Before the advent of modern city infrastructure, people in old Park City deployed bucket brigades to fight fires. In a nod to the past, the Park City Library used a similar all-together-now approach to move 2,000 books in 1982.

For many years, the Park City Library was based on Main Street in a small location that’s now the Park City Museum gift shop. In 1980, the Library Board received approval from the City Council to move the library to the recently renovated Miners’ Hospital in City Park. The move would allow the library to better meet state and national standards. The new space, at 5,000 square feet, would provide ample room for expansion.

The move was set for Sept. 4, 1982. At the time, the collection was approximately 5,000 books and periodicals.

Community leader Tina Lewis, Library Director Judy MacMahon, project chairperson Madeline Smith, and others led the planning. The organizers came up with the idea of a book brigade to move a good portion of the collection three-quarters of a mile by hand. “Brand-spanking new books” and reference books would not by moved by the brigade process.

The plan was for volunteers to take the applicable volumes from shelves in the Main Street facility, move them down the line, and put them back into similar shelves in the new facility, roughly in Dewey Decimal System order. In a newspaper interview prior to the event, Smith cautioned volunteers to keep the books moving: “Any pause to peruse a volume will cause a terrific backlog somewhere up the line.”

MacMahon acknowledged that boxing up and transporting books by vehicle would be more efficient, but the intent of the event was to honor the town’s rough-and-ready past and to exercise some community spirit.

A question arose: How many people would need to line the 3,900-foot distance between Main Street and the Miners Hospital? MacMahon said she divided the distance by six, “about the number of feet comfortable between two people.”

MacMahon figured 700 volunteers working an hour and a half would do the trick. Some 690 ultimately showed up. Summit Engineering staked out the path, and library staff and volunteers worked long hours cleaning and organizing the Main Street and Miners Hospital spaces. Park City Police directed traffic. Staff from the city Public Works and Recreation Departments provided general support. Big Four Distributing donated Budweiser beer for the after party in City Park.

The event did experience some hitches. At 10 a.m., the line was formed and several books were sent down the line in test runs. Volunteers had to repeatedly spread out and fill a gap in the middle section of the route before the hand-off process got up to speed.

Observers noted that some fumbles occurred and that a number of volumes were scuffed or damaged during the cross-town journey. And Tina Lewis was known to say that one volume went missing that day: The best-selling “Joy of Sex.”

Overall, the event was highly successful and garnered national press attention, including the “Today Show” and Paul Harvey’s radio program.

The library stayed in the Miners’ Hospital for 11 years and grew to 25,000 books and periodicals. In late May and early June 1993, it moved again, from Miners Hospital to its current location at the old Park City High School at 1255 Park Ave.. The need to move furniture and shelving as well as the increased number of volumes counseled against repeating the book brigade. The risk of dropped books and traffic on Park Avenue may have been further arguments for professional moving services.

When the library did a $9.6 million renovation in 2014, the library was again based in the Miners Hospital for a year.

In June 2015, organizers did hold a ceremonial book brigade from the Miners Hospital to celebrate the reopening. A line of 500 volunteers moved 127 books, to mark 127 years of library service in Park City. Today the Park City Library encompasses 54,000 square feet and offers (as of this writing) 62,173 physical print items.

In just a few weeks, the Summit County Library Kimball Junction branch is moving to a new facility at the former Skullcandy building. The short route is not as daunting as the 1982 Park City move, but it does cross a busy road. The county library plans a grand opening and ceremonial book brigade on Oct. 3 but will move the bulk of its collection — 42,372 volumes — prior to that date by more conventional means. More information is here: summitcountylibrary.beehiiv.com/p/check-out-the-move

Though it was a large outdoor public gathering, the book brigade was not a parade, so it didn’t neatly fit into the Park City Museum’s new exhibit, “Park City Loves A Parade,” on display through March 2027.

Michael O’Malley is a volunteer researcher at the Park City Museum. His book “Attitude at Altitude: The People’s Guide to Park City and Summit County” is available for check-out at the Park City and Summit County libraries and for purchase at local establishments.

The post Way We Were: The 1982 library book brigade appeared first on Park Record.

Amid today’s economic turmoil, it can be cathartic to examine the past rather than to fret over our 401(k) balances. The disruption known as The Panic of 1893 was the largest U.S. economic downturn in our history until the Great Depression. Park City’s lifeblood — silver — was a driving factor.

Starting in February 1893 and lasting several years, the panic saw bank failures, railroad and other bankruptcies, massive unemployment, a single-day decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 24 percent, and a draining of U.S. Treasury gold reserves.

Multiple factors caused the panic, including bumper crop farm output driving down prices, railroad overbuilding, tariffs and overseas crises prompting foreign investors to trade U.S. stock holdings for U.S. gold. Utah and Park City were not immune to these impacts.

Historians also point to federal monetary legislation as contributing factors. In the 1850s, the cost of silver bullion was rising beyond the face value of the minted coins, and the U.S. Mint had been reducing the amount of silver contained in the coins minted from bullion.

The Coinage Act of 1873, promoted by “sound money” advocates of gold-based policies, in effect demonetized silver. The act prohibited the minting of silver dollars and the use of silver currency in transactions greater than $5. Silver money advocates called this legislation The Crime of 1873. At this time, the cost of 16 ounces of silver was about the same as of one ounce of gold.

