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Zehnder - Carbon County Coal Camps

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A GUIDE TO CARBON COUNTY

COAL CAMPS

AND

GHOST TOWNS

by Chuck Zehnder

Introduction

This work, of course, is not to be construed to be definitive of the coal camps and ghost towns of Carbon County. It is taken from written records and personal memories of people who lived in the towns. Sometimes memories fade and become slightly distorted. It is accurate in that it does not make assumptions but reports accurately the old records and memories.

I wish to thank, especially, Frances Cunningham for her help. Much of what is found in these pages comes from her efforts to supply accurate research. It is her desire, as it is mine, that a history of some involvement of the camps and towns of Carbon County be recorded.

There are innumerable residents of Carbon County who have also contributed to this work. They are the ones whose minds have supplied the memories or have provided the names of others with additional information. To all of you, thank you.

Chuck Zehnder

Winters Quarters

"There's gold in them thar hills," was the cry a few years ago regarding Winter Quarters.

The cry came years after Winter Quarters was abandoned and for good cause. But first, the history of this present ghost town.

"I inspected the mines here on March 8,1900, and found them in fair condition. The ventilation was good and the mine free from gas. In my estimation the disaster was caused by a heavy shot of giant powder or loose powder exploding.

"The giant powder went off, being the result of a dust explosion. I went to a place where it was claimed they had powder stored away, and the place showed that the explosion had started there and showed further by the action of the explosion and by the body which was found there that was burned more than the other bodies which we found.

"In March, at the time of the examination of the mine to check the ventilation, I found that the Pleasant Valley Coal Company had complied with the law," so said Gomer Thomas, state mine inspector, after the explosion in the Winter Quarters mine at 10:15 a.m. on May 1, 1900.

With that explosion, the life of Winter Quarters as a town had only 28 years to exist.

Winter Quarters was the first mine to be opened in Utah. The mine was first opened by George Matson, Springville, in the spring of 1875.

"When we arrived in Pleasant Valley, later the site of Winter Quarters, we started right in to survey Pleasant Valley township and later we did assessment work on the claims.

"Phil Beard, John Nelson and I started No. 1 tunnel and drove the first hundred feet into the hillside. Later thousands of tons of coal were hauled out of this entry. I helped dig from the five-foot vein, the first load of coal ever shipped out of the valley," so said Matson in an Aug. 23, 1928, issue of The Sun newspaper.

"With a mule, I packed it in sacks down the hillside where it could be loaded on the wagons. It was hauled by mules to Springville by Milan (Packard) and Myron Crandall...Pleasant Valley was a beautiful country, well-watered and abounding in game. The town (later established) was named Winter Quarters because John Nelson and Abram Taylor, who were holding the claims for the owners, wintered there in 1875," Matson said.

It was two years later in 1877 that a group of men from Sanpete County came over the mountain and settled into the area to begin the town and continually work the mine. It was their intention to leave before too deeply into winter and come back in the spring.

But an early winter trapped the men. They stayed until their supplies ran out in February 1878 and then left the area on foot, walking to Tucker.

When the quantity of the coal became known, more people began moving to the small mountain valley and the need for a railroad became apparent to haul the now-too-great tonnage out of Pleasant Valley.

Some of the residents got together and bought out a bankrupt dry goods firm in the East and paid railroad construction workers with clothing stock. Where the ties, spikes and rails came from for the construction of the narrow-gauge railroad from Springville to Pleasant Valley never became a matter of public record, but the line was named the "Calico Road."

The old railbed is now a dirt road which leads from the Tucker rest area in Spanish Fork Canyon up to Skyline Drive in the Manti LaSal National Forest.

Soon after the Calico Road was finished, it was purchased by the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, which had recently extended its line from Springville to Colton. The Winter Quarters branch was connected with the new main line at Colton, then called Pleasant Valley Junction.

About eight years later, Winter Quarters was leased to David Williams, an LDS bishop.

Many miners were used in the long-haul operation by 1900 and many never left the mine alive on May Day, 1900.

From Charles Madsen's writings comes this account of the disaster:

"May Day, or ‘Dewey Day,' dawned bright and clear. Two hundred miners left their homes in the brightest of spirits aboard the miner's coach that carried the men back and forth to the mines of Pleasant Valley Coal Company at Winter Quarters. Joke after joke was bandied back and forth as the men rode to work. What had they to fear? Were they not working in the safest mine in the western coal fields?

"At ten fifteen, a terrific detonation shook the surrounding country. People thought someone was honoring the hero of the day. Soon the horrible truth dawned upon a few and spread from person to person. Mothers and daughters were seen hurrying toward the mine entrance, faces blanched with fear, hoping against hope that their loved ones in some way had escaped. Soon the realization came that the miners were caught — caught like rats in a trap with no chance of escape.

"A relief committee headed by T.J. Parmley, superintendent of the mine, started for the levels of Number 4, through Number 1, there being inside connections. They were driven back by the terrible after-damp that had by this time reached the levels of Number 1. The route by way of Number 1, having been found impractical and impossible, the committee hurried to the mouth of Number 4 where they again attempted to enter. Attempts were made three times before the actual rescue work began. Hope was still held out for some of the men, especially in Number 1, but the deeper they penetrated, the more the magnitude of the disaster became apparent. They saw men piled in heaps, burned beyond recognition. The bodies were removed as fast as possible and the school, the church and other available buildings were requisitioned as a morgue. The extent of the catastrophe was soon apparent: 199 men were killed, and seven others seriously injured. Only one man escaped from Number 4, but 103 came out of Number 1 alive."

Once the Castle Gate mines opened, the coal at Winter Quarters was used by the railroad for its locomotives and was not sold elsewhere. Because of the long haulage underground and the quality of the coal, the production tonnage decreased after 1920 and in 1928 Winter Quarters was abandoned.

For many years the buildings stood mute in that mountain valley: windows boarded shut, roof shingles slowly falling away and walls rotting into dust.

The school no longer heard the sounds of children laughing and there was no need for a janitor to clean the spring-time mud from the floors.

Eventually the buildings collapsed or were torn down by scavengers and today only grass-covered foundations remain of what was Utah's first coal camp. But is that all that remains?

Speculation over the years about buried gold at Winter Quarters exists today. There is no question the miners were paid in gold coins. When Butch Cassidy and another member of the Wild Bunch robbed the Pleasant Valley Coal Company payroll just three years before, the loot was $7,000 in gold.

Another fact must be recognized. There was no bank in Winter Quarters. Couple that with the fact of miners being paid in gold and one can easily believe there were some of those 200 men who died who buried their money in the rocks behind their homes. Some have searched over the years. None have reported finding anything.

Can it be that the ghosts of those miners stand watch over buried gold Double Eagles?

Clear Creek

Clear Creek never did have a large population, nor did it ever really have a specific "claim to fame." But it did have the Mountain Rose Temperance Society! But first some background.

When mining really got underway at Winter Quarters, a logging camp was sought to supply timbers for roof supports in the new mine. Some were cut early near the mine, but the best source was soon located at the extreme south end of Pleasant Valley about five miles from the new mine.

A camp was established and for several years Clear Creek was a logging camp. Water was plentiful and good, but spring runoff brought about the name Muddy Creek for the normally clear stream flowing through the camp.

Of course, with all the activity of cutting and hauling logs, the soil was shifted and eventually a good vein of coal was found at the camp. The coal was of such high quality that the property was immediately developed. A short time later, in 1898, the railroad extended its line to the small mining camp.

With the camp changing from logging to coal, the population began to grow and soon employed over 200 miners.

In 1900 the coal was being shipped to the Southern Pacific Railroad at Ogden. It was so easy to mine that the miners often could walk outside for lunch. There was no waste slack in the high-grade coal, so production costs made this coal the cheapest in the state.

That same year, the year of the Winter Quarters disaster, Utah Fuel Company really developed the camp. They added 25 more homes, a hotel which would house 150 miners, a new hospital, company store, school, meeting hall, barns, workshops and a water plant.

The Finns built their own hall which took the name of Finnish Hall and soon became the general meeting house for the camp. It also became the meeting hall of the Mountain Rose Temperance Society which then closed the hall to many other groups.

In 1901 the LDS church organized a branch in Clear Creek. It wasn't until 1911 that it became a ward with David McMillan as the first bishop. But the Mormons erected a building, and the camp now had a church.

Then came the temperance society. In May 1902 some citizens got together and ran a legal advertisement in the Eastern Utah Advocate that they were forming the Mountain Rose Temperance Society.

They met at the Finnish Hall on May 10, 1902, for the purpose of incorporation and election of corporate officers. The society elected a president, secretary, treasurer and five directors. The president, secretary and treasurer are to be directors, they said.

The first officers were A. Westerly, president and director; Isaac Johnson, secretary and director; Gabriel Mattson, treasurer and director; Jacob Polarie and Gabriel Mattila, directors.

The society made clear their purpose. "This corporation is formed...for the purpose only of promoting by proper means the cause of temperance and alleviating sickness of its members and that for the purpose of raising funds for which to carry out such designs it may permit the use of its hall and other property for social purposes, but that in no case shall said society countenance or lend aid to or permit the use of any of its property for the assistance of any labor...organization, nor as a place of meeting of any such organization."

Things moved slowly in Clear Creek for the next few years. Winters were long and hard, so much of the amusement for the people of the small mountain coal camp was winter sports, such as ice skating, sledding, etc.

A local drama group was established, and plays were presented throughout the year. Bert Martin brought in moving picture shows once every week and twice a year Walter's Theatrical Troupe would come to town to provide a professional play. Dances were held frequently, often at least two a week.

In 1908 there were 450 miners working at Clear Creek and they were mining, with pick and shovel, 2,000 tons of coal per day. In 1912 mechanized mining came to Clear Creek and production increased.

There were now two coal trains every day hauling coal from the camp. There were more than 600 people living there, some of the miners living in Scofield and Winter Quarters.

During the 1920s coal demand dropped, costs rose and production slowed. People began slowly moving out of the mountain community. Many were prosperous and just wanted to leave the 8,000-foot elevation for the warmer climate near Price.

By the time the Great Depression hit, there were less than 300 people living in Clear Creek. The 1930 census listed just 256 citizens, the Mormon church claiming 146 of them as members, including 45 children.

The total coal production for the last month of 1931 was down to only 5,000 tons, less than a tenth of what production had been ten years earlier.

Longer haulage and lower demand curbed production even more, though there was a slight resurgence during World War II. By the mid-1950s production stood at zero tons per day. The mine closed and many people left for good.

Clear Creek today stands as a monument to the good times. There are few year-round residents, although the summer population increases as some have purchased the old houses for summer cabins.

During the deer season every fall, the population more than doubles as hunters make Clear Creek the base camp for the hunt. The steel rails of the old railroad lie rusting as they snake through the canyon from Scofield to the town.

Clear Creek is quiet most of the time, slowly reverting to its appearance of nearly 100 years ago when the only sounds were those of the wildlife and the falling water of the clear cold stream, now called Muddy Creek.

Scofield

Although Winter Quarters mine was already producing coal, Scofield began as a mountain valley ranching town just a few years after the early mine had begun production.

People were drawn to Pleasant Valley, not by coal, but by the rich, wild hay growing there. The valley, about six miles long and a mile wide, was filled with tall grass and early ranchers brought their cattle to the valley.

