A History of Summit County

Living off the land

CHAPTER 12 LIVING OFF THE LAND I.n the spring of 1997, a survey went out to residents of the more rural areas of Summit County-including the Kamas and Weber River valleys. The survey, which asked residents what they thought about commercial development, also attempted to measure attitudes about the importance of agriculture in these areas. Of those who responded, only 5.6 percent said they personally benefited from hav­ing agriculture in the area, and only 3.9 percent said that agriculture was the occupation of the head of the household. On the other hand, a majority (53 percent) said agriculture plays a dominant role in the community, and many residents said it was important to preserve that lifestyle. "There is a perception that the economics of agriculture is more important than what is actually taking place," planner Shawn Seeger told the Park Record.1 When compared to the vast wheat fields of the Great Plains or the irrigated valleys of central California, Utah's agricultural output is small. And even among Utah's twenty-nine counties, Summit County is no agricultural powerhouse. Its growing season is short and its arable land is limited to a few mountain valleys. In the 1992 U.S. 261 262 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY ^'1''HVS:i<''^~?f£'i A Coalville farm scene in the early spring, about 1900. (Brigham Young University, George Beard collection) Census of Agriculture, Summit ranked fifteenth among Utah's twenty-nine counties, with about $15 million in agricultural prod­ucts. Nevertheless, it is easy to understand why an agricultural lifestyle remains important to many county residents. The farms and forests have done as much to define the character of eastern Summit County as the mines and ski resorts have done to define Park City. It was the fertile river valleys that attracted the first settlers to the area in the late 1850s. It was the rolling hillsides that offered grazing land for their sheep and cattle. And it was the forested mountains that produced thousands of acres of timber to build homes, mines, and railroads. The first settlers recognized the agricultural potential of Parley's Park (the Snyderville Basin), the Kamas Valley, and the Weber River valley. They claimed the land from the federal government, built farms and sawmills, cut the forests, and planted crops. Newspaper stories and the diaries of early settlers recount attempts to plant a variety of crops in these valleys, including pota­toes, grains, and even fruit trees. Mills to grind the grains were built LIVING OFF THE LAND 263 at Coalville, Echo, Hoytsville, Oakley, and Wanship. However, in spite of some early successes, farmers soon discovered that the mountain valleys presented a hostile climate for many crops. The winters could be frigid, and killing frosts could occur at any time of the year. By the early 1880s, county farmers were focusing more of their efforts on livestock-particularly sheep and cattle, which fed on native plants and hardy crops such as hay a n d alfalfa (lucerne). By 1883, local farmers had more than 7,000 cattle. Early residents of Davis County, drawn by the lush grass in the Weber River valley a n d Parley's Park, began driving their cattle up Weber and Silver Creek canyons in the spring and then down again in the fall. The Atkinson, Brown, Hatch, Moss, Pace and Nelson fam­ilies, among others, soon saw the year-round potential of these alpine valleys, w i t h their supply of i r r i g a t i o n water, and settled perma­nently. 2 About the t u r n of the century, creameries were started in several county towns, including Marion (1896), Francis (1897), Hoytsville (1899), Oakley (1900), and Henefer (1904). In 1915, t h e Park Record described the county's thriving dairy industry: The proximity of Salt Lake, Ogden and Park City assure markets of the highest order with a minimum of transportation expense: The Park City branch of the Denver 8c Rio Grande railroad daily takes from Snyderville alone better than five hundred gallons of milk and cream to Salt Lake City. While the Park City branch of the Union Pacific railroad gathers and takes to the main line per­haps an equal amount of milk and cream from the hamlets that dot its line between Park City and Echo. Besides the amounts shipped out, several modern creameries are supplied with cream sufficient to enable them to produce perhaps two thousand or more pounds of butter per week. Add to this the consumption of milk and cream of Park City's (5000) population and we have quite a considerable dairy production in the county.3 According to agricultural census figures, the amount of milk sold by Summit County farms increased steadily, from 1.14 million gallons in 1919 to 3.66 million gallons in 1954.4 Farming in general, and raising livestock in particular, continued to sustain a large number of Summit County families. In 1950 there 264 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY were 480 farms in the county, of which 362 had milk cows. That year, almost 32 percent of the county work force was employed in agricul­ture. 5 However, it was a demanding lifestyle. In a recent interview, William Ward Stevens, who was b o r n in Oakley and tended dairy cattle in the Kamas Valley as an adult, described a daily routine that was "more trying t h a n most occupations": We started milking about 4:15 or 4:30 A.M. After the cows were milked we would clean the barn and equipment, then feed the small calves their milk. We would then feed the cows their hay. After breakfast we would have the sheds to clean and the other livestock to feed. During the summer, some of us would go to the fields to put up the hay or take a stream of water to irrigate. We would start milking again about 4 P.M. After the milking, we would have to feed the calves, and often after supper we would have some more irrigation to do or repair some of the machinery. One of the first things that I learned on the farm was that you never run out of work.6 The Oakley creamery was s t a r t e d by Stevens's grandfather, William H. Stevens. At first it ran on a part-time basis, making butter two or three days a week. As business prospered, it began making