Later in the 1870s, the Free Silver movement grew in power, promoting unlimited government minting of silver coinage. (“Free” meant to liberate vs. the coinage being without cost.)

This movement aligned Western silver mining interests and their legislators with agricultural interests, which wanted to grow the money supply, spur some inflation, and lower borrowing costs for farmers.

The resulting Bland-Allison Act of 1878 remonetized silver by requiring the Treasury to purchase a minimum of $2 million in silver bullion a month and to mint silver dollar coins from that bullion at a legislated 16-to-1 weight ratio.

The market ratio of silver and gold values at the time was 18 to 1, setting the stage for future market turbulence due to silver’s overvaluation.

President Rutherford Hayes struck down the bill, but Congress overrode the veto, and in 1878 the U.S. Mint issued the Morgan Silver Dollar (after coin designer George Morgan).

A period of economic growth followed, then late in the 1880s, the Free Silver movement once again gained steam and passed the Sherman Silver Act of 1890. The act required the Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver per month, about a 50 percent increase in dollar value from the amounts purchased under Bland-Allison.

The bullion was paid for in bank notes that could be redeemed for gold, and silver was still coined at the legislated weight ratio of 16 to 1 despite the current market ratio having risen to 30 to 1. This overvaluation of silver prompted further hoarding of gold at home and abroad.

In 1892, Congress considered lifting all limits on the Treasury’s purchase of silver. Though the bill did not pass, it alarmed financial markets.

Cumulatively these acts illustrated Gresham’s Law, which states, “Bad money drives good money out of circulation.”

The Treasury’s gold reserves dropped from $320 million in 1888 to $189 million in 1893, showing a lack of investor confidence in the U.S. economy. Before the Panic of 1893 subsided, reserves dropped to $125 million in 1895. The government’s exertions to prop up the price of silver came to naught.

In August 1893, President Grover Cleveland, a “sound money” man, worked with Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Act with the goal of rebuilding confidence in the economy. It did not benefit Cleveland politically, as he lost the party nomination in 1896 to Free Silver advocate William Jennings Bryan, but Cleveland’s move started the road to recovery.

An upcoming part two article will describe the impacts of the Panic of 1893 in Utah and Park City. The short version: With low silver prices and tightened credit, mines and mills shut down or reduced their outputs, and other businesses experienced a range of difficulties.

Michael O’Malley is a museum volunteer researcher and author of “Attitude at Altitude: The People’s Guide to Park City and Summit County.”

The post Way We Were: The panic of 1893 was rooted in silver appeared first on Park Record.

In 1878, Philip Morgan, a Welshman, began filing or acquiring a cadre of claims in the Empire Canyon area. This began two decades of contention, unfulfilled hopes, mergers and acquisitions.

Mine developers often slipped back and forth between partnerships, lawsuits and new partnerships. In old Park City, your ally could become your adversary and then back again, like changing partners in a square dance.

In May 1884, Morgan, with co-owner Gottlieb Schaer and two other partners, agreed to lease their claims to George A. Meears, a Latter-day Saint from Birmingham, England.

The Park Record stated, “Meears was given $1,000 and a deed of trust to enable him to carry out the provisions of the contract.”

In June 1885, Morgan and his partners apparently got a sweeter deal from Simon Bamberger. Morgan et al formed a new corporation with Bamberger and other capitalists. The new group contended that Meears had done little or no development, and that his lease was void. (This was Bamberger’s first foray into investing in Park City mining. He later became governor of Utah.)

Meears counter-claimed that he had done considerable work at the cost of $6,000, and that he did not intend to abandon the development, which had included drilling the Grizzly Tunnel, in the vicinity of Deer Valley Resort’s modernday Pearl run.

The Morgan group sent men to bust into and possess the Grizzly Tunnel. The raiders — one of whom may have been involved in the lynching of “Black Jack” Murphy — brandished six-shooters, though no shots were said to have been fired.

Meears contacted the sheriff, who arrested the rowdies a few days later, giving Meears control of the property again. The court found four of the party guilty and fined them $25 each.

Meanwhile, John Daly of the nearby Daly West Mine had his eyes on the properties and sent surveyors to map the disputed terrain. This escalated into what’s called the “Three-Corner Lawsuit.”

The Morgan group sued Meears, who counter-sued them, and both Morgan and Meears sued Daly. The Salt Lake Democrat newspaper rightly stated at the time, “The Morgan group trouble has presented such a series of kaleidoscopic changes of owners, possessors, claimants, plaintiffs, defendants, rulings, exceptions, fines, costs, changes of venue, etc., etc., as to make an attempt at a lucid explanation a very hazardous, not to say doubtful, proceeding.”

This writer does not have the column inches to rectify what newspaper editors could scarcely resolve at the time. The upshot: The Third District Court dismissed the cases in 1888 in a victory for Meears.

Then in 1890, R.C. Chambers, John Daly, Philip and Henry Morgan, Meears and others incorporated the Meears Silver Mining Company. This unlikely partnership would prove uncomfortable.

In March 1892, there was a report of inactivity at the mining site due to an unspecified dispute among the directors. About this time, Meears attested he had spent up to $500,000 on the Morgan claims, including $150,000 in legal expenses.

