Salt Lake magazine provides a rich and engaging exploration of Utah’s lore and history, offering readers a deeper understanding of the state’s unique cultural, historical and geographical heritage. Through a blend of storytelling and in-depth research, the magazine delves into Utah’s diverse past, highlighting everything from the early Native American inhabitants and the Mormon pioneers to the state’s role in Western expansion and the development of the American frontier.
The magazine often features stories that uncover forgotten events, little-known figures, and historic landmarks that have shaped Utah’s identity. Its coverage extends to the state’s folk traditions, ghost stories, and legends. Whether profiling historic towns, exploring the state’s natural wonders, or recounting famous events like the founding of Salt Lake City, Salt Lake magazine offers and contact perspective on Utah’s past recent and ancient.
Ted Smith/ S.L. Parks Department’s Utah Writers Project, Utah State Historical Society.
Around 1911,Salt Lake City completed work on its first major park, Liberty Park. The park was built in the grand tradition of New York’s Central Park and London’s Hyde Park, albeit on a much smaller scale. In that tradition, Salt Lake City’s grand park must have a zoo among its attractions. Animals exotic and, more often, not so exotic filled the menagerie. But what zoo is complete, at least in the minds of Salt Lake City residents at the turn of the 20th Century, without an elephant? In 1916, Salt Lake City school children gathered up nickels, dimes and pennies in a fundraising drive and purchased an Asian elephant from a traveling circus for what was then the elephantine sum of $3,250. Her name was Princess Alice and she came with her circus handler. Emil “Dutch” Shider.
Princess Alice was a favorite, drawing visitors from around the region. But Alice didn’t take well to captivity. She became known for her daring escapes, rampaging around the surrounding Liberty Wells neighborhood, knocking down fences and hiding from searchers for hours. The repeated escapes, although charming, alarmed neighbors and prompted an effort to relocate the zoo to its current location at the mouth of Emigration Canyon in 1931.
Local author and historian Linda Sillitoe memorialized Princess Alice’s exploits in her work of fiction The Thieves of Summer,which she set during her childhood in Salt Lake City around the time Princess Alice and the zoo moved to Emigration Canyon.
A sculpture in relief of Princess Alice’s visage was included in the elephant enclosure and remains there today. Even with the new digs, in 1947, she once again escaped, rampaging around the zoo grounds. In 1953, at the age of 69, Alice was euthanized after a prolonged illness.
Art installation located at Hogle Zoo commemorating Princess Alice. Photo by Elizabeth Rudloff, Tim Kelly/ Utah State Historical Society. Emil “Dutch” Shider (above) was Alice’s longtime caretaker. Ted Smith/ S.L. Parks Department’s Utah Writers Project, Utah State Historical Society.
Alice’s Offspring
In 1918, Alice gave birth to a male elephant named Prince Utah, the first elephant ever born in Utah. Sadly, he died a year later after his mother rolled over on him.
In 1966, two 18-year-old gas station attendants were kidnapped in Kearns and stabbed to death. The bodies of Steven Shea and Michael Holtz were discovered stripped of their clothing in a remote location. The brutality of the crimes caught Salt Lake residents off guard. “It wasn’t that we didn’t have robberies and murders in Salt Lake City at the time,” says Salt Lake Police historian Steve “Duffy” Diamond, who passed away in 2015. “It was the harsh nature of these killings that got the attention.”
On a wintry night of that year, two men—Myron Lance and Walter Kelbach—were drinking at Lally’s Tavern on the west side of Salt Lake City, on the corner of 400 South and 900 West, now a vacant brownstone. The bartender was chatting with them about the two bodies that had been found.
“The bartender (Lloyd Graven) said something like, ‘I wish I had the guys who killed those kids right here. I’d teach them a lesson,’” says Diamond. “Lance and Kelbach told him he had his chance, brought out their guns, and started blazing away.”
Fred Lillie, 21, James Sisemore, 47, and Beverly Mace, 34, were gunned down that night at the bar. Lance and Kelbach emptied the register and fled. They were captured later that evening at a police roadblock. The investigation uncovered that they had killed Shea and Holtz and that, before the tavern shootings, Lance and Kelbach had shot a cab driver, Grant Strong. The final body count was six.
“It was like sitting in a foxhole at the battlefront,” Graven told The Salt Lake Tribune in 1966. “He turned on me and shot point-blank. The concussion of the shot knocked me down. He leaned over the bar and shot at me lying on the floor. How he missed, I’ll never know.”
Lance and Kelbach were convicted and sentenced to death in April 1967. (Lance chose the firing squad; Kelbach decided he would hang.) But in 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, and their sentences were reduced to life in prison. After the verdict, the duo gave a startling prison house interview for NBC.
Walter Kelbach with an unknown woman. Photo courtesy of the Sale Lake City Police Museum.
Lance said, “I haven’t any feelings toward the victims.” Kelbach added, “I don’t mind people getting hurt because I just like to watch it.”
After capital punishment was reinstated, the state again sought the death penalty for the duo, but a Fifth Circuit Court judge rejected the state’s arguments because of the case’s age.
“They were without remorse,” Diamond says. “They were so cold-blooded. It shocked everyone.”
Extra! Extra! Extra!
In 1968, Lance attacked a prison guard with a sharpened spoon. In that same year, the duo escaped with seven other inmates but were captured in Idaho. During the ’70s, Kelbach attempted to adopt a younger, male parolee. His request was denied. Lance died in prison in 2010 of natural causes. Kelbach passed away in 2018 after serving 51 years.
You may arrive at this year’s 24th of July parade at what you assume to be right on time, lawn chairs in tow, ready for the grand marshal’s whistle and the drum majors’ first beat. You are too late. You’ll be relegated to a patch of dirt near Liberty Park, while the primo spots are already filled with enthusiastic daughters and sons of Utah pioneers who have shown up ready to play…12 to 16 hours before go time.
This parade, after all, is part of the emphatically celebrated anniversary of the Latter-day Saints’ arrival in the Salt Lake Valley. Few states have such a rich history that it warrants an official day off and a parade of this magnitude.
Snagging key parade spots, and the modest revelry that ensues up and down the town’s main drag, may not be unique to Utah. We all love a parade, after all. But the vibe around 6 p.m.-ish, and on into twilight’s last fading on the 23rd, is essential Utah.
First, there are the teens, up late with a good excuse for prowling. But “prowling” is too sinister a term. These are the Archie-comic, suburban-parallel-universe versions of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. You’ll meet a fleet of good-natured Davis County teens, enjoying nothing more intoxicating than Mountain Dew and a pass to be out beyond curfew, thrilling in the “big city.” While mom and dad (and vast extended families) dutifully GUARD THE SPOT with elaborate systems of coolers, lawn chairs and Honda generators, the young crowd is free to roam. Besides, if Mom and Dad are not physically there, the Holy Ghost stays up late tonight (this is Pioneer Day Eve, after all).