Some of those first settlers included S. J. Harkness, William Burrows, D.D. Green, J.W. Metcalf, T.H. Thomas, Joseph Castle, H. McKecheny and O.G. Kimball. Most of these men moved into the valley in 1879 and 80.

Coal was discovered on the east side of the valley, across from the mouth of the canyon in which Winter Quarters was located. This discovery brought more people to the mountain valley, this time to industrialize the agricultural community.

By 1882, when the railroad finally came to the valley, there were 800 people living there. Mines were producing at three camps and Scofield. A small camp between Scofield and Clear Creek, Mud Creek, was the fourth community in the valley. Scofield was clearly destined to lead the others.

Scofield continued to grow, with many businesses coming into the valley and locating at the town which was not bound by canyon walls like the other three camps.

Scofield had wider streets, blocks clearly laid out and, most importantly, room to expand. Because of the beauty of this mountain community, most people preferred the locate in this town, even with husbands working in one of the other mines.

On March 15, 1893, a petition was delivered to the county seat at Castle Dale from 100 citizens of Scofield asking for their own town government to be established. Carbon County was not formed out of the northern part of Emery County until the following year, so Scofield was part of Emery County then.

The following March, just before Carbon County was established, Emery County gave the go-ahead, and Scofield elected its first town board. A.H. Earll was the president with Kimball, Wright, Lewis and Krebs as trustees. Thomas Lloyd was elected Marshall and M.P. Braffet was named town clerk.

A school was erected, and an LDS ward established almost immediately. The community continued to grow. It became a favorite place for outings for others from area communities. People from the "lower camps" (Castle Gate, Price, Wellington and others later on) often would travel to Scofield during the spring and summer months to take advantage of the cool mountain air and the tall grass.

The first large school buildings were built in 1901. The old two-room school simply was not large enough any longer. This building survived until Dec. 18, 1927, when it was destroyed by fire. The present school was erected on the foundation of the older building.

Construction of a dam was begun in the early 1920s where Fish Creek left the mountain valley and went out through a narrow canyon. Horses and hand tools were used to "roll" the earth for the large dam. In 1924 it was completed, and the large hayfields were covered with rising water as a new lake was formed just north of the town.

Life in Scofield was anything but dull. There were meetings going on by the various groups and even considerable violence was often reported from the mountain community.

On Sunday night, the first week of October 1902, two men were killed in a brawl and shootout at the home of one of the saloon keepers there. The Eastern Utah Advocate reported the story on the front page later in the week.

According to the newspaper report, there was a large group of "Finlanders and Slavs gathered at the home of A. Barnick. They were enjoying the evening in drinking, dancing and making disturbances when a complaint was made by neighbors to Marshall Hugh Hunter, asking him to quiet the disturbance."

The newspaper reported that Hunter went to the home about 8:30 p.m. and was run off. He went home, got his gun and a deputy and went back. The partiers took away the Marshall's gun and fired at shot at him from the house. This time Hunter swore in about six men and back they went.

They "attempted to arrest A. Barnick and Antone Genisky, his bartender. Deputy Thomas Nalley seized Barnick by the shoulder and attempted to take him with him, when a scuffle ensued in which Antone Genisky also took part.

"During the scuffle Nalley was shot, supposedly by Genisky, the ball entering the back of the head at the base of the skull and coming out about three or four inches above. Nalley fell to the floor and Genisky jumped with both feet on his face as he lay on his back, cutting him under the eyes.

"At this time someone blew out the lights and Genisky jumped through the window, taking the sash with him. During the fray, several shots were fired in the dark, one entering the left side of Barnick and lodging just under the skin between the eleventh and twelfth ribs on the opposite side.

"While Barnick lay on the floor wounded, his wife placed a gun in his hands to continue the fight, which was promptly taken from him, after which she gave him a knife, which was also taken from him. He lived about an hour after the shooting. Nalley was taken to his home and became unconscious in about an hour."

The paper went on to say that Nalley was taken in the morning by train to St. Mark's Hospital and Genisky was arrested in the morning, still carrying the "38-caliber pistol covered with blood."

Nalley died a few days later and the outcome of the trial of Genisky was never reported.

Though there were fights, beatings and even occasional murders in Pleasant Valley, times were generally much calmer and lots of fun for residents. Many social events were held and there were clubs formed for every possible purpose.

In 1919 a major fire wiped out most of the commercial district, Front Street, in Scofield. The fire broke out before dawn and raged for five hours, destroying six business firms. One month later a second fire broke out and destroyed most of the rest of the businesses in town. Arson was the reported cause of the fire.

For six months during 1922, the town was rocked with violence and uneasiness and the mines organized and struck. Some miners continued to work, while others threw rocks, bottles and even fired guns at the "scabs" and security officers.

Eventually, the state brought in troops and declared marshall law. A constant check of movement and searches for guns, eliminated most of the violence until the situation was resolved and everyone went back to work.

The Ku Klux Klan was active during the summer of 1924. Citizens awoke one night to see a big burning cross on the mountainside above the cemetery. A few months later, a second cross was burned.

This time Frank Gorishek received a letter from the KKK demanding $5,000 or his store would be blown up. The money was to be packaged and left in front of the town hall.

Gorishek responded by placing a package at the designated spot at the proper time. But he and some of his friends were on the roof of the building, hiding behind a sign and waiting for the Klansmen. Fortunately, for the Klan, they never showed up and the Klan simply disappeared.

With the coming of the Great Depression, came the slow decline of the town. As with other towns in the county, when the coal market went soft, the towns went down.

There was a slight upsurge during World War II, but for the most part Scofield continued its decline until today it has few year-round residents.

But things haven't changed much in attitudes of those from the "lower camps." People still flock to the valley during the summer months to escape the heat below and enjoy the cool mountain air and the lake just north of town.

Royal

Royal wasn't Royal for a long time. When the coal camp was first begun, it was named for a side canyon of Price Canyon where the town was located — Bear Canyon.

Royal was scattered in two canyons and up through the Castle Gate. This was the main part of town in Price Canyon just below the Castle Gate.

The town really began in 1913 when Frank Cameron, who also developed the Panther Canyon mine and town of Heiner, began to develop a mine there with the help of just 35 miners.

Bear Canyon continued to develop and grow, and the town changed its name to Cameron in honor of the man who had begun the work there. In 1917 Cameron sold his interest in the coal property to Henry Rolapp.

The residents of the town weren't fickle, but the town received a new name. This time the camp became Rolapp in honor of the new owner. In four years, the town had possessed three names!

In 1917 Rolapp had a population of about 200 and many new stone and wood frame homes graced the site. The town dropped down out of Bear Canyon on the west and spread across the canyon floor, through the Castle Gate and started up Price Canyon.

Today there are still buildings and foundations in Bear Canyon and a few in Price Canyon. When the Price River Water Improvement District was formed and it developed its diversion and treatment plant in Price Canyon, much of the old town was destroyed.

One more change in name was to take place. The Royal Coal Company purchased the properties in the 1920s and the name was changed for its final time — this time to Royal.

But it had been called Rolapp for too long and some people refused to refer to the town as Royal. Both names seemed to hang on and even today people remember it by one of the two former names.

In 1930 Royal Coal sold out to Spring Canyon Coal. At the time of the transfer of ownership, Royal was still unincorporated but was a fine town.

There were no parks, amusement halls, library or churches, but Royal had a school. And it had a population of about 360. In its first seven years, Royal had grown by 226 people, but the growth slowed and realized only an additional 129 in the next ten years.

But the population did shift. Winters saw a bigger population than summers since there was higher production at the mine. Almost 60 men were employed at the mine and they produced a daily average of about 1,200 tons of coal.

Royal now had a school, hospital, general store, post office and a small service station. The highway up Price Canyon was new in 1930 and it became the town's Main Street.

The Lion Coal Company store at Royal was a popular gathering place.

Slowly the town began its decline. It really had begun in the '20s, but now began to accelerate slightly. By 1940, many people had left, even though the mine continued to produce coal. Many of the miners simply commuted from Castle Gate and Helper.

Royal saw tragedy. The first week of 1941 saw a Spring Glen resident, a miner at Royal, killed in an explosion.

The Helper Journal reported the accident: "One man was dead this week and another lay critically burned because of an explosion which occurred in the Royal coal mine last Saturday evening, about 6:30 o'clock. Killed, reportedly by gas poisoning, was Sheldon Binch, 27, of Spring Glen.

"The injured man, Glen Petty, 40 of Royal, suffered extensive third degree burns of the face and upper torso, and was reported in serious condition.

"Shortly after the blast, State Mine Inspector Jack Taylor of Helper arrived at the scene and took complete charge. After a brief investigation he reported that the explosion had been caused by sudden ignition of coal dust.

"He said that Mr. Petty, truck tender, was pushing a string of cars when they derailed, crashing into timber supports and caving in a portion of the roof. Coal dust, which spilled from the timbers, was ignited by a wire torn loose when the roof caved.

"Binch, motorman, was reported to have been overcome by carbon monoxide gas, called ‘after-damp,' which was created by the explosion. Severely burned, Petty stumbled 100 feet along the tunnel before he collapsed unconscious.

"Had the blast been caused by gas alone, the explosion probably would have spread and killed all inside. As it was, all others escaped and no fire resulted...

"Mr. Petty was treated at the Royal hospital and then transferred to the hospital at Standardville where, under the care of the company's physician, Dr. L. H. Merrill, his condition is improving.

"Report of the explosion created somewhat of a panic among families having members working in the mine. Cars jammed the scene until rescue and ambulance work became almost impossible. Attempting to stop the increasing number of persons arriving on the scene, Highway Patrolman J. L. Sullivan reached a telephone and called radio station KEUB, requesting that they announce all men had been able to leave the mine."

As went the other coal camps in Carbon County, so went Royal. As the demand for coal continued to decline following World War II, so did the population. By the end of the decade of the Fifties, Royal was empty.

Today lilac bushes still bloom in the spring in empty yards. Lawns are overgrown and trees have begun to push up through the few buildings still in Bear Canyon.

A new power substation sits where the tipple once saw coal cars dumping their loads. An elevated walkway from the office to the tipple is beginning to collapse, but still hangs suspended amidst growing box elder trees.

On cool summer evenings, one can walk along the street in Royal and almost see the residents sitting on empty porches while children play in fenced yards and on the slopes of the canyon.

But there is no one there.

Castle Gate

By the end of May 1974 Castle Gate was a ghost town. That made it the most recent of many ghost towns in Castle Country.

But unlike most of the other coal camps in the area which became ghost towns, Castle Gate simply moved. Many of the old homes can be found today in the Castle Gate subdivision at the mouth of Spring Canyon in West Helper.

Castle Gate went out with a bang. The final week before the town was moved, a big town party was held in the amusement hall. The hall had been closed for years, but local citizens cleaned it up for one more bash. Bands played, beer flowed and many Carbon County residents said goodbye to the old coal camp in real style.

Today, only the water treatment plant remains at the north end of the huge coal piles.

Castle Gate was incorporated on April 1, 1914, but the town existed for many years prior to that. The first mine at the old townsite was opened in 1888 and it remained in operation until about the time of incorporation.

The Pleasant Valley Coal Company, which had its main mine at Winter Quarters, was looking for a new mine which would be closer to the main line of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad which had finally been completed in 1883.

