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Show C H A P T E R 1 2 REFLECTIONS ON BOX ELDER COUNTY AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY J.n Brigham City it is Peach Days, which lays claim to being the oldest harvest festival in the state of Utah. In the rocky alluvium of Brigham City, the honored crop in the early agricultural years was peaches. Out in "the Valley" it is Wheat and Beet days, with produce coming in from the dry farms and the sugar beet and onion fields. Then there is the County Fair. Though there are variations, taken together, they conform to the ancient pattern. The people come together once a year. Those who come in from outlying communities with their produce and their farm animals to exhibit have to stay near the fairgrounds. They have to stay, to eat, and to visit the banks. Sometimes they suffer injuries and have to go to the hospital. They meet other family members from nearby towns, and share news and family photographs. Sometimes they go to the photography booth or the caricaturist's booth, and have a family portrait done. While waiting for the judges to come by, they play cards or throw horseshoes. Sometimes they race, either on foot or on their sleek, combed horses. They go to the street dance, they walk and talk, and spend time with girlfriends or boyfriends. There is the election of the Peach Queen or 294 HISTORY OF BOX ELDER COUNTY Wheat and Beet Queen, or Miss County Fair. All go to the rodeo, where brave youths, the cream of the crop, wrestle with calves or broncs or bulls, and show their athletic prowess. More than this, like the youth who fought the bulls in the Mithraic contests of ancient times, young men at the peak of their virility battle the powerful, dark bovine brute beasts, as Mithras slew the bull centuries ago. In days gone by, one of the county heroes, Sheriff Warren Hyde, rode his horse at the head of the procession through the rodeo arena. And a hero he was, a hero of thirty-some years as sheriff of one of Utah's largest counties. There were amazing tales of daring captures, and his famous battle with one of the great prizes of World War II, one of the elusive "fire balloons" sent from Japan to set fire to the cities and countryside of western America. Such is the mythic power of Peach Days, Wheat and Beet days, and the County Fair. It is these seemingly frivolous events which provide that mystic tie between the residents of Box Elder County in the 1990s with people much like themselves separated from them by thousands of miles of geography and thousands of years of time. We dress differently, and get around differently, but we, citizens of Box Elder County, are also related to people throughout the world, people who live, laugh, cry, eat, sleep, go to school and to work, read, worship, sicken, die, despair, and hope. To some degree, our history is part of theirs. There are so many facets of our history. There is the change from church schools to public schools, and the eventual consolidation of schools and the utilization of school busses and long bus rides instead of small schools closer to home. There is the building and re-routing of roads, from the coming of Interstate 15 and Interstate 84 to the minor re-routing of the highway from Brigham City to Corinne and 1-15 to Box Elder Canyon. One of them, the building of the road west toward Corinne from the north end of Brigham City, was one of those historically significant projects brought about through Franklin D. Roosevelt's alphabet agencies during the Depression. It was build largely by hand, and the huge sections of concrete laid one at a time. Now they make an annoying bump, bump, bump, as cars speed along, but then it was a fine highway (and, even now, that construction has lasted longer than a lot of sections of new freeway). It provided employment for many REFLECTIONS AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 295 Brigham City Main Street. (Utah State Historical Society) who survived because of it. I am acquainted with a wonderful woman, now in her nineties, who drove a team of horses in the construction of that piece of highway. Even Box Elder's concrete has its history, and its personal stories-the stories of people, individuals and families, and their own personal struggles and triumphs. There is the story of the old Cement Plant, still a monument of ruins next to the freeway between Brigham City and Honeyville. Cement was made from the marl beds north and west of Brigham City. There was some disagreement between someone in the administration of the Cement Plant and the mayor of Brigham City, some personal thing. When the plant caught fire, the mayor, the old-timers say, wouldn't allow the city fire department to put the fire out. The Cement Plant burned. By then the new Portland Cement process had been developed, and the old plant was not rebuilt. All that is left is the ruins of the east part of the large plant, a few crumbling company houses west of the freeway, and the old "Cement Plant Pond" which 296 HISTORY OF BOX ELDER COUNTY served as a swimming hole before Brigham City built its municipal pool in the 1960s.1 There is the saga of game hunting in Box Elder County, from the plethora of duck clubs of the 1920s and 1930s, the great deer hunts and rabbit drives of the 1930s and 1940s to the pheasant and goose hunting of the present