Next, there are the Bible Bangers. Limited most often to the “protest zone” just off Temple Square, this ragtag fleet of Jesus Freaks and End-of-Timers is set free to carry its fire-and-brimstone message to the gathered throngs. Everyone is up all night. What time is it? Half past John 3:16.
Combine those earnest, mostly LDS-mission-bound teens from the suburbs, all hopped up on sugary sodas, with wild-eyed prophets representing The Lord Savior Jesus Christ “hisself” on one long Rocky Mountain Las Ramblas, and now you’re in Utah, baby.
And by 2 a.m., after the SLCPD has shooed away the antagonists in the debate over the Trinity, it’s proper family time. Bring on the card games, laughter and a shared goal to enjoy the dawn’s early light, to cheer on the marathoners as they enter the city and to anticipate the Grand Marshal’s whistle—which means salt water taffy for all!
In 1845, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintssent its first missionaries to the South Pacific Island of Tahiti. The Mormons weren’t alone. It was a period of zealous Christian proselytizing in the Pacific Islands. But the LDS missionaries had remarkable success in the South Pacific—perhaps because their belief that the native island peoples were descendants of the Lamanites, a group of people in The Book of Mormon, gave LDS missionaries extra zeal. Many of the converted were from the Hawaiian Islands, then known as the Sandwich Islands, and many of the fresh converts made the perilous journey to Salt Lake City to dwell in the shadow of Temple Square.
In 1879, LDS Church leaders established a colony for Hawaiian immigrants to Utah in Skull Valley, an ominously named and arid place in the western desert near what is today the military-proving grounds and chemical weapons disposal base Dugway. The settlement was named Iosepa, the Hawaiian word for Joseph after Mormon founder Joseph Smith and his descendant, LDS church president Joseph F. Smith, who went to Hawaii on a church mission in 1854.
Iosepa residents celebrating the Pioneer Day of 1913. Photo courtesy of Utah Historical Society.
It’s hard to imagine Hawaiians, coming from such a lush and green island, feeling quite at home there. But religious zeal (and ample support from Salt Lake City) sustained them in a hard-scrabble existence where they farmed, ranched cattle and raised pigs, toiling under harsh conditions.
By 1917, the experiment was abandoned and many of the residents returned to their native islands, drawn back to help work on the LDS Temple being built in Laie on the island of Oahu. At its height, nearly 228 Pacific Islanders lived in Iosepa. The site is a ghost town today on the National Register of Historic Places. There are informational markers and remnants of some structures as well as a forlorn graveyard that continues to bear testimony of the harsh conditions in Iosepa.
Leprosy in Iosepa?
Although it is not officially stated, an irrational fear of leprosy may have been behind the far-flung location of Iosepa. The site is 75 miles from Salt Lake City, an arduous journey in the days of horse-drawn carts. Although three leprosy cases were documented during Iosepa’s lifespan, the fears were largely unfounded.
How to Go
Iosepa, an abandoned Hawaiian colony in Utah’s Skull Valley, is located off of Interstate 80’s exit 77. After the exit, travel south on Utah Highway 196 for 15 miles. A large sign marks the dirt road that leads to the cemetery.
This day, 124 years ago, was a day of horror in Scofield, Utah. On this day, 200 men and boys perished in a dark hole under the mountain. At the time, it was the worst mining disaster in The United States and would become a rallying cry for American Workers.
This is the story of May 1 and the sorrow that followed.
It was difficult to get around the room because the coffin was so big. But they did it. They shuffled and jostled and positioned themselves around the dead man as the photographer told them to hold still. Any movement would blur the image. So they were arrayed around the box, absolutely motionless—as still as the man in the coffin. Nearly every home in Scofield, Utah, would have a 6-foot-long box in the parlor in early May 1900. Families who were a little better off would pay to have a photographer document the scene. Within a short time, the coffin would be in the ground, the families would continue to mourn, and just about everyone in this eastern Utah town wondered how the Pleasant Valley Coal Co.’s mine had exploded on such a perfect May morning, wiping 200 men and boys out of existence.
Mrs. Seth Jones and family and casket at a funeral ceremony following the disaster. Photo by George Edward Anderson (1860-1928), courtesy L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
124 Years Ago at 10:30 a.m.
On May 1, 1900, Scofield became a town with too many bodies, and nowhere to put them. The Scofield mine disaster ranks as the fifth most deadly mining accident in the United States, and Utah’s worst calamity. Some estimates place the death toll as high as 246. To a certain degree, miners and their families accepted the risks. Today, 124 years later, not much has changed. Miners still gamble every time they go underground. The 2006 Sago Mine disaster, which claimed 12 lives, was a vivid reminder of those dangers.
The Pleasant Valley Coal Co.’s mine was in nearby Winter Quarters at the mouth of the canyon. Sagebrush and scree littered the hillsides. Mineshafts yawned out of the hills, the more productive mines reaching high-quality coal seams. Shafts No. 1 and No. 4 were good ones; at one point the two would be producing more than 80% of Utah’s coal.
The folks at Scofield and Winter Quarters had not had an easy winter. Smallpox and poverty were rampant. The smallpox ran its course and soon abated, but the poverty did not, particularly for the immigrants—the Finns, the Italians, the Dutch. Still, Scofield’s 2,500 people were just beginning to come out from under such dark clouds, preparing to celebrate May Day.
Things looked good. The Pleasant Valley Coal Co. was due to supply 2,000 tons of coal a day to the U.S. Navy. Men trudged to work that morning, many hefting large bags of gunpowder for blasting. There were shouts and teasing, the Finns clustering together, a mishmash of languages and accents bouncing off the canyon walls. They disappeared into the ground, working their way through the warrens and low rooms.
At 10:25 a.m.
The men in No. 1 felt a change in the air. A kind of concussion, a pressure on the chest. Word spread that something was terribly wrong in No. 4. Then the words “Get out” echoed through the caverns. Tools dropped and boots began moving toward the mouth of shaft No. 1, while pushing at their backs was a cloud of dust, debris, and the deadliest thing a mine can throw at you: afterdamp.
Miners fear several things: an accident resulting in injury, followed by time off work and no pay; or losing the job because the company folds or the coal plays out. And of course black lung, a disease from inhaling coal dust. But that’s a slow, protracted death, free of shock and violence. Miners don’t dwell on those. After all, these mines in Scofield had a reputation for being among the safest.
But afterdamp, that’s something else.