cheese along with the butter. The Stevens family went on to open new creameries in Salt Lake City a n d Evanston, Wyoming, and then bought existing cheese plants in St. Charles, Idaho, and in Lyman and Mountain View, Wyoming. The second half of the twentieth century has seen a dramatic transformation in the dairy industry in Summit County. Reflecting nationwide trends, many farmers with small dairy herds have sold out rather t h a n t ry to compete in an increasingly capital-intensive industry. The children of farmers and ranchers, instead of learning the family trade, have taken jobs in the tourism/recreation industry or moved to the cities. In addition, the construction of reservoirs and interstate highways has cost some county farmers thousands of acres of their most productive land. Suburban sprawl has crept into other areas once devoted to farming, particularly in the Snyderville Basin outside Park City. One of the survivors is Hoytsville's Glenn Brown, a third-gener- LIVING OFF THE LAND 265 ation dairy farmer, who has a herd of about 350 cows. "When people only had 25 or 30 (cows), that was a good size," Brown said. "Now we have a very modest size of herd. Now there are not many farms under 100."7 According to census figures, the number of dairy cows now stands at about 40 percent of 1950 levels and the number of farms with dairy cows has dropped from 362 in 1950 to only 26 in 1992. Meanwhile, the size of the average dairy herd has grown from thir­teen cows in 1950 to seventy-four in 1992.8 On the other hand, the numbers of beef cattle in the county have actually increased in the last half of the twentieth century. The agri­cultural census shows that the total number of cattle and calves in Summit County rose from about 14,000 in 1950 to about 22,700 in 1992. However, in recent years, there have been signs that ranchers of beef cattle are facing a struggle to stay in business in the wake of declining profits. "During the past few years, there's been a transfer of profits in the beef industry from the rachers to the meatpacking industry," Cary Peterson, Utah's commissioner of agriculture, told the Deseret News in 1996. "That phenomenon, combined with higher feed prices and droughts, are combining to threaten the solvency of 25 to 30 percent of Utah's and the nation's cattle ranchers."9 In the same newspaper story, Summit County Commissioner Tom Flinders predicted that, if these ranchers were forced to sell, their land would be lost to agriculture: "It's real sorrowful to see these people who have been on these ranches for 100 years have to sell out because they can't afford to pay their bills. There's no incentive for young ranchers to stay on the farm." Ranchers also are facing increasing restrictions on grazing on federal land. Concerns about watershed damage and competition from other users such as backpackers and hikers have convinced offi­cials to increase grazing fees and reduce the number of animal per­mits. In 1993, for example, the U.S. Forest Service issued a decision reducing the number of cattle allowed on the 72,000-acre Kamas Valley allotment by 40 percent.10 Counting Sheep Like their counterparts in the cattle industry, owners of sheep also currently are struggling to survive in the face of escalating land 266 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY values, new subdivisions, and increasing restrictions on federally owned grazing land. According to the Utah Gazetteer, Summit County residents owned 9,582 sheep in 1883. However, these num­bers do not reflect the hundreds of thousands of animals registered in other parts of Utah that used Summit County for summer range. Many northern Utah ranchers grazed their sheep in the Uinta Mountains during the summer and then moved them to the lower-elevation deserts of western Utah for the winter. Each spring and fall, sheep were herded through the canyons and Wasatch Front commu­nities in huge drives involving tens of thousands of animals. For decades, Emigration and Parleys canyons were major sheep thor­oughfares, although there was rising concern about the damage this practice was causing to Salt Lake City's watersheds.11 Some sheepmen took advantage of the railroads to simplify the process. By the turn of the century, railroad towns such as Wahsatch in Echo Canyon had become major shipping points for sheep. In lune 1903, the Coalville Times reported that 489 carloads of sheep had been unloaded at Wahsatch during the spring season.12 After their arrival in the spring, crews set up camps to shear the sheep. "Our little burgh is having something of a boom," the Wahsatch correspondent to the Coalville Times reported in May 1898. "Several shacks and shanties are in course of erection for use during the sheep shearing season." According to one estimate, 700,000 pounds of wool were clipped at Wahsatch alone during the spring of 1899. By the middle of June, wagonloads of wool would start arriv­ing at railroad shipping points such as Echo and Wahatch.13 On a statewide basis, the number of sheep rose tenfold in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, from about 233,000 in 1880 to more than 2.5 million in 1900.14 As livestock numbers rose, sheep­men from large concerns such as Hatch Brothers and the Deseret Land and Live Stock Company began to compete for prime grazing lands with the local farmers, many of whom raised cattle for beef or for dairy products. In some cases, competion became conflict. "Several sheep men have been in this vicinity looking for a range for their sheep," the Echo correspondent to the Coalville Times reported in April 1899. "This is very discouraging to a few farmers who depend on the feed for a few milch cows upon which they depend for a liv- LIVING OFF THE LAND 267 ing. Why don't the farmers organize and defend their rights against some of these sheep men?"15 The Summit County Commission even joined the fray, passing an ordinance in December 1898 requiring the licensing of businesses t h a t grazed sheep in the county. However, t h a t ordinanc e was repealed a few months later. According to a Deseret News correspon­dent, t h e residents of Henefer came to the conclusion that it was futile to fight the sheepmen: The enterprise