Utah Ghost Towns

W. Dee Halverson at Heritage Associates, opens doors to the past.
Recently Dee wrote the history of a coal mining community which has now disappeared into the dust.

"One of the most important tasks of a coal miner's wife was having a tub of water heating on the stove ready for the grimy workman to jump into on his return from a twelve-hour shift."


Lucille Judd, a 93-year-old Grass Creek native recalled, "In Grass Creek there was only one water source for washing, cooking and bathing. We called it the Town Pump. The townspeople would all line up on Saturday with their buckets and tubs to get water for the family's weekly baths. They would be there again on Sunday night to get water for Monday wash day. I think the only place with running water in Grass Creek was Mrs. Buchanan's boarding house."

Grass Creek, Utah is a ghost town, one of many old settlements that have vanished as if by the wave of a magician's wand, leaving only memories to prove they once existed. As fragile as memories are the stories of the people who once lived in these now deserted towns.

Grass Creek, Utah Classroom

Many of today's ghost towns were prosperous mining camps, boom towns built upon silver, gold and even coal. But they might as well have been built upon sand, for they bloomed briefly, then faded and died. Sometimes they were deserted overnight when the miners left to answer the call of rich strikes elsewhere. More often the mines died gradually when their veins pinched out, or when underground water flooded their shafts.

Not many people alive today can remember Grass Creek when hundreds of miners, speaking a dozen different languages, made their way up the six-mile canyon. Or when schools, boarding houses, saloons and homes crowded streets, and picnics, dances and daily chores crowded lives. But no matter its size or how long its life, historic towns like Grass, Creek, Utah should be remembered—if only as places where people lived, loved and died.

Is there a door to your past that needs opening? Heritage Associates has the key! Contact us in South Jordan, Utah, at 801-532-2561, or wdhalverson@heritageassociates.com

Ten Easy Steps to Family History

Illustrations by Robert Lawson

"This is the story of my mother and my father and of their fathers and mothers. Most of it I heard as a little boy, so there may be many mistakes; perhaps I have forgotten or mixed up some of the events and people. But that does not really matter . . . None of them were great or famous, but they were strong and good."—Robert Lawson

A family history can be as simple as a bedtime story, or it can be volumes, covering generations in detail. The idea of volumes is what keeps people from writing something simple. This child's book by Robert Lawson illustrates how valuable even the most basic family history can be.

"My mother's mother was a little Dutch girl,
who lived on a farm in New Jersey."

Some of you have asked how to get started on a family history so we've created an outline.

Ten Easy Steps to Family History

1. Make a simple chart of you, your parents, and their parents, going back as far as you want. (ex: Marty—June and Jiggs—Agnes and Axel; Adelila and Hawley.)
   
2. Create a new folder on your computer and name it: Information for Family History.
   
3. Create a separate file for each of the people on your chart. They will be blank except for the person's name. Drag the files into your folder.
4. Now open each file and list the details you already know. (ex: Axel born Sweden about 1890; came to America when he was 17.)
   
5. Do you remember any family stories? List them in the appropriate file. (ex: Jiggs chased by a bear; Hawley ran away to the circus.)
   
6. Choose one of the stories and write it as a chapter or a blog post. Include any dates or places you're sure of.
7. Fact check your story by calling a relative or two. (Be sure to add any stories they share to your files.)
   
8. Find photos to illustrate the story if you can.
   
9. Save your story in a new folder called "Family History."
10. Repeat until you've told all the stories you remember. Then start searching for new ones.

"So they were married. They worked hard and were strong and good. They had many children and one of them happened to be me!"—Robert Lawson

For those of you who want help, Heritage Associates has a great history of writing family histories! Contact Dee Halverson at 801-532-2561.

Bohemian Grandmas

Wood Carvings from Krakow, Poland

Some Bohemian grandmas are looking down with gratitude.

Heritage Associates helped them share their good advice.

Archival Birth Register, Colmar, France

The Mika grandmas lived in different regions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in days of economic upheaval and political intrigue. Their individual histories came together in Vienna just before World War I, and their grandchildren lived under Nazi and Communist rule before coming to the United States.

Old letters and scrapbooks supplied enough information to raise a hundred questions. Heritage Associates found answers in France, Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic. Interviews with distant relatives in Austria filled in the details, and their photos filled in the blanks.