Following a mine explosion, oxygen is forced out of the shaft. What’s left behind is a deadly cocktail of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen, utterly irrespirable. Those who survive a fire or explosion are usually wiped out by afterdamp in short order. Rescuers know it when they see it: corpses strewn across the mine floor, untouched by flame or debris, but with handkerchiefs, hats, and coats pressed to their mouths in a futile attempt to keep the afterdamp out of their lungs. One rescuer described the scene in the Winter Quarters mine: “We found bodies of the men in every conceivable shape, but generally they were lying on their stomachs with their arms about their faces. The men died almost instantly when struck by the damp and did not suffer. They just became unconscious and were asphyxiated. Their faces were all calm and peaceful as though they had just fallen asleep.”
One-hundred and three miners made it out of Winter Quarters No. 1. Some 200 did not make it out of the mine at all—that is, until they were hauled out with sheets covering their faces. Some of the dead included young boys who had been working with their fathers.
At No. 4, those who were near the portal were lucky, despite the shattered timbers and twisted mine cars blown out of the hole. They could get to fresh air quickly.
Walter Clark rushed into the mine to find his brother and father. But the afterdamp still hung heavy in the air. He lost consciousness and died.
The Library of Congress maintains archive of images from the horrific mining disaster. Photo courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
After the air in No. 4 began to clear, rescuers plunged into the mine, scrambling over the tangles of wood, metal, and horses split open by the explosion. They would only find four survivors, one of whom was so badly burned and wailing in pain he begged to be killed. He died the following day. Another miner died on the way to a nearby boarding house, which was to serve as a makeshift hospital. Of the other two survivors, one was put on a train to St. Mark’s Hospital in Salt Lake City and would recover. The fourth, Jacob Anderson, emerged untouched.
Some evidence, based on the mine inspector’s report written just after the explosion, suggests that the men had run directly into the afterdamp. They didn’t know from which direction the explosion had come, and in effect, fled straight to their deaths.
As bodies were hauled out of the mine, wives and children drifted up the hill. Some bodies, burnt and mangled beyond recognition, could not be identified. Row upon row of corpses lay on the ground. Some were loaded onto a boxcar and hauled away to be stored at the schoolhouse in Scofield, and news of the tragedy spread across the West. The tally of the dead revealed some horrific numbers: Nine members of the Luoma family died. The Hunters lost 11. In total, 107 widows, 270 children without fathers and three orphans.
A large proportion of these were Finnish families. Life had been brutal enough, with a dangerous oceanic crossing and a difficult trek across the continent to Utah. And there were the slurs and insults. But nothing compared to having the fathers, sons, husbands, brothers and nephews snatched away.
Now, the Undertakers Descended on the Town
Mine safety in the early 20th century was understandably not as advanced as today. Yet it wasn’t primitive, either. Requirements for ventilation, escape routes and levels of noxious gasses were enforced. The state had a mining safety inspector, and in 1897, Gomer Thomas visited the mine, giving it a clean bill of health.
His investigation of the accident was far from conclusive. But after examining singed timbers, debris and charred corpses, he concluded that someone in No. 4 inadvertently ignited gunpowder, touching off an even larger blast when it mingled with the coal dust hanging in the air. Coal dust is highly combustible, but enough water vapor in the air will keep it under control. The air in the Winter Quarters mine, however, had been dry and thick with dust. “The blast shot down along the main and main-back entries of No. 4 mine, gathering combustibles, such as dust, powder, etc., within reach,” Thomas wrote. “Part of the blast shot out to the surface through No. 4 tunnel and air shaft, and part went through No. 1 mine.”
Covered bodies in a schoolroom after the 1900 Scofield mine disaster. Photo by George Edward Anderson (1860-1928), courtesy L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University
In 1936, Federal Bureau of Mines investigator Daniel Harrington—who had also worked at Winter Quarters following the explosion—drafted a report on the disaster, based on extensive research. “Two men, wearing the old-time oil lamps, were making up some cartridges of black blasting powder at a point in their workroom where they had at least three, and probably more, 25-pound kegs of black blasting powder available,” he wrote. “Presumably on making up the charge, the flame of their open light in some way or other came in contact with the granular black blasting powder and the explosion was precipitated with the resultant loss of 200 lives.”
The Finns were destitute. Many were in deep debt to the company, owing money for housing and supplies from the company store. Sometimes, as much as 95% of a worker’s pay had been deducted to pay off these debts. What had been a hardscrabble existence suddenly became unbearable.
Funeral trains rolled out of Scofield, heading east to Colorado and north to Salt Lake City. The mining company provided the coffins and the clothes and forgave families’ debts at the company store. The company also offered $500 to each family, in exchange for agreements to not hold it liable for further damages.
A few days after the explosion, a Lutheran minister came down from Wyoming to preside over the funeral. Mormon officials came to town to conduct their funerals. Even in death, the community remained segregated. That evening, clouds rolled into the valley and the winds picked up. Sheets of rain forced the last of the mourners indoors.
One-hundred years after the horrific mining disaster at the Winter Quarters Mine vestiges and evidence of the event can still be found at the site. The Library of Congress maintains an archive of images and mine schematics (above) from the Federal Bureau of Mines investigation—which wasn’t fully completed until 1936. Photo courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
The Scofield disaster highlighted the dangers of concentrated coal dust. Up to that point, the chief culprit in mine disasters had been a buildup of methane gasses. Yet after Scofield, miners, companies, inspectors and officials began to look into the possibility that coal dust was more than a minor irritant. But it would take other explosions, more deaths, including a 1924 explosion at Castle Gate, Utah, killing 172, before anyone would take coal dust seriously.
The Scofield explosion also focused attention on the perilous conditions of mine work. Miners in the area staged an unsuccessful strike the following year, but set the wheels in motion for reform. Real change in the industry did not occur until 1933, following a major national strike.
But take a walk through Scofield’s cemetery on a warm, still day, something much like the morning of May 1, 1900. Under the hillsides around you, seams of coal are locked in darkness. Underfoot, men and boys, locked in darkness.
Read More
My Loving Vigil Keeping by Carla Kelly (Cedar Fort, 1992)
This historical romance, based on the Scofield Mine disaster of 1900, features Della, a young woman who takes a teaching position up in the Utah town above Scofield for a year. She gives up the comforts of bustling Salt Lake City to teach school in the rural coal mining town. When tragedy strikes in the Scofield Mine, Della’s life will be changed forever.
History Of The Scofield Mine Disaster:A Concise Account Of The Incidents And Scenes That Took Place At Scofield, Utah, May 1, 1900 by James W. Dilley (Kessinger Publishing, republished in 2009)
Originally published in 1900, the book provides an account of the events leading up to the disaster, the rescue efforts and the aftermath. Dilley provides detailed information about the mining industry in Utah at the time and the conditions that led to the disaster.