of the people of Hennefer is to be commended. Instead of deploring the evils of capital, the rapacity of corpora­tions and the bugaboo of expansion, they have devoted their ener­gies to providing work for themselves. The result is that the village of Hennefer enjoys the distinction of being the richest settlement in Summit county. While the people of other districts were fighting the sheepmen in a vain endeavor to keep them off the ranges the sturdy farmers of Hennefer purchased sheep for themselves and used the surrounding ranges for their own flocks."16 Farmers in other communities eventually followed Henefer's lead, starting their own flocks. In many cases they would pool their resources, combining sheep and rangeland with their neighbors and hiring a herder to tend the joint herd.17 By 1925, t h e number of sheep registered to Summit Count farmers had risen to 43,079. The num­ber peaked at 69,532 in 1969; by 1992 it had returned to the level of the 1920s.18 Statewide statistics show t h a t the n u m b e r of sheep peaked at about 2.9 million head in 1930 and declined steadily over the next sixty years. In 1992 the census counted about 520,000 sheep, less than 20 percent of the total some sixty years earlier. According to a 1964 study of the Utah sheep industry, one reason for the decline was a sharp reduction in the number of sheep permitted on federal land.19 In large part, those reductions were triggered by concerns over damage caused by the overgrazing of cattle and sheep. As early as the 1890s there were signs that Utah's public lands could not sustain the growing number of animals that were herded upon t h em each sum­mer. "The timbered slopes, which are essential to c o n t i n u e d civic progress, were overrun by reckless grazing, and extensive areas of 268 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY ranges changed i n t o b a r r e n t r a m p l e d dust beds," one early study reported. "In those days the mountain herds could be located by the clouds of dust that rose above them."20 In a 1902 visit to Utah, Albert F. Potter, chief of grazing for the federal Division of Forestry, docu­mented several cases where large numbers of sheep were competing for all-too-little feed.21 Although federal officials began taking steps to correct the dam­age, problems with overgrazing persisted well into the twentieth cen­tury. Forest Ranger A.E. Briggs, w h o was assigned to t h e Kamas District in 1936-37, noted: I found several cases of poor management practices. Some impor­tant watershed areas were being seriously abused through exces­sive grazing use. I spent enough time on each abused area to analyze the soil and vegetation conditions, and prepare notes to be used later in describing the conditions and recommending urgently needed adjustments to lighten or eliminate the grazing abuse.22 Briggs recommended that "some of t h e most abused areas be closed to grazing entirely a n d downward adjustments on other areas ranging u p to sixty per cent." He suspected that some ranchers were putting more cattle on the range than their permits allowed, and he called for a system of marking the animals with metal ear tags. He made his proposal at the annual meetings of the cattlemen's associa­tions in Kamas, Marion, and Oakley. Many permittees objected to the tagging proposal and gave the lack of adequate corrals and tagging chutes as their reason for oppos­ing tagging of their permitted cattle. They were informed that if the permittees in each community would agree o n a site suitable to t h em and t h e district ranger, Briggs would recommend that the Forest Service furnish the materials to build a corral and tagging chute in each of the three communities, with the understanding that the per­mittees would furnish the labor to build the corrals and chutes in accordance with plans a n d specifications to be furnished by the Forest Service.23 The controversial drives that polluted streams and turned water­sheds to dust eventually disappeared from western Summit County. LIVING OFF THE LAND 269 Along with t h em went the shanty towns at railheads such as Wahsatch where the sheep were sheared every spring. Today, most of the remaining sheep travel between their summer and winter ranges in the trailers of large semi-trucks. The 1964 study of the sheep industry also blamed the decline in sheep numbers on a shift in the relative prices commanded by cattle and sheep. After 1940, cattle prices rose more quickly t h a n did sheep prices, apparently convincing some ranchers to switch from one to the other.24 In 1974, the Utah Crop and Livestock Reporting Service said that a number of sheep producers, discouraged by heavy losses to predators and the shortage of good help, were selling their entire flocks. However, some Summit County residents c o n t i n u e d to make t h e i r living by raising sheep. Among t h em was Metta Richins of Coalville. The mother of five sons, Metta was still tending sheep at age sixty-seven, as the Salt Lake Tribune reported in 1986. Said Metta: "I keep thinking it's time to retire and let somebody else take over my ranch, but then I say, 'No, I can't do that. What else would I do?' This is my life-I don't know nothing else. I know sheep bet­ter than most anybody around here. Sheep ranching is a dying art-I'd hate to give up an old-time tradition." Metta has been a sheep rancher nearly fifty years-she mar­ried the business when she married her husband, the late Ellis Richins. The couple met at a high school dance in Coalville, mar­ried two weeks later, and spent their honeymoon shearing sheep at the Richins' ranch. "It wasn't the most romantic honeymoon," recalls Metta, "but it was definitely one I will never forget. I cooked chow for 21 men and smelled like a sheep for three days. But the job had to be done, so I did it. There's no putting things off, in the sheep business." Metta and Ellis summered their sheep on Coalville's Lewis Peak every year, and trucked them to the desert near Ely, Nevada, when winter rolled around. Metta often slept outdoors and cooked over an open fire during those months, and there were times when weeks went by before she saw another per­son. But Metta loved the simplicity of the