Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 69, Number 1, 2001

TOR WINTER 2001

QUARTERLY •

VOLUME 69

•

NUMBER 1

UTAH HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

(ISSN 0042-143X)

EDITORIAL

STAFF

MAX J. EVANS, Editor STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor KRISTEN SMART ROGERS, Associate Editor ALLAN KENT POWELL, Book Review Editor

ADVISORY B O A R D OF

EDITORS

NOEL A. CARMACK, Hyrum, 2003 LEE ANN KREUTZER,Torrey, 2003 ROBERT S. MCPHERSON, Branding, 2001 MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Murray, 2003 ANTONETTE CHAMBERS NOBLE, Cora,WY, 2002 RICHARD C. ROBERTS, Ogden, 2001 JANET BURTON SEEGMILLER, Cedar City, 2002 GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City, 2002 RICHARD S. VAN WAGONER, Lehi, 2001

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah history. The Quarterly is published four times a year by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 R i o Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-3500 for membership and publications information. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Beehive History, Utah Preservation, and the bimonthly newsletter upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $20; institution, $20; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or older), $15; contributing, $25; sustaining, $35; patron, $50; business, $100.

Manuscripts submitted for publication should be double-spaced with endnotes. Authors are encouraged to include a P C diskette with the submission. For additional information on requirements, contact the managing editor. Articles and book reviews represent the views of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Utah State Historical Society.

Periodicals postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah.

POSTMASTER: Send address change to Utah Historical Quarterly, 300 R i o Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101.

WINTER 2001

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VOLUME 69

•

NUMBER 1

2

I N THIS ISSUE

4

Cowboys, Indians, and Conflict: The Pinhook Draw Fight, 1881 By Rusty Salmon and Robert S. McPherson

29

H o t Rocks Make Big Waves: The Impact o f the Uranium B o o m on Moab, Utah, 1948-57

By Amberly Knight

46

B y Foot, by Horse, by C r u m m y : Louise Van Ee, School Nurse in B i n g h a m Canyon, 1921-39

By Kathleen Kaufman and Dianne Knorr

60

B i n g h a m Canyon Physician: Paul Snelgrove Richards, 1892-1958 By Eric G. Swedin

69

B O O K REVIEWS Charles G. Hibbard. Fort Douglas, Utah: A Frontier Fort, 1862-1991.

Reviewed by Mark Mulcahey

Kimi Kodani Hill, ed. Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment.

Reviewed by Sandra C. Taylor

Dennis Slifer. Guide to Rock Art of the Utah Region: Sites with Public Access.

Reviewed by Kevin T. Jones

John Bieter and Mark Bieter. An Enduring Legacy: The Story of Basques in Idaho.

Reviewed by Robert J. Ithurralde

Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith. Frontier Children.

Reviewed by Lyndia Carter

Richard White and John M. Findlay eds. Power and Place in the American West.

Reviewed by Kristen Smart Rogers

Susan Cummins Miller, ed. A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800—1922.

Reviewed by Miriam B. Murphy

David L. Bigler and Will Bagley, eds. Army of Israel: Mormon Battalion Narratives.

Reviewed by M. Guy Bishop

86

BOOK NOTICES

92

LETTERS © COPYRIGHT 2001 UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

IN THIS ISSUE

A

group of cowboys pursue a band of ABOVE: Bingham Main Street Indians into mountains to punish them during its heyday as a mining for cattle rustling and homicide. Bullets town. whiz through the air in sporadic fighting over two days, killing some two dozen men. It is a classic western tale of cowboys and Indians, horses, six-shooters, and rifles. The images are right out of a dime novel, a B-grade movie, or childhood games in the back yard. Now toss in the mounted cavalry—black soldiers at that—and place the action in one of the most remote areas in southeastern Utah to complete the picture. Suddenly it is 1881, and the tragic battle of Pinhook Draw has just been fought. Hardly anyone of that time and place seems to understand just why or how it happened. In fact, for the next 120 years the incident will be obscured in mystery and confusion. Finally, in a predictable plot

twist, historians ride to the rescue—in this case, quite literally. Two energetic and talented researchers travel to Pinhook Draw, walk the battle site with maps and documents in hand, and piece the story together. As finished and published here, it is a sobering but sensitive analysis of cultural conflict, racial prejudice, and personal violence—not pretty but gripping, detailed, and instructive. A seminal work, it holds first spot among the offerings in this issue.

Remaining fixed in the same region, we fast-forward through two-thirds of a century to look at the bustling community of Moab in 1948. Pickups and house trailers have replaced horses and cabins, Geiger counters have taken the place of firearms, and uranium has out-muscled the cattle industry as the main source of livelihood.

Hundreds of new arrivals need places to stay, schools for their children, and telephones for calling friends and families in faraway places. The rush will continue. By 1950, the city's population will double its 1940 count; within another ten years, the population will triple. The story of urban grown is an amazing one, but it has often received short shrift in the various histories of the uranium boom. Here in our second offering, a historian's lively prose sketches the processes by which the city officials and residents coped with shortages of water, housing, services, and medical facilities, all the while planning for the future. It is an engaging tale of community cohesion and triumph, sprinkled with humor and anecdotes, that can be read and appreciated on several different levels.

Community building is also at the heart of the final two articles in this issue, though the emphasis is on medical services rather than infrastructure. Bingham Canyon is the place, with its rich ethnic mix and unique setting adjacent to the enormous open pit copper mine. Louise Van Ee Jager is the star of the first drama, which describes how, barely finished with nurses' training, she was hired as a public health nurse within the Jordan School District. Not fully prepared for the unique set of circumstances facing her, she nevertheless proved equal to every challenge over an eighteen-year period, tutoring children and parents in matters of hygiene and preventative medicine, overcoming language barriers and occasional suspicion, providing hospital assistance in times of emergency, and even herding a few cows along the way.

Among the many interesting people Louise met in Bingham Canyon was Paul S. Richards, Bingham Canyon physician. Dr. Paul takes center stage for the concluding article. The historian's spotlight reveals him as an unassuming man with no makeup, costume, or script. Having overcome a sickly childhood, he seemed to relate especially well to the struggling immigrant workers in the copper industry. They responded in kind to him. Along with that rapport, Dr. Paul was able not only to build a hospital and provide everyday medical services to an appreciative community but also to establish a reputation as an innovator in industrial medicine. His story, like that of Louise Van Ee Jager, is one of love—love of community, of service, and of fellow human beings.

The discipline of history was never intended to be a feel-good experience, but who in the world is going to complain if it serves that purpose every now and then?

ON THE COVER: A man prospects for uranium ore near Moab by doodle-bugging, 1954. A folk method of prospecting, doodle-bugging apparently somewhat resembled water-witching.

USHS photo.

Cowboys, Indians, and Conflict: The Pinhook Draw Fight, 1881

By RUSTY SALMON and ROBERT S. MCPHERSON

T

he La Sal Mountains sit astride the Utah—Colorado border, dominating the skyline over the canyons and mesas of southeastern Utah. For thousands of years these mountains have been important in diverse ways to the changing peoples of the region. In the late 1800s, as a dramatic change in regional human occupation was solidifying, the La Sals became the site of an incident that symbolizes the shifting of power from one group to another. Here, on the northwest slope of the range, a group of Utes/Paiutes and Anglo cowboys engaged in a gunfight.

The skirmish, fought in what is today called Pinhook Draw, was a bloody consequence of the struggle of two groups to maintain incompatible lifestyles on the same land.

Noted for their natural resources in an often-stingy land, the La Sals have long offered water, minerals, vegetation, and animal life to those who have c o m e to e x p l o i t t h e i r w e a l t h . T h e La Sal Mountains, seen from Paleoindian and Archaic peoples were the present.dayArches National first to avail themselves of these resources, Park. Pinhook Draw, site of a hunting and gathering in climatic conditions that often differed from those of today. The gunfight between Utes and Anasazi, the next prehistoric peoples, hunted cowboys, is located on the and farmed on the slopes of the mountains northwest slope of the range.

Rusty Salmon, a retired medical researcher, now uses her investigative skills to address questions surrounding historical events. She lives less than three miles from this battle site. Robert S. McPherson is on the Advisory Board of the Utah Historical Quarterly and teaches at the College of Eastern Utah-San Juan Campus.

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

and at their base. D u r i n g historic times, the Utes and some Paiutes and Navajos depended upon the mountains' offerings. The La Sals, c o u p l e d w i t h lofty Blue Mountain (the Abajos) fifty miles to the s o u t h and Sleeping U t e M o u n t a i n ninety miles to the southeast, served as natural beacons to all of these groups seeking resources for survival.1 T h e U t e s , always descriptive in their naming, referred to the La Sals as Elk Mountain, for the herds they hunted there. The Navajos called them Utes with dwelling; no date or Five Peaks, although w h i c h of the many location identified. peaks this name referred to is unknown. Both groups had stories to explain the creation of these mountains and the lands surrounding them. These sacred narratives identify this formation as a spiritual entity that holds power and religious significance for those who use it.

For the Utes and Paiutes of the region this was particularly true. While there were a number of Ute bands that came to this noted landmark, it was the Weeminuche who claimed the most direct "ownership" and use-rights.

Other Utes—the Uncompahgre, Muache, and Capote—had their places too. These groups lived to the east, where they hunted and gathered throughout the state of Colorado and northern New Mexico, as well as on the Great Plains. Indeed, as one moved through Ute country to the east, there appeared a greater adaptation to the entire Plains Indian complex with its cultural dependence on the buffalo. Moving to the west, one found the Utes adapting to the resources characteristic of the mountains, mesas, and high desert environment of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. The Weeminuche represented the farthest extension of this presence to the west.

They, in turn, shared part of this region with their "cousins," the San Juan Band Paiutes, who represented the farthest extension of Paiutes to the east. The central location for most southern Paiute activity lay in southw e s t e r n U t a h , e a s t e r n N e v a d a , and n o r t h e r n A r i z o n a . T h u s , t h e 1 For a concise history of these different indigenous groups, prehistoric and historic, see Robert S. McPherson, A History of San Juan County: In the Palm of Time (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1995); also Richard A. Firmage, A History of Grand County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1996).

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Weeminuche Utes and the San Juan Band Paiutes were peripheral to the main concentrations of their respective peoples. They shared the Numic language and had generally peaceful relations that gave rise to intermarriage and interdependence. The combined territory over which they hunted and gathered was bounded by, but not limited to, the Dolores River region of southwestern Colorado to the east; northwestern N e w Mexico, northeastern Arizona, and Monument Valley to the south; the Colorado River to the west, and east-central Utah's Book Cliffs area to the north. At times, the historical record becomes confusing when it refers to these two intermingled groups. In some instances they are referred to as Utes, sometimes as Paiutes, and often simply as "renegades," since neither group desired to join with other bands or move to a reservation. For the purposes of this article these people will be referred to as Utes.

While there may be some confusion over exact identity within some of these groups, there can be no missing their dependence on the land. Plants, animals, and water were the triad around which survival revolved. The Utes had an encyclopedic knowledge of their country, its resources, and the location of resources during a particular season. Finding grass for the horses, plants to be harvested, water to drink, and animals to hunt required astute observation and a cumulative wisdom.

Deer, for instance, were the most important of all the game. Ute dependence upon these animals is comparable to the eastern Utes' and Plains Indian tribes' reliance on the buffalo. Deer provided food, clothing, and shelter throughout the year, acting as the backbone of the Ute economy in southeastern Utah. Tepees, the Utes' moveable homes, were fashioned from elk and deer skins, the former on the bottom and the latter on the top to reduce the weight of the structure. Tanned hides, beaded buckskin clothing, and meat became important trade items.

Still, the hunting, killing, and preparation of this game animal was just as sacred as it was practical. Edward Dutchie, Sr., an elderly Ute, commented, " H o w you are going to take care of the deer, has already been told you by your ancestors. It has been passed down from generation to generation, how you are to handle the deer.... It has got to be with prayers.That is how important it is to me. I shed tears when I talk about that deer, when I pray for that deer, that meat. It is going to be here in my home." 2 The migratory patterns of the deer caused the Utes to follow them in seasonal movements. In the late spring/early summer the deer and the Indians moved to higher elevations, where the water was fresh from newly melted snow, the forbs and other plants were tender, and the intensifying heat of the high desert landscape was left behind. Favorite camping spots in southeastern Utah included La Sal, Deer, Coyote, Two Mile, Hop, Geyser, Taylor, Beaver and Mill creeks on the La Sal Mountains; and Spring, North 2 Edward Dutchie, Sr., interview with Robert S. McPherson, May 7, 1996; transcript in possession of author.

and South Montezuma, C o t t o n w o o d , and Utes in the La Sal Mountains.

Indian creeks on Blue Mountain. In the fall, before the snow fell, the Utes moved to the lower canyon floors to prepare for winter. Paiute, Dodge, Peters, Kane, and Hatch springs as well as Dry Valley, Montezuma Canyon, Comb Ridge, and the San Juan River provided camping sites with sufficient wood, water, and protection from the elements. 3 The mountains were important for yet another reason—protection. The Utes have often been labeled "mountain" Indians, since they lived there but ventured onto the plains to hunt buffalo. In times of trouble, they retreated back to their homelands, using the mountains for protection and ambush.

This was also true of the Weeminuche, who did not travel to the plains as frequently as other Ute groups did but who used the mountains just as effectively. Edward Dutchie commented: There is a story about Utes on the [La Sal] Mountains and the high peaks around Mancos and Durango [Colorado] and around here [Blue Mountain] too. The highest peaks were where the Utes would go to out-run any tribe in the fighting days. They would go to the peaks and then fight down from there. That is why the peaks are very important. O n foot, white men could not run to the peaks like the Utes could. Those old people used to run every day like white men now run. 4

3 Frank Silvey, "Additional Information on Indians," MS, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah. Many of the place names used in this article (including Pinhook Draw) were not in use at the time of the fight.

4 Edward Dutchie, Sr., interview with Robert S. McPherson, May 13, 1996; transcript in possession of author.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

This fact should have been considered by the participants of the Pinhook Draw fight.

With the arrival of the Anglo Americans, life for the Utes began to change dramatically. The 1860s were generally good years, when the two groups shared friendly relations and worked against their common foe, the Navajos. The military hired Utes from various bands to raid, capture, and generally coerce the Navajos into either surrendering and moving to Fort Sumner for four years (1864-68) of incarceration, or making them ineffective as a military force. The Utes proved highly effective. Some, in 1868, even helped against another traditional enemy, the Comanches, on the plains. But at the same time that the government released the Navajos to return to their new reservation and their old haunts it also created the first Ute reservation, covering approximately the western third of Colorado. O n March 21, 1868, the Utes begrudgingly signed the treaty in Washington granting them this land. It did not remain theirs for long. Gold rushes, settlements, the cattle industry, and farming required large tracts of land, and in 1873 the Utes signed the Brunot Agreement, which removed massive chunks of land from their new reservation. By 1880 and one more treaty, comparatively little remained of their land holdings. In Colorado, for example, from their aboriginal territory of some 56 million acres the first treaty promised only 18 million acres. By 1934 the Ute land base in Colorado had shrunk to 553,600 acres.5 Friction was a natural outcome. One of the most notable incidents for the Northern Utes in Colorado was the Meeker Massacre. The trouble began when Agent Nathan Meeker forced his ideas of civilization upon the Indians living at the White River Agency. His determination to turn them into farmers and have them abandon traditional ways led to a melee in which Meeker and twenty-eight other whites died before the incident ended. 6 The event triggered a secondary consequence, a new treaty that removed the Utes from Colorado to the new Uintah Reservation in Utah.

The Southern Utes in southwestern Colorado felt the repercussions from these events as their white neighbors pondered the possibility of removing them too.

The Utes living in Utah encountered similar problems as Anglo civilization spread throughout the Four Corners region. A brief synopsis of just five years, from 1878 to 1882, tells the story. During this time in southwestern Colorado, the livestock and farming communities of Mancos and Dolores sprang out of the rocks and sagebrush, as did the mining towns of Durango and Rico. In Utah, eighteen families from Colorado settled along the San Juan River in the Montezuma Creek and Aneth area, Mormons established Bluff, Moab began at the base of the La Sal Mountains, and 5

Donald G. Calaway, Joel C. Janetski, Omer C. Stewart, "Ute," in Handbook of North American Indians 11 (Washington, D C : Smithsonian Institution, 1986), 355.

6 See Gregory C.Thompson,"The Unwanted Indians:The Southern Utes in Southeastern Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (1981): 189-203.

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

three different cattle outfits operated on or near Blue Mountain. These figures do not include the increasing number of isolated settlements sprinkled throughout the region taking advantage of the open rangelands as part of the livestock industry.7 At the same time, Navajo herders pushed their stock across the San Juan River in search of grass for their sheep.

The Utes were not blind to these events. Thousands of cattle and sheep trampled the canyon lands and mountains, eating the grass, stomping edible plants, and muddying springs and other water sources. Cowboys rode the range, built cabins in choice camping spots, and either killed or drove away wildlife. Settlers were of the same ilk, cutting trees off the mountains, running their own livestock, and building roads for greater access. Within a few short years, the face of the land changed right before the eyes of those who depended on it most for hunting and gathering.

Little wonder that the Utes reacted aggressively. A low-intensity warfare built upon calculated aggravation and retribution ensued. Utes begging food at a cabin door, stealing horses, killing or mutilating livestock, uttering threats, destroying fences and cabins, and going on an occasional shooting spree increased the tension on both sides. One settler in Bluff, when speaking about the problems with Navajos and Utes along the San Juan River, put it this way: "We are about to be crucified between two thieves—meaning the Navajos and the Paiutes."8 Yet to the Utes the whites had broken the treaty promises and were reaping what they had sown. Anglos were, in Ute thinking, like Coyote, the trickster figure in their mythology. "The Coyote is always making trouble, making wars, telling lies. The white man is like that."9 Thus, all that the cowboys and settlers brought into the San Juan country was now fair game, payment even, for what they were taking.

From the Anglo perspective, these Indian problems needed to cease, and soon. Local newspapers are often a good barometer of how people feel towards an issue at the time. Assuming this to be true, the people of southwestern Colorado were near the boiling point. In May 1880 the Dolores News commented on Indian troubles in New Mexico, saying that for many years the New Mexicans had "tolerated the curse of Indians" and that the local settlers should "muster every man into active service, procure guns, ammunition and other necessaries, and pursue, kill the red-skinned devils, until there is not enough of them left to rob a 'hen roost.'"10 A year later, some of the members of this community would attempt to do just that— and wince at the results.

Another article, reprinted from the Denver Republican the following week, was even more inflammatory. The paper reported the existence of "a 7 For further information on this early stage of settlement in southeastern Utah, see Firmage, A History of Grand County and McPherson, A History of San Juan County.

8 Quoted in Albert R. Lyman, "History of San Juan County, 1879-1917" (1965), Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, BrighamYoung University, Provo, Utah, 17.

9 Dutchie interview, May 13,1996.

10 Dolores News, May 22,1880.

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

powerful secret organization to clean out the [Ute] reservation" for mining interests and on general principle. T h e group boasted 150 members w h o had signed a "covenant" to wage war against their foes, to "arm and equip themselves ready for military service," and then "explore and develop the Ute Reservation." 11 The article urged this move as a part of God's plan to go forth and subdue the earth as cited in the Bible and as part of the best tradition of nineteenth-century "progression." The time ripened for conflict.

A newspaper told of "one good Indian" killed while asking for food from two freighters; another stated how, during the past year alone, the Utes had killed and mutilated more than 100 cattle in the Paradox Valley, southeast of the La Sals. Still others complained about the mutilation of livestock and the insolent manner in which Indians demanded goods, plundered cabins in the La Sal region, and made threats on the range. 12 Yet another article, under the banner of " N e w Indian War," listed all of the problems with Navajos, Paiutes, and Utes, suggesting that the press had little impact on changing their behavior. It noted: Newspaper comments on his actions has but little weight with the average Ute. It neither breaks his heart nor shuts off his wind.... Explosive bullets have more influence with savages than folios of vigorous editorials. We cannot appeal to an Indian's sense of justice or cause him to feel the pangs of remorse. Let us substitute Winchester rifles for brains and note the results.13

It was just a matter of time before emotions over low-grade conflict erupted into a high-intensity reaction.

The events that led to the Pinhook Draw fight began when three brothers—Dick, George, and Billy May—settled in 1877 as cattlemen in the Big Bend country (known today as Dolores) of Colorado. They prospered, utilizing the open range between Mancos, Colorado, and the Blue and La Sal mountains in Utah. T h e mining camps of Rico, Telluride, and Silverton welcomed their beef and encouraged expansion of the business.14 Two years later, other businessmen, John Thurman and J. H. Alderson, went into partnership on a large herd of high quality horses and pastured them on the Utah-Colorado border near present-day Dove Creek, where they built a cabin. The men opened for business, selling their stock to local buyers.15 Among these buyers were Dick May and his friend Byron Smith, w h o were at Thurman's cabin on May 1, 1881, to purchase horses, presumably for the spring cattle roundup just starting. O n their way, they met some cowboys w h o warned of a group of Utes "on the prod" and told May and 11

Ibid., May 29,1880.

Ibid., June 12, September 18, October 30, 1880.

13 Ibid., November 13, 1880.

14 Dolores Star, September 4, 1908.

15 Mancos Minutes, La Plata County, Colorado, September 25, 1881, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. Members of the Mancos and Dolores communities wrote this important document on September 25, 1881, and it was signed by many of the participants of the Pinhook Draw fight. Because the information in it was not subject to vague recollection, it appears to be highly accurate.

12

10

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

Cowboys at Moab in 1896: Ephraim Moore, David Perkins, and Felix Murphy, Moab, 1896.

Smith to turn back. H o w events at the cabin unfolded has b e e n a source of conjecture. But the story is usually told as it was worked out by some wellk n o w n trackers from Big Bend w h o later evaluated the scene. A few days before the arrival of May and Smith, John Thurman had apparently discovered these Utes trying to catch some of his prize stock. He beat them soundly and sent them, angry, on their way.16 T h e U t e s killed D i c k May at the cabin following a hard fight. A r o u n d his b o d y lay a q u a n t i t y of expended cartridges; outside were two dead horses; and the cabin was burned. 17 The Indians also killed Thurman, approximately a half mile away from his home, and stole an estimated $1,000 from the bodies, along with 100 horses, 900 pounds of flour, five rifles, three pistols, a shotgun, seventyfive pounds of ammunition, and assorted other goods.18 According to a Ute account given during an interrogation after the Pinhook fight, four Utes met May at the cabin. He came to the door, grabbed one Indian and threw him down on the ground, then walked over and shot two Ute horses. The Utes became angry, killed the two men, then left.19 16

One less-told version of the story posits that the Indians and the whites were haggling over the horses when the Indians just blatantly killed the whites.

Events surrounding the Pinhook Draw fight have been discussed in a variety of sources—interviews, letters, newspaper articles, reminiscences, second- and third-hand accounts, and secondary sources—many of which are conflicting. The authors of this article have primarily used materials gathered shortly after the fight or from participants who later shared their story. Not all of the conflicting information has been resolved, nor all questions answered. In a number of instances, what follows is the most logical explanation of what occurred based on primary sources, walking of the battlefield, and the attitude of the times.

Evaluation of some of the more prominent sources is given in subsequent footnotes.

17 Wilson Rockwell, The Utes: A Forgotten People (Denver: Sage Books, 1956), 220-21.This author validates his version of the May and Thurman killings from interviews and letters from the 1930s. Most of the testimony was given a long time after the event but seems plausible.

18 Dolores News, May 14, 1881.

19 Agent W. H. Berry to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 18, 1881, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

11

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The record is also unclear as to w h o first uncovered what had taken place. Different versions suggest a wandering prospector, neighboring cowboys, or a Navajo named Little Captain. 20 Whoever made the discovery rode to the settlement at Big Bend, approximately forty-five miles away, and notified the residents that at least one man had been killed. Dick May's brothers, George and Billy, and several other men left on May 3 to determine what had happened and to retrieve the bodies. After a thorough search of the area and the discovery ofThurman's corpse on Cedar Point in Colorado, the group buried h i m where he had fallen but took May's remains back to Dolores. Byron Smith was never found.21 Meanwhile, the Utes left for Dodge Springs, located ten miles southeast of present-day Monticello, where they met with others camped there. 22 They did not stay long, since the Mormons in Bluff reported them stealing horses on May 5. Platte D. Lyman recorded in his journal that the Indians had fired upon one of the settlers, Joseph Nielson, and that eight or nine of the "boys" rode to Butler Wash to investigate. "They found about 30 Indians with about 60 or more squaws and papooses," as well as sheep, goats, and 150 horses. Eleven of the latter belonged to owners in Bluff, and two of these animals had been taken from there some time earlier.

The next day, Lyman went to the Ute camp as they prepared to leave.