The Next Time We Strike: Labor in Utah’s Coal Fields, 1900-1933 by Allan Kent Powell (University of Colorado Press, 1992)
In the traumatic days that followed the disaster, the surviving miners began to understand that they, too, might be called to make this ultimate sacrifice for mine owners and begin a struggle for unionization. The Next Time We Strike explores the ethnic tensions and nativistic sentiments that hampered unionization efforts even in the face of mine explosions.
Every state has mottos and symbols to represent that state’s whole, general vibe. Consider Florida, for instance. Florida’s state reptile is the American Alligator, and, as the state with the fifth highest median age, Florida’s state song is “Old Folks At Home.” Each state also picks two people to represent them in Washington, D.C., and I’m not talking about electing U.S. Senators. Rather, the National Statuary Hall collection contains more permanent representation (although a few forever-senators have tried to give them a run for their money).
The selection of the statues is an opportunity for each state to put its best foot forward and highlight its favorite sons and daughters. Not every state gets it right the first time. Several Confederate officers have lost their spots in the National Statuary Hall…as well as Philo Farnsworth, a former resident of Beaver, Utah and the inventor of the television.
Why give Farnsworth the boot? Well, a few years ago, we were approaching the 150th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Utah, which was the first state (well, territory) where women cast their ballots. To commemorate the occasion, the Utah State Legislature, after encouragement from the non-profit group Better Days 2020, passed a resolution to replace poor, old Farnsworth with Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon.
Cannon was the first-ever woman elected to a State Senate. She was also a medical doctor, suffragist, mother and Mormon Pioneer. Not only did Cannon check all of the “Utah” boxes, but she also reminded people that Utah used to be first for women. Maybe it could be again. At the time of this publication, Utah has once again ranked the worst state for women (according to WalletHub’s analysis, “Best & Worst States for Women’s Equality”), thanks in part to a significant gender-wage gap and political representation gap.
To address this reputation, the Utah State Legislature “sent Martha to Washington” to stand next to our other statuary representative: Brigham Young, a man who loved women so much that he married 56 of them and once complained of women who didn’t particularly like polygamy, “I do know that there is no cessation to the everlasting whining of many of the women in this Territory.”
In sending Martha to Washington, D.C., Utah is also addressing the realization that not much of the art in the nation’s capital is of women, and, as many have pointed out before, the few women who are depicted are not real people; they’re fictional like Betsy Ross or embody concepts like Justice, Truth or Victory. Women in the National Statuary Hall include a few more recent additions like famed aviator Amelia Earhart (who replaced a statue of some Kansas senator in 2022) and educator and civil rights leader Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. She’s the first Black woman depicted in the National Statuary Hall collection. Florida chose her to replace a statue of a Confederate general in 2022. That’s become something of a trend as well. Student civil rights leader Barbara Rose Johns will eventually fill a vacancy for Virginia left by a Confederate whose name rhymes with Bobert B. Pee, and Arkansas plans to remove both of its statues of white supremacists and replace them with civil rights activist Daisy Bates and singer-songwriter Johnny Cash.
All told, currently 11 out of the 100 statues in the National Statuary Hall collection are of women. Once Martha Hughes Cannon joins them, it will be at least 12. She was supposed to head to Washington in 2020, but the pandemic delayed her trip until further notice. At last check, she’s still standing in the Utah State Capitol building, if you’d like to visit her before she leaves. Until then, Mr. Farnsworth stays on his pedestal a little longer.
On the grand stage of national politics, Utah is a bit player. We are one of the least densely populated, most reliably conservative states with middling voter participation rates and are currently embroiled in a gerrymandering lawsuit. However, Utah’s seeming political insignificance is something of a smokescreen, and the monolithic nature of Utah’s long-held political beliefs is an illusion. Utah politicians have amassed power and influence that penetrated state borders and directed the country to where it is today. We are taking a look at the Utah men throughout history who made it into “the room where it happens,” as Hamilton so succinctly put it, and what they did when they got there.
Political Ideology With Parallels Today
On June 17, 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed The Smoot-Hawley Tariff in the wake of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that marks the impetus of the Great Depression. Utah Senator Reed Smoot lent his name to the Tariff, as the chair of the Senate Finance Committee during the months of odious debates, amendment votes, reversals, in-fighting, backroom-dealing and special interest lobbying that preceded the bill’s passage. (Sound familiar?) At best, the act failed at what its authors initially set out to do—help the struggling agriculture sector. At worst, the Tariff takes the blame for exacerbating the Great Depression.
If the act sounds familiar, it might be because Smoot’s namesake was invoked in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and again in 2017. A Washington Post columnist who declared “The ghost of Smoot-Hawley seems to haunt President Trump” was not the only one who compared President Trump’s tariffs and protectionism to the 1930 bill.
In 1929, when the tariff negotiations began, Smoot had a reputation as an “exceptionally capable and indefatigable legislator,” according to Douglas A. Irwin of the National Bureau of Economic Research. By 1932, Smoot had lost reelection, but he defended his tariff with the zeal of a religious crusade. “Even if one disagrees with Smoot’s strict protectionist doctrine, one can understand and admire the tenacity with which he pursued his goal,” concludes James B. Allen, former LDS Church historian and BYU professor of history. “He had one great characteristic that some will admire and others scoff at…his overwhelming confidence in his own wisdom and ability.”
This clip, retrieved from El Paso Herald, December 16, 1929 illustrates how unpopular the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were on a national scale. Courtesy of Newspapers.com
That confidence allowed Smoot to lead “Utah’s march into the national mainstream,” as Utah Historic Quarterly put it, and to be “successful in placing many Utahns in positions of national prominence,” as stated in Smoot’s failed reelection campaign. Outside of the impact of his policies (soon undone after he left the Senate), Smoot’s legacy is forging a path to power for future representatives of the frontier West.
Elbert D. Thomas, the Utah senator who replaced Smoot, took office during worst economic crisis the country had ever seen. Thomas worked to create a New Deal work-relief program that employed millions of young men in environmental projects and national parks, as chair of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, establishing the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, a minimum wage and a legal working age.
Thomas’s secretary, Elaine F. Hatch, said of her “beloved” senator’s legacy, “This Nation may have totally collapsed and foundered except for the dedicated efforts and activities of men like President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marriner Eccles and Senator Elbert D. Thomas.”
In today’s political climate, as well as in the 1930s, the mindset of a Utah banker might seem incongruous with the top-down economic policy of the New Deal, but Marriner Eccles was different. Eccles said “frontier economic philosophy” guided him until the Great Depression, when he changed his mind and chose not to double down on a failed philosophy. In 1933, Eccles testified before the Senate Committee on Finance, saying, “The orthodox capitalistic system of uncontrolled individualism, with its free competition, will no longer serve our purpose. We must think in terms of the scientific, technological, interdependent machine age, which can only survive and function under a modified capitalistic system controlled and regulated from the top by the government.”
