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LAND USE MANAGEMENT
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee:
Ted Seeholzer
Place of Interview:
Date of Interview:
Beaver Mountain Ski Area Office, Logan, Utah
November 19, 2008
Interviewer:
Recordist:
Brad Cole and Clint Pumphrey
Brad Cole
Recording Equipment:
Marantz PMD660 Digital Recorder
Transcription Equipment used:
Transcribed by:
Transcript Proofed by:
Power Player Transcription Software: Executive
Communication Systems
Susan Gross
Randy Williams (2 March 2009 & July 2011)
Brief Description of Contents: Ted Seeholzer is the owner of the Beaver Mountain ski area in
Logan Canyon. He speaks about the history of Beaver Mountain (which has been owned by his
family since its inception), and his varying roles with the ski resort – beginning in childhood. He
also talks about interactions and his relationship with the Forest Service and Utah School and
Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) over the years.
Reference:
BC = Brad Cole (Interviewer; Associate Dean, USU Libraries)
CH = Clint Pumphrey (Interviewer; USU history graduate student)
TS = Ted Seeholzer
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “uh” and starts and stops
in conversations are not included in transcribed. All additions to transcript are noted with
brackets.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[Tape 1 of 1: A]
BC:
Hi. This is Brad Cole from Special Collections and Archives at Utah State University.
Today is November 19 [2008]. And we’re in Logan, Utah visiting with Ted Seeholzer at
the Beaver Mountain Office – Beaver Mountain Ski Area Office. And also accompanying
me today is Clint Pumphrey, a [graduate] student at Utah State University.
Ted I always like to begin my interviews from the very beginning, [so] if you could tell
us when and where you born?
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�TS:
I was born in Logan, Utah – 1932; January 29, 1932. Seventy-six years ago.
BC:
And who were your parents?
TS:
Harold and Luella Seeholzer. They were both – my mom was born in Wellsville; my dad
in Logan.
BC:
And had they lived in the valley for quite some time?
TS:
All their life. Dad served no military time. And the furthest dad got away from Logan; he
went to New Zealand to help on the temple over there.
BC:
And your mother was from Wellsville you said.
TS:
Wellsville, yep. And her dad actually started the service station business in Cache Valley.
You can see the old – there used to be a service station between 1st and 2nd North, on the
east side of the road kind of where the Royal Bakery is there.
BC:
Um-hmm.
TS:
He started a service station there. One hundred years ago or more. I don’t have the
pictures handy here, but we do of course have them of that. So he was instrumental. He
also meddled in the horticulture business with Utah State many years ago. So our
family’s been active, not just the kids.
BC:
Um-hmm. So did you have a greenhouse then?
TS:
He had a cellar. That’s all they had was a cellar over there. They’d plant the trees, of
course harvest the apples and store them in there. At one time there was lots of orchards
in Wellsville; lots of orchards in Wellsville. I remember as a young person going over
there – the orchards. And he also had a cellar – it was a (what do you call them when they
have) a co-op type thing. And then he also had his own cellar that he would use for his
apples; and then he raised chickens at the same time. And I can still remember as a young
man and watching them count all the eggs and this, that and the other. He was a very
energetic old chap. You know, he was a “Svede” – Swede.
[Laughing]
And Grandma was a Dane. And they had their coffee every morning with their lumps of
sugar. I can still remember that. You know, maybe I’m getting off the subject here, I
don’t know.
BC:
That’s fine. So what were their names?
TS:
They were Brobie.
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�BC:
Brobie.
TS:
Don’t ask me Grandma Brobie’s name before she was married, I don’t know that. I don’t
recall that.
Did you got to school at Logan High?
BC:
No, I’m actually from Pocatello.
TS:
From “Pocaroostie”?
BC:
Yeah.
TS:
Can I give you a little more history there. My granddad’s brother had a cobble,
shoemaker, right across Logan High there on the corner – 100 years ago back in the ‘50s,
the old fellar did. You know, my family’s got quite a history here in the valley.
BC:
Sounds like it.