In 1888 the company sent their chief engineer, Robert Forrester, into "the region of the Price Canyon, just below The Castle Gate."

A party of prospectors went along and returned a favorable report of the petrified sunshine — enough so that Number One mine was opened immediately.

Men were moved into the area and shelters erected for them. A register of these early miners would include Harry World, John Young, R.S. Robertson, Charles Checketts, John Platt, William Jones, Thomas Reese and others.

Two years later, on November 11, 1890, Glen D. Reese became the first child to be born in the budding town.

Mining was very primitive in those early days. "Shooting" has changed considerably.

In 1890, the men would pick up a 25-pound keg of powder and take it into their working area. When it came time for blasting, they would punch a hole in the keg with their picks. This hole would then be plugged with a piece of paper when they weren't preparing a shot.

After making a cartridge tube out of a piece of newspaper, they would fill the paper with from one to three pounds of powder, pouring the powder directly from the keg into the paper cartridge.

Usually when they were doing this, they would have a lighted oil lamp on their heads and often a pipe in their mouths, early miners relate.

While this type of thing was going on in the mine, James B. Crandall was teaching school in house "47" on the outside. He was the first teacher and came in 1890.

Two years later, an increase in enrollment forced the school to move to the LDS church building. Soon after, the school moved again. This time to a four-room building on the hillside near the old hotel. It remained there until 1920 when a new school was built.

World and Robertson erected the first store in 1890 which later became known as the Wasatch Store. In addition to being the company store, it housed the Pleasant Valley Coal Company offices on the second floor.

The steps weren't covered then, but right at the base of the stairs, Butch Cassidy relieved the clerk of $7,000 in gold meant to pay the miners of Castle Gate. The Wasatch Store was destroyed when the town moved.

Directly south of it was the first post office and Harry Nelson was the first postmaster. He was also clerk for the company.

It was at the northeast corner of the store where the steps led up to the company offices, that Butch Cassidy and Elza Lay robbed the company payroll in April 1897. The two successfully made off with $7000 in gold coin which was never recovered.

It has been suspected over the years that the gold may have been secreted in Buckhorn Draw somewhere. If it was buried, it was probably buried at what is now known as Sid's Mountain. Newspaper accounts of the robbery, place Robbers Roost there in Emery County. There are still some old cabins on top of the remote mountain.

In 1899, coking ovens were built at Castle Gate and coked for a time. Coal from the mine did not provide a high-quality coke, so coal from East Carbon was brought in and coked.

It was during this time that the company changed its name to Utah Fuel Company and opened their second mine — this time in Willow Creek Canyon near the present power plant.

The vein was only four feet thick, but exploration led them to find a twenty-foot thick vein beneath the first one.

Connections between the two mines were made by driving a pair of rock tunnels which opened up the richest and greatest deposit of coal in this country at that time.

In 1922, Number Three mine was opened along the main Une of the D&RGW between Royal and Castle Gate. It was the west's first shaft mine and was abandoned a short time later. Number One was already closing and only the Willow Creek mine continued to operate.

In 1924 the second worst mine disaster in the west occurred when methane gas in the Castle Gate mine reached a mixture in air of more than five percent and caused an explosion which claimed many lives.

Soon after that more stringent regulations were made and passed regarding the mining industry's safety measures. In 24 years, the same company had witnessed the violent deaths of more than 350 miners in two explosions, one at Winter Quarters and the second at Castle Gate.

As with most coal camps, modern transportation began to take it's toll and people moved to the larger communities of Price and Helper. Many people remained in the town until 1974 when McCulloch Oil bought the townsite and moved the homes.

Perhaps saddest of all was the destruction of a registered historic site — the old Wasatch Store. Residents circulated petitions to have the stone building moved and a museum built inside its walls, but the cost was considered prohibitive.

Today, in addition to the water plant, the old cemetery in Willow Creek Canyon is all that remains.

Heiner

It was never incorporated, never very large and we can't find any kind of treasure story attached to it, but Heiner was home to many Cabon County residents for quite a few years in the early decades of this century.

Part of the town existed until Thursday morning, July 19, 1984. That was the day the old LDS church building in Helper was torn down. The building had been built from the brick used in the old school at Heiner.

Although the town didn't really become a town until 1914 when school was first taught there, activity in the area began in 1911 when Frank N. Cameron began prospecting for coal there.

Heiner was situated at the mouth of Panther Canyon, the first canyon on the east side as one starts up Price Canyon. At first, Cameron named the town to-be "Panther" after the canyon. Later the name was changed to Carbon for a short time. Finally it was named after the vice president of U.S. Fuel Company, Moroni Heiner.

John Crawford followed Cameron into the area and was later to become the first superintendent at Heiner. Other names of local prominence in the development of Heiner are John Cavania, John Ceteria, Andrew Mininie, Joe Ricardi, Pete Milano, Ernest Juicia and George Garavaglia.

John E. Pettit, one of the pioneer mining men of this area was also a superintendent at Heiner and had much to do with the development of the coal properties there.

The first shipment of Panther Coal was made on Feb. 13,1914. It was only a short time after that, that the improved properties were leased by the United States Fuel Company to Frank Cameron and John Crawford. When the lease expired four years later, the property reverted back to U.S. Fuel Company.

School was first taught in 1914 in a one-room building and was shortly moved to a two-room structure built for a school.

It wasn't until 1923 that a four-room brick building was erected for a permanent school in the center of town. The new building also served as a community building. Heiner had its greatest population in 1923 — almost 600 residents.

For many years Ernest L. Miner was principal at the school. Miner retired at the age of 70 in 1945 after many years in education in Cabon County. There is no question of his influence in the lives of many Cabon County residents living here still.

In the late 1930's the town died a slow death as people moved into Castle Gate or Martin and Helper.

Heiner, like most of Carbon County then, was very cosmopolitan with a mixture of many European nationalities. When the town died, they melted into the county in other coal camps and towns.

Kenilworth

A showplace among coal camps. That was an apt description of Kenilworth. Perched high in the mountains above Castle Valley, Kenilworth literally looked down on the world around it.

Kenilworth is situated at the 6,800-foot level east of Helper and had its roots of existence in 1904 when coal was first located there by Heber Stowell who was looking for some horses.

Stowell was from Spring Glen and spotted the large outcroppings of coal while searching for some lost horses there. He showed the coal samples to W. H. Lawley of Price and the two men decided to begin mining the petrified sunshine in 1905.

Prospecting was difficult and finances were scarce. But James Wade, Price, and Fred Sweet, Salt Lake City, became interested in the venture and invested money in the budding operation. From then on, the mine and subsequent town progressed evenly and rapidly.

The first road to the operation was from Price and came up over Wood Hill and it was along this route that supplies made their way from Price to the tiny mining claim.

Stowell and Lawley began the operations in Bull Hollow, just to the northeast of the present town, but found access too difficult. They climbed about halfway up the mountain and opened a new entrance into the coal veins. Eventually, a steep tram was built to this entrance.

The mine was high above Kenilworth in the early days. Miners would often "sled" down this old tramway to town after they got off their shift.

By February 1906 there were 16 men working the two mine entrances at Kenilworth. Stowell was no longer involved as the property was now known as the "Wade-Lawley" prospect. The D. J. Sharp Coal Company, James A. Harrison, superintendent, had 14 miners working an adjoining property.

By December of that year, the properties were known as the Aberdeen mine and the Price Trading Company mine and Independent Coal and Coke had bought them out. There were 40 men working the mines there on Dec. 27,1906.

One week later, the Eastern Utah Advocate, Price, indicated in a front-page story that the mines would be producing a thousand tons per day in a few months. They also specified this production would not affect the Price coal market..."as the Price Trading Company will continue to supply the demand here at the same old price of three dollars a ton, delivered."

Five days earlier (Dec. 29, 1906), the Deseret News reported, "That the new company which quietly filed its articles with the secretary of state a week ago means business is instanced by reports that come from Helper that already work has commenced on grading from Bull Hollow, a point about four miles distant from Helper, to connect with the Rio Grande main line and the Rio Grande tracks about one mile east of Helper. The new coal company has secured 160 acres of land where are to be located tipples, coke ovens and a townsite."

The metropolitan daily also reported "the Aberdeen property consists of a tunnel two hundred feet in length through which wagons are driven and loaded in a big chamber during the past 15 years whenever the citizens of Price needed a load of coal."

The story also stated that the chamber could hold 30 wagons at a time and there were 300 tons of slack on the floor that had been ground out by the wagon wheels! "It is affirmed that a man can stand on the spring seat of a wagon and yet not be able to touch the coal overhead with his hand," the article said.

A slump in the coal market later that year made things look bad for the tiny camp. By Feb. 20, 1908, the mines were producing only about 600 tons a day and shipping 450 tons to Nevada for steam power generation. About 100 men were employed at the camp.

A contract to supply naval ships with coal was seen as the hope of the future.

On Oct. 1, 1908, Superintendent Stevenson requested the company hire an additional 30 men for the camp mines.

During the next 2-1/2 years, the town grew as employment began to grow again due to the turn-around in the coal market. By now, the grocery store was running full tilt and was operated by William Brooks. The company had erected an amusement hall which provided for social activities. Lawley, himself, directed and staged the first show there, "Rube and his Ma."

Boarding houses were built, and homes were erected. There was a Greek coffeehouse, a Boy Scout Hall, used by the Italians for dances, and a saloon.

Three apartment houses were also built, one for the "colored workmen," one for the Japanese and one for the rest of the workers. A school was also erected about this same time.

Water was still being hauled by barrels from Helper up to the town which now had a road to that community also.

On Saturday, Feb. 4, 1911, violence erupted at Kenilworth. Some of the workers there alleged the company was "short weighing" coal. This was denied by Thomas Bell, superintendent, and other company officials and the complaining "foreigners" were fired.

According to a news story, "several Greeks congregated in the hills about the camp and behind trees and fired upon the camp and deputies."

The fighting apparently continued for several days. "T. Elias Jackson, a deputy sheriff and watchman for the company at the camp, was last Monday killed, and Chris Sonberb, another guard, slightly wounded in the arm. One Greek rioter is known to be dead, and it is believed three or four more bodies are in the hills," the newspaper reported.

The newspaper reported the dead Greek as Steve Kolozakis and said that Robert Jackson, brother of the dead deputy, is the one who killed him.

By that Thursday there were 60 officers at the camp and the violence subsided. The mine was reopened then without incident.

"Rumors of strike troubles at Hiawatha, Mohrland and the five camps of Utah Fuel Company in Carbon County have no foundation. The miners at all of these places are well paid and are satisfied with the conditions prevailing, according to reports by telephone today," the newspaper reported.

On February 28,1919, The Sun in Price, reported "Kenilworth Unionized." The short article said a union organizer, John McLennon, claimed the complete organization of the camp of Kenilworth.

The year of the riot (1911) was also the year the trees were planted in Kenilworth by John Blackham, Sr. Lawns, gardens and flowers were all beginning to be evidenced around homes.

A new road was built between the other two roads. This one led down to Spring Glen and soon became the main traffic artery for the new town as it had less steep inclines.

In 1926 a new railroad was built into the town which afforded less incline and more loads being taken out. So, in 1927, a second tipple was built to accommodate the ever-expanding market.