wilderness-she would­n't have traded it for any high paying city job in the world. So, when her husband died in 1965, she decided to run the ranch on her own, instead of selling out.25 270 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY The declining demand for their product, the removal of federal tariffs, and encroaching development in Summit County have con­vinced some sheep ranchers that it is time to sell, or at least to move their operations to less costly land. Once such transaction came in 1994 when the Gillmor family, descendants of pioneer ranchers, decided to sell a 210-acre parcel near Park City's exclusive Deer Valley development. The asking price was $7,350,000. "When you get that close, you can't have people and dogs around the livestock all the time," Frank Gillmor told the Deseret News. He also blamed a recent decision by the federal government to eliminate a forty-year-old tar­iff on imported wool.26 Raising Furs for Fashion In 1925, Ray Vernon of Coalville broke new ground for Utah agriculture by starting the first mink ranch in the state. In the 1940s he was one of five men to organize the Fur Breeders Agricultural Coop and became its first president.27 By the 1950s, Coalville-area mink ranchers were attracting nationwide attention. At an auction in May 1956, furs raised by rancher John Adkins commanded an all-time record price of $125 each, the most ever paid for a standard pelt in the history of mink ranching.28 In the Kamas Valley, mink ranching gained a foothold in the Peoa area. According to one estimate, by the early 1970s there were twelve Peoa mink ranchers, with an annual production of 450 pelts worth about $132,000.29 Although mink ranching has a much lower profile than cattle or sheep ranching, it plays a significant role in the Summit County economy. According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, thirty-two mink ranches raised pelts worth about $4.1 million in 1987, repre­senting more than one-quarter of the value of the county's agricul­tural production. The most recent statistics show Summit County third in the state in mink production behind Utah and Cache coun­ties. Nationally, Utah produces more mink pelts than any other state except Wisconsin.30 However, mink ranching is highly vulnerable to the whims of the fashion world. In recent years, animal-rights advocates in the United States have led a public backlash against the wearing of furs. In LIVING OFF THE LAND 271 Aspen, Colorado, a proposal to ban the wearing of furs even went to a public vote. By 1992, the number of mink ranchers in Summit County had declined to twenty-one, and the value of their furs had dropped to about $1.7 million.31 Fur breeders also have been the targets of a wave of vandalism in the 1990s. In October 1996, for example, an animal-rights group claimed responsibility for a raid on a Hoytsville mink ranch in which about 1,000 animals were released.32 The Future of Farming Today, as the twentieth century comes to a close, it would be tempting to write the obituary of farming in Summit County. The percentage of people listing farming as their primary occupation is at an all-time low. The numbers of dairy cattle are down sharply. After increasing steadily for forty years, the total value of farm prod­ucts declined in the 1992 census of agriculture. Subdivisions are sprouting on valley pastures in many parts of the county. However, such a conclusion may be premature. There are other signs that farming is not ready to disappear from the county. Census figures show that the amount of land in farms is not declining, and the number of irrigated acres is also holding its own. Also, the survey quoted at the beginning of this chapter indicates that local residents are not ready to turn their backs on their agricultural heritage. Will twenty-first-century innovations revive the family farm? Will rising transportation costs trigger a renewed interest in local agriculture? Will the population boom of the 1990s turn to a bust? Time will tell. The National Forests Sheep and cattle ranchers were not the only private interests to take advantage of the huge expanses of federal land on the eastern side of the county. The sweeping forests of lodgepole pine and Engelmann spruce also attracted many with the hopes of converting the resources to riches. During the 1870s, Congress passed several laws encouraging eco­nomic development of federal land. Among them were the Timber Culture Act of 1873, which encouraged the planting of trees on west- 272 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY ern lands for future harvesting; the Timber and Stone Act of 1878, which allowed settlers to purchase federal forest land; and the General Mining Act of 1877, which offered prospectors the ability to file mineral claims on federal lands. In general, these laws encouraged t h e exploitation of federal land rather t h a n the p r o t e c t i o n of it. Throughout the West, trees were cut by the millions.33 In Summit County, at least seven sawmills were operating by 1874.34 By t h e t u r n of the century, thousands of acres had been stripped in the western part of Summit County to satisfy the growing demand for timber in the Salt Lake Valley and the voracious appetite of the Park City mines, which used wood not only for mine props but also to fuel the enormous pumps that removed water from the mines. Photographs of the Park City area from that period show the sur­rounding hillsides devoid of vegetation. With no trees to hold the snow in place, t h e r e were many deadly avalanches in t h e n a r r ow canyons around the town. In the upper Bear River drainage, conditions were m u c h the same, according to LJ. Colton, former district ranger in the Kamas District of the Wasatch National Forest: There was little or no governmental control during the first period (from 1870 to 1900), and since there was no thought for the future, no system of silviculture was employed. It was a time when fires, man-made and naturally caused, raged uncontrolled throughout the burning season. Many areas were cut over, mainly high-graded, then set on fire and allowed to burn. Old-timers recall that early loggers often times deliberately set fires