The young banker from Utah proposed a bold five-point plan to fix the economy. F.D.R. gave Eccles a job in the U.S. Treasury Department and then, in 1934, the job as chair of the Federal Reserve. His plan became the inspiration for New Deal programs. While the New Deal did not end the Depression, “It restored a sense of security as it put people back to work. It created the framework for a regulatory state that could protect the interests of all Americans, rich and poor…It rebuilt the infrastructure of the United States, providing a network of schools, hospitals and roads,” said historian Allan Winkler in his own 2009 testimony to the U.S. Senate.
Eccles pushed to reform the Fed and create the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Housing Act (FHA). While the FHA allowed many Americans to obtain housing, it did not extend those benefits to generations of Black Americans in a process known as “redlining.” Eccles’ legacy includes some insights relevant to post-Great Recession America, as noted by Mark Wayne Nelson in Jumping the Abyss: Marriner S. Eccles and the New Deal, 1933–1940. Eccles advocated for centralized banking regulation and believed it would “prove effective in establishing a sound financial sector…One imagines that were he with us today he might assert that the remarkable financial stability that has distinguished the first three decades following the New Deal, and the turbulence that marked the years 2007 and 2008, has validated this conviction.”
– 1870 – Utah’s Impact on Voting Rights
Utah Territory holds the first elections in which women could vote in the U.S. Seraph Young is the first woman to cast a ballot. Utah women lost voting rights with the passing of the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887.
Seraph Young (Ford)
– 1894 – Joining the Union
Congress passes the Utah Enabling Act, admitting Utah into the Union contingent upon its banning polygamy and other mandates.
– 1896 – Utah Statehood
Utah becomes the 45th state in the Union after publicly forgoing polygamy. The right for women to vote and to hold public office is written into the state constitution.
Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon
– 1898 – Women’s Suffrage
Utah State Senator and suffragist, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon testifies to the success of women’s suffrage in Utah before a U.S. congressional committee.
Reed Smoot
– 1903 – Credentials in Question
Reed Smoot is elected to the Senate. His ability to serve as a senator is challenged due to his leadership role within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, leading to the Reed Smoot Hearings.
William H. King
– 1917 > 1919 – Polygamist Denied Senate Seat
William H. King of Salt Lake City replaces B. H. Roberts, who was unseated over polygamy. King also serves on the Overman Committee, which investigated “un-American” activities during WWI.
Justice George Sutherland
– 1922 – One of the ‘Four Horsemen’ of the U.S. Supreme Court
The Senate confirms the nomination of George Sutherland to the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the first and only Utahn to so far serve on the Supreme Court. During his tenure, he becomes known as one of the court’s “Four Horseman,” a group of conservative justices who rule against some of F.D.R.’s New Deal policies.
– 1930 – The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, cosponsored by Senator Reed Smoot (then chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance), is signed into law. The act raises U.S. tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods to record levels, and other countries raise their tariffs in retaliation. It is widely blamed for prolonging the Great Depression.
Marriner Eccles
– 1934 – The Father of the Modern Federal Reserve
F.D.R. appoints Marriner S. Eccles, a Utah banker, as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Eccles advocates for policies that become the architecture of the New Deal. By restructuring the Fed, he becomes known as “the father of the modern Federal Reserve.” He is the son of industrialist David Eccles’ and Eccles’ second wife, Ellen Stoddard Eccles.
Elbert D. Thomas
– 1937 – New Deal
Elbert Thomas of Salt Lake City becomes chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. He introduces part of the New Deal legislation and serves on New Deal committees.
Arthur Watkins
– 1953 – Leading the Tribal Termination Movement
Utah Senator Arthur Watkins spearheads the assimilation of native tribes and the tribal termination movement, authoring bills that unrecognize and relocate 60 tribes across the country.
Ezra Taft Benson
– 1953 – Secretary of Agriculture
President Dwight Eisenhower appoints Ezra Taft Benson as Secretary of Agriculture. Benson opposes government price controls and aid to farmers, arguing that it amounts to socialism and drawing the ire of farmers across the country and at home in Utah and Idaho.
Ivy Baker Priest
– 1953 – United States Treasurer
President Dwight Eisenhower also appoints Ivy Baker Priest of Utah as Treasurer.
Joe McCarthy
– 1954 – Censuring McCarthy
Arthur Watkins is chair of the Select Committee to Study Censure Charges against Joseph McCarthy, voting to censure McCarthy for conduct unbecoming of a senator.
Esther Eggertsen Peterson
– 1961 > 1963 – Equal Pay for Equal Work
President John F. Kennedy calls up Esther Eggertsen Peterson, a labor organizer and lobbyist from Utah, to be Director of the U.S. Women’s Bureau and later the Assistant Secretary of Labor. She crusades for the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
Frank “Ted” Moss
– 1965 – Consumer Protection
Utah Senator Frank “Ted” Moss champions the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, creating requirements for cigarette package labels and banning cigarette advertisements. As chair of the Consumer Subcommittee, Moss sponsors numerous consumer protection acts that become law.
David M. Kennedy
– 1969 – Short-lived Term in the Treasury
David Kennedy of Utah serves as Secretary of the Treasury and later as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, after losing the favor of President Richard Nixon.
Wayne Owens
– 1973 – Taking Nixon to Task
Wayne Owens of Panguitch is elected to U.S. Congress. While in Congress, Owens fights to impeach Richard Nixon for the Watergate scandal, despite Nixon’s popularity among Utahns.
Utah’s Faithful Fight the ERA
– 1976 > 1977 – Equal Rights Amendment
LDS Church leaders direct anti-Equal Rights Amendment campaigns in 21 states outside of Utah, collecting funds for Families Are Concerned Today. Their efforts often receive credit for defeating the ERA.
MX Missle Protest
– 1979 > 1980 – The Mormon Church and the MX Missile
The Carter administration plans to have the Air Force store new MX missiles on bases in Utah. LDS Church leadership releases a statement against the missile bases, after which opposition to base in Utah increases by 21% and the plan does not move forward.
Jake Garn
– 1981 > 1982 – Banking Deregulation
Jake Garn of Utah becomes chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. As chair, Garn co-authors the Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982. The law deregulates the savings and loan industry in an attempt to thwart the ’80s S&L crisis. The Act directly contributes to the conditions that cause the 2007 Subprime Mortgage Crisis.