Sadly, despite some ore ultimately shipping from the claims, Meears shot himself during the financial panic of 1893. Just prior to his suicide, he was named in a suit by Gottlieb Schaer’s widow for allegedly mishandling Schaer’s estate.

In early 1895, the name of the Meears company changed to the Morgan Silver Mining Co. Several workforce layoffs shortly ensued.

The square dance do-si-do continued in 1897 when Daly bought a portion of the new company. Yet in December 1898, Daly was on a list of delinquent stockholders following a midyear assessment.

Then in 1899 with other backers, Daly swept up the rest of the business for $100,000. At the time, Philip Morgan stated that the sale of stock would place him and his brother Henry in easy circumstances for the rest of his days.

The Morgan claims never produced at the level of the nearby Daly West or other top mines in the district. Exploration and development likely did not reach much beyond the 900-foot level despite plans to reach the 1,200-foot level.

One final turnabout occurred. As a previous Park City Museum article describes it: “The 15 claims of the Morgan Group, the Quincy Mine and the Little Bell Mine were all added to the Daly West’s large holdings and eventually the Daly West comprised of 1,200 acres in Empire Canyon. However, disputes arose with the Ontario owners (who owned half of the mine) and gradually members of the Bamberger family amassed the majority of the Daly West stock.”

Even the masterful John Daly could find himself elbowed to the side of the dance hall from time to time.

The Park City Museum and Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History are hosting a lecture, “Preserving Park City Mine History,” given by Brian Buck on Thursday from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Education and Collections Center, 2079 Sidewinder Drive.

Michael O’Malley is a museum researcher and the author of “Attitude at Altitude: The People’s Guide to Park City and Summit County.” Part of this article draws on a presentation about John Daly by Sandy Brumley and Brian Buck (Nov. 19, 2025).

The post Way We Were: The muddled Morgan matter mined pure confusion appeared first on Park Record.

Who was Lady Morgan? It’s a question you often hear when skiing at Deer Valley Resort, where the Lady Morgan Express chairlift serves the Empire Canyon area. There are several hypotheses, all of which are perhaps unprovable. Here’s what we know.

In August 1878, Philip Morgan, 31, filed the Lady Morgan claim, located halfway down what is now the Supreme ski run, off the Empire Express chairlift. It was one of 15 claims that ultimately became known as the Morgan Silver Mining Co. A number of these claims underlie what skiers call Lady Morgan Bowl, skier’s left of Supreme.

Philip had emigrated from Glamorgan, Wales, an area known for coal mining. He and his brother Henry were attracted by the possibilities of Park City’s hard rock. This brings us to the naming hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Philip left behind in Wales his mother, Mary, and sister, Emma. Were either of those women memorialized in the Lady Morgan claim? Answers remain mute on the question. Since Philip’s branch of the family was not likely to be Welsh royalty, would he borrow a title for a claim name? Given the mores of the time, probably not.

Hypothesis 2: Lady Morgan was a sporting gal. There’s no evidence of this, but you do hear this salacious speculation on chairlift rides. As mentioned, the Morgan brothers owned claims in the area, and some of these claim names — Lizarina, Abby, Maryetta, and Cora — could just as well be ladies of the night. Or just as likely, they could denote girlfriends or relatives. As above, the record is silent. A perusal of Park Record archives reveals no solicitation arrests associated with those names. Perhaps the chairlift expositors are confusing Lady Morgan with Mother Urban, Park City’s most famous madam.

Hypothesis 3: Was Lady Morgan the miner’s wife? Philip married Fidella “Dell” Roark in Evanston, Wyoming, in 1893, long after filing the Lady Morgan claim. Furthermore, Fidella filed for divorce less than two years later. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, her court petition stated that for more than a year, Philip failed to provide “common necessaries of life,” although he was worth a substantial $14,000 at the time.

The article continues, “Mrs. Morgan also alleges that her husband has continuously treated her in a cruel and inhuman manner charging her with having committed adultery with various parties. He also threatened her on one occasion … to ‘knock her d___ head off,’ at the same time breaking a lot of dishes and chairs and throwing plaintiff’s birdcage upon the floor.”

Timing and marital struggles do not seem to support this hypothesis.

Hypothesis 4: A tip of the hat to former Deer Valley ski instructor Karl Lund for uncovering this possibility. Sydney Owenson was a female Irish novelist whose most famous work, “The Wild Irish Girl,” was published in 1806. She became Lady Morgan in 1812 upon marrying Sir Thomas Charles Morgan, and continued to publish outspoken works under her new name. In her time, she was a well-regarded, internationally-known writer, and did not shy away from politically charged topics. Her books sometimes caused controversy, and the poets Shelley and Byron both came to her defense.

Lady Morgan was a spirited woman of the world and even appeared in The Park Record. One article describes the witty woman besting Irish jurist John Philpot Curran in a drawing room “conversational contest.” A bit scandalously, Lady Morgan was wearing a dress with no sleeves, merely straps over her shoulders. As Curran left the room after the verbal parrying, Lady Morgan called out for him to acknowledge that he had been fairly beaten in the matter of repartee. In a face-saving comeback, he replied, “I have this consolation, Lady Morgan, that you can’t laugh at me in your sleeve.”

