A History of Uintah County

Commercial developmentsa

6 From Sagebrush to Shopping Centers COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS Ooon after settlers established homes in the county, they set about establishing means of exchanging goods. Two businesses that soon appeared were the trading post or general store and the saloon. In the town of Ashley, Pardon Dodds and James Gibson began trad­ing posts. Several saloons soon came into existence, all bringing trade and money into the county. Each outlying settlement developed in a similar manner. Throughout the years many establishments have been organized to serve the county. The first general merchandise store in Vernal was erected by John A. Blythe and Thomas L. Mitchell; it also became the post office. In 1889 John Thomas McKeachnie opened a large general merchandise store in Glines at what is now called McKeachnie Corner (1500 South and 1500 West). The main road into Vernal passed by the store in the early days. The Ashley Co-operative Mercantile Institution was organized in 1881. The one-story, log-and-rock building was twenty by thirty feet. Its first manager was William Ashton and the first clerks were Philip Stringham and B.O. Colton. The store soon prospered in thriving Ashley Valley. The old co-op building was torn down and a new one 154 COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 155 built in 1900 at 4 West Main; it is one of the few landmarks left in the county today. The Ashley Co-op was in business until 1932. The new two-story structure boasted an ornamental iron-and-glass front. It was a general merchandise store and included grocery, meat, dry goods, hardware, shoe, and mens' furnishings departments. A place was needed for area residents to deposit and exchange money, obtain loans, and make investments, so the LDS church pres­idency sent Samuel Roberts Bennion to Vernal on 24 September 1886 to assist the people of the valley in handling their money through the Ashley Co-op. By 1903 the volume of money being deposited was more than the co-op could handle. This led to the establishment of a separate banking institution-the Bank of Vernal-organized in 1903. The investors set out to find a manager and cashier. N.J. Meagher was teaching business at All Hallows College in Salt Lake City and working as a bookkeeper at the Bank of Commerce and Utah Savings and Trust Company; he was hired as cashier-manager of the new bank. The bank was then organized with S. M. Browne, president; William Porter Coltharp, vice-president; N. J. Meagher, cashier-manager; and Samuel R. Bennion, Harden Bennion, and lohn R. Reader, directors. The bank was first housed in a portion of the co­op building. The first customers of the bank were cowboys, sheepmen, and homesteaders who traded in gold and silver coin. An important source of money was government payments to Ute Indians. As some Indians could not read the figures on paper currency, gold and silver coins were shipped to the bank in strong-boxes on buckboard wagons. Heavy sacks of coins were a discouraging load for robbers who traveled only on horseback.1 The bank included a bulletproof screen surrounding its steel-lined counter and a large walk-in vault, which remains in the building today at 18 West Main. When the Bank of Vernal was organized, most of the organizers were non-Mormon; manager N.J. Meagher was an Irish Catholic. A few Mormons such as S.R. Bennion were on the board. Late in 1909, after William H. Smart became president of the LDS Uintah Stake, considerable dissatisfaction with the policies adopted by the bank erupted within the Mormon section of the community. The Vernal Milling and Light Company had applied to the Bank of Vernal for 156 HISTORY OF UINTAH COUNTY ";f~i»ta4- Uintah State Bank building which also housed the post office and Vernal Drug. (UCLRHC, C. J. Neal collection) additional credit and, though not refused, the conditions imposed and the attitude of the bank directors was such that the company procured the loan from S.R. Bennion personally. A decision was made to establish another bank. S.R. Bennion was at this time presi­dent of the Bank of Vernal; however, he was very much dissatisfied with the attitude of directors J.H. Reader, W.H. Coltharp, and N.J. Meagher, and he advocated and aided the establishment of Uintah State Bank.2 Plans for Uintah State Bank progressed, and L.W Curry, a mer­chant from Ouray, was chosen as cashier; E.H. Belcher, a post office employee, was hired as assistant cashier. The bank was temporarily quartered in the Peironet building located on the southeast corner of the main intersection of Vernal. The Uintah State Bank formally opened for business on 10 August 1910, with the following board of directors: William H. Smart, W.H. Siddoway, Edward D. Samuels, J.K. Bullock, George E. Adams, H.W. Woolley, and W.M. McCoy. An architect was hired to draw plans for a new building to be located across the street from the original bank. Construction of the build­ing began in the fall of 1913, and in September 1915 the bank moved COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 