Orrin Hatch
– 1988 > 1990 – An Unlikely Supporter of AIDS Funding + Research
Orrin Hatch of Utah gathers support to pass the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Research and Information Act. Two years later, Hatch co-sponsors the Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act.
– 1990 – ADA
Hatch proves instrumental in ushering the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) through a gridlocked U.S. Senate with the passage of the Hatch Amendment.
– 1994 – DSHEA
Hatch authors the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which deregulates the dietary and herbal supplements industry.
– 1997 – CHIP
Hatch works with Ted Kennedy to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover uninsured children whose family’s often do not qualify for Medicaid in their states.
– 1998 – Opposing Gay Marriage
The Hawaii legislature passes a bill that bans gay marriage, following the lobbying efforts of the LDS Church and other religious organizations.
– 2001 – The Patriot Act
Orrin Hatch introduces the controversial USA PATRIOT Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Some of the bill’s provisions are later struck down in legal challenges for violating individuals’ constitutional and civil rights.
Mitt Romney
– 2012 – On the Main Stage
Utah’s political visibility appears to be at an all-time high. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. (and at times serving as U.S. Ambassador to Singapore, China or Russia) makes a bid for the presidency, and future Utah Senator Mitt Romney secures the Republican nomination but loses the general election to Barack Obama.
Orrin Hatch
– 2018 – Long Legacy
Orrin Hatch announces his retirement from the Senate. He is Utah’s longest-serving senator, surpassing Reed Smoot’s record of 30 years. During his term, Hatch sponsors or co-sponsors nearly 800 pieces of legislation that pass into law. Mitt Romney succeeds Hatch.
Unmaking the New Deal
While Eccles went back to Utah during the Truman administration, he returned to Washington, D.C., in a fashion, when the building that houses the Fed was named for him. The provision to name it after Eccles came in a 1982 bill co-authored by Utah Senator Jake Garn. Perhaps ironically, given Eccles’ convictions, the Garn-St. Germaine Act deregulated financial institutions, removing some Depression-era restraints on savings and loans and allowing variable-rate mortgages. As with Smoot-Hawley, the legacy of the Garn-St. Germain Act is one of devastating, unintended consequences.
If this sounds familiar, VRMs were at the heart of the 2007 Subprime Mortgage Crisis, which preceded the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
As economist Gillian Garcia noted, “The Garn-St. Germain Act allowed lenders to make alternative mortgages, some of which proved to be problematic…unrestrained lenders offered infamous 2/28 adjustable-rate mortgages to entice subprime borrowers,” who then could not afford payments when the rate reset at a higher rate, and millions of people lost their homes.
Conspiracy Thinking
Eccles’ policies as Fed Chair drew the same sort of shallow criticism that we see in American politics today, when one congresswoman told him, “You just love socialism.” During the Red Scare, such unfounded accusations abounded. Burgeoning McCarthyist fervor ended Sen. Elbert Thomas’s political career. Thomas advocated for accepting more Jewish refugees into the U.S. and against interning Japanese Americans during WWII. His inclinations toward global cooperation saw him labeled a communist sympathizer.
In 1953, one man with Utah ties came to Washington, D.C. with more zeal for rooting out communism than anyone, perhaps save for Sen. Joe McCarthy himself. When Ezra Taft Benson, a Mormon apostle, became President Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture, he did not face the same scrutiny that Smoot endured. At the time, separation of church and state was not much of an issue, explains Dr. Gregory Prince, author of multiple books and essays on Mormon history. “The precedent of a high-ranking church official holding a high office in the federal government had been in place for decades,” says Prince. “I think what changed was the nature of the public’s perception of what churches should and should not do.”
Ezra Taft Benson boarding an airplane, cir. 1953. As agriculture secretary, he traveled through Western Europe, where he said he would try to pass on U.S. agriculture policies. Photo courtesy of Marriot Library.
The shift in perception might have come about in part because of Benson’s controversial politics. In his book, Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right, Matthew Harris, professor of history at Colorado State University, details Benson’s political involvement and influence. Benson believed “he had a divine calling to warn Americans about the dangers of communism,” says Harris. As such, he created a secret surveillance system to catch suspected communists within his department. Benson also worked on dismantling the popular New Deal policies of price controls on farm goods and reducing agricultural subsidies, which he called socialism.
As Benson became entrenched in the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative anti-communist hate group, “Benson emerged as one of the leading anti-communist spokesmen in the United States,” says Harris. For Benson, the concepts of centralized government, socialism, social justice, atheism, etc., were lumped together under a communist conspiracy that he believed had infiltrated all levels of government and corrupted the American way of life.
Harris is careful to point out that Benson was not unique among his peers for embracing conspiracy theories, with one notable exception. Benson and his friend J. Rueben Clark—whose name is still on BYU’s law school—were “the only apostles who associated the conspiracy with Jews.” They made antisemitic claims that Jewish people established communism and the NAACP to promote racial integration, which Benson opposed. Benson’s political ambitions culminated in two failed presidential bids with two high-profile segregationists: Strom Thurmond and George Wallace.
Influence on Civil Rights
In 1898, Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon, the first woman to serve as a State Senator in Utah and the U.S., testified to the success of Utah’s equal suffrage before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. Cannon declared that the women’s suffrage experiment was so successful that it “is no longer an experiment, but is a practical reality, tending to the well-being of the State,” and “Even those who opposed equal suffrage with the greatest ability and vehemence would not now vote for the repeal of the measure.”
The Utah Territory’s women were the first in the nation to cast their ballots. The comparatively early adoption of women’s right to vote and run for public office allowed Utah women to become powerful and vocal advocates for the national suffragist movement, Cannon among them, alongside household names like Susan B. Anthony. While nothing can purge Utah’s legacy as a state that pioneered women’s involvement in politics, Utah’s role as a civil rights leader would later transform into that of one of its most ardent detractors.
Anti-feminist spokesperson Phyllis Schlafly with Utah Senator Orrin Hatch at an Anti-ERA Gala, cir. 1979. Photo courtesy of Marriot Library.
Officials in Washington, D.C. were not the sole actors from Utah influencing national politics. The Utah-based religious organization, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka LDS Church or Mormon Church), has wielded its clout and deployed an obedient membership to sway national politics. Gregory Prince notes that the first time the LDS Church waded into a political issue and made a difference on a national level is with the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972 (ERA).
The ERA would amend the U.S. Constitution to include, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” and needed the approval of three-fourths of state legislatures to ratify. The Utah-based church (then led by Spencer W. Kimball) publicly justified its opposition to the ERA in 1976 when it needed only four more states’ approvals. The church considered the ERA not a political issue but a moral one. The church claimed that the ERA allowed for a “possible train of unnatural consequences” such as “encouragement of those who seek a unisex society, an increase in the practice of homosexual and lesbian activities, and other concepts which could alter the natural, God-given relationship of men and women.”
