A History of Summit County

Architecture and the built environment

C H A P T E R 8 ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT V V e spend most of our time in or around buildings, but people don't usually think of them as a means to understanding the past. The truth is, however, human-built structures can tell us much about history-although in a different language than books. It is possible to wander through any Summit County town and get a sense of why it was created, how it evolved, who lives there, and what its religious, social, and cultural characteristics are. If we take a close look at the buildings, we can determine when the town was founded, when it was growing quickly or not growing at all, and how the residents made their livings. When we come to understand why each structure was built-in response to the real needs of real people-we can see how those people used ingenuity, craftsmanship, design, and technology to fill those needs and create their society. And we can see that each element in a structure com­municates something about its creators. Mormon Towns: Designing the Real with an Eye to the Ideal No matter where they are, how old they are, or how big they are, 164 ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 165 Mormon towns in Summit County share similar physical character­istics. Each town was usually neatly organized in regular square blocks. Oriented to the cardinal points of the compass, a larger town might be four blocks wide and eight blocks long, with a "Main" street running lengthwise down the middle (usually north to south) and a "Center" street running east-west.1 Other smaller hamlets, however, were developed more haphazardly, most along a single road, as in Hoytsville, Rockport, Woodland, Upton, Marion, and Francis. Settlers had an ideal in mind when they planned their commu­nities, based on a town plan drawn out by Mormon church founder loseph Smith in 1833. This idealized plan, called the "Plat for the City of Zion," called for a square core of religious and public buildings in the very center of the town, a surrounding middle core of commer­cial buildings, and an outlying residential area. Residents were to live close together in town, not on scattered farms; the farmlands were located outside of town. The plan-and the towns based on it- demonstrated physically the importance of theocratic government and community to the Mormons. In addition, the plan embodied Joseph Smith's belief that small towns create a more spiritually and physically healthy living environment than do large cities. In reality, however, the towns in Summit County were only rough approximations of Smith's 1833 plan, which assumed a flat, uniform townsite.2 Not much of the land in Summit County fits that profile, so each group of colonists had to deal with the practical realities of their individual site. The presence of a river (Wanship) or hillside (Coalville) was enough to disrupt any attempt at perfect symmetry. In addition to these anomalies, existing trails or roads often became a major factor influencing town development. The configu­ration of towns located on the main emigrant trail differed subtly from those of other Mormon towns. Rather than strictly following the Plat of Zion, trail towns stretched along the road. The main street functioned as highway, as supply station for travelers, and as the cen­ter of trade and community life. Regular gridded streets then usually grew out from this center line. For many years, chief territorial surveyor Jesse Fox dealt with each town's unique features when he traveled from Salt Lake City to Summit County to draw up the town plans. Although the towns he 166 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY Coalville, about 1870. In the early stages of the community, the centrally located masonry meetinghouse, regular blocks, and fenced lots suggest an emerging Mormon village. (Utah State Historical Society) platted often varied significantly from loseph Smith's ideal, they did capture the essence of the Plat of Zion, embodying order, regularity, and relative homogeneity. In addition to the arrangement of streets, Mormon towns had several features that distinguished t h em from neighboring mining or railroad towns; these included irrigation ditches, certain styles of fences and hay derricks, a centrally located meetinghouse used for church, school, and social functions, and typical house types and architectural styles. One h u n d r e d t h i r t y years later, many of these characteristic nineteenth-century features remain; many others have been lost, however. The first group of colonists of a town chose lots for themselves. Then, as new settlers arrived, additional lots were distributed around the central core, a n d the town would expand in a fairly organized and easily controlled fashion. ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 167 Mining Towns: Form (Quickly) Follows Function The development of the county's mining towns was different, Park City being the primary example. These boom towns grew in a much more haphazard manner. From the first, Park City was owned and developed by many independent persons and groups rather than by a single governing entity. That is not to say there was no organiz­ing principle behind the city's layout. Historic photographs show that Park City grew from a single street (Main Street) running down the center of Empire Canyon, becoming a town a few blocks wide on either side of Main Street. The earliest town maps show a long, nar­row grid of streets with small lots, typically measuring 25 by 75 feet. Despite alterations and additions, these original streets and lot sizes survive to the present. As growth continued, the town lengthened and widened, spread­ing along the canyon. From the original regular plat, streets veered off at angles and curved up adjacent canyons and hillsides. Some of these twisting roads once led to mines and giant milling structures that no longer exist. Railroad Towns: Single Function Utility Like the railroad tracks running through them, towns created to service or take special advantage of the railroad were typically linear in layout. The small town of Echo is a good example of this pattern, as was Wahsatch before its demise. Echo is long and nar­row, extending at most two blocks eastward and a block more or less westward from the railroad lines that provided the town's rai-son d'etre. As the importance of the railroad decreased over time, Echo itself shrank to the present fraction of its historic size. In 1975 the old Echo train depot was moved to Coalville to be used as a senior citizens' center. In addition to the actual railroad towns, there were also smaller "sidings" or mini-stations at irregular intervals along the railroad route, at places such as Atkinson, Castle Rock, Henefer, and Wahsatch. Some of these featured small frame buildings used to ser­vice trains. 168 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY Resort Communities, Subdivisions, and Planned Unit Developments: Accommodating Modern Living Needs As they expanded, towns of all types added new plats or subdi­visions to the original plat (typically called Plat "A"). In the nine­teenth century, newer plats often repeated the rhythms of the original plat. That is, Plat "B" might add ten more blocks of the same size and arrangement to the east side of Plat "A." In the twentieth century, however, new planning philosophies often rejected the traditional gridded plans in favor of plans thought to be more creative, diverse, and psychologically satisfying. From the air, many newer subdivisions have an organic, cellular appearance, with shorter, curving streets, cul de sacs, areas of planting, and built landscaping features. These late-twentieth- century developments are mostly irregular and asymmet­rical in street layout, reflecting the varied contours of the terrain. Unincorporated developments in Summit Park, Pinebrook, Silver Springs, Jeremy Ranch, and elsewhere share these characteristics. Building Materials: Literally Living Off the Land During the critical first years of colonization, settlers needed shelter that could be built quickly and cheaply using native materi­als. Although in many early Utah settlements builders used adobe, Summit County's rich stands of old-growth timber gave settlers another choice, and they often chose logs. The earliest known photograph of Coalville shows a town of all log structures, with the exception of a small stone meetinghouse. Although they were inevitably replaced by less rustic materials, logs enjoyed a revival during the years between the world wars, when the U.S. Forest Service and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built log structures in the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains. Following World War II, "log kit" houses were built in Park City and some of the recre­ation areas, and in recent decades log construction has become very popular for ski lodges, condominiums, and custom houses. Used in walls, posts, beams, and railings, logs retain their appeal partly because of their visual compatibility with nearby forests and partly because "rustic" styling has become fashionable. Sawmills quickly appeared along waterways in the county, and it wasn't long before cut and sawn wood became readily available to res- ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 169 The only commercial building in Henefer is this turn-of-the-century, wood-framed, wood-sided structure. (Allen Roberts) idents and to mining and railroad companies. The first sawmill in Summit County was built by Samuel C. Snyder in Parley's Park in 1853. In the 1860s and 1870s, ED. Huffeker & Co. and Samuel J. Sudbury 8c Co. operated sawmills using water power from the Weber River and from Chalk Creek. John Taylor and Henry Stevens built mills in Oakley. In the Kamas area, sawmills were operated by the Pack Brothers, Lambert Brothers, lohn Carpenter, and Joseph Williams.3 For complicated or large construction projects such as mining structures, bridges, railroad ties, cribbing, and any multistoried build­ings, dimensioned milled lumber was, and has continued to be, the building material of choice. In fact, only in the last decade have metal framing units become competitive with wood on the basis of struc­tural, economic, and fire-safety criteria. From the earliest years, pragmatic pioneer builders used stone for foundations, retaining walls, bridge piers, road cribbing, and struc­tural walls. Local outcroppings of sandstone and limestone provided "soft" stone, which could be easily quarried, cut, and trimmed. This stone has been used as the main architectural material in several important public structures: schools (for example, the Washington 170 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY The ruins of the 1861-1862 Samuel Hoyt Flour Mill are still standing in Hoytsville. Both smooth and rough cut