157 into the building. In 1916 a post office extension was built, and in 1917 Vernal Drug was added to the building. The two banks were very competitive. At one time J.A. Cheney of the Uintah State Bank placed a letter in the paper noting that the Uintah State Bank had no foreclosures while the Bank of Vernal had seventeen. The 1941 annual report of the Uintah State Bank claimed that the Bank of Vernal was foreclosing mortgages nearly every term of court while the Uintah State Bank had only had two foreclosures in the past twelve years.3 By 1916 the Bank of Vernal officers decided it should move. A large new structure to be faced with 80,000 textured bricks was planned across the street on the southwest corner of Main Street. The bricks cost only seven cents each, but freight charges to haul them the 175 miles from Salt Lake City to Vernal were four times that much, so William H. Coltharp came up with the brilliant idea to mail them! A fifty-pound package could be sent parcel post from Salt Lake City for only fifty-two cents, less than half the freight charge. Coltharp traveled to Salt Lake City to order the brick. Forty tons of brick were wrapped at the Parker Lumber Company and put into fifty-pound bundles. The brick had to go 407 miles by standard-gauge railroad to Mack, Colorado, then, by narrow gauge, sixty miles to Watson, Utah, where the railroad ended. The final sixty-five miles to Vernal was by freight wagons over rough roads and by ferry over the Green River. The brick was delivered in the spring and the roads were muddy. The bank directors asked the postmaster if the packages could be deliv­ered directly to the bank site, but he insisted the brick had to come to the post office with each package going over the counter and being stamped. When the crates began to pile up in the mud, the postmas­ter changed his mind and delivered them to the site, coming there to stamp them. Because the wagon journey to Vernal took four days each way, mountains of brick were piling up. A frantic postmaster in Mack, Colorado, telegraphed Washington for help. Postal regulations were immediately changed to limit the total weight of any parcel-post shipment in one day to 200 pounds; but it was too late to remedy the situation, as the last brick were already en route to Vernal. Eventually the brick were all delivered and became a unique part of county his- 158 HISTORY OF UINTAH COUNTY A freight wagon loaded with brick for the Bank of Vernal. (UCLRHC, L. C. Thorne collection) tory-the "building shipped by mail," also known as the "Parcel Post Bank." During the "boom" years of the 1980s several other banks opened in the county including Walker Bank and Trust, Basin State Bank, Deseret Federal Savings & Loan, First Interstate Bank of Utah, and American Savings and Loan. All had closed by 1995 except the two original banks. Besides the Ashley Co-op, several other mercantile businesses came into existence. One was a mercantile business of brothers Ren and Alva Hatch, who constructed a brick building about 1885. It was later torn down to make room for the Cobble Rock Station. Another early landmark was the Coltharp Building built in 1893 which housed the Coltharp Mercantile Company owned by William H. Coltharp and Isaac Burton, Sr. It was located at 3 West Main, where the Bank of Vernal was later built.The Acorn Mercantile was estab­lished in 1906 by Fred Bingham and E.J. Winder; the Consolidated Wagon & Machine Company was another early mercantile. These co­op stores served a useful purpose in early days as capital to operate a business could be acquired much more easily by groups than by indi­viduals. 4 In 1932 a J. C. Penney Company store replaced the Ashley Co-op at 4 West Main. The Penney company had originally opened in town in 1927 in the building which the Acorn store had vacated. In 1941 COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 159 under the management of J.D. Jones the store was completely remod­eled at a cost of $8,000. It sported new cash transmitters which con­nected to the upstairs office so the nine departments could have change made easily. The money and sales ticket were placed in a small container and with the pull of a string were shot up across the store to the cashier upstairs. The Penney store occupied the co-op build­ing until 1990 when it closed its doors. The company now provides only a mail-order store in the county. Another large store in Vernal began in about 1920 as the A-K (Ashton-Kelly) Mercantile Company, owned by Leslie Ashton, WS. Ashton, and Benjamin P. Kelly. A company store was also opened in lensen. Later the partnership was dissolved, with Kelly taking the lensen store and the Ashtons the Vernal store. By 1930 the store in Vernal was called Ashton Brothers and had become a department and grocery store that was managed by Rae Ashton. Rae's sons, Stewart and Ralph, managed the store after Rae's death. It was the largest store in Vernal and brought a lot of people through the Depression on credit. Livestock men were allowed to charge goods and pay the bill in the spring when wool was sold or in the fall when cattle