LDS Church leadership created a Special Affairs Committee to spearhead anti-ERA efforts in 21 states outside of Utah, where members collected funds for anti-ERA candidates, distributed pamphlets and organized letter-writing campaigns. Historian D. Michael Quinn wrote, “The results were numerically staggering.” Of the anti-ERA mail received by state legislators in Virginia, for instance, 85% of the letters were written by Mormons. They succeeded in swaying ERA “I think the ERA was when they honed their political skills, certainly,” says Prince. “And that same playbook came back in the marriage equality battle.” The Utah-based church once again mobilized to influence votes in other states—this time to oppose the legalization of gay marriage. “That started in Hawaii,” says Prince. The LDS Church “allied with the Catholic Church, very quietly, under a front organization called Hawaii’s Future Today,” says Prince. “It had a significant influence on the debate and the legislation that was going on in Hawaii.”
In Oct. 1958, a group of farmers from Utah and Idaho travel to D.C. to ask Ezra Taft Benson for much needed aid. Benson had the reputation of “a heartless ideologue who lacked sympathy for small farmers.” Photo courtesy of Utah Historical Society
The LDS Church followed similar patterns in 2000 with Proposition 22 and again in 2008 with Proposition 8, both in California. “When Proposition 8 came around, they jumped in with both feet,” says Prince. “They took a very public stand and had a considerable boots-on-the-ground initiative within the state.” Mormons’ financial contributions accounted for more than half of the money raised in support of Prop 8.
The LDS Church likewise declared this a moral issue, not a political one, and published its justification, called The Family: A Proclamation to the World. The document asserts that divine design only allows for a narrow definition of marriage, families and gender roles. The proclamation warns that living outside this definition “will bring upon…the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.”
The promises of the unraveling of society are not unlike the arguments made against women’s rights. As Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon observed in her prescient testimony on women’s suffrage to Congress in 1898, “None of the unpleasant results, which were predicted, have occurred…[They] have all been found to be but the ghosts of unfounded prejudices.”
Some of women who lead the national suffragist movement 1848-1920. The 19th Amendment, which gave non-native women in the U.S. the right to vote, was ratified in 1920. Photo courtesy of Marriot Library.
Time Will Tell
Utah’s history of political influence could show that who wielded power was determined by the swing of the ideological pendulum. The same state that produced George Sutherland, who ruled against New Deal legislation as a Supreme Court Justice, elected Abe Murdock, a New Deal supporter; Republican Arthur Watkins replaced him, and Frank Moss, the last Democrat to represent Utah, replaced him. Moss lost reelection to Orrin Hatch. Had the pendulum stopped swinging?
“Utah began to swing to the right with the full aid of Benson,” says Prince. “And I think it’s kept going in that direction ever since. I think that’s where the genesis of it was, in the early 1960s, to the point now where Utah is one of the most reliably pro-Trump states in the country.”
That is not the sum of Utah’s political legacy. People—even politicians—are complex, and sometimes they break ideological ranks to great effect.
As a final example, take Sen. Watkins, who championed a policy that forcibly disconnected indigenous people from their culture and lands. But during his tenure in Congress he also headed a committee to censure Joe McCarthy, a move so unpopular in Utah that he likely lost his seat over it. What was right and what was wrong depends on not just who you ask but when. Legacy is our choices and all of the unintended consequences.
The victim is the youngwife of a prominent and wealthy physician. There are suitors, insinuated affairs, missing jewels and even a Persian prince. It sounds like an Agatha Christie novel, but it all happened in Salt Lake City. Just after midnight on February 22, 1930, the brutally disfigured body of Dorothy Dexter Moormeister, 32, was found on the western edge of Salt Lake City. She had been repeatedly run over with her own car. Dorothy’s husband was Dr. Frank Moormeister, a wealthy physician and abortionist for the local brothels. Dr. Moormeister was much older than his wife, who had a wild social life and actively solicited the attention of other men.
One of these men, Charles Peter, was a prime suspect in her death. He had allegedly urged Dorothy to divorce her husband and fleece him in the settlement. Additionally, the doctor had once loaned Peter a large sum of money and, as partial payment, taken from Peter a valuable pendant.
The Moormeister’s 1929 Cadillac, found at the crime scene. Hotel Utah 1910. Photo courtesy Marriot Library
The pendant was among the jewelry missing from Dorothy’s body. Another suitor, Prince Farid XI, who had met the Moormeisters during an excursion to Paris, was rumored to have been in Salt Lake City at the time. There were letters discovered afterwards intimating that Dorothy had designs to run away with him.
A map of the murder scene, published by The Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 23, 1930.
On the night of her murder, Dorothy was seen entering the Hotel Utah at around 6 p.m. She left a short time later with two men and another woman. Dr. Moormeister claimed to have gone out to see a movie alone during this time period. The autopsy revealed traces of absinthe in Dorothy’s stomach. A search of her letters also revealed that she had been hiding money in various safety deposit boxes around town and had drafted some recent changes in her will but had not signed them officially.
However, despite all the intrigue and a massive effort by county investigators who even brought in a private detective who was popularly considered the “Sherlock Holmes” of his time, the killer was never revealed and brought to justice.
EXTRA!
Author Andrew Hunt, a historian and novelist, made the Moormeister Murder the backdrop for the first book in his noir series about rookie Sheriff’s Deputy, Art Overman, a squeaky clean family man and devout Mormon. Hunt’s book, City of Saints, is the first in a series of mystery novels set in the 1930s and won the 2011 Hillerman Prize.
WHAT: The last known whereabouts of Dorothy Moormeister
WHERE: The Hotel Utah (Now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building), 15 E. S. Temple, SLC
Interested in learning more about Salt Lake’s past? See what our city used to look and feel like here!
Salt Lake magazine gathered these ghost stories YOU submitted to us on saltlakemagazine.com and facebook.com/SaltLakemag. Read on for some spooky folklore in your neck of the woods!
Purple Lovin’ Ghost in Memory Grove
“Thought I would send over this little gem of a picture I took at Memory Grove a couple falls ago. The people who work at the Memorial House reception center in Memory Grove say it is haunted by a woman who loves the color purple. The ghost’s face appears in the window pane to the right, above the father’s head. I shot ten frames in this exact location, and in all the other frames, you can see my reflection in the window, but no face.
I wasn’t the one that noticed it, the client texted me late one night after I put her previews up on my blog to say that she had enlarged the photo and made it her screensaver, and that is when she saw it. She thought it was interesting because while we were taking the photos, I was telling them about the rumors I had heard about the ghost and how she liked the color purple and that since my client was wearing a purple sweater, maybe the ghost would visit us.