Even though the Great Depression had come and was firmly entrenched in the country, a third tipple was built in 1931. At the time it was finished, it was the largest coal tipple west of the Mississippi River. On heavy production days, all three tipples were busy.

At the same time the Kenilworth camp was building the new railroad, the town also acquired new concrete sidewalks along the main street, then known as Kenilworth Avenue.

By the time the third tipple was built, Kenilworth had a hospital, new tennis courts, a church and two stores. There was also the post office, a new amusement hall (the old one had burned down in 1926) which featured "talking pictures," a grand hotel and many streets of new homes.

The Kenilworth Mercantile Store was a company store which issued its own script for miners to make purchases between paydays. In its very earliest days, the store was the only place miners were allowed to shop, or they were subject to firing by the company.

As the coal continued to be mined deeper and deeper inside the mountain, it soon became easier to reach from the Castle Gate side. As most other camps saw the end of mining in the late '50s and early '60s, so came the end at Kenilworth.

The mine closed and later the company began selling the homes and land to private individuals. In 1976 the Kenilworth Merc, closed its doors and the coal camp was gone.

Today there seems to be a revitalization for Kenilworth. A new water and sewer system has been installed and a new home was completed early in 1984.

It may just be that Kenilworth will again see an expansion and a renewing of its former beauty.

Peerless - Maple Creek - Little Standard

Today there are many suburbs in the country. Most, of course, are found pushed up against the city limits of large metropolitan cities, but suburbs are not new.

When the coal mines of Spring Canyon just west of Helper were in their heyday, there were three communities which might have been termed suburbs to the large communities in the canyon. Maple Creek and Little Standard were two and Peerless, although its own small community, might be a third.

Peerless

Charles and Will Sweet picked up an option on the coal properties at what was to become Peerless just a mile east of Spring Canyon (Storrs) in 1915. They began development of the property and then sold it to two men from Salt Lake City, a Thompson and Murdock, who formed the Peerless Coal Company.

These men finished development work on the mine, which only had about a four-foot-thick vein and was high on a rock point, and opened a tram to bring the coal down to the canyon floor. The first coal moved down the tram to the tipple in 1917.

From 1917 to 1921, coal production really boomed, and the small town was built. Enough coal was produced in those few years to pay off all indebtedness on the property by the end of 1920.

About 150 men were employed in the mine during its busiest days and they accounted for the town of about 30 homes. Peerless also had a store, post office, clubhouse for mine officials and a schoolhouse.

But by 1938 many people were moving to Helper, less than three miles away. Driving to work in the canyon was easy now and Helper certainly offered more conveniences as a larger community.

By the time World War II came to this country, there were very few living in the small town, although the mine continued to produce coal. The school remained open for the few children there until 1950.

There are still some foundations and walls standing at Peerless, just 1.8 miles above the Utah Railway underpass at the mouth of Spring Canyon. Until a few years ago, the company store still stood with a "Never-rip Overalls" advertisement painted on the end of the stone building.

Maple Creek

The Maple Creek mine was begun just south of the town of Standardville in 1927. Coal had been found up the small side canyon years before, but never developed.

In September 1927 Henry Fiack began building a boarding house and tipple near the mouth of the Maple Creek Canyon. The Maple Creek Coal Company had already been formed and the mine face exposed.

On February 15, 1928, coal was being shipped from the new mine and tipple and some men were living in the boarding house. The News-Advocate reported the coal production exceeded 100 tons daily.

The new tipple and boarding house had come in at a cost of $50,000 and the tipple could sustain a daily production of from 150 to 200 tons a day, the newspaper said. The coal seam, which was almost seven feet thick, was high up in the canyon and a 3,500-foot tramway was built to bring the coal down.

Company officers that first year were E. Francis, president; F. Childs, vice president; Peter Martakis, second vice president; Louis E. Callis, secretary-treasurer; T. C. Winn, C. Bapis and Sam Giannos, directors.

A few homes were built in the small canyon, most of them up where the tram made a switch on its way down the canyon to Spring Canyon below. There were a few wood frame homes built and a couple of stone houses which still stand, but most people lived in Standardville who worked in the mine.

The mine employed only about 30 miners at the height of production that first year. By December, Callis became manager of the company, J. E. McCluskey was mine superintendent and E. H. Burdick was consulting engineer.

In April 1931 the small town and mine closed down suddenly. According to the Sun, one of Price's two newspapers, a fire was the cause of the closure.

"Fire of unknown origin almost entirely destroyed the tipple of the Maple Creek Coal company's mine located above Standardville about 3 a.m. Saturday, causing damage estimated at between ten and fourteen thousand dollars," the newspaper reported.

"When the blaze was discovered by workmen, it had gained a big start, and efforts to extinguish the flames by means of dirt and what little water was available, was useless," the Sun went on to say.

The newspaper said that virtually all of the wooden tipple was destroyed, specifically, the dump, motor and scales were totally destroyed.

According to E. N. Radcliff, chief clerk at the time of the fire, there were then about 50 miners employed by the company. The mine was not reopened and the town, what little there was of it, died as quickly.

Today there are still a few stone buildings, one a very nice home with fenced yard, still high in the little side canyon. One old wood frame house only recently collapsed.

Little Standard

Little Standard was a true suburb and the highest of all camps in the canyon.

The little town was formed in the south fork at the top of Spring Canyon, just a short ways from Mutual and Rains. Mutual and Rains formed a good sized community, with the Mutual Store being the hub of activity and Rains maintaining the post office.

Little Standard began in 1925 when families moved into a tent city built near a mine of the same name. There was also a 14-room boarding house in the little town. Since it was the last town in the canyon, there were some corrals built by residents and horses were kept by many families there.

For 13 years the little town thrived in the high mountain canyon as miners and their families made a home for themselves beneath the canvases.

But when the mine closed at Mutual in 1938, many of the families at Mutual left the canyon. Their homes were vacant for only hours as many of the families living in Little Standard moved into the now-vacant Mutual houses.

Almost overnight, the little suburb was abandoned. If it hadn't been for the "shift" in populations, the store at Mutual would have closed, but the previous population of Little Standard now, with Rains, continued to keep the store going until it finally closed down in 1954.

Little Standard mine closed with the end of World War II in 1945, just seven years after the citizens of the tent city of Little Standard had made their sudden exodus.

Spring Canyon

Virtually no evidence is left in Spring Canyon west of Helper of the largest of all the Carbon County ghost towns.

The town of Spring Canyon was just four miles west of Helper, was home for many years for more than 1,000 citizens and today lies buried beneath a road and sagebrush.

The mine at Sowbelly Gulch where the old town used to be really begun in 1895 by Teancum Pratt when he started a road into the small side canyon in order to "get coal for our own fires."

Pratt bought out his two partners in the mine, Frank and L.H. Ewell, in 1897-98 for a total of $70. L.H. received $50 and Frank $20.

On Feb. 28, 1911, the Union Coal Company was formed and further exploration of the property was begun. Then, in 1912, "Uncle" Jesse Knight bought 1,600 acres with the mineral rights in the canyon. He immediately began to build a town by having 60 houses built from the native sandstone.

The new town was named Storrs after Knight's general manager of the site, George A. Storrs. By May 1913 the town was occupied and the mine was producing coal. The coal was transported on a railroad Knight had laid up the canyon from Helper.

The Carbon County News reported on Jan. 1,1914 that the mine at Storrs was producing and transporting 20 carloads a day to the Rio Grande at Helper.

During 1914 a large tent was used for a school while a stone one was being built. B.H. Stringham was the first principal and Valera Fillmore and Gladys Robinson were the two teachers.

The first recorded accidental deaths at Storrs occurred on Monday, Jan. 26, 1914, when "Without a second's warning the avalanche of snow swept down the mountainside a distance of 100 rods, crushing and demolishing four houses in the canyon, and burying their occupants under from four to ten feet of packed snow."

The Carbon County News reported the dead as Louie Kavralakis, Mike Christolakes and Mrs. Mike Perkovich. The funeral for the three was held in Spring Glen the following day.

But there were fun social activities in Storrs. This from May 13, 1914: "The Mental Culture Club met Wednesday evening at the home of Mrs. F.T. Bennett. Part of Stoddard's Lecture on Yellowstone Park was read by Miss G.F. Hall, and little Erma Bennett gave a recitation...a dainty luncheon was served to Miss Maude Walraven, Miss Gladys Robinson, Mesdames L.H. Robinson, A.B. Liechty, R.T. Davis, R. Southworth, Briant Stringham and G.F. Hall."

Two men were killed in October of that same year when a boiler in the power plant suddenly exploded, "completely wrecking the power plant, killing two outright and injuring five, one of whom will probably die," the newpaper reported.

A.B. Elliott, chief engineer, and A.C. Strong, fireman, were killed in the blast. The newspaper said, "Strong was literally blown to pieces." Elliott had been scalded "from head to foot."

John Pappas, miner, was killed in a rock fall in 1916 in the mine. But perhaps the most unusual incident happened later that year in August when a shooting occurred.

"War broke out between Greece and Austria at Storrs Saturday night with the result that one valiant Austrian got a bullet hole through the head and the Greek who is accused of the shooting vamoosed." That was the entire report in the News-Advocate on the front page!

The company store stood until it, along with the rest of the town, was bulldozed down in 1975. It was a large general merchandise store which carried everything from fresh meat to dry goods.

Storrs continued to maintain about 100 youngsters in the school during the time and taught all grades. J. Grant Kilfoyle became the principal there and later was superintendent of schools for the Carbon County District.

Kilfoyle remembered the heated swimming pool the community maintained.

"The pool was not Olympic size, but it was adequate," Kilfoyle said. "It was built of brand-new concrete with modern dressing rooms and showers along the east side (of the canyon)." He said it was deep enough for diving, springboard and high, and shallow enough for the youngest child.

"The heating system was ingenious," he said. "Live steam from the coal company's central boiler plant about a half mile away was pumped into the pool through four pipes which entered the corners."

Kilfolye said the town filled the pool each week during the summer and then the steam was turned on until the water was comfortably warm. He said he thought every child and most adults in that town learned to swim.

Then in 1924 the name of the town was changed from Storrs to Spring Canyon. That did cause some confusion for some of the people had lived there for ten years now and were used to the name Storrs. In fact, the LDS church there continued to be known as the Storrs Ward.

The company store was modern and very complete. There was a hospital there, a doctor's office and, of course, the large school.

The Storrs bakery was of renown in the area and was owned and operated by Batista Anselmi and his wife for many years. The bakery stood below the large cliff on top of which still stands the community's flagpole.

Mining production had already reached 1,000 tons per day by 1924 and remained at that level for almost two decades. Then, during World War II, production doubled to 2,000 tons daily.

By the time the war was over and 1946 rolled around, the two mines at Spring Canyon had produced 11 million tons of coal!

In 1947 the first forward word of an approaching coal slump reached the town. "This may not affect the larger mines but some of the smaller mines may feel the pinch, which could cause the owners to curtail production or to shut down completely."

By 1954 the work force was down to a skeleton crew and most of the residents left, having seen the handwriting on the wall. In 1969 the mines were completely closed and the town abandoned.

Then, in 1975, the bulldozers moved in and in a few days the town was completely gone. All that remains today are the charred remnants of the tipple near the canyon road, a section of trestle for the old tramway and an empty flagpole atop the cliff entrance to Sowbelly Gulch.