stone were used. (Utah State Historical Society) School in Park City), churches (St. Mary's Catholic Church and School in Park City), and government buildings (the Summit County Courthouse in Coalville). Local stone was also used for the Coalville LDS meetinghouse, built in 1864-65 and later moved to the "Pioneer Village" at Lagoon Resort in Farmington; the Kimball Stage Station along 1-80 northeast of Park City; the Samuel Hoyt residence and flour mill in Hoytsville; and several houses along the old hillside road from Wanship to West Hoytsville. Compared to brick or adobe, stone is difficult to quarry and work. Still, several of the county's rock quar­ries have remained in operation, producing stone for both local use and export. Adobe did find its way into some Summit County buildings, often because settlers moving into Summit County from older Mormon towns brought with them their knowledge of adobe con­struction. Adobe blocks, or "bricks," made of mud and a binder such as sand, small pebbles, straw, or animal hair, were literally "dirt cheap" to make. Mud of the proper consistency was prepared in ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 171 Samuel Hoyt's Gothic-influenced home, begun in 1866 on the same site as the mill, employs finely cut stone and high-style architecture. (Utah State Historical Society) adobe pits a n d mixed w i t h a h u m a n - or a n i m a l - d r a w n auger, or "screw." The m u d would then be packed into wooden frames-usu­ally measuring 4 by 5 by 12 inches-and placed on flat ground to dry in the sun. Depending on the temperature and wetness of the mud, "dobies" would take from a few days to a week to dry or cure to a hardness usable as a masonry unit. A simple adobe house could then be erected in as little as two or three weeks, a much shorter time than it t o o k to build a s t r u c t u r e of stone or brick. Exterior and interior plaster helped protect against moisture and created a more finished appearance. The house of Edward Richins, built near Echo in 1865, was made of adobe brick. A secondary historical account records t h a t the settlers' houses in Henefer "were built of logs or adobe, with barred shutters. The doors were of heavy plank and the floors were made of firmly packed clay blocks which were laid as close together as pos­sible. The roofs were built of heavy mud, and dried. Another coat of 172 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY From the first years of settlement, builders depended on construction sup­ply companies for their tools and materials. The Morrison-Merrill 8c Co. Store (Later Utah Coal and Lumber), still stands in Park City. (Summit County Historical Society) dry dirt was put on to keep the m u d from cracking, but during the rainy seasons, they would leak!"4 Kiln-fired brick was not available in Utah until the mid-1860s, about the time that Summit County was being seriously settled. By 1869, Summit County kilns were producing a good quality of brick. In that year several men in Hoytsville began brickmaking using the following process: lames Chandler, Obediah Frost and Albert Chandler used dirt and water in the pug mill, which was turned by a horse. When this was mixed to a proper thickness it was pressed into a mold which was sanded before the bricks were put in. The first mold held twelve bricks. These were laid out and covered with burlap for three days so that they would not dry out too quickly as that caused them to crack. When they had enough brick to make a kiln, they would make it 3 feet high, before making a round roof over it. After the kiln was made the outside was plastered with mud to keep the heat in. Chancey and Edwin Crittenden hauled wood out of the hills with oxen; and chopped it into four foot lengths for Mr. Mills to burn in the kiln. Two men worked to keep the fire going night and ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 173 " " : . • • • ' • . Built in 1876, the church in Echo has a stone foundation, brick walls, and simple ornamental trim and a belfry of wood. (Summit County Historical Society) 174 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY The Coalville tabernacle as it looked in the early 1900s. (Brigham Young University, George Beard collection) day for ten days. One hundred and fifty thousand bricks were baked at a time.5 Local brick also was used to build the diminutive church that still stands at the head of so-called Temple Lane in Echo. Built for a Protestant denomination in 1876, the building was deeded over to the Echo School District in 1880. In 1913, when a new school was built in town, the LDS church bought the old building. It was remod­eled in 1927 and again in 1940. In recent years, the building has been lovingly maintained by a local preservation group.6 Other buildings made from this local red and salmon brick remain standing through­out the county, including the old Park City city hall. After the arrival of the railroad, a greater variety of brick and other building materials became available locally. This conveniently corresponded with the onset of Victorian architecture, which called for a wide variety of materials, colors, and textures to achieve the ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 175 Vacant, but a candidate for restoration, this house in Francis has walls of uniformly red-orange brick. (Allen Roberts) desired flamboyant effect. Later buildings from the early twentieth century to the present have used a variety