Philip Morgan may well have heard of the famous novelist and honored her with the claim name. It would be like naming a claim today after Margaret Atwood or J.K. Rowling. Given that others at the time named claims after presidents, generals, and literary characters (among other notable figures), this hypothesis seems plausible, though, like the others, it lacks documentary evidence.

In 1915, Morgan died of stomach cancer in a modest home in the Marmalade District of Salt Lake City at the age of 76. On the death certificate, his occupation is listed as miner and marital status as divorced.

An upcoming article will discuss other aspects of Philip Morgan’s time in Park City. It’s a tale of hard work, unfulfilled hopes, litigation, shotguns, and mergers and acquisitions. Typical Park City stuff.

The Park City Museum will the annual Glenwood Cemetery Tribute, featuring actors portraying ghosts of the cemetery’s residents, on Oct. 11. To claim a spot and buy your ticket for the morning show, go here. For an afternoon slot, go here. Or visit parkcityhistory.org/

Michael O’Malley is a Museum volunteer researcher and hiking/ski guide. He is publishing “Attitude at Altitude: The People’s Guide to Park City and Summit County” this month on Amazon.

The post Way We Were: The Lady Morgan mystique appeared first on Park Record.

There is, unfortunately, a scarcity of statistical data on prostitution in the United States in the 1800s. One of the only large-scale studies was “The History of Prostitution,” by William F. Sanger, MD, published in 1858. Sanger interviewed 2,000 female prostitutes in New York City, asking them more than three dozen questions, including “Why did you become a prostitute?”

A remote Western boom town atmosphere obviously contrasted with New York’s urban setting. While we can draw few conclusions about Park City based on Sanger’s data, the information he gathered provides general insights on the trade in the mid-1800s.

The ages of the women Sanger interviewed ranged from 15 to 77 years. The median age was 21 years. About 80 percent of the cohort was between the ages of 17 and 27. For time spent in the profession, the median career was just under four years. In the Sanger cohort, 643 had been turning tricks for less than a year.

Nearly two-thirds of the prostitutes interviewed — 1,238 — were born in other countries. In the top three, women of Irish birth numbered 706, German birth 249, and English birth 104.

Sanger asked the foreign-born women: “What induced you to emigrate to the United States?” The most frequent answers were:

• Came with relatives or to join relatives already here: 619
• Came to improve their condition: 411

In contrast to a common Victorian Era belief that most prostitutes had been lured into the career, only 39 said they accompanied their seducers to the United States.

In terms of literacy, a quarter of the respondents (521) could not read or write, 219 could only read, and 546 claimed they could read and write “imperfectly.” A third (714) stated they were fully literate.

Sanger asked if his respondents were single, married or divorced. Some 1,216 were single, 490 were married, and 294 were divorced. Of the married prostitutes, only 71 lived with their husbands. Causes of separation for the other married women included “Ill Usage,” “Desertion” and “Intemperance.”

Just under half (947) of the respondents stated they had children. About 30 percent of the single women, 73 percent of the married, and 79 percent of the widowed made up this group.

Disease was rampant. Some 821 (41 percent) reported at least one attack of syphilis, gonorrhea or both, due to their trade. That 1,179 respondents did not report venereal disease might be questionable, but one can understand reticence to answer the question fully.

As mentioned above, Sanger’s study looked at why these 2,000 women got into the profession. Sanger was a reformer hoping to irradicate prostitution, and his beliefs may have made it difficult for him to recognize the possibility that women of his time could be sexual beings and who appreciated the autonomy and financial control that prostitution presented.

While Sanger’s narrative underscores the Victorian picture of seduced and fallen women filling the ranks of prostitutes, the statistics do not. Only 15 percent (309) of the cohort indicated seduction and violation as the cause of their becoming ladies of the night. Alcoholism accounted for another 181, or 9 percent.

In contrast, about a quarter of the respondents (513) said they had an inclination toward prostitution. Some 124 noted it was “an easy life.” Further, 71 were persuaded to enter the profession by the example of other prostitutes. Another 26 percent (528) were driven by economic circumstances — “Destitution” — a reflection of the limited job opportunities presented to women in the 1800s.

Sanger asked: “What trade or calling did you follow before you became a prostitute?” The largest group (933) had been household servants. Another 326 had been dressmakers, tailors, seamstresses and milliners. Of the 837 respondents who told Sanger what their wages in those lines of work had been, 600 had earned $3 or less a week, another indication of the limited opportunities for women of that time. While Sanger did not ask what the prostitutes earned, he estimated weekly revenue at between $10 and $50, multiples higher than other common occupations.

As a side note, Anne M. Butler argues convincingly in “Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery” that prostitutes of the time had corresponding expenses such as municipal fines and exorbitant rents that kept many of them in poverty despite the higher incomes.

What do we know about Park City’s prostitution business? The “soiled doves” were young and often immigrants, much as Sanger’s study indicates. They too earned well above what domestics, teachers and nurses made. It was a tough lifestyle, as the suicides and murders reported in the Park Record over the years reveal. Much beyond that we only have anecdotal stories and Sanger’s flawed but important study for context.

While the study was undertaken on the other side of the country, Park City’s well-known houses of ill-repute likely would have produced similar results, though on a much smaller scale. If only a study had been done here.

The Park City Museum and Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History are hosting a lecture titled “Queen of the Soiled Doves: Mother Urban,” given by Sandy Brumley on Wednesday, March 5, from 5-6 p.m. held at their Education and Collections Center located at 2079 Sidewinder Drive.