Heimat: The Story of a Family by W. Dee Halverson

Diane Setterfield wrote:

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some, there is an exception to this annihilation. For in books they continue to exist. We can rediscover them...

"As one tends the graves of the dead, so I read the books ... I allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it? Does a pinprick of light appear ... is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading about them? I do hope so."

---from The Thirteenth Tale

Generations of grandparents stretch back, back, back through the ages, with experience descendants would find priceless. Heritage Associates will help you discover and compile their stories in the context of the time and place. After all, your Bohemian grandmas might have some good advice!

Grass Creek, Utah

W. Dee Halverson at Heritage Associates, opens doors to the past.
Recently Dee wrote the history of a coal mining community which has now disappeared into the dust.

"One of the most important tasks of a coal miner's wife was having a tub of water heating on the stove ready for the grimy workman to jump into on his return from a twelve-hour shift."


Lucille Judd, a 93-year-old Grass Creek native recalled, "In Grass Creek there was only one water source for washing, cooking and bathing. We called it the Town Pump. The townspeople would all line up on Saturday with their buckets and tubs to get water for the family's weekly baths. They would be there again on Sunday night to get water for Monday wash day. I think the only place with running water in Grass Creek was Mrs. Buchanan's boarding house."

Grass Creek, Utah is a ghost town, one of many old settlements that have vanished as if by the wave of a magician's wand, leaving only memories to prove they once existed. As fragile as memories are the stories of the people who once lived in these now deserted towns.

Grass Creek, Utah Classroom

Many of today's ghost towns were prosperous mining camps, boom towns built upon silver, gold and even coal. But they might as well have been built upon sand, for they bloomed briefly, then faded and died. Sometimes they were deserted overnight when the miners left to answer the call of rich strikes elsewhere. More often the mines died gradually when their veins pinched out, or when underground water flooded their shafts.

Not many people alive today can remember Grass Creek when hundreds of miners, speaking a dozen different languages, made their way up the six-mile canyon. Or when schools, boarding houses, saloons and homes crowded streets, and picnics, dances and daily chores crowded lives. But no matter its size or how long its life, historic towns like Grass, Creek, Utah should be remembered—if only as places where people lived, loved and died.

Is there a door to your past that needs opening? Heritage Associates has the key! Contact us in South Jordan, Utah, at 801-532-2561, or wdhalverson@heritageassociates.com

Miles Goodyear Cabin

Restored Miles Goodyear Cabin

All the really cool people have cabins. They say, "We're spending the weekend at the cabin," or "We keep our horses at the cabin," or "We ski right into the cabin." Dee and Marty Halverson have a cabin, too.

Their cabin was built on the Weber River in 1845, the first permanent dwelling of a white man in the state. Miles Goodyear was a fur trapper, and a mountain man. He married an Indian woman and they lived by the river several years. The cabin was later moved a few times and finally ended up in a ramshackle and decrepid condition, wrapped in chicken wire, behind the Ogden DUP museum. It was an historic hidden treasure! Dee had actually been visiting it for a few years when he finally convinced a friend that it would be possible to restore it. She donated the money to the DUP and Dee was hired in 1994 to bring it back to it's former glory. What had he gotten himself into?



The cabin had to be dismantled and then restored in the way it was originally built. First of all, their daughter Amy drew a diagram of it, log by log. Then each log was painstakingly labeled before Dee, and sons Josh, Micah and Pete, and Pete's scout troop took it apart. They hauled the logs to a warehouse, where they were cleaned and treated, and left to cure. Several times during the winter Dee went to check on the stacks of logs. It made him sick. He couldn't imagine how he was ever going to recreate the cabin! He went home sicker every time he visited. It looked impossible. The whole project seemed like a nightmare. Whose idea was this? The DUP ladies were impatient and annoying. They always seemed to call when Dee was gone, and Marty began to hate them.

A new cement pad was poured behind the Tabernacle and the logs were hauled back. Pete's Eagle Project was to get everything ready to be put back together. With the help of the diagram, eight boy scouts started stacking the pieces on top of each other like Lincoln Logs, with Dee directing. It was like constructing a giant puzzle. The scouts had done their bit after one day, and Dee and Pete were left very short-handed. It took weeks.