of imported bricks, includ­ing multicolored, striated, rock-faced, and oversized brick. As the county moved out of the early pioneer period, so too did the buildings. Materials became more varied. Around the turn of the century, cast iron was used both as a structural metal and for exterior ornamentation, especially in commercial storefronts. Among the handful of metal facades found on the county's main streets is a fine pressed-metal facade-imported via train through a Mesker Brothers mail-order catalogue-on the front of the building at 438 Main Street in Park City that presently houses the Szechwan Chinese Restaurant. Concrete block and poured concrete, employed in the Memorial Hall and Elks Club buildings in Park City, were occasion- 176 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY This new commercial building on the main street of Kamas features multi­colored brick and is architecturally compatible with its historic neighbors. (Allen Roberts) ally used, as was rock-faced block simulating stone, used in some houses and churches, including the meetinghouse built in Marion between 1910 and 1914. As a result of the world wars, new materials and technologies were developed which eventually found their ways into the building construction industry. These materials have been used in new con­struction, but they also have been used in alterations to historic struc­tures, where they have too often damaged the character of those buildings. Building Types: For Every Function, a Different Building Among the oldest surviving structures in the county are the "Old Mormon Breastworks" in East Canyon and the fortifications in Echo Canyon. Now in ruins, these stone walls and cribbings were built as defensive embattlements against United States Army troops ("Johnston's Army") during the so-called Utah War of 1857-58. A member of lohnston's party observed on 21 June 1858: ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 177 We . . . continue our march through Echo Canon. Arriving, after a pretty toilsome stretch, within about three miles from the farther mouth of the canon we come upon the ruins of fortifications attempted by the Mormons in the design to bar our progress. . . . There was, upon a neat rise at the left, an earthwork of decidedly respectable pretensions, while in the gulch, or sub-canon at the right, a wall extended which would have been out of range from the front and difficult to carry. A tolerable defense was thrown across the grand canon, connecting the work at the left with other points, and at front of this also it was intended the bottom should have been flooded by the waters of the creek, dammed for the pur­pose. 7 Not much remains of these hastily built structures to tell of their role in this important "war" between the Mormons and the U.S. gov­ernment- a war in which no shots were fired but which significantly changed the development of the territory. Of the several town forts that later were built by the Mormons as defensive structures during the Black Hawk War, none remain. In 1866 the people of Henefer constructed a fort of logs along the Weber River. It enclosed about an acre and consisted of "log houses facing the center with the outside walls, having port holes through them, serving as a protection."8 Also in 1866, the settlers of Hoytsville actu­ally tore down their cabins and reused the materials to build a square fort, with the houses facing the interior towards the church meeting­house in the center. Along the outside of the perimeter walls were the stables and corrals for livestock.9 Similar forts were built in Coalville, Kamas, Peoa, and Rockport during the mid-1860s. As conflicts with Native Americans subsided, the forts were dismantled and their sal­vageable materials were reused in building foundations, walls, and fences. The first residential s t r u c t u r e s were of necessity t e m p o r a ry dugouts and primitive log cabins. Edmund Rees and his family, who moved to Coalville in 1859, built a dugout as a makeshift shelter. Charles and Louisa Richins and their one child, having moved to Henefer in 1860, lived in two tents before inhabiting three dugouts for more t h a n a year. According to a report, "Then they built two rooms of adobe brick over the dugouts. The following year three 178 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY A mixture of vernacular stone masonry and Greek Revival trim is found in the Kimball Stage Station. Built in the early 1860s, it may be the county's oldest surviving building. (Utah State Historical Society) more additions were made. Year after year this continued until, when the house was finished, it contained fifteen rooms. It was known as the 'Big House' by everyone in the valley. This house was the first one built out of material other than logs."10 As means allowed, settlers built larger homes, some using floor plans borrowed from books they had brought across the plains. The first multiroom Mormon residences had "hall-parlor" floor plans with symmetrical, broadside facades and two rooms of unequal size. Many examples of this house type, built of log, lumber, stone, or brick, remain in the county. The first "style" in the county was the Greek Revival, brought by pioneers from Nauvoo and eastern U.S. cities. The oldest extant example is the early 1860s Kimball Stage Station, possibly the county's oldest building. During the 1880s and especially from 1890 through 1910, Victorian architecture became