In the Frisco Cemetery, Charles K. Odell’s epitaph reads: “Farewell my wife and children all / From thee a father Christ doth call / Mourn not for me it is in vain / To call me to your side again.” Note also the misspelling of “Poughkeepsie.”
UTAH’S HISTORy IS FAR DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER STATES in this book. In the others, settlers were encouraged, often even enticed, by the United States government to explore and tame the Western wilderness of the United States.
When Brigham young brought his Latter-day Saints to the Great Salt Lake in 1847, he was intentionally leaving the United States—a country that had repeatedly persecuted the Mormons—for Mexico, whose land it was. His mission was to create a utopian society, called Zion, away from outside interference, and Mexican influence there was minimal. In fact, when the Mormons came to Utah, that was the very beginning of non-Indian settlements in the Great Basin of North America, which had previously been called the Great Desert, a fundamentally uninhabitable area.
One can imagine Brigham young’s consternation when his Zion became part of United States territory in July 1848, following the Mexican-American War. Would the religious freedom the Mormons sought be denied them yet again?
The end of the Mexican-American War resulted in the Mexican Cession, in which Mexico gave up what would eventually become the entire states of California, Utah, and Nevada, along with most of Arizona and parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
What Mexico ceded would soon yield the California Gold Rush, Nevada’s Comstock Lode, and enormous deposits of copper in Arizona and Utah. The Mexican Cession eventually played an important role in America’s becoming a world power.
In Zion, the settlers created a provisional state in 1849 called Deseret, a word meaning “honeybee” in the Book of Mormon. Deseret was never recognized by the United States, which created the Utah Territory in 1850. In February 1851, Brigham Young was chosen as the first governor of the territory, which included all of Utah, most of Nevada, and small portions of Wyoming and Colorado. Two months later, the State of Deseret dissolved itself and Utah became the operant name. (The word “Deseret” remains, however, as the name of a Mormon Church–affiliated newspaper, and it is symbolized by the hive of the honeybee on the Utah state emblem.)
Incidentally, the word “Utah” would seem to come from the Ute Indians. But there is no such word in their language. A tribal spokesman believes that “Utah” is an Anglicizing of what the Spanish called the Utes: Yuta, apparently meaning “Meat-Eaters.”
Utahans repeatedly petitioned the federal government for statehood, all of which failed partially because of the Mormon practice of polygamy and also because of the fear that in Utah there would be no separation of church and state. In 1887, another attempt included a clause prohibiting polygamy, addressing one of the concerns. In the early 1890s, the Mormon People’s Party was dissolved, with its members evenly joining the Republican and Democratic parties. With this final concern conveniently addressed for Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C., Utah achieved statehood in 1896.
In 1849, at the beginning of the California Gold Rush, Brigham Young told his followers that California was no place for Mormons, but he did encourage the mining of that which could be of practical use, like iron and coal. As a result, silver towns such as Silver Reef and Frisco had little Mormon influence, but the coal town of Scofield did.
The sequence of towns in this chapter begins with the northeasternmost site, Scofield, and travels through the heart of Utah to the southernmost, Grafton. The westernmost site, Frisco, leads you toward chapter 8, the ghost towns of Nevada.
Scofield has only a few ghostly buildings mixed in among more modern ones. It doesn’t really have that “ghost town feeling.” But if you are truly interested in being struck by the enormity of what tragedy can mean in a mining community, a visit to the Scofield Cemetery should be obligatory.
Coal deposits were found on the western slopes of Pleasant Valley around 1875. Two years later, the first commercial coal mine in Utah opened, with coal transported over mountain roads to towns in the Sanpete Valley. (If you take the road from Scofield to the next site in this book, Spring City (pages 234–239), you will follow one of the main routes.) When a vicious winter storm stranded miners in the mountains that first year, those who rode out the season had a new name for their camp: Winter Quarters.
A second camp, named for mining official Charles W. Scofield, was established out on the flat east of the narrow Winter Quarters Canyon, where there was more room to build.
To make the transportation of coal more profitable, a railroad was constructed from Springville, south of Provo, up Soldier Creek and over Soldier Summit. (If you came from Provo on U.S. Highway 6, you probably saw a coal train still traversing this same route.) The Utah & Pleasant Valley Railroad was begun in 1877 and completed to Scofield and Winter Quarters two years later.