Michael O’Malley is a Park City Museum researcher.

The post Way We Were: Soiled doves in the 1800s appeared first on Park Record.

From our early days, the real estate business has been a contact sport around these parts.

In 1873, for example, little documentation of land ownership existed for Park City’s Main Street area, creating a slippery business opportunity for a group of Midwest entrepreneurs including E.P. Ferry, D.C. McLaughlin, and F.A. Nims. Known today as the Michigan Bunch, they were associated with the Marsac Silver Mining Company. The legal wrangling they engendered reached as far as the U.S. Supreme Court.

In May 1874 through an agent, Marsac co-owner Nims filed claim to four “quarters” of land, some 160 acres centered on the Main Street area. The application stated the land was unoccupied and not mining territory, though dozens of people who had built on it or prospected it would argue to the contrary.

Nims’ purchase used certificates, called scrip, originally issued by the federal government to — in the words of the day — half-breeds or mixed-bloods of the Sioux Nation in Minnesota Territory. The certificates, known as Sioux Half-Breed Scrip, could be exchanged by the original designee for other unencumbered U.S. territorial land. Nims ignored the stipulation that the scrip had limitations on transferability.

In October 1875, Nims, McLaughlin et al asked the federal Land Office to substitute more transferrable Valentine Scrip in place of the Sioux Scrip. The Land Office overlooked the technicalities and allowed the switch, and in August 1876 Nims applied for a land patent.

In November 1876, a group of Park City residents led by lawyer and butcher John L. Street, appealed to the Interior Department, stating the land was occupied in 1874 and that some was used for mining and trade. (Parts of the Creole Mine, Dugway Claim, and Ontario Mill overlapped the 160 acres.)

At the national level, the fix appeared to be in. In February 1877, President Ulysses S. Grant approved the land patent. His acting vice president at the time was Sen. T.W. Ferry, R-Michigan, who was E.P. Ferry’s brother. The Interior Department issued the patent, dismissing the protesters’ affidavits and other evidence.

The Marsac Company began issuing lease, purchase or vacate demands to inhabitants of the land at issue.

In June 1877, Marsac manager and land agent E.W. Thayer became the target of what was called the “Red Hot Riot.” Ten men led by Col. John Nelson made a late-night vigilante visit to Thayer demanding that he sign a letter specifying lower prices than the company’s offers. The men also demanded that Thayer leave town. One report of the altercation had Col. Nelson laying hands on Thayer. The 10 men were arrested, and seven of them were fined for disturbance of peace. The signed letter never surfaced.

Meanwhile, some residents took the Marsac group up on their offers. Then in 1880, Nims signed the remaining property over to E.P. Ferry.

The fix was in at the local level, too. R.C. Chambers of the Ontario Mine originally spoke out against the land transaction. His opposition cooled when the Marsac group offered title to the Ontario Mill site at very reasonable terms. Col. Nelson’s ardor against the Marsac group also diminished when he was given title to plots of land he occupied.

The aforementioned John L. Street was recalcitrant and refused to pay Ferry for four lots, which Street said he acquired from the McHenry Company in 1874. In 1882, Ferry sued Street for possession of the land plus damages of $500.

The trial took place in November 1883. The court did not allow Street to argue that the original land patent was illegal, and subsequently ruled in favor of Ferry. The court directed Street to turn over the lots and pay damages and court costs.

Legal maneuvers ensued. Street appealed to the Territory’s Supreme Court, but that body upheld the lower court’s determination. Street then appealed in 1886 to the U.S. Supreme Court, but SCOTUS claimed lack of jurisdiction. It would not be the only SCOTUS trial to which Ferry was a party.

In parallel to these actions, Street reached out to the U.S. attorney general in 1882. After conferring with the Land Office, the attorney general filed suit to annul Nims’ patent. This trial took place in 1883 in Utah’s Third District Court, and was again decided in favor of Nims, Ferry et al. The Territory’s Supreme Court dismissed an appeal in 1888.

With options exhausted, the fight was over. In this real estate scheme, Ferry may have made about $32,400, or close to $800,000 in today’s dollars. Presumably these funds were plowed back into mining operations. The gains obtained by sharp practices and in Street’s words, “a copper-bottomed conscience,” may have provided vital cash flow in Ferry’s pursuit of a mining empire.

The Park City Museum is hosting a lecture on E.P. Ferry’s life given by Michael O’Malley and Sandy Brumley on Dec. 11 from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Museum’s Education and Collections Center located at 2079 Sidewinder Drive.

Michael O’Malley is a Park City Museum researcher.

The post Way We Were: The Michigan Bunch and a ‘copper-bottomed conscience’ appeared first on Park Record.

Launched in 1928, the Park City Consolidated Mine (Park Con) was a significant ore producer through the next decade. In 1936, the mine’s general superintendent, Gloyd M. Wiles, wrote a detailed report for the U.S. Bureau of Mines on mining methods and costs in the mine. This technical document provides a look into the complexities of hard-rock mining in the Park City area.

From its inception to November 1935, the mine produced 4,525 ounces of gold and 2.4 million ounces of silver from 155,135 tons of ore. This works out to about 12.5 ounces of silver to the ton.