day. There is the development of private hunting reserves and the commercialization of bird hunting in western Box Elder County. There is the coming of public utilities, including the saga of electrical power generation in Brigham City, from the first generator connected to the waterwheel at the Woolen Mill to the steam power-plant near the OSL Depot to the city-owned hydroelectric plant at the mouth of the canyon. Brigham City was so proud of its own electrical power generating facility that it made the people of the city an offer. If they would agree to leave their porch lights on all night to make the streets more safe and friendly, the city would pay for the electricity to operate the porch lights. Of course, Thiokol came, Brigham City connected up to the great power grid, and eventually the offer was withdrawn, the porchlights wired through the meters, and the streets of Brigham City became a little darker and a little less safe, and the city a little less friendly. There was the coming of the telephone lines, then finally dial telephones in the 1960s and digital switching in the 1990s. There was the coming of Mountain Fuel Supply Company's gas pipeline along the bench east of Brigham City, with its attendant scar along the mountainside. Brigham City's power company, and even the great Cutler power plant on the Bear River, became only sparks in the great power grid that served the nation, and brought brownouts and blackouts when a transformer failed hundreds of miles away. Then there are the mines. There is Fred Holton's dream mine above the old Brigham City temple site. There is the Vipont Mine near Lucin, and there is the Baker Mine, above Harper Ward. There is the old Antimony Mine, its access road a long scar along the foothills north of Brigham City. Each has its own story. There are the stories of the Oregon Short Line, the Utah-Idaho Northern, and the Utah-Idaho Central. There are the old streetcars which plied the streets of Brigham City. The old-timers talk about the REFLECTIONS AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 297 motor-man, Tommy Slatter. Everybody knew him. They also said that the old streetcar had one wheel with a flat side, from all the clanking noise it made as it moved slowly along. There is the story of the American Greetings plant which came to Brigham City, and then went. There is the Lazy Boy furniture factory which boosted the economy of Tremonton and Garland. There is the Morton Airbag Factory, a spinoff of the partnership of Morton and Thiokol, which took over and enlarged the American Greetings factory west of Brigham City. There is the Box Elder Water Conservancy District, organized to protect Box Elder County's share of the water of the Bear River. It was not involved in planning of the ill-conceived Honeyville Dam, which considered finishing John R. Bothwell's grand plan to extend a canal from the Bear River to Ogden. Under the direction of former Box Elder County commissioner Frank Nishiguchi, the Water Conservancy District is pursuing a long-range plan to connect the culinary water supplies of Box Elder County's major communities and provide an adequate supply of drinking water for a majority of the citizens of Box Elder County. It favored storage of Bear River Water farther upstream, in Cache Valley, preserving the old Hampton's Ford hotel and stage coach station, which would have been inundated by the dam.2 Then there is the story of Box Elder County in the art world. One of the most noted artworks in the world is in Box Elder County. Most residents of the county don't even know it. Those who do, guffaw and belittle it. Even so, it is in the art texts used in universities all over the world, and (as the staff at Golden Spike National Historic Site can attest) people come from all over the United States and the world to visit it. It is the Spiral Jetty, a product of the "earth art" movement of the 1960s. The Jetty was the "crowning achievement" of James Smithson. It "is a 1,500-foot-long, 15-foot wide artwork made of 6,650 tons of black rock."3 Smithson hired a local bulldozer operator to push the rock out into the shallow waters of Great Salt Lake, making a "Left handed spiral, which turns in on itself twice"4 in 1970. Many of the visitors to the site are disappointed to find that the jetty was built during a low-water cycle of Great Salt Lake. Most of the time, the jetty is several feet under water. According to Mark Saal, "It 298 HISTORY OF BOX ELDER COUNTY has only been since 1993, after 10 years of receding water levels, that visitors could see the jetty from the shore, and its re-emergence has brought renewed interest."5 Not to be outdone (or to continue the legacy), Smithson's widow, Nancy Holt, had four huge concrete pipes, which resemble ten-foot-diameter concrete culverts, hauled to a remote site south of Lucin, where they were carefully placed on the alkali playa, in line with the summer and winter solstice sunrise and sunset, and holes cut in them for viewing selected constellations. She named her work of art the Sun Tunnels and said that their "public a r t " - t h e Jetty and the Tunnels-"went out into the world." More people visit the Jetty than the Tunnels, due to the greater exposure given the former in the art texts and its near proximity to paved roads and cities, but the Tunnels are a more impressive