Descendants of Timpanogos Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah and Latter-day Saint pioneer Joseph Stacy Murdock gathered at the Heber City Cemetery on Saturday to honor a moment of peace that occurred amid the violent conflict between Latter-day Saints and Indigenous tribes during the Black Hawk War that lasted from 1865 to 1872.

In 1867, Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s son, Tom Tabby, died. Many written histories attribute his death to a hunting accident, but Timpanogos Tribal Councilman Perry Murdock told a different story.

“He grew up right in the middle of war,” he said. “Our oral history said he was killed.”

Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah brought the body of his son on horseback to Heber City and asked Joseph Stacy Murdock, the former bodyguard of Prophet Joseph Smith and the bishop of Heber City, to bury him. Tom Tabby received a Latter-day Saint service, then was honored through Timpanogos customs by slaughtering his favorite pony and burning its body on a pyre.

Tom Tabby now rests in the Heber City Cemetery under a tree that was planted around the same time he died.

The Latter-day Saint heritage organization, Sons of Utah Pioneers, installed a monument there in 1988. The organization, along with local nonprofit Wasatch Community Foundation, led the effort to replace the dilapidated monument.

Tom Tabby’s burial occurred the same year that Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah and Joseph Stacy Murdock negotiated a peace treaty in Heber City, which had been established eight years prior on land that had served as the Timpanogos’ hunting ground.

“On August 19, 1867, Chief Tabby and several hundred of his people entered the town of Heber City,” said Alice Hicken, a local historian and direct descendant of Joseph Stacy Murdock. “After a day of feasting and talking, Joseph Stacy Murdock, Chief Tabby and his other chiefs met in an upstairs room in Joseph’s house, where a peace pipe was smoked and a treaty of friendship was signed.”

Hicken described Joseph Stacy Murdock as “always a friend to the Indians,” adding that his own patriarchal blessing — a spiritual blessing that provides life guidance for Latter-day Saints — stated that Hicken would “be a means of restoring peace between the Mormons and the Indians.”

Joseph Stacy Murdock had 32 children and six wives, including a Timpanogos woman named Pernetta, Perry’s ancestor. 

“It’s passed down through oral history on my side of the family … (that Pernetta and her father would) frequently come in and camp by them with Tabby and everybody, there on that lawn next to the Murdock house,” Perry said. “We were told they would come and camp there and keep people up all night. They were happy to rejoice and visit. They felt like they had a little bit of peace and a little bit of relief from running, from battle, from war.”

Although there may have been some friendship as a result of the marriage, Perry clarified that it was likely a political move to protect the local Timpanogos people from persecution. 

“The story is that they worked her pretty hard. I know she escaped a few times, and they took her back,” he said.

Pernetta was in her early teens when she married Joseph Stacy Murdock. She died in her 40s.

While Joseph Stacy Murdock’s progeny can be found throughout the Heber Valley and beyond, Perry explained that most of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s family was “slaughtered.”

One of his sons, Leo Pritchett, was born after the Black Hawk War and died at the age of 75 in 1956. Roosevelt resident Stephanie Montes Christensen, who attended the ceremony, is his great-granddaughter. She wasn’t aware of her family history until she was an adult, when she became more involved with the Timpanogos Nation as her brother-in-law and husband served on the tribal council.

Christensen was the only descendant of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s to attend the ceremony, which came as a surprise to her.

“I didn’t know I was going to be the only one standing up there,” she said. “But I guess it was OK, because I am who I am.”

Today, about 900 are enrolled with the Timpanogos Nation, many of whom live on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. While many of the reservation’s residents are members of the Ute Indian Tribe, the Timpanogos are a band of the Shoshone people. The Timpanogos Nation estimates that its population numbered approximately 70,000 before Latter-day Saint pioneers colonized Utah.

Latter-day Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Two years later, settlers expanded to the Utah Valley by establishing Fort Utah on Timpanogos land in modern-day Provo.

Conflicts between the two groups rose in frequency in January 1850, after three settlers shot and killed a Timpanogos man they believed stole a shirt. By the end of the month, the church’s president at the time, Brigham Young, called for the extermination order of male Timpanogos, which was put into effect through Special Orders No. 1 and 2. 

The order led to the Fort Utah Massacre the next month. Latter-day Saint militiamen killed an estimated 100 Timpanogos people living along the Provo River and decapitated many of the bodies, which were discovered by a group including Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah, according to historian Jared Farmer’s book “On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians and the American Landscape.”

Despite the atrocities committed against his people, Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah was a lifelong advocate for peace.

For Perry, honoring Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s “terrible,” grief-stricken life represents a chance for Utahns of all ancestries to face the atrocities of the past and unite in remedying them.