or sheep were shipped to market. The closing of the store in 1985 was a loss to many Vernal residents. Wong Sing, a wealthy Chinese merchant, had an important impact on the early economy of Fort Duchesne. Wong Sing's life was a rags-to-riches story. From Canton, China, he immigrated to San Francisco and then went inland. He arrived in Fort Duchesne in 1889. Upon arrival he built a primitive laundry on the banks of the Uinta River where he scrubbed the soldiers' uniforms. Sing ordered chinaware and sold it to the wives of army officers and homestead­ers. The profit from this venture enabled him to buy a restaurant on the military site, and he soon added a small store to the side of his restaurant. Complaints were made about him being on government property, so he purchased a few acres east across the river and built a store on the edge of the "Strip." At the height of his career, from 1927 to 1929, he employed eight clerks in his combination furniture store, general merchandise store, and meat market. He was greatly respected by local Indians as well as whites. Sing was killed instantly in an automobile accident in March 1934. His son, Wong Wing, took 160 HISTORY OF UINTAH COUNTY Wong Sing's store at Fort Duchesne in the 1880s. (UCLRHC collection) over the business after his death. In 1938 he moved the store across the Uinta River to U.S. Highway 40. Wing's wife, Jenny, joined him, and the couple also opened a store in Vernal which they operated until Wing passed away in 1952. Other Chinese merchants opened businesses in Fort Duchesne and on South Vernal Avenue in Vernal. The area along Vernal Avenue was called China Row.5 Chinese immigrants were brought to Rock Springs, Wyoming, to work in the Union Pacific Coal Company mines. The arrival of the Chinese coincided with mounting tensions between Asians and Euro-Americans. The newcomers were seen as strike breakers who were taking jobs away from Rock Springs resi­dents. When the "Chinese Massacre" occurred in Rock Springs in 1885 hundreds of Chinese fled the area.6 It is possible that some of these Chinese people drifted to Ashley Valley. Some Chinese residents of the county worked in the Gilsonite mines and began to open busi­nesses of their own. On Chung arrived in Vernal in 1895 and opened a restaurant, bathhouse, and laundry. He also sold Japanese and Chinese goods. An early advertisement stated he would exchange pies, cakes, and dry goods for chickens and eggs. In 1896 some malicious persons broke the windows of his restaurant and fired several shots at him. A few COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 161 months later the sign of his restaurant was torn down. In 1897 On Chung ran down the street barefoot to the sheriff's office claiming two men had come into his establishment and clubbed him over the head with a gun. Other mentions of On Chung are found in county court records.7 Sing Lung, another Chinese merchant, opened a business on South Vernal Avenue. He kept a pen behind the store for live chick­ens. One story is told of boys stealing his chickens and then selling them back to him. Often, however, actions against the Chinese were more than boyish pranks. Sing Lung spoke the Ute language fluently and left Vernal to work for the Indian agency in Ouray. He later returned to China.8 Several Chinese merchants besides Wong Sing took up businesses at Fort Duchesne. Many were victims of trouble and prejudice.9 One document clearly states how some of the residents felt about the Chinese: when the Carbonate Mining District was organized, its con­stitution declared, "No Chinaman would be tolerated in the district." While banks and mercantile stores were the largest commercial institutions in the county, other businesses also were important. Saloons made some men, like S.M. Browne, Vernal's first mayor, a well-to-do entrepreneur. The first saloons were set up in tents around the county. The first saloon in the town of Ashley went broke the same day it opened, as the owner became drunk along with his cus­tomers and forgot to charge anyone for drinks. The next saloon that opened a year later was owned by Charles Bentley, whose watered-down whiskey was so weak that it froze solid. Saloons were common in most communities, and it has been claimed that some barkeepers went to jail for selling liquor to the Indians. Many saloons were prof­itable; from 1 June 1916 to the end of the year, one enterprise in Vernal paid invoices in the amount of $2,345.15 for whiskey.10 After prohibition became the law of the land, many saloons were converted into pool halls. Another commercial institution was established on 2 January 1891 when the first newspaper was published in Uintah County. It was named The Uintah Papoose by the owner and publisher, Kate lean Boan. It was printed on a printing press ordered from a mail-order house. The first issue had four pages with three columns to a page. A 162 HISTORY OF UINTAH COUNTY year later Kate Boan sold the paper to lames Barker. He did not like being teased about his papoose and changed the name to The Vernal Express. The newspaper changed hands several