sight from the ground.6 In 1996 the state of Utah reached its centennial. In preparation for that event, Box Elder County clerk and recorder LuAnn Adams decided that a renewal of the old Box Elder County Courthouse was in order. An article in an anecdotal history of Cache County some year ago opined that the Cache County Courthouse was the oldest courthouse in the state still functioning as such. In reality, it is the courthouse in Box Elder County, built in the mid-1850s. Though it underwent a facelift in the 1887, and was given Italianate ornamentation, and a clocktower, and though it was extensively added to in 1909-10,7 it still incorporates the original structure, used for church meetings and theatrical productions in the days of Brigham City's infancy. During what turned out to be a renovation, a new roof was installed to replace the roof which had served for over eighty years. The exterior was cleaned and the stonework covered with a moisture-resistant sealant. Inside the building received a new coat of paint. The old juvenile courtrooms were converted into spacious new quarters for the county commission, and the county surveyor, county inspector, FEMA office received larger q u a r t e r s in t h e old commission chambers. The building was retrofitted to conform to the requirements of t h e Americans with Disabilities Act, new c a r p e t i n g was installed, a n d the building was given a n ew life and a shining new face. The old p e n d u l um clockworks, which had turned the hands of the tower clock from 1910 until the 1960s, was rebuilt and placed in a 300 HISTORY OF BOX ELDER COUNTY City.10 There is Box Elder native son Boyd Packer, son of an automobile mechanic, who took Rudger Clawson's and Lorenzo Snow's place representing Box Elder in the highest councils of the LDS church, along with a number of others who have served their church and community in high and responsible positions. They are many. Fame and notoriety come and go, but the real story of Box Elder is not in those with fame and position (who generally have to live outside Brigham City to take their positions and serve their fame), it is people like the members of the committee who provided most of the information for the histories of the individual communities in the following chapter. There is Merlin Larsen, who has lived much of his life farming the dry hillsides of Promontory, and his wife, Doris. There is LeGrand Morris, who knows the hills and trails around Park Valley and Rosette better than just about anybody else, and his wife Dorothy who shares life and work with him. There is Keith Andersen of Bothwell, who amazes people with his knowledge of almost the entire western two-thirds of the county. There is Gale Welling of Fielding, who gave me a wonderful tour, and saved hundreds of hours of research about the canals and the dam in Bear River Canyon. There is Frank Nishiguchi, farmer, administrator, county commissioner from Riverside, who got this project going in the first place. There are the Secrists of Collinston, who were so helpful and supportive, and Merlin Tracy, who spent untold hours working out the route of the old Salt Lake Cutoff through Yost. There are those who came with the Thiokol influx, who have added depth and breadth to the matrix of culture and faith of Box Elder County. They can be exemplified by Lorna Ravenberg, who has kept the Box Elder County history project on track and, as its secretary, keeps the Box Elder County Commission running smoothly, and also serves as a pillar of her church. Then there were those who are long gone. There were William Davis, James Brooks, and Thomas Pierce, who first came to Box Elder in 1850. There were all the unnamed souls who pioneered Brigham City, like my own grandparents and great-grandparents, who left homes in Wales and Denmark to pioneer a new land. There were those who came with the railroad, those who came with the sugar REFLECTIONS AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 301 Smoothing out a stock pond site on the Adams ranch in 1939 using a caterpillar tractor, four horse fresno, four mule fresno, and a bucket scraper pulled by two oxen. (Box Elder County) company, the canal system, a n d the land b o om of the turn-of-the-century. There were those who came from Russia a n d India, and from China and Japan. These are t h e people who deserve t h e real publicity and honor in a history of Box Elder County. Perhaps the story of the real people of Box Elder can be told in the story of those unsung heroes, the story of "everyman." It is the story of my maternal great-grandmother, who as a girl worked in the coal mines of Wales, and who, with her sweetheart, crossed the ocean and the plains to come of Box Elder when it was a tiny, struggling settlement. It is the story of my great-grandfather, who left a hard life in Denmark to come to Utah to gather with others of his faith, to worship in the community of Zion. It is the story of the Nelsons and the Nielsens, of the Larsens and the Rasmussens, of the Andersens and the Andersons, of the Evanses and the Davises and the Bodens, of the Wellings and the Christensens. It is the story of the Wrights and the Kellys, of the Joneses and the Rosenbaums (Morris Rosenbaum was one of Lorenzo Snow's converts from Europe, a n d one of the first 302 HISTORY OF BOX ELDER COUNTY Jewish converts