The mining operations became a one-owner affair when the Utah Fuel Company purchased the mine. It in turn became a subsidiary in 1882 of one of the West’s major railroads, the Denver & Rio Grande Western, which, naturally, consumed enormous quantities of coal. The mines of Pleasant Valley seemed assured of a long and profitable life, and, with its reputation as a safe operation, the Winter Quarters Mine became a sought-after employer for miners from around the United States and even Europe.
That reputation for safety came to a sudden end. A plaque attached to a monument just outside the Scofield Cemetery tells the tragic story: At 10:25 on the morning of May 1, 1900, a keg of powder at the Winter Quarters Mine No. 4 ignited, causing coal dust to rise and also ignite. Subsequent explosions of twenty-four kegs of black powder also included nearby Mine No. 1, killing a total of 200 miners (although some rescuers placed the total as high as 246), either from the explosions themselves or from suffocation in the resulting poisonous gas. Many others were injured in what was the nation’s worst coal mining disaster at the time.
Scofield’s schoolhouse, the town’s largest building, was erected in 1928, when the town was already in decline.
Miners who had escaped the blasts, joined by others from nearby mines, entered the shafts in a heroic effort to rescue those trapped inside, but mostly it became a mission to retrieve bodies, the last of which came out of the mine eleven days later. The disaster left 107 widows and 268 fatherless children.
The monument to the fallen Winter Quarters miners outside the cemetery features a touching bas-relief sculpture showing the anguished faces of miners, the mournful countenances of women and children, grave markers, and empty cabins—along with the names of the miners who died.
Winter Quarters and Scofield turned into mass morgues. The company boardinghouse at Winter Quarters was emptied to receive and identify the dead; the bodies were then taken to the schoolhouse for families to claim. The supply of 125 caskets in Salt Lake City was not sufficient, so a carload of 75 caskets from Denver was sent by train. Two large funerals were held in Scofield on May 5, a Lutheran one for the Finns killed and another for the Mormon dead. Three-quarters of the dead were buried in Scofield, while two funeral trains took the other fifty caskets for burial in various cemeteries in Utah and other states.
This section of the Scofield Cemetery is dominated by the graves of coal miners who died in 1900 in what was then the country’s worst mining disaster.
The mines reopened on May 28, but Winter Quarters and Scofield never fully recovered. As seams faltered, the coal was of a lower grade, and transportation costs made the mines unprofitable. They closed in 1928. Winter Quarters was a total ghost by 1930, and Scofield slowly died until after World War II, when it became a ghost as well. The population of Scofield in 2003 was twenty-six.
WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND SCOFIELD
Mining has made a mild resurgence in Scofield. When you drive to Spring City, the next entry in this book (pages 234–239), you will pass the huge Canyon Coal operation, with its lengthy conveyor belt, not far from Scofield.
Today, Scofield features mostly occupied buildings with perhaps a dozen dilapidated or empty structures. The dominant one is the stone and brick public schoolhouse, which stands on the west side of town on Church Street. It was erected in 1928, when Scofield, already in decline, must have looked toward a promising future that did not occur. Other empty structures include a mercantile and the Mountaineer Bar.
On the south end of town, along the highway, two informative signs chronicle the tragic history of Scofield and Winter Quarters. They feature a haunting photograph of the Luoma family, originally from Finland, who lost six sons and three grandsons in the Winter Quarters disaster, and a photo of a special train from Salt Lake City that carried the caskets of miners who were to be interred elsewhere.
The cemetery is across the railroad tracks on a hill on the east side of town. When you walk through the main gate, you immediately see a section of children’s graves, reminding us that this is a place of more than one tragedy.
The miners buried in Scofield lie mostly in the northwest section of the cemetery. Their graves, even if they have an individual tombstone, are also delineated with a wooden marker. Also in the section is a special tomb for the unidentified victims. One elaborate, deteriorating monument is to those miners who were also members of the International Order of Odd Fellows.
I found one headstone particularly touching. It was for Robert and Llewelyn Williams, father and son, who died in the disaster. Robert was forty-five; his son did not reach his sixteenth birthday.
While I was walking around the cemetery, I watched four young girls, none likely older than ten, happily gathering some of the profusion of purple, white, yellow, and red wildflowers growing at the site. At this solemn place, I was glad to see such energy and happiness.
WHEN YOU GO
From Provo, head about 5 miles south on Interstate 15 to Spanish Fork. From there, take U.S. Highway 6 southeast for 37 miles to Soldier Summit. At about 5.5 miles beyond Soldier Summit, there is a turnoff onto Utah Highway 96. Scofield is 16.4 miles southwest of that junction.