as a means of retribution and of obtaining higher wages for their services. . . . Volume of timber cut during the first period is unknown because no one kept any record, but it must have been substantial. Examination of cut and burned-over areas indicates a large amount of timber was removed. The principal trees cut were lodgepole pine and Englemann spruce, and they were made into lumber, hewn railroad ties, mine props and ties, and cordwood for charcoal. The charcoal was used in turn for ore smelting in Utah and Colorado.35 Whether by design or coincidence, the transcontinental line of the Union Pacific Railroad ran close to the n o r t h slope of the Uinta LIVING OFF THE LAND 273 Mountains, giving the company large tracts of timber via the land-grant process. The railroad took full advantage of this resource; by one estimate, there were as many as seventy-five "tie hackers" working solely on the Hayden Fork of the Bear River in 1874-75. The Union Pacific managed so fully to control access from the n o r t h slope that one lumberman complained in 1876 that there was "no other mar­ket for ties in this c o u n t r y except the Union Pacific Railroad." Companies such as Cole and Carter in the late 1800s and the Standard Timber Company in the early 1900s made a steady income supplying ties to the Union Pacific. At one point, Standard Timber was delivering a half million ties a year to the railroad company.36 Colton has concluded that the destructive practices of these early timbercutters left their descendants a questionable legacy: Thousands of acres of fine timber land were converted to lands now covered with grass, forb and aspen. While the resulting range land has great value for watershed and grazing purposes, of greater value would be stands of good timber. Much of the residual tim­ber left from this early day type of harvest is inferior-insect and disease infested. During most of these timber cutting operations only the choicest trees were taken, leaving cull or diseased trees to supply seed for future timber stands to replace those that were cut or burned.37 Despite the careless destruction, the seeds of the conservation movement began to take hold in the late n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y as people began to question the wisdom of unregulated use. In 1873, Franklin B. Hough presented a paper to the American Association for the Advancement of Science calling for the federal government to put a stop to uncontrolled resource damage. The association appointed a committee to lobby Congress for action to preserve the nation's timber supply.38 Those lobbying efforts quickly paid off. In 1876, Congress autho­rized the appointment of a federal forestry agent. Hough became the first man to fill the position; in six years he had become head of the new Division of Forestry within the Department of Agriculture. In 1891, Congress passed legislation authorizing the president to desig- 274 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY nate certain parcels of federal land as forest reserves and prohibit their use by the public.39 On 22 February 1897, a week before he left office, President Grover Cleveland created thirteen reserves-among them, Utah's first, the 428,000-acre Uintah Forest Reserve-in a bold move that banned public utilization of more than 21 million acres.40 Two years later, Utah's first forest agent arrived in Coalville to administer the new Uintah reserve.41 Legislators in several Western states were furious. With a stroke of the pen, and without the approval of Congress, Cleveland had locked up huge tracts of land in seven states. Wyoming lawmakers led an unsuccessful attempt to have Cleveland's proclamation repealed. Utah Senator Frank J. Cannon supported those efforts, saying that he considered Cleveland's action "unjust, inasmuch as it took from the public lands of Utah, Wyoming and surrounding States lands with­out forest and which had very little timber."42 Some historians believe that this act led to organized Western opposition to the forest reserves, giving birth to a movement that continues today.43 In response to Western interests, Congress enacted a definition of purpose for the forest preserves, which opened the door to some public uses. The Organic Act of 1897 specified that reserves could be created "to improve and protect the forest within the reservation for the purpose of securing favorable water flows, and to furnish a con­tinuous supply of timber."44 With the appointment of Gifford Pinchot as chief of the Division of Forestry in 1898 and the ascendance of Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency in 1901, the multiple-use philosophy of managing public lands "for the greatest good of the greatest number" gained wide public support. At Pinchot's urging, Congress passed legislation transferring the forest reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture. In 1905 and 1906, another 1.44 million acres were added to the Uintah Forest Reserve, later renamed the Uinta National Forest, bringing its total size to more than 1.9 million acres.45 Much of that land lay within the Uintah Indian Reservation. However, in 1908, about half the land in the Uinta National Forest was sliced off to cre­ate the Ashley National Forest, with headquarters in Vernal. LIVING OFF THE LAND 275 In 1915, another 355,000 acres were transferred from the Uinta National Forest to the Wasatch National Forest, which had been cre­ated by a series of presidential proclamations beginning in 1904. Over the years, t h r o u g h a series of exchanges and transfers involving the Uinta, Ashley, and Wasatch national forests, much of the land from the original Uintah Forest Preserve ended up in the Wasatch National Forest, i n c l u d i n g a large block of the n o r t h slope of t h e Uinta Mountains stretching from Francis in Summit County n o r t h and east to the Summit/Daggett c o u n t y line. Most of these transfers were made to accommodate cattle and sheep owners, many of w h om lived in Heber and Provo, and the timber interests located in Kamas and in Evanston, Wyoming. Ironically, this process left the Uinta National Forest almost completely isolated from the m o u n t a i n range