Arsenal Hill Explosion
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Baseball Grounds behind the old city wall on Arsenal Hill. No one suspected or was prepared for the disaster and havoc that would wrack the northern portions of the city that evening. 2 At 5:00 P.M. an explosion of the powder magazines on Arsenal Hill rocked the city. T h e forty-second interval between the first and last of the three devastating blasts threw many citizens into a panic and caused widespread destruction. A deaf gentleman, quietly enjoying dinner at a restaurant opposite the Townsend House hotel, tried to find refuge from the window glass suddenly breaking over him. Although unharmed, he said, "it seemed as though the place was being blown to pieces." Initial reactions varied considerably. T h e immediate cause of the earthshaking concussions was not apparent to most people. Not a few thought the veritable j u d g m e n t day had come upon them. One distraught mother was reported to have run out of the house with her three children, whom she gathered around her kneeling in the street and imploring heavenward, "The end of the world! O, Lord, have mercy on us!" Two ladies reportedly rushed into the arms of a stranger on the street, shouting "Brother, let us pray; the world's coming to an end!" 3 Some thought that an earthquake or volcanic eruption was in progress. Some confided that they feared that the soldiers at Fort Douglas were cannonading the city to drive the Mormons out. Conversely, it was reported that others thought that Brigham Young was blowing up the city to rid it of the Gentiles. T h e thirty boys playing on the old Deseret Baseball Grounds, a quarter-mile southwest of the powder magazines, immediately realized the source of the blast. T h e force of the shock knocked several of them unconscious. Those who were able scurried to safety behind the old city wall and then fled in the wildest excitement to their homes. 4 2 Arsenal Hill, now called Capitol Hill, received its name from the old Nauvoo Legion arsenal building which was located south of the present Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum, between T h i r d North and Hillside Avenue. That building was also used as a slaughterhouse for a number of years before a fire destroyed it. Deseret Evening News, October 12, 1870. 3 T h e powder magazines were warehouses for gunpowder and explosives sold by various businesses in the city. They comprised four buildings on the west rim of City Creek Canyon, directly north of the present Capitol Hill reservoir. T o give it a sense of scale, the magazine grounds extended from about Fourth North to Seventh North streets (if those streets were extended eastward onto the present precipitous hillscape), hugging the then-undeveloped steep rim of the canyon. T h e Townsend House was located at the southwest corner of First South and West Temple. Map of Salt Lake City and Suburbs (Salt Lake City: J o h n L. Burns, 1871); Historian's Office Journal, April 5, 1876, LDS Church Library Archives, Salt Lake City; J o h n Paternoster Squires, Journal, Book D, April 5, 1876, ibid; Samuel A. Woolley, Diary, Volume 14, April 5, 1876, ibid.; Thomas Higgs in Sixteenth Q u o r u m of Seventies, Minutes, April 16, 1876, ibid.; Deseret Evening News, April 6, 1876; Salt Lake Herald, April 7, 1876; Salt Lake Tribune, April 7, 1876. 4 Ruth May Fox, Autobiography, p. 29, Mormon Biographies Collection, LDS Church Library Archives; Frederick Kesler, Diary, April 5, 1876, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of