times. In 1910 a stock company was organized and took over the paper. James H. Wallis of Salt Lake City, who had come to Vernal as a sanitary inspector for the state board of health in 1917, managed the newspaper until 1923, at which time he purchased the paper. The Wallis family has continued to operate the paper, with editor lames B. Wallis followed through the years by his son lack and lack's son Steve. The newspaper office has been located in various rented locations, including an upstairs room of the co-op building. A permanent building was constructed for the paper in 1935. The Vernal Express has filled an important role in serv­ing the public and recording the history of the area. Another important role was filled by the undertakers and mor­ticians. The location of funeral services has moved from a private parlor to a home for funerals. There were many acting undertakers in the valley who made and decorated coffins in the early days. One was Joseph Henderson Black, who made coffins during the hard win­ter of 1879 and kept one on display in his carpenter shop. The first undertaker in Vernal Memorial Park Cemetery records is Solomon Pendleton Trim in 1891. Trim and Peter Dillman opened the first funeral parlor in Ashley Valley. Albert Francis Young signed sixteen of the local thirty-four death certificates in 1905, but no location of his business has been established. Peter Dillman's son Elmer gradu­ated from Eccles School of Embalming and opened a parlor just two doors north of where Trim was practicing. Trim left the valley, and William Henderson and Ashley Bartlett started a funeral business in the building but eventually gave it up and went into the music busi­ness across the street. In 1918 Elmer Dillman died during the influenza epidemic. His wife Bessie continued her husband's under­taking business. She later married Frank Swain, and after the funeral parlor was destroyed by fire, a new parlor was moved into the Swain home, which became the Swain Funeral Home. Bessie was Ashley Valley's only undertaker until 1949 when Vernal Mortuary was started by loseph Arben lolley. Jolley sold the mortuary to Franklin D. Thomson in 1972, and Thomson's Vernal Mortuary continues to operate in 1996. In 1983 William K. Jolley, son of J.A. Jolley, opened COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 163 Hadlock and Sons blacksmith shop. (UCLRHC collection) the Valley Funeral Home, which he later sold to Hullinger-Olpin Mortuary of Roosevelt. Wayne Spafford manages the present Hullinger-Jolley Funeral Home.11 Between 1900 and 1930 about twenty different blacksmith shops existed in Vernal alone. As horses were the main means of travel at the beginning of the county's settlement, blacksmith shops and liv­ery stables were needed to care for the animals. Every community in the county had at least one blacksmith shop. Livery stables also were established along the roads into Uintah County. Hadlock's Blacksmith Shop and Burton's Blacksmith Shop were two of the longest-running blacksmith shops in Vernal, each operating more than thirty years. With the advent of the automobile and tourism, service stations, cafes, and cabins were established for the convenience of travelers. One such was the Uintah Camp Cabins opened in 1929 by W.S. Henderson in Vernal. The tiny individual log cabins had no running water. A rumor started around town that Henderson was building a house of ill repute and one lady started a petition to stop the project. Henderson sold the cabins to his son Chuck and built more cabins nearby at 423 West Main. 164 HISTORY OF UINTAH COUNTY The county's first boarding house was located in the town of Ashley in 1877; it was operated by Richard Huffaker. Hotels also came into existence early in Jensen, Ouray, and Fort Duchesne, where Sophia Curtis opened the Garrison Hotel in 1899. Boarding houses, some called hotels, were located in Vernal by at least the early 1890s. They included the Horse Shoe Hotel owned by M.A.Workman; the Vernal House, with Mrs. Simons as the proprietor; the Bascom Hotel; the Uintah House, owned by J. B. Blankenship; and the Valley House operated by Mrs. M. W King. They offered rooms by the day or week, and meals were served. In 1896 an article in the Vernal Express expressed the need for a real hotel. In 1898 Mrs. R. M. Carey started a "first class" hotel she named the Cottage Hotel in the building for­merly occupied by Wong On. Arthur Rich later purchased the hotel, which was located on North Vernal Avenue near the Uintah Railroad stage stop and became one of the town's best hotels. Early hotels were located on South Vernal Avenue, because it was the main road into town. Main Street was at first called Uintah Avenue; but when the roads into town changed to come from the east and west, hotels expanded onto that street and the name was changed to Main Street. The Noe Hotel was the first to be built on West Main; it opened in 1901. Owners changed through the years, and the hotel's name changed to the Elks Hotel, Oxford Hotel, and at last to the Gipson Hotel at 121 West Main. One of the main hotels was the Vernal Hotel on 