He wrote: They seemed very friendly but a few of them were very mad w h e n another stolen horse was taken away from them. As they moved off [still] another stolen horse was taken from them. We traveled with them for several miles and as we returned found that they had been shooting down our cows and destroying the calves.... They had about 40 horses branded B, some of them fine large horses of good stock. They also had plenty of greenbacks to which they attached very little value. It is evident they have raided somebody's ranch as in addition to the horses and paper money, they have harness lines and blind bridles and halters. 23

N o t until May 15 did the Mormons in Bluff learn about the deaths of May and Thurman. 24 The Utes left Butler Wash, traveling north to Blue Mountain and stealing horses from Joshua B. "Spud" Hudson and other ranchers along the

20

Jones Adam, "In the Stronghold of the Pi-Utes," Overland Monthly 22 (1893): 584; Jordan Bean, "Jordan Bean's Story and the Castle Valley Indian Fight," Colorado Magazine 20 (1943): 19; A. M. Rogers, "A True Narrative of an Indian Fight," Echo of the Cliffdwellers (U S. Department of Agriculture: La Sal National Forest, April, 1912), 39.

21 Rockwell, The Utes, 221. Although Indians subsequently claimed that Smith had been killed, and several years later an unidentified body was found, he could have escaped. An article published in the Dolores News, May 25, 1883, tells of a man named Smith in the Santa Fe jail who had been talking about his escape from Indians near the Utah-Colorado border.

22 Faun M. Tanner, The Far Country: Moab and Ea Sal (Salt Lake City: Olympus Publishing Company, 1976), 117. Tanner relied on multiple sources, including newspapers, interviews, and Silvey. One of her greatest original contributions is her interview of Joseph Burkholder, a member of the Moab contingent, which she cites in her book.

23 Platte D. Lyman, "Diary of Platte D Lyman," 39, Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library.

24 Ibid., 40.

12

-LEGEND-

-'• %.%\

mom v * \ ;

—

Indians

'•*•

Posse Gathers

-

Dawson's Posse Hudson's Posse C o m b i n e d Posse

Modern names for locations not named at the time of this incident, or having a name lange since, are shown in parentheses.

RICO

BLUFF 30 approximate scale in miles

way. "Spud," a Colorado cattleman hailing Movements of the Indians and from the Purgatoire (often misidentified as posses through the Four Corners "Picketwire") River country of southeastern area Colorado, was angry. His camp, called the Double Cabins, located about six miles north of Monticello, became an important landmark in the events that followed. But not only Hudson's stock was lost; others in the vicinity were missing livestock and had their cabins raided. O n May 14, several ranchers again encountered Indians stealing their stock, and after some shooting during which, perhaps, one Indian died, they returned to their towns to form a posse.25 They soon joined forces and went in search of the culprits; the Utes by this time had procured a herd estimated at 350 stolen horses plus their own animals. They had also "wantonly killed hundreds of cattle belonging to the stockmen of this vicinity."26 It was time, the cowboys thought, to do something about the Utes.

25

Bean, "Jordan Bean's Story," 19; Mancos Minutes.

Dolores News, May 28, 1881; Cornelia A. Perkins, Marian Nielson, and Lenora Jones, Saga of San Juan (Salt Lake City: Mercury Publishing Company, 1968), 238;"Mancos Minutes."

26

13

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Hudson formed an initial posse of twelve men, but after finding the Indians' deserted camp at Dodge Spring and realizing their numbers, the Blue Mountain posse spent a few more days recruiting help and doubling their force to twenty-five. They then followed the Utes' frail to the southern end of Blue Mountain. Along the way, the cowboys found tired ponies and an occasional goat from the Indians' herd, but they feared pressing the chase because of possible ambush in the canyons.27 At the same time, another small army, this one from Colorado, was on its way. While the majority of these volunteers came from the livestock communities of Mancos and Dolores, almost half hailed from the mining town of Rico. Their stated intention was to protect the cattlemen and recover stolen animals as the spring roundup played across the ranges of southeastern Utah. Their real intent was to fight Indians. They had formed at Dolores on May 31 and selected their leaders: Bill Dawson as captain with Billy May second in command. 28 O n June 1, the men set out for what they hoped would be a quick victory. The papers reported that "a company of about sixty-five men, well-armed, left Big Bend (Dolores) for the Blue Mountains to try and gather up stock.... And should the Ute Indians molest them, they are determined to fight for their rights."29 Colonel Henry Page, agent for the Southern Utes, commented about the wisdom of any group undertaking such a mission. He may or may not have been aware of Dawson's men presently en route to Utah when the Dolores News printed his remarks on June 4, but he certainly was accurate.

Page pointed out that this particular group of Indians "who make their home in the Sierra La Sal and Blue Mountains are a fearless and wayward set."30 He then compared a conflict with them on their home territory to the one fought recently against the Modocs in the lava beds of Oregon. "If war should be opened on these [Ute] renegades, the Government would find their conquest even more difficult.... The latter country is rough and inaccessible to troops throughout.... Hence it will be seen that a small and moderate band of Indians could keep at bay an immense army." Dawson's force was not an "immense army," nor were its members trained as soldiers or knowledgeable about the terrain. Future events proved Page's assessment correct.

T h e posse traveled over rolling grasslands c o u n t r y across the Colorado—Utah border, arriving at the O'Donnells' cabin, south of the Double Cabins, on June 3. There they met yet another group, members of 27

Perkins, Saga, 238; Tanner, The Far Country, 119-20; Frank Silvey, History and Settlement of Northern San Juan County, Utah (Moab: Times-Independent, 1990), 13-14. Silvey is an oft-quoted source on the Pinhook Battle, and though he was not a participant, his brother Jack was part of the rescue party from Rico. Some of Silvey's version is unsubstantiated by other documents or eyewitness accounts.

28 Bean, "Jordan Bean's Story," 20.

29 Dolores News, June 11, 1881.

30 Ibid., June 4, 1881.

31 Ibid.

14

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

Company C, 13th Infantry, under the command of Captain Benjamin H. Rogers from Fort Lewis, Colorado. T h e soldiers had arrived four days before with orders to scout the region for Indians while protecting any whites in the area collecting cattle. They reconnoitered the area along the eastern edge of Blue Mountain and reported the Hudson and O'Donnell cabins deserted; apparently, the Blue Mountain posse had already left.

Dawson was eager to do his own reconnoitering. As soon as he and his men arrived at the cabin, he sent out scouts to determine the Indians' location. By June 5, when the soldiers were out of food and were leaving to return to their supply camp at Big Bend, they realized that the Dawson posse was doing much more than just looking for cattle. One source states that members of the posse and Company C had "words" because the soldiers felt that the cowboys should stay out of the Indian-fighting business.32 Shortly after the military left for Fort Lewis, Hudson's Blue Mountain posse and Dawson's men from Colorado apparently joined forces.33 For seven more days the entire group remained in the saddle. They scoured C o m b Wash, Blue Mountain, Indian Creek, and parts of Dry Valley.

Conditions were difficult. Jordan Bean, a participant, claimed that they had little to eat and "our bread and meat was cooked on sticks."34 The men traveled through Hart's Draw to Hatch Rock, where Hudson had his winter camp. By then, the horses belonging to members of the Blue Mountain posse were "leg-weary and foot-sore," having been out for more than three weeks.35 The terrain had exacted a toll on his force as it traveled through the canyons and over the mountains. Consequently, when scouts finally intercepted the Indians' trail crossing Dry Valley and heading toward the La Sals, the Colorado cowboys left in pursuit; Hudson's group followed more slowly.36 For various reasons, Dawson's group was also dwindling. For instance, Billy May and seven others returned to Colorado because they did not agree with the existing leadership, while another eight men went 32 "Operational Returns," Fort Lewis, October 1878-August 1891, Microfiche M617, National Archives, Washington, D C ; Denver Tribune, June 25, 1881; Silvey, History, 19; Bean, "Jordan Bean's Story," 19-20; Denver Republican, June 29, 1881. That the soldiers and cowboys would clash seems probable, especially in light of a recent but tenuous treaty with the Utes and the impending plan to move the Utes to a reservation, which was scheduled for later that summer.

33 This is an assumption, based on three accounts of the two groups working together: (a) men from both groups were mentioned as the men who named Indian Creek (Silvey, "Additional Information"), (b) Dawson sent two men, known to be members of the Blue Mountain posse, to get some beef for the possemen to eat (Bean, "Jordan Bean's Story"), and (c) Tom Pepper, one of Dawson's men, tried to convince certain members of the Blue Mountain posse to turn back when they were in an area by Hatch Rock where they could have been easily ambushed (Silvey, History). Additionally, Bean talks about being in areas where they would have likely encountered the Blue Mountain group.

34 Jordan Bean, "Jordan Bean," unpublished account, May 14, 1941, in possession of authors. Bean recorded his memories in several articles and interviews, most of which were written sixty years after the fight. In spite of the lapse in time, his statements have proven to be quite accurate and verifiable using other sources.

35 Perkins, Saga of San Juan, 240; Silvey, History, 20.

36 Silvey (History) claimed to have interviewed a number of participants; Cortes and others say that the Blue Mountain posse arrived after the fight and were not involved in it. But the sources are not clear on where they arrived or on many other details.

15

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

on a separate scouting expedition looking for a couple of missing men. 37 As the Colorado cowboys continued on the trail, they encountered tired stock, waterholes used by the Indians, and increasingly fresh sign. O n the evening of June 12, a full lunar eclipse led to division in the camp.

According to A. (Albert) M. Rogers, whose account is the only one to mention this, two of the cowboys had spotted the Utes' camp, reported its location, and urged forming a plan of attack. Others argued that the eclipse should be used as a powerful sign in negotiations with the Indians to give up the murderers of May and Thurman as well as the captured livestock.

The majority of the men, however, wanted a fight. The disagreement was strong enough that when Dawson, speaking to those not in favor of a fight, said, "Boys! Strike for your country and your homes," twenty-two of them left the next morning. 38 This could have been Billy May and his group, although the time sequence, numbers, and events seem somewhat askew and embellished.

Now' with less than three dozen men, those who remained continued to follow the Indians. That night, an exceptionally bright comet became visible in the evening sky, presenting another opportunity to play upon the Indians' beliefs. The idea was again voted down. Rogers tells of how later he had been told "by Indians who were in the fight, that they had no heart to fight the white men after the Great Spirit had darkened the full moon and burned up a star, and that if we had demanded the surrender of the guilty Indians and the return of the stolen stock, they would have given them up without resistance; but we wanted an Indian fight and we got it."39 O n the morning of June 15, Dawson's men struck. They found the Indians' horse herd, said to have numbered 1,500, as well as 800 goats. The Utes, resting in the area of today's Wilcox Flat/Warner Lake in the northwest section of the La Sal Mountains, were just breaking camp. Some of them spotted the cowboys on a mesa approximately three-quarters of a mile away and sounded the alarm. The Ute men prepared to fight while the women hastily packed what they could and started toward the northern end of the La Sals.40 According to Rogers, the cowboys swept down one long hill and up another to the Indians' camp, capturing a sizeable portion of the Ute's livestock as well as nine women guarding it. Dawson decided to leave thirteen 37

Denver Republican, June 29, 1881; Rogers, "A True Narrative," 40. Many ofRogers's minute details are accurate (the eclipse and the comet have both been scientifically documented), but he injudiciously wrote his story as though he were a participant in the battle—when, in fact, he has been verified as a member of the Rico rescue party. He gleaned much of his material from other sources and from the actual participants.

The fluctuations in posse numbers are not clear in the different accounts. When Dawson sent two members of the Blue Mountain posse to get a beef from Hudson's herd to feed the men, they were spotted by Indians and chased all the way to Big Bend (DenverTribune,June 25, 1881). Reynolds says that when these men did not return, Dawson sent a group of eight headed by Lou Paquin to find them.

38 Rogers, "A True Narrative," 40.

39 Ibid., 46.

40 Ibid, 42; Dolores News, June 16, 1883.

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

men behind to guard the prize before giving chase to the fleeing enemy.

Those who stayed settled in comfortably and eventually ended up playing "seven u p " and "coon can," two types of card games, with some of the younger women. Some cowboys slept while some guarded. The older Ute women, however, quietly and peacefully prepared an escape. O n signal, all of the women fled to their horses and drove the Indians' herd before them along with the cowboys' mounts. O n e source says that "the discomfited heroes [cowboys] sadly shouldered their saddles and wended their way to Moab, eighteen miles distant."41 Another story, often repeated, tells of men w h o went " d o w n the R i m " accidentally and only returned to j o i n Dawson's forces the first night after the day's fighting was over. This could only refer to this separated group of men, who probably became disoriented by the terrain.42 Exactly how much credence can be given to the first story, told only by Rogers, who was a member of a later rescue party, can be argued. That there was an eclipse and bright comet can be proven. But nothing has ever been said about any group of cowboys straggling into Moab. And for Dawson to deplete his fighting force by half on the verge of battle would seem unwise. Eyewitness accounts vary as to the number of men involved in the ensuing fight, but there were probably between fifteen and eighteen who actually participated in the major fire fight of the first day. The other half of the posse became separated and ineffective, but little has ever been offered as an explanation for their lack of participation with the attacking force. It seems highly probable, then, that these were the m e n w h o remained with the Ute livestock and only later attempted to take part in the battle. They failed because of lack of communication and limited knowledge of the land.

The pursuing cowboys estimated that the Indian band numbered about 100—comprised of 65 men and 35 women, children, and old people; these figures are the reverse of what Platte Lyman reported near Bluff (30 men, 60 others).43 Whatever the group's composition, the white men gave chase through the Indian camp and its assorted unpacked goods scattered about the clearing. They continued the pursuit, moving across Bald Mesa and hoping to intercept the Utes before they escaped. Dawson felt he needed to develop the situation before committing the entire force to an ambush, so he moved down the trail, leaving those who were guarding the livestock behind and ending any coordination and planning between the two groups.

T h e Ute men fought a rearguard action, slowing the advance of the cowboys while the women and others herded the remaining stock ahead.

41

Rogers, "A True Narrative," 41-42.

Silvey, History. Rogers's account says that the men left to guard the livestock eventually went to Moab but returned to help at the battlefield. This story is improbable, but it does contain the idea that the men went down the rim and returned at a later time.

43 Dolores News, June 16, 1883.

42

17

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The posse pursued for a number of miles, Pinhook Draw, site of the gunfighting cat-and-mouse through the trees, fight between Dawson's posse rocks, and brush. The group halted when it and a band of Utes and Paiutes. reached Mason Spring at the head of Little Castle Valley, which descends to the north end of the mountains and the Colorado River beyond. Dawson selected six men, one of w h o m was Jordan Bean, and sent them forward to locate the Utes' position within the thickly wooded canyon. According to Bean, their instructions were to "overtake the Indians and make a stand on them, and he [Dawson] would bring the rest as fast as possible."44 Risky business for sure, but the leader was slow to send his entire force into a possible ambush.

The point element traveled warily down the trail, passing over Bald Mesa toward Pinhook Draw and Harpole Mesa. It was ideal terrain for a defender. From Mason Spring and Draw there are two possible routes into Little Castle Valley. T h e first is the steep, V-shaped Porcupine Draw, a straight canyon approximately one and one-half miles long but less than two-tenths of a mile wide that opens directly into Castle Valley. Its southwestern wall is the twelve-mile-long Porcupine Rim; the northeastern side is a sharp-spined ridge covered with huge boulders and large rocks. The far side of this ridge descends into the larger, U-shaped canyon known as Pinhook Draw. This valley forms a wide sloping bowl, approximately onehalf mile across and three miles long. With almost vertical walls to the east and northeast and with Harpole Mesa to the north, these features pinch into a "hook" that narrows to a quarter mile before opening into Castle Valley. Both Pinhook and Porcupine draws are cut by intermittent stream beds and are thick with scrub oak, pinyon, and juniper growing on their slopes.

44

Bean, "Jordan Bean's Story," 20.

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

The six men moved cautiously down the trail descending the canyon, occasionally detecting the flash of a red blanket or an Indian pony in the oak and rocks on the slopes to their side. As they descended, the Utes opened fire, and as planned, Dawson moved the rest of his force forward to develop the situation. The Indians held the high ground and poured murderous shots from the hillside onto the valley floor below. Command and control of the cowboys fell apart. Most sought shelter in the brush or in the streambed and hillocks in the valley before returning fire.

Six men in the lead rode for the protection of an arroyo. Thinking they were safe from the bullets sweeping the battlefield, they discovered too late that the Indians could send enfilading fire from various angles down into the winding draw. All accounts agree that Dave Willis was the first killed, as he stood in the open and blasted at targets in the scrub oak. Mancos Jim, a Ute participant, later recalled the bravery on both sides. He said: Dave Willis never took shelter but stood out in bold relief and fought till he fell dead.

The other boys tried to protect themselves by getting into a shallow arroyo or washout, but they were surrounded and when the Indians charged from one side, hanging onto the ponies, yelling and shooting, the white boys would raise to fire. The Indians in ambush in another direction [would] shoot them down.

The white boys were extravagant with their ammunition, which they exhausted about dusk after fighting all day, and the Indians then rode around the washout in a circle, shooting into the living and lifeless bodies till there was no sign of life in the bloody pit.45

With the main force an estimated 100 to 150 yards distant from those in the draw, perhaps Dawson decided that he could not provide supporting fire. Nor, it seems, was he able or willing to move forward. The terrain today is rough, cut with arroyos, and very thick with scrub; perhaps this was a factor in his failure to support the point men. Instead, Tim Jenkins, a slightly built member of the posse, rode to the men in the ditch and urged them to retreat from almost certain death. Although Indian marksmen maintained a steady fire, Jenkins regained the main body, but none of the trapped men followed.46 Six eventually died in this general area. Bandages later found on their bodies suggested that some had been wounded before being finally killed.

The Utes, "armed with Winchester rifles" maintained pressure on the beleaguered cowboys.47 This point is made by a number of the participants.

The cowboys felt that their enemy was far better armed—supposedly with .44-caliber Winchesters and plenty of ammunition. Probably some of this weaponry was booty from the Thurman cabin. The white men, on the other hand, had a "'duke's mixture' of old buffalo guns, Sharps rifles, and a 45

Idea (Durango newspaper),June 16, 1886.

Rockwell, "The Utes," 222.

47 Denver Tribune, July 9, 1881. This appears to be a very accurate source. It was written within three weeks of the battle and contained information "acknowledged as reliable by the survivors who have returned and furnished the facts for the following." It is also interesting that this article corresponds closely to what Mancos Jim, a Ute participant, would claim five years later.

46

19

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

few Winchesters, old fashioned black powder guns with short range and a slow velocity of bullets [that] made distance shooting a guess."48 This last statement is only partly accurate. The Sharps rifle had approximately three times the range (600 yards vs 200 yards) and a heavier bullet (500 grain vs 200 grain) than that of the Winchester. However, Dave Willis was the only posse member who without question had a Sharps rifle. Besides, a singleshot Sharps could n o t c o m p a r e to the f o u r t e e n - s h o t l e v e r - a c t i o n Winchester, which was especially appreciated by the Utes for close-in fighting. O n the Pinhook battlefield most of the Indians' positions were well within range of their weapons.

One story from the battle tells of a large Ute who climbed on top of a boulder and directed the fire of his fellow fighters to critical points of the battlefield. Many of the cowboys shot at him but were ineffective.49 Perhaps this was the same person w h o the newspapers falsely reported was a "Mexican seen with the Indians, apparently commanding different squads of Indians. O n the second day, the Mexican rode to the summit of a knoll, patted his Winchester and six shooters and cried aloud,'Shoot you cowardly sons-of-bitches,' and the boys fired but failed to get him."50 There were other frustrations in the fight. Jordan Bean tells of how he and Harden Tarter were in the lead; then it was every man for himself.... We soon found some big rocks, lay down there and were shooting at some Indians above us on the mountainside. We were doing fine until one Injun seemed to be a pretty good shot for he got me in the left temple. I had my head thrown back so far—the hill was steep—the bullet didn't go in very far but grazed my skull and knocked me out. M

Later that afternoon Bean regained consciousness, unaware of what else had transpired. None of his companions were in sight; he learned later that his friend Tarter, w h o m he had sent off on his own horse, was dead. As he looked about, he spotted a large Ute standing on a rock. Bean, fearing that the man had seen him, dropped down and crawled into a thicket of scrub oak and remained silent. A horse standing nearby attracted the Utes' attention, and two men walked over. They talked about the blood on the ground, and one started toward the brush that concealed Bean and made a low whistling noise, but he never found the cowboy.

Under the cover of darkness, the wounded Bean made his way back to a spring he had used that morning. His overwhelming thirst drove him to drink too much, which made him even sicker. But with additional rest and some controlled drinking he began to feel better. In the morning Bean 4S

Silvey, History, 17.

Ibid.

50 Dolores News, June 25, 1881. The story of the Mexican has the ring of many of the stories that later turned out to be someone's imagination. The newspapers did not score high in accuracy; one even declared that the whole settlement at Moab had been massacred in the incident; Denver Tribune, June 25, 1881.

51 Bean, "Jordan Bean's Story," 20.

49

20

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

Jordan Bean, participant in the Pinhook Draw battle and memoirist, in 1886.

s p o t t e d m e m b e r s of the posse moving out toward the battlefield again. They were surprised to see him, having assumed that he was dead, but they moved him back to their camp and rendered aid.52 In the late afternoon of the first day, both sides were still engaged but beginning to break contact. Dawson no doubt had a number of questions on his m i n d .

First, would he be able to return to Mason Spring, the designated gathering point, to rally after the day's events?53 Would the mounted Indians be able to seal him off in Castle Valley? Where was the other half of his men? When the two groups had parted company, there was no specific agreement as to supporting roles. After the firing started, Dawson must have thought that those left with the horses would come to the assistance of those engaged. They never appeared. Also, during the day the cowboys heard shots down in the valley, some distance from where their own fight was taking place. Could this have been the lost detachment? Finally, how many of his group had been lost or wounded?

The answers to these questions came slowly during the evening and the next day. Once the possemen had extricated themselves from the battlefield and returned to Mason Spring, they counted their numbers. At that point, before Jordan Bean arrived, there were nine men missing. Depending upon whether or not Dawson had actually detailed thirteen of his men to guard the Ute herd, this figure could represent as much as half of the force engaged in the fight. As the sun set, a group of cowboys approaching from the direction of Porcupine R i m provided another answer. The missing group of men appeared with a new appreciation of the terrain they had encountered. They had eventually heard the firing in upper Castle Valley.

Hoping to come in behind the Utes, they traveled a good distance along the rim, searching for a route down the 1,400-foot escarpment to the val52 53

Ibid., 20-21.

Bean, "Jordan Bean," 1.

21

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

ley floor below. They found none. Realizing their mistake, they returned to the head of the draw but were ineffective for the entire battle. In Dawson's words: "We have had hell here all day, and we don't know how many men have been killed. It's just too bad you were not here with us. More than likely we could have routed the Indians out of their trap."54 T h e r e were also the w o u n d e d to take care of. Harg Eskridge had received a bullet below the ankle that shattered many of the small bones in his foot. During the fight he had worn "a large, gaudy Chihuahua hat...that was riddled with bullets so that it cannot be worn and his hair was nearly all cut off with scalp wounds from grazing bullets."55 James Hall received a shoulder wound, injured ribs, and a leg wound that began above the knee and exited through his calf. Miraculously, he healed without any permanent damage. In the morning, Jordan Bean arrived with a wound in his temple, most likely caused by a ricochet. 56 After receiving immediate first aid, these men remained with the posse for the next two days.

In the meantime, Dawson spent the first night hoping to continue the battle in the morning and at least determine the location of his missing men. With the second half of his group present, he would reenter Pinhook Draw with around twenty-five of the original Colorado posse. The order of events again becomes muddied, but apparently a group of about ten men from Moab met the Colorado posse near Mason Spring the next morning.

Joseph Burkholder, who was in the Moab group, says that the townspeople had learned about the Utes and Coloradans from a local prospector/cattleman who had encountered Dawson's posse. Posse member Reynolds, however, says that before his group entered the La Sals Dawson had specifically sent a member of the posse to Moab for help. However they learned of the situation, the Moabites, knowing that their cattle and their friends were in the mountains, decided to investigate and offer help. En route, they passed a camp used by brothers Alfred and Isadore Wilson and found no one there.

W h e n they arrived at Porcupine R i m the night of June 15 they saw the posse's camp but, not knowing whether it was a cowboy or U t e camp, waited until morning to approach. 57 After the Moab men joined the Colorado posse, the combined force headed down to the battlefield to learn the fate of those missing. The fighting of the previous day had ranged around Pinhook Draw and Harpole Mesa. The searchers found the first body in an open area near an old trail that passed over Harpole Mesa. As they gathered around the body, which was most likely that of Dave Willis, the Indians on the side of the mesa 54

Silvey, History, 19.

Dolores News, June 25, 1881.

56 Ibid.,June 16,1883.

57 Faun Tanner interviewed Joseph Burkholder sometime in the early 1930s. There is no existing copy of the manuscript, but Tanner uses information from this interview extensively in The Far Country, 127-29.

