in 1899 apparently followed this custom: T h e deciding set in the match between Miss Bessie Kirkpatrick and J. F. Sharp and Messrs. [Ralph] Richards and [D. B.] Kimball was won by Messrs. Richards and Kimball by a score of 6-4. T h e set was marked by very pretty back line play by Miss Kirkpatrick, excellent net work by Messrs. Richards and Sharp, and good serving by Kimball. 7

T h e tennis of the nineteenth century was not the game of speed and power that we know today. According to the Herald, "Although it is athletic, it is not too violent, and while affording plenty of exercise, it is not exhausting, and may be played by women and children." 8 Tennis was definitely "not too violent" in 1885. T h e game had a reputation of being effeminate in the beginning because of the way it was played â&#x20AC;&#x201D; u n d e r h a n d serves, few volleys at the net, no driving the ball straight for your opponent (that would probably have brought expulsion from the club). Add to that men's white flannels and women's long skirts and petticoats, "love" as a score, and "lawn" to describe the game, and it is easy to understand why tennis was considered a "sissy" game.

Tommie Griffin, a tennis pioneer who arrived in Salt Lake City in 1897, confirmed the genteel game. Looking back many years 'Salt Lake Herald, September 16, 1899, p. 3. Dr. Ralph Richards was one of the organizers of the original Salt Lake Clinic.

8 Salt Lake Herald, May 3 1 , 1885, p. 2.

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later, Griffin wrote, "Tennis then was a game of gentility, a social function and pastime, not a gladiatorial conflict. . . . T h e r e were few volleys, no overhead smashes, the idea was to keep the ball in play until it was driven into the net or out of bounds. Most monotonous!" 0 Griffin wrote about the "tennis wheel horses" of early Utah, all successful in winning open state and Intermountain tournaments: Sam Neel (United States doubles champion), O. J. and Walker Salisbury (original financiers of the Salt Lake Tennis Club), Carl and Frank Roberts, E. M. Garnett, and T. B. Parker. Griffin modestly omitted his own name. He described early tennis equipment: Racquets were of the square headed vintage; strings heavy cat-gut; balls were heavy with little resiliency, sometimes without cloth covers. I recall a man asking me if a racquet was some kind of a harp and would I play him a tune!

Griffin claims to have played the first indoor tennis in the world: "Some hardy, ubiquitous Scotsman and myself enjoyed a rather unique experience, doubtless unknown elsewhere in the world, when we played in the old Salt Palace on an improvised court."

Tommie Griffin was aware of only two public courts in Salt Lake City in 1897: "one where the Bransford Apts. now are [105 East South Temple], the other on First South St., opposite St. Marks Cathedral." He mentioned some private courts later in his article: "Play on Deseret and Roberts Courts was primitive. Tethered cows looked on in wonderment. Chickens ran across the courts." 10 Courts must have been crude before the turn of the century.

Some owners probably scooped out the sagebrush, leveled the land, and painted the lines with lime: "No elaborate structure is necessary . . . simply a plot of ground 78 feet long by 36 feet in width, kept in good condition without any great amount of labor." An 1885 diagram showing how to "draw the lines" for a tennis court appeared in the Salt Lake Herald u n d e r the heading, "Lawn Tennis." 11 Although the early Utah courts are described by the English term, "lawn tennis," they were undoubtedly clay. Grass courts require a tremendous amount of upkeep, are far more expensive, wear out faster, require moving the lines often, and can be played upon only about twice a week and only during the summer months.

"Tommie Griffin, "Tennis as Seen in Salt Lake Fifty Years Ago," Official Program, USLTA Thirty-Seventh Annual Clay Court Tennis Championships, Salt Lake City, June 28 to July 6, 1947, p. 21.

10 Ibid.

11 "Lawn Tennis, By a Sporting Tramp," Outing Magazine, July 1887, p. 325; Salt Lake Herald, May 31, 1885, p. 2.

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T h e Deseret courts, mentioned by Griffin, were built before 1899. A tournament chronicled in the newspapers early in September took place at the Deseret Club. T h e r e must have been other courts as well, for an article dated September 4, 1899, says that "most [not all] of the matches were played on the Deseret Club court." 1 T h e club's two clay courts were located east of the present Hotel Utah. Two asphalt courts were added behind the old LDS Church Office Building on South Temple around 1910, and the clay courts were replaced by concrete in the mid-1920s. By 1920 there were several private courts in Salt Lake City: Popperton Place (going east from Virginia Street), the Haxton Place and Miller courts (on Haxton Place, 940 East South Temple), Husler Flour Mills court on State Street, Rowland Hall (First Avenue and B Street), and the Roberts court.

Ogden had its share of tennis activity at the turn of the century.

A tournament was recorded as early as 1899: O G D E N S TOURNAMENT (By Telephone to the Herald) Ogden, Sept. 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; T h e tennis tournament begins Monday evening at 6 o'clock, at the club courts, corner Munroe avenue and Twenty-fifth streets, where spectators will be made welcome.

Ogden, Sept. 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; T h e tournament of the Ogden Tennis club is scheduled to begin at 6 o'clock tomorrow, at the club courts. Any player who fails to appear by that time for his match forfeits the game. Mr. Bell of the Alferetta tennis club of California will referee the matches.

All preliminaries will be decided by two out of three sets. 13

Tennis had not yet been organized in Provo. In 1911 a tennis club was started there, including mostly Brigham Young University students. T h e club was instrumental in building a tennis court on the south side of the college building "at a cost of three h u n d r e d dollars, the club members paying half and the University the rest. In 1912 two new tennis courts were started on the ground across the street west from the school."14 Don "Sanky" Dixon, a star of the BYU team of the late 1920s, remembers those courts across from the University (600 North and 100 East). As a young boy learning the game, however, he did most 12

Salt Lake Herald, September 4, 1899, p. 4.

Salt Lake Herald, September 3, 1899, p. 3; September 4, 1899, p. 3. ,4 Sima Nikolic, "History of Intercollegiate Tennis at B.Y.U." (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1970), p. 19.

13

Tennis in Utah

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BYU's championship tennis team photographed for the 1929 Banyan included Bruce Gilchrist, Wesley Porter, Eldon Brinley, coach Fred "Buck" Dixon, Don "Sanky" Dixon, Lewis Munk, and Paul Holt.

of his practicing at the T. N. Taylor court on 300 North and 500 West. T h e Taylor court was one of the private courts that contributed to the development of tennis in Provo, along with courts owned

by R. Eugene Allen and J. Will Knight.

Immediately after the War . . . clay courts were erected property of these three individuals. In fact, tennis, as a Provo was born on these clay courts. . . . Such players appeared on these courts; Fred Dixon, Sanky Dixon, [Hunter Manson], Lee Buttle, Paul Holt. . . .

on the private major sport in as youngsters, H u n t Madsen

After the old Knight Woolen Mills burned down, the Knight family donated that property for a tennis club (100 West at 100 North).

Twenty-five active members, including J o h n Smith, Horace Merrill, Merle Taylor, Clayton Jenkins, and T. Earl Pardoe, paid a fifty dollar membership fee plus yearly dues of fifty dollars. "Showerbaths of cold water made these first courts, two in number, appear as tremendously fine courts. Only the cold weather kept the members off the court. . . . " T h e Knight Woolen Mills courts became the home courts for the BYU team in the late 1920s.15 Collegiate tennis had been slow in developing. Efforts toward the development of collegiate tennis before the turn of the century 15 Interview with Don "Sanky" Dixon, Salt Lake City, May 18, 1983; T. Earl Pardoe, "History of Tennis in Provo, Utah," Program, National Clay Courts, 1947, p. 23.

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had all failed. T h e University of Utah Chronicle reported interest in tennis as early as 1894: T h e University campus is to be cleared and levelled! T h e "boys" took the initiative step last Saturday, when a score or more of them assembled and removed the trees. T h e Athletic Association followed closely in a p p r o p r i a t i n g money to have the whole field ploughed and leveled. . . . That the ladies may not be entirely left out, several tennis courts will be arranged on the campus.