TS:
Yeah, yeah; a lot of history.
BC:
So what were some of your memories of growing up in Logan in the 1930s I guess?
TS:
Yeah. I know that my dad’s a plather by trade, okay. He’d put lath on it for you, plaster.
Of course during the Depression they did anything they could. He talks about working
with the Forest Service on the PWA [Public Works Administration agency of New Deal]
type stuff: going and roofing buildings, or whatever they could do to make a dollar. Dad
also trapped. His dad was a game warden at that time: muskrats and beaver, that’s where
some of the income was. I was born on West 3rd South and at that time Dad raised foxes
and mink for market. Shortly after that the Russians came in with all of their furs and of
course the mink markets went to the deuce [devil]. Dad was forced to sell and then
continue with his lathing. He still trapped rats; we still have some of the traps they used.
And like I say, his dad was a Fish and Game man.
I remember stories about Old Ephraim. Dad and his brothers chased Old Ephraim; the
same as the Crookston stories that you’ve heard. And I can’t remember the gentleman’s
name that finally ended up catching Old Ephraim. [Frank Clark; see USU’s digital
collection of Old Ephraim materials online.]
I know that our family lived on game: deer and elk and fish and ducks and pheasant;
[these] were extremely important to our meals. Dad used to illegally hunt ducks for
market. Dad was a pool player I guess. Down at the old Dee Woodall Pool Hall he’d
bring those ducks in there and throw them in the corner; you could take two for a dollar,
put the money on the counter. That’s what Dad bought shells with and whatever else he
needed. But I do remember that as a young person.
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�But I also remember the old automobiles and our trips to the canyon. [Getting choked up]
This canyon is pretty important (excuse the tears), but it’s been alive forever. I started
helping my folks [inaudible] when I was six years old and we’re still here. We are the
longest family owned ski area in America. I’m proud of that; pretty proud of that.
Anyway, I’ll try and collect myself here. But it’s touching. And you’ll find that the more
you dig the more it means to me. So anyway, that’s what I recall.
We did move from there on South Main, Logan River was right in our backyard. We
could fish anytime when the stream was open. And we always hunted ducks and
pheasants and those types of things. Dad got involved in the ski area in 1936 when it was
at the Beaver – and then it went from there up to the Sinks. Now, if you know where the
Sinks are, [they are] about a mile and a half above the state sheds up on the summit. It
was there from, oh, we finally came back to the Beaver in 1947 when money was
appropriated for the road through the county and the Forest Service and the state. Then
the Forest Service was very instrumental in bringing the water to the area. It was in ’39
that my dad and another gentleman took over the ski area and made it go [and we’ve]
been there ever since.
BC:
Who was the other gentleman?
TS:
Don Shupe.
BC:
Don Shupe.
TS:
Don Schupe was an auto body man. Shupe Auto body – it’s now (it’s no longer Shupe) –
shoot on the corner of 10th North and Main.
BC:
Oh, is that Miller’s?
TS:
Millers! Don Shupe was a first cousin to Charlie Miller, or brother-in-law or whatever the
situation was. And Don was there a couple of years and his back gave out on him and so
he had to bow out of the picture. Jane Johnson, who was married to Max Johnson
(LeGrand Johnson’s son) – it was her dad. (I mean just to give you a little relationship to
people that are still alive.) And we see Jane once in a while and we kind of kid about it a
little bit – what might have been, you know. So anyway, that’s the story. And I don’t
know how far you want to go along with this.
We came back in 1947; we put a rope-tow in. And then in 1948 we put in a T-bar.
There’s a big picture around here somewhere of it. Put in the T-bar and that run there for
a lot of years. That was kind of a make-shift – there was chairlifts in those days, but
money wasn’t available for us to do that. There wasn’t enough skiing public, lots of
things you can say why it wasn’t necessary. The size of Cache Valley wasn’t – the
population that skied was very small (and it’s still not very big in relationship for a major
business).
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�CP:
So who were most of other people who came to Beaver Mountain? Were they from the
Valley?
TS:
That started it?