Standardville

There is yet another Carbon County ghost town with a treasure story attached. Standardville has a lost horde of silver dollars still awaiting discovery.

It wasn't the largest community in the county, but back in its earliest days it was the most modern of any of the county's coal camps. Because it was established as a "decisively better" town than other mining camps, it was named Standardville — reputed to be a "standard" for other camps to follow.

Being one of the smallest of the old ghost towns in the area, little can be said of it since little happened there during its existence.

The town was begun by F.A. Sweet in 1912 when he opened a rich seam of coal in the mountainside just about five miles up Spring Canyon from Helper.

The mine was only a quarter of a mile up a side canyon from where the town was established and the portal remains today with the mining company name incised into the concrete above the mine entrance.

The town stayed quite small until 1914 when it suddenly boomed due to the increased coal production of 200 tons per day. But in 1915 the town really blossomed as coal production sky-rocketed to an incredible 1,000 tons daily. By 1932, that figured doubled.

After 1932 coal production there varied with the market demand, sometimes reaching up to the 2,000 tons per day mark, but most often was considerably less.

At one time Standardville sported steam-heated apartments, a hospital, a general merchandise store, butcher shop, post office, barber shop, recreation hall, tennis courts and modern homes.

None of the buildings are intact although many walls still stand and the bath house is complete, however, it is minus the roof.

When the town was at its peak, there were four schoolteachers teaching the elementary grades. All the junior high school students were taken up the canyon two miles to Latuda. Slowly the town began to lag, and the teacher number slipped from four to none.

The town died very slowly as miners moved their families down the canyon to Helper which was at its peak. It became easier to live in Helper and ride the train up to Standardville to work.

As recently as 1974 there were still two families living there and most of the buildings and tipple were in good condition.

The mine office continued to open every day through 1973 and into the early months of 1974. A single woman employee kept a lonely vigil on the rifle-ravaged tipple. Then everyone left that summer.

People began to strip the old buildings for the lumber and brick until what is there today was all that was left.

Somewhere near the company office lies a treasure of real silver dollars which has yet to be discovered.

A woman, who shall remain nameless, was a little girl living just up the hill from the old mine office back in the early twenties. She remembered a couple of years ago about the dollars.

She found the silver dollars which belonged to her father and, wanting to play with them, took them outside. She remembered that she was not far from the company office when she began to drop them, one by one, down into a pipe protruding from the ground.

She continued to drop them down into the pipe until they were all gone. Later, when they were found missing, she confessed what she had done, but was unsure which pipe now contained the silver.

To her knowledge, those silver dollars are still at the bottom of a pipe somewhere near the mine office where only the old vault still stands.

Unfortunately, most of the pipes sticking out of the ground in the old ghost town are imbedded in concrete. The lost silver of Standardville will probably forever remain lost.

Latuda

Nestled at the junction of several side canyons of Spring Canyon, the old coal camp of Latuda was one of the more beautiful coal camps in Carbon County.

Although Latuda doesn't have a treasure connected with the town, it does have a locally famous ghost in the "white lady."

Latuda was located about seven miles from the mouth of Spring Canyon at Helper and is shown on topographical maps as being about 6,700 feet above sea level.

The town was one of the newer coal camps in the county, having been organized in 1918, just four years after Frank Latuda began mining coal high up on the canyon wall. Latuda and Frank Cameron (who operated the Panther mine at Heiner) followed earlier prospectors, some of whom were Frank Gentry, George Shultz, S.N. Marchetti and Gus Goddard.

Shultz was named as the mine superintendent in those early days by Latuda and Cameron and remained so for many years.

Latuda found and opened a new mine near the canyon floor in 1917 and the next year 20 new homes were built near the mine. The new town was named Liberty, for the name of the coal company Latuda started six years earlier — Liberty Fuel Company.

For the first few years, miners preferred to live in tents. But the cold and the apparent permanency of the town prompted building and in January of that year those new homes were finished and occupied.

Water was supplied in limited quantities by a spring in one of the side canyons. Extra water was brought up from Helper.

Two years later, 1920, native stone was cut in the area and a two-story mine office erected. It's walls still stand today. S. N. Marchetti built and managed the first general mercantile store about the same time. School was begun and held in a company house until a large school was put up in 1923.

When the post office was established, a new name was sought, and Liberty became Latuda in honor of the mining developer who started everything just a few years earlier.

The town had nearly 400 residents by the time the post office came and maintained that population until into the 1950's. The mine averaged about 110 miners during the same time.

The mine itself was considered one of the safest mines in the western coal fields. It had a natural rock "roof" about 70 feet thick that appeared almost as concrete.

While it was safe in the mine, the winter weather outside in 1927 was anything but safe.

On Feb. 16, 1927, Latuda was the victim of two deadly avalanches which took two lives and caused many injuries. It also wiped out a row of homes.

The first slide that morning occurred at the check cabin near the mine entrance, catching mine foreman Gus Goddard just as he entered the cabin. He was buried under 20 feet of snow and by the time rescuers could dig him out, he was dead.

About the time Goddard was reached, a second slide occurred, just an hour after the first. This slide killed barn boss Moroni Mower. He was helping families move their personal effects, families who were in danger from the first slide, when that fatal second slide took his life.

Others were buried in the second slide, but all managed to dig themselves out or be rescued. A mile of new railroad was covered with snow and debris which knocked out rail traffic for several days.

Most of the homes had outhouses and no indoor plumbing, so in 1945 a pipeline from the mine was installed and many of the homes received indoor plumbing for the first time. Still many families continued to haul drinking water from Helper.

Mining slowed in 1954 and only about 20 families remained in the small town. Some of those who continued to live there worked just a mile down the canyon at Spring Canyon.

In 1966 the company blasted the mine entrance shut, and the town was lost to history.

The mine office was intact until about 1972 when someone blasted the interior with dynamite to kill the "white lady."

Young people from the county began telling of a mysterious lady dressed in a flowing white gown who was ghostly as she walked through the old building on moonlit nights. The stories continued for a few years until the building was blasted. Later someone set fire to the wooden debris inside and today only the walls stand.

Even today stories persist that the "white lady" is sometimes seen by moonlight. Young people report seeing her moving quietly and stealthily through the ruins of Latuda, always to disappear at the old Liberty Mine Company office.

Rains and Mutual

At the western end of Spring Canyon, just seven miles above Helper and 7,000 feet in elevation lie the rotting remains of two communities which were really only one. Rains and Mutual supported each other.

In 1915 L.F. Rains, a renowned opera star from the east turned coal miner, interested P.J. Quealy, a Wyoming coal operator, in the coal land just west of Standardville. Rains was general manager for the Standard Coal Company the year before.

A company, Carbon Fuel Company, was formed and Rains was named president. By November of that same year coal was being shipped from the mine.

The company built 60 wooden frame homes along the main canyon road and the new town was named Rains. A school, boarding house and store was also erected.

The 18-foot-thick coal seam was producing up to 2,000 tons daily soon after production began and the mine employed 200 miners at peak production periods.

The old Mutual Store had a dance hall on the top floor where social events for the area were held. The town stretched up the canyon to the right of this picture.

The most intact building of any in the Spring Canyon ghost towns is the old bath house at Rains. The town itself was situated in a canyon just behind the building and boasted 60 houses plus a boarding house and school. Originally there was a store there but the Mutual Store eventually served both communities.

Unfortunately, the mine only operated for 15 years and was closed in 1930. But other mines had opened during those years and continued to ship coal.

In 1921 Mutual Coal Company was begun, the little town built and the mine began to ship coal. A store was built at Mutual but Rains maintained the post office for the two towns.

Early superintendents of the Mutual Coal Company included Mans H. Coffin, Jr., Albert Shaw, W.F. Bowns and Oliver Sutch.

Jeanette McAlpine recently remembered moving to Rains in 1935. She and her husband came from Oklahoma and were very definitely moved by the beauty of the canyon. But she also had some misgivings.

"But how could we live in this two-room house without indoor plumbing, clothes closets and kitchen cabinets? No landscaping! Where were the grass, the flowers and the trees?" she thought.

"The joys outweighed the hardships in this town, which was really just a main road with houses on each side," she remembered. "The residents, 500 or fewer, were friendly."

"Dances at the hall over the Mutual Store, home talent shows, and dinner parties provided entertainment during the snowed-in months," she said. "Trips to Helper and Price were highlights reserved for special occasions."

"Children climbed the high, flat rocks beyond the creek bed and defied their mothers to rescue them. They played in the quiet streets during long summer evenings, while parents gathered on front doorsteps to chat," Mrs. McAlpine remembered.

Most of the mines and towns in Spring Canyon met their demise in the 1950s and Rains/Mutual was no exception. The mines closed completely by 1958. The store at Mutual had stopped retail business four years earlier when most of the people had already left the small mountain towns.

At its peak production, the Rains district, which included Mutual, produced nearly 200,000 tons of coal a year and boasted combined populations of nearly 1,000. By 1946 the Spring Canyon mines had produced a total tonnage of 30,000,000 tons of coal and employed between 800 and 900 miners!

Today little remains of the two towns. The Mutual Store still stands but is minus its floors and roof. The bath house at Rains is still intact and is unique in its architectural design.

Rains was in a little side canyon to the northwest of the present bathhouse and still boasts quite a few old foundations. The mine superintendent's house is just about gone at the mouth of the canyon under an elm tree.

Mutual is on private property and was up a north canyon from the Mutual Store. There are still remnants of buildings standing there, but most have collapsed in on themselves.

Rains and Mutual were an important part of Carbon County history, but today only a few remember the towns and it is mainly those memories which remain.

Coal City

On July 7, 1889, at 4:10 p.m., James Deseret Gordon filed on a parcel of land near the head of what is now known as Gordon Creek.

But the area was not to become truly populated for another 32 years. A few prospectors and some trappers used the area, but it was Alfred Grames in 1885 who took up residence at what later was to become Coal City.

Others who moved in and out of the area for the next few years included Wes Gentry, William Warren, Victor Rambeau, Joe Nujuier and Joe Vacher. These men used the Coal City area for herding sheep and some farming.

Noe and Edward Aubert and Shekra and Nedje Sheye came and prospected the area, now known as Cedar Mesa Farm.

George Storrs eventually bought the farm and on August 6, 1921, filed a petition with the Carbon County Commission in Price to establish a townsite and develop coal properties there. The town was named Great Western and was laid out immediately.

Emma Mae Peterson remembers her grandfather, George Storrs, when they first moved out to the property in those early days.

"He had in his heart a drawn map of a city. Coal City was his dream," she said. "But it was one thing which did not materialize — such as paved roads, sidewalks, hospital on Hospital Knoll, many houses or many people."

Storrs was forming a cooperative, with the miners buying smaller tracts of the farm and would then become stockholders in the effort. They would farm their properties when not underground in the mine.

People were skeptical of the project. The Sun in Price, in a page one story finished its article with this statement: "Those familiar with mining costs in Carbon County will watch with interest to see how far $75,000 will go."

But it did go.

By Aug. 18 the company was already putting in a railroad which would connect with the Utah Railroad at the mouth of Spring Canyon. The surveying was already complete, and the grading crew was at work.