Unfortunately, the university "ladies" did not get their courts in 1894. "Lack of funds and the interest in football and baseball probably prevented the carrying out of the promise." Courts were not built until 1901. That year the student newspaper announced that "a double tennis court and also a basket ball grounds are now being constructed on the campus" next to the old gymnasium. 16 A tennis club organized at the University of Utah in 1904 continued to function in 1906: Tennis club meets regularly every day in L-5 or elsewhere. But no move has been made to improve the tennis court. T h e match announced in the last issue of the Chronicle has been called off. Fuzzy has given the assurance that as soon as the court is repaired, the match will be played.

Poor condition of the clay courts must have been a perennial problem. Concerning a men's doubles tournament in 1916 the student newspaper reported, "The condition of the courts precludes accurate playing. T h e hollows and small gullies give the impression of a golf course." Care of the university courts was apparently the responsibility of the club members. "Four members of the club were selected each week to take care of the tennis courts. These four members were to keep the courts well lined and in good condition.

Club dues were fifty cents, and members had preference to the courts." 17 Club members must have kept the courts busy, as evidenced by the accelerated tennis activity during the second decade of the twentieth century. "Ever since the first little group of students were able to purchase a net and scrape together a bucket of lime . . . tennis has steadily grown to be the most popular sport of the University. . . ." Despite the popularity of the sport, facilities continued to ^University of Utah Chronicle, October 23, 1894; Walter A. Kerr, "Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Utah," MS, Special Collections, Marriott Library, p. 453; Chronicle, April 10, 1901.

"Chronicle, October 19, 1904, May 9, 1906, April 27, 1916; Kerr, "Intercollegiate Athletics," p.

454.

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be a problem. "On some occasions last spring as many as fifteen students waited for their turns to play. . . ." Finally, in 1917, announcement was made of "Four new courts to be constructed . . . east of the present 'Forty Lovers' Field."18 T h e question of whether the new courts were to be clay or cement prompted a trip to Logan by Professor A. L. Mathews, first tennis coach at Utah. His appraisal provides insight into the tennis situation at Utah State Agricultural College in 1917: Logan has the better of u s . . . in the matter of tennis courts. T h e Aggie courts are of the cement type . . . can be used later in the fall and earlier in the spring than can clay courts. They require no expert for upkeep, and most important of all, they seem to be more popular. . . . Authorities at the A. C. have promised the students two new cement courts, provided the students do the leveling and constructive work. 10

Utah State's tennis courts in the 1920s were not as wonderful as Coach Mathews claimed, according to Joe Cowley, Aggies star of the late twenties. Cowley remembers the cement courts, but "the cement ended at the baseline, and the cement and clay rarely came out even." 20 David Freed, a star of the University of Utah tennis team, described the Logan courts as "horrible."

Intercollegiate competition had begun in 1912 in Provo, with BYU victorious over Utah in the first competition. Utah State had entered the meet but defaulted. "The Aggies forfeited both singles and doubles matches. Although the interest at the College was keen, the tennisters were not quite ready for the intercollegiate competition." By 1922 the Aggies were ready. They won back-to-back Rocky Mountain Conference championships in 1922 and 1923, led by Intermountain Doubles champions Cyril H a m m o n d and Wesley Howells. (The Men's Intermountain Doubles was the most coveted championship in Utah from 1922 to 1931. Winners were awarded a trip to Boston for the national championships, expenses paid by the United States Lawn Tennis Association.) Intercollegiate records from 1912 to 1935 show Utah State winning two championships, BYU four, and Utah seventeen championships. (There was no competition in 1917 due to World War I.)21 ^Chronicle, March 23, 1914, February 21, 1916, March 29, 1917. '"Chronicle, April 5, 1917.

20 Interview with Joe Cowley, Salt Lake City, J u n e 3, 1983. Cowley is attempting to improve conditions at Utah State through a Tennis Endowment Fund.

2 ' Kerr, "Intercollegiate Athletics," p. 455. Utah's domination in tennis has continued to the present, the Utes, coached by Harry James, winning the Western Athletic Conference the last five years (1979-83).

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Tennis boomed at all three universities during the 1920s. Earl Pardoe became player-coach at BYU in 1920, followed in 1928 by "Buck" Dixon, star of the "Y" team and one of the all-time greats of Utah tennis.

Dixon also coached basketball, footP^S J^ ball, and golf. He coached the tennis <^| wL w m team until 1963, his thirty-five years <1 P J ^^yj\'%. topped only by T h e r o n Par melee, who coached at the University of Utah from 1921 until 1961, with the exception of three years' army service d u r i n g World War II. Utah State made tennis progress in the 1920s u n d e r C R.Johnson. Johnson taught at USAC, coached the tennis team, and worked with three Logan Jack Irvine and Wallace Stegner in High School tennis players whose the 1930 Utonian. names became quite well known throughout the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Joe Cowley, Hyrum P. "Dutch" Cannon, and Lund Johnson ( C R.'s son).

T h e strength of the university tennis programs filtered down to the high schools. Good competition between the city schools and intercity competition among Salt Lake, Logan, and Provo developed during the 1920s. High school players looked forward each year to two big tournaments â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the state championships and the BYU Invitational (a tradition that continued until 1983). T h e Pardoe Cup, an intercity competition for juniors, was inaugurated in the twenties.

T h e J. Will Knight Cup encouraged intercity senior competition.

Tennis was flourishing at private schools as well. Rowland Hall in Salt Lake City had one of the earliest tennis courts in Utah, probably built around the turn of the century. Clara Colburn, principal of Rowland Hall from 1895 to 1913, explained the difficulties involved in building the first court: I think that you would be interested in knowing that the first tennis court I paid for by tutoring evenings, preparing a young man for Yale College. T h e whole lawn had been an alfalfa field on which the Bishop's cow had lived, and we had much trouble and expense killing the roots, as they grow very deep. At last, by the help of water, we froze the roots and had a good court.

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mm

V

Lincoln House at Wasatch Academy. The Presbyterian school was an early tennis center in central Utah. USHS collections.

I think I have heard that you have two courts now, but I believe you never had more joy over the second court than we had over the first, when, at last, we had conquered the alfalfa.

Another private school that emphasized tennis early was Wasatch Academy in Mount Pleasant. T h r e e courts were built there in 1924, influenced by the arrival of Ernest Brunger who became "coach of everything." Soon Wasatch Academy tennis teams were competing favorably with high schools around the state. 23 Utah's best junior college team in the early years was at Snow College in Ephraim. Snow established itself as the power of the Intermountain Collegiate Athletic Conference. 24 It is surprising that there is no indication of early competition in the southern part of Utah. One would expect tennis to have flourished in the favorable weather conditions of St. George. However, R. J. Snow, who grew up there, explains that there were no tennis courts in St. George until the 1930s; hence, no early tennis competition. 25

22

Interview with Frances Wilson, secretary of Rowland Hall alumni office, Salt Lake City, February 9, 1983; Colburn to Wilson, August 24, 1933, Rowland Hall alumni office.

23 Interview with Ernest Brunger, Mount Pleasant, Utah, May 15, 1983.

24 Interview with LaRue Nielsen and Lee R. Thompson, Ephraim, Utah, November 8, 1983.

25 Interview with R. J. Snow, Salt Lake City, April 15, 1983.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Newhouse, Utah, a mining town near Milford, had a tennis court. Samuel Newhouse bought the town in 1900, following his financial success in Bingham. A tennis court was built there in about 1905, as well as an opera house, library, hospital, and hotel. When the Cactus Mine gave out five years later, the town was abandoned.

An unexpected stronghold of tennis, away from the urban centers, was Manti in central Utah. Wilbur Braithwaite, coach of the Manti High School tennis team since 1952, credits the strength of Manti tennis to a long-standing tradition and an early Manti pioneer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Dilworth Woolley. J u d g e Woolley (he was district j u d g e ) graduated from Brigham Young Academy, then left to study law at the University of Michigan. According to his son, Harold Woolley of Salt Lake City, "the J u d g e was a health nut who stressed physical fitness and was always telling his sons to run around the block." T h e j u d g e was very impressed with the physical condition and cleanlooking clothing of the tennis players he observed at Michigan.

