Park City Museum members will get a chance to hike into the past to Rossie Hill on Tuesday.
Hikers will get a close-up view of more than 30 homes that were built throughout Park City’s history, said Dalton Gackle, the museum’s research coordinator who will guide the excursion.
“This is the fifth time I’ve done this hike this year, and it’s the last one of the season,” he said. “It’s one of our exclusive tours that is only open to our members. The tour runs about two-and-a-half hours, long enough to make it worth people’s time.”
Non-members who are interested in the hike can purchase museum memberships at parkcityhistory.org/membership and contact Education Director Diane Knispel at [email protected] to register for the event.
“This is the third year we’ve done tours that focus on architecture,” Gackle said. “I started with Daly Avenue and Park Avenue and Woodside, which are the town’s big streets, other than Main Street. So, this year I wanted to do Rossie Hill.”
Gackle selected Rossie Hill because it gets mentioned a lot in historical documents, as well as because of its inaccessibility.
“You can’t really get to it by car, so a lot of people don’t know where it is unless they live there,” he said. “I also wanted to create the tour so the public could see this unique section of town.”
Because of the lack of access, the Rossie Hill hike is slightly more strenuous than past architecture hikes, Gackle said.
“The previous tours are mainly walking along the main roads or sidewalks,” he said. “With this one, we do a little walking on roads, but we also have to climb the stairs of Rossie Hill and go over a couple of paths that are sort of maintained. And then we take a section of a trail from Rossie Hill to the old Ontario drain tunnel No. 1.”
So, Gackle suggests hikers wear comfortable shoes for walking/hiking, bring water and snacks and wear sunscreen.
The oldest structures on Rossie Hill were built in the 1800s, and there are others that were erected in the early 1900s, according to Gackle.
“There are a couple from the Depression and the ’40s, and then we also see ski-era homes from the ’60 and ’70s,” he said.
Many miners and their families lived in the older homes, and many business owners built some of the homes, Gackle said.
“I talk about some of the first settlers of Rossie Hill, including those who funded the construction of China Bridge so racist white people didn’t have to go through Park City’s Chinatown to get to Main Street,” he said. “Those guys were business people, called the Michigan Bunch, and they created Park City Townsite Corp. They owned the town and sold the houses back to the people who built them, and they sold property to new people moving in and also created the Marsac Mill.”
The Michigan Bunch moved to Park City with the goal of making money anyway they could, Gackle said.
“They were the first people to build houses on Rossie Hill, but they didn’t name Rossie Hill, which is named after Rossie, a town in New York,” he said. “They did, however, name Marsac Avenue after one of their family friends, Sophie de Marsac, who was from Grand Haven, Michigan.”
The hike also showcases rare architectural styles from the ski-era, Gackle said.
“One of the coolest homes we see is the oldest-remaining A-frame structure in town,” he said. “The home was built in 1962, a year before Treasure Mountain resort was built in 1963, and it’s a Gothic-arched A-frame, which are often nicknamed ‘pregnant A-frames’ because they are belly-shaped.”
Gackle’s interest in architecture adds to his advocacy of historic preservation, which he says is one of the ‘cool things’ about his job..
“One of the ways I advocate is showing how cool the architecture is, whether it’s basic, parlor-style homes or T and L-planned cottages, and the way they are situated on the hillside or how they are expanded upon,” he said. “When giving people a sense of how Parkites lived in the past, I like using architecture as a way to connect people with the historical aspects of the social and immigration history of our town.”
Gackle, during his research, was surprised at how some of the houses are situated on Rossie Hill.
“There is one section where we have to walk up Shorty’s Stairs, which is equivalent to Fourth Street, and halfway up. There are side paths that take you to homes that were built in the middle of the hill,” he said. “And that’s the only way you can get to them, even though some homeowners today have built expansions that reach Ontario Avenue proper. Seeing that up close is interesting.”
Usually a structure is deemed historic after 50 years, Gackle said.
“There are other factors like the significance of architecture or who had lived in the building that can be used to deem a home eligible if it isn’t 50 years old,” he said. “But as of now, anything built in 1974 or prior is eligible for inclusion in our city’s Historic Sites inventory.”
Still, the city hasn’t yet included anything on the list that was built later than the 1950s, Gackle laments.
“One of the worries is the homeowners will tear it down and remodel it before restrictions go into effect,” he said. “Some of the homes, even before they hit the 50-year mark, are being torn down anyway at a rapid rate. A ton of the buildings were torn down by homeowners in 2013, 2014 and 2015, and we’ve already lost over 35% of our ski-era homes.”
So, Gackle uses these tours as a call for action to protect the buildings before more are torn down.
“These homes are an important part of our history, and we wouldn’t exist the way we do if it hadn’t been for that transition from mining to skiing,” he said. “They are just as important as our mining structures, and I want to showcase them to show how cool they are.”
Park City Museum’s Rossie Hill hike for members
- When: 9:30 a.m., Tuesday, Oct. 12
- Registration: parkcityhistory.org/events
- Web: parkcityhistory.org