| OCR Text |
Show Comments Gary Tomsic It is always a pleasure to listen to Dr. O'Neil. Historians like Floyd and Kent Powell, Helen Papanikolas, and Dr. Geary who have some roots in the area bring to us not only the whats and whens of history, but the hows, and more particularly, the whys. I don't perceive myself as anything more than a curbstone historian, although Dr. Dorman and I normally sit in front of the museum rather than on a curbstone when we get into history. And then, it's not so much from the standpoint of dates and names as it is events-their impact on the Carbon County of today, and, more important, on the Carbon County of the future. My job is to assist communities and people in planning their futures in Carbon, Emery, Grand, and San Juan regions. In doing so I often reach back into the history that I know and try to make comparisons and perhaps draw some conclusions. I think that the points that Dr. O'Neil made can be projected into our present day and into our future without changing them a great deal. I have always appreciated Floyd's comparison of Carbon County to an island. In fact, I have borrowed it- sometimes without giving him credit for it. But Carbon County is an island in the mainstream of Utah history. Fortunately, Utah is rapidly catching up with us. For Carbon County reflects a much later story of social events across the nation. While Utah was struggling with an isolated territorial colonization effort, Carbon County was experiencing the repressions of immigration, the labor movement, and all of the effects of national and international economics. We were kind of a microcosm of America sitting right in the middle of a territory that was preoccupied with a good deal of other things. And this is somewhat true today; Carbon County is still more affected 40 Comments by international and national events than we are by local and state events. This has recently been brought to our attention as the decisions of the president affect Carbon and Emery counties much more severely than they do other rural counties in the nation. His economic and energy policies directly influence our growth: policies that inflate interest rates and curtail construction shut down our energy-dependent economy much more rapidly and in many cases more severely than other areas of Utah. I am one who puts a lot of credence in the economic reasons for places to exist. One theory that I have from observing and reading is that there are a lot of communities in Utah that really have no business being there, from a planners' point of view. In most of rural Utah the colonization catalyst was religion. As you know, the leaders of the Mormon church sent people to settle areas throughout the state. The people went there because they were told to, and it was only after they got there that they started to think about how they were going to develop the economy. That is not true in Carbon County. Emery County was one of the last areas to be settled because no one wanted to come here. It was difficult enough for the pioneers to settle in Emery County, but it was even more difficult for them to settle in Carbon County where agriculture has always been marginal. So Carbon County was one of the few areas that I know of in the state that was developed solely for an economic reason-to mine coal. Mining has been paramount throughout our history. There has been no other reason for us to be here, religious or otherwise. I would like to talk very quickly about the impact of the vagaries of the economy that Floyd mentioned. What kinds of attitudes are produced by a hundred-or-so-year history of ups and downs with a few periods of stabilization? I have observed in my work that in 1972-74 when we heard that once again the area was going to grow, the people of Carbon County exhibited an attitude of high skepticism and, as 41 Gary Tomsic Floyd's talk so adequately illustrated, there was good reason to feel skeptical. We had been through this before. It was perceived by many of the old-timers to be another cycle that was going to end in a bust. But along with that, and somewhat inconsistent, was a general willingness to participate. Knowing that the only leg in our economy was mining, we had to accept the good times when they came. And so no one was going to turn them away. I think those attitudes have their foundations in the early beginnings of Carbon County. Dr. O'Neil made some comments about the image problem. It still exists. Though the coal miners and coal mining in Utah may be different from the industry in the East, there still exists a perception of this region that is very similar to Dr. CNeil's description of coal mining and the people who live in coal mining regions. It still carries with it the stigma of the big dumb foreigner with a pick, shovel, and a donkey going into a coal mine rather than the highly sophisticated, technical, and well-paid occupation that it is. This affects us in many ways: It affects the recruitment here at the College of Eastern Utah. It affects the recruitment of labor forces for our power plants and coal mines. And coal mining is not a vocation that students look to when they graduate from high school in Salt Lake and sit down to assess their career alternatives. But even though the old images are with us, they are rapidly changing as Utah becomes an energy state. Where once we were the only area with coal mining as the main source of the economy, now other areas-the Uinta Basin, Emery County, the central and southwestern parts of Utah, for example-are all undergoing changes (positive and negative) similar to those we underwent one hundred years ago. Fortunately, we have learned from our mistakes. Though growth will have impact on the community and create some hardships and burdens in providing services to growing populations, we can at least acknowledge some experience in dealing with the inevitable social and cultural change. 42 Comments So the problems are still there. But there is one difference: For the the first time in a hundred years we have a long-term outlook that shows some stability. The reason for this is that, unlike the past, our coal markets are now local, not national. We are not dependent on the steel industries in Pittsburgh, or Japan, or any other area. As long as Utah Power and Light runs their power plant and it burns coal, there is going to be a need for coal. Regardless of national and international events, the bottom is not likely to fall out as it has in the past. At least for the next forty years. It is interesting to project ourselves beyond that point and understand that we have a nonrenewable resource that we depend upon as our life's blood, and that someday it is going to disappear. Then where is Carbon County going to be? I don't know. Perhaps it will cease to be. But, Dr. O'Neil, looking right down the line at the things you have told us, I would say that they have not changed radically; and we can use the points you bring out not only to look into our past but to give us some good guidance into the future of our area. Mr. Tomsic is director, Utah Division of Community Development, and a native of Helper. 43 44 |