100 South Vernal Avenue. This hotel was operated by sisters May Long lorgensen, Sarah Rudge, and others. It burned down in 1936. Later Mrs. lorgensen purchased the Calder Building and opened the Commercial Hotel at 54 West Main. Increased tourism and automobile travel has changed the nature of transient lodging in Vernal as in other cities. Contemporary travelers prefer the convenience of motels, which have replaced hotels to the point that there are only two hotels remaining in Vernal. Large restaurants and small cafes of all kinds were opened in the county, including the Bon Ton Restaurant and the Greasy Spoon, lim's Cafe in Vernal was the first to stay open all night. Vernal's first fast food drive-ins were a hot dog stand known as the Pig Stand and Lynn Pack's root beer stand, both of which opened in 1932. The Pig COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 165 Stand was owned by Warren Belcher and grew to become the 7-11 Ranch Cafe. Other drive-ins have followed in subsequent decades. Barber shops opened early in the settlement; one featured baths for men. In 1927 beauty shops began to open. Specialty dress, millinery, gift, jewelry, and other shops also were established. Many of these small shops and stores began to close in the 1970s with the arrival of large grocery stores and all-purpose stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart. One of the area's first manufacturing businesses was Newton Brothers' Saddle Company, which was established in 1905 as a shoe store and grew to make harnesses, saddle trees, and fine saddles. The company also provided catalog sales outside the area, as did Standard Saddle Tree, which started operating in 1951. Bessie Swain, Vernal's lady mortician, manufactured laundry soap in 1922. In 1969 Vernal Sportswear, a subsidiary of Dale Sportswear of California, a clothing manufacturing firm, operated for a short time with twenty industrial sewing machines. Because of the need for oil-related supply busi­nesses, an industrial area developed between Vernal and Naples beginning in the 1970s. Other early industrial endeavors in the area included sawmills. In the Uinta Mountains north of Vernal and extending west for a hundred miles is the largest body of timber in Utah. It has been esti­mated that 700 million board feet of timber are in the Uintah County portion of the Ashley National Forest. In 1917 all the mills in the Uinta Basin using timber from the Ashley Forest produced 2.6 mil­lion board feet of lumber. In 1935 this figure had increased to 10 mil­lion board feet, produced by thirty-five mills. In 1967 the Vernal District alone provided 7 million board feet from four mills.12 Early settlers cut and hauled logs off the mountains to build their cabins. This changed after the national forest was established. Men could be arrested and charged with willful trespass when taking logs from the forest without a permit. These timber restrictions along with the grazing restrictions were hard for many early settlers to accept; in fact, many inhabitants of the area still resent them. The first sawmill was started in 1878 by Peter Dillman and John Steinaker using a whipsaw. The saw was set up in Ashley near the first school site and the lumber was sawed for the school. The saw was 166 HISTORY OF UINTAH COUNTY then moved to Taylor Mountain to cut lumber for Pardon Dodds. The men built Dodds's cabin on the mountain where they camped, sawing up to 150 feet of lumber a day.13 Alma Johnstun brought his sawmill from Park City on 27 October 1880. It was a difficult task to bring the heavy machinery over the rough roads; Pimmy Rynmon helped lohnstun bring in the equipment. The mill was taken to Dry Fork Mountain and for many years supplied lumber for builders in the valley. The mill was set up at different locations in the mountains. Probably the most noted setting was at Kane Hollow on Brush Creek Mountain. lohnstun also built the Red Planer Mill at 500 West Main in Vernal in 1882; it was destroyed by fire in May 1892. Alma's son Darrell operated a mill on Taylor Mountain at Soldiers Park for many years before selling it to Bjorn Rye. The soldiers stationed at Fort Thornburgh at the mouth of Dry Fork Canyon built a sawmill in 1882 at Government Park on Taylor Mountain. William H. Siddoway, an early pioneer of the valley and prominent businessman, started a sawmill around 1884 about two miles from the government mill site on Taylor Mountain near what is now Oaks Park Reservoir.14 Patrick Henry Carroll erected an improvised sawmill and sawed crude lumber at a mill site at Rock Point. This mill supplied lumber to area settlers. Carroll filed on 160 acres of meadowland at the mouth of Dry Fork Canyon, but when Fort Thornburgh was moved to Maeser, the government chose this meadow for the fort location and Carroll had to relinquish his claim. He was paid for improve­ments and had the filing fee returned. He later moved the mill to Taylor Mountain. A small sign at the side of the road on Taylor Mountain reads, "Pat Carroll's mill site." In 1893 when Carroll died, his son Ed moved the mill down to the valley. lohn