This is the only extant information from the perspective of the Moab settlers who later became involved in the affair.

55

22

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

opened fire and commenced the second day of fighting. The white men retreated uphill toward Bald Mesa, taking cover in an aspen grove on its side. An old Indian woman moving through the brush was caught in the crossfire and killed.

Dawson took stock of his situation and realized how desperately he needed additional help. He did not believe that Moab, eighteen miles away, could provide additional assistance, so he turned to the next closest source, Rico. At mid-morning of June 16, the second day, D. G.Taylor began the 150-mile ride. According to Bean, one of the men from the Moab group saw the rider and fired shots but missed.58 Taylor completed the journey in five days, arriving on the afternoon of June 21. A rescue party left Rico the next day, camped at Big Bend that night, and were joined by other volunteers in the morning. The group elected Worden Grigsby as its leader and set out for Utah. O n June 24 they arrived in the vicinity of the La Sal Mountains, but by this time their initial group of forty had dwindled to twenty-four. 59 They also were far too late to help in the fight against the Utes.

The Colorado possemen had other concerns. Dawson worried about the three wounded men and their small detachment of two guards left to protect them in camp. A group started back but received fire from Utes who were now between them and their destination. The cowboys retreated to the aspen grove again. After a few more hours of fighting, the Indians broke contact and began moving toward the Dolores and the Ute Reservation.

The Colorado and Moab men returned to their camp, ending the second day of fighting.60 That evening, the cowboys decided they had had enough. Guided by the men from Moab, the group moved to the lower end of Pack Creek, near the settlement, to rest and obtain assistance for the wounded. The three injured men descended the mountain on horseback to a point where a spring-cushioned wagon could be used for the rest of the trip,61 then they stayed at the Peter Rasmussen ranch in a new shed that served as an infirmary. Mrs. Rasmussen and her four daughters rendered medical assistance.

One of the girls remembers how they applied prickly pear poultices to the wounds, but Eskridge's badly infected foot required more extensive treatment. Mrs. Rasmussen took a clean pair of her husband's pants, sewed the end of one leg closed, filled it with hot yeast, and slipped it over the injured foot and leg. "Sure enough, his leg was saved by my Mother's care and he began to improve."62 The wounded remained there for five days before 58

Bean was in camp, wounded, and may not have got the story completely right, but he is very specific about the shooting. Perhaps the man galloping away, raising clouds of dust, was mistaken for Indians.

59 Dolores News, July 9, 1881.

60 Ibid.

61 Bean, "Jordan Bean," 3; Eliza Burr (Moab resident), Statement, November 30, 1948, in possession of authors.

62 Bean, "Jordan Bean's Story," 23; Fred T. Christensen, "Early History of Sanford, Colorado," Colorado Magazine (July 1959): 216-17.

23

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

starting their long trip back to Colorado. The stay in Moab, for all concerned, was a much-needed rest. O n e man commented, "It was only a small place, but they treated us like royalty."63 Four days after the fight, a group of men returned to the battlefield to bury the dead. The land lay silent; the Indians and the sounds of battle had long since faded away. By now, the corpses were badly decomposed, and one account tells of how the heads had been smashed, as if with a rock.64 N o other mutilation had occurred. The party buried Dave Willis where he fell, 100 yards distant from the other bodies. A search of the terrain below the main fighting area revealed the remains of the two Wilson brothers, w h o had probably been herding cattle in the area but were not directly involved in the fight. Apparently, they had been attracted by the shooting and came to investigate. The Utes killed them, which explained the firing heard down the valley during the first day's fight. The burial detail interred the brothers in the same grave with three Colorado cowboys, while they laid another three to rest in an adjoining grave. The body ofT. C.Taylor remained missing, but he was presumed dead, bringing the final count to ten posse members killed.65 The following day the entire group started for Colorado.

In the meantime, Worden Grigsby and the twenty-four men of the rescue party completed the trip from Rico in two and a half days, arriving at Coyote, south of the La Sals, on June 24. Although they did not encounter the main body of the returning posse, they did meet two of the participants, w h o related past events. The party spent the next day at Coyote.

Some men chose to leave in the evening, but nineteen of the original number insisted on going to the battle site, "thinking that if the victorious Indians were still in the field and not too heavily reinforced, [they could] avenge the massacred boys in a measure or else leave more blood to mingle with theirs."66 These men traveled to the site, noting how much of the terrain lent itself to ambush. Unsure exactly how the fight had unfolded, they began to piece together the story from the equipment and dead animals encountered along the way.

That night they camped on a mesa overlooking the battlefield. It was a somber occasion. In the distance the setting sun played across sandstone ridges, changing their color from a "grayish blue to a lurid red, and many a heart felt weary as we thought that beneath that gory pall, lay the forms of our friends.... An Indian dog slunk into camp and as we drove him off, added his dismal howls to a weird and ghostly picture which already held the soul in a thraldom of solemnity." 67 T h e following morning, after a " O r s o n Reynolds to George B. Hobbs, May 12, 1918, "San Juan Stake History," Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah.

64 Ibid. to Denver Tribune, July 9, 1881.

66 Dolores News, July 9, 1881.

67 Ibid.

24

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

hurried breakfast, the searchers found the freshly dug graves, the gulch where a number of men had died, the old Indian woman murdered by the cowboys, the body of a Ute man, and other telltale remnants of the fight.

The men left that day intimately aware of the price paid on both sides.

O n their return, Grigsby's group met the survivors of the battle, w h o were camped at Hudson's D o u b l e Cabins. T h e combined group also encountered four companies of buffalo soldiers of the 9th Cavalry. Their commander, Captain Henry Carroll, had elements from three different posts—Fort Bayard, Fort Cummings, and Fort Seldon—all in southern N e w Mexico. The 190 men, belonging to C, E, F, and M troops, had begun their ride to Fort Lewis on May 23, arrived on June 10, left on June 2 1 , and arrived at the Double Cabins about a week later. This means that they had traveled an average of twenty-two miles a day for more than 500 miles.

Also, during their march they had in tow at least one howitzer and some supply wagons, which undoubtedly slowed their advance.68 Captain Carroll was an experienced veteran of many Indian conflicts throughout Texas and N e w Mexico, and most recently had fought in the Apache campaign against Victorio. As a professional soldier, he did not appreciate civilian interference in Indian affairs. If Bean is accurate in recounting the following dialogue, Carroll wanted to remove all vigilante posses from his path. Bean recorded: [Carroll] told us we were everyone under arrest for attacking and disturbing the Indians. Bill Dawson drawed his rifle out of the scabbard and told Carroll he just didn't have "niggers" enough to arrest his men. Every man pulled their guns. Grigsby and his men, too, never faltered.

Carroll said, "Tut, tut. I don't want to fight."

Dawson said, "We have just come from a fight and we can fight some more."

T h e n Carroll said, "If any of your men will show us the Indian trail, we will overtake them."

Dick Curtis and Gus Hefferman (of Rico) stepped out and said, "We will show you the trail."

They started back the next morning. 69

The soldiers and cowboys parted company; the Colorado men returned by way of Paiute Springs, Cross Canyon, and Big Bend of the Dolores, then splintered off to Rico, Mancos, and Durango.

The soldiers continued on in search of the Utes. Prior to the Pinhook fight, the Indians had let it be known how they felt about having African American soldiers stationed in the area. When they learned that Fort Lewis would be established, they were not terribly worried as long as the soldiers stationed there were Anglo. However (as the newspaper reported in a doubly racist comment), "if they are Negro troops that will 'sit down' there, they [the Utes] will fight. The only mark of civilization the Indian has ever 68

Operational Returns, 9th Cavalry, 1881-1887, Microfiche M774, National Archives, Washington,

D.C. 69

Be an, "Jordan Bean's Story," 23.

25

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Mancos Jim, participant battle and, later, an

in the

informant

about the events from the Ute point of view.

shown has been his inveterate hatred for the Negro." 70 T h e cavalry followed a cold trail. M a n y of t h e I n d i a n s had traveled to Dolores and the safety of the U t e reservation. T h e soldiers reported, based on the location of the Indians' campsites, that their pace must have been slow, only six to seven miles a day. At each of these campsites the pursuers found bloody rags used to care for the wounded. 71 O n July 24 the soldiers returned to Fort Lewis empty-handed after their 200-mile jaunt. 72 Observers were convinced that the Indians hid behind the sanctity of the reservation and government control (read "interference"), to the detriment of the settlers.

The Ute side of the Pinhook Draw Battle is available in only fragmentary pieces. One definite participant was Mancos Jim, who not only discussed the incident but was also in possession of Dave Willis's rifle. In conversation with a local trader in 1886, Jim said that he lost "eighteen of his best and four average Indians in that fight."73 This figure is in complete agreement with the estimates made by the white participants, although only two bodies were actually found near the battlefield.

Poco Narraguinep, more commonly k n o w n as Poke, took pride in telling whites about his part in the fracas. He claimed three individual kills, and according to Albert R . Lyman, a local historian who had a number of later confrontations with Poke, "his years of insolent safety since that time have no doubt convinced him that it was a good business."74 During a skirmish on Blue Mountain before the Pinhook fight, some civilians had captured Poke's horse. Belongings found on the horse identified Poke with the group that had passed through and ransacked the O'Donnell and Hudson cabins. Before the fight, his father, Narraguinep, boasted to a number of 70

Dolores News, September 11,1880.

Ibid.,July 9,1881.

72 Operational Returns, 9th Cavalry.

71

26

73

J e j u n e 16,1886.

74

Albert R. Lyman, "History," 22-23.

PINHOOK DRAW FIGHT

white men at Dolores that the Utes would attack Fort Lewis and '"clean it up.'That the Utes knew that the killing of Thurman and May was to take place is shown by their telling several men the day before the massacre 'not to go beyond the Great Bend, as somebody would heap kill "white people out there pretty soon.'"75 O n July 18 S o u t h e r n U t e A g e n t W H . B e r r y w r o t e to t h e Commissioner of Indian Affairs about two "Pah U t e " Indians he had arrested and interrogated about the fighting around the La Sal Mountains. The two men, Ca-cah-par-a-mata and Pah-gie, were slow to admit any knowledge of what had transpired. Although others on the reservation asserted that they were part of the renegade group, they claimed their information was only second-hand but that they were aware of some of the details concerning the deaths of May and Thurman. The single Ute responsible for this, they said, had been "wounded in the Pinhook fight, "started out on the trail and has not been heard from since."76 Although there was no real evidence of their involvement, the two Utes -who gave this information were later sent to be incarcerated at Fort Leavenworth. 77 Other than the sentencing of these two men, the record is silent about any other Indians being held officially accountable for involvement in the Pinhook fight. Additional names, such as that of Posey, who was involved in later troubles, have been associated with this fight, but their participation cannot be confirmed. /Although Posey was a teenager at the time and too young to have been in command, he has been unfairly accused of leading the group.

The battlefield lay quiet for four months before a group of pilgrims returned that October. Among them was America J. Willis, wife of Dave Willis, come to claim her husband's remains and bring them to Mancos.

Others came to return Hiram Melvin's remains to Dolores. The roundtrip journey took sixteen days, America making it entirely on horseback. The seven bodies remaining at the site received reburial before the party started back. Following the 300-mile journey, Mrs. Willis wrote, "It was all we could do for him [Dave] and it seemed so little when he deserved so much." 78 O n Armistice Day, 1940, nineteen Moab citizens, under the sponsorship of Grand County and the Lions Club, erected a four-foot-high marker between the two graves, honoring the fallen.79 It stands there today, a mute "witness of the struggle between the cowboys and the Indians.

What is the significance of the Pinhook Draw fight from an historical perspective? One could argue that the success the Utes achieved that day— killing more white men in that single battle than in any others fought in 75

Lieutenant Colonel R. Crofton to Colonel Henry Page, June 9, 1881, Record Group 75, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Consolidated Ute Agency, Federal Records Center, Denver, Colorado. lh Berry to Commissioner.

77 H.J. Crosby, Letter from the War Department with enclosure from Colonel C. H Smith, September 29,1881, MS 109, Special Collections, Marriott Library.

78 Cortez Sentinel, January 28, 1882.

79 Times-Independent, November 14,1940.

27

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

southeastern U t a h — e n c o u r a g e d a n o t h e r forty-two years of low-grade conflict that at times erupted into open warfare. Albert R .

Lyman pointed out that during that span of time "the Indians killed an average of more than one white man a year." Twenty-five percent of those died on one day in the Pinhook fight. In the years that followed, the Utes often mentioned this fact to intimidate local people. Old-timers still recall the Indians talking with pride about their "victory" well into the 1930s and 1940s.80 In a n o t h e r sense, t h e fight focused a brighter light on this band of "renegades," Grave marker at Pinhook Draw, reinforcing the feeling among whites that the band needed to be brought under control erected in 1940. and placed on a reservation. This did not happen with finality until 1923 and the "Posey War," which was really only a desperate flight by a desperate people who were finally, totally crushed.81 The Pinhook fight was the first of a number of conflicts that kept the agents, the military, Washington bureaucrats, and the local populace demanding an end to the autonomy and antics of this uncontri lied group of Utes living in the canyons and mountains of southeastern Utah. That the Indians held out as long as they did while their lifestyle was being impoverished is a credit to their tenacity.

A final point to be made is the changing perspective of history. Papers of the day called the fight a "massacre" of brave heroes by "renegades." Today, some would have a different view. W h e n a people fight desperately to maintain their land and lifestyle, one cannot be too quick to condemn them for what most of us would do. True, the Utes wantonly killed, maimed, and stole livestock, as well as doing everything else they could to get even for what they were losing, but it was the only way they could protest. While no one can laud the tactics or the bloodshed, one can certainly recognize the desperation they must have felt.

One hundred and twenty years after the Pinhook Draw fight, the La Sal Mountains still cast their shadows over the graves of those who were killed.

Now, there are different conflicts over the land—less bloody but, some would say, just as emotionally charged. Still, when tourists flock into the town of Moab on a warm June evening, they are unaware of the price paid

by Colorado cowboys and Southern Utes just eighteen miles away. As long as the marker sits on the battlefield, however, the land will remind us of that time when two cultures clashed and individuals died.

80

Finley Bayles conversation with author, March 22, 2000.

For further information on this episode in Ute history, see Robert S. McPherson, "Paiute Posey and the Last White Uprising," Utah Historical Quarterly 53 (1985): 248-67.

81

28

gpn

: -v

i V

_X :

H o t Rocks Make Big Waves: T h e Impact of the U r a n i u m B o o m on Moab, Utah, 1948-57

By AMBERLY KNIGHT

T

he red rock landscape of southeastern Utah, dotted with olivegreen vegetation, draws tourists, hikers, and mountain bikers from all corners of the world. Currently, business is booming in the small town of Moab, the gateway to two national parks and one state park. New tourist shops crowd Main Street, and motels pop up at an astonishing rate. A similar boom occurred more than four decades ago, but instead of being driven by the hot pockets of sightseers, it was fueled by the hot rocks of the earth, uranium. The uranium boom in Moab in the 1950s was both a boon and a bane to townspeople. The industry drew thousands of newcomers, causing enormous strains on public utilities and community services. However, it "was also a catalyst that prompted major improvements in Moab's infrastructure and economy.

When Brigham Young sent groups of men to explore the area in the early 1850s, one of Uranium prospectors, date and them reported that it was "[g]ood for nothing place uknown.

Amberly Knight holds a degree in history and is a student in international studies. She is writing a thesis on conservationists' efforts in Jordan to foster a rural economy that is both viable and environmentally sound.

29

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

e x c e p t to h o l d t h e w o r l d t o g e t h e r . " 1 Miners at entrance to uranium Although it seemed an inhospitable country, mine in Moab area. in 1855 the LDS church first sent settlers there to farm, raise cattle, and establish a settlement. During the next ninety years the population of Moab grew to around 1,000 people w h o eked out a living mainly through agriculture and ranching.

By 1910, amateur prospectors had begun to search the hills for treasures of the earth. They found coal, oil, uranium, vanadium, radium, and even some gold. Most of these ventures were not very lucrative because other areas of the world, such as Brazil and Peru, were supplying the minerals more economically than was possible for a tiny western town in the United States. Additionally, most of the minerals near Moab were not very valuable. Uranium, for example, "was used only as a yellow pigment for paint. 2 However, after World War II the United States government worked frantically to develop, produce, and stockpile atomic weapons. Because uranium was essential for these weapons, its value skyrocketed at the end of the 1940s. In order to procure this newly popular metal, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began to offer huge incentives to uranium miners. In 1948 the AEC offered, in addition to the $2.00 per pound base rate, $10,000 to the first prospector to provide twenty tons of 0.2 percent ore.3 Although the AEC announced its uranium-buying program in 1948, 1

Phyllis Cortes, Grand Memories (Grand County: Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, 1978), 3.

Nathaniel B. Knight, Jr., interview by Suzanne Simon, August 10, 1970, transcript in Uranium Industry Project, University of Utah and California State College, Fullerton, 2. Don Sorensen, "Wonder Mineral: Utah's Uranium," Utah Historical Quarterly 31 (1963): 289.

3 Lee Huffaker, interview by author, November 5, 1995, Moab.

2

30

HOT ROCKS MAKE BIG WAVES

there was no appreciable impact on Moab for about four years. In many cases, miners could not get the ore to a town because of poor roads. Even if they were able to make it to Monticello, the first uranium processing center in the area, local samplers and mills were i n a d e q u a t e . T h e TimesIndependent, Moab's weekly newspaper, announced in July 1948 that out of 800 tons of ore that had been delivered, only sixty tons had been sampled (to determine uranium content). 4 The miners were not paid until the ore was sampled.

Miners also had difficulty locating ore. It was often buried deep beneath layers of sedimentary rock. In order to assist the miners, the 7\EC initiated an exploration and research program and hired workers who, in three years, completed 500,000 feet of drilling. However, miners led by Howard Balsley, a local citizen, complained that most of the drilling was done for large, established mining companies and did not help the independent miner. When the uranium was buried deep in the earth, the price paid for the ore was not high enough to produce a profit for independent miners.

Walt Gramlich, who had mined several minerals in the Moab area since 1912, complained in the Times-Independent, "Prices being paid by the AEC through private corporations are inadequate to provide for any development of ore reserves outside of shallow beds."5 Eventually, the government heard the pleas of the mining community and in March 1951 provided a shot in the arm. Prices for the lowest grade of ore, 0.1 percent, went from fifty cents to $1.50 per pound—an increase of 300 percent. The highest grade of ore, 0.2 percent and higher, increased from $2.00 to $3.50 per pound. 6 Although rising prices attracted some new miners, the real boost to the industry in Moab came when Charlie Steen, an impoverished geology professor, discovered an ore bed worth more than $60 million. His rags-toriches story was published in newspapers all over the nation, and in late 1952 newcomers, eager to capture their share of the wealth, began pouring into Moab. As miners and support workers flocked to Moab, the AEC, a true bureaucracy, made improvements at a snail-like pace. The government put a uranium sampling plant in Moab in February 1955, but miners still had to haul their ore to Monticello, Utah, or Grand Junction, Colorado, to a processing mill. In June 1955 Steen used some of the profits from his 4

Two excellent sources on the events during this time period are Arthur R. Gomez, Quest for the Golden Circle (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994) and Raymond W and Samuel W. Taylor, Uranium Fever, or No Talk under $1 Million (NewYork: Macmillan, 1970). Times-Independent, July 29, 1948.

5 Times-Independent, April 27, 1950. Nate B. Knight, who had mined uranium and vanadium in Moab since 1910, tried to mine the MiVida area in 1949. He believed that ore was located below the surface, but he could not get to it. Three years later Charles Steen realized the potential of the area. With his background in geology, he was able to convince investors to provide him with deep-drilling equipment. When he struck ore, he found a vein that proved to be worth $60 million; Jacque Knight, interview by author, October 20, 1997, Moab, Utah.

6 Times-Independent, July 6, 1950, and March 6, 1951.

31

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

mining company, U T E X , to build an $8 million mill only a mile from Moab. Its capacity was double that of any other mill on the Colorado Plateau.7 Throughout the boom, population growth far exceeded city leaders' most liberal estimates. The federal census recorded Moab's population in 1940 as 1,084. In 1950 the Times-Independent declared, "A substantial increase in the population of Moab doubtless will be shown by the 17th decentennial [sic] census.... Although final figures cannot be given out at this time there is reason to believe...[that the population will] exceed 1,200." This statement implies that citizens felt that an 11 percent population increase was a great change for the community. But after two official counts, census takers actually announced the final figure as 1,903—almost double the population often years before. The growth reflects the extensive in-migration of prospectors with grand dreams and of workers who came to support the dreamers. N o one imagined that in the next decade the population would triple! In 1960, of the 6,345 people in Moab, only 1,102 reported living in the same house they had occupied in 1954, and only 2,377 reported that they had been born in Utah. 8 N o t all move-ins -were miners. For example, a man k n o w n only as Frenchie, a hot dog vendor in Chicago, saw Charlie Steen's story of instant "wealth in the newspaper, sold his hot dog stand, and used the money to buy a bus ticket to Moab. Immediately after arriving late one Saturday night, he asked a local service station owner where he could sell hot dogs.

The man replied that Frenchie might want to try to go to the American Legion, where miners gathered every "weekend. Frenchie went to Miller's Co-op and bought some buns and hot dogs on credit. H e sold out that night and stayed in Moab for the rest of his life.9 Like Frenchie, other businessmen, construction workers, and professionals came to Moab to offer their services.

One businessman who came to Moab at the beginning of the boom was Pete Byrd, a former bomber pilot in the South Pacific during World War II. Byrd learned of the opportunities in Moab directly from Charlie Steen, his old college roommate. H e moved to Moab in early 1953 and set up his own charter flight business, Byrd Aviation. W h e n he first came to Moab, he noted that there "were horses, cows, chickens, and outhouses on every block and only one paved road. Over the next ten years, he witnessed huge changes as the small town developed the infrastructure capable of supporting the growing population. 10 In 1955 Archie M. Swenson, Moab chief of police, summarized the developments of the town when he said, "Most of us are aware by now that the 'city of the R e d R o c k Country' is no longer the quiet little cowtown 7

Ibid., June 23, 1955. Steen's rich MiVida Mine was in Lisbon Valley in southern San Juan County.

Times-Independent, May 4,1950; U. S. Census, 1940,1950, and 1960.

9 Dennis E. "Pete" Byrd, interview by author, October 10, 1997, Moab.

10 Ibid.

8

32

HOT ROCKS MAKE BIG WAVES

of yesteryear. Once the crossroads of cattle The boom gave rise to a number trails, it is n o w a t h r o b b i n g thruway for of new businesses, including tourists, and of late an artery of the uranium Engineer's Syndicate, which set country." 11 The dramatic changes in Moab's up shop in an old Arctic Circle p o p u l a t i o n , e c o n o m y , and d e m o g r a p h y Building. caused by the uranium mining industry called for vast alterations in Moab's infrastructure.

Housing, water supply and sewer facilities, phone lines, schools, and medical facilities—all these needs and more were the challenges brought to this tiny community as the need for uranium made its sudden and far-reaching impact.

"Housing is Moab's number one problem," the Times-Independent proclaimed in 1955. Bill McDougall, a geologist who later served on the city council and as Moab's mayor, recalled that "People lived all over the place.

Every space in town was used. Trailers were scattered all over." Often homeowners rented out their backyards as places to park trailers, allowing tenants to use their personal water and sewer facilities. However, in February 1954 the city council passed an ordinance stating that any trailer used as a residence must be connected to the sewer immediately. 12 O n e month later, the council defined a trailer court as more than two trailers on a property and mandated that anyone operating a trailer court apply for a 11 12

Times-Independent, August 4,1955.

Moab City Council Minutes, vol. 3, February 2,1954.

33

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

city license.13 T h e housing shortage quickly developed into a crisis. In January 1955 the U.S. Labor Department reported on a survey of Moab residents to determine exact housing needs.

Although the survey was administered in the winter and many citizens complained that it would be outdated when good weather came and new companies moved in, the results still reflected dire circumstances. For example, the survey determined that at least 4,294 people, comprising 865 families, lived in Moab. Of those families, 534 reported that they had moved to Moab within the last year. In addition, 426 felt that they were not "adequately" housed, and 608 of the families wanted a new home. 1 4 Because of the h o u s i n g shortage, many families lived in hotel rooms, trailers, tents, or Charles Steen. even in their cars. June Stilson, a Moab resident, c o m m e n t e d that the banks of Mill Creek looked very similar to the way they do now in the summer, when many tourists and mountain bikers camp along it. Sam and R a y m o n d Taylor described the situation in their book Uranium Fever.

The length of a man's stay at Moab could be told by a glance at his trailer. At first it sat there among the peach trees just as it had been pulled off the road. After awhile he jacked it up on piers and took the wheels off. Next thing, he built a cinder block foundation under it. T h e n he began nailing on lean-to's. Some of the old residents, men who'd been there a year or more, had expanded their trailers into dwellings of four or five rooms.