The mine, near today’s St. Regis Deer Valley hotel, was served by the Denver & Rio Grande Western and Union Pacific railroads. The railroads shared track rights on the spur connecting the mine to Salt Lake City and ultimately transported ore to a concentrating plant in Midvale.

Most of the ore mined at the Park Con was confined to lode deposits in three main fissures of Weber quartzite — the Silver, Roosevelt and East Crescent. A vertical shaft was sunk to the 400-foot level, and then two winzes (inclined shafts) drove to the 1,000-foot levels of the Silver and East Crescent fissures. Drifts (side tunnels) were worked at multiple levels along the winzes. At the time of the report, a crosscut was being driven at the 900-foot level to improve ore transfer, water mitigation, and ventilation.

Exploration (a.k.a. “development”) was carried on by crosscutting, drifting and raising. Diamond drilling of core samples into the shattered veins and native quartzite “country” rock wasn’t worth the effort, Wiles noted.

One difficulty underground had to do with the swelling and sloughing faced when mining operations encountered porphyry and limestone adjacent to the fissures.

“Swelling then takes place within a few hours after they are opened to the atmosphere,” Wiles wrote. “Walls and ore matrices such as these demand individual attention in the various parts of the mine and present individual problems of wall support if safe, clean mining is to be accomplished.”

In other words, the geology posed a danger of collapse. This called for a lot of cut-and-fill and open-stope mining with timber support. The report describes sophisticated 8- by 8-inch Douglas fir “post, bridge, and cap” timber structures and other carpentry necessary to shore up the work spaces.

When it came to mining, pneumatic drilling and blasting were the order of the day. In the rock typically encountered, a miner and two muckers could advance a 6- by 8-foot heading as much as five to six feet in eight hours.

“Usually 12 holes and 60 to 80 sticks of 30 percent-strength powder suffice to break the round,” Wiles wrote.

Ventilation also proved a challenge.

“The country rock contains an inert gas, probably nitrogen and carbon dioxide, which ebbs and flows from the workings in accordance with the barometric pressure. When the barometer is falling this gas enters the mine workings and so replaces the air to such an extent that even a carbide lamp will not burn. Conversely, when the barometer is rising, the air flows into the rock from the workings, and the most remote heading will contain pure fresh air.”

(Mines can breathe? Indeed! Anybody who has stood in the cool breeze emanating from the Spiro Tunnel on a hot July day knows that is true!)

The company had a 30-horsepower centrifugal fan to draw air from the surface and deliver it to the working faces through galvanized iron tubes. “Four hours are allowed between shifts so that the mine air will be as pure as possible when workmen go on shift,” Wiles noted.

The mine also had four pumps capable of lifting 1,100 gallons of water per minute, and an electrical system to power the various equipment needed.

Not surprisingly, the workforce reflected a range of talents. Besides a cadre of miners and muckers, job functions included an electrical/mechanical engineer, two electricians (and two helpers), three mechanics, three pump men, two timber framers, a blacksmith, and a steel sharpener.

In administration, roles included geologist, assayer, cost-and-time clerk, and stenographer, among others.

Wages reflected the labor spectrum. For an eight-hour day, shift bosses earned $6.75. Master mechanics made $6.50, hoistmen $5.50, and electricians $5.25. The shaft timbermen and shaft miners made $5.75. Regular miners made $5.25, and muckers $4.75.

Rounding out the report is a dollars-and-cents analysis. It cost about $3.41 to produce and hoist a ton of ore. Development accounted for 30 percent of the cost, mining 29 percent, transportation 22 percent, general 2 percent, pumping 6 percent, and surface operations 5 percent. Across all those categories, labor accounted for 71 percent of the costs. Quite a way to make a buck!

Some of this information was discussed during a members-only hike for the Museum this summer led by Michael O’Malley and Utah Open Lands’ Wendy Fisher. To find out about the hikes, and join them as one of your benefits as a member with the museum.

Michael O’Malley is a Park City Museum researcher. He expresses appreciation to David Nicholas for assistance in preparing this article.

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Anyone who has recreated in Thaynes Canyon knows it is an active, well-traveled place. Turns out that’s always been the case, with its history of mining, agriculture, lumber, the raising of thoroughbred horses and prize cows, and even the manufacture of bootleg whiskey.

The canyon’s namesake, John Johnson Thayne, was born in Scotland in 1825. As a child, he emigrated to Ontario, Canada. Life grew hard when his father died shortly upon their arrival. A family memoir states: “The family was left without much property or money, in a cold country. At times they were obliged to peel the bark from fences for fuel to keep warm.”

Surviving these hard times, Thayne developed a head for business. He traveled widely to sell a glue he made for repairing china. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Thayne met his wife-to-be Sidney Boyer on one such sales call, and upon marriage, the couple moved to Iowa in 1855. There he made a good living running a sawmill, something he would do for most of his life.

In 1861, they moved to Utah, and established a home in Sugarhouse. At this time, Thayne entered the practice of polygamy by marrying Elizabeth Hunt, who had traveled in the same party of Saints from Iowa. Thayne had 14 children by his two wives.

Shortly after their arrival in Salt Lake City, Thayne built a water-powered sawmill in Mill Creek canyon and a steam-powered one in the Park City canyon. Both operated until 1875. The exact location of the Thaynes Canyon mill is unknown, and there is mystery involved with it. The memoir continues: “Enemies or someone who was jealous burned one sawmill down and he lost most of his property.”