A school census on Nov. 24, 1921, showed a population of 19. The following year Eugene Andreini erected a stone building known as the Andreini-Colzani building. It became the office for the Great Western until 1925 when Andreini turned it into a general mercantile store.

By the beginning of 1922, more than 200 lots had been sold to various people from the area. Helper businessmen were excited about the potential and even helped get a road built from Spring Canyon over to the townsite.

In 1923, when most residents were still living in tents, Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight champion, took up residence there. He used the town, now named Dempsey City, for a training camp and was often in local headlines.

In the May 18 Sun, he was quoted as saying, "After the Shelby fight, I hope that the next big ring bout will take place at Dempsey City. That's just an idea of mine — maybe you think it's a little premature, but just the same I hope that arrangement is made." It wasn't.

In February 1924, Dempsey decided not to invest in the coal properties. The local coal company, upset at that decision, decided not to officially name the town Dempsey City, but changed the name to Coal City and so it remained.

The railroad was completed that summer and went on through the town to the other properties higher on Gordon Creek.

In 1925 a log school building was erected and school held there one month while J. M. Miller built a new school from cement block. The first schoolteacher was Mrs. Henry Syndergaard and she had 24 pupils.

Miller also built two new block houses in the growing town and others began building wood frame homes and leaving their canvas homes behind.

While the Coal City store and a bakery were being built that year, H. J. Fisher was elected Justice of the Peace and Robert Mack was named constable.

The town was going to maintain its growth for only a few more years now. In 1935, the town began its decline during the Great Depression and by 1939-40 was just a ghost town.

Mrs. Peterson remembered a couple of the characters who lived there.

"Old Man Mack lived in a one-room cabin about 100 feet below Andreni's Store. No one knew where he had come from, but I loved him. He had blue eyes, was thin and in every way was a gentleman.

"Dr. Eldon Dorman has the only evidence that Old Man Mack had lived there. In his office is an oil painting of Old Man Mack sitting in front of his cabin.

"Jack Fox, a hermit, lived there. His house still stands. He built beautiful furniture from the maple trees around Coal City. He would cure the lumber and then build from it.

"He had been a musician because he gave me a book (relating to music)." Fox had also just appeared and left behind some relatives back east. "In the '50s his family discovered where he was, but it was toward the end of his life," Mrs. Peterson said.

Mrs. Peterson remembered that near the big railroad bridge there were rumors of lost gold. She said her grandfather had found it, but later was unable to return to the same spot. "Also, some Indian relics are in a cave up there," she said.

Today there are still some of the old houses there and the skeleton of the stone store stands atop the hill. A stone cistern still holds water, and the last old mailbox finally has fallen over.

In a good year, fruit can still be picked from the fruit trees growing in overgrown yards, still surrounded by old fences.

Today the big farm is owned by Utah and is still a farm, used now by the Division of Wildlife Resources. During the deer season, the population often grows again nearly to the original population of 100 as hunters camp at the old townsite.

But the rest of the year the only activity there is a rustling of wind through old trees and high grass.

Most of the homes are gone now, but some still stand at Coal City. The wood frame homes are in various stages of collapse while the stone and block buildings remain relatively solid, though empty for more than 40 years.

Consumers - National - Sweet

Just a few miles up Gordon Creek from the budding town of Coal City, was a cluster of three small towns. Consumers was the biggest of the three and was situated in the middle. Below Consumers was National and just above was Sweet.

Although the three towns were distinct, they seemed to exist as a single entity.

The area was opened by A. E. Gibson who had come to Price in February of 1889 and worked as a telegrapher for the railroad that final year of the narrow gauge. Gibson worked himself into the coal industry and eventually became the superintendent of the Spring Canyon Coal Company mine.

During the winter of 1921, Gibson went into the hills around what was to become Consumers and began prospecting for coal. During the following year, mostly in the winter, he opened a nine-foot vein of coal and, with some men he had employed, hauled out 34 carloads of coal which was shipped from Wildcat Siding on the Utah Railway.

The next spring saw the formation of Consumers Mutual Coal Company with Donald Jenkins as president, Gibson as vice president and J. Tracy Wooten as secretary-treasurer.

Once the company was formed, development of the properties was swift. The railroad was completed by 1925. Funds were not available to bridge Gordon Creek at the canyon where the Sweet mine was located until the following year and during that one-year delay, the brothers, C. N. and H. W. Sweet, changed the name of the properties from Gordon Creek Coal to Sweet Coal Company.

National had begun to be developed in 1921 when Fred Sweet bought the property and began the National Coal Company. Just below National was the town of Coal Creek, a tent village which housed the miners who were now working the three mines there at the head of Gordon Creek.

In 1924 the first school was organized in the three towns, and it was housed in a tent and a wooden shack. Mae Mathis and Irene Coates were hired as teachers. In 1931 a four-room modern school was built in Consumers, and it served the educational needs of all three camps.

The town had been named Gibson, but now it was changed to Consumers and the coal company was changed from Consumers Mutual to Blue Blaze.

In the seven years between 1924 and 1931, all three towns were built up extensively. National saw a long row of red tile homes erected, each having arched doorways and several rooms with outbuildings. There was also a store and service station there.

Sweet was mostly a tent city, but there were some permanent homes built there during that time. The huge wooden trestle across the canyon was the construction marvel of the area and still stands today.

But Consumers saw the greatest growth. Consumers had a four-story apartment house, store, service station and post office in the main part of town.

Then, stretching up the canyon, were homes by the dozen. A large twenty-stall garage stood (still does today) below the houses and across the street from the apartment house. There were apartments situated on top of the garages.

Homes were well-kept with fences and plants growing around them. Many people had gardens alongside their homes.

The Sun, Price, reported this on Oct. 1, 1931: "The three mines in the Gordon Creek district are running a good production of coal. At the Blue Blaze mine in Consumers, 300 men are getting an average of three days a week, while the Sweet mine is giving approximately 175 men from three to five days' work, according to reports from the mine offices at the two camps. National worked 22 days in August and is now working five days a week with 100 on the payroll."

In spite of a depression which was sweeping around the world, the Gordon Creek district mines were keeping fairly busy. But not for long.

Twenty-one days after that glowing report, Glen Bailey of Price was killed in a rock fall at the Sweet mine. The horse he was driving was also killed in the cave-in. Bailey had only worked at the mine for 11 days and left a widow and two children.

The Sweet mine closed in 1937 while the other two managed to hang on. Many people had already left the canyon. But then came World War II and production picked up again, enough so that the Sweet mine reopened.

By the time just six years following the war had slipped by, all three mines were closed and the camps deserted.

Today the wind whispers through tall fir trees and blows dead leaves through the remnants of the towns. Sweet is almost indiscernible, except for the tipple. Consumers still sports many old foundations and one intact house below the steel tipple. National still has a row of tile houses with the beautiful brick-arched doorways.

But today the only residents are deer and other animals. Coal trucks pound the wide road now from the mines above the towns, but there is no one living in the Gordon Creek district anymore.

Wattis

Back in 1915-16, residents of this area could still homestead. And that's what Charles Petitti decided to do.

"Charlie" lived in Huntington but decided to homestead a section at what was to become Wattis a couple years later. Charlie Petitti moved his family up there in 1916, making their own road in their wagon as they went along the mountains.

Joe Smith and his family lived a couple of miles north in Smiths Canyon, otherwise the family only had mountain cats and coyotes for neighbors.

But later in the year (1916), W. H. Wattis and his brother from Ogden picked up 160 acres from the federal government to begin mining operations in the area.

That winter of 1916-17 found Charlie very sick and bedridden for three weeks. The family lived in a tent, so things were not easy. But when spring came, so did some miners, who also erected tents.

The railroad approached Charlie and offered him $1,000 or a four-room house for a right-of-way across his property. Charlie took the money and the railroad came through. Coal began to be shipped that fall.

During the summer of 1917, electric power came to the area and Charlie benefitted by $200, being paid $20 per pole for the lines to cross his property on the way to the mine just above. Charlie's brother, John, built a company store that summer, which also housed a pool hall on one side.

Charlie went up into what is known now as Petitti Canyon and cut and hauled logs and erected a log cabin for his family that summer.

By spring in 1918, there were quite a few families now living in the new camp, called Wattis for the brothers who began the mine there. School was being taught to the children in one of the tents.

County Commissioner Miller and the school teacher approached Charlie Petitti and asked him to sell three acres for a school and playground. They offered Charlie $250 per acre and Charlie sold.

The town really blossomed during 1919. The company merged with Lion Coal Company and the new organization began building permanent wood frame homes for the residents. A "Jap town" was built for the Japanese residents, bunk houses and a boarding house were built for single miners. The town was now occasionally referred to as "Lions."

Charlie was working for the mine now, but also herded sheep on his property. One day, while out herding sheep, a rockslide covered the tracks, and Charlie left the sheep and flagged down the train. His daughter, Juanita Petitti Naillon, said "he saved the train, but it took him days to find all the sheep again."

Wattis was not without its tragedy. Clyde Hanson from Manti was killed in a roof fall in those early days. He had been a partner of Petitti. Charlie got sick while working one day and the two were going to leave, but Hanson decided to stay on. He was alone at the time and never left the mine alive.

As with many of the old mountain mining camps, Wattis also saw avalanches in the winters. One, near the mine entrance, buried two men. Don Oviatt was pulled from beneath the snow and taken to the mine office where Dr. Dwight, the company doctor, revived him when everyone thought him dead. The other man (unidentified) died beneath the slide.

The miners worked eight-hour shifts, even back then, and were paid about $425 a month, so wages were good. There was a second entrance into the mine where the horses and mules used to pull the cars in the mine, were stabled..

In 1938 religion came to Wattis. Missionaries came there and established the Community Sunday School. The Catholic and Baptist churches supplied the books and hymnals and saw anywhere from 25 to 75 people attending every Sunday morning.

As in most of the old camps, entertainment was never provided, it just was done. In the summer, the children did much hiking and playing in the junipers and on the rock ledges. In the winter, sliding down the snow-covered mountains was the order of the day.

There was a movie theater set up eventually and "moving pictures" were shown there. The chairs could be removed, and dances held to the music of a phonograph. A union Hall was also built and housed community dances and affairs.

When World War II came, the demand for coal jumped and so did the population of Wattis. There were 250 miners working there during those years and new apartment buildings were built to house the new residents.

During the early 1950s, the demand for coal dropped and people moved out. Many miners who continued to work at Wattis, moved to Price and began to commute to 18 miles every day. The town was dying.

In 1932 a fire destroyed the Japanese section of the town. The only thing left was the water tank used for the gravity-fed water system.

The water in the town was piped from the mine and had a high mineral content so it wasn't used for drinking. Drinking water was brought to the camp on the train every week in a large tank car and that day would see wives and children lined up to get the water in anything that would hold water.

Then in 1965, the coal properties were sold. The new company decided not to maintain the camp and most of the rest of the people left. By 1970 only two families remained and many of the buildings were now gone -- torn down for salvage.

Today Plateau (Getty Oil) continues to mine there, but the camp is gone. For many former residents, Wattis is still a bright memory.

Hiawatha

As in some of the other coal camps of Carbon County, Hiawatha saw name changes while it struggled into existence.