Bill McDougall noted that mobile homes did more than any other solution to alleviate the housing crisis. Even when people had the money to buy a house, they often could not find one for sale.15 At one time, Moab had more mobile homes than houses. Because of this, today there are many mobile homes in areas zoned only for houses.

W h e n Steen built his uranium processing plant in Moab, he also developed a subdivision north of Main Street, right beneath his house high on the hill. However, a person could not buy a house there unless he was a Steen employee—hence the area's nickname, Steenville.16 Sometimes devel13 William E. McDougall, interview by author, October 20, 1997, Moab; Moab City Council Minutes, vol. 3, February 2 and March 3, 1954.

14 Times-Independent, January 6, 1955.

15 June Stilson, interview by author, October 20, 1997, Moab; Taylor and Taylor, Uranium Fever, 110; McDougall interview.

16 Stilson interview.

34

HOT ROCKS MAKE BIG WAVES

opers planned subdivisions but could not get building permits because of the lack of sewer and water facilities. In April 1954 Moab hired a city planner, Dale Despain, to provide technical direction for the struggling community.17 Lack of housing affected employment. The unemployment rate was very low, but because of the housing shortage many potential workers would not move to Moab. Helen M. Knight, the school superintendent, reported that for the 1955-56 school year, eight new teachers would have signed contracts but did not because they could not find reasonable rent.18 At one point, housing costs were second highest in the state.

The Times-Independent advertised labor shortages in the Moab area but -warned those seeking work to find living quarters before moving into the area.19 Congressman Henry A. Dixon (RUtah), proposed involving insurance companies and banks in providing low-interest funds to developers and future homeowners. His ideas were well received by First Security Bank president George Eccles, who helped finance many loans for citizens of Moab. 20 In order to c o n t i n u e approving housing Steen's Mi Vida Mine. developments, city leaders had to provide adequate sewage facilities and water services. In January 1955 the city council determined that the water supply was critically low. It was winter, and the city was barely keeping up with demands. "What will happen," asked Fred Dalmus, the city water commissioner, "when the summer comes, and the water flow decreases, and water demands increase?" The council determined that "funds must be obtained in some way to take care of [the problem], necessitated by unprecedented growth of Moab and any possibility for securing additional revenue will be looked into." In the city council meeting at the end of the month, the situation appeared even more severe.

Dalmus repeated his fears that citizens would not be able to water their gardens or lawns during the summer. And by July the city was in a crisis.

The city instituted a complete ban on lawn sprinkling. One of the drive-in theaters had to shut down because it did not have enough water to operate its water-cooled projectors. During two evenings, many areas of town were 17

Moab City Council Minutes, vol. 3, April 22, 1954.

Times-Independent, August 11, 1955.

19 Ibid., June 23,1955.

20 Ibid., November 3, 1955.

18

35

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

completely out of water.21 Ralph Miller owned Miller's Co-op, a grocery and dry goods store. He was also a city councilman when new sewer and water fees were approved.

Some of his best customers and friends, angry about the higher rates, stopped patronizing his store. Miller decided that politics and business did not go well together, so instead he fulfilled his civic duty by becoming a volunteer firefighter. Miller remembered that often during the summer of '55, firemen would get to a fire and turn on the hose, but nothing would come out. Pete Byrd recalled that when the fire siren went off, everyone in town knew that they needed to turn off their faucets immediately. Since fire insurance rates are based on fire fighting capabilities, insurance in Moab was quite expensive during the water shortage.22 Citizens dealt with the water crisis in different ways. Bill McDougall, also a member of the city council, explained that the situation was not caused by a lack of water but by a lack of water mains and storage tanks that could deliver water to the people. He had a neighbor with a well, and during the most severe part of the crisis he paid his neighbor to pump water so he could water his lawn. Adrien Taylor, daughter of Ellis Foote, the city manager, said that she and her family would often take buckets to the river to draw their own water. Miller recalled similar solutions: "Sometimes people couldn't get a drink, or wash, and so they would go to one of the springs with jugs and buckets and get water by hand." 23 The sewer system was also inadequate. According to a Times-Independent editorial, the sewer was already servicing two thousand more people than it had originally been designed for. Sheriff John Stocks was particularly worried about possible epidemics, especially polio. H e mandated that all trailers and temporary housing install toilet facilities by spring 1955. 24 Adrien Taylor noted that during the next summer the sewer was overloaded and often backed up until the city ran out of water; soon the sewer problems disappeared.

Concerned about community growth in 1951, the mayor and city council had approved plans for a $150,000 project to expand water and sewer infrastructure. The plans included construction of a 250,000-gallon storage reservoir, extension of water mains and sewer lines, and construction of a new community septic tank.25 The city voted to finance the improvements by issuing bonds. City engineer W i n Templeton believed that these improvements, which would provide for 5,000 citizens, would be more than adequate for Moab. But he underestimated growth, and within five years the system was inadequate. By 1955, the VA and FHA refused to provide further monetary commitments for housing until sewer and water 21

Ibid., January 6 and 27, 1955, and July 7, 1955.

Ralph Miller, Jr., interview by author, October 9, 1997, Moab; Byrd interview.

23 Adrien Taylor, interview by author, October 9, 1997, Moab; Miller interview.

24 Times-Independent, January 27 and March 3,1955;Taylor interview.

25 Ibid., January 11,1951.

22

36

HOT ROCKS MAKE BIG WAVES

Campers parked along Mill Creek during the uranium boom.

facilities became available.26 In J u n e 1955 Moab received a $198,000 grant from the federal government, which provided enough money to extend water and sewer mains but " t not to expand treatment i ^ ^ ^ B l plants or construct additional reservoirs.27 Next to housing, sewer, and water, phone communication was Moab's biggest problem. In 1949 two circuits connected Moab with the rest of the world; the AEC office in Grand Junction dominated those circuits much of the time. T h e local t e l e p h o n e company, operated by J. W C o r b i n , announced improvements on telephone lines in March 1950. Corbin, who justified the expense by noting the crowded existing facilities, added a completely new dialing system. However, like other improvements made in the early years of the boom, the dialing system was soon outdated, and within a month the telephone company received complaints. Because of party lines and people who made lengthy calls, many customers had limited access to phone service. In August 1950 Midland Telephone issued an ultimatum. Unless customers cooperated, the company would switch on an automatic cut-off feature that would terminate any call after ten minutes. 28 The lack of local and long distance phone lines was particularly problematic for businesses. Ralph Miller, owner of Miller's Co-op, often needed to call Salt Lake City to place wholesale orders. Many times he waited for eight or nine hours to place a call. Pete Byrd operated his aviation business from the airport located ten miles from Moab. He shared his phone line with ten other parties, and customers who tried to call to charter flights often reached only a busy signal.29 By 1955 Moab's new dialing system was completely inadequate. Because of the phenomenal growth, general manager Corbin, who by this time was also the mayor, moved the outdated equipment to Dove Creek, Colorado, and installed a much more extensive system for Moab. Mayor Corbin explained that the telephone company had planned for growth, but "Moab got a lot bigger faster than [we] figured."30 The new system handled 2,400 calls in twenty-four hours—a great improvement over the previous 600g g ^

26

Ibid.,January 27,1955.

Times-Independent, June 30, 1955.

28 Ibid.June 30, 1955,July 21, 1949,August 24,1950.

29 Miller interview; Byrd interview.

30 Times-Independent, June 30,1955.

27

37

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

call carrier. However, the updated system still could not satisfy demand.

Also during 1955, Intermountain Bell, the long distance provider, spent $200,000 to install new circuits in Moab. The company had three operators -working sixteen hours a day just to assist with toll calls, and customers placed an average of 700 long distance calls daily. Because there were only five outside lines, many customers waited constantly for a line to be cleared. People -who wanted to make long distance calls put their names on a "waiting list. Sometimes it was several days before their turn came and the call could go through. At other times, people would simply line up at the telephone office. Because the wait could take all day, men "would take turns sitting in line for each other while others patronized the Wagon Wheel Bar next door. Another commonly employed option was to charter a flight to Grand Junction, use the pay phone in the Grand Junction terminal, and then return to Moab. But the surest way to place a call was to be friends -with the Corbins—especially Mrs. Ida Corbin. McDougall remembered that if you knew Ida you could get your phone call placed before all the "Texans and foreigners" could.31 Sometimes the lack of phone lines affected the entire community. For example, on June 15, 1955, two power lines went down, causing a blackout throughout the town. A man on his way out of town saw the lines short out. He continued on to Green River, fifty miles from Moab. While workers searched for the missing link, the man tried to call to report the location. But he could not get a telephone call through, and he finally drove back to Moab to report it. Power was out for more than ten hours.32 Miners and workers who came to Moab seeking their fortunes often brought their families. The county tried desperately to provide adequate education for the new children. In 1950 Moab's schools served 300 students. At the beginning of the boom, one school housed grades K-12, and it quickly became overcrowded. Construction began on a new elementary school in 1951. In order to provide room for all the students, the school board initiated double sessions. Half the students attended from 8:30 to noon, while the other half attended from 12:30 to 4:30.33 As the new school neared completion in 1953, the school board realized that it too would be inadequate, especially if the population continued to increase. Charlie Steen donated a plot of land for a new site, and the district began construction of a second elementary school. 34 Students attended double sessions until the second school was completed.

At the beginning of 1955, school superintendent Helen M. Knight addressed the overcrowding problem in the Times-Independent. First, she argued that the school lunch program was not adequate and requested that 31

Times-Independent, April 28,1955; Cortes, Grant Memories, 100; Byrd interview; McDougall interview.

Times-Independent, June 16, 1955.

33 Ibid., February 20, 1955.

34 Ibid., December 10, 1953.

32

38

HOT ROCKS MAKE BIG WAVES

all students who lived within six blocks of the school walk home for lunch. She also announced that as soon as furniture was available a new high school would be set up in the basement of t h e LDS c h u r c h . N e w classes, including economics, sociology, and anthropology, would be added to the curriculum. 35 In February the second grade moved to Among the top-selling items in another church building, and the students Toots McDougald's trading post attended in shifts. By July of that year, 241 on Main Street was the uranium n e w pupils h a d a r r i v e d in M o a b . jewelry that she fashioned out of Superintendent Knight a n n o u n c e d , " T h e carnotite ore (containing uranium heavy influx of new students has made the great increase in the budget needed. Even and vanadium) and "yellow with the elementary school being added this cake," which is ore that has been year, double sessions will have to be held partly refined. until another building can be added." By October, the schools had again been forced to implement double sessions, which ran from 7:30 to 12:30 and from 1:00 to 6:00. The split sessions created two problems, according to Pete Byrd. First, half the kids were going to school in the dark, and the other half were coming home in the dark.

Second, since some of the kids were always out of school "running up and down the streets," it was easier for truants to avoid being caught. However, store owner Miller benefited from the double sessions. Because the high school students went to school in the morning, he was able to hire teenage boys to work in the afternoons stocking shelves, carrying out groceries, and unloading merchandise. Often, the boys had to carry groceries more than two blocks because the streets were so crowded that patrons could not find a closer parking space.36 In order to plan for the 1955-56 school year, the elementary school held early registration in August. Six hundred children registered, 75 percent of w h o m were from families connected with the uranium industry. School officials estimated that these 600 early enrollees represented 70 percent of the total student population. However, enrollment that year actually reached 1,215 students—150 percent of what they had estimated. This figure is especially significant in light of the fact that just seven years earlier the entire population of Moab had been less than 1,200. Many of the chil35 36

Ibid.,January 20, 1955.

Ibid., July 21 and 30, 1955; Byrd interview; Miller interview.

39

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

dren were from very transient families, some of w h o m lived in cars or tents with no running water or electricity. For this reason, the school district employed full-time janitors to keep restrooms and showers in the locker rooms sanitary.37 As in other areas of concern, community support alleviated many problems. The PTA was particularly active during this time. In 1954 they organized a N e w Year's Eve dance in a garage and made enough money to buy fifty additional desks. They furnished three classrooms and donated $1,000 to the furniture fund.38 In addition to housing, sanitation, communication, and education, Moab needed improved medical facilities and medical service providers, both to assist those who had accidents in the dangerous mines and to provide basic medical care for the burgeoning population. From 1919 until 1954, Moab had only one physician, Dr. I. W. Allen. But in 1954 three new doctors moved into town: E. E. Hinckley, an ear, nose, and throat specialist; D. Lowrey Smith; and Winston Ekron, who relocated from North Dakota. Jay Munsey joined the group in 1955, and Paul Mayberry arrived from Texas in 1956.39 In the twenty-three years he lived there, Dr. Mayberry became somewhat of a legend in Moab. He was kind, generous, and charming, and he was regarded as an outstanding surgeon. Although he "was drawn to Moab because of the opportunities presented by the uranium, he became an integral part of the community. Moab residents felt that he cared about the community and those he treated. One miner, Nate Knight, broke his neck in 1960 while working in a mine. He was paralyzed from his neck down until his death in 1987. After his accident, Dr. Mayberry visited him often but never charged the family for his services. H e also was instrumental in helping Knight's wife, Peggy, receive compensation from the government as Nate's caregiver. Just before he died of cancer in 1979 he said to his wife, "Mary, you could have been a wealthy woman—if I hadn't given it all away." The town practically shut down to attend his funeral.40 As early as 1950, citizens recognized the need for a new hospital. State inspectors announced that the existing hospital, built in 1920, had inadequate heating facilities and too many fire hazards. In 1954 city officials opened a bank account to gather funds for the new hospital, announcing, "With the rapid increase in population, the need for a larger and better equipped hospital becomes more and more apparent." The hospital was expected to cost $650,000, but the Hill-Burton Act provided a grant from the federal government covering 45 percent of the total cost. Citizens 37

Times-Independent, August 25, October 6, 1955; Miller interview.

Cortes, Grand Memories, 60.

39 Times-Independent, May 20, October 28, August 12, 1954, July 14, 1955; Paula Kelley, "A Medical March through Time: A Brief History of the Hospital, Doctors and Nurses W h o Served Moab," Canyon Legacy 38 (Spring 2000), 12.

40 Miller, McDougall, Knight interviews; Kelly, 14.

38

40

HOT ROCKS MAKE BIG WAVES

passed a bond issue for $225,000 in November 1954. Cecil Thomson, the head of the Moab Chamber of Commerce hospital fundraising committee, sold a 4.5-acre site to the county for one dollar and led citizens in raising more than $100,000. When the state-of-the-art facility officially opened on January 17, 1957, it was named the I.W.Allen Memorial Hospital to commemorate Allen's thirty-five years of dedicated service as Moab's only doctor. Allen Memorial still serves as the county's hospital today.41 As the town grew and improvements continued, civic leaders searched for revenue. According to many citizens, the problem was that Moab was trying to act like a city but only had the income of a village.42 As the TimesIndependent reported, Moab had to provide services for the miners while much of the revenue from mining benefited other areas: "A good part of the extra load has come through the influx of mining interests," but although much of the mining was being done in San Juan County, most of the workers lived in Moab. 43 Total expenditures for Grand County during 1948 as reflected in its published financial statement were $26,000. By 1955, expenditures rose beyond $346,000—a thirteen-fold increase.44 Newcomers' expectations added to the pressures. Adrien Taylor, who moved into Moab during the boom, noted that many newcomers were from larger towns, and they expected and demanded paved streets, curbs, gutters, and sidewalks.45 Although the city needed money, city council members were reluctant to raise property taxes because they felt that the longtime residents would be affected more than the miners would be.

Additionally, the city council members and county commissioners were mostly business owners and ranchers, and they wanted to protect their own interests as much as possible. Finally, they resorted to a slight tax increase.46 The council also issued municipal bonds to fund capital improvements. 47 In addition to local revenues, improvements were funded through outside sources: state appropriations, federal grants and loans, and private donations. Utah state government primarily responded to requests for transportation aid. In 1952 the state appropriated $1,250,000 to build the longest bridge in the state at the time—over the Colorado River. E. G. Johnson, the chief engineer of the State Road Commission, related this project directly to the impact of the uranium. He was quoted as saying, "Since the development of uranium deposits in southeastern Utah and the 41

Times-Independent, March 16, 1950, February 25,1954;Kelley,"A Medical March," 14.

Times-Independent, March 24,1955.

43 Ibid., June 23, 1955.

44 Ibid., February 17, 1949; November 24,1955.

45 Taylor interview.

46 Byrd interview; Times-Independent, June 23, 1955.

47 The city used bonds to fund improvements to the sewer and water system: $150,000 in 1951, $75,000 in 1954, $133,000 in 1956, and $85,000 in 1957; Times-Independent, June 14, 1951, July 29, 1954, January 19, 1956, June 13, 1957. Additionally, the city issued a $600,000 bond to build a new elementary school in 1954 and a $225,000 bond to build the hospital in 1956; Times-Independent, April 8, 1954, and Kelley,"A Medical March," 14. Grand County also bonded extensively—to its legal limit during 1954-56; Times-Independent, July 29, December 23, 1954,June 23,1955,January 19, 1956.

42

41

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

increase in heavy truck hauling on the highways serving the area, the old 16-ton capacity bridge has become increasingly dangerous and inadequate."

The state also provided $12,500 in 1952 for improvements to the airport.48 Moab citizens also petitioned their congressional representatives for federal aid, justifying their requests by saying that because the government needed the uranium it was responsible for the growth and should pay for the improvements. In August 1954 economists from the Housing and Home Finance Agency visited Moab and determined that it was a critical defense area. Based on this, they appropriated $150,000 in 1955 for the development of city water mains and lines and a sewage disposal plant.

Later that year the agency provided a $49,000 loan,49 and in 1957 they provided $156,000 for additional water and sewer improvements. 50 Congress, under the Hill-Burton Act, provided a $250,000 grant for the hospital. In 1955 the federal government gave Moab $54,000 to improve the airport runway.51 And, through the Hill-Burton Act, the school district received in 1956 and 1957 almost $250,000 to build new schools and to improve the existing ones. These funds were provided under Public Laws 815 and 874, bills that earmarked money for schools in federally impacted areas.52 Finally, Arches National M o n u m e n t received almost $2.5 million under the Mission 66 program, which developed and expanded national parks. The money was used to build roads, a visitors' center, and an employee residence and to develop the water and sewer systems in the park.53 Mining companies and private individuals assisted with some community improvements. Much of the money to build the hospital, including a $25,000 gift from Charlie Steen, was donated by mining companies. Steen also donated land for the new elementary school and churches, and he loaned the city $40,000 to build a pipeline from a spring he had traded for sewer and water connections to his subdivision. And he donated the office building that now houses the school district offices.54 A great boost to city funds occurred when U T E X , the mining company owned by Charlie Steen, built its uranium processing plant near Moab.

According to Pete Byrd, the reason Charlie built the mill in Moab, miles from his mines (costing him millions of dollars in trucking expenses), was so that Moab would have a valuable property to tax. Steen also told his friend that he preferred to live in Moab because "Moab didn't have a lot of laws or police who pushed people around. In Moab people took care of their own problems." 55 This individualistic spirit of town leaders was reflected in the city coun48

Times-Independent, January 21, July 2, 1952.

Ibid., August 26, 1954, March 3, 1955, and June 30, 1955.

50 Ibid., June 6, 1957.

51 Ibid., August 11,1955.

52 Ibid., July 21, 1955, January 26, 1956, May 9, 1957.

53 Ibid., January 26, 1956, March 1, 1957.

54 Byrd interview.

55 Ibid.

49

42

HOT ROCKS MAKE BIG WAVES

cil m i n u t e s . U n t i l 1953 M o a b only had had o n e deputy. H i r i n g a n o t h e r resulted in some difficulty when a difference of opinion caused friction between the two. They complained to the city council, and the minutes recorded, "It is the opinion of the Council that the two marshals can get along together if they put $ their minds to it."56 . *** Although the early uranium boom years provided many challenges Nate Knight, Jr., bulldozing a as leaders tried to develop the infrastructure road in Grand County while his to support the exploding population, it also son, Nate Knight III, dozes on provided a base for growth upon which the his lap. current economy rests. One of the most positive economic consequences of the uranium boom was its impact on tourism. During the 1950s, miners often staked claims in areas accessible only by helicopter. In their zeal to obtain the precious uranium ore, the AEC and large mining companies paid for roads to be built. These were often not elegant roads built by construction companies but rough roads built by struggling independent miners who used the extra income to make ends meet so they could go back to mining.

Between 1952 and 1958 the AEC built 1,200 miles of access roads in the Four Corners area at a cost of $13.5 million. According to AEC officials, these "emergency funds" were provided to "expedite" uranium production.

The Times-Independent reported that "back country never before accessible is now open to exploration...by hardy uranium prospectors whose finds of valuable deposits of this precious material has forced the building of roads to allow shipment to the mills from these mines."57 One example of a uranium access road is the Shafer Trail. During the early twentieth century the Murphy brothers and Shafer brothers developed this cattle trail along the Colorado River west of Moab, directly below Dead Horse Point. At some points the trail was so narrow that a cow could not turn around without tumbling to its death. In the summer of 1952 a group of mining companies and miners hired Nate Knight, Gordon Babble, and Felix and Nick Murphy, all long-time citizens of Moab, to widen the trail into a road. The Times-Independent reported, "The Shafer Trail, though built primarily as an AEC access road, will eventually become 1 Moab City Council Minutes, vol. 3, May 5,1954. ' Gomez, Quest for the Golden Circle, 26. Times-Independent, February 8,1951, June 11,1953.

43

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

known as one of the most spectacular scenic trips in the world."58 In 1961 the area made accessible by Shafer Trail was set aside as the one-millionacre Canyonlands National Park. Today, the Shafer Trail still provides the only access into many areas of the park.

Another AEC access road developed at this time was the "river road" along the Colorado north of Moab. The trail (prior to 1950) was widened and graveled, with funds provided by the AEC (95 percent) and the state of Utah (5 percent). 59 The road from Green River to Hanksville, Highway 24, which river-rafting companies use for dropping off and picking up rafters, was also originally a uranium access road. In a prophetic statement, TimesIndependent editor Mack Turner wrote in 1956: The uranium industry built a lot of access roads into some of these spots. The roads are still no more than jeep roads, but they are starts in the right direction.... Someday, the tourists will "discover" the West. And when they do, the Four Corners area should come in for more than its share of tourists and the tourist dollar.60

Travel to Arches National Monument increased dramatically during this period. During the travel year of 1946-47 (July 1 to June 30), 3,080 people visited the park. However, with the publicity that came with the uranium, people flocked to see the sights. In 1953, as of November 25, some 30,350 had visited the park that year.61 The national publicity received by Charlie Steen and the uranium industry drew tourists to Utah, but it also hindered vacationers. Abnormally high prices and lack of accommodations acted as strong deterrents to travelers.62 However, as Moab improved conditions, city leaders encouraged visitors to come. In the summer of 1955 entrepreneurs built seven new motels, bringing the total to eleven. The newspaper announced, "So if you by chance live elsewhere and would like to see historic Moab and its picturesque surroundings next summer, come ahead! You'll no longer have to sleep in your car.

Despite the turmoil of the times, Elsie Leech, whose grandparents settled Moab in the 1890s, saw the boom as a very positive time in her life. She said that without the U T E X Mill that her husband worked at for twentythree years, she would not have had the income to stay in Moab, near her family. "Some things [like not being able to water the lawn or use the telephone] you just had to put up with," she said. "Businesses might have had problems, but normal everyday people—we just dealt with it and it didn't bother us that much." Another plus from Leech's perspective was that Moab had more of the conveniences of larger cities. For example, she said, 58

Knight interview; Times-Independent, December 31, 1953.

Ibid. " Q u o t e d in Raye Ringholz, Uranium Frenzy: Boom and Bust on the Colorado Plateau (NewYork:W.W. Norton, 1989), 270.

61 Times-Independent, June 30, 1949, and November 26,1953.

62 Ibid., June 30, 1955.

63 Ibid., October 6,1955.

59

44

HOT ROCKS MAKE BIG WAVES

"At Miller's Co-op, you could get everything you wanted. You might have to stand in line a while, but you could get it."64 The years from 1948 to 1957 transformed Moab. The community faced the same problems that confronted any growing town, but at a much faster pace. As city leaders creatively and systematically worked through these problems, the vital infrastructure developed upon which Moab is based today. Although many of the uranium miners left Moab after the AEC stopped buying ore, the impact of the uranium boom endured. For Moab, like other mining communities in the West, the mining industry was the link between an agriculture-based and a tourist-dependent economy.

Although the astronomical increase in the value of the hot rocks containing uranium created huge waves for the community, citizens were able to handle the problems and provide solutions that would last for decades.

1

Elsie Leech, interview by author, October 10, 1997, Moab.