When he returned to Manti in the early 1900s he built a tennis court behind his house. T h e r e was so much enthusiasm for the game (there wasn't much else to do in Manti, according to Harold Woolley) that people lined up to play on the Woolley court and on two other courts built later in Manti Memorial Park. Manti has a long tradition Tennis players at Newhouse, Utah. USHS collections.

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in tennis and continues to be a strong tennis center today. Manti High School has won its regional championship twenty-five of the last twenty-six years. 26 Another tennis pioneer lived in Mayfield, Utah, about twelve miles south of Manti. "Charlie" Whitlock built a court on the clay at his property in about 1916. His daughter and sons, and others in the small community, kept the court busy until 1926. That year a new school building was constructed in Mayfield, and two tennis courts were included in the building project. T h e tennis players moved to the school courts and the Whitlock court was allowed to deteriorate, but there was considerable tennis action in the tiny town of Mayfield in the early 1900s.27 In view of nineteenth-century puritanical influences that considered sports, recreation, and amusement anti-religious, it is surprising to find strong support for tennis in such predominantly Mormon communities as Manti and Mayfield. However, the Mormon church has always been in favor of sports. T h e Mormons built the Social Hall in Salt Lake City for recreation and amusement less than six years after their arrival in the valley: "The Social Hall was used for socials and dances for more than half a century . . . and was also occupied as a gymnasium." T h e Mormon church later built many gymnasiums. Brigham Young asked for a new type of church architecture with recreation halls adjacent to the actual church building. T h e bishop of each local area was encouraged to provide facilities for the youth so that "young people would be able to engage in games and sports u n d e r the close supervision of the Church, and they would not be forced to seek these things elsewhere." 2 Mormon leaders were appointed to promote athletic participation. In 1911 a series of lessons were held at the Deseret Gymnasium to train directors in several sports, including tennis. Twenty-seven young men from twenty-seven wards and stakes were enrolled in lessons in "basketball, baseball, volley ball, and tennis. . . . T h e course was very short, lasting four weeks, with five hours per day. . . . 'Rejoice, O young man, in thy strength.' "20 26 Interview with Wilbur Braithwaite, Manti, Utah, May 11, 1983; interview with Harold Woolley, Salt Lake City, May 15, 1983.

27 Interview with Loyd Whitlock, Salt Lake City, November 8, 1983.

28 George D. Pyper, Romance of an Old Playhouse (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Book Company, 1937), p. 61; Darrell Lloyd Parkin, "The Athletic Program of the Mormon Church: Its Growth and Development" (Master's thesis, University of Illinois, 1964), p. 16.

2!, "The Normal Athletic Class," Improvement Era, January, 1912, pp. 285-86.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Another organization that promoted athletics, particularly tennis, was the United States Army. T h e inventor of the game of tennis, Maj. Walter C Wingfield, was a British army officer who introduced "sphairistike" to his military friends at a lawn party in London in 1873, claiming it was a game played by the ancient Greeks. 30 T h e game spread around the world through military people. Mary Ewing Outerbridge learned tennis from British army officers while vacationing in Bermuda and returned home to lay out a court on an unused corner of the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club in 1874. Some accept that court as the first in America; others argue for different sites. A few military posts had tennis courts that same year, including Camp Apache in Arizona and Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. Fort Douglas must have played a role in the development of tennis in Utah, and the first tournament included several participants from the fort. T h e military-tennis connection is evidenced in an 1892 newspaper story about a Memorial Day celebration: T h e programme of athletic contests between the Utah university cadets and the students of the Ogden Military academy, attracted fifteen h u n d r e d persons to the baseball park yesterday afternoon. . . . Tennis was the first game to open up the programme. . . . Roberts did not play his usual game. . . . T h e Ogdens won the two sets by a score of 6 to 3.

T h e news that "Roberts did not play his usual game" suggests that the Utah cadets had played before. T h e article is also revealing in its indication that there was tennis in Ogden in 1892, at least at the military academy.

T h e Fort Douglas Museum has 1917 photographs showing two tennis courts at the fort, but there is no record of the year of construction. T h e courts were apparently built before 1905 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a tournament was played on them that year.

T h e first annual tournament of the newly-formed Inter-Mountain Lawn Tennis Association, which comprises the four states of Utah, 30 Rather than an ancient Greek game, Wingfield's tennis was more similar to "court tennis" of thirteenth-century France, a bare-handed game of hitting a stuffed cloth bag over a rope (later played with rackets). Wingfield combined elements of court tennis with other sports: net from badminton, ball from Eton fives (a form of handball), and method of scoring from hard racquets. Because it was played on a lawn, or perhaps because no one could pronounce let alone spell "sphairistike," Wingfield's game became known as tennis-on-the-lawn, and eventually lawn tennis. T h e Tennis Museum at Wimbledon, England, refers to Wingfield as "innovator" rather than "inventor" of tennis, but most tennis writers go along with his adaptation of court tennis as the beginning of the game we play today.

Wingfield's most quoted defender is George Alexander of Boise, Idaho, in Lawn Tennis: Its Founders and Its Early Days (Lynn, Mass.: H. O. Zimman, 1974). Alexander is aided in his defense of the major by the Wingfield Club, a group that meets during the U.S. Open and USTA meetings. Secretary of the Wingfield Club is David L. Freed of Salt Lake City.

31 Salt Lake Herald, May 31, 1892, p. 5.

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Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado, with headquarters at Salt Lake City, was played August 7 to 14, 1905, on the fine clay courts of the Fort Douglas Tennis Club, located on the Military Reservation.

T h e r e were fifty-four entries in the tournament. First prize, the $500 Newhouse Cup, was won by R. G. H u n t from California.

Runner-up was Frank T. Roberts of Salt Lake City. T h e Salisbury brothers won the Gentlemen's Doubles. 32 Another military tennis facility can be dated 1918. From 1917 to 1920, the area east of the present University of Utah Special Events Center was the site of a prisoner-of-war internment camp. German prisoners of World War I were housed there, as well as at other camps throughout the nation. Switzerland was the country charged with supervising the Fort Douglas internment camp, and many photographs were sent to Switzerland to prove that the prisoners were treated satisfactorily. Those pictures reveal two tennis courts next to the prisoner barracks, probably located where the Annex Building now stands. Frederick Wissenback (who had been studying for the ministry when he was taken from a seminary into custody) organized a tennis club at the camp. ZCMI donated equipment for the club, and the YMCA helped finance the facility.33 32 Bob Goodell, "History of Intermountain Tennis," Program, National Clay Courts, 1947, p. 27.

R: G. H u n t was the father of Joe R. Hunt, who defeated Bobby Riggs for the Utah State Championship in 1937, and who went on to win the National Singles Championship in 1943.

33 Interview with Raymond Kelly Cunningham, Jr., Salt Lake City, April 14, 1983, author of "Internment, 1917-1920: A History of the Prison Camp at Fort Douglas, Utah, and the Treatment of Enemy Aliens in the Western United States" (Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1976).

Prisoners barracks and tennis court at Fort Douglas internment camp. U.S. Signal Corps photograph.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

T h e club that became the greatest force for developing tennis in Utah was the Salt Lake Tennis Club, first organized in 1912 on a site near Second South on Tenth East (later Victory Playground and now a senior citizens center). O. J. and Walker Salisbury, state a n d I n t e r m o u n t a i n t e n n i s c h a m p i o n s , financed t h e five clay courts. T h e club became the premier tennis facility in Utah and one of the first clubs in the West to join the United States Lawn Tennis Association, ruling body of American tennis. For twenty-one years t h e T e n n i s Club functioned at the Tenth East location, hosting almost every tournament held in Utah. A young high school student, David L. Freed and Ray David L. Freed, was paid "$2.50 per Forsberg in the 1930 Utonian. day in 1928 to water the courts at night, roll them each morning with a large, heavy roller, and then mark the lines with a paint brush dipped in lime water. A tough job! "34 Freed learned a lot about the lines of a tennis court — in 1954 he won the U.S. Seniors Championship and was ranked number one in the nation. H e also won the National Public Parks Senior Singles in 1957 and captained the Davis Cup team in 1960-61.