Hiawatha was quite remote in 1907 when it first saw someone file claims on the coal property there. The remoteness of the area kept people from rushing to what one newspaper account called one of the richest coal properties in the west.

On Oct. 17, 1907, articles of incorporation were filed and Consolidated Fuel Co. began to move toward opening the mines at what they referred to as "Miller Creek."

There was a total of $800,000 earmarked for the properties, $450,000 for development of the mine and installing machinery and $350,000 for buildings, other equipment and a railroad to the property. F. W. Francis was director of the operation and F. A. Sweet was president.

Coal was being mined and stockpiled by the first of the year, 1908, but in Feb, 1908 the work force was cut back to six men until the railroad could be built, enabling the coal to reach a market.

In August of that year, the right of way for a new railroad spur was secured and in September a contract was let to Ely Construction for the grading of the new line.

In October the grading was begun at what was called "the new camp in Miller Creek." The grading continued and the final terminus was determined to be Price instead of Helper, as was originally supposed.

In April 1909 the grading project crossed the Price River and moved into Price to hook up with the Denver and Rio Grande. Southern Utah Railroad ordered a locomotive and rails for the new line that same month.

By June 1911 the camp was built, the mines were operating and the town was known as Hiawatha. But Hiawatha was only what later became known as East Hiawatha. To the southwest of Hiawatha then was Black Hawk (later called Eccles).

By August of that year, the two towns and mines were together shipping two thousand tons of coal every day.

On Sept. 28, 1911, Hiawatha (East Hiawatha) was incorporated as a town, bringing to four, the number of incorporated towns in Carbon County, Price being classed a city. H. E. Lewis was president and George Haymon, J. G. Fleming, David Johnson and Dr. J. E. Dowd were named as trustees.

At the time of incorporation, there were about 500 people living in Hiawatha. Black Hawk, up on the hill southwest of Hiawatha, only had ten homes, but 35 more were under construction and would be occupied the next summer.

Early in December 1911, moving pictures came to Hiawatha. W. C. Culp and a man named Wilson brought in the first "movies" and packed the house. Modern entertainment had come to the mountain coal camp.

In June 1912 it was rumored on the front page of the Eastern Utah Advocate that the D&RG was about to purchase the Southern Utah Railroad and the Castle Valley Railroad, the railroads serving Eccles, Mohrland and Hiawatha.

The news story said the railroads would be extended to "Hilltop" (presumably, Colton) and then on to Provo. New rails were being put in and stronger bridges built to handle the 5,000 tons of coal which flowed daily from the three towns.

Eventually (during 1914), the Utah Railroad was built to handle all three mine camps, and it was tied into the D&RG at Castle Gate. The old rail line (still visible crossing the Wattis road) was abandoned as being too steep to handle the longer trains and the rails removed three years later.

In 1915 the post office was closed at Hiawatha, the government moved up on the hill to Black Hawk (Eccles) and the whole area became Hiawatha.

Perhaps what prompted the change was a bad fire which started in the Black Hawk mine in Oct. 1913. On Feb. 26,1915 the Eastern Utah Advocate reported on page 1 that the fire at the Black Hawk mine was still burning.

United States Fuel Co. had taken over operation of all three coal properties just prior to the consolidation. Things continued to move along normally for the next few years.

In 1917 the company built a large amusement hall, complete with stage and scenery for plays, a moving picture area, a banquet room and even a library.

Ball teams were organized for the three towns and competition became quite keen between the three coal camps. Teams would travel by train from one camp to the other to play games. Excellent ball fields were constructed at each camp.

In 1924 the company built two church buildings — one for the Mormons and one for the others. Both churches were completely outfitted and were used heavily on Sundays. During World War II the Mormon church building was converted into a housing unit.

The company also maintained its own dairy farm, so fresh dairy products were always available without having to be shipped in. Water was spring water, piped to every home. Most homes were connected to a sewage treatment system provided by the company.

In its heyday, Hiawatha had a complete business district, although the Hiawatha Merc was the biggest commercial draw. The town had two churches, a large school, post office, service station and its own jail.

The town was truly a showplace. People were not only encouraged to keep their property looking beautiful, inducements were also made for positive effect. Residents knew that failure to keep the camp looking nice could be grounds for dismissal.

Lawns were beautifully kept, the wetter climate making them very lush. Gardens and flowers were everywhere. Yards were fenced, walks built, and trees grew to gigantic size in a few years.

But, like many other area camps, the slump in the coal market during World War II began to take its toll. People began to leave as jobs were cut back due to lower demand.

East Hiawatha was now gone, as was "Jap" town. The main section of town hung on, but in recent years has diminished tremendously. Winter comes early to this high mountain camp and many who continue to work there prefer to live in the warmer climes around Price.

Hiawatha continues to hang on, but with just a handful of residents. Rumors are that as people leave, none move in so, through attrition, the town will soon die.

Mohrland

(Mohrland is in Emery County, but was part of the three camps of Wattis, Hiawatha and Mohrland, so we include it here.)

"M" for Mays, "0" for Orem, "H" for Heiner and "R" for Rice — add "land" and you have a ghost town in Emery County — MOHRLAND.

In the spring, of 1910 a big celebration was held at Mohrland in honor of opening the town and the new store (later to become a Price Trading Company store). But the town really got its start back in 1906 when William Howard and his brother, Erin, opened a coal mine there.

When these two brothers later lost the mine on a faulty claim filing, three other brothers, Samuel, Ulysess and Ernest Grange, along with friend Albert Gardner, filed on the 160 acres and continued to mine coal from the seam.

William Howard and his son, Ernest, filed another claim on 40 acres nearby and opened a second mine. Coal was hauled out of the 17-foot-high seams by horses and wagons.

Two years after filing for the second mine, both mines were sold to four men who formed the Castle Valley Fuel Company and began building the town. The men's names were J. H. Mays, Orem, Heiner and Rice — hence the name of the town.

In 1909, United States Fuel Company was formed, and "High Pockets" Lewis was named superintendent. That year there were six houses, a company store, a home for "High Pockets," the company doctor's office, the boarding house (Beanery), a company hospital and a shelter lived in by a couple of miners.

Families living there that year included Ira Strong, Edgar Gordon, David Leonard, William Jones, Lester Collard, George Wakefield, James Bradley, Oz Morgan, William Kirby and Marion Guyman. Later came Raymond Gordon, Louis Marshall, Dick Mills and LeRoy Strong.

Just prior to the founding celebration in 1910, eight more families moved in; Jerome Asay, Lawrence Leonard, Ira Marshall, Delbert Marshall, Theodore LeRoy, William Green, Frank Robbins and Amos Manchester.

The town soon formed into four small communities in one — a kind of rural suburban community. The districts even had their own names. There was Brotherhood Flat, later called Centerville, Gobblers Knob, Tipple Town and Jap Town.

In 1915 the first school was built. Prior to that, school had been held in the amusement hall. The school was erected in Tipple Town with Rolla V. Johnson as teacher. Later the school was moved to Centerville.

"The schoolhouse consisted of four rooms with two classes in each room. There were three teachers and a principal there at a time," remembered Albert Vogrenic. Al was raised in Mohrland until the town closed in 1938.

Among the teachers at the new school were Evan Wilberg, William Guyman, Rolla V. Johnson, Gus Johnson, Kate Robbins, Erin Leonard and Russell Williams.

William Green was the first bus driver in 1927 when Emery County bought a school bus to transport students to Huntington to high school. Prior to that (from about 1924) David Leonard drove students to the high school in his car.

The community was quite socialistic as each employee paid a monthly fee which entitled the family to doctor services, movies, dances and other entertainment.

Competition was quite heavy in the little mountain community. "Neighbors constantly competed for the best gardens, best looking yards or the best flowers," Remo Spigarelli said. "Prizes were given for the best in all categories and competition was keen."

"We had our own sporting events like baseball, basketball, tennis, bochenio and horseshoes," Vogrenic said.

The ball games were really popular, and jobs were often offered to top players of other towns to draw them away from opposing teams.

Mohrland had a good orchestra, too. The group played for dances from Price to Ferron in all the best dance halls of the day. Orchestra members in 1914 were Ralph Green, coronet; Calvin Jensen, piano; Melvin Henry, trombone; Arlie Marshall, second violin; Frank Cloward, first violin; Ira Strong, drums; and Rolla Johnson, clarinet and leader.

If the monthly fees for amusement weren't used up before the final days each month, they would be expended for a special program. If short, there would be a free movie or dance.

A couple bad accidents at Mohrland were recorded.

In 1909 Louis Marshall was working as a lineman on the tramway. As the trip came, the rope came off in negotiating a curve, entangling his legs and causing one leg to be amputated. Charley Hardy had both his legs broken in the mishap.

Then on June 9, 1929, Johnny Sax was killed at the Mohrland bridge when the car he was driving went through the guardrail and into Cedar Creek wash. Workmen found Sax's body the following morning on their way up from Huntington.

From 1925 to 1926 the mines were closed, and many people left the town. Finally, in 1938 the residents remaining said goodbye to a great coal town and Mohrland was lost to the ages.

Sunnyside

Although Sunnyside is not a ghost town, its history is as colorful as the people who began the mine and town there before the turn of the century.

The one directly responsible for the mines and town at Whitmore Canyon was, perhaps, the most colorful pioneer of Carbon County. His name was Jefferson Tidwell and if the people of Wellington had defied his wishes, Wellington would be Jefferson today.

Tidwell was born in Indiana in 1836 and moved with his parents to Nauvoo, Illinois prior to Joseph Smith's murder in 1844. The family was Mormon.

On June 5, 1852, the family moved west to Utah and arrived in Pleasant Grove that September. In 1859 Jefferson Tidwell moved to Mt. Pleasant at the bidding of Mormon Church President Young and 18 months later married Sarah Seeley.

In 1877 he was called upon by the church to explore what is now Carbon, Emery and Wayne counties with a view to settlement. In October 1879, Tidwell settled on the present Wellington townsite along the banks of the White (Price) River.

The federal government, shortly after the turn of the century, brought many land fraud suits in the western United States and Sunnyside was one of the most celebrated.

The Sunnyside case began in 1906 and wasn't concluded until 1908. Many men were claiming title to the mines which were known then as providing the best coking coal in the country.

Many times over the last thirty years the mines had changed hands, usually with no claims filed and no formal land purchases.

Jefferson Tidwell, now almost 72, finally was called to testify in the hearings being held in Salt Lake City. The Eastern Utah Advocate described him this way:

"Jefferson Tidwell of Wellington, 73 years old (age wrong, he was 71) and a character, was on the witness stand in the coal hearings this morning (April 9,1908). The old gentleman has a limitless store of humor and a quick tongue despite his advanced age, and as he told his story in his own inimitable manner, counsel for both sides and a number of witnesses laughed almost continually."

Tidwell was permitted by the court to simply tell the story, as he knew it, of the discovery of the mines near Sunnyside and the first people who were there. The newspaper that day said he was rarely interrupted by counsel.

This is how the Advocate told the story in 1908:

"At times Tidwell became almost dramatic in his narrative. Gesturing freely, half rising from his chair, and with his face lighted up with excitement, he told of discovering coal in the Sunset District, Sunnyside, years and years ago.

'It stuck out six or seven feet high and rods across, and in the sun of a bright morning it glittered like silver. I was poor; we were all poor, so it looked awfully good to us. We dug and drilled and worked until we were out of food, and our feet were out of our shoes. We did the best we knew how.