45

.'

j | B y F o o t , by Horse,

by C r u m m y : Louise Van Ee, School Nurse in B i n g h a m f Canyon, 1921-39

By KATHLEEN KAUFMAN and DIANNE KNORR

I

n a canyon twenty-eight miles west and south of Salt Lake City is an enormous o p e n - p i t c o p p e r m i n e . Even visible from space, it is the largest manmade excavation on earth. Sixty million years ago, a gigantic upheaval broke up large sedimentary deposits of sand, silt, and limestone. Magma

Carr Fork in Bingham 1926. Copperfield,

Canyon,

or Upper

Bingham, was in the left fork; Highland Boy was in the right.

Below: Louise Van Ee Jager as a student nurse in 1917.

Kathleen Kaufman, R N , MS, is an associate professor (clinical) at the University of Utah College of Nursing, where she teaches medical-surgical nursing and nursing history.

Dianne Nilsen Knorr, R N , BSN, is a staff nurse in the Maternal Newborn Unit at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City.

46

LOUISE VAN EE, SCHOOL NURSE

from within the earth pushed up into the fissures. This molten rock became the source of the minerals that have been mined in the Oquirrh Mountains almost continuously since the 1860s.1 In 1848 Thomas and Sanford Bingham, two brothers, herded cattle in the canyon that was later named for them. They discovered some gold nuggets there but were advised by Brigham Young against mining; he considered the production of food for the settlers and those who were coming to Utah more important. In 1863 Colonel Patrick Connor sent soldiers from the Third California Infantry stationed at Fort Douglas to prospect through the Oquirrh Mountains. His soldiers, many of w h o m were former gold prospectors, are credited with discovering the mineral wealth of Bingham Canyon. At first, copper mining was hindered by lack of transportation for the ore and by lack of smelting facilities. Mining progressed as railroads were built to carry the ore to new smelters built in Murray and Midvale. More railroads were built when the refinery in Garfield was constructed, allowing finished copper to be produced locally.2 The population of Bingham Canyon increased rapidly as mining operations grew. News of the canyon's mineral wealth reached the world in 1873, and a mining boom began that beckoned thousands of immigrants, including Italians, Greeks, Slavs, and Norwegians. In 1914 nearly 20,000 people lived in the canyon in the Bingham City, Copperfield (also known as Upper Bingham), and Highland Boy mining camps. 3 Early medical care for workers and their families in Bingham Canyon was very limited. For many years, only one medical doctor was nearby; seriously ill or injured people had to be treated in Salt Lake City. In 1872 the six-bed St. Mark's Hospital, founded by the Episcopal church and largely funded through miners' subscriptions, became the first formal hospital in Utah. The establishment of other hospitals in Salt Lake City followed.4 Despite these advancements, Utah did not address several public health issues until well into the twentieth century. Thomas Alexander notes a "glacial slowness" in Utah's response to such ongoing public health concerns as contaminated water and air.5 But progress occurred. The State Department of Health was established near the end of the nineteenth century. Citizens also formed the Utah 1 Leonard J. Arrington and Gary B. Hansen, The Richest Hole on Earth (Logan: Utah State University Press, October 1993), 7, 83.

2 Ibid., 11, 12; Kennecott Utah Copper, Copper Mining Communities and Their People (Magna, UT: Kennecott Utah Copper, 1999). For more on Bingham Canyon, see Violet Boyce and Mabel Harmer, Upstairs to a Mine (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1976).

3 Arrington and Hansen, The Richest Hole on Earth, 3-7, 11-12; Kennecott Utah Copper, Copper Mining Communities andTheir People; Gottorm Nilsen to "Dagney," 1912, in possession of Gary Nilsen.

4 See William H. Behle, Biography of August C. Behle with an Account of the Early History of St. Marks Hospital, Salt Lake City, Utah (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, Inc., 1948), 26-27, 30, and Ward B. Studt, Jerold G. Sorensen, and Beverly Burge, Medicine in the Intermountain West (Salt Lake City: Olympus Publishing Co., 1976), 43-44.

5 Thomas G.Alexander, Utah:The Right Place (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1995), 213.

47

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Health League, which lobbied for the establishment of a state dairy and food commissioner. However, efforts by the Health League and the health commissioner, Theodore Beatty, to mandate smallpox vaccinations in 1900 met with strong opposition in the legislature despite recurrent smallpox epidemics throughout Utah. Several decades would pass before concern for public health would outweigh the emphasis on personal liberty and smallpox vaccinations for all school children would be required. Some public health legislation was more readily accepted, however. In 1907 the legislature mandated the teaching of sanitation and the prevention of disease in public schools. By 1911, physical examinations of school children had been authorized, with health problems being reported to parents. 6 Within the general climate of health care in Utah, Bingham Canyon was a unique community. Citizens there were particularly subject to accidents, natural disasters, and environmental pollution; besides this, the diverse ethnic makeup of the citizenry created special challenges for public health workers. According to Marion Dunn, Bingham Canyon was a community with a personality all its own. It was "a movie set come to life."7 One familiar face in this drama was a public health nurse, Louise Van Ee, who began work in the canyon in 1921. Fortunately, Van Ee preserved memories of her involvement with the town in a manuscript she wrote after her retirement in 1959. Excerpted here, it gives a good sense of the community's health issues during the 1920s and '30s. It also shows how health professionals, schoolteachers, and community members dealt with these challenges.

Louise Van Jager was b o r n Louise Van Ee in Bussum, Holland, on October 13, 1893. She came to the United States as a teenager to care for the children of a Mr. and Mrs. Eardly in Salt Lake City, then trained as a nurse at LDS Hospital. Three years after completing her training, she was hired as the second nurse to serve as a health inspector for the Jordan School District. Actually, Dr. Robert J. Alexander, the Salt Lake County Health Officer, wanted to hire public health nurses for the schools in the Jordan District, but he had no budget for nurses. So he creatively hired two nurses as "health inspectors" for the schools. Initially, Van Ee's primary area of responsibility was the four schools in the Bingham Canyon area of the Jordan District. These included grade schools in Bingham, Copperfield, and Highland Boy and the high school, which shared a building with the Bingham grade school. As the years went by, she added the schools in Lark and Herriman to her workload. 8 6 See Melvin M. Owens and Suzanne Dandoy, "Utah's Public Health," in Henry P. Plenk, ed., Medicine in the Beehive State: 1940-90 (Salt Lake City: University Press, 1992), 547; Alexander, Utah:The Right Place, 213, 256-57, 292; and Studt, Sorensen, and Burge, Medicine in the Intermountain West, 32-34.

7 Marion Dunn, Bingham Canyon (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1973), 4.

8 Carol Ann Jager, "Louise Van Ee Jager," unpublished eulogy, 1979, copy in Utah State Historical Society archive, Salt Lake City (USHS); Mildred Quinn, interview with authors, Salt Lake City, 1999, notes in possession of authors; Louise Van Jager, "From Employment to Retirement (1921-1958)," unpublished manuscript, 1971. Van Jager's manuscript is seventeen pages long. She also wrote a ten-page manuscript, "Snowslide." Copies of both are at USHS.

48

LOUISE VAN EE, SCHOOL NURSE

LDSH SCHOOL OF NURSING ARCHIVES. COURTESY OF EVELYN JORGEIISEI

..

The first nurse hired as an inspector for the Louise Van Ee's graduating class Jordan School District in 1917 worked alone of 1918 of the Dr. W. H. Groves as the health supervisor to educate the prin- Latter-day Saints Hospital cipals and teachers on the importance of gen- Training School marched to the eral hygiene in the school settings. To this Salt Lake Temple for a photoend, the inspector focused on "cleanliness, proper lighting, ventilation, and care of lava- graph. Louise is the first person tories." Total enrollment in the district was on the left in the second row.

4,260 students at the time, so the nurse had relatively infrequent contact with each school. However, her diligence led to a health program that spread rapidly and included an emphasis on "proper school sanitation, supervision over contagious diseases and some community work in preventive illness."9 D u r i n g her work in the canyon, Louise would usually walk from Bingham to the upper schools, which were about a mile and a half above Bingham—one in each of the two major forks of the canyon. "The roads were not paved, nor were the sidewalks, so in the winter it was quite a trek to reach these schools or to make visits to the homes on the hillsides."

The population of the canyon was mainly of foreign extraction, which required her to establish rapport if the health programs were to be successful. "My being European by birth helped me to understand some of the worries and insecurities of these mothers who spoke little English and who understood less of what was being said," she wrote in her memoir. Much of Van Jager, "From Employment to Retirement," 1.

49

.

'"":;"""

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Louise's work could be said to be that of helping to socialize the immigrant population into American culture. In one school, which had an enrollment of 200 students, there were twenty-seven different languages and dialects spoken. The children were mostly of Greek, Italian,Yugoslavian, Hungarian, Austrian, Bulgarian, Japanese, Chinese, M e x i c a n , and Spanish backgrounds. 10 The lack of a common language required both creativity and perseverance as Van Ee tried to teach general health care.

Van Ee wrote of her efforts and also of the efforts of the immigrants to learn: As we inspected the schools...we often played games to teach the children how to wash hands and faces and how to brush teeth. One class at a time went outside to practice, and it never failed that we had an audience on the street to watch the performance. Even parents came to observe. These demonstrations were well received. At this time a company sold toothbrushes at five cents each. Sometimes the children brought their nickels, but whether they did or not, every child had a toothbrush.

The main emphasis was on sanitation at school and at home. The children loved to take part in learning "to take care of themselves to keep from getting sick." The teachers were most cooperative but sometimes they did not understand the conditions at the home. For example one teacher was working hard to encourage cleanliness and how to be neatly dressed. She called one youngster to the front to point out that his shirt was badly wrinkled. The boy's eyes filled with tears and the children were laughing as I then entered the classroom. I put my arm around the boy and asked him how he came to have such a clean shirt this morning.

I knew he came from a large and very poor family. H e snuggled up for comfort and then told how he had washed his shirt in the sink after the supper dishes had been done and then hung it on the line to dry. He wanted to be like the other children and get a gold star for being clean for a whole week. I led the applause he received from the other children.

H e got his gold star. Later the teacher and I made a call to the boy's home. It taught her not to be too critical.

In those days it was still the habit of the foreign mothers to wrap their babies in swaddling clothes. I tried to explain to the mothers that the babies needed to exercise arms and legs, but with a seven- or eight-yearold doing the translating it was difficult to get the message across. So we started a baby care class for the high school tenth-grade girls. The mothers became interested until on several occasions one of the girls brought a real baby to class, accompanied by its mother.

To finish the class with a flourish, each girl made a baby outfit.

Members of the Bingham's women's organizations judged the contest for the most complete well-sewed outfit. This demonstration was of benefit 10

50

Ibid., 1-2.

LOUISE VAN EE, SCHOOL NURSE

to b o t h m o t h e r s and daughters. It was a little more difficult to break the habit of sewing the youngsters into their winter underwear!

B u t the i m m i g r a n t was eager to learn and to do the best he could for his children. We found that 'show and do' helped to o v e r c o m e t h e l a n guage b a r r i e r .

Nor should we underemphasize the i m p o r t a n c e of home contacts and visits.

It was only through the careful c u l t i v a t i o n of friendships that many of these, to them, Bingham High School. really revolutionary projects could be undertaken, including school lunches, vaccinations and pre-school clinics, etc.11 An important part of the school nurse's job was to do a "general inspection of the children (for contagious diseases), report any contagion and then to make house calls to determine the cause of a student's absence."

This continues to be an important part of the nurse's job, especially in those schools that are considered high-risk. These home visits revealed that the community as a whole needed some preventive medicine—a need partly met through an integrated classroom effort in the schools as well as community classes directed primarily toward adults. The curriculum in the schools was as follows: 7th grade—personal health 8th grade—Little Mother classes (care & growth of the baby) 9th and 10th grades—principles of anatomy and physiology; home care of the sick 11th and 12th grades—follow-up; a person's responsibility to the community.

During the 1920s the Jordan District school nurses gave more than 2,000 community and classroom talks to improve the general health and hygiene of the people of Bingham Canyon.12 Louise's narrative continues: "Ibid., 2-3.

12 Ibid., 7.

51

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

In the early days, the approach to health was pragmatic. One taught the things that needed teaching. Today parents would possibly resent the emphasis on cleanliness and mutual concern, but in those days first graders were taught how to wash their hands before meals, clean their nails, and brush their teeth. They were encouraged to eat what was cooked at home and to get enough hours of sleep. Coughing should be done in a paper towel or into a handkerchief. For a while head lice were a problem in some areas until instruction in proper hair shampoo cleared up the situation.

Older school children were constantly encouraged to help out at home, picking up debris in their yards, teaching younger children health rules, and looking after their welfare, sharing with parents knowledge of better nutrition.

Principles of anatomy began early enough so that girls had some awareness of their own sexual development, but such instruction was always a part of the larger picture of social relations, proper dress, good posture, and particularly fairness in dealing with others and concern for community good. Students visited the hospital and learned the principles of first aid. There was a remarkable spirit of inter-relatedness that strengthened and inspired.13 Nurses also worked personally w i t h families; follow-up for school absences, contagious diseases, and basic preventive healthcare required many home visits over the years. By 1930, "nearly 2,000 home visits [had been m a d e ] . . . m a n y of t h e m memorable for h u m o r or pathos." T h e nurse became involved in the lives of the people in a variety of unexpected ways, as the following examples illustrate.

Once when I started my walking trip to Highland Boy, a little mother called to me from her front yard. The following dialogue took place: "Hey, you nurse?"

"Yes; I am nurse."

"You go Highland Boy?" "Yes, I'm going to Highland Boy." "You take dem two cows up road. Nothing to eat here.You trow rock, dey climb up hill."

So I threw a rock at one of the two cows and together we were on our way. Some small fry followed me, or the cows, part of the way, and some of the men who passed on the road asked if I had started a dairy.

To my surprise, the cows were waiting when I finished my work at the school and together we went back down the road. I delivered them safely to their barn....

Upper Bingham had a lesser language problem but climbing up and 13

52

Ibid., 7-8.

LOUISE VAN EE, SCHOOL NURSE

down the mountainside was more difficult. One rainy cold afternoon I had to ask a father to permit my taking three of his children to an eye specialist. It was an impossibility to convince him that this was necessary.

I left in a pouring rain. As I started down the steep and muddy trail, suddenly I slipped, lost my nurse's bag and rushed on down to the bottom.

There were no bushes to stop me, even on the turn. I bumped into a telephone pole where I clung to catch my breath. Luckily I was just a few steps from the road. Tired and discouraged, I reached my room, bewailing the fact that this visit had been a waste of time.

But not so, on my next visit the father did give his consent. He even let me take the children to stay at my home in Salt Lake City the night before we had to appear at the doctor's office. A daughter had an operation to correct her crossed eyes, and the two boys received glasses.

Whenever I see the daughter, now a school teacher with a family of her own, she tells me that it was that visit which really saved her eyes....

Another episode involving transportation occurred when the District established a one-room school for a dozen or so children near the top of the mountain where the N e w England mine was located. It was at least a two mile trip from Upper Bingham and very difficult to navigate during the winter months. I wrote to the school board explaining that getting there and back was almost impossible. Facetiously I commented that only a horse could make this trip and survive. To my great surprise I was notified that a horse would be supplied on a once a week basis.

I really did not know what I was getting into, but the canyons above Upper Bingham were beautiful, the horse could not run at that altitude or did not choose to, so I enjoyed this trip every week. A lovely group of children, an excellent teacher, and a free lunch at the company mess hall always made this a delightful day. The home calls, however, were rather tiring as it was difficult to get off and on the horse if there was not someplace or a person to give a boost.

Once when it was snowing it was particularly difficult to get down to Bingham. I should not have worried about the horse slipping but I concentrated on the road rather than on the landmarks. Suddenly there was a chorus of guffaws. I looked up. My horse had stopped dead still in front of the local brothel. The only thing I could do was to join in the fun. I was told that the man who usually used this horse always stopped at this place on his way back from work.

After this episode I had permission to ride the B i n g h a m M i n e Company train, called the "crummy," which left at seven in the morning to take the men to the top level of the mine. At five in the afternoon I came back down with the same train. This way of travel was much easier, and I learned a great deal about the workings of the open pit mine area and about the problems of the miners. 14 14

Ibid., 3-5.

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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

While Louise was responsible for the health of children, a physician was usually hired by the mining companies to care for the health of the miners.

Dr. Paul Richards worked in this capacity during the 1920s and '30s.

Through observation and experimentation, he made many innovations in industrial health and safety practices that benefited the miners. Among these was the addition of hot showers at the mine and a change of clothes for miners before they walked home at the end of their shifts. Richards also developed and tested safety goggles and the helmets that became the hard hats of today.15 Van Ee worked with local doctors in promoting and giving vaccinations in the community. The first vaccination program was begun during a 1924 typhoid epidemic in Bingham. "It was mandatory that the men in Upper Bingham and Highland Boy mines also be vaccinated,"Van Ee wrote. "Four thousand persons were protected. We had 95% protection in the schools as well. For three years there was a follow-up program of booster shots." Evidently, the efforts of the nurses and physicians in Bingham Canyon were far more successful than those in Salt Lake City, where only slightly less than 2,000 citizens were inoculated against typhoid during that same year.16 O t h e r programs soon followed. " T h e first active immunity in the Bingham area schools was vaccination against smallpox in 1925, involving 827 students. A year later there was a general inoculation against diphtheria.

At that time, toxin-antitoxin was all that was yet available which was much more painful than what students get today. Programs such as this required popularizing among the parents. Happily our private physicians (including Dr. Fred Straup and Dr. Richards) assisted [in] explaining the need of protection for the children. We nurses met with parent-teacher associations, Relief Societies, and similar church and public meetings to outline and explain the immunization programs."17 Success in reaching a significant number of the population is reflected in the increase in diphtheria protection from 55 percent of school children in 1928 to 80 percent protection in 1939. Likewise, the number protected against smallpox also rose steadily from 58 percent to 79 percent over those same years. Jordan District consistently led Salt Lake City, Granite, and Murray school districts in the percent of children vaccinated against these two diseases.18 A similar goal to examine members of the community in order to identify those with tuberculosis was much more difficult to achieve. The State 15

Paul S. Richards, The Memoirs of Dr. Paul (Salt Lake City: privately published), copy in Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

16 Van Jager, "From Employment to Retirement," 9; Richards, "The Memoirs of Dr. Paul," 199.

17 Van Jager, "From Employment to Retirement," 9-10.

18 Christian N. Jensen, "Percent of Protection in Schools of District, Grades 1-6 (From Fall 1928-Fall 1939)," Jordan School District Report, 1939; Christian N. Jensen, "Tabulations of Percent of Protection against Diphtheria and Smallpox in Salt Lake City and County, February 1940," Jordan School District Report, copy at USHS.

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LOUISE VAN EE, SCHOOL NURSE

Health Department sponsored a TB clinic in the Highland Boy area in 1925. This undertaking required many home visits in order to encourage parents to bring their children to be examined.

So many mothers were frightened by this prospect that promises to come were almost nil. I then went to the leaders of the different men's organizations to urge their cooperation to explain to their members the need of having the examination. This really brought excellent results.

Some of the mothers still did not come. If I missed their presence at the clinic I sent a child of the family home to tell her they must come. This too made the clinic a great success.

Other clinics met with more rapid success. [In the mid-1920s] State Board of Health statistics indicated that only one out of every four children at that time was physically sound. We began to hold clinics to examine new students who were to start school as well as infants and first graders. The object was to bring to the attention of the parents any physical defects that would seriously interfere with the educational advancement of the child.19 The sustained slump in demand for copper after World War I was only briefly relieved in 1929, just before the Great Depression began. This prolonged economic situation caused widespread poverty in the area, and schoolchildren were often significantly malnourished. 20 Again, health professionals assisted families.

"In 1933, the Jordan Health Council was organized which all the physicians in the district joined. Later the dentists also became members. These doctors and dentists gave generously of their time and skills" throughout the depression of the 1930s. During this time the County Health Officer and Supervisor of Public Health Nurses was Dr. Robert Alexander, who had the hospital furnish cod liver oil (to provide vitamin D) to the students of the Bingham District.

The teachers at the school served this cod liver oil to the children from grade 1 through 6. Each child brought his own spoon....We had to watch them very closely because the children would often go back in line again to get a second serving.

The nurse made periodical inspections of all the children, looking for any health problem which might need the attention of a physician— vision, hearing, dental care, sores or contagious diseases were closely watched.21 Students with identified behavioral problems were also referred by teachers to determine whether a medical problem might be the cause.

19

Van Jager, "From Employment to Retirement," 10.

Studt, Sorensen, and Burge, Medicine in the Intermountain West, 64.

21 Van Jager, "From Employment to Retirement," 11.

20

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Doctors and nurses also donated their services for mass surgeries.

After the Jordan Health Council was formed, several clinics were set up to meet special needs in Bingham Canyon. O n different occasions tonsillectomy clinics were set up. Each day at least 30 children were operated on free of charge. The Salt Lake County Hospital provided the e t h e r a n d l i n e n s for t h e d o c t o r s ' use. T h e ( M e t h o d i s t c h u r c h ) Community Center in Highland Boy provided the amusement hall as a recovery room. Cots and kids were provided by the community. The local ladies organizations, the doctors' office nurses and public health nurses were the assisting team.22 Each child would be prepared for surgery by a nurse while Dr. Richards would take tonsils out of another child. Then the nurse would take the second child in and move the first child to the recovery room. The children would stay in the community center for a day or two after surgery. Twenty or thirty children made for a hard day's work. 23 Similar large-scale clinics were held in Highland Boy and in West Jordan to treat any children needing dental care—and statistics for 1938-39 show that a large number did need treatment. In these years, a dental survey indicated that even in the schools with the best-cared-for teeth—this happened to be in Bingham—only 48 percent of the children had no cavities. Only 17 percent of the children in Highland Boy had no cavities, which was better than the children of Sandy, where only 8 percent were without cavities.

Free dental clinics were held at Highland Boy and at West Jordan, and many extractions were done. 24 Beyond routine health care, doctors and nurses assisted with the disasters that were inherent to mining communities.

Tightly shut in between the hills, Bingham Canyon knew a cohesion not experienced by those spread out in the valley. Though in many ways different in background and skills, they all shared the risks of the mine and the mining company. Those who knew the area felt something intense and explosive in the very air. There was a kind of precarious tension... as though violence were just under the surface as indeed it was. Health and security for the mine families was hard won. So one cannot tell the story of early days in Bingham Canyon without noting the eruptions in the environment. The town seemed to be beset by catastrophe.25 As Marion D u n n summarizes the situation, "The big fears that haunted the Bingham residents were fear of fire, fear of snowslides, fear of floods, and fear of disaster in the mines."26 22

Van Jager, "From Employment to Retirement," 10-12 Studt, Sorensen, and Burge, "Medicine in the Intermountain West," 64; Richards, Memoirs, 47.

24 Jordan School District, Report of Dental Examinations (1938-1939), 1939.

25 Van Jager, "From Employment to Retirement," 12.

26 Dunn, Bingham Canyon, 117.

23

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LOUISE VAN EE, SCHOOL NURSE

The majority of these catastrophies occurred in the Highland Boy area.

The worst loss of lives also occurred in this section of the canyon during the Highland Boy avalanche on February 17, 1926. Louise Van Ee recalled the rescue: It was just before noon. It had been snowing heavily for two days and the roads were almost impassable. On my way to make my weekly visit to the school the driver of the company wagon offered me a ride. He told me there had been a snowslide. His horses had all they could do to make headway.

We arrived at the flat where the Highland Boy Mine office had been turned into a hospital. Dr. F E. Straup and Dr. G.Jamison were in the operating room along with two nurses from their office. I stayed in the main room to aid the volunteers who had had some experience in first aid. Patients were either unconscious or in shock. The orders were to put hot towels on the injured parts or frozen areas. O u r hot water supply was limited so some boys were sent around the neighborhood to borrow hot plates and more towels. The help was far from perfect but it was fantastic considering the magnitude of the catastrophe.

Dr. Paul Richards was out on the hill to give first aid to those who were rescued and to diagnose their condition and the severity of their injuries. We did not have time to weep over the fatalities. These were taken to the morgue (by sled) or to the admissions room if there seemed a chance that they might live.

At one time Dr. Richards brought in a little five year old girl, apparently dead. He took over the treatment of hot-packing the entire body. I just handed him what he needed. The doctor's lips were moving but no sound was heard. After a time the child moved her head slightly, the little slate-colored hands became pale, then there was a sigh. She opened her eyes slowly, smiled a little and whispered, "Hi doc, I'm cold." Tears blinded my eyes. Orders were left for her care as the doctor quickly left the room again.

Officials from the state and county departments of health as well as members of the R e d Cross Department arrived later in the afternoon.

The snowplows had cleared a path and mountains of snow had been hauled away. The injured could then be taken to the Bingham hospital or transported to the various hospitals in the valley. Thirty-nine people had died.27 Most snowslides were associated with some degree of fire, since the wooden buildings burned when the stoves were swept over. Other serious fires broke out and threatened to annihilate the lower Bingham town in 1924,1925, and 1927. Louise recalled the 1924 fire in Bingham: 27

Van Jager, "From Employment to Retirement," 12-14

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Louise Van Ee Jager in 1972.