the rage. The county has several Queen Anne and Victorian Eclectic houses, including a fine group of wood-frame cottages in the Marion area. After Victorian architecture faded into the background, residents continued to copy the styles popular in the rest of the country. The bungalow style was beloved during the ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 179 Standing in isolation along the road north of Echo, this Victorian Eclectic house has a double-crosswing plan, brick walls, shingled gables, and scroll-cut "gingerbread" trim. (Allen Roberts) early twentieth century, and many of the homes built in Park City after the 1898 fire are in that style. Throughout the century, cabins and second homes also have tended to mirror trends elsewhere. Multifamily housing has been around for a long time in Summit County, whether to house polygamists' families or single-men work­ers. Early boarding houses-four of which have been preserved in Park City-double houses, and duplexes all have been built. But the real boom in multifamily housing occurred when the recreation industry took off in Park City, producing scores of hotels, lodges, and condominiums. One of the earliest-Utah's first condominium pro­ject, in fact-is Treasure Mountain Inn, a box-like building near the top of Main Street. The inn was built before Park City adopted design guidelines. More recent projects have been more varied in plan, form, size, and overall design quality. Religious and public meetinghouses were a high priority in the early years of Mormon towns. The first churches were generally simple in plan, with a single large room and a gabled roof-not much different from the residences of the time. These early churches 180 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY Picturesque, flamboyant styling was created with a tower, bay window, porch, and fancy trim in this Victorian dwelling in Coalville. (Allen Roberts) were fairly quickly replaced by larger edifices. Replacing an earlier log structure, the second meetinghouse in Henefer was built in 1872; it was a one-room, red-brick building measuring 28 by 54 feet. The sec­ond church in Hoytsville was built of white sandstone in 1882-83. After burning down for lack of a chimney, it was rebuilt in 1887. A single chapel or sanctuary with a front entry vestry was a com­mon religious building type for Mormons, Protestants, and Catholics during the late nineteenth century. The former LDS meetinghouse in Coalville, since relocated to Lagoon Resort in Davis County, is a good example, as are t h e few small but elegant Catholic and Protestant churches on Park Avenue in Park City. Among t h em are St. Mary's of the Assumption Old Town Chapel and school, the former St. John's Lutheran Church, the former Community Church, and St. Luke's Chapel. A frame LDS chapel, n ow the Blue Church Lodge, also sits on Park Avenue. However, in the past decade, several denominations have built large new churches on State Road 224 northwest of Park City. These buildings generally have taken good advantage of native materials and impressive site views, and large windows invite natural light into the buildings. ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 181 The Woodland Cash Store, built about 1920, is a simple but well-preserved commercial structure typical of rural communities. (Allen Roberts) As the Mormon communities grew, so did their buildings. At the same time, some communities built smaller buildings alongside the meetinghouses: these included t i t h i n g offices and bishop's store­houses, Relief Society halls, and granaries. Typical of these were the tithing barn and granary built during Bishop George Sargent's tenure in Hoytsville. The women of Hoytsville built a Relief Society Hall in 1882. Easily the most outstanding Mormon landmark in the county-was the Coalville Tabernacle. The organization of the Summit Stake of Zion on 8-9 July 1877 gave b i r th to the tabernacle project. A cen­tral house of worship, or "stake center," was needed for large assem­blies of Mormon faithful from all of Summit County and western Wyoming. A committee composed of architect/builder Thomas L. Allen, George Dumfore, Andrew Hobon, Charles Richins, and Chester Staley was appointed to secure plans as well as estimates of materials and cost." Thomas Allen is often credited with designing the building, but it 182 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY Erected at great effort over a twenty-year period from 1879-99, the cathedral-like Summit Stake Tabernacle in Coalville was a monument to the devotion and skill of its builders. (Utah State Historical Society) seems a p p a r e n t that the p l a n and architectural expression were derived from architect Obed Taylor's design of the Assembly Hall built recently o n Temple Square in Salt Lake City. However, that building was made of blocks of quartzite (granite), while the taber­nacle in Coalville had a superstructure of brick trimmed with sand­stone. It is likely that Allen served as the local supervising architect ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 183 and that he modified the design to distinguish the one building from the other. The design revisions were successful. The Coalville church proved to be the more elegant, ethereal, and Gothic of the two related buildings. The committee's aspirations for the tabernacle were highly ambi­tious and would tax the human and financial resources of Summit County Mormons