The Timpanogos Nation is calling for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Gov. Spencer Cox to formally rescind and apologize for the extermination order, the same way the Missouri government rescinded the 1838 extermination order placed on Latter-day Saints in 1976.

“That gave them relief, gave everybody closure, gave everybody a chance to move on, but they will not do that to us,” Perry said. “Just escaping an extermination order themselves, (they) came out here and then placed one on our people.”

Perry said he is consistently approached at events like the monument unveiling by people who want to learn more about the Timpanogos people.

“Why haven’t you heard about us throughout history? Because we were supposed to be exterminated,” he said. “Our ancestors, I think, are crying out. There’s wrong doings that need straightened up. And I think that’s why events like this pop up.”

Learn more about the Timpanogos Nation at timpanogostribe.com. A petition to rescind the Timpanogos extermination order can be signed at tinyurl.com/2s48jt6t. 

The Wasatch Community Foundation is also fundraising to build a statue of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah on the roundabout near the city columbarium. The $50,000 project has received about $20,000 in donations, which can be made at ourwcf.app.neoncrm.com/forms/arts.

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Melvin’s Public House in downtown Heber City is haunted, and one of its ghosts is a former regular.

“Jack was 94,” recalled owner Melissa Laird. “His friends would bring him in once a week. And he’d sit there with his coat on. He was always cold. And he would have a beer and just talk to everybody.”

Jack still visits bar manager Ginger Mair every once in a while. During one shift, she witnessed a Bud Light inexplicably slide across the bar top, as if Jack were reaching for a cold one with his ethereal hand. There wasn’t any condensation underneath the can to provide a simple, scientific explanation.

“Everybody’s seen something,” Mair said.

It’s no wonder Melvin’s Public House has so many ghosts. The building is over 125 years old and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

That’s why Melvin’s Public House qualified for the state’s Rural Revive & Reside program, which awards grants of up to $50,000 for renovations of historic buildings that bring in business and housing opportunities.

The grant program is funded by the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund. It is administered by Utah Main Street, a network of downtown revitalization organizations across the state, of which Heber City’s Community Alliance for Main Street (CAMS) is a member.

CAMS Executive Director Rachel Kahler guided Laird through the application process, and on Wednesday, Melvin’s Public House received a grant of $50,000. The sports bar will be contributing an extra $12,500 of its own funds for renovations.

The projects include restoration of the floor, windows and front doors through methods including hand sanding, refinishing and sealing, as well as an upgrade to the kitchen hood to improve the interior temperature of the building.

“It’s always too hot or too cold. No one’s ever happy,” Laird said.

Melvin’s Public House will reopen on Monday after a three-week closure to restore the floors.

The building has been Melvin’s Public House since 2018. It opened as Wasatch Saloon after former owner Parley Murdock bought the property from his brother in 1901.

Murdock and other saloon owners in town faced business challenges as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cracked down on alcohol consumption, which is prohibited per the church’s 1833 health code, the “Word of Wisdom.” 

Heber City leadership took several measures to discourage alcohol consumption, such as raising the price of a liquor license and outright banning the sale of alcoholic beverages in 1909, according to the National Register of Historic Places.

Murdock adapted to the ordinance and the following Prohibition era by transforming the saloon into a pool hall. He reopened a bar in the space following Prohibition, which he continued to operate until 1950.

Willis “Tink” Clyde, a former Park City miner of 17 years, bought the building “to try something different,” according to the National Register of Historic Places. 

Clyde and his family ran Clyde’s Billiards until around the turn of the century. Before Laird opened Melvin’s Public House, the building served as home base for three restaurants: first, bistro The Spicy Lady, then rodeo-themed The Angry Bull, which was run by Flanagan’s Irish Pub co-owner John Kenworthy, and finally Vito’s Italian Ristorante.

Laird saw the for lease sign on the front of the building a few weeks after her 50th birthday and figured running a family-friendly sports bar would be the perfect way to spend her last decade of work before retirement. As a Heber City resident since 2009, she had grown tired of driving her and her husband to Park City every Sunday to find a good place to watch football.

So, the historic building was reimagined eight years ago. Today, the walls of the once-saloon are adorned with flags representing countless football teams. Laird’s regulars brought most of them in. Her team is the Ohio State Buckeyes, and she dances on the bar top every time they win.

The bar top, which was installed when Kenworthy ran The Angry Bull, is one of the building’s features that’s held up best over the years, according to Jose Sotelo, a handyman who has worked on the building multiple times over the past decade.

Operating out of such an old building, Laird walks in every day anticipating that something won’t work. 

When the sports bar opened in 2018, it was always the plumbing, which was later fixed by rerouting the sewer lines. 

Electrical is always “interesting,” Laird said. The sports bar is currently installing a new dishwasher, which has required lots of exploration of the crawl space underneath the building to find the right electric box.