W h e n the fires had been q u e n c h e d , I made a final inspection of the ruins to be sure that everybody had left the area. I found one lady in the back of her cellar s t o r e r o o m w h i c h had been dug into the face of the mountain back of the h o m e . She stood leaning against the back wall weeping quietly. I knew she must be i n j u r e d , b u t w h e r e ?

Slowly we walked through the debris. When we came to t h e street I t o o k my h a n d from her shoulder.

She then removed her arms from her apron. O n each arm she had a blister from elbow to wrist. O n the way to the doctor's office we met another poor soul wandering back and forth across the street in obvious shock. I took her hand and led both to the doctor's office to receive medical attention. 28 In September 1932, "a big fire started in Highland Boy across the street from the school. Suddenly the wind blew the flames across the street causing great damage to the school." The fire destroyed the residential and business heart of Highland Boy—injuring thirty-five persons and leaving 300 people homeless. During and after these disasters, the residents of Bingham Canyon all worked together to rescue the trapped, aid the injured, and rebuild homes and businesses. "Because of the mutual difficulty the many ethnic groups grew closer together," Louise noted. 29 Van Ee worked in Bingham Canyon until 1939. She married Arjen W Jager on December 19, 1941, in Salt Lake City, and with the marriage gained a family of five stepsons, three stepdaughters, and several grandchildren. She never had children of her own. A family memory of Grandma Louise includes her drawing iodine bunnies on the arms of the children before she gave them shots.30 According to a history of Midvale, "Louise Van Ee (Jager) was a district nurse who administered iodine tablets, cod liver oil, love and encouraged good dental health...she was warm-hearted 28

Ibid., 14.

-' Ibid., 14-15; Dunn, Bingham Canyon, 119. "'Jager, "Louise Van Ee Jager."

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LOUISE VAN EE, SCHOOL NURSE

and nearly always carried a sack of flour and potatoes in her car trunk for needy families."31 She continued to work in public health nursing in the Salt Lake Valley until her retirement in 1959; she died twenty years later in a nursing home in Bountiful, Utah, on September 23, 1979. As a final note, when burial arrangements were being made, it was discovered that Louise had given away all the cemetery lots that were near to those of her parents.

The lots had been used to bury people she knew who had no family or money.32 Ironically, while catastrophe could not destroy the town of Bingham, the success of the mining operation did. As the mine expanded, the town was gradually engulfed as Kennecott Copper bought property from everyone willing to sell. Marion Dunn notes, " O n November 22, 1971, the town of Bingham City officially ceased to exist—in truth it had actually stopped living some years before."33 Almost doomed from its beginning, the town of Bingham City never became "old" as towns are measured. Incorporated in 1904, it was only sixty-seven years old at its dissolution in 1971. Today, driving up the access road to the Kennecott Visitor's Center high in the canyon, one might wonder if (or perhaps not even consider that) there ever really was a town here. As Violet Boyce, a child w h o grew up in the canyon, remembers: There used to be a town there, With trestles, trains, and play; We climbed up to our homes there, 'Til giants moved it away34 Years after the deaths of both Louise Van Ee and Bingham Canyon, public health nurses continue to serve the Jordan School District. Today, six nurses are responsible for monitoring the health of nearly 73,000 school children.35

3!

Maurine Jensen, ed., The Midvale History: 1851—1979 (Midvale, UT: Midvale Historical Society, 1979).

32 Jager, "Louise Van Ee Jager."

33 Dunn, Bingham Canyon, foreword.

34 Boyce and Harmer, Upstairs to a Mine, 189.

33 Pauline Sherwin, Jordan School District Public Information Office, personal communication with authors, 2000.

59

Bingham Canyon Physician: Paul Snelgrove Richards, 1892-1958

By ERIC G. SWEDIN

W

hen Paul Snelgrove Richards was b o r n into a prominent M o r m o n family on November 25, 1892, Utah was on the verge of the transition between a territory and a state. Paul's grandfather was Dr. Willard Richards, an early leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who survived the mob attack at Carthage Jail when the faith's founder, Joseph Smith, was slain. Paul's father, Willard B r i g h a m Richards, was b o r n in W i n t e r Quarters during the M o r m o n trek west to Utah. But Paul Richards was a man of the twentieth century. After obtaining a medical degree from Harvard, he served most of his professional life as a physician in Bingham Canyon. By the time of his death in 1958, he was a recognized national authority in industrial medicine.

T h e fourth child of Willard Brigham Richards and Louise Snelgrove, Paul grew up in Salt Lake City. His father worked two farms outside of Salt Lake City, though he raised his family on an eighteen-acre lot at 1935 South 900 East—in the city, where his children could obtain a good education. Paul recorded many fond memories of a childhood that was still rural in the state's largest city. The family raised much of their own food from the orchards, gardens, and livestock on their lot, and they obtained grain from their farm in Cache Valley. There was a strong sense of order within the family. At mealtimes, the father sat at the head of a large table with his oldest son at his left side and his wife at his right. The children were arranged around the table in order of age so that the youngest sat next to his mother.

As a youth, Paul was often sick with inflammatory rheumatism. During Eric G. Swedin is a computer consultant and adjunct faculty member at Weber State University. He earned a Ph.D. in the history of science and technology from Case Western Reserve University in 1996.

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episodes lasting six to eight weeks, he was confined to bed with red spots over his lower body, fever, chills, and bloody urine. This prevented him from keeping "up with the group either educationally, physically, playwise, or from any angle." As he related later in life, this inability to keep up created an "inferiority complex" within himself, and his feelings of inadequacy were compounded by depression. During childhood, he stammered when he talked. As an adult, however, he experienced success in college, which lifted his depression and gave him a sense of self-confidence.1 In 1911 the LDS church called on the young man to serve a proselytizing mission in Scotland. Even though he was nineteen years old, he had completed less than two years of high school at the time. Because of his health, doctors objected to his going, but his mother supported the idea.

She felt that if he died on a mission, at least he would be engaged in the work of the Lord. While in Scotland, Elder Richards overcame his stammering, and he became more self-assured. Then he fell ill during an epidemic of diphtheria. He spent six weeks in an Edinburgh infirmary, where the doctors had little hope for his survival and expected him to be an invalid if he did pull through. His cousin Steve Wilcox, who was also on a mission in Europe, came to Edinburgh and took Paul to mission headquarters in Liverpool, where mission president Rudger Clawson prescribed a small glass of port wine several times a day. After two weeks, Richards was carried by stretcher onto the Lusitania, and two other missionaries accompanied him home. His companions became violently seasick, but Richards avoided seasickness and improved enough to be able to walk off the ship in New York. He then weighed less than a hundred pounds. After six weeks with his brother in Washington, D O , he returned to Salt Lake City, underwent an operation to remove his tonsils, and spent the summer recuperating.2 In the fall of 1913 Richards was admitted into LDS College despite his poor academic record. Encouraged by his instructors and growing in selfconfidence, he applied himself to school. Reading a book on psychoanalysis convinced him that he suffered from a fear of failure, which he strove to overcome. In three years of study he finished his high school education and came close to finishing a bachelor's degree.

Five of Paul's relatives, including his grandfather and three uncles, had gone into the medical profession, and he chose to follow that professional path. Although he lacked a bachelor's degree, his grades were high enough for him to be accepted to medical school at Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and Harvard. He had seen the first two during his time in the East and thought their schools looked a bit rundown. O n the other hand, a picture of five

1

Paul Snelgrove Richards, "The Memoirs of Dr. Paul," 1-7. This typescript autobiography is available at the University of Utah Eccles Health Sciences library and also at the LDS Church Archives in Salt Lake City.

2 Ibid., 10,15,19—21. Two years later, on May 7,1915, the Lusitania was sunk off the coast of Ireland by the German submarine U-20.

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new white marble buildings that Harvard sent him inspired him to go to N e w England. 3 Paul married Ethel Bennion on September 7, 1916, a few days before they left for Boston. Their first child was born a year later, and they named her Lenore. While a student, Paul labored during the influenza epidemic that swept the world in the wake of the First World War. For the first time in his life, he faced death in "large proportions." O n some days, he pronounced as many as ten people dead. Such a strain caused him to seek out some type of philosophy to sustain him. H e concluded that one can only "do the best one can in any situation and then accept the results."

In May 1920 Richards graduated high in his class. He spent the summer completing a residency in surgery at Peter Bent Brigham hospital, then spent a year in general practice at Cincinnati General. Returning to the Boston area, he practiced obstetrics and gynecology for six months each at Boston Lying-in Hospital and the Free Hospital for Women in Brookline. 4 While at the Free Hospital for Women, young Dr. Richards developed a new technique for using radium to treat cancer of the cervix and uterus.

Previous efforts to use radium had resulted in damage to surrounding tissues, including holes in the rectum and bladder. Paul's treatment was based on a good-luck piece that he carried—a silver dollar on which he had used acid to etch the date of his twenty-first birthday. By placing the radium in four locations on a silver dollar and sewing the silver dollar in place, he reasoned, the radium could be applied to the cancer alone. Later treatment methods would be based on his idea, although a colleague of his joked that the idea of using a silver dollar would only occur to someone from the American West, where silver mining was so important to the economy.

While the medical profession appreciated the benefits of radium in making x-rays and treating different forms of cancer, there was not yet sufficient understanding of the dangers of radium. At the time, x-ray tubes were not shielded to protect the operator, and it was not until 1924 that the first daily exposure limit to x-rays was proposed. Dr. Richards was as careless as his contemporaries were. Even the fact that the hospital's radiologist had already lost a number of fingers to radium exposure did not sufficiently alarm the young doctor. While an intern, Paul "burned" his hands with radiation; his eldest daughter cannot remember him without "funny-looking fingernails and heavy crusted areas on his hands." He "was always whittling on his hands or fingernails" with a "beautiful sterling silver pocket knife that he kept at the other end of his watch fob."5 3

Ibid., 10, 20, 22, 24.

Ibid., 24, 27-28, 30, 32-33. For a more complete account of the influenza outbreak, see Alfred V. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic.The Influenza of 1918 (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

5 Richards, Memoirs, 24, 27-28, 30-32; Lenore Richards, interview with author, Salt Lake City, February 2, 2000. See also Ronald L. Kathern and Paul L. Ziemer, "The First Fifty Years of Radiation Protection," in Kathern and Ziemer, eds., Health Physics: A Backward Glance (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980), 1-9.

4

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During that last year in Boston, Paul pur- A view of Bingham Canyon, n.d. chased an old Model-T Ford and repaired it himself. W h e n his residency ended, he drove his small family across the country back to Utah, taking time along the way to visit early M o r m o n history sites that they had learned of in their youth. In the old Nauvoo cemetery they located the grave of Jennetta Richards, his grandfather's first wife.6 O n the day of the family's arrival in Salt Lake City, October 6, 1922, he was contacted on the behalf of Dr. Fred E. Straup. Straup owned a medical practice and hospital in Bingham, but he was ill, so he hired Richards for six months, at two hundred dollars a month, to take care of his business while he recovered. The next day Richards left his family in Salt Lake City and moved to Bingham to begin a short-term contract that stretched into twenty-six years. As his eldest daughter described it, " H e was going to be the ladies' doctor and woke up being the miners' savior."7 Bingham served as home to the workers of several mines, including the large Bingham open-pit copper mine. The buildings of the town lined a single mam street strung along the narrow canyon. Dr. Straup had contracts to p r o v i d e m e d i c a l services w i t h t h r e e m i n e s in t h e area: U t a h 6 7

Richards, Memoirs, 34-35.

Lenore Richards interview.

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Consolidated (Highland Boy), Utah Metals, and U.S. Mine. The Bingham Canyon Hospital and Clinic employed three nurses, a janitor/cook, and an "office girl." O n his first day, Paul found the hospital little more than a firstaid station, and "very sub-standard in cleanliness." Fortunately, surgeries were usually performed at the county hospital. 8 That first day also introduced the doctor to his patients. H e was impressed by the diversity of nationalities among his patients; immigrants from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Finland, Japan, and the Slavic countries of eastern and southern Europe were among the many ethnic groups that made Bingham and the surrounding mining communities their home.

The following day he purchased a pair of coveralls, some soap, and a scrub brush so he could scrub down his operating room. Two days later he was forced to use the room to deal with a ruptured appendix in a pregnant patient, and when she survived with no infection, he credited his newly cleaned operating room. He also began purchasing modern equipment for the hospital.

The new doctor soon settled into a routine: surgery at 6 a.m., then visits to hospital patients. The rest of the morning included office hours for medical examinations and visits to patients at their homes. After lunch he held afternoon office hours and visited hospital patients again; he also held afterdinner office hours and did evening house calls. The round-the-clock nature of mining operations required a grueling all-day routine, including on-call work. When winter came, he was often forced to rely on a horse to reach his home patients, since automobiles could not use the steep roads.

Under Richards's care, business at the clinic and hospital increased so rapidly that he could employ an additional physician. Among the reasons for the increase in patients were the ability of Paul to perform surgeries within the hospital and a growing sense of confidence among residents that he could provide the care they needed. The people of the town welcomed the doctor into their activities. That first winter, for instance, he was invited to several different Serbian homes to celebrate Christmas—visits that became annual events that he remembered fondly.9 A second daughter, named after her mother, was born to Paul and Ethel in Salt Lake City on September 16, 1923. Their son, whom they named after his father, was born on May 24, 1925. By then, the family had joined Paul in Bingham and were living in a house across the street from the hospital. Daughter Lenore remembers her father's daily schedule as "leaving for work at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning"; he came home for meals, including dinner at 5:00 and a nap afterward. He then returned to the hospital and finally came home at 9:00 p.m. During "slow" times, like Sunday, Richards 8 Richards, Memoirs, 38. For a history of Bingham Canyon and the mines, see Lynn R. Bailey, Old Reliable: A History of Bingham Canyon, Utah (Tucson: Westernlore Press, 1988), and Marion Dunn, Bingham Canyon (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1973).

9 Richards, Memoirs, 38-41, 43. See also Claire Noall, "Serbian-Austrian Christmas in Highland Boy," Utah Historical Quarterly 33 (1965): 316-25.

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took his children with him as he made his rounds. 10 After a time, Richards leased the hospital from Dr. Straup—choosing to lease instead of buying because he thought that owning any property in Bingham was a "bad investment."11 When he had first arrived in town, the building contained a dozen beds, "a kitchen, two small waiting rooms, two dressing rooms, an operating room, and a one-room clinic." Gradually, the business grew into a four-story structure w i t h "seventeen examining rooms, two waiting rooms, dressing rooms, a complete laboratory, a wonderful diagnostic X-ray department, a modern operating room, and a fiftybed hospital with kitchen, dining room, laundry, and all [the] modern conveniences." Because of the steep slope of the canyon, each hospital floor actually opened out onto a street. Such a major change merited a new name: the Bingham Canyon Hospital and Clinic. At its peak, sixty-seven employees and five doctors served where once there had been five employees and a single doctor.

To relieve the stress of running such a large organization, Richards constructed a terraced garden on the steep hill behind the hospital. In the mornings he watered the garden, and he spent two or three hours tending the flowers and plants in the evenings. H e was proud of the garden and "did a lot of entertaining in it during the summertime." Paul had obviously transcended his sickly youth and matured into a man of considerable energy. He also enjoyed a good joke and confessed an inclination toward offcolor humor. 12 Having established Bingham as his home, Richards brought his medical expertise into efforts at community leadership. Dr. Straup had been the town mayor, setting an example of professionals providing leadership within the town. For his part, Paul began by organizing an immunization campaign within the local schools to combat typhoid fever, smallpox, and diphtheria. He also donated professional time; during times of economic hardship, local dentists and doctors provided their services to needy schoolchildren at no cost, pulling teeth and removing infected tonsils and adenoids. Dorothy Lowman, then a public health nurse for the local school district, described doctors giving "tonsillectomies en masse" to twenty or thirty children a day. "You'd get one ready while the doctor was taking another child's tonsils out, then take the second one in and the first one to the recovery room." Paul presented sex education classes to the local high schools and served for six years as a member of the Jordan School Board and for ten years as its president. He was also an active leader in the local Boy Scouts, eventually receiving the Silver Beaver for his lifetime contributions.13 10

Lenore Richards interview and Richards, Memoirs, 44.

Lenore Richards interview.

12 Richards, Memoirs, 79, 84-87; Lenore Richards interview.

13 Richards, Memoirs, 45-50, 96. Lowman is quoted in Ward B. Studt, et al., Medicine in the Intermountain West: A History of Health Care in Rural Areas of the West (Salt Lake City: Olympus Publishing Company, 11

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Dr. Richards's major medical accomplishments were in the area of industrial medicine. Having observed that too many of his surgical patients did not recover well because of complications from silicosis-related tuberculosis, he encouraged the local mines to introduce health measures such as improved ventilation and wetting down the dust to prevent the inhalation of fine silica particles. He also successfully lobbied the local mining companies to jointly hire an expert in industrial hygiene, Oscar A. Glaser.The two of them collected chest x-rays and other clinical information, an endeavor that eventually led to an industrial-health research project under the auspices of the United States Public Health Service. Richards later received a U.S. Presidential citation for these activities.

H e also helped promote a Safety First program both locally and nationally, which led to improved sanitation and lighting, ventilation for miners, and requirements to wear helmets and safety goggles. H e contributed toward the design of the goggles by making plaster faces, exposing them to dynamite blasts, and analyzing the patterns formed by the embedded particles. As a well-respected community leader, he was particularly effective in convincing mining officials of the advantages of safety programs. From 1938 to 1940 Paul served on Utah's Medical, Labor, and Industrial Council and served on a committee that drafted the first occupational disease law for Utah in 1941. 14 Medical practice in a mining town included many emergency surgeries to treat injuries from falls, blasting, fires, floods, snowslides, and cave-ins.

The dangers extended from the mines into town because of the nature of the narrow canyon into which the town was wedged. In February 1926 a heavy snowfall followed by rapid warming led to a snowslide engulfing part of the town. Fires among the debris further added to the danger. In all, the disaster killed thirty-nine town members and buried another 150. Many victims removed from the snow hours later were frozen into immobility yet had faint, slow heartbeats. W h e n the victims were brought to the hospital, Paul instructed that they be placed in a cold room, where towels were used to wipe away the snow. Paul then instructed volunteers to gently massage the entire body of each victim, using the warmth of their hands to gradually melt away the frost. At times, sixty to eighty people were working over the frozen people. Each victim who had a discernable heartbeat, even as slow as eight beats per minute, revived and recovered.15 Later, physicians attending medical conferences often disbelieved accounts of this experience, but there had been many witnesses. A nurse, 1976), 64. On Straup's mayorship, see Ivy Baker Priest, Green Grows Ivy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958), 26-27, 35-36. Priest grew up in Bingham Canyon and later became the U.S. Treasurer.

"Richards, Memoirs, 51-58. For a national perspective on the industrial safety movement, see David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, eds., Dying for Work: Workers' Safety and Health in Twentieth-century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).

15 Bailey, Old Reliable, 158; Richards, Memoirs, 63-71. Dunn, Bingham Canyon, 115-17, provides some vivid anecdotes of the 1926 snowslide.

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PAUL SNELGROVE RICHARDS

Louise V Jager, remembered an incident that occurred that day: Dr. Richards brought in a little five year old girl, apparently dead. H e took over the treatment of hot-packing the entire body. I just handed him what he needed. The doctor's lips were moving but no sound was heard. After a time the child moved her head slightly, and little slate-colored hands became pale, then there was a sigh. She opened her eyes slowly, smiled a little and whispered, "Hi, doc, I'm cold."Tears blinded my eyes.

Orders were left for her care as the doctor quickly left the room again.16

Richards was also active in rehabilitative surgery. At the time, a fracture of the spine was thought to lead to permanent disability, but he reversed this belief by demonstrating that workers could recover with the appropriate surgery and care. As part of these activities, he became one of the first to perform intervertebral disc operations. His skill became so well known that during one year he operated on patients who came to him from twenty-two states. Patients also sought out his skill in repairing ruptured supraspinatus tendons in the shoulder, another common cause of disability.

In 1953, along w i t h Dr. Louis E . V i k o , R i c h a r d s received a n o t h e r Presidential citation for outstanding service in rehabilitation.17 Outside the clinic, the doctor was given to adventurousness. In May 1928 he flew across the United States as a passenger in a biplane carrying mail—a flight of twenty-two hours from Salt Lake City to Newark, N e w Jersey. Another time, a miner fell down the 2,500-foot-deep Yampa Shaft.

Out of curiosity, Paul rode on top of the elevator cage up and down the shaft, noting the "forty-five or fifty" times that the body had struck the side of the shaft. Searchers could not find the body, and on the doctor's insistence the sump at the shaft's base was drained. They found the body—with the bones and internal organs completely pulverized within a bag of intact skin. The body had actually slipped through a gap of four and one-half inches between wooden planks set over the sump. This incident was referred to in later years as "the Bag of Bones."18 In 1948 cancerous lesions on his hands from overexposure to radium and x-rays forced Richards to leave his Bingham practice. He traveled to N e w York City and underwent operations that removed all the skin from his fingers and from parts of his hands. A tourniquet used during surgery caused him to lose the end of his right middle finger. During his painful recuperation, which lasted more than a year, he preferred to be away from his family, fighting an addiction to medication and resorting to whiskey to dull his pain. After his recovery, he put the liquor away.19 Having recovered from the worst effects of the operations, he convalesced in Idaho for twenty months on a ranch that he partially owned.

16

Louise V. Jager, "From Employment to Retirement: 1925-1958"; typescript, copy in author's posses-

i. sion.

17 Richards, Memoirs, 59-62; "Deaths," Journal of the American Medical Association 169 (February 1959): 863-64.

18 Richards, Memoirs, 71-72, 82.

19 Ibid., 92-93.

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W h e n his d a u g h t e r L e n o r e c o m p l e t e d h e r residency in surgery at Cincinnati General Hospital, Paul joined her, reentering the practice of medicine in 1951. While he had never particularly encouraged Lenore to follow his profession, Paul "never discouraged" her in her career choice and "was a staunch supporter" once she started her studies. However, as a woman Lenore was not initially granted physician privileges to practice at LDS Hospital, a common problem for female physicians of that time.20 Paul enjoyed working with his daughter and respected her professional skills as a diagnostician and surgeon. In 1953 father and daughter opened the Memorial Medical Center in Salt Lake City, naming it in honor of Paul's grandfather, Willard Richards, and his father's three brothers, all of w h o m were physicians. The practice included fourteen physicians and two dentists. The Center, built on the family farm near where Paul had grown up, is now called the Memorial I H C Health Center. 21 In 1954, cancer returned and Richards submitted to more operations. As he suffered through terminal prostate cancer, his wife was also declining with palsy. As one of his last professional efforts, he founded in 1958 the Richards Memorial Medical Foundation to fund future medical research.

The foundation currently donates about $45,000 yearly to various universities in Utah for science scholarships and development. H e also dictated his autobiography to his family, thus preserving the story of an interesting life.

H e died at his Memorial Medical Center on November 20, 1958, at the age of sixty-five.22 While Dr. Paul Snelgrove Richards did not make a major contribution to any one particular field, his interests and activities contributed to smaller advances in a number of fields, refining the work of others in industrial medicine and rehabilitative surgery. Today, the town of Bingham is gone, consumed by the ravenous appetite of the open-pit mine. Yet the doctor's legacy lives on in the lives of the people he helped and in the medical and safety innovations that he promoted.

20

Lenore Richards interview.

Richards, Memoirs, 94-95, 110, 117.

22 Lenore Richards interview; Richards, Memoirs, 114, foreword.

21

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BOOK REVIEWS Fort Douglas, Utah: A Frontier Fort, 1862-1991

By Charles G. Hibbard (Fort

Collins, Colorado: Vestige Press, 1999. xiv + 281 pp. $45.00.)

E X P A N D I N G U P O N HIS P H . D . dissertation, "Fort Douglas 1862-1916: Pivotal Link on the Western Frontier," Charles G. Hibbard has authored a more complete history of Fort Douglas.

Hibbard's new effort incorporates the fort's twentieth-century service, its use as a P O W installation during World War I and as headquarters for the Ninth Service Command during World War II, and its diminishing role in the post-World War II era, culminating with its closure on October 26, 1991. For the most part, Hibbard has provided a broadly researched account of Fort Douglas; h o w ever, his failure to provide a full explanation of certain events, coupled with errors that could easily have been avoided through careful fact-checking and prudent editing, prove distracting to what is an otherwise positive contribution to both military history and Utah state history.