Slaugh and his son Dick operated a mill at various locations near Windy and Oaks parks on Taylor Mountain and also near Dyer Park on Brush Creek Mountain. Dan Allen operated the sawmill for the building of the old flume in Dry Fork Canyon, after which his son Arch operated the mill, as did Arch's sons Merle and Keith. Charles Hardy spent several years timbering and sawing lumber. He worked around Oaks Park, and during the winter used bobsleds to haul the timber to the face of Taylor Mountain. When spring broke, the tim- COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 167 Henry Ruple's oxen team hauling lumber from mountains. (UCLRHC, L. C. Thorne collection) ber was hauled down to the sawmill. Years later his son Elmo went into the sawmill business, working around Farm Creek and Whiterocks. The Cook family had an early sawmill and planer mill for many years located in Vernal north of the Tabernacle. The Cooks were noted for their workmanship during the early years of the century. William Cook operated the Flume Sawmill in Dry Fork in 1910, sell­ing it to James O. Nord in 1919. Nord sold the sawmill to Charles T. Pope. Dan E. Adams acquired the mill and ran it on Taylor Mountain until it was destroyed by fire in 1924. Henry Ruple sawed lumber for the government during the build­ing of Fort Thornburgh. Early settings for this mill were near Government Park on Taylor Mountain and other sites between there and Pot Creek on Diamond Mountain. The mill was operated by steam power and the logs were hauled by wagon with a team of oxen. George Dagle purchased the Ruple sawmill on Brush Creek Mountain and opened the Central Lumber Yard in Vernal. Fred Feltch came to Vernal from Fraizer, Colorado, in 1914 and bought a farm in Ashley Ward. He became interested in the logging business and began a sawmill on his farm. He was the first to run a mill with electricity and the first to buy a large truck to haul logs off 168 HISTORY OF UINTAH COUNTY the mountain. He also installed a dipping vat for treating power poles. He cut poles on Red Mountain and skidded them down the east slope by team, then hauled them off the mountain in a big Marlin truck. Silver Licht worked Fred Feltch's sawmill in Ashley and then moved to Manila where he went into business for himself. He and his son Lynn later logged out of Pat Carroll Park. Ernest Caldwell and Eric Nelson began a sawmill in 1943, oper­ating out of East Park and Big Park in the Ashley Forest and employ­ing a crew of eleven men. The next winter Caldwell bought Nelson out and continued to operate the mill on Taylor Mountain at Big Park. He later moved the mill to Vernal, where he and his son Bryce operated the mill, hauling logs off the mountain. lames M. Griffin and David H. Bingham owned a sawmill known as the Vernal Sawmill near East Park. It was located on a creek and a flume was built to float the logs through the rough area. In 1899 T.T. Holdaway purchased Bingham's interest in the mill, which had been moved onto Little Brush Creek. In 1906 a new company was formed for this mill; it included J.M. Griffin, E.W Davis, Herman Miller, and Leslie Ashton. The Park Lumber Company mill at Twin Parks on Taylor Mountain was operated by Joe Luck and his sons, who produced large quantities of shingles. Other men who operated mills in the county were Henry Bill Gardner, Harvey Kanistanaux, and Scotty Massey in Dry Fork Canyon. Swen Anderson operated a mill in 1896, and William Anderson and a Mr. lolly operated another around 1906. Brothers named Lybbert owned a mill on the west side of the county and Charles Hutcheon owned one in Whiterocks. Douglas Mountain Sawmill furnished lumber for a lumberyard at lensen managed by C.H. Hellman. Eliza Walters Anderson operated a sawmill near Dyer. Other mills included the Reynolds Sawmill, McKune Sawmill, and Hicks Sawmill, and there may have been oth­ers. Martin Oaks came to the valley in 1879 and built the first shingle mill, located on Taylor Mountain near Oaks Park. Several sawmills were set up on the mountain north of LaPoint and Tridell where the settlers could take logs to be sawed into lum­ber. The first was established by lohn Bowles on Mosby Park near Bowl Spring and built as early as 1907 or 1908. When Adolphus Le COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 169 Beau was manager of the mill, the steam boiler blew up; fortunately, no one was hurt. Bowles sold the mill to A.J. Johnston. In 1912 lohnston set up another mill farther back in Mill Canyon. Bill Johnston was the third miller on this mountain, with a sawmill located at Paradise Creek below Paradise Park. Next, a Mr. Hardinger put a mill in at Deer or Buck Point. Henry Lee and his brother Eli owned a mill for two years and then sold it in 1927 to George H. Bartlett and Neldon Nyberg, who were still operating the mill in 1931 according to the Vernal Express. The mill was later moved to Mosby Park. The mill was powered by a Case steam tractor. Water for the steam engine came from a nearby lake. The logs were brought to the mill by horses; sometimes the wagon was used to load one end of the logs, the