it was named after.46 One of the first priorities of the U.S. Forest Service was to begin a program of reforestation. A government nursery on Beaver Creek, near Kamas, began raising seedlings to be planted in the Wasatch and other national forests. By 1914, the operation had grown quite large: The planting of 100,000 yellow pine trees in the Wasatch national forest near Kamas has been attended with unusual success, says J.F. Bruins, who returned yesterday from the Beaver creek government nursery. Nearly 600,000 yellow pine seedlings, raised at the nurs­ery, will be shipped to Manti, the Uintah and other forests in the state. The nursery now has a force of forty men engaged in ship­ping and planting trees.47 One of the early federal rangers in Summit County was Dan S. Pack, a native of Kamas who in 1901 was assigned with ranger lohn Turnbow to two ranger districts on the n o r t h slope of the Uintas.48 When the U.S. Forest Service was created in 1905, replacing the Bureau of Forestry, Pack stayed on. From 1905 to 1910 he served as the first supervisor of the Wasatch National Forest. He remained with the Forest Service until 1913, when he resigned to go into business for himself. Among other Summit County residents who worked for the Forest Service in those early years were John H. Woolstenhulme of Kamas and A. Frank Richards of Oakley. After working for several years as a seasonal employee, Woolstenhulme was appointed as an 276 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY assistant ranger in 1909 and remained with the Forest Service until 1946. During his tenure, he supervised the construction of many of the original roads within the Wasatch National Forest.49 In l a n u a r y 1933, about 106,000 acres of Summit County land, including an area containing the headwaters of the Bear, the Weber, and the Black's Fork of the Green rivers, were added to the Wasatch National Forest. Although more t h a n 94,000 acres were in private hands at the time, t h e move had the support of a number of private owners, business groups, and h u n t i n g clubs as well as the Summit County Board of Commissioners, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, and the Utah State Land Board. In support of the move, the Forest Service noted that during 1931 six fires had burned 3,000 acres in the proposed Summit County addition. That total would, no doubt, have been higher if the Forest Service had not stepped in. The watershed had been damaged by such fires and also by heavy grazing and log­ging. The resulting runoff threatened to flood downstream commu­nities and fill the newly-created Echo Reservoir with sediment.50 With its acquisition, the Forest Service hoped both to control fires and to restore the integrity of the watershed. Though the rate of t i m b e r - c u t t i n g had d r o p p e d off from the frenzied pace of the late 1800s, t h e memoirs of Forest Ranger A.E. Briggs make it clear that during the 1930s there was still plenty of activity in the Kamas District. He wrote: The Kamas District is quite heavily timbered and at the time I transferred to the District was one of the largest producers of saw timber, mine props, and other Forest products of the many dis­tricts in the Intermountain Region, both in numbers of sales and volume. Logging and sawmill operators and farmers from Salt Lake and Utah Valleys were demanding and cutting timber faster than access roads were being constructed to open up other stands. . . . There were hundreds of applications for mine prop and farm timber sales. Five or six large contracts sales were in progress dur­ing the summer months. The Great Lakes Timber Company [of Hailstone, Wasatch County] was the largest operator and its products were saw tim­ber, power and telephone poles, mine props and railroad ties. The LIVING OFF THE LAND 277 company operated four portable saw mills in the woods, and was cutting mature and overmature lodgepole pine.51 In 1953, the U.S. Forest Service reported that sales in the Wasatch National Forest had reached a record 12.5 million board feet, of which about 9.5 million board feet came from Summit County.52 In 1955, the Salt Lake Tribune noted that the Kamas area had become one of the largest logging centers in the state. "Some 11 million board feet of forest products, largely lumber, is now being processed through the mills and box factory there each year," the Tribune reported. "The output has a total value of 1 1/2 million dollars and supplies markets in Salt Lake, Davis and Weber Counties. Principal producers are the Kamas Lumber Co., Union Timber Co., Blazzard Lumber Co. and the lohn W Blazzard Box Co."53 The local lumber business kept growing. On 5 luly 1956, the Summit County Bee reported that the local employment office had filed requests for timber workers in "most employment offices west of the Mississippi, in order to satisfy the biggest demand for timber cutters registered during the past ten years." In 1958, the Wasatch National Forest announced it was planning the biggest timber sale in its history. Depending on market conditions, as much as 79 million board feet could be cut over a three-year period, including about 24.5 million board feet in the Kamas District alone.54 Business stayed good for the Kamas mills through the 1960s and into the 1970s. But then, beginning about 1975, sawmill operators and loggers started to notice a change in the way the Kamas District was being managed. According to Stan Leavitt of Leavitt Lumber Company in Kamas, the Forest Service began to manage the area more for recreation than for timber harvesting.55 From then on, tim­ber sales from public lands in the Uintas began a steady decline. The west slope, administered by the Kamas Ranger District, was particu­larly affected. Since the mid-1980s, industry insiders say, timber sales from the Kamas District have almost vanished. Public pressure has been a big factor in the management changes. "The public is requiring us to provide more diversity than lumber, grazing and big-game habitat," Neal Riffle, timber officer for the 278 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY Wasatch/Cache National Forest, told the Salt Lake Tribune in 1991. "We're looking out for