for two decades. The floor plan called for a main structure 45 by 90 feet, with transepts of 8 by 25 feet on the two sides and west end, and a 22-by-25-foot vestry on the east end. Upon the review and approval of construction documents by church architects and stake leaders, the site was secured. Groundbreaking occurred in the spring of 1879, and the cornerstone was laid by Apostle Franklin D. Richards on 7 August 1879.12 The tabernacle was sufficiently completed to host the LDS church's semiannual conference in October 1886. Finishing touches were added over the next thirteen years and the building was finally dedicated on 14 May 1899 by the same Mormon apostle who had dedicated the cornerstone twenty years earlier.13 Rising like a cathedral above the town's surrounding smaller buildings, the tabernacle featured a decorative vocabulary of finely crafted Gothic Revival ornament, including a 117-foot-tall central tower, massive pointed-arch windows with art glass from Belgium, and buttresses topped by tall pinnacles and spires. Inside, the sanctu­ary space soared vertically to a vaulted ceiling on which portraits of all the Mormon prophets were painted. The tabernacle was com­pleted at a cost of $55,000, most of it contributed in materials and labor by the men, women, and children of the area. The building, used as both a stake center and ward meetinghouse, was remodeled in 1940-41 to accommodate the area's growing LDS population. Ironically, it was the addition of a second floor, lowering the ceiling height of the chapel room, that provided a justification to those who planned the building's destruction thirty years later. The tabernacle had lost its architectural integrity, and, besides, there was another one like it in Salt Lake City, so there is no need to save the one here, they rationalized. In the pre-dawn hours of 5 March 1971, Coalville townspeople were awakened by the rumble of bulldozers, the cracking of giant 184 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY 3* :";:;>;:- In the pre-dawn hours of 5 March 1971, the Summit Stake Tabernacle was demolished by wrecking balls and bulldozers as townspeople watched. (Utah State Historical Society) timbers, and the falling of brick and stone. By daybreak, the tower of the tabernacle, which had been visible for miles around as a symbol of the Mormon presence, lay shattered. The tabernacle was torn down more than a quarter of a century ago, but it was an event still keenly remembered by many today (1997). It is impossible to calculate the impact of the tabernacle's destruction. Small numbers of historic buildings are destroyed every year, despite protests from preservationists, but the Coalville incident was greater in magnitude. It was a singular event that received not just local and state but national news coverage. In an attempt to prevent its destruction, preservationists made several visits to the highest-ranking LDS church officials in Salt Lake City. Lawsuits were threatened. Attempts were made to buy the build­ing. A "roundtable" of three analytical articles on the subject appeared in the scholarly publication Dialogue: A fournal of Mormon Thought.14 A history of the Wright family of Coalville contains a ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 185 thirty-four-page section on the tabernacle's demise. In Provo, the chairman of Brigham Young University's Environmental Design Department was fired and the entire department was dismantled after the chairman attempted to organize an on-site protest of the proposed demolition.15 The tabernacle's destruction caused one man to spend the next five years researching and writing an inventory of historic Mormon architecture.16 The adverse consequences of the loss in Coalville, along with uproar over the later gutting and moderniz­ing of the interior of the Logan LDS Temple, may have been positive factors in the saving and restoring of the splendid Manti LDS Temple and several significant LDS tabernacles, including those in Brigham City, Provo, Logan, Manti, Randolph, Vernal, and Malad, Idaho. However, this silver lining was not much of a consolation to many in the Summit LDS Stake. Not everyone was distressed. Local old-timer C.B. Copley, born in Coalville in 1898, the year before the building's dedication, said that his grief subsided after seeing that the replacement stake center was functionally superior to the historic one.17 But others who agreed on the need for a new facility wished the old one had been put to some other community use. When asked recently to identify the most important event of the last fifty years, longtime Coalville area resi­dent Mae W Moore responded without hesitation, "tearing down the tabernacle-it broke a lot of hearts."18 In more recent decades, the LDS church has built conventional meetinghouses of much more standard plans to replace older, smaller buildings. The present buildings feature large, dominating roofs, short exterior walls, and few or no windows bringing light into the chapels.19 Within a few years of their founding, most towns had acquired a handful of stores, saloons, laundries, banks, groceries, clothiers, and other commercial establishments. At first, these buildings tended to be simple, one-room, stone, log, adobe, or wood-frame structures, usually with gables or shed roofs and often with balloon-framed false fronts. Coalville's J. S. Salmon & Co. store (built in 1882-83) and the lohnston Jewelry Store (circa 1905), were