other ends of which dragged along the ground. In winter­time bobsleds were used. Lumber was hauled down the mountain to market on wagons or sleighs in winter to Tridell, LaPoint, Vernal, Roosevelt, and other nearby towns. The A.J. Johnston mill on Brush Creek Mountain burned to the ground in 1916. This was the second fire to plague this company. In 1928 a bigger steam engine and boiler were purchased from an aban­doned gold dredge on the Green River above Jensen. It was moved to the mountain mostly by draft-team wagons and sleighs. A truck was hired to haul the big boiler to the foot of the mountain. During the fall and winter of 1929, the equipment was set up in Paradise Park. A large shed was built, and two planers and the saw were run by the steam engine. In the summer of 1930 the company purchased its first small truck to haul lumber to market. George and Owen Bartlett took their families to the mountains each spring when school was out and stayed all summer until school started in the fall. Their company operated in Paradise Park for ten years, until 1940 when the sawmill burned to the ground. Nothing was saved. George and Owen purchased a mill and a diesel engine and set up operations on the hill west of the George Bartlett home. Logs were hauled by truck from Mosby Mountain. Owen, his son Mark, and George's son Lester operated the mill in Tridell until 1951. In 1957 the mill was sold and moved.15 In 1920 Hen Lee and A. Warburton purchased a planing mill in Roosevelt and moved it to LaPoint. 170 HISTORY OF UINTAH COUNTY The first government sawmill was operated by George Dickson a short distance north of Whiterocks. Sappanis Cutch and Pete Dillman also worked in the mill. Three other government mills oper­ated at times-one in Dry Gulch, one in Uinta Canyon, and one in John Star Flat. Twenty-four sawmills were on or near the Ashley National Forest in 1943, and eighteen of these operated throughout the summer. Many mine props were taken from the forest that year. Byron Thomas and sons Bill and Bud ran a sawmill in Meadow Park and later moved the mill to their ranch in Dry Fork. They hauled logs by truck from Dry Fork Mountain to the mill. A million-dollar lumber industry was envisioned for Ashley Valley with the acquisition of the controlling interest in the Flaming Gorge Stud Sawmill by the Croft brothers. In 1968 Leo Croft pur­chased the mill which Smoky Rasmussen had begun to develop. Another nearby small mill was purchased from Ward Blazzard. The mill was located near Doc's Beach on the Taylor Mountain road. The mill was sold to a company from New Mexico which operated it for about two years and then turned it back to Croft. This caused diffi­culty for Croft and his company went into bankruptcy and was taken over by the bank.16 The Simper family purchased the mill from the bank. It later burned but was rebuilt. Alfred Simper ran a mill in the Greendale area in the early years. Alfred's son lay carried on the business. Jay also had a mill in Vernal which was moved to Mail Draw east of Steinaker Draw; Gary Simper operated it. The Mail Draw Mill burned out several times and Simper purchased the Croft Mill near Doc's Beach, which also burned. At present the Mail Draw Mill has been abandoned, and only the mill at Doc's Beach is in operation. Simper Lumber Company went into the fourth generation in the 1990s when Wayne Simper purchased the mill from other family members. The Sweeney family started a lumber business in LaPoint in 1913. William Sweeney took over the business in 1929, which is now known as the Great Lakes Timber Company. Some mills operated for only a season; others continued for several years with many men employed cutting logs, working in the sawmills, and hauling the logs down from the mountains. The mills have been a great source of rev- COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 171 enue for the county's economy and much of the lumber is found in area homes and businesses today. Brickmaking was another large industry in the county. One of the first brickmaking kilns, owned by Charles B. Atwood, began oper­ation in 1889 and produced brick for the Central School and Ashley Co-op. Swain brothers' brickyard made the brick for the Uintah LDS Tabernacle in 1901, and one of the last brickmakers, Al Campbell, made brick for the Vernal LDS First Ward in 1928. Other companies involved in brickmaking (and their founding dates) include Brunker & Davids, 1897; Teeters & Brunker, 1898; S.W Tucker & H.H. Taylor, 1892; Berkley Brick Company, 1901; lohn Grant, 1907; Johnson, Bullock 8c Company, 1898; George lohnstun and Ed Taylor, 1898; Mark Cook, 1916; and George Fuller, 1925. A plant for making pressed brick opened at Avalon in 1940, producing brick in various colors, and Abner Swain operated a brickyard in LaPoint. Fred Wahlquist and Blake Peay purchased a brick press and began busi­ness in Randlett during the Depression, operating it for two summers before they gave up on the enterprise. Early lime-kiln operators included D.H. Workman, who con­structed the first lime kiln in Maeser to burn lime for plaster; Duke Brothers made