The cabin had had a sod roof, and replacing that was the biggest challenge. How do you get tons of dirt on top of a pile of sticks, without collapsing the whole structure? Miles Goodyear and his Indian wife had done it all alone, so Dee knew it could be done. With a lot of research and trial and error, it was finally accomplished.

As is common in projects like this, the money and time needed were vastly underestimated and there was still a lot to do. By then it had become a labor of love. The opening of the cabin was only a few weeks away, and dignitaries and media people had all been invited. The DUP ladies were frantic that it wouldn't be finished, and although Dee was assuring them it was under control, he was actually a wreck as well.

One day in desperation he checked the kids out of school and the Halversons all went up to the cabin to "chink." Chinking is a mixture of straw, dirt, and manure that is used as a mortar between the logs. It's put on with a trowel, and it's a mess. That day it was pouring rain, and cold, and they all stood in the mud and slapped on the chinking, trying to make it stay where it was supposed to. They put it between all the logs both inside and outside. Several days after it dried, they went back to smooth the earthen floor. That day was very hot, and they had a hose and a huge roller. After the dirt was wet they were on their knees patting it down and dripping with sweat before it was rolled over and over again to get it even. Finally the cabin was ready to be furnished.




A few days later some wild flowers were planted, and it was finished. It was a miracle! It was dedicated and has been open during the summer as part of the temple grounds until the recent remodel of the Ogden temple.

Every time Dee Halverson is faced with an overwhelming challenge he drives up to the cabin. It reminds him that he can take a pile of sticks and make it something worthwhile. He always comes home buoyed up and refreshed.

They never have parties there, they never stay overnight ... they don't even have any claim to it. But the Miles Goodyear Cabin is definitely the Halverson's cabin!

Collecting Memories

Ervin Hirschmann about 1950

"Gather memories while ye may, for old men may be dying."

Erwin Hirschmann was a little boy, living in Vienna during World War II. These recollections are from an interview shortly before he died suddenly at age 85, January 1, 2009.

“When war began in September 1939 it meant little to us children. Our routines were not interrupted by an event most of us didn’t even know was taking place, much less understood. War, when we thought of it at all, was something for adults, taking place in lands with strange-sounding names. War seemed heroic to many of us; at least that is how the adults spoke of it when we overheard them over Sunday afternoon dinner. We continued to play hide-and-seek, hopscotch, Cowboys and Indians, went to school, and in time simply added another game to our list—Krieg.


“In 1940 and 1941 the air waves were filled with constant program interruptions of Sondermeldungen, special announcements of great victories by the German armies. But by 1943 there were no more Sondermeldungen. Instead, the drone of enemy aircraft overhead and the wail of the air raid siren began to define our lives in Vienna. Sleeping through a night without being awakened by the wail of a siren or the thump of exploding bombs became a rarity. We clung to our mothers, and when Mutti said that everything would be all right, we tried to believe, holding on even more tightly as we were herded into house cellars and bunkers.

“By 1944 war no longer was a game to us, nor was it heroic. Many of us were called into military service at a very young age. We saw our houses burned, our friends buried under rubble. The air raid siren in Vienna and other large cities became the ultimate sound of terror. The war from the sky, which claimed nearly 600,000 civilians, many of them children, remains a vivid memory for me still.”

Heritage Associates is in the memory business. Oral history interviews give dimension and perspective to lists of names, dates and places; the experiences of a lifetime become relevant to the future. Contact W. Dee Halverson to collect the important memories of people important to you.

Bingham Canyon, Utah Lecture Series

Sporting Women

Treasures of the Oquirrh Mountains

by

W. Dee Halverson

Dee Halverson, president of Heritage Associates, recently gave his final lecture on the ghost towns of Bingham Canyon, Utah. You can read it here:

Bars, Brothels and Brotherhood

Bingham Canyon, Utah

W. Dee Halverson presents a lecture on Copperton, Utah

"This lecture series is dedicated to the memory of

Bingham Canyon's 25,000 men, women and children.

May they always be remembered."

Recently Dee Halverson, president of Heritage Associates, LLC, acquainted residents of South Jordan, Utah with the former residents of the area: people who lived in fifteen small towns surrounding what has become the largest open pit copper mine in the world.