both single-room, wood-frame, false-front buildings. Toward the end of the century, as wealth and population increased, two- and three-story commercial struc- 186 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY : Like other milling structures, the massive, varied forms of the wood-frame Silver King "Sampler" are now only a memory. (Utah State Historical Society) tures were built using stone, brick, or both. Many of these remain in area towns today. The two-story, brick, stone-trimmed Coalville Co­op is one of many good examples. Less prosperous businesses con­tinued to erect larger frame structures, evident especially in Park City but also found in Coalville and other towns. Commercial architecture changed slightly over time, but larger ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 187 commercial structures weren't built in the county until the 1960s. The newest development is the mushrooming of malls, fast-food restaurants, and discount stores at Kimball lunction. Some new com­mercial areas such as Prospector Square in Park City have also been platted and developed entirely for new stores and office buildings. These trends will likely continue as the population expands. Government buildings have tended to be larger and more impos­ing than most other building types. The county courthouse in Coalville is an architecturally impressive building, as is its sensitive, newer addition. Built in 1903-04 for $20,000, the "white sandstone" building was designed in the Romanesque Revival style by architects EC. Woods and Son of Ogden. The city halls and other government buildings in smaller towns are proportionally more modest. A recent addition to the county's government buildings is the new city hall in Kamas, a picturesque, post-modern style building on Main Street. The largest and in some ways most impressive structures built in Summit County were the gigantic processing mills erected in and around Park City. With some containing as many as eleven levels and more than 100,000 square feet of floor area, these heavy timber and wood or metal-sided behemoths cascaded down hillsides in a variety of forms and masses. Each was designed to house a particu­lar function or type of machinery. Among the most spectacular of the mining structures were the Marsac Mill, Silver King Sampler, Silver King Coalition Building, Ontario Mill, Union Concentrator, and Anchor Works. Although mills once dominated the city's skyline, they are now gone, and only a few mining structures remain in the nearby canyons. The desire to educate their children in formal schools led the county's various groups of settlers to quickly build schools. The first school in Hoytsville was taught in a one-room structure measuring about 14 by 16 feet. It is reported that "the room was heated by an open fire place which burned wood. When the wind blew, the chil­dren were obliged to rush out of doors to prevent being overcome by the smoke from the fire. The seats were made from slabs, the flat side up. The desks were slabs attached to the wall so that the pupil faced the wall."20 Within the first decade of their settlement, larger communities HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY The Mid-Mountain Lodge, a boarding house for miners in the mountains west of Park City, was saved when it was moved to the next valley and ren­ovated as a ski-in restaurant (Allen Roberts Collection) began to construct larger schools. Upton's second school-a two-room, wood-frame building with a small bell tower-was typical. Hoytsville's second school was a large, single-room structure built of brick in 1889. Echo's joint school and meetinghouse built of brick in 1876 is still standing. A larger building, the Washington District School, was built of native stone in 1889 in Park City. Within its T-shaped floor plan, the school originally had three large classrooms. Left vacant for decades, the old schoolhouse was extensively restored as a bed-and-breakfast lodge in the mid-1980s. Between 1890 and 1915, districts built masonry schools with four to eight rooms on one or two floors. Because of their boxlike forms, they are referred to today as "school blocks." Examples are the small elementary schools in Peoa and Echo. Between 1915 and World War II, Utah's school districts followed the national pattern of construct­ing "horizontal schools," so named for their sprawling floor plans. Among the local examples are the former Marsac and Park City High schools in Park City. Since World War II, schools have reflected the current educational theories and needs. As they gradually filled in the towns, these buildings and others ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 189 expressed the nature of each place and its people. The towns' struc­tures represent those things that have been most important to the residents, and they form the public and private spaces where com­munity takes shape. Changing Townscapes: Late-Twentieth-Century Developments and Challenges Valleys, hillsides and even hilltops in the county in the late-twen­tieth century are filling with new, practically instant communities. Some new developments encourage huge custom houses; others fea­ture more moderately sized dwellings. In more remote places, cabins and small houses sprawl across the hills. As old farms and grazing lands are sliced into housing lots, the landscape in virtually every area of the county changes annually. Most towns have adopted ordinances and codes in