'We were on unsurveyed ground, so we held it by work. We paid ninety dollars and figured that it was ours, just as you would when you bought a horse for ninety dollars. It's yours to do with as you please, isn't it?'

"Tidwell asked for a drink of water and when the government's and defense's lawyers arose as a man to bring the drink, the old man said: ‘Sit down, sit down. One of you boys bring me a drink,' and he looked at three middle aged men sitting in the back. Turning to an auditor sitting close by Tidwell he said, 'They're my sons. I've got four of them and they're all fine men, but say, I'm as fine as any one of them.' His chuckle came to an end in the upturned glass. A question was asked. 'I'll tell you when I get this drink,' answered the witness calmly.'"

The three sons were John, Jeff and William who began working the coal seam at Sunnyside early in 1896. Three Tidwell boys from Wellington started the first mines at Whitmore Canyon near Sunnyside.

George Holliday became a partner of the boys early in 1897. On Feb. 5, that year, they had six men employed at their mine in Whitmore Canyon.

"A number of our boys are at the Tidwell-Holliday coal mine digging coal and making a road to Sunnyside over which the coal is to be hauled. This mine will be a heavy supplier in the near future," the Eastern Utah Advicate reported on April 15, 1897.

During the hearings in which Jefferson Tidwell testified 11 years later, Tidwell described Holliday by saying, "Oh, Holliday? He never did anything as he agreed to in his life."

The newspaper reported that the judge leaned over and said to Tidwell, "We're all alone — just a few of us boys together." Tidwell answered, "I wouldn't care if the whole world is listening!"

Pleasant Valley Coal Company (later, Utah Fuel Company) apparently bought the rights to the property from them late in 1898, after discovering the coal was much better for coking than the coal they were producing at Castle Gate.

The following year, 1899, a railroad was begun from Sunnyside to Mounds. And on November 9, the railroad spur was completed under the direction of Samuel Naylor. The next day the Sunnyside precinct was detached from the Wellington precinct and a new school district was created.

Three months earlier, the local newspaper reported that "Will Tidwell was in town Monday from Sunnyside and says there will be a hundred men or more at work in the camp inside the next month — just as soon as more mules are gotten in to put underground."

As the mining of coal continued to increase at Whitmore and Horse Canyons, so did the number of people in the Sunnyside district. Early residents lived in tents and later saw four-room wood frame houses built, followed by rock homes.

Water was a problem in the community and eventually Utah Fuel installed a pump over the mountain in Range Creek on the Book Cliffs. The water had to be pumped up over the mountain for seven miles.

In 1906, after water rights were secured from Preston Nutter, the pump was installed. A steam boiler supplied the power for the lift station. In 1922 electricity was moved into the area and two electric pumps were installed.

Sunnyside was named for the sunlit southern exposure of the Book Cliffs in 1898. Prior to that, the area was known as Verdi after a railroad camp of the same name south of Mounds on the Rio Grande railroad.

Coke ovens were built at Sunnyside in 1902 and 1903. A total of 480 ovens were built and that eliminated the need for the coking ovens at Castle Gate. In 1912, 170 more ovens were built, followed by 74 more in 1914 and an additional 89 in 1917.

Just a year earlier, 1916, Sunnyside was incorporated. Walter Wetzel was the first town president; J.C. Moore, clerk; Nils Nelson, treasurer; E.V. Tucker, constable; W.J. Emigholz, justice of the peace and A.W. Dowd, physician. The trustees were A.D. Hadley, J.M. Slapp and Samuel Dugmore.

In 1929 the town claimed a population of 2,000. The drop in population must have been very abrupt because the 1930 census places the population of the area at 935 with 749 living in Sunnyside proper. In 1940, the census showed a total of 472 living in the precinct with only 424 living in Sunnyside itself.

The war and the Geneva Steel plant during the early 1940s tremendously increased the population of the precinct and brought about a new town.

Today, Sunnyside seems to be slipping again. The coal mines are all but closed and steel production is extremely low.

The colorful character who really started Sunnyside never saw it grown to its "boom" days. Jefferson Tidwell died in Wellington on Nov. 21, 1913 at the age of 77.

Harper

The facts that there was a town in Nine Mile Canyon and that it was named Harper cannot be denied. The general location can also be ascertained as just above the confluence of Argyle and Nine Mile canyons.

But beyond these few facts, little else can be found about the town. Many rumors persist about its location, population and size. These will be discussed.

Virginia Nutter Price, who lived in the canyon most of her life told of the town existing while she was a young girl. That would mean the town still existed in the early 1920s, perhaps some later.

The town began, no doubt, sometime after the formation of the freight road through Nine Mile Canyon and up Gate Canyon from Price to Fort Duchesne in the Uintah Basin. That road was begun in 1886 when a telegraph line was built through the canyons.

Freight stops were established along the route about every 20 miles — Harper became one of them.

Mrs. Price said that Harper had two schools and a large community building in which dances were held every weekend. Reason for the two schools was that the town was on the county line, so Duchesne County maintained a school as did Carbon County.

The town also had a log post office, hotel, store and, probably, a saloon. The hotel, post office and stable area still stand today.

Mrs. Price told a story about two people coming to her quite a few years ago and asking which building had been the post office.

She said the couple went back after she described the building, removed some flooring and recovered some stamps which had fallen, over the years, between the floor boards. Mrs. Price said the value of the stamps recovered turned out to be several thousand dollars.

The post office, hotel, livery barn and a couple other buildings are all that remain of the old town in Nine Mile Canyon.

The livery barn's roof has collapsed, but old harness and other tack items still hang from log walls in this nearly a century old structure.

The town stretched from where the few log buildings are now located on down the canyon to the present site of the Neville Wimer ranch just below the balanced rock. The old telegraph relay station is still standing there. It is the large stone house with the wooden shingles.

The Lee Station in the canyon in 1899 became Harper slowly as more buildings were added to the hotel Ed Lee had built there. Since this was a town which fluctuated with the traffic and the number of small ranches in the canyon, it never developed as the mining communities did in Carbon County.

Harper sported a huge livery barn for the horses and grew, no doubt, because of the hotel and barn. Many of the ranchers on the small ranches in the canyon preferred to live together and so homes were built at Harper.

Some reports of the town identify Frank Alger as building a store in the town, but Alger Station was on down the canyon nearly five miles.

One author recently said that a man named Brock built a saloon there, but Brock owned what is now known as the Nutter Ranch at the mouth of Gate Canyon in Nine Mile.

Pete Francis took over the ranch about the turn of the century and operated it as a commercial venture. When he was killed in a gunfight in his own saloon, his widow sold the place to Preston Nutter in 1902.

Harper was generally a quiet town, except for the every-Saturday-night dances. There were some wild times then, but mostly just loud.

Harper died as it was born; slowly. It just slowly lost people as the road to the basin was used less and less because of a new rail spur into the basin which made shipment of supplies easier.

Today only five empty buildings stand near the road in the canyon. The ghosts of long-dead cowboys, ranchers and freight drivers visit with the predecessors, the Fremont, who once lived in the pithouse above the hotel.

Kiz

Kiz is only a memory now, but it was quite a little town out in Clark Valley years ago. The town was formed by a number of ranchers — no coal mines in or near the town — so it became a ranching town instead of a coal camp.

Clark Valley is a fertile valley extending from Sunnyside on the east to Soldier Creek on the west and is possibly the largest tract of level land in all of Carbon County.

The valley was first occupied by a rancher named Clark who stocked the land with horses and cattle. He erected the first buildings — a house, stables, granaries and a blacksmith shop — sometime before 1898. It was in that year when the property was sold to a man named Fausett for a rumored $75,000.

Fausett loved horses and turned the valley into a large horse ranch until a drought hit for several years and he abandoned the property.

It was just a few years later when the buildings were rotted and collapsing that the valley returned to what it had been before man had come — sagebrush-covered flatland.

In June 1906 Orson Dimick and John Higginson settled on the abandoned ranch and put the buildings back into repair. Nephi Perkins, Ephraim Dimick, Orson's father, and his wife, Kiziah, and others joined Dimick and Higginson. All these families took over the land on "squatter's rights."

Sheepmen began then to move into the valley to enlarge grazing lands for their flocks. Sheepman Gratien Etcheborne was the first on record to move in as a sheep rancher and the first to file a land claim in 1916.

Etcheborne was in love with the land he claimed and thought highly of the future possibilities.

"A little work was done on the present reservoir in 1910, but did not begin in earnest until George Mead came in July 1914. In 1916, Francis Dimick came to the valley to homestead and several years later Lafe M. Norton and his family came to make their home. The Workman, Babcock and Asay families also moved to Kiz," reported an early history, "A Brief History of Carbon County."

In 1924 school was finally established through the efforts of Norton and Etcheborne and was situated in an old log granary with a dirt roof owned by Etcheborne.

Mrs. Mary Tidwell, Wellington, was brought out to the valley as the first teacher and paid $40 a month cash and she and her husband were provided with room and board. The school district would only pay $25, so Norton and Etcheborne made up 'the difference out of their own pockets.

Because of moving around to various granaries due to leaking roofs, Mrs. Tidwell became discouraged and resigned. Vivian Norton, an eighth-grade student, took over the teaching duties for the remainder of the school term.

School was then moved into a log house owned by Lew Workman. By the time school was out for the summer, there were 17 children enrolled and the teacher was now being paid by the transportation allowance for each child.

Tragedy struck the small community a year later when the new teacher, Mrs. Elsie Huntsman, was drowned when the car in which she was riding enroute to Price overturned in a nearby wash. This was the year the first real schoolhouse was constructed. Etcheborne had erected the building during the summer and school was held there for many years afterwards.

Once a drunk held the entire Norton family prisoners at gunpoint in their own home for several hours before Mrs. Norton convinced him to go home for supper.

When he left, they sent for help in case he should return. Jake and Lew Workman came to relieve Norton in guarding the home. While Norton was in the house, Jake sighted the drunk creeping along the ground toward them with a gun in his hand.

Jake pulled his gun and fired a bullet which shattered the drunk's arm and entered his side. He was loaded onto a wagon and taken to Price where he was treated for the gunshot wounds and ordered out of the county by the sheriff.

It was in 1926 when Kiz finally got a post office. Prior to that, citizens of the Clark Valley town were forced to go into Wellington or Price for mail service.

In selecting a suitable name for the new post office and town, Mead proposed the name of Kiz in honor of the first woman in the valley, Kiziah Dimick who was always known as "Aunt Kiz." The name was submitted and accepted, and the first mail left the Kiz post office on Nov. 2, 1926 with George Mead as the first postmaster.

The late Walter Boren was the first mail carrier and hauled the mail between Price and Kiz "two or three times a week." The government required the mail be carried with no assistance for three months before allowing bids on the mail contract. After four months, Ernest Babcock picked up the contract but soon turned the duties over to Roy Boren.

The post office seemed to sound the death knell for Kiz. Within the next few years, the town began to dwindle in size and finally everyone left the arid valley. Most of the people moved into Wellington.

All that remains of Kiz is an old cemetery, a few foundations and cisterns and the reservoir.

The main part of Kiz was located around Gratien Etcheborn's home. Auto travel was limited to dry roads because of the older cars.

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