to Mormonism). It is the story of the Nishiguchis and the Tazois and the Satos and the Yamasakis, who came to Utah to work for the railroad or the sugar company, or raise vegetables in the newly irrigated soil of Bear River Valley. It is the story of the Singhs and the Madsens, the Pierces and the Forsgrens (Peter Adolph Forsgren was the first person in all of Scandinavia baptized into the LDS church). Box Elder would not be Box Elder without the Wrightons (William Wrighton brought the first peach seeds to Brigham City). What would our history be without Shadrack Jones, Willard's Welsh stonemason, or John H. Bott, who learned the stonemason's trade working on the Salt Lake temple and came to Brigham City with his three wives and numerous posterity? What about the Dunns and the Barons and the Horsleys and the Merrills and the Reeders and the Valentines and all the others who came? What would Honeyville be without the Hunsakers, the Binghams, and the Tolmans? What would Beaverdam have been without the Bowens and the Busenbarks? Could there have been a Bear River City without Holmgrens, or Yost without Tracys and Tanners; and how about Park Valley without the Kimbers? These families, and hundreds like them, have made Box Elder County what it is. Then there are the Timbimboos and their kin, whose ancestors were here before any of the rest of us. And what breadth has been added to our community by those who have come since pioneer days: the Misrasis, the Kozaks, the Sholtys, the Browns, the Basses, the Wilhites, the Breitenbuchers, the Martinezes, the Savocas, the Harrises, the Ravenbergs, and so many others. The real story of Box Elder County is the story of its people, people from many nations, people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, people with varied religious beliefs. It is the story of the common people more than those who have achieved notoriety. Perhaps the best summation of the people of Box Elder is the story of Adolph Olsen, whose mother carried silk-worms in a specially made pouch under her dress to keep them warm so that the Mercantile and Manufacturing Association could have silk and be self-sufficient-so that the Relief Society could present a beautiful silk dress, made entirely from home industry, to the noted Susan B. Anthony when she visited Utah. REFLECTIONS AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 303_ Adolph Olsen left home, farm, and town to serve a mission for his church in the old Southern States Mission, when they were still s t o n i n g and killing and t a r r i n g and feathering and castrating Mormon missionaries. He came home older, more wise in the ways of the world, and more self-confident. He went to the coal fields of eastern Utah with the National Guard to p u t down a strike. He thought of home as he lay perched on the hillside above the mines and the striking unionists, wondering if he would have to kill someone. He spent most of his life in Brigham City, married to the same girl for over fifty years, farming and raising his family. He spent his later years systematically walking the streets of Brigham City in his blue-striped overalls, reading the water and power meters. He never worked for a large corporation, he probably never had his picture in the newspaper, but his story, and the stories of thousands like him, is the story of the farms and the families and the towns of Box Elder County. Let us never forget that. ENDNOTES 1. That pool, which succeeded an older one at the north end of Pioneer Park Pond, wore out, in its turn, and was replaced by one of the largest and most up-to-date outdoor water-recreation facilities in Utah in the late 1990s. 2. The thing which finally put an end to the dam project was the discovery that the high-earth banks of the river channel would not stand up to a reservoir, and would continually cave in, widening the channel, eating away farmland, and rapidly filling the reservoir with silt. 3. Mark Saal, "The Spiral letty," Ogden Standard Examiner, 23 lune 1996. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. See also, Angelika Pagael, "The Immobile Cyclone: Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty," cited in Saal's article. Collateral articles in the same issue of the Standard Examiner provide more information about Smithson, construction of the jetty, and access to the site. Information and directions are also available at the visitor center at Golden Spike National Historic Site. 7. See Sarah Yates, "BE County courthouse featured in publication," Box Elder News Journal, 19 January 1994; and Ernest Freeman, chair, Brigham 304 HISTORY OF BOX ELDER COUNTY City Eighth Ward Building Committee, Through the Years (Brigham City: Brigham City Eighth Ward, 1951), 25. 8. Many of the photographs come from the priceless collection of glass plates from pioneer Brigham City photographer Alma Compton, and the large-format celluloid negatives of his son, Matthew Compton. Matthew Compton's son, Glen, bequeathed the collection to the Special Collections archives of Utah State University's Merrill Library, where they are cared for and provide a resource for generations to come. 9. Interview with LuAnn Adams, 25 March 1998. 10. See Howard M. Carlisle, Colonist Fathers, Corporate Sons: A Selected History of the Call Family (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1996). |