an effort to make the growth occur in efficient, com­munity- enhancing, and aesthetically pleasing ways. Some of these regulations are more effective than others, however. The county government has chosen to allow urban development in unincorporated areas-a precedent set when it approved the Summit Park development in the 1950s. As a result, various large subdivisions have blossomed in the Snyderville area, including Pinebrook, leremy Ranch, Highland Estates, Silver Summit, Silver Creek, and Silver Springs. Each of these planned developments lacks what every Mormon town included: a definite center of community, with public, spiritual, and commercial buildings as gathering places. Churches and schools have been added adjacent to these areas, but usually only as afterthoughts. Commercial buildings are clustered at the freeway interchanges instead of in the town centers, and they include discount stores, fast-food restaurants, and large parking lots. Obviously, the built environment in these subdivisions expresses an entirely different purpose from that expressed by both the Mormon and the industrial towns. The county's historical legacy has been lessened by the some­times unnecessary loss of noteworthy buildings. Gone are the Grand Opera House, the Park City Bank, the Silver King Coalition Building, and other milling structures. Gone are the Summit LDS Stake Academy and LDS Tabernacle buildings in Coalville and the elegant 190 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY A good example of compatible new construction is the east addition to the historic Summit County Courthouse. Both structures are two stories and feature masonry walls and tall windows. (Allen Roberts) 1880s-era Carpenter house in Kamas, which was t o rn down in 1958 to make way for a gas station. Gone too are u n c o u n t e d churches, schools, commercial and industrial structures, pioneer-era buildings, bridges, and ore-hauling towers. As public support for historical preservation has increased, however, the rate of demolition has slowed. The Park City community in recent years has been particu­larly strong in its determination to save historic buildings. Through its design guidelines, Historic District Commission, educational and matching grant programs, the city government has successfully sup­ported the private sector in preserving and restoring nearly 200 of Park City's remaining historic structures. Other communities and individuals also have been major play­ers in the preservation movement. The Summit County Courthouse has been renovated with a sensitively designed addition. The Samuel Hoyt mansion and several other important residences countywide have undergone various levels of restoration. There are preservation projects still waiting to be accomplished-the Kimball Stage Stop ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT 191 complex and Coalville's Main Street are just two possibilities-but with each saved building the communal connection between past and present grows stronger. The preservation movement has proven itself to be not a passing, elitist fad but a valuable strategy for improving our physical environment. ENDNOTES 1. See G. Lowery Nelson, The Mormon Village (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1952). 2. C. Mark Hamilton, Nineteenth Century Mormon Architecture and City Planning (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 13-31. 3. Utah Territory Agricultural 8c Industrial Census for 1860, 1870, 1880, 1890, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City. 4. Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday, 50-51. 5. Ibid., 157. 6. Summit County Bee, 1 lanuary 1970. 7. Albert Tracy, "The Utah War: lournal of Albert Tracy, 1858-1860," Utah Historical Quarterly 13 (1945): 22-23. 8. Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday, 51. 9. Ibid., 154. 10. Ibid. 11. Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday, 118-19. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 94-95. 14. See Dialogue 5, no. 4. The articles include Edward Geary's "The Last Days of the Coalville Tabernacle," "The Coalville Tabernacle: A Point of View" by an anonymous author, and "The Lesson of Coalville" by Paul G. Salisbury. 15. Despite a nearly unanimous vote to raze the Bountiful LDS Tabernacle, church president Spencer W. Kimball intervened and person­ally overturned the decision and spared the 1857-62 Greek Revival build­ing. The building was later restored and expanded and is still in use. 16. See Allen D. Roberts, Historic Architecture of the Church of fesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Utah Division of State History, LDS Historical Department and Cornerstone: Mormon Architectural Heritage, 1974). As a direct result of the tabernacle's demolition, Roberts became an historical architect in an effort to help prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future. 192 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY 17. C.B. Copley, interview with Allen Roberts on 22 March 1996, Coalville. 18. Mae W. Moore, interview with Allen Roberts on 22 March 1996, Coalville. 19. Detailed information on Mormon architecture is found in Roberts, Historic Architecture of the Church of fesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Allen D. Roberts. "Religious Architecture of the L.D.S. Church: Influences and Changes Since 1847" Utah Historical Quarterly 43 (Summer 1975): 310-27. 20. Peterson, Echoes of Yesterday, 164.