the overall vegetative health of the forest."56 While the shift in Forest Service philosophy may have helped recreation in the Kamas area, it has forced drastic cutbacks in the timber industry. Leavitt Lumber Company, which once employed almost fifty people, was down to eighteen employees by 1996.57 In fact, Kamas lumber mills now import most of their timber from the Ashley National Forest around Roosevelt and Duchesne and from the Uinta National Forest, which includes the Strawberry Valley east of Heber. "The Kamas District has been heavily timbered in the past, and to be frank, we are scrounging now to find places where we can harvest and still meet environmental constraints," District Ranger Melissa Blackwell said in 1993. "To be honest, I don't think this area can support four mills, not from public lands, anyway."58 Jack Sargent of Sargents Timber in Oakley told the Deseret News in 1992 that his mill was surviving on timber cut on private land. Stressing the importance of the industry to his community, he said, "There are a lot of people dependent upon the timber industry in this area. It's a trickle-down effect. There are families involved. There are probably 100 kids that eat off my sawmill."59 That may be true, but some environmental groups continue the push to reduce timber har­vests in the Uintas even more; controversy over the issue is to be expected in years to come.60 Recreation In the early years of the national forests, top administrators tol­erated- but didn't encourage-recreational use.61 However, a grow­ing population in Salt Lake City, together with the exploding popularity of the automobile in the 1920s, forced local Forest Service officials to do more than tolerate recreation in the forest areas. The Deseret News gave voice to the swelling public enthusiasm for national forests when it editorialized in 1923: Men and sometimes women, have made trips into the northern forests of Canada to enjoy boating and hunting; to see magnificent forests. The state of Utah is blessed with many great attractions that are being more widely used year by year by the great American public. Yet some of these attractions have not yet been developed. LIVING OFF THE LAND 279 We have within a few hours drive of the city of Salt Lake one of the greatest forest and lake regions in the world, The Uinta National Forest.62 By the time this passage was written, forestry officials had already h e a r d numerous requests for a road r u n n i n g from Kamas to Evanston, traversing this picturesque region of lakes and rivers. The Deseret News did its part to d r um up support for the project: This region is close enough to most of the principle [sic] cities and towns of Utah to be reached, and some of the wonderful scenery viewed, in one days drive. Days and even weeks could be spent along this road by vacationists from the surrounding districts in profitable enjoyment. The lakes afford bathing, boating and fishing and desirable camp sights [sic] are innumerable. There would be no crowding, for there is room for many more tourists and vacationists than will visit the region for many years to come.63 Fortunately for "vacationists," a road from Kamas to Mirror Lake was opened to automobile traffic in 1925.64 However, it took the bet­ter part of four decades before the road became the type of facility that the Deseret News proposed in 1923. It wasn't until 1942 that the road even reached Evanston. And it remained a crude, primitive thor­oughfare, as a delegation of area business leaders discovered on a tour in 1948, and as the Salt Lake Tribune editorialized soon after: The purpose of the tour was to point out to a representative group the sorry condition of the present forest road and to enlist support in a movement to secure eventually an entire new road between Evanston and Kamas. . . . Thousands of Utahs have never seen shimmering Mirror lake, Old Baldy, or the flamboyant mountain divide where headwaters rise for four major streams: Provo river, Bear river, Weber river and Duchesne river. Many will not get that privilege unless the road is improved. Even if eventually realized, the new highway likely will not be built for a long time.65 Notwithstanding the "sorry condition" of the road, interest in the Uinta Mountains exploded in the 1950s. By 1958, there were fourteen camping areas along the highway between Kamas and Mirror Lake 280 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY and another nine areas in the Mill Creek District between Mirror Lake and the Wyoming state line.66 Two years later, in September 1960, road supporters finally got their wish when Utah Governor George D. Clyde dedicated the newly paved Mirror Lake Multiple- Use Highway.67 But the hikers and campers who took full advantage of the Mirror Lake Highway in the 1960s and 1970s were a mixed blessing. Like cattle and loggers, they too impacted the environment. "It's obvi­ous that crowds are coming into the Uintas in greater numbers every year," the Salt Lake Tribune reported in 1975. "Statistics and observa­tions of those who spend time there tell the story. But what is the solution to the problem? How many people can the area, which recovers slowly from heavy use, handle in a season? Are permits the only answer? The U.S. Forest Service, in charge of the primitive area, is searching for answers to these problems."68 One answer was to legislate restrictions on human presence in the Uintas. In 1984, Congress passed the Utah Forest Service Wilderness Bill, which declared that 750,000 acres of federal land would be off-limits to motorized vehicles, mineral development, road-building, timber-cutting and many other activities. The largest of twelve wilderness areas designated by the bill was a 460,000-acre parcel of the Uintas east of Mirror Lake.69 Of course, the High Uintas Wilderness Area didn't include the Mirror Lake Highway itself. And, by 1993, more than 150,000 vehi­cles a year were making the turn east off Kamas's Main Street onto the Mirror Lake Highway. "Visitation in the area has more than doubled during the past decade," the Deseret News reported in luly 1993. "And it's starting to show. Campgrounds routinely overflow; off-road camping, also known as 'dispersed