Manager of the Salt Lake Tennis Club at that first location was Frank Capp, who had other interests as well — he was a bootlegger.

"His liquor was furnished by Wallace Stegner's father. One day while Wallace was playing football at the Tennis Club, he hurt his finger and had to have it amputated," 3 5 but that did not stop him from becoming one of the top tennis players on the University of Utah team and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author as well. Stegner no longer plays tennis, but it is amazing how many of the early players do — a testimonial to the life-long aspect of tennis. Many of the tennis lettermen from the 1920s on are still playing tennis.

T h e Salt Lake Tennis Club property was sold to Salt Lake City in 1927, but the club was allowed to remain at the T e n t h East location 34 35

Several interviews with David L. Freed, Salt Lake City, in 1983.

Ibid.

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until 1933. That year the five clay courts were cemented and became a public facility. T h e Tennis Club moved to Forest Dale, which had been the second home of the Salt Lake Country Club (the first had been at Gilmer Park). T h e Country Club vacated Forest Dale for its present location on the east bench, leaving three clay tennis courts in a state of disrepair. T h e Tennis Club remodeled those courts and later added two new red clay ones. This excellent facility introduced a new era to Utah tennis. Utah State Championships held there each year b e g a n to a t t r a c t world-class fields: Bobby Riggs, T e d Schroeder, Frankie Parker, Joe Hunt, and many others. T h e Intermountain Championships were held there every other year, alternating with a Colorado location. T h r e e national championships were held at the Forest Dale facility.36 By 1935, fiftieth anniversary of the first tennis tournament in Utah, the game had exploded here. Utah's facilities had evolved from courts dug out of the sagebrush to outstanding tennis centers.

Collegiate tennis had developed from no action before 1912 to one of the most popular sports at all three Utah universities in 1935.

Utah players were traveling to tournaments throughout the nation, and some of the country's finest players were attracted to the Utah State and Intermountain championships. Tennis was no longer the genteel, lobbing game of the turn of the century but had become a game of speed, grace, and athletic ability. Players had discarded the bulky clothing: men wore short-sleeved, open-throat polo shirts and sometimes short pants; women's skirts had moved up to the kneecap, and Helen Jacobs brazenly wore shorts at Forest Hills in 1933.

Utah tennis stars were becoming well known: David Freed, Buck and Sanky Dixon, Earle Peirce, Welby Emms, Ralph McElvenny, Mel Gallacher, Joe Cowley, Lee Buttle, Wes Howell, and Cy Hammond. Stars whose names were unknown competed in a new local tournament beginning in 1928. Only those who had never won a tournament were allowed to enter this unique competition â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the Salt Lake Tribune No-Champs. 37 Internationally, the names of Bill Tilden, Suzanne Lenglen, and the French Musketeers became well known in the twenties; and the thirties brought talk of the famous American Helens â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Wills and Jacobs. Fred Perry and Ellsworth 36

National Clay Court Tennis Championships in 1947 in conjunction with the celebration of Utah's Centennial; National Hardcourt Championships in 1951; National Intercollegiate Championships in 1957. T h e hardcourt tournament was possible because the Tennis Club took out the clay courts in 1948 and replaced them with concrete courts, better suited to Utah's climate.

37 A half-century later there were almost 3,000 entries in the Tribune tournament. T h e No-

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Vines, stars of the thirties, played one of a series of matches in Salt Lake City, which prompted a full-page story in the Deseret News Society Section featuring the "smart young society matrons" who hostessed parties celebrating the matches. 38 Tennis was no longer a game for a lawn party but a spectator sport and prime box office attraction.

T h e year 1935 concluded a half-century of tennis progress in Utah. T h e key to success was involvement. Utah's tennis pioneers established a tradition of activity and exceptional leadership that has continued through the years.

Utah's contribution to the growth of the game of tennis (there are an estimated thirty million players in the United States today) has been greater than the population and climate of the state would suggest. Salt Lake City has hosted more national championships than any city in the country â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the NCAA Men's Championships twice, NCAA Women's Championships twice, National Clay Courts, National Public Parks twice, National Seniors many times, National Hardcourts, and others. Salt Lake City was first to host the Intermountain Championships in 1905. T h e State Championships became in the 1930s one of the prestigious tournaments of the West.

T h e Salt Lake Tennis Club was one of the first clubs in the West to belong to the United States Tennis Association and in 1981 was honored as the outstanding "Member Organizaton of the Year."

National rankings of the top players in the country list several Utahns every year, including the 1983 NCAA champion. 30 Community endorsement of tennis has been extensive: the Salt Lake Tribune has sponsored the No-Champs for over a half-century; the Deseret News sponsors a large tournament that has been on-going for twenty years; the Ogden Standard-Examiner has sponsored a tennis tournament for about eight years; the Mormon church for many years held a churchwide tennis tournament; local businesses underwrite many tournaments. Utah has a progressive development program for young players, aided by the Youth Tennis Foundation started by David L. Freed in 1935. Freed also originated Little League and Junior League Tennis, programs that have now been adopted all over the nation. T h e traditions of Utah's tennis pioneers continue.

Champs is managed each year by Lee and Ruby Hammel. Lee was tennis coach at South and East High Schools in Salt Lake City; Ruby is the author's Saturday morning tennis partner.

38 Deseret News, February 27, 1937.

3!)

Greg Holmes, University of Utah.

Book Reviews Gold Rush Sojourners in Great Salt Lake City, 1849 and 1850. By BRIGHAM D. MADSEN. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983. xvi + 178 pp. $17.50.)

This descriptive m o n o g r a p h examines the mutually advantageous economic and social relationships that developed in Great Salt Lake Valley between Mormon and non-Mormon p o p u l a t i o n s d u r i n g t h e two-year period of the California gold rush.

Madsen's highly readable narrative begins with the story of the Mormon experience in Great Salt Lake Valley prior to the discovery of gold in California, then shifts some t h r e e hundred miles eastward to the site of the Mormon ferry on the North Platte River. For it was really at this point that the emigrant gold seeker first e n t e r e d t h e s p h e r e of M o r m o n influence. Utilizing the seminal work of Dale L. Morgan on the subject of ferry operations during the gold rush period, Madsen breathes a new vitality into this oft-told story with his judicious selection of eyewitness accounts that superbly capture the excitement of the personal experiences shared by the boatman and the emigrant alike.

Certainly, one of the pleasures of reading this scholarly work is to be found in the author's skillful editing of the original observer's remarks.

With the crossing of the N o r t h Platte and the Green rivers safely behind t h e m , the e m i g r a n t t h r o n g s made their way to Salt Lake City, passing e n t e r p r i s i n g M o r m o n salvaging parties traveling eastward as far as Fort Laramie, retrieving items scarce in the valley that were jet-

tisoned by the o v e r b u r d e n e d gold seekers to reduce the strain on their animals. According to Madsen, fully one-third of the '49ers were to take the road to Salt Lake City â&#x20AC;&#x201D; usually those that were least well prepared, the latecomers, the ill, or the argumentive, who were often in search of legal services.

Gleaning his information from the diaries and journals of reliable observers and from such contemporary sources as the Deseret News and the Millennial Star, Madsen uncovered a pattern of mutually beneficial economic and social exchanges between the emigrants and the Mormons that indicates t h e gold r u s h p e r i o d brought prosperity to the Mormon c o m m u n i t y , while the c o m m u n i t y provided succor for the emigrant. His investigations reveal that during the average one-week stay in Salt Lake City the emigrant was overjoyed to discover that he could trade his trailworn animals to the Mormons for fresh ones at a price that he could afford. Furthermore, his host, whose clothing had seen the ravages of two years wear, was eager to trade produce, milk, or eggs for the extra clothes that overburdened the emigrant. However, nothing enjoyed a more brisk exchange than did coffee, tea, or tobacco, for the M o r m o n community had little opportunity to procure such luxuries.

Devoting ample room to the social

198 aspects of the relationships, Madsen noted that the natural warm spring on the north end of town found good use as a bathing place; likewise, many emigrants recorded their visits to the Bowery, observations of Pioneer Day celebrations, the Sabbath day services, and the sermons of Brigham Young; and many offered comments about the t h e n p r a c t i c e d i n s t i t u t i o n of polygamy. Yet, the o v e r w h e l m i n g number of sojourners were favorably impressed with Mormon hospitality.