The family then moved to Woodland, establishing another sawmill using the Mill Creek equipment. Thayne died in 1910 in Wellington.

In 1878, Civil War veteran William M. Ferry and his wife Jeannette arrived in Park City and bought 160 acres at the mouth of Thaynes Canyon. In 1890, they built a large wooden Victorian mansion filled with stained glass and other ornate touches. Upon the colonel’s death in 1915, the Silver King Consolidated Mining Company purchased the home. U.S. Senator and mining magnate Thomas Kearns spent summers there, and raised thoroughbred horses, a common practice among his contemporaries such as Hearst, Haggin, and Crocker. The mansion was later moved to Park Meadows and is in private hands.

In 1894, P.J. Sullivan bought ranchland in Thaynes canyon. Sullivan – known as the “milkman” – raised dairy cows, and his wife Elizabeth continued operations upon his death in 1898. Apparently, milk was not the only drink available on the premises. In 1921, three men – one of whom was named Jack Sullivan – were arrested for operating an illegal whiskey still in the canyon. In 1924, the sheriff raided another bootlegging operation on the ranch. Someone named Dan Sullivan grabbed the small still that was set up in the woods and outran the Sheriff, avoiding arrest briefly.

Around 1930, the Sullivans sold the property to local mine manager Andrew Hurley, who built the 35-by-140-foot barn, now known as the Armstrong barn. Salt Lake City banker and mayor Herbert Snow then bought the ranch in 1934 and continued the dairy operations until his death in 1957. The ranch – called Snow’s Summit Ranch – stayed in the family. 

Snow’s daughter Heloise married William Melbourne Armstrong and her children all lived on the property at one time. Heloise’s sons, Herbert “Herbie” Snow Armstrong and William Melbourne Armstrong Jr. worked alongside their grandfather and took prize Guernsey milk cows to the Utah State Fair. Their stock won Grand Champion several times.

Herbert and Mel were instrumental in preserving much of the lands in Thaynes Canyon that were part of the original Snow’s Summit Ranch. The November 2018 bond passed by Park City voters that preserved Treasure Hill also included funding for the Armstrong Snow Ranch Pastures. Herbert Armstrong and Mel’s wife Kerry Armstrong made a substantial contribution of value to ensure the pastures were protected. The iconic 1926-era dairy barn which Mel and Kerry restored in the late 70s is protected under a conservation easement as well. Utah Open Lands (UOL) currently holds three easements preserving about 175 acres in the canyon.

These and other topics of historic and ecological interest will be covered on an Aug. 15 hike led by Wendy Fisher and local hiking guide Michael O’Malley. Park City Museum membership is required to join the hike. Become a member at parkcityhistory.org.

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Images of lands traversed and things encountered have long been important findings of explorations. The Lewis and Clark Expedition gathered mineral, plant, and animal specimens and – just as important – the leaders’ journals contained detail-rich drawings of birds, fish, plants, and geologic features. 

What Lewis and Clark could not provide were photographs – since that technology did not exist in 1805. It was not until two decades later that Nicephore Niépce captured an eight-hour exposure using a copper plate covered in bitumen. Taken in France, “View from the Window at Le Gras” is reportedly the world’s first photo.

Collaborating with Niépce, Louis Daguerre experimented with silver iodide and salt and created in 1839 the first Daguerreotype image. This process lowered exposure time to minutes and even seconds in bright conditions. While still a cumbersome endeavor, Daguerreotype photography had a wider range of uses than the Niépce approach.

The first western U.S. expedition to take advantage of Daguerreotypes was John C. Frémont’s 1853 survey from Missouri to Utah. It was in search of a viable route for the transcontinental railroad. Solomon Carvalho was the company’s Daguerreotypist. Carvalho was also an accomplished painter.

While he took images throughout the trek, harsh winter weather forced Carvalho to abandon gear and numerous image plates in the high mountains.

Surviving massive snows and near starvation, the party sought shelter in Parowan, UT. To recover his health, he traveled to Salt Lake City, and there, Carvalho – raised in the Jewish faith – became fast friends with Brigham Young. He painted portraits of Young and Native American chief Wakara that are well-known today. Unfortunately, few daguerreotype images remain from this expedition.

By 1848, collodion wet plate technology using albumen paper offered fast exposure times and enhanced reproducibility compared to daguerreotypes. Matthew Brady and others put this process to the test during the Civil War.

The technique used portable dark rooms in the field (picture the big box on a tripod with the dark curtain covering the photographer). Prep work was complex, and image development could take five to 20 minutes.

However, if the photographer was not satisfied with the image, the glass plate could be reused, making for a significant advance in utility. Photographers who were experts in this process joined all four of the “Great Surveys” that began to explore the West after the war:

• Timothy O’Sullivan (an acolyte of Brady) and C.E. Watkins (an early documenter of Yosemite) accompanied Clarence King’s 1867 survey of the Fortieth Parallel.

• William Henry Jackson produced dramatic images of Yellowstone and the surrounding country in the 1869 survey led by F.V. Hayden.

• J. K. Hillers, James Fennemore, and E. O. Beaman documented John Wesley Powell’s second voyage down the Grand Canyon in 1871. No known photos exist of Powell’s 1869 exploration.