I go back there and shoot in that exact window every time I do a session in Memory Grove, but to date, have not captured anything like this since that day.” —Photographer, Carrie Butler, via e-mail
Editor’s Note—We called Memorial House, and they confirmed the rumors of a purple-loving, lady ghost.
Cottonwood Heights’ Haunted Mill
“One of my favorite haunted places is the Old Mill in Cottonwood Heights. We went to film there for fun, and the site already is eerie during the night after being shut down for several decades now. When we filmed into the old windows you could see eerie things going on through them that the camera was picking up. All in all, that place is just creepy and I swear it is haunted!” —Jamie Bowen, via facebook.com/SaltLakemag
Editor’s Note—Jamie is referring to the paper mill formerly used by the Deseret News at 6845 S. Big Cottonwood Canyon.
Ghost on the Green River
“Along the Green River, near Flaming Gorge, there is a lovely spot where river-rafters like to launch their crafts. My husband and I were to rendezvous with several friends for a day on the river. As we waited for everyone to arrive, I wandered the surrounding area until I found myself on a promontory overlooking the Green River and the spectacular red canyons beyond.
Here I sat down on a low rock, turned my face toward the sun, and closed my eyes, feeling deliciously warm and a little bit sleepy. That is when I felt it. Less than a touch, but more than a whisper, something was keeping me company. Well, something or…someone.
This is the part of my tale where I sound like a crazy woman. My new friend, the “whispery presence” let me know that this special place was where he used to sit and keep a lookout; watching and waiting, while fashioning arrowheads to fill the long hours.
He told me he had lost one of his arrowheads here, and if I would simply brush through the earth at my feet, I would find it. I didn’t doubt for a moment that I would indeed find his missing treasure. So, I slowly reached down, gently pushed aside the dirt and rocks at my fingertips, and gazed at the small gray arrowhead.” —Melanie Inskeep, via saltlakemagazine.com
The Old House in Draper
“I never believed in ghosts until one day I saw a little old house for sale on Fort St in Draper.
My husband & I got out & walked around it since it looked abandoned & immediately I had a strange feeling. It seemed like someone was watching us but there was nobody around.
Then the sprinklers came on & they were just connected to hoses – not the automatic kind. I ran back to the car but my husband looked in the windows & said nobody could possibly be living there since the few things inside were covered with dust & cobwebs. SCARY!” —Sonja Jorgensen, via facebook.com/SaltLakemag
Asylum 49 Meetup in Tooele
“I visited Asylum 49 in Tooele for their first official meetup. My friend and I both noticed an eerie feeling in one area of the room we were in. Since we both had felt it in the same spot, I was sure it wasn’t just my imagination.
Later, as I was about to leave, we were taken through the old hospital and I glanced down a hall and a door was open to one of the old rooms. The guy who was leading us out noticed I was looking in that direction and asked if I’d seen anything. I hadn’t seen anything, but I had a feeling there was something especially strange about that room. He told us that was where a number of people died, which would explain the negative energy that seemed to spill out into the hallway from that area of the hospital.” —Brianna Kent, via facebook.com/SaltLakemag
Editor’s Note—Asylum 49 Paranormal Investigators are a local ghost hunting group, who meet in the old Tooele Hospital. Recently, an episode of Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel was filmed at the hospital.
Horror Scene at SLC Cemetery
“You all have seen it in the movies. Someone is trying to escape harm and the engine to their car will not start. Crank, crank, crank, and then at the last minute the car starts and they get away. Don’t you hold your breath when that happens…” Come on, come on. Oh thank God”.
My boyfriend lived in the Avenues area of Salt Lake City, his apartment adjacent to a cemetery. It was a peaceful and serene scene during the day and I would often appreciate its beauty. But at night, when I would leave his apartment to drive home, the rustling of leaves,the moaning of the wind, the squeal of a cat, the shadowy figures cutting through the grave yard to walk home or perhaps just wander,made my heart pound. What was I really hearing and who was I really seeing? At night I always held my breath until I had driven past the headstones. Safe again.
One winter night it had been snowing. Freezing outside, a white blanket covered my car. As I left the apartment to go home, the grave yard looked particularly eerie. I wanted to get away as quickly as I could. I began to move out from the curb, but my car became stuck. I was panicked. I pressed on the gas harder and spinning my wheels my car became more embedded in the snow. I could feel the graveyard closing in on me. I put the car in forward, then reverse over and over again. Could I rock my car out?
I was shaking. I was sure I could see movement in the graveyard. I couldn’t swallow. My legs were shaking so hard I could barely keep my foot on the gas pedal.
Then I felt a loud thump and a banging on the trunk of my car. My heart jumped, I became paralyzed with fear.
Someone, something, started to walk along the side of the car to the drivers window. My heart was pounding out of my chest. A figure leaned against my car door.
Then a familiar voice. “Put your car in drive, I’m gong to try to push you out.”
And when we got married, I would not live in that beautiful apartment adjacent to the cemetery graced by day and perhaps haunted by night. We sometimes drive to see his old apartment, looking at the window that was once his, and I look across to the graveyard, the trees, and the headstones, and am thankful that we live really really far away.” —Lynne Cohen, via saltlakemagazine.com
Ghost at the Old Spaghetti Factory
“I had a ghost touch me on the shoulder and say “Hi” close to my ear. I was having dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Trolley Square. When I turned around no one was there.” —Angela Richey, via facebook.com/SaltLakemag
Spooky House in West Valley
“I have a spooky story. So there is a house in West Valley that my friend used to live at. It was a typical red-brick house with a ground floor and a basement. Well, we were at her house alone one day in the basement room directly at the bottom of the stairs. To the right was a door to a bathroom. Both the door to the room we were in and the door to the bathroom were wide open. We actually saw the door to the bathroom close, and we didn’t think anything of it. Probably a draft or something. But then we hear the toilet seat slam and we think someone else must be in the house. So we go and check to see if her family is home. No go. So we go back downstairs and the door to the bathroom is still closed, and then we hear the toilet flush. Both of us start wigging out a little thinking someone is in the bathroom, so we open the door and no one is there. The window in the bathroom was too small for anyone to have gone through! Spooky right?” —Steve Scriven, via facebook.com/SaltLakemag
Bad Vibes at Kay’s Cross
“There is a part of the path leading to Kay’s Cross in Kaysville that is narrow and has a fence on both sides. My friends and I would always get really “bad vibes” when going through there. Everywhere else was fine, but when we went through the narrow path we all stopped talking at the same time and walked really fast. It felt like something (other than cops and the guy that owns the land) didn’t want us there.” —Brittany Hackett, via facebook.com/SaltLakemag
Editor’s Note—Some submissions were edited due to length or clarity.
