Grouse Creek Cultural Survey

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xii The Grouse Creek Cultural Survey for preservationists. Grouse Creek's abundance of old buildings can help us document the community's history. Yet when Milt Oman breaks in a new horse, when Oren Kimber turns the irrigation water onto his field, or when Wallace Betteridge braids a rawhide rope, we are also witnessing history, for these activities are done today much as they were fifty to seventy-five years ago. Tangible landscape features such as ranch houses and corrals and intangible traditions such as celebrations and occupational prac­tices are part of the same cultural fabric. This report is about the history and culture of Grouse Creek. It describes a survey conducted during July 1985 by a team of folklorists, architectural historians, and historians. The purpose of the survey was to test the idea of combining in the same fieldwork a concern for architecture, folk arts, and folklife. The work was motivated by a growing commitment among public-sector historians and folklorists to a more com­prehensive approach to preservation that includes both tangible and intangible cultural resources and embraces both the historical past and the cultural present. It is useful to think of this broader approach as cultural conservation, a term that underscores a con­cern not simply with cultural products like houses, quilts, or songs, but with the deeper values and processes of culture itself. The focus of this report therefore is not on history, although a history of Grouse Creek should be written, nor on ethnography, although a full-scale folklife study of the area is warranted, but on concept and method. It examines one project, reviewing its background and genesis, describing its planning and execu­tion, reporting its findings, and judging what may be learned from it. Neither the survey nor the report could have been accomplished without the sup­port and encouragement of the American Folklife Center, the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, the Folk Arts Program of the Utah Arts Council, the Western Folklife Center, the Interagency Resources Division of the National Park Service, and Utah State University. Special thanks for offering their advice on the manuscript are due to de Teel Patterson Tiller and Patricia L. Parker of the National Park Service's In­teragency Resources Division and Thomas F. King of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. The field team is particularly indebted to the people of Grouse Creek who genially endured nearly a month of questions, interviews, and interruptions. Doug and Kathleen Tanner and their children deserve special thanks, for they fed us and kept our spirits up. Max and Melissa Tanner, Allen Tanner, Ella Tanner, Archie and Rhea Toyn, Winfred Kimber, Marge Thompson, Verna Kimber Richardson, and Oren and Opal Kimber are only a few of the people that made our stay profitable and enjoyable. Our thanks to them all. Finally, this volume is dedicated to the memories of Henry Carter and Tricia Tanner.