• O’Sullivan subsequently documented G.M. Wheeler’s 1872 survey of the One-Hundredth Meridian. On this survey, O’Sullivan took numerous images of Native American life in the Southwest.

An early audience for the images was the U.S. Congress. For example, King had O’Sullivan’s work exhibited in the U.S. Capitol to bolster his request for extended survey funding. This “exposure” to the powers that be in Washington may have contributed to Congress appointing King as the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879.

At a high level, the collective efforts of these and other western photographers fired the country’s imagination. The images were instrumental in spurring expansion into the Western U.S. and driving land policy, such as the creation of national parks. 

O’Sullivan had perhaps the most direct ties to Summit County of all the photographers mentioned. As a member of the King survey, which actually started in California and worked its way east, O’Sullivan took numerous photos of the Wasatch and Uinta ranges, including some beautiful images of Christmas Meadows.

Along the way, he spent time on the Weber River near Henefer and Echo and captured striking images of Devil’s Slide and the Witches Rocks.

The Park City Museum is hosting a free in-person lecture on Wednesday, September 7, from 5 to 6 p.m. at their Education and Collections Center at 2079 Sidewinder Drive. Lecturer Dorian De Maio will discuss fur trappers who made pathways and routes across the West after Lewis and Clark’s explorations. Register at parkcityhistory.org.

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In 2005, Park City historian Gary Kimball published a seminal work: “Death & Dying in Old Park City.” He spent 18 months researching newspaper obituaries and mortuary records. He produced a 126-page listing of a thousand people who were buried in Park City from 1877 to 1954 and whose burials did not make it into cemetery records. There’s no narrative thread, just ‘core samples’ of woe paragraph by paragraph. “This is the story of the forgotten ones,” he wrote.

This article is a tabulation of those woes. It attempts to categorize some of the causes, genders, and ages of the people described in Kimball’s work. This is not a statistically comprehensive expression of all deaths by all causes with all demographic data in place, as you would expect from a state or research authority. Kimball’s record drew primarily from the Park Record, and there are many missing elements in terms of gender, age, cause of death, and even date of birth or death. Like a core sample, the data indicate trending strata, not a delineation of the full body of ore.

With caveats in place, what were the leading causes of death in the cohort described in “Death & Dying”?

Far and away, the leading killer is not dramatic. It was pneumonia. Of the 773 deaths in Kimball’s work that have sufficient data for our purposes, some 158 or 20.4 percent represent deaths by “the old man’s friend.” Back then, pneumonia respected no age; Victims ranged from infants to those in their 70s. In Park City, pneumonia was a sweeping scythe that took many lives, decade after decade.

Numbers two and three among causes in the “Death & Dying” list reflect our mining heritage. Mining accidents represent 75 or nearly 10 percent of the researched deaths. These include falls, cave-ins, cage mishaps, runaway ore carts, explosions, and more. The horrible lung-damaging ailment silicosis – or miner’s consumption – represents 56 (or more than 7 percent of) deaths. The takeaway? Mining yields nearly a fifth of the deaths in Kimball’s tally.

The number four killer in the cohort was heart disease. Compare this to 2017, when heart disease was Utah’s number one cause of death. The other top causes of death in “Death & Dying” round out with ailments that today’s medicine regards as addressable or controllable. These include non-mining accidents, tuberculosis, stomach ailments, diphtheria, and kidney failure. Of this list, only accidents are near the top of Utah’s contemporary list (number three statewide in 2017).

Life in old Park City had brutal edges. At 2.3 percent, murder consumed 18 lives, and suicide 3.1 percent or 24 lives. In possibly the most gruesome way to take one’s life, Samuel A. Johanson shoved a stick of black powder in his mouth, lit it, and the resulting explosion splattered his head onto the walls of the Ontario Mine in March 1925.

How did Park City’s experience align with the state as a whole? Picking 1910 as the representative year, since that’s when statewide reporting gained relative robustness, Utah’s top causes of death were pneumonia (10.7 percent), injuries (8.5 percent), heart disease (7.4 percent), and kidney failure (5.9 percent). Other familiars – tuberculosis and typhoid – came in at 4.1 and 3.4 percent.

The question of life expectancy in Old Park City is tricky. Kimball’s book stretches more than seven decades in terms of the years of demise, with 1908 as the median point. Life expectancy for men in this collection averaged 35 years while women averaged 23 years. Not much weight can be put on this comparison but, nationally in 1908, life expectancy for men was about 48 years and for women about 52. Death during childbirth was a likely occurrence for both mothers and newborns. Approaching 30 percent, the large number of deaths of those two or under drives the Park City life expectancy numbers lower in both genders. Kimball describes the scale of infant mortality as “numbing.”

The lesson for today? In 2020, the top causes nationally were heart disease, cancer, COVID, accidents, and stroke, reflecting that people tend to live longer nowadays. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the scientists, doctors, nurses, public health officials, and other healthcare professionals who have cornered and caged diseases and ailments that terrified previous generations.

The Park City Museum is hosting an in-person lecture on historic preservation efforts in Park City by City Planner Aiden Lilly on Thursday, August 11, from 5 to 6 p.m. at their Education and Collections Center at 2079 Sidewinder Drive. Register here.

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