camping,' is out of con­trol; off-road-vehicle use is endangering flora and fauna; and exces­sively large camping groups are trampling terrain and causing sanitation problems."70 In response, Kamas District Ranger Melissa Blackwell announced plans to close many off-road-vehicle trails and dispersed camping sites. In addition, limits would be placed on group camping. "Times are changing," Blackwell told the Deseret News. "We're in the new era LIVING OFF THE LAND 281 of conservation, a shift toward recognizing other values of the forest than commodities." In 1996, t h e Forest Service held public hearings on a p l a n to charge a fee for vehicles using the Mirror Lake Highway. A fee of three dollars per vehicle was introduced in the summer of 1997. Like the Park City area to the west, the communities of the Kamas Valley are seeing those gritty industries that once supported their families replaced by recreation and tourism. As in Park City, the transition has provided new opportunities, but it has also raised new challenges and questions. ENDNOTES 1. Park Record, 23 August 1997. 2. Kate B. Carter, comp., Our Pioneer Heritage (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1966), 9: 561. 3. Park Record, 6 February 1915. 4. See various U.S. Censuses of Agriculture, United States Department of Commerce. 5. 1950 U.S. Census of Agriculture, United States Department of Commerce. 6. William Stevens, interview with Patrick Cone, 26 February 1993, copy in possession of the authors. 7. Glenn Brown, interview with David Hampshire, 1 August 1997. 8. See various U.S. Censuses of Agriculture, United States Department of Commerce. 9. Deseret News, 19 luly 1996. 10. Melissa Blackwell, Record of Decision for the Kamas Valley Allotment, USDA Forest Service, Wasatch-Cache National Forest, Kamas Ranger District, 1993. 11. Charles S. Peterson and Linda E. Speth, A History of the Wasatch- Cache National Forest (n.p.: Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 1980), 200-01. 12. Coalville Times, 5 lune 1903. 13. Coalville Times, 6 May 1898, 24 lune 1898, 7 luly 1899. 14. See Everett H. Mecham, "The History of the Sheep Industry in Utah" (Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1925). 15. Coalville Times, 14 April 1899. 16. Deseret News, 23 lune 1899. 282 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY 17. See Edna M. Tremelling, comp., Hoytsville Through The Years, (n.p., 1959). 18. See various U.S. Censuses of Agriculture, United States Department of Commerce. 19. N. Keith Roberts and G.T. Blanch, "Sheep Ranching in Utah's Economy, 1964" (Logan: Agricultural Experiment Station, Utah State University, 1966), 2. 20. Mecham, "The History of the Sheep Industry in Utah," 28. 21. Peterson and Speth, A History of Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 180. 22. A.E. Briggs, "Memoirs of a United States Forest Ranger," MS, Kamas District Historical Files, 1963, 162. 23. Ibid., 163. 24. See Roberts and Blanch, "Sheep Ranching in Utah's Economy." 25. Salt Lake Tribune, 2 lune 1986. 26. Deseret News, 16 lanuary 1994. 27. See Ogden Standard-Examiner, 30 lune 1983. 28. Summit County Bee, 24 May 1956. 29. Melania Sanchez de Mota, "Natural Resources and Potential Development of Kamas Valley, Utah" (Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1973), 66. 30. "1997 Utah Agricultural Statistics and Utah Department of Agriculture and Food Annual Report" (Salt Lake City: Utah Department of Agriculture, 1997), 28, 95. 31. 1992 U.S. Census of Agriculture. 32. Deseret News, 26 October 1996. 33. Harold K. Steen, The U.S. Forest Service: A History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976), 4. 34. Edward L. Sloan, editor, Gazeteer of Utah, and Salt Lake City Directory, 1874 (Salt Lake City: n.p., 1874). 35. L.J. Colton, "Early Days of Timber Cutting Along the Upper Bear River," Utah Historical Quarterly 35 (Summer 1967), 202-3. 36. Peterson and Speth, A History of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 126-28; Homer E. Ferry, letter to A.B. Apperson, 13 August 1914, Wasatch- Cache National Forest history files. 37. Colton, "Early Days," 208. 38. Samuel Trask Dana, Forest and Range Policy: Its Development in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956), 80. 39. Ibid., 102. LIVING OFF THE LAND 283 40. Salt Lake Tribune, 23 February 1897; Steen, U.S. Forest Service, 30. 41. Peterson and Speth, A History of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 42. 10. 42. Salt Lake Tribune, 27 February 1897. 43. Peterson and Speth, A History of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 44. Ibid., 11. 45. Ibid., 59. 46. Ibid., 60-63. 47. Salt Lake Herald Republican, 1 May 1914. 48. Peterson and Speth, A History of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, 84. 49. F.C. Koziol, letter to Roy Lambert, 7 August 1964, copy in Wasatch- Cache National Forest history files; Summit County Bee, 3 February 1955. Pack, Woolstenhulme, and Richards were among a group of former Forest Service employees honored at a ceremony in Ogden celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the organization. 50. Salt Lake Tribune, 21 August 1932; Summit County Bee, 16 February 1933; "Report on the Proposed Summit County Addition," 15 December 1932, Wasatch-Cache National Forest history files. 51. Briggs, "Memoirs," 160. 52. Salt Lake Tribune, 27 December 1953. 53. Salt Lake Tribune, 17 April 1955. 54. Salt Lake Tribune, 16 March 1958. 55. Stan Leavitt, phone interview with David Hampshire, 13 May 1996. 56. Salt Lake Tribune, 29 April 1991. 57. Leavitt, interview. 58. Nan Chalat, "Changing of the Guard," Park City Lodestar 16 (Summer 1993), 25. 59. Deseret News, 18 lune 1992. 60. Deseret News, 18 July 1993. 61. Steen, U.S. Forest Service, 113-22. 62. Deseret News, 31 March 1923. 63. Ibid. 64. "History of the Kamas Ranger District," Wasatch-Cache National Forest, Kamas District Historical Files, 2, Kamas, Utah. 65. Salt Lake Tribune, 2 July 1948. 66. Salt Lake Tribune, 1 June 1958. 284 HISTORY OF SUMMIT COUNTY 67. Summit County Bee, 15 September 1960. 68. Salt Lake Tribune, 31 August 1975. 69. Salt Lake Tribune, 22 February 1984, 29 September 1984. 70. Deseret News, 18 July 1993.