T h e strength of Hibbard's monograph manifests itself in his account of Fort Douglas d u r i n g the nineteenth century. H e painstakingly illustrates the origins of the founding of Fort Douglas, the tense relations between Mormons and the California Volunteers stationed at Fort Douglas, the various Indian campaigns in which Fort Douglas units participated, and the tenure of black soldiers as a garrison force. T h e highlights of the early chapters are Hibbard's description of the military expedition led by Colonel Patrick C o n n o r against the Shoshone Indians at Bear River and his insightful portrayal of the nineteenth-century soldier, which instills in the reader an appreciation for the hardships soldiers endured.

Nevertheless, the positive merits of the early chapters are blemished by seemingly avoidable errors.The fact that Connor's disdain for Mormons is indisputable causes the reader to be baffled when Hibbard claims that relations between C o n n o r and M o r m o n s eased in 1865.The book does not provide an explanation for this occurrence. An equally peculiar situation is the author's omission in explaining why Connor hired Orrin Porter Rockwell to guide his columns to Bear River in January 1863, when five months earlier Connor had characterized Mormons as "a community of traitors [and] murderers." The reader also might wish that Hibbard had devoted more time in describing the conciliatory efforts made

by Colonel Philippe Regis de Trobriand and Captain Charles H .

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Hempstead toward the M o r m o n populace. The presence of both factual and textual errors further undermines the otherwise-solid foundation laid in these early chapters. These include a description of the start of construction on the Transcontinental Railroad as beginning two years too late, a claim that General Philip Sheridan was the acting Secretary of War in 1888, a misidentification of Carl Schurz as "Shurz," an incorrect statement that there was complete racial segregation between black and white military personnel during World War II, and the presence of too many stylistic errors for a work of this length.

Hibbard commendably portrays the story of the imminent closure of Fort Douglas throughout its existence during the twentieth century, only to be twice forestalled due to the United States becoming an active participant in two world wars. Both world wars revitalized Fort Douglas through its being an induction center and intern camp for POWs, of which Hibbard gives an excellent account. H e also expertly describes the installation's inadequacies to properly support a modern military force, the piecemeal selling of the land by the government to civilian organizations, and the constant attempts made by the Department of Army to close the fort.

This monographic history is informative, and it personalizes the experiences of the soldiers stationed at Fort Douglas. O n e hopes that Charles G. Hibbard will compose an improved edition free of minor errors and episodic ambiguity.

MARK MULCAHEY Brigham Young University

Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment

Edited with text by Kimi

Kodani Hill (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2000. xviii + 147 pp. $19.95.)

TOPAZ MOON IS A P O I G N A N T account of the life and art of Japanese American artist Chiura Obata, emphasizing the years 1942—45, when he was interned at Tanforan Assembly Center and Topaz (officially, the Central Utah Relocation Center).The beauty, harshness, and cruelty of the World War II concentration camp is portrayed in images and text in this slim volume, the initial p u b lication of the California Civil Liberties Public Education Project, which was formed to present information to students and the general public about racial discrimination.

In 1941, Obata, an Issei trained in Japan, was an accomplished

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artist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. H e and his family lived a secure, comfortable middle-class life in a community known for its tolerance, but they were swept up with the rest of the West Coast Japanese American community in the racist hysteria following Pearl Harbor, and they were interned.

Obata used his experiences as subject matter for his art, chronicling the beauty of their California home, the family's departure from the Bay Area, and their sorrow and confusion as they were shuttled from Berkeley to temporary quarters at the Tanforan racetrack then moved by train through the desolation of the desert to a barren camp in central Utah. Topaz, which was in reality a concentration camp, took its name from a nearby mountain.

Obata continued his work, painting, drawing, and also teaching art as he established a school for the internees as he had previously at Tanforan. The Topaz art school held an exhibition just two weeks after its establishment, for Obata, a sensitive and politically aware man, wished to lift people's morale. Topaz, at its peak the fifth largest city in Utah, held a sizeable community of artists, more than any other of the ten camps, and Obata was its best known. The Topaz artists instructed children and adults with the limited materials available, helping to document their lives and the desolation of their surroundings. Obata sketched camp life and captured the beauty of the remote surroundings in oils and watercolors. Captions for his art were composed by Obata's wife Haruko, a talented teacher of the art of ikebana (Japanese flowerarranging) .

Obata's paintings gained wider recognition when two commissioned works were sent to War Relocation Authority director Dillon Myer and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The loyalty oath imposed in 1943, ostensibly to ease resettlement for so-called "loyal" Americans in the camps, brought a crisis for Obata, w h o was unjustly suspected of being an administration spy and was brutally attacked by an unknown assailant. But the Obata family was released from Topaz and resettled near St. Louis, where Chiura and Haruko worked in commercial art. After the war's end the Obatas returned to Berkeley; Chiura resumed his professorship and the couple resided again in their old home.

Topaz Moon is lavishly illustrated with Obata's paintings and occasional photographs. Excerpts from Chiura's and Haruko's letters add poignancy to the text. Although the author, Obata's granddaughter, clearly believes the incarceration to have been a grave injustice, she lets the story convey her feelings without polemics. The Obatas survived the ordeal and suffered no over-

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whelming economic loss as a result, unlike so many others. They shared their talents with the other internees, and Obata's works provide a legacy of beauty and d o c u m e n t a r y evidence of an episode that should still shame the nation.

This book is readily accessible to young people and adults alike, beautifully written and illustrated. Unfortunately, this reviewer's copy contained a printer's error that omitted twenty-five pages of text on Tanforan and printed an equal number of duplicate pages.

SANDRA C. TAYLOR University of Utah

Guide to Rock Art of the Utah Region: Sites with Public Access By Dennis Slifer (Santa Fe: Ancient City Press, 2000. x + 245 pp. Paper, $15.95.)

U T A H ' S C A N Y O N S , CLIFFS, and boulders are graced with some of the most striking and awe-inspiring ancient art in the world. The Fremont culture, for example, a relatively little-known horticultural society that thrived here for nearly one thousand years before abruptly disappearing 700 years ago, is renowned among rock art aficionados worldwide for its distinctive and mysterious pecked and painted images. The earlier Barrier Canyon style of art is equally celebrated and written about in numerous guides, scholarly publications, coffee table publications, and even web sites. Do we really need another guide to the rock art of the area?

Guidebooks to this or that—all purporting to convey some sort of insider's, privileged i n f o r m a t i o n and insight—have b e e n appearing on the shelves of bookstores and tourist wallows by the bucketload in recent years. Judging from the sheer n u m b e r of guides out there, the books must sell. Unfortunately, some guides direct readers to places that might not be safe or that are not prepared to receive visitors. Some readers may follow the book's directions and drive and perhaps even hike to some secret undiscovered wonder, and then, being totally unfamiliar with the place, do the stupid and destructive things some tourists do, leaving a degraded wonder for the next bumbling, book-following, milecounting adventuring explorer to relish.

N o t only do a great number of these guides direct people to visit places that are not prepared for visitors, they may also hasten the destruction of the very special places they describe; if the destination is a remote and fragile historic, archaeological, or paleon-

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tological site, the mere trampling by visitors may be damaging, let alone the havoc wreaked by herds of scouts, rampaging teenagers, or souvenir-seeking trophy-takers.

While many guidebooks are primarily hiking or sightseeing guides that include archaeological and historical sites in their lists of places to visit, Dennis Slifer's book is a guide to a specific kind of historic site. As such, it is a delightful departure from the common irresponsibly written and published guidebook. Readers are not simply directed to places where they can see rock art; they are treated to a rich and well-researched presentation of information about the early inhabitants of the region and the various styles and typologies of rock art classification that have been developed, and they are even given a lesson in the often-difficult art of p h o tographing rock art. Site etiquette—guidelines about how to behave when visiting rock art sites (Don't touch it! is only one of many important admonitions to keep in mind)—is carefully explained and presented. That the book is well researched and documented is evidenced by the extensive bibliography, annotated resource list, comprehensive index, and chapter end notes.

The rock art itself is clearly described and well illustrated with numerous black and white photographs, clean line drawings, and twenty-six color plates. Most notably, Slifer not only indicates how to find a particular site but he also provides a solid description of the panels and their elements, informing the reader about the styles represented, the time period and cultural affiliation of the art, and the physical setting of the site. He also offers some ideas about possible interpretations of the panels but is careful to present these as hypotheses and not as some kind of truth, as some writers have done.

I am most impressed by Slifer's choice of sites to include. The book's subtitle, Sites with Public Access, indicates an intention to direct readers to visit sites that are either open to the public, and hence prepared for visitors, or that are located on public lands and are reasonably accessible. The result is a very good sampling both of prepared sites in national and state parks, where visitors will find well-marked trails and interpretive information, and of sites away from the paved road and prepared trail. In all cases, the sites have been chosen because of the fabulous art they harbor, and visitors are treated to a good description of each site and suggestions about how to behave when there.

Guide to the Rock Art of the Utah Region is more than a hiking or visitor's guide. It is a very readable, accurate, and responsibly written introduction to the rock art of the area. Slifer has a good

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understanding of the prehistory of the region, the artistic traditions of its ancient cultures, and the delicate nature of these artistic treasures. His book is a solid contribution to the popular literature on rock art and will make a fine traveling companion.

KEVIN T. JONES Utah State Archaeologist

An Enduring Legacy: The Story of Basques in Idaho By John Bieter and Mark Bieter (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2000. xvi + 191 pp. $31.95.)

AN ENDURING LEGACY: THE STORY of Basques in Idaho is the story of the Basques coming to the Boise, Idaho, area and assimilating into and surviving as a group in the American culture.

The introduction describes two lone Basque sheepherders in the desert, dramatizing to the reader the impact of total isolation that the Basques experienced as immigrants into the United States.

From this austere beginning the Basques have been accepted into mainstream America. Beginning with sheepherders' experience, they have aspired to and prospered in every professional walk of life that America has to offer.

As a first-generation A m e r i c a n - b o r n Basque, I found An Enduring Legacy very close to my heart. Coming from Eureka, Nevada, w h e r e b o t h of my parents were Basque immigrants working in the sheep industry, I experienced "our" assimilation into the American culture. After high school I moved to Salt Lake City and lived in a Basque boardinghouse called the Hogar Hotel for eight years. During this time, I witnessed the inner survival activities of a Basque community as I experienced the acceptance and non-acceptance of our Basque culture in Utah. An Enduring Legacy gives an outstanding overview of this process. This acceptance process was not an easy one. The Basque language, traditions, and culture are u n i q u e w i t h i n and different from the American mainstream. Because of these differences it was not easy for the Basques as individuals or as a community to be accepted into mainstream America.

The Basque boardinghouse played an important part in this process, as An Enduring Legacy illustrates. It was because of the boardinghouse that the Basque culture was introduced to the American community at large. At the same time, the immigrants themselves were learning about the new customs of America. This occurred in Boise as well as in other towns and cities where

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Basque boardinghouses existed in the United States.

An Enduring Legacy tells us that the Basque sheepherders found the boardinghouse the closest thing to their homeland. In the boardinghouse they spoke Basque, ate home-cooked Basque-style food, and played a Basque card game called Mus.They also danced and sang Basque songs. The Americans could hear, see, smell, and perhaps get invited to a Basque gathering—a wedding or a funeral—and be introduced to this unique cultural experience.

T h e b o a r d i n g h o u s e b e c a m e a t w o - w a y street of cultural exchange. While the Basques thought the boardinghouse was a refuge of their culture, it also became the place of introduction for the Basques to the American way of life, even though this process was slow. The Basque children in the boardinghouses started going to American schools and brought the American ways into the boardinghouses.The children became involved in various activities and sports such as football, basketball, and baseball. For example, a B o i s e n e w s p a p e r o n c e n i c k n a m e d Savino U b e r u a g a t h e "Bounding Basque." This young man, the son of a Basque immigrant, excelled in football.

As the Basque children became accepted into mainstream A m e r i c a , a p r i c e was to be paid. T h e y w e r e b r i n g i n g the "American way" into the Basque community, and the Basque traditions would lose their importance. The assimilation process had begun. Because of this, individuals within the Basque community of Boise felt a need for the preservation and survival of their traditions and culture. Dance groups such as the Oinkari Basque Dancers, singing groups, and Basque language schools were started to teach the new American-born Basques these various traditions of the culture.

These cultural preservation processes were met with great acceptance, both from Basques and Americans. Basque cultural groups participated in various cities in Idaho as well as at national and international functions. Even though assimilation had taken place within the community, a process to preserve the traditions of the Basques in Boise and America had also taken place.

An Enduring Legacy is definitely a worthwhile read that introduces its reader to the trials, struggles, and survival through the assimilation process that the Basque immigrant experienced both in Boise and the United States. It is a must-read for Basques and also for individuals who are interested in them.

ROBERT J. ITHURRALDE Salt Lake City

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Frontier Children

By Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith (Norman: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1999. xi + 164 pp. Cloth, $24.95.)

SWEPT A L O N G BY T H E C U R R E N T S of westward expansion and the decision of their parents to relocate, American children came west and with their families settled on land that other children, the progeny of native peoples, had claimed for countless generations. The vast desert lands, plains, mountains, and coasts of t h e t r a n s - M i s s i s s i p p i West w e r e already h o m e to N a t i v e Americans. In California and the Southwest, Hispanic children, products of earlier encroachment into Native American territory, also lived for many decades prior to this emigration from the United States east of the Mississippi River. By mid-nineteenth century, children of these three groups precariously co-existed while thousands of Americans continued to stream westward.

Before the end of that century, European and Asian immigrant children joined the mix as their parents sought homes or economic opportunity on American soil.

Until recent years, the story of children on the frontier has been for the most part neglected, except in books written especially for children and adolescents. Few historians have given serious attention to childhood in the American West. While much is known and has been written about westward expansion, historians have traditionally focused on the men, the adult white males w h o headed the families w h o went west to seek homes, a new life, or mineral wealth. During the past four decades, however, historical researchers and writers have endeavored to balance the record by studying the important roles o f w o m e n and the significant contributions of African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and other ethnic minority groups in the settlement and development of the American West. Finally, in the last few years some historians have turned their attention to the lives of children on the emigrant trails or those who grew up in early settlements, on isolated farms and ranches, in mining towns, and in railroad camps.

Thankfully, in the past few years a number of books have concentrated on childhood in the West during the nineteenth century, childhoods so very different from youth today. Frontier Children, written for an adult audience, is an excellent addition to these books that complete the picture of life on the frontier.

To approach the formidable task of telling the story of frontier childhood, Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith utilized memoirs of men and women w h o either traveled west as children or w h o

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were born and grew up in the trans-Mississippi West (few children wrote diaries). To achieve an accurate and fair balance of the myriad cultures that lived in the West, they additionally researched and included stories of Native American children. Adding vitality and completing the picture, the authors blended in stories and reminiscences of Hispanic boys and girls, children of African-American and Asian-American parentage, and children of European immigrants who sought homes in the Midwest and on the high plains of the Dakotas and Montana during the last decades of the nineteenth and first years of the twentieth century. Because of this mingling of childhood experiences and perspectives, Smith and Peavy have created a very informative book for anyone interested in children or in the West—and especially for those concerned with both, such as teachers and parents.

The history of these children of the West is enormously complex. T h e land that shaped their lives is immense; the transMississippi West includes everything from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, from Mexico to Canada. T h e timeframe is equally daunting; migration and settlement spanned approximately the years from the early 1840s through 1910. The large number, or "infinite variety" (3), of cultures involved in the drama add to the challenge of covering the subject. T h e enormous diversity in experiences of children between infancy and adulthood, living the different lifestyles of poverty or wealth and associated with various environments, such as a mining camp, rural farm or ranch, military post, town or Indian village, further complicates the writing of a single book about frontier childhood. However, Peavy and Smith successfully condense their account into a slender volume of less than two hundred pages.

It is important to note that Frontier Children is literally a look at childhood in the West. The text is richly enhanced by a fantastic number of period photographs. Approximately half the page space is devoted to them. These photographs, which show children in relation to their homes, clothing, work, play, school, families, landscapes, and animals, not only are charming but also significantly enrich the narrative. The photographs were apparently very carefully chosen to supplement the history.

Though of a general nature, the narrative does make frequent use of short quotes from a large number of reminiscences, demonstrating a wide variety of experiences and making a colorful and personal picture of childhood. Brief stories of specific experiences are interspersed with historical information. T h e blend of the t h r e e makes for very pleasurable reading. T h e text is well

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researched, well documented, and professionally written without being excessively scholarly, in a style that will be appreciated by many readers.

Chapters focus on the various backgrounds of the children, how they got West, the ways that the land determined experiences, homes and homelife, how children worked and played, family relationships, formal and informal education, and the passage to adulthood. An especially thought-provoking section is about reservation and mission schools for Native American children.

Given the usual nature of memoirs written years later, one might suspect that this book paints a romanticized or idealized picture. O n the contrary, the text is remarkably frank. T h e hardships of poverty and child labor, the harshness of discipline, the difficulties of acculturation, the plight of orphans, the unfairness of discrimination, the inadequacies of frontier schools, and the heavy responsibilities parents placed on their children are objectively examined. But again, the authors create balance by also writing of the amusements and pleasures that children experienced.

Periodically, the authors add a life sketch, a vignette, a detailed historical tidbit, or diary excerpt to the text. Unfortunately their placement sometimes causes an interruption of the reading. As interesting, complementary, informative, and useful as these extras are, they can be a little distracting. In most cases, there is no problem since a slightly different color background encloses the extra information in a box that "warns the reader to finish a section of text and come back for the bonus. But occasionally a full-page piece comes along, and the background contrast is not enough to tell the reader to skip ahead to the continuing text. Then the disruption is a bit irritating, especially when the reader is deeply involved in the narrative. Aside from that very tiny flaw this book is extraordinarily well written and arranged. It makes a delightful read and an informative look at the children w h o grew up with the West.

LYNDIA CARTER Springville, Utah

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BOOK REVIEWS

Power and Place in the American West Edited by Richard White and John M. Findlay (Seattle and London: Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest and University of Washington Press, 1999. xx + 312 pp. Cloth, $35.00; paper, $19.95.)

THIS IS A N I M P O R T A N T B O O K . Each of these essays stands alone as fresh scholarship, an intellectual adventure for the reader.

But packaged together as an exploration of power relations as they operate within and create space, the essays do what history can and should do. They throw light on old paradigms, change ways of seeing, and open a path for future dialogue.

A dominant culture may almost unthinkingly swim in the waters of power and place, phenomena created by the culture itself, largely through economic and political forces. But place, the editors remind us in an essay that lays out the book's conceptual framework, is not an unchanging given. Rather, it is "a spatial reality constructed by people," w h o impose a conceptual order on space. Power is "the ability of an agent...to influence either people or natural forces to act according to that agent's desire or will" (x).

As the book's essays show, the exercise of power is almost always connected to and potent in the creation of place. Whose values and desires will any one place reflect? Those w h o are able to impose power. These relationships are explored in the book's four sections: "Indians and Non-Indians," "Race in the Urban West," "Environment and Economy," and "Gender in the Urban West."

T h e first essay, James Ronda's "Coboway's Tale: A Story of Power and Places along the Columbia," brings the book's issues into immediate focus. Identifying a point at the mouth of the Columbia, Ronda queries, "What is the name of this place?" The Clatsop people called it "where there is pounded salmon," a name that describes a place defined by Clatsop life. "But if it is Point Adams [as it later became], then the lines of power and meaning run east to the Federal City...and to the name of an American politician" (3).

Coboway, a Clatsop leader, lived "where there is p o u n d e d salmon"—until Lewis and Clark arrived and, through the winter they spent there, imposed a "new definition of space and the power to define space" (7), at least within the fort boundaries.

Ronda traces the dispossession of the Clatsops and the evolution of place until 1866, when a newcomer to Fort Stevens, on the site of Coboway's old village, described "a beautiful e a r t h w o r k bristling with guns and neat as a model, the gravel walks neat and

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precise—" (18). "Power is "always unstable, unpredictable," R o n d a writes. "And as power shifts, it transforms place" (19).

Inherent in the shifting of power is the shifting of cultural conceptions. In "Making 'Indians' in British Columbia," J o h n Lutz deconstructs the concept of "race." Even historians, he says, have accepted racial categories that were created through mythology and outdated science. But race is not a neutral, fixed category, he says; it varies according to time, place, and power relations. In examining this idea, Lutz shows how the concept of Indianness evolved in British Columbia. T h e earliest trappers had only a slight conception of Indians as Other; the boundaries between groups were fuzzy i n d e e d as the aboriginals and Europeans formed partnerships and marriages. Socially and legally the groups "were on equal footing. Later British immigrants, however, did see the Indians as Other—and inferior. These colonists used race as a useful category that expressed the relationship they wished to have with the aboriginals. Through discourse and law, they imposed concepts of race that became increasingly hierarchical, until they had passed a law stating that "the term person means an individual other than an Indian" (71).

In a later essay, Paul Hirt explores how the imposition of cultural concepts on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest led to disastrous results ecologically and economically. T h e precipitous decline in the timber harvest beginning in the 1980s, he says, has a history much more complex and interesting than that suggested by the spotted owl debate. Choosing a policy guided by wildly optimistic predictions of "sustained yield," forest managers chose to maximize timber production at the cost of the forest's integrity, even when it became clear that such a policy could not be sustained indefinitely. Interestingly, the forest fiasco occurred because managers did not pay attention to history, perhaps "because the lessons of the past and responsibilities to future generations -were only weak abstract notions compared to the economic demands of the present" (228).

Other essays explore power and place on several fronts, including the colonial nature of tourism, the use of rhetoric in industrial development in Oregon, and place and power relations in the c o n s t r u c t i o n of ethnicity a m o n g Nisei and A m e r i c a n - b o r n Chinese. Contributors also explore conflicts over salmon management, the market for human captives in N e w Mexico, men's control over women's mobility, race and rhetoric in Los Angeles boosterism, and how federal agencies challenged racist traditions in Los Angeles during World War II.

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The editors and the essays themselves remind us that, although places are created and evolve through the exercise of power, that power is seldom absolute or uncontested. In a given situation, resistance to the controlling ideology may be weak, but it usually exists and therefore is a factor in the shaping of place. The interplay of all factors in the creation of place through "perceptions, a mental imposition of order, a parcelization of the earth's surface, a transformation of space—an abstraction—into something more specific and limited" (x) is a subject with ongoing and current relevance. This volume, as it makes more clear the controlling forces within historical places and times, stimulates questions about the places we currently perceive and inhabit. How have power relationships shaped the West of today? As we evaluate the exercise of power and its influence on our intimate relationships with the land and its inhabitants, will we see the need to change the balance of power? Can growing awareness itself become a power that shapes place?

KRISTEN SMART ROGERS Utah State Historical Society

A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800-1922

Edited by Susan Cummins Miller (Salt Lake City: University of Utah

Press, 2000. xiv + 447 pp. Cloth, $59.95; paper, $21.95.)

I LIKE T H E B O O K A LOT; I really dislike the title. That sums things up, but there is more to the story. Twenty or more years ago a well-known history professor complained about the title of an article of mine then called "Petticoats with Paychecks: Working Women in Utah...." He said he was tired of "Sunbonnet Sisters" and "Dusty Skirts" trailing across the historic landscapes of the West. And who could blame him? At that time such titles fairly leaped from book jackets and journal contents pages. Today I blush at the thought of "Petticoats with Paychecks ."Well I should, for it appears to shunt w o m e n off onto a gender-based siding, away from the main tracks of history. I think words like "A Sweet, Separate Intimacy" do the same—despite coming from Mary Austin's fairly muscular collection of essays, The Land of Little Ram. That's a shame, for the women in this anthology wrote about the frontier and the western experience with as firm a grip on their pens as their male counterparts had.

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The final lines of text in the book are these from "Song of Sunlight" by poet Alice Corbin Henderson: Sunlight, I am mad with your light.

Rocks, I have never known you before.

Earth, your red canyons Are sluiced through me.

The crests of your hills Break over me— I ride upward to meet them.

I am a sometime poet myself and her words knocked my socks off. That's what it's like hiking in Capitol Reef or Bryce Canyon or dozens of other red earth places! Walt Whitman couldn't have said it better. There is nothing sweet about these lines, and the gender of the author is neither apparent nor relevant.

Thirty-four women writers of differing educational and ethnic backgrounds are included in this anthology. Among them are wellknown names such as Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather, Mary Austin, Ina Coolbrith, Mary Hallock Foote, Sharlot Hall, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Sarah Winnemucca. The selections range from poetry, to short stories, excerpts from novels, essays, diary and journal entries, letters, and children's literature. Miller has arranged her chosen authors in chronological order—an effective choice for as diverse a group as she presents, for it allows the reader to observe subtle changes in writing styles and use of language over time.

Among the writers new to me, one I especially enjoyed was Alice Cary, represented by a haunting and understated reminiscence of her grandfather's death. She demonstrates exquisite taste in selecting simple, evocative details that capture the final moments of a loved one's life and the somber rites that follow— images that burn in one's memory.