lime in 1901. WP. Reynolds made the county's first plaster of paris, which was ground in the old burr mill and used as the hard finish on the original co-op building. William Oaks was one of the first men in the area to burn gypsum. Another enterprise that has been a factor in the county's growth economy is fish hatcheries. Between 1902 and 1922 several organiza­tions including the Vernal Gun and Rifle Club, Commercial Club, and U.S. Forest Service worked to get a fish hatchery for the area. Construction of the Whiterocks hatchery by the Utah Fish and Game Department began in August 1922 at a location northwest of Whiterocks just below Provo Ditch spring. The constant 50 degree water temperature from the spring was favorable for raising cut­throat, eastern brook, and brown trout. From some 600,000 fish eggs furnished to the hatchery, a good supply of trout grew, and the first fish from the hatchery were released in county streams in 1929. Most of the fish were planted from eight-gallon cans carried on horseback to the streams and lakes of the Uinta Mountains. Fish planting 172 HISTORY OF UINTAH COUNTY became much easier in 1931 when the hatchery acquired its first fish-planting truck. The Whiterocks hatchery was enlarged several times, including 1935 when Federal Emergency Relief A d m i n i s t r a t i o n funds were secured and 1956 when new cement ponds were built. The expanded hatchery, now one of the largest in the state, provides as many as 3 m i l l i o n fish annually for the Uinta Basin and other locations throughout the state. Airplanes now transport the one-to-three-inch-long fish to the lakes, dropping t h em almost 100 feet into the water. A second local fish hatchery was constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation in May 1965 to mitigate the loss of fish habitat and the increase in fishing recreational use due to the Colorado River Storage Project. The lones Hole National Fish Hatchery was put into pro­d u c t i o n in January 1970. Jones Hole is accessed by traveling over Diamond Mountain forty-two miles northeast of Vernal near the Colorado border. Constant water temperature from the seven springs which supply water to the h a t c h e r y makes the lones Hole Fish Hatchery ideal year r o u n d for producing rainbow, brown, and cut­throat trout. Operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, lones Hole Fish H a t c h e r y supplies half of its fish to Flaming Gorge Reservoir as well as supplying fish to Steinaker, Red Fleet, and Strawberry reservoirs. The development of commercial and industrial enterprises from the first trading post and co-op to the large national chain stores has been a continual endeavor. The county's main settlement of Vernal no longer has a close small-town atmosphere but has become a bustling city meeting the needs of a growing and diverse population. ENDNOTES 1. Vernal Express, 21 December 1967. 2. "A Brief History of Uintah State Bank," unpublished manuscript pre­sented by Henry Schaffermeyer to Uintah County Library Regional History Center. 3. Annual Report to the Stockholders of Uintah State Bank, 1941; copy located in Uintah County Library Regional History Center, folder 0311. 4. Mildred Lind Mansfield, "Ashley Co-op and Other Co-op Stores of COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 173 Early Days," unpublished manuscript, copy held in Uintah County Library Regional History Center. 5. Margaret Francke, untranscribed interview with author at Uintah County Library in 1985. 6. The "Chinese Massacre" began when a group of angry Rock Springs miners attacked the local Chinatown, killing more than forty people, burn­ing at least eighty cabins, and driving up to 500 people from the town. See Craig Storti, Incident at Bitter Creek, The Story of the Rock Springs Chinese Massacre (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991), 113-20; and Robert B. Rhode, Booms & Busts on Bitter Creek (Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing Company, 1987), 45-63. 7. Vernal Express, 22 April 1897 and 28 April 1898. 8. Ibid., 14 September 1893, 23 lanuary 1896, and 8 luly 1897; Harold Workman, interview with author at Regional History Center, Uintah County Library, 12 luly 1993. 9. See, for example, Vernal Express, 6 March 1891, 17 luly 1891, 29 December 1892, and 22 lune 1893. 10. Ibid., 16 February 1917. 11. Ibid., 22 and 29 luly 1987. 12. Byron Loosle, "The Ashley National Forest," unpublished manu­script, copy located in Uintah County Library Regional History Center. 13. Life and Times of Peter Dillman (Springville, UT: Art City Publishing Co., 1954), 19; "History of Teancum Taylor," unpublished man­uscript, copy located in Uintah County Library Regional History Center. 14. Vera Christena Lee Bigelow and Vera Helen Bigelow Chivers, The Ancestors and Descendants of Isaac Lee and Elizabeth Blizard (Salt Lake City: Lee Family, 1987), 67. 15. Lester H. Bartlett, "History of Bartlett Lumber Company," unpub­lished paper, copy located in the Uintah County Library Regional History Center. 16. Leo Croft, telephone interview with Doris Burton, 10 August 1994.