T h e emigrants took leave of Salt Lake City by one of three routes: north by the Salt Lake Road, west by the Hastings Cutoff, or south by the Old Spanish Trail. For some, however, the trail ended at Salt Lake City when they opted to "winter over," rather than face the prospect of crossing the Sierra in the dead of winter.

Of those who elected to remain, many resumed their journey once the grass appeared in spring, while others converted to Mormonism and lived out their days in Zion. However, there was yet another group to emerge following the vernal equinox. This small but vocal band was composed of individuals who h a d b e c o m e v e h e m e n t l y a n t i - M o r m o n , and they began at-

Utah Historical Quarterly tacking the church. With regard to the latter, Madsen presents his closing thesis: that it was the negative publicity generated by the disgruntled few emigrants (particularly Franklin Langworthy, Nelson Slater, and J. W. Goodell) that would be responsible for the rupture of political relations between the Mormons and their national government before the end of the decade. For these emigrant malcontents were the "first to agitate for the kind of tight control of Mormondom which eventually led President James Buchanan to send an army to Utah" (p. 131).

Illustrated with an excellent selection of contemporary sketches and photographs and augmented by three succinct m a p s , M a d s e n ' s welldocumented work is a worthy contribution to the literature of the gold rush and to the history of the emb r y o n i c City of Zion. Gold Rush Sojouners belongs on the bookshelf of b o t h the serious scholar a n d the amateur historian.

TODD I. BERENS

Lexington Jr. High School Cypress, California

Blazing Crosses in Zion: The Ku Klux'Klan in Utah. By LARRY R. GERLACH. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1982. xxvi + 248 pp. Cloth, $ 17.50; paper, $7.95.)

Paradoxically, Larry Gerlach has written a highly significant book about a m o v e m e n t that had little significance: the Ku Klux Klan in Utah. T h e Klan's insignificance comes from the fact that during its heyday in the 1920s, as well as during its recent revival, it gained very few adherents in Utah, had virtually no political influence, and had little importance in any other way. T h e significance of the book, however, comes from the kind of questions the author raises. Why

did the Klan gain a foothold at all in Utah? What kind of people joined the Klan, and why? Why did it not become stronger, given the social climate that was, in many ways, amenable to its announced ideals? And why did it so quickly die out in the 1920s? In dealing with such questions, Gerlach provides an important social commentary on Utah that has significance far beyond the importance of the Klan itself.

For once a dust jacket blurb is cor-

Book Reviews and Notices rect when it reads: "Well-conceived, appealingly written, and carefully researched, Blazing Crosses in Zion is the definitive history of the Ku Klux Klan in Utah." Gerlach's style is clear, lucid, a n d i n t e r e s t i n g . H e writes with enough spice to keep the reader interested but with no tendency at all toward flamboyancy or toward the kind of emotionally a p p e a l i n g or heavy-handed criticism that could be so natural with a topic such as this. His organization is well thought out, and he does his readers a service by putting the activities of the Utah Klan into their larger national political and social setting. In that sense, it is a fine commentary on American as well as Utah social history.

His first chapter briefly summarizes the rise of the Klan movement and comments in particular on social conditions that helped account for its catching on in Utah in the 1920s. This is followed by an interpretive chapter characterizing the organization, personnel, and reasons for the decline of the Klan. T h e n comes a provocative chapter on its recent revival in Utah, which suggests some i m p o r t a n t changes in characteristics that have attracted to it a few more Mormons than before, and an epilogue that evaluates briefly its role today.

Some nit-pickers might object to calling Blazing Crosses a "definitive" history, for Gerlach had no access to the kind of inside, Klan-generated sources that are generally so important to writing history. No membership rolls, minutes of meetings, correspondence, or official records of any sort were available to him. He did, h o w e v e r , m a k e use of over o n e hundred oral interviews, the papers of prominent people who were associated with or influenced by the Klan, and all the relevant government records (which yielded little of value). He also made good use of all the newsp a p e r s o u r c e s . W h a t he finally

199 created, by his own definition, was not an internal history of the Klan but, rather, a public history. And that is what makes the book so important.

As a public history, it deals with the impact of the Klan on the public mind and the relationship between the activities of the Klan and the things g o i n g on a r o u n d it. In C a r b o n County, for example, one sees the relationship between the rise of the Klan and the tense labor problems that existed not only there but in other parts of the country in the 1920s. T h e book is n o t a n a r r o w l y focused m o n o g r a p h b u t , r a t h e r , a social analysis that uses the Klan as the focus for some significant commentary on Utah and its attitudes in general. In this sense it is the definitive history of the Utah Klan.

Gerlach does it all with exemplary deftness. While he obviously does not like the Klan or its p r o g r a m s , he nevertheless tries to help the reader see Klansmen from their own point of view. He does not hesitate to name names, when necessary to the story, or to say other things Klansmen might not like, but neither does he hound them with critical epithets. He does not hesitate to express his own views about the negative results of Klandom, but neither does he run such commentary into the ground by repeating it endlessly. He sees that certain Mormon attitudes contributed to the rise of the Klan, yet is not heavyhanded in his treatment of the predominant Utah religion. His own assumptions are clear, yet he does not compromise his credibility by overstating them. When dealing with a topic as full of emotion-laden possibilities as the Klan in a Mormondominated state, it is a skillful historian who can do it with the balance and detachment that Gerlach accomplishes.

T h e story becomes fascinating as o n e sees K l a n c r a f t .

Kleagles,

200 Klaverns, Konklaves, the Kloran, and all the other Klanish paraphernalia marching across the pages of Utah history. Generally, Utahns were unfriendly to it, but certain factors in the social climate nevertheless made the Invisible Empire attractive to some of them in the 1920s. Even a few Mormons joined, though church leaders generally d e n o u n c e d it a n d most Klansmen were clearly non-Mormon.

T h e pro-Klan movie, The Birth of a Nation, was as p o p u l a r in Utah as elsewhere. Utahns were highly susceptible to the one-hundred-percent Americanism preached by the Klan.

Many were disturbed by the presence of the new immigrants, who where not as well assimilated into Utah society as were the nineteenth-century Mormon immigrants. T h e Mormon denial of the priesthood to blacks contributed to a racist attitude not unlike that of whites elsewhere, and Utah was not immune from anti-Semitism. In addition, t h e M o r m o n - n o n - M o r m o n dichotomy made the Klan's strong call for absolute separation of church and state an appealing factor for many non-Mormons.

Gerlach systematically takes his readers through the many efforts to organize the Klan, most of these along the Wasatch Front. After 1924 the Klan practically disappeared. For a short time, however, hooded Klansmen and burning crosses appeared in Cache Valley, Ogden, Salt Lake City, U t a h C o u n t y , C a r b o n County, and elsewhere, though the greatest success was in Salt Lake and Carbon counties. But general public sentiment was opposed to the Klan.

Mormon leaders made specific and pointed statements against it, and the newspapers were actively hostile.

T o the Utah Klan's credit, however, Gerlach observes that it did not engage in many acts of violence, as did its counterparts elsewhere in the nation.

One of the reasons for its demise, in

Utah Historical Quarterly fact, was the publicly attending certain violent incidents that were promulgated by others but blamed on the Klan. Another was the antimask ordin a n c e passed by some cities t h a t threatened to reveal the identity of Klansmen if they continued wearing their hoods. It is worthy of note that members of the recently revived Klan have a p p e a r e d in public w i t h o u t hoods and seem to have no fear of public exposure as did their predecessors in the 1920s.

Though Gerlach succeeds in presenting a well-balanced history, he does not mince words in his denunciation not just of the Klan but also of the social conditions that fostered it in the 1920s and still allow it to exist today. T h e prejudice inherent in Klan motives and activities comes u n d e r severe indictment from his pen. Its history in Utah, he says, "is a tragic story because so many Utahns, like their fellow Americans across the nation, failed to learn from the experience."