Another pleasant surprise for me was the excerpt from Vanished Arizona: Recollections of My Army Life by M a r t h a D u r h a m Summerhayes. Unlike Jessie Benton Fremont or Elizabeth Bacon Custer—both of w h o m are represented in this compilation— Summerhayes was not the wife of a famous, or infamous, man.

Jack Summerhayes appears to have been an ordinary lieutenant posted to many forts west of the Mississippi. Like Mary Austin, Martha Summerhayes soon succumbed to the enchantment of the West's remote, dry places: I wondered if I had really grown to love the desert. I had read somewhere that people did. But I was not paying much attention in those days to the analysis of my feelings. I did not stop to question the subtle fascination -which I felt steal over me as we rolled along the

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smooth hard roads that followed the windings of the Gila River. I was back again in the army; I had cast my lot with a soldier, and where he was, was home to me.

Summerhayes was a woman fully engaged in a new life very different from her East Coast upbringing. Recollections—part love story, part journey of personal discovery—was written for her family. It earned a wider audience and status as a regional classic because it conveys a strong sense of a particular time and place.

Two important points need to be made regarding this anthology. T h e writings of Summerhayes and the others add more to western history in general than just a few engaging footnotes.

These women were active participants in history. Frances Barker Gage recorded Sojourner Truth's first major speech. Maria Ruiz de Burton's romantic novels, based on her own experiences, capture life in California during a time of social upheaval following the end of the Mexican War. Eleanor Pruitt Stewart's Letters of a Woman Homesteader detail, as only an eyewitness could, the difficulty of homesteading in the remote open spaces of the West.

O n e must also acknowledge that these women wove part of the American literary tapestry. The thirty-four included here represent but a sampling of w o m e n writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. O f the thirty-four only Willa Cather ranks with the immortals of American literature, but that should not minimize the achievements of Austin, Atherton, Coolbrith, and others. They contributed to literary history as writers and in other ways. After moving to N e w York, sisters Phoebe and Alice Cary, for example, organized a well-known literary salon. Poet Alice Corbin Henderson worked to promote the poetry of others by helping Harriet M o n r o e edit one of the literary world's most influential j o u r n a l s . F o u n d e d by M o n r o e in 1912, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse has published the work of virtually every major American poet of the twentieth century.

If Women Writers of the American Frontier is intended as a textbook, a more substantial introduction -would have been useful.

Still, one can easily find studies of the literature and history of the century and a quarter under consideration, while locating some of the selected writers in a public library might prove difficult.

Miller deserves thanks for introducing and/or reintroducing us to some significant figures in the history of the West and the literature of America.

MIRIAM B. MURPHY Salt Lake City

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Army of Israel: Mormon Battalion Narratives

Edited by David L. Bigler and

Will Bagley Vol. 4 of Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier (Spokane: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2000. 492 pp. $39.95. Paperback edition, Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2000, $24.95.)

W H E N H E N R Y W I L L I A M B I G L E R and his cousin Jesse Martin were looking for lost M o r m o n stock near the Latter-day Saint refugee camps in Iowa during late June 1846, they were approached by an army officer inquiring if they knew the whereabouts of Brigham Young. N o t knowing the man's intentions, the two Mormons remained tight-lipped. As Bigler later wrote in his journal, "We [knew] President Young perfectly well and where his quarters were," but since the officer, Capt. James Allen of the First Dragoons, was a stranger, they chose to feign ignorance at this moment (42).

In truth, Brigham Young was happy to see Captain Allen, who bore an offer from President James K. Polk that would facilitate the Latter-day Saints in their westward migration. In the words of the editors, Allen "did his best to solicit the favor and confidence of the M o r m o n leaders" (43).

Bigler and Bagley have made skillful use of the documents relating to this event in M o r m o n history T h e documents have been recognized by historians before, but now they are more readily available to scholars and the interested public at large in Army of Israel. For this the editors are to be thanked.

Worthy of note, far from the Latter-day Saint emigrants, were the efforts of Jesse C. Little and Thomas L. Kane to make the M o r m o n Battalion happen. In January 1846 B r i g h a m Young i n s t r u c t e d L i t t l e , " w h o rules all t h e C h u r c h east of the Mississippi," in Kane's very descriptive words, to take charge of securing the battalion assignment in Washington, D . C . (55).

Writing to his parents in Philadelphia in mid-July 1846, Thomas L. Kane n o t e d t h e significance he p l a c e d o n assisting the Mormons. "You know the importance I attached to the enlistment by the United States of volunteers from the M o r m o n s " (56).

Then, calling upon the influence he knew that his family held and the trust that the Mormons had placed in him, he wrote, "Try and write to the President on account of what I have w r i t t e n to you...and at some future convenient period go to Washington and have a few words with him in person" (58-59).

The call of the government to the Latter-day Saints to march west during the Mexican-American War was the well-document-

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ed result of politics. Editors David L. Bigler and Will Bagley have skillfully drawn together much of the fabric of the M o r m o n Battalion experience into a well-crafted narrative history. T h e depth of their search for relevant primary documents provides a model for such histories. These documents tell of hardship, faith, and perseverance for a cause. They also tell of other achievements: battalion volunteers were present at the discovery of gold in northern California in January 1848 and helped blaze the northern trail from California to Salt Lake City upon their journey to Utah in 1848.

As the editors admit, the military contribution of the M o r m o n Battalion to the outcome of the Mexican War was "inconsequential" (417). Most historians tend to overlook it altogether in favor of the more colorful episodes of the conflict. Still, the M o r m o n Utah c o m m u n i t y remembers the influence of the M o r m o n Battalion quite profoundly, and the battalion is still widely celebrated within LDS culture and history. Members were remembered fondly by their fellow Utah pioneers for the remainder of their lives; H e n r y Bigler, for example, was h o n o r e d by the Mormon community as a battalion veteran to the end of his long life (he died in 1900). In 1896 a fiftieth anniversary reunion was held.

In 1915 LDS historian B. H. Roberts wrote the first "accurate assessment" of the M o r m o n Battalion (442). Roberts's version of the story rejected the long-held myth that Brigham Young had "created" to justify the battalion's sacrifice (443). This myth stressed that t h e M o r m o n militia was sent to defend t h e Mormons' religious liberty, and in the late nineteenth-century the standard LDS position on the battalion viewed the call as a villainous act by an evil government. But Roberts, a member of the LDS hierarchy, openly wrote of how M o r m o n leaders had actively sought this assignment.

Viewing the battalion experience through the words of the participants helps bring life to the experience. The editors are to be congratulated on their fine effort. The Mormon Battalion has received a good deal of scholarly attention of late, but this narrative, with its deeply researched primary sources, should prove invaluable to students of the subject. Originally published in cloth by the Arthur H. Clark Company as part of their "Kingdom in the West" series, this paperback Utah State University Press version makes the Army of Israel available to a wider audience.

M. GUY BISHOP Woods Cross, Utah

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BOOK NOTICES Cidermaster of Rio Oscuro By Harvey Frauenglass (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000. xii + 191 pp. $21.95.)

After years of employment in a N e w Mexico nuclear weapons industry, Harvey Frauenglass sought personal redemption as an orchardist and cidermaker on a small farm along the R i o Oscuro. His enchanting memoir of simple enterprise, worn-out machinery, art, life, death, and nature's cryptic ways, along with his practical pomological snippets and his lyrical expression of the agrarian mystique, comprise a blend as pleasing as the cider he seeks to press and sell at the farmers' market in Santa Fe.

Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry

By Richard W.

Etulain (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. xvi +174 pp. Cloth, $35.00; paper, $17.95.)

Etulain looks at the evolution of American consciousness about the West as reflected in and shaped by western narratives, beginning with William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who "did more than any other person to create the archetypal western story during the late nineteenth century" (8). From the foundations Cody laid, the story of conflict and drama in the taming of the frontier continued with variations into the twentieth century. The book traces these themes in the writings of such authors as Frederick Jackson Turner, O w e n Wister, and Louis L'Amour. Although some minority writers described women's or ethnic experiences, these accounts could not displace the master narrative. But change picked up m o m e n t u m with authors like Wallace Stegner, Patricia Limerick, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Larry McMurtry. Etulain shows how a new story, "gray," complex, and multiple in perspective, has supplanted the old story.

En Aquel Entonces Edited by Manuel G. Gonzales and Cynthia M. Gonzales (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. xvii + 289 pp. Cloth, $39.95; paper, $19.95.)

This anthology of three decades of scholarship i n M e x i c a n American history surveys a wide range of topics. Essays are arranged in chronological sections and address the Mexican American experience throughout the West, from Mexican colonization during the 1600s to activism of recent years.

The editors have condensed the essays, which come mainly from previously p u b lished work (and they have also dispensed with footnotes). As a result, there is

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room for thirty-one essays, enough to give readers a broad sense of Mexican American history and historiography.

The Five Crows Ledger: Biographic Warrior Art of the Flathead Indians

By James D. Keyser (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000. 128 pp. $24.95.)

During the historic period, Plains Indians produced pictographs showing stylized action scenes of combat, raiding, and hunting. Drawn on shields, clothing, paper, and other perishable objects, this "ledger art" shows artifacts and cultural practices. The details in these drawings are of course invaluable for anthropological study.

This volume focuses on a group of thirteen drawings made by the Flathead leaders Ambrose and Adolphe and annotated by Father Pierre Jean De Smet.

Illustrated with abundant examples of other ledger art, the book explores in depth the history, meaning, and significance of this art form.

Black Elk Speaks By Nicholas Black Elk; compiled and edited by John G. Neihardt (1932, 1959,1961,1972; reprint, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. xxx + 230 pp. + illustrations. Paper, $12.95.)

An account of Lakota spirituality and history in the late nineteenth century, Black Elk Speaks has become an intriguing classic. Both influential and controversial (Neihardt's role as "editor" of Black Elk's discourse is not clear), the text narrates Nicholas Black Elk's famous visions and his subsequent experiences. His first vision, received at age nine, seemed to promise a restoration of peace and wholeness to the oppressed Sioux and in fact to all nations. But as he lived through the unfolding of history—the victory over Custer, the murders of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, starvation and broken treaties, the Ghost Dance craze, Wounded Knee—Black Elk felt that he had failed in the work he had been given to do. N o wonder his memoir is visionary, action-filled, culturally and historically revealing—and often melancholy.

Black Elk Lives: Conversations with the Black Elk Family By Esther Black E. DeSersa, Olivia Black Elk Pourier, Aaron DeSersa, Jr., and Clifton DeSersa; edited by Hilda Neihardt and Lori Utrecht (Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 2000. xvii + 168 pp. $25.00.)

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The descendants of Lakota holy man Nicholas Black Elk talk to the daughter of John Neihardt about their personal lives, their memories of Black Elk, and their culture. These free-flowing discussions cover a wide slice of Lakota experience, including such topics as political activism, boarding school, alcohol abuse, traditional ceremonies, relationships between men and women, extended families, color television, and, of course, Nicholas Black Elk. T h e University of Nevada Press has launched a website tied to its new Black Elk books. T h e website, Black Elk's World, contains the full text of Black Elk Speaks, biographies, p h o tographs, maps, scholarship on Lakota and Dakota history and culture, Native biographies and memoirs, and winners of the N o r t h American Indian Prose Award.

From Everglade to Canyon with the Second United States

Cavalry:

An Authentic Account of Service in Florida, Mexico, Virginia, and the Indian Country, 1836-1875

By Theophilus F. Rodenbough (1875; reprint, Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. 576 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

Second Cavalry officer Theophilus R o d e n b o u g h was a fine writer as well as a fine soldier, and his history of the cavalry written 125 years ago is highly readable and historically significant. " N o other study has so thoroughly and so vividly captured the lifestyle, color, and personality of a Regular Army regiment," writes Edward Longacre in the foreword (7). R o d e n b o u g h intertwines military narrative with extensive first-person accounts by others and primary documents. H e does not neglect the human side of the soldier's life; various anecdotes spice up the accounts of long marches, battles, and daily life. Included are a narrative by Gen. George Crooke of the Second Cavalry's bitter wintertime march to Utah as reinforcements to Johnston's Army and a description of the Salt Lake Valley as seen through the eyes of a bugler with the cavalry.

Treasure Hill: Portrait of a Silver Mining Camp

By WTurrentine Jackson (1963;

reprint, Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2000. xiv + 254 pp. Paper, $17.95.)

O u t of print for many years, this book is still the only study of Nevada's White Pine silver rush. The rush, which began in 1867, was perhaps the "shortest, most intense one in the history of the West" (1); the bust occurred after only three seasons of prospecting. In his preface the author states that the shortlived mining camps consumed "far greater effort and suffering, more money and equipment" than the more famous long-lived camps. This is an account of that

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expenditure of effort in east-central Nevada, the tenuous community brought together by hope in the proverbial pot of gold, and the failure, once again, of western miners to realize their dreams.

The Last War Trail: The Utes and the Settlement of Colorado By Robert Emmitt (1954; reprint, Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000. 378 pp. Paper, $24.95.)

First published in 1954, this volume uses interviews and historical documents as the basis for a narrative of the escalating tensions in western Colorado that led to a battle between the Utes and federal troops, the Meeker Massacre, and the removal of the White River Utes from their treaty lands. Indian Agent Nathan Meeker is portrayed as humorless, single-minded, and small-hearted in his crusade to turn hunters into farmers. At the same time, the Utes are portrayed as honorable, misunderstood children of the land.

Despite stereotypes, the fictionalization of events, and the somewhat inflated tone of the writing, Emmitt's strong effort to understand and communicate the Ute point of view makes for a book that, upon its first publication, probably had an important impact in showing history from a non-majority viewpoint. Today, it is still an absorbing story.

Homeward to Zion: The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia By William Mulder (1957; reprint, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press in cooperation with Brigham Young University Press, 2000. xii + 377 pp. Paper, $16.95.)

Many have greeted the reissuing of this Mormon classic, complete with added maps and photographs, enthusiastically. This is not surprising, since Homeward to Zion tells its story of proselytizing, conversion, emigration, and settlement with style and verve. The research is extensive; Mulder uses varied sources to describe the movements and development of individuals, groups, and larger Scandinavian societies. The book describes Scandinavia's religious and social climate as the first LDS missionaries arrived in Denmark in 1850 and continues through the decades to the 1890s, by which time Scandinavians had become well assimilated and influential in their Utah "Zion."

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North Logan Town: 1934—1970

By Jesse L.Embry (North Logan: North Logan

City, 2000. x + 36 pp. Paper, $10.00.)

North Logan, Utah, has evolved from an atypical M o r m o n village of scattered farms to an expanded and sprawling—but still relatively small—town.

As she tells the story of change, Embry describes the town's strongly M o r m o n culture, the development of utilities and infrastructure, "church-state" cooperation in the building and use of facilities, pressures from developers, and the town board's various means of coping with growth. The book's sources consist mainly of oral histories, so this is largely a view of history through the eyes of those w h o experienced it.

America's Public Holidays, 1865-1920

By Ellen M. Litwicki (Washington, D.C.:

Smithsonian Institution Press, x + 291 pp. $39.95.)

Between 1865 and 1920, Americans created more than twentyfive holidays. The celebrations, some of which became traditional and some of which quietly faded away, reflected the times. The Civil War, emancipation, immigration, labor, class conflict, and urban growth were all impetus for new holidays; many were created out of idealistic, reform-based motivations. Reformers also sought to reclaim virtues and a sense of seriousness that seemed to have been lost in established holidays; the Sane Fourth movement is an example. This book examines holidays as diverse as Memorial Day, Bird Day, and Haymarket Martyrs' Day and the cultural conditions that produced them.

The Gold Rush Diary of Ramon

Gil Navarro Ed. and trans, by Maria del Carmen

Ferreyra and David S. Reher (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, xxii + 315 pp. $45.00.)

W h e n Navarro, a twenty-two-year-old Argentinian political exile, heard of gold in California, he decided to j u m p into the fray. With other investors he gathered 120 men and supplies and sailed with them to California. "Astute, cultured, yet impassioned," he wrote a detailed diary. His position as a n o n American—a highly educated and highly principled observer/participant—allows him to record the events and atmosphere of the gold rush with vivid writing and insightful commentary. H e also reveals himself in his very personal entries. The three years Navarro spent in California came to naught financially, but they no doubt influenced the way his life unfolded. After his return to Argentina, his experiences, talents, and interests led him to a career as a politician and journalist.

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Quest for the Golden Circle: The Four Corners and the Metropolitan West, 1945—1970

By Arthur R. Gomez (Reprint; Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2000. 288

pp. Paper, $16.95.)

The author traverses the economic and social terrain traveled by the cities of the Four Corners region after World War II: the uranium boom; increased development of oil, gas, and timber; accelerated road-building; in-migration; economic decline; and tourist development efforts that were stimulated by the "Golden Circle" vision of Interior secretary Stewart Udall.

The hardback version of the book, published in 1994, looked optimistically at a future of cooperative regional economic development through tourism. However, in six years a lot of water has passed under the bridge, and the author reconsiders those views in the preface to this edition. H e writes, "If population growth at the expense of economic diversification, development at the cost of a diminished land base, and recreation that exacts a price on environmental quality could be viewed as indicators of economic well-being, then my optimism for the future of the Four Corners was well grounded" (xix).

The Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow Edited by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher (Reprint; Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000. xx + 316 pp. Paper, $19.95.)

"Personal texts," writes the editor,"... are the fictions we create in order to make our lives acceptable to ourselves and our imagined readers" (xviii).

Snow's "A Sketch of My Life," first published in 1877 as a "set-off" to Fannie Stenhouse's vitriolic look at Mormondom, is one of the writings printed here.

The others are her Nauvoo journal and notebook of 1842—44 and her trail diary of 1846—47. Written by the woman who became Zion's "poetess, priestess, and presidentess," these are important and interesting texts. The book includes introductions, annotations, and a listing of names mentioned in the trail diary.

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LETTERS Editor: I am pleased to see the autobiography of George A. Hicks brought to a wider audience in'"I'd Rather Have Some Roasting Ears':The Peregrinations of George Armstrong Hicks," by Davis Bitton (Summer 2000, 196-222), especially as copies of the privately printed book are extremely scarce. However, I am disappointed in the defensive M o r m o n bias of the author.

Bitton concludes that Hicks was a "faultfinder, a complainer, a blamer" (221) and a despiser of religion (222). Could not one more justly interpret Hicks's complaints as courageous protests against what he perceived as abuses of his faith by the church leaders? In a period when silence was safest, he loudly deplored the Mountain Meadows Massacre, protested against John D. Lee—who as an adopted son of Brigham Young and a member of the Missouri Danites and the Council of Fifty was not someone to be crossed lightly—and even challenged Brigham Young himself about the massacre.

Hicks may not have been an eyewitness to the instances of violence he attributes to the doctrine of blood atonement, but to write that doctrine off as something that "was never carried out in practice" (210) suggests an unawareness of the research of scholars like D. Michael Quinn. In The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, Quinn documents some two dozen instances of murder or mutilation instigated or approved by M o r m o n leaders in the name of blood atonement—including the ones cited by Hicks.

Could not a more considered analysis of Hicks's thought conclude that a steady M o r m o n faith underpinned his life but was battered by his disappointment in priesthood inspiration and the actions of church leaders in such events as the unfortunate location of Palmyra, Utah, the 1856 handcart disaster, the M o r m o n Reformation, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and the wisdom of the Dixie Mission? In a period when apostates—some so afraid, as we know from sources like Albert Tracy, Jesse Gove, and Alfred Cumming, that they sought the Army's protection—were streaming back to the States or to California, Hicks stood fast.

His deathbed confession of lifelong faith (219) supports this more evenhanded interpretation.

Could not one rightly see Hicks as a forerunner of modern Mormonism—the very M o r m o n i s m devoutly espoused by Davis Bitton? Hicks objected to polygamy, w h i c h the church has renounced; he objected to the M o u n t a i n Meadows Massacre, which the church has condemned; he denounced John D. Lee, w h o m the church allowed to be executed; he objected to theocracy, which the church has left behind; he objected to some unwise colonization projects, which the church eventually abandoned. "A young smart aleck"? H o w about a voice from the future?

Sincerely yours, Polly Aird

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Davis Bitton replies to Polly Aird: The faith of George Armstrong Hicks was "battered," Polly Aird says. In his own perception, she says, he was protesting "abuses of his faith by church leaders." I don't use these currently fashionable terms, but I recount his experiences as he presents them and recognize their influence on him. She is certainly entitled, if she wishes, to see Hicks only as a far-seeing, courageous spokesman for the future.

But such one-dimensional presentism is often unhelpful in seeing issues and personalities in the context of their own time.

Like many others on the frontier, Hicks faced a series of trials. Since much of my article was devoted to going over these, I learn nothing from Aird's listing. But how one responds to challenges is always of great importance. Is it unfair to point out that others who suffered equally or who knew at least as much as Hicks reacted differently? If at times he merely purveys charges of the anti-Mormon press, should not this be recognized? Is it wrong of me to ask in each instance whether Hicks claims firsthand knowledge? If, writing in 1878, he ascribed the worst possible motivation to his leaders, if for him mere allegation of wrongdoing was sufficient evidence, if he readily indulged in insulting name-calling, should I not say so? I doubt that Ms. Aird means to leave the impression that only Hicks deplored the Mountain Meadow Massacre (try Brigham Young and John Taylor) or that every unsolved murder in frontier Utah can fairly be blamed on the Mormons. We may have different standards of what constitutes compelling evidence.

I come not to praise George A. Hicks, or to blame him, but to understand him.

Ms. Aird sees me as "defensive," but nowhere in my article do I defend any of the actions or policies she mentions. As a historian, I have a document in front of me.

Like other vestiges of the past, it is evidence. But evidence of what? I conscientiously evaluate it, accept it as a complex statement of its author's perceptions at a certain point in time, privilege his firsthand experiences as opposed to rumors he heard from others, acknowledge during a certain phase of his life the abrasive personality he himself describes, and sketch a nuanced, not unsympathetic portrayal of one man's evolving attitudes and reactions. To determine whether I succeed, whether I have been fair to my subject, readers are encouraged to consult the original article.

True enough, the issues that exercised Hicks have been left behind. "If George A. Hicks had been able to hunker down and bide his time," I write, "he might gradually have found things more to his liking" (217).

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U T A H STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY FELLOWS THOMAS G.ALEXANDER JAMES B.ALLEN MAUREEN URSENBACH BEECHER EVERETT L. COOLEY BRIGHAM D. MADSEN DEAN L. MAY HELEN Z. PAPANIKOLAS CHARLES S. PETERSON

H O N O R A R Y LIFE MEMBERS VEE CARLISLE EVERETT L. COOLEY LORA CROUCH JACK GOODMAN FLORENCE S.JACOBSEN MARGARET D. LESTER LAMAR PETERSEN MELVIN T.SMITH MARTHA R. STEWART JEROME STOFFEL

Membership in the Utah State Historical Society is open to everyone.

We invite you to join.

If you are already a member you may use this form or a piece of plain paper to purchase gift memberships, or fill in the "Share the Wealth" coupon and we will send those you list a special invitation to join the Society.

MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION Membership Secretary Utah State Historical Society 300 R i o Grande Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 Please enter my one-year membership in the category checked. I understand that I will receive Utah Historical Quarterly, the newsletter, Utah Preservation, and Beehive History. I have enclosed a check or money order in the amount indicated.

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Individual, $20.00 Senior Citizen (65 or over), $15.00 Student, $15.00

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Institution, $20.00 Business, $100.00 Contributing, $25.00 Sustaining, $35.00

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Patron, $50.00 Sponsor, $250.00 Benefactor, $350.00 Life, $500.00

Name Address, City

State

SHARE THE WEALTH Please invite the following persons to join the Historical Society: Name

Address

Name

Address

Name

Address

_Zip_

U T A H

STATE HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History

B O A R D

OF STATE

HISTORY

RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden, 2003, Chair CAROL CORNWALL MADSEN, Salt Lake City, 2001, Vice-Chair MAX J. EVANS, Salt Lake City, Secretary PAUL ANDERSON, Salt Lake City, 2003 MICHAEL W. HOMER, Salt Lake City, 2001 KIM A. HYATT, Bountiful, 2001 JOEL C.JANETSKI, Provo, 2 0 0 1 PAM MILLER, Price, 2 0 0 3 CHRISTIE SMITH NEEDHAM, Logan, 2 0 0 1 ROSS PETERSON, Logan, 2 0 0 3 PAUL D.WILLIAMS, Salt Lake City, 2 0 0 3 WALLY WRIGHT, Salt Lake City, 2 0 0 1

A D M I N I S T R A T I O N MAX J. EVANS, Director WILSON G. MARTIN, Associate Director PATRICIA SMITH-MANSFIELD, Assistant Director STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor KEVIN T.JONES, State Archaeologist

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, under 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 up 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 National Park Service, under provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 as amended.

This program receives financial assistance for identification and preservation of historic properties under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The U. S. Department of the Interior prohibits unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, or handicap in its federally assisted programs. If 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, National Park Service, 1849 C Street, NW, Washington, D C , 20240.