But that’s OK with Laird — she likes buildings with character. 

Part of the appeal of being part of a lineage of businesses operating out of the once-Wasatch Saloon is that customers always come in with stories, whether about eating pickled eggs at Clyde’s Billiards or cleaning the spittoons.

Many of Clyde’s descendants are regulars. Laird said that one of his great-granddaughters wants to hold a seance at Melvin’s Public House “to see who’s hanging out.”

“She’ll probably find her great-grandpa,” Laird said. “Hopefully, she finds my husband. He passed away last year, so we’ve been making fun (of it) because things fall down and lights flicker around a lot now. We just blame Mike for all that.”

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Park City celebrated their mining heritage Monday, Sept. 4, 2017, with a 5K run, the annual running of the balls, parade, BBQ in the park and more. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

Link to full gallery here: https://parkrecordphoto.smugmug.com/PHOTOS-Miners-Day/

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The Park City Museum welcomed 125,000 visitors last year.

With only four full-time staff members, the museum relied heavily on their volunteers to accommodate the high number of people who came to learn about the ski town’s history.

This year, the nonprofit expects around the same amount of patrons, and its director of education, Diane Knispel, is ready.

She’ll host two volunteer training sessions this month. The first will be held from 5-7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 7, and the second will be from 3-5 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15.

“People can just show up to these,” Knispel told The Park Record. “They don’t have to call or anything.”

These group volunteer orientations are less intense than the one-on-one volunteer interviews Knispel does.

“We’ll have groups of people come in and learn about the museum and what a volunteer is all about before they make a choice of whether or not to volunteer,” she said. “People can come to one orientation or the other. They don’t have to come to both.”

If neither of those days works for people who want to learn more about volunteering, they
can call Knispel.

“Then we can set up individual training sessions,” she said.

Volunteers are used for a variety of duties that include installing and taking down traveling exhibits, cataloging and processing collection items, assisting in the Research Library, helping with special events, leading both adult tours and school group programs and assisting as gallery guides.

“Many volunteers have been volunteers for years,” Knispel said. “Some only want to help in specific areas and programs, like our annual Historic House Tour.”

Some volunteers are seasonal.

“Just like many people who live in Park City part time, we’ll have volunteers who come for the summer or winter and not for spring or fall,” Knispel said. “When they get to town they’ll call us to tell us they’re ready to volunteer, and we’ll take them whenever they have time.”

Some volunteers like working with the public.

“We always try to have a gallery guide who gives people a quick intro to the museum, the layout, where things are and that type of thing,” Knispel said. “We also have volunteers who do our Historic Main Street tours and our annual fundraiser gala as well as school tours.”

Other volunteers work behind the scenes.

“They work downstairs in our collections and research library, because we need all the items that come in cataloged and entered in the computer,” Knispel said. “We also have volunteers that write ‘The Way We Were’ articles for The Park Record or help with our bulk mailings.”

People have their own reasons for volunteering.

“We have people who have been impressed by the museum during a visit and they’ll call us and ask if there’s something they can do,” Knispel said. “Some want to learn more about Park City.”

One thing Knispel wants to emphasize is potential volunteers do not need a deep knowledge of Park City history to help out.

“We will train them in all of that,” she said. “First off, give everyone tours to give them some background and history.”

Knispel will also hand out training manuals that include Park City’s history.

“Then we’ll have them observe a tour that will give them an idea of what needs to be done,” she said. “Even if volunteers want to work in the collections or write articles, they can do research and learn as they go on. So, you see, we don’t leave anyone high and dry because we want them to feel comfortable with what they are doing.”

The key is matching people with their interests.

“To do that, I’ll have them come in and meet and we’ll talk,” Knispel said. “They’ll be able to pick what they want to help with and we’ll see if they’re comfortable in that area.”

Sometimes people will start in one area and want to move to another.

“We’re fine with that,” Knispel said. “The thing is, there are many opportunities to volunteer in Park City, and we want them to remember the museum needs help, too.”

New volunteer orientation will be held from 5-7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 7, and from 3-5 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15, at the Park City Museum, 528 Main St. For information, contact Diane Knispel by emailing education@parkcityhistory.org or by calling 435-649-7457, ext. 102.

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In this week’s collection of portraits from For The Record, we asked attendees at the Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History Membership Party why Park City’s mining legacy is still important to them. (Photos by Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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The Park City Museum embarked on their weekly guided walking tour of Main Street Monday afternoon, August 15, at 2 p.m. The tours, recurring weekly at 2 p.m. Monday – Friday from July 8 – September 2, cost $5.00 per person and begin at the Park City Museum. Tour-goers take the free Main Street Trolley to the top of the street to begin their hour-long tour. (Photos by Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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