Most Utahns were not willing to join the Klan, but they p r o m o t e d discrimination in a way that only supported Klan objectives. It exists in Utah today, he says, for the same reasons, t h a t is, " b e c a u s e racism, nativism, and bigotry remain controlling social assumptions for many residents." One who reads the book must be challenged to take stock of himself, to see if such attitudes indeed exist within himself. If Gerlach is right, then "so long as people persist in making arbitrary j u d g m e n t s based solely on color, creed, or ethnicity, the Klan or similar organizations will continue to find a niche in society."

Blazing Crosses in Zion is a book well worth reading â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not necessarily because of what it says about the Klan itself, but because of the deeper insight it gives us into the social nuances that go to make up Utah itself and because of the challenge it presents each Utahn who may read it. In that

Book Reviews and Notices way it becomes much more important than the specific topic announced by its title.

201 JAMES B. ALLEN

Brigham Young University

Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration, 1830-1890. By CONWAY B. SONNE. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983. xviii + 212 pp. $20.00.)

"A church on the move": thus Conway B. Sonne aptly describes the Mormon experience of migration and immigration in the period from 1830 to 1890. Saints on the Seas reveals the m o v e m e n t of M o r m o n s and their converts by numerous water routes both to and from the North American continent. In this study we learn that Mormon missionaries were, almost from the church's inception, prepared to go abroad to seek converts.

Many readers may be surprised that early missions often took churchmen into the Pacific: to India, Ceylon, New Zealand, and Australia. Although the harvest of converts yielded less than similar efforts in the Atlantic area, missionary efforts were active and s u s t a i n e d t h r o u g h m u c h of this period.

Travelers crossing the Atlantic provided the bulk of overseas emigrants, and here Sonne makes an important contribution. Most non-Mormons, or those only casually aware of westward movement, are likely to view Mormon migration solely as an internal odyssey â&#x20AC;&#x201D; often by handcart â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Sonne reveals in careful detail the extent of the overseas effort, tracing the importance of Liverpool as the principal port of embarkation for British and other European and Scandinavian converts.

T h e j o u r n e y overseas for many Mormons, whether convert or missionary, often was a voyage of hardship, disease, and deprivation with many Saints finding themselves economically distressed. T h r o u g h the judicious use of brief but poignant quotations from the letters and diaries

of the participants, the author brings alive this phase of Mormon life. In the process he conveys the sense of purpose and the spiritual intensity that motivated these people. We learn as well of the importance of "gathering" as a spiritual and temporal force and, most important, as a device for moving large numbers of converts from distant continents to the Utah wilderness that had become their Zion.

T h e book is filled with interesting tidbits. We learn that Joseph Smith with others purchased a steamboat in 1840 from Lt. (later General) Robert E. Lee and that in half a century only o n e vessel t r a n s p o r t i n g e m i g r a n t companies across the oceans was ever lost. At the same time, the author indirectly provides us with a sense of the ships and shipbuilding, of the evolution of ocean-going vessels from sail to steam, and of the n a t u r e of early transportation by water, which used America's inland water system with its rivers and canals.

T h e work is not without some annoying features, perhaps unavoidable in this type of approach. From the very beginning careful attention is given to the proper identification of vessel names and types, but the reader is left to ponder what constitutes a bark, a schooner, a scow, or a ship until well into the text where these distinctions are finally, though ably, defined for us. T h e seemingly endless inclusion of names throughout the text, p e r h a p s a d e l i g h t to t h e genealogists a n d M o r m o n history buffs, is another annoyance in that it produces a cataloging effect that for the a v e r a g e r e a d e r c l u t t e r s this

202 otherwise fine narrative. Finally, although Sonne provides us with a sense of the global missionary effort on the part of the early Mormon church and notes in the final chapter that Mormon migration was but a part of the general movement of people from Europe during the nineteenth century, his failure to integrate this more fully into the text unnecessarily narrows his focus.

T h e strength of this work lies in the author's undertaking of the Herculean task of sifting through newspapers, church records, diaries, ship's logs, letters, and a myriad of obscure documents to produce both a welldocumented text and an appendix of charts and lists that are a valuable part of this work. T h e old axiom "a picture is worth a thousand words" might be altered here to read "chart." These tabulations, especially the one dealing with emigrant companies, provide much information not only about people — the company leader, the

Utah Historical Quarterly ship captain, a n d the n u m b e r of Mormon emigrants — but also of vessel registry, ship names, d e p a r t u r e and arrival times, days required for passage, types a n d t o n n a g e , a n d places of construction — a veritable nugget in the history of transportation and an important acquisition for those interested in the development of maritime transportation.

Although the general reader may in some instances feel the work to be encumbered with detail, this account of Mormon migration is sufficiently unusual and well written to hold one's attention and is well worth reading.

For those interested in Mormon history and genealogy this story of Mormon movement adds the bonus of names and places and is highly recommended.

JAMES H. LEVITT

State University College of Arts and Science Potsdam, New York

Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature. By WALLACE STEGNER and RICHARD W. ETULAIN. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983. x + 207 pp. $15.00.)

Utahns identify with and love Wallace Stegner in a way they do no other writer. Anyone who was at the University of Utah in the thirties — my mother tells me the enrollment was only about three thousand in those days — is likely to have known him either as an instructor or as a fellow student. (Once, about twenty years ago, an aunt of mine nearly floored me by making reference to "Wally" Stegner. She wasn't name-dropping; that's just what people called him at the U.) Stegner has a way, too, of recreating Salt Lake City's past that no one has matched. When Recapitulation was published five years ago, my

father reminisced fondly about the late-twenties n e i g h b o r h o o d s a n d downtown streets that serve as the novel's setting. Even people who have never met Stegner (myself, for example, though I used to date a fellow who eventually went to Stanford to study writing with him) have a special place for him in their hearts. In Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature, Stegner shows he understands why this is: "I was a gentile who didn't turn out to be a Mormon-hater. . . . "[T]he Mormon audience, the Utah audience, Mormon and gentile, has been kind to me because it seems to them I'm a local

Book Reviews and Notices boy made good." Stegner is one of our own. He is a superb writer besides, an artist of the first rank whose failure to be recognized properly by the eastern literary establishment makes us love him all the more fiercely.

Our fondness for Stegner the man as well as for Stegner the novelist and historian is sure to make Conversations a welcome addition to home and public libraries throughout the West. We may thank Richard W. Etulain for conceiving the book. A respected hist o r i a n who is very familiar with Stegner and his work, Etulain conducted a series of ten informal interviews with him, each two hours long and each loosely addressing a particular topic, such as Stegner's life, his early and later works, the Mormons, western literature, western historiography, and environmentalism. Etulain says in an afterword that he and S t e g n e r e x a m i n e d the t a p e t r a n scriptions and "made minor changes in wording and punctuation, but the interviews are essentially as they were recorded." T h e text is generously interspersed with candid portraits of the two men, made during the interviews by p h o t o g r a p h e r Leo Holub. This presentation gives the book an immediacy that is most fetching. We discover, too, that Stegner's speech — while retaining the qualities appropriate to informal discourse — is as graceful, balanced, trenchant, and witty as his writing.

I regret having to report that for all its a p p e a l , Conversations is deeply flawed by an unaccountable failure — Etulain's, I imagine — to supply a context for the interviews. T h e book is almost guaranteed to alienate outsid-

203 ers, for it presupposes that the reader knows Stegner, and it does not provide a scrap of introduction to the man's life a n d work. ( T h e list of Stegner's books is not enough. A full chapter of biographical and literary information was needed, but even a sketch of five or six pages would have been better than nothing.) T h e problem is worsened by Norman Cousins's foreword, which, though impressive, misleads the reader into thinking the book was meant to appeal to a general audience. T h a t it is not is demonstrated by Etulain's opening words: "I gather from what you have written in Wolf Willow a n d Big Rock Candy Mountain that your boyhood experiences gave you a s t r o n g sense of place." An uninitiated reader who comes upon these words immediately after reading Cousins's words is in danger of getting the bends.