Lecture at Garden Park Clubhouse

During the 1920s and 30s Bingham Canyon, Utah was the third largest city in Utah with 25,000 men, women and children who were mostly foreign born and who spoke 30 different languages. These miners came from Greece, Italy, Austria, Great Britain, Japan, China, Korea, Serbia and Croatia to work in the copper mines which began in 1906. Octogenarians who grew up in towns later swallowed up by the mine, were the source of stories about Galena Gulch, Frog Town and Highland Boy.

Treasures of the Oquirrh Mountains Lecture Series

One of many stories told of an avalanche that killed 31 people outright, and left 150 buried. Dr. Paul Richards revived many of the victims by wrapping them in hot towels, instructing others to massage their arms and legs. At times 60 to 80 people were working over the frozen bodies. All of the victims who had a discernible heartbeat were eventually revived. One little five-year-old girl who had been buried alive was cared for by Dr. Richards. After several frantic and frightening minutes she opened her eyes and said, "Hi, Doc. I'm cold."

Dee Halverson revives history. Towns that were buried have now been uncovered and remembered. People once forgotten have come back to life.

Contact Heritage Associates:
"We give a future to your past."

Ghost Towns of Bingham Canyon can be read in full by clicking here.
Copperton: A Company Town can be read in full by clicking here.

Recent Publications from Heritage Associates

Grass Creek Canyon Coal

"Many old settlements have vanished as if by the wave of a magician's wand, leaving only memories to prove they once existed."

The pride and history of Summit County is alive and well. This book was written to preserve its rich and diverse history.

Tales of Luke's Hot Pots
&
The Mountain Spaa Resort

The history of Luke's dates all the way back to days when an Indian called "Red Cap" used the hot springs to cook his meat and sooth his muscles in the 1850's . . .

"Legend has it that a gang of outlaws stopped to take a swim in the old hot pot. They were interrupted by a band of hostile Indians. The outlaws quickly put their gold in an old, iron kettle and buried it. The gold remains hidden to this day."

A Legend in Mink
Mink Ranching in Summit County, Utah

"Utah is one of the largest fur producing states in the nation, second only to Wisconsin, the reason being the cold Utah winters, which are ideal for mink to grow their coveted winter fur. Most of the fur farms in Summit County are family businesses, often operated by two or three generations of the same family. This is the account of an old-fashioned, American success story."

Bonner's Corners

After 130 years, three houses stand as some of the most striking ever built in Utah. Generations of the Bonner family, as well as thousands of visitors to Midway, Utah have enjoyed the story and sheer beauty of these examples of Gothic Revival style.

"After John Watkins built his own picturesque, red-brick home, with white gingerbread trim in 1869, the Bonner brothers asked him to build a similar home for their parents in 1876. Knowing that they would soon be married themselves, they contracted with Watkins to build them two smaller versions of the house directly across Main Street on two facing corner lots. They were completed and furnished just in time for the Bonner brother's double wedding in 1878."

Heritage Associates will help you
discover, preserve and utilize your heritage.

Midway

Provo Canyon

In April 1859, John Wesley Witt traveled with his wife, Lavina, and their five children, up the new Provo Canyon Road to settle what became the Heber Valley. While traveling along the steep road in a driving snowstorm, the Witt’s wagon with all its contents suddenly tipped over into the swirling waters of the Provo River below.

Working quickly, Uncle Dan and others helped lift the heavy wagon box off the family and miraculously snatched up the 13-day-old baby daughter, Nancy, as she began floating down stream. They salvaged what they could: the bake oven, one sack of flour and one chest of clothes. But most of their belongings were lost.

The Witt family arrived in the new settlement on April 29, 1859. The weather was cold, snowy and the conditions were miserable as they made their first home out of the wagon box placed in a rude dugout.

John and the other men soon put in a crop of wheat and barley grain with the hope that it would be ready for harvesting before winter. The Witt and nineteen other families celebrated a meager, but happy first Christmas of 1859 in the Heber Valley.

Dee Halverson has finished the text for his second book on Midway, entitled My Love Affair With Midway. This will be out sometime next spring, filled with unpublished photographs, maps, and untold stories that will make anyone familiar with Midway, UT fall in love with her all over again.

Contact Dee Halverson: wdh@heritageassociates.com for information.