More's the pity. Conversations might have served as the book that helped outsiders — the eastern literary establishment, say — better appreciate Stegner; it might have made them interested in reading him not as a western writer but as a writer. It is, instead, the proceedings of a tight little club, a document almost inaccessible to outsiders at some points. I predict that r e a d e r s who have known Wallace Stegner personally, or who know his work, will find the book edifying and delightful. Readers who neither have nor do are likely to find it hermetic and frustrating.

POLLY STEWART

Salisbury State College Salisbury, Maryland

Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty. By W. L. RUSHO with the letters of EVERETT RUESS. (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1983. xii+228 pp. $15.50.)

T h e life of poet, artist, and canyon country wanderer Everett Ruess, who

vanished in 1934 at age twenty from Davis Gulch in the Escalante River

204 country, presents a series of nagging riddles, none of which can be completely solved. What forces d r o v e Ruess into the canyons and the desert?

What could he have become at full artistic and literary maturity? What was his ultimate fate? T h e search for Everett Ruess began with Everett Ruess himself and it will not end with this book. It can hardly continue without this book, though, for W. L. Rusho has done a fine job of assembling and weighing the available evidence, and if he reaches few conclusions, it is because that evidence is so fragmentary and so contradictory that a full understanding of Everett Ruess will never be achieved.

Like the man himself, the book fits fully none of the standard categories; it is biography, edited collection of letters, and detective story all at once.

It is a stronger book for that, for Rusho has had the sensitivity to follow his materials where they led and to present them in what may be the only appropriate way, unorthodox though it may be.

T h e biographical part is the slimmest. It consists mostly of editorial connective tissue among the letters, with the letters themselves bearing most of the biographical burden. This is perfectly appropriate, for what we want is not mainly a recital of the external facts of Ruess's life, in themselves relatively insignificant, b u t rather a feeling for his inner life â&#x20AC;&#x201D; his emotions, his motives, his aspirations â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that m a d e u p the real Everett Ruess. And this we get in generous measure, for Rusho gives us "most of the extant letters" (p. 10) written during Ruess's four years of wandering. This collection far surpasses in quantity the earlier anthology, On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess, published by Desert magazine in 1940, though that earlier volume, if only for its visual beauty, still merits a place in any worthy canyon country library.

Utah Historical Quarterly What do the letters reveal? Inevitably, they reveal immaturity in their melodrama and purple prose, and that of course is Ruess's great misfortune; who of us would like to be rem e m b e r e d only for that which he wrote before he was twenty-one? At their best, though, they are highly moving and challenging, strongly reminiscent of Thoreau in their disenchantment with modern civilization and in their childlike pleasure in things wild and unspoiled. They hint of deep undeveloped expressive resources that additional years might have discovered and brought u n d e r command. Even without that maturation, Ruess's influence is virtually inescapable for other canyon country writers, some of whom, like Edward Abbey, have had the time and the discipline to exploit the literary and philosophical potential in Ruess's basic perspective.

Regarding Ruess's ultimate fate, one can have both the pleasure and the frustration of choosing a m o n g several colorful possibilities. Was he murdered by cattle rustlers? Did he drown trying to cross the Colorado, or perhaps the San Juan? Or is he alive today, spinning out his last years anonymously among the Navajo or in Mexico? All of these theories have devoted adherents, plausible evidence â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and equally damaging liabilities. A careful historian, Rusho advocates none of these nor any other theory, realizing that the available evidence is simply inconclusive. So the search for Everett Ruess goes on. In the meantime, pending discovery of some minute but pregnant bit of evidence in some unexplored rincon, we have this book, full of love of canyon and desert and of life apart from the shackling coordinates of civilization.

GARY TOPPING

Utah State Historical Society

Book Reviews and Notices

205

Back Trail of an Old Cowboy. By PAUL E. YOUNG. Edited by NELLIE (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. 229 pp. $14.95.)

Since this biography starts with a slow, low-key beginning, a r e a d e r might j u m p to the conclusion that the writer is no cowboy, is indeed a fake.

But the account soon picks up and convinces the skeptic that not all cowboys were born in Texas. Here is an honest-to-God cowboy, who peeled b r o n c s , b u s t e d cows, d r a g g e d b o g g e d - d o w n c r i t t e r s o u t of t h e quicksand, lived part-time in dugouts, drank moonshine whiskey, outrode winter blizzards, and did it all without bragging.

T h e story begins where the tracks were first made, in Heber, Utah, in 1892 by a boy from a typical frontier family where money was scarce and g r u b b i n g for a living the u n c o m promising rule. It was natural for Paul Young to learn how to mouth a horse to get his age and how to shoe him with plates in the summer and sharp calks in the winter. But where did he pick up that arcane lore that taught him to j u d g e a horse's character before he ever put a saddle on him? Unexplainable, except that it lay in the makeup of the boy, an observer with sharp memory and ambition.

At age fourteen he was breaking horses, and at sixteen doing it for a living. By then he was really weaned and had left the family h o m e for good, although not in a bad sense.

Young first rode for neighbors and friends who ran small herds of cattle on nearby mountains. One of his earliest j o b s was r i d i n g line on t h e mountain to keep cattle from getting higher up where the poison larkspur grew rank. Soon after that he hired as driver of freight wagons in the Mancos and Montezuma area. That job came b e c a u s e his e m p l o y e r h a d formed a good opinion of him from the way he handled his team while bucking a fresno scraper.

SNYDER YOST.

I talked low to my horses and was careful never to jerk them, even accidentally. I have made it a habit never to jerk a horse's rein or line when he had a bit in his mouth. A fellow might jerk a colt around, halter-breaking it, but that was a different deal.

As he developed skill in breaking and handling horses, his reputation as a bronc twister began to bring him customers who wanted rough animals smoothed out and taught to give reliable service. At the same time he was learning from experienced cowmen how to handle cattle individually and in herds. And always he nurtured a dream about having a spread of his own with herds of sound horses and fat cattle.

But with it all he kept an eye open for fun, never missing dances in small towns and practicing wrestling with an old friend who had turned pro and who taught him the fundamentals of t h e s p o r t . T h i s led to his b e i n g m a t c h e d o n e a f t e r n o o n with t h e young Jack Dempsey. They tangled in a sand lot behind a bar in Price, and he surprised the rowdy boxer by pinning him with a fall.

T h e jargon used in Young's profession flows naturally from his pen. He even repeats the local folk corruptions of common words such aspanyards for panniers, the bags that hang on each side of a pack saddle. Some examples of his usage: "to bring a cut of yearling heifers back to the ranch" "They were corraling the remuda to catch up their night horses."

"I told the snubber to hand me the rope and I would step on the bronc."

"You rode him without pulling leather but you didn't have time to scratch him."

And our cowboy certainly had an ear

206 for dramatic comments, as when a cocky Texas Kid walked up to an ex-outlaw at the bar and sneered, "They tell me you used to ride with the Wild Bunch." The ex-Wild Bunch rider's right arm went round the Kid's neck and his left hand snatched a gun from some place and shoved it, cocked, into the Kid's ear and twisted it, taking some skin off. "Now" he said, "after cleaning your ear for you maybe you can hear what I've got to tell you. It's simply this: I've walked away from you twice to avoid trouble. But don't crowd me again or you will have to be carried out."

It was inevitable that Paul Young, whose tastes generally pointed him in the direction of horses, should have heard of a wild bunch of ponies that were getting fat on the slopes of Ute M o u n t a i n in s o u t h e r n C o l o r a d o .

Naturally, he made plans to catch some of them. In this affair he was himself caught in a little mixup with the Utes, who resented any white activity on t h e i r r a n g e . T h e r e was shooting and Young left the region with eight horses he knew he could sell to miners in Park City. We can see him pack his animals, taking care to bal-

Utah Historical Quarterly ance meticulously the panyards so the uneven loads would not rub sores on the horses' backs.

O u r subject frequently mentions characters known to local history buffs such as Matt W a r n e r of the Wild Bunch. But when he talks with pride and affection of his bootmaker, one Silcott, the small-town craftsman in Grand Junction, who made a pair of excellent boots for this reviewer in 1922, you know that Paul Young is a u t h e n t i c . T h i s cowboy d o e s n o t exaggerate, and if a reader relishes the anecdotes of cowboy life that reveal it without flinching, here is the book to check out.

In p u r s u i t of his d r e a m Young finally went to Montana to get a ranch for himself. In the course of this move he found himself in Miles City, where he broke hundreds of horses, many of them outlaws, for inspectors from Britain, France, and Italy who were buying horses for WW I. Later, having b e c o m e comfortably well off, Young organized a polo club, a fair novelty in Montana. He died at age 92.

KARL E. YOUNG

Brigham Young University

Time, Space, and Transition in Anasazi Prehistory. By MICHAEL S. BERRY. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1982. xii + 147 pp. $20.00.)

If a basic criterion for determining t h e significance of a work is t h e amount of debate and discussion that it generates, then Michael Berry's study is a potentially important work.

This study should stimulate a r e v a l u ation of the prehistory of the Southwest as well as the current paradigm of the cultural evolution of the Anasazi.

Berry's principal goal in this study is a systematic reassessment of the prehistoric C o l o r a d o P l a t e a u d e n drochronological and radiocarbon chronometric data. Based on this data

and paleoclimatological information, Berry analyzes the trends of Anasazi cultural development. His theoretical s c h e m e eschews an e v o l u t i o n a r y " g r a d u a l i s m " as an i n t e r p r e t a t i v e framework in favor of an alternative biological evolutionary model.

Berry initially applies his approach to the problem of dating the introduction of maize into the Southwest.

Based on his reevaluadon of both the chronometric and extant archaeological data, he concludes that the introduction of maize took place much

Book Reviews and Notices later t h a n has b e e n previously suggested: after 750 B.C. in the Basin and Range area of the Southwest and after 185 B.C. on the Colorado Plateau.

This event, he concludes, was the p r o d u c t of m i g r a t i o n s into each province, which in turn initiated an abrupt and profound transition in cultural development. While Berry's treatment of the existing but limited chronometric data is good, his interpretation of the data is not unequivocally supported. T h e reader, therefore, is asked to accept tacitly his assertions.

T h e main body of this work is its d i a c h r o n i c reanalysis of c u l t u r a l c h a n g e in the s o u t h e r n C o l o r a d o Plateau from the i n t r o d u c t i o n of maize to A.D. 1450. Descriptive summaries of the well-dated sites from the pre-A.D. 700 period are presented and assessed in detail. Based on a ten-year i n c r e m e n t bar chart of all of the chronometric data, Berry suggests that cultural development occurred in discrete temporal stages corresponding to t h e stages of t h e Pecos Classification rather than in a continuous pattern. He concludes that the discontinuities between the stages d i s p r o v e g r a d u a l in situ Anasazi evolution.

In the final chapter, "Climate, Migration, and Anasazi Evolution," Berry details his perspective on Anasazi evolution. He posits that cycles of drought, as interpreted from the current dendroclimatological data, provided the catalyst for migration, which he considers to be the principal survival response. He argues that during periods of severe drought the Colo r a d o Plateau was virtually abandoned with diverse groups aggregating in "refugia." These areas were generally located at higher elevations

207 w h e r e an a g r i c u l t u r a l subsistence strategy was still viable. It was during these transition periods, reflected as discontinuities in dated events on the Colorado Plateau, that the process of cultural evolution presumably took place. With the return of more favorable environmental conditions the culturally altered groups, manifesting those characteristics of the succeeding cultural stage, returned to the Colorado Plateau.

T h e ideas expressed in this chapter are both provocative and controversial but often unconvincingly presented or documented. Berry's model oversimplifies complex processes of cultural change by considering only a single stress factor, drought, which he assumes was always equally devastating across the plateau. T h e model also assumes homogenous socio-political cultural development for any given time period and does not account for alternative organizational survival responses to environmental stress factors, i.e., alterations in exchange networks. F u r t h e r , the processes and mechanisms of cultural change are not discussed to any extent, nor are they related to the "punctated equilibria" evolutionary model.

Despite these theoretical and interpretative weaknesses, Berry's book is one that should be seriously considered by all students of Southwest prehistory. His reanalysis of t h e chronometric data, in particular, provides a fresh perspective that should serve to stimulate research to reinforce or refute this alternative view of prehistoric culture change.

ROBERT NEILY

Bureau of Land Management

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Book Notices

The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918.

By R U T H ROSEN. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. xvii + 245 pp. Paper, $7.95.)

This outstanding study of prostitution in the Progressive Era deserves a wide audience. T h e author analyzes the historical, social, economic, and political forces at work in the early twentieth century, painting a vivid portrait of the prostitute and her particular milieu as well as the larger society of which she was a part. In so doing, Rosen ably demonstrates what a very complex problem prostitution was and is.

T h e success of Progressive reformers in closing notorious red-light districts in major cities "drove the Social Evil u n d e r g r o u n d where it became more closely yoked to . . . drugs . . . and increased violence." What had been essentially a "women's business" became in the later twentieth century "enormously profitable . . . with most of the profits siphoned off by men â&#x20AC;&#x201D; pimps, taxi drivers, members of organized crime, liquor dealers, physicians, and real estate speculators."

Moreover, "the sexual objectification of women's bodies" now permeates everything from advertising to the slimiest pornography, producing, like prostitution, e n o r m o u s profits for someone other than the exploited women.

The Lost Sisterhood represents a decade of reseach; the result has justified the effort, for Professor Rosen has given us a fascinating scholarly work that illuminates past and present.

^*CMJ,

Diary of the Jesuit Residence of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, Conejos, Colorado, December 1871-December 1875. Edited by MARIANNE L. STOLLER and THOMAS J. STEELE. Translated by JOSE B. FERNANDEZ. (Colorado Springs: Colorado College, 1982. xlvi + 227 pp. Paper, $9.95.)

This diary documents the religious life and the yearly cycle of events in Colorado's first Catholic parish, located in the San Luis Valley, an area of small, mostly Hispanic communities.

T h e text, notes, and introduction t o g e t h e r p r o v i d e a p i c t u r e of nineteenth-century Hispanic Catholic life and culture that helps to define Utah's ethnic history, for many Utah Hispanos trace their roots to the Hispanic communities in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.

Forging the Copper Collar: Arizona's Labor-Management War of 19011921. By JAMES W. BYRKIT. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982. xvi + 435 pp. $24.95.)

When some eleven h u n d r e d alleged Wobblies were forcibly removed from Bisbee, Arizona, to the New Mexico desert in boxcars in 1917 the event "charted a course of anti-unionism that is still being followed in Arizona."

Byrkit contends that corporate interests m a n i p u l a t e d state politics, thwarted unionism, and set u p tax structures favorable to themselves during a period of turbulent social change.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY MILTON C. ABRAMS, Logan, 1985

Chairman WAYNE K. H I N T O N , Cedar City, 1985

Vice-chairman MELVIN T. SMITH, Salt Lake City

Secretary THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, Provo, 1987 PHILLIP A. BULLEN, Salt Lake City, 1987 J. ELDON DORMAN, Price, 1985 ELIZABETH GRIFFITH, Ogden, 1985

DEAN L MAY, Salt Lake City, 1987 DAVID S. MONSON, Lieutenant Governor/

Secretary of State, Ex officio WILLIAM D. OWENS, Salt Lake City, 1987 HELEN Z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City, 1985 ANAND A. YANG, Salt Lake City, 1985

ADMINISTRATION M E L V I N T. SMITH. Director STAN FORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor JAY M. HAYMOND, Librarian DAVID B. MADSEN, State Archaeologist A. KENT POWELL, Historic Preservation Research WILSON G. MARTIN, Historic Preservation Development P H I L I P F. NOTARIANNI, Museum Services

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, u n d e r state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical materials; collecting historic Utah artifacts; locating, documenting, and preserving historic and prehistoric buildings and sites; and maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs, museum, or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live u p to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah s past.

This publication has been funded with the assistance of a matching grant-in-aid from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, u n d e r provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended.

This program receives financial assistance for identification and preservation of historic properties u n d e r Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. T h e U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, or handicap in its federally assisted programs. I f you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to: Office of Equal Opportunity, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C. 20240.