CP:
Just to ski there?
TS:
Yeah. And it still is. We probably have less than – unless you want to call it college
student as a vacation skier or a transient or whatever word you want to use – then we
have about 1 to 1.5% of our people are out of state or transient skiers or vacation skiers or
whatever word you would attach to it. And we don’t see many of those. We’re seeing
more because of developments at Bear Lake. Wasatch Front is where a good share of
them come from. But we do have people who have timeshares and once they have come
and skied here we seem to get them back. The problem with that is the duration of the
sport that you do, that you’re real active in it: three years, five years, ten years? How long
did you play tennis? How long did you play golf? How long did you play badminton?
See, so this interest span, you have to have new all the time to replace the guy that’s
dropping out. That’s a pretty big deal actually in our sport.
You had a question?
CP:
Yeah. Just to go back to when you first started working at the ski resort – what kind of
responsibilities did you have then?
TS:
Up at the Sinks – now I’m five, six, seven years old; I was born in ’32, so ’39 is what?
[I’d be seven?]
BC:
Yeah.
TS:
Dad built a building there out of weedy-edge siding. I don’t know if you know what that
is or not – that’s the edges when you cut timber, you don’t cut the bark off? Okay, that’s
weedy-edge. Dad built a small building down there – I think 12 by 14 or 12 by 12 – I
can’t recall. And Mother – that building was to serve as a warming hut and food service.
Now I forgot the question you asked me.
CP:
What did you do? What were you responsible for?
TS:
Oh, what did I did do? Okay, alright. Our function as kids of course was to, of course we
weren’t running lifts in them days, but we would bring the food service from up on the
road, down to that building for Mother – the foods were all fixed at home: the chilies, the
barbecues, that stuff was all fixed at home. And we’d carry it, all in boxes. Dad pulled a
trailer behind the car (brown ’39 Chevrolet), I can remember just like it was yesterday.
And then we would take that stuff down there and then we would bring it back. Sure, we
had a little snow to shovel, but you know, six-seven year old, you don’t get a whole
bunch out of them other than lip service. Then as we got older, 12 year old, 13 year old,
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�we were running – I was running a lift then. Today they would put you in jail if you did
that.
BC:
Now up at the Sinks, there weren’t any lifts then?
TS:
We had this cable (we called it a rope tow); it was like a rope-tow except it was a 9/16”
cable. And we had some hooks (I don’t have one here) that you would hook on the cable,
wrap it around you and it would pull you up the mountain. Now, how did you keep that
cable from burying you in the snow? Well on the highest spots we’d go cut an aspen, lay
it on the high spots and the cable would run on that. Of course, then we only skied
Saturday and Sunday, and there was a heck of lot more snow fell then than there is today,
I’m here to tell you. Talk about global warming, talk about whatever you want: we don’t
have the snow today we used to have. So it was always a big deal then to dig out of our
buildings, we left shovels outside – couldn’t get into them if we didn’t have a shovel! So
then those were the type things that Norm Mecham and I (Norm, he lives in Arizona or
somewhere now). But that was our responsibility to go up and dig it out.
My brother worked when he was older – he was almost eight years older than I am – so
he had more responsibilities. Then he went away to school and blaty, blaty, blah. But he
went in the military is where he went. ’42 he went and Uncle Sam joined him up.
And then in 1947 we came back here [Beaver Mountain]. But in those days ski crowds
were different than they are today. Utah State used to have a big winter carnival deal up
there. And when you go up there if you look on your left-hand side going up – it’s pretty
steep mountain there – and they used to build huge snow sculptures. I don’t mean these
snowmen kids make out in their backyards; I mean 12, 15, 18 foot high snow sculptures
of like the pyramid stuff is what they would build; or horse and buggy-type thing.
Literally shape them. It was a big deal. Somewhere I have those pictures. I don’t have
them now.
BC:
And that would have been in the 1940s?
TS:
That would have been in the ‘40s, yep. But see to prior to that Utah State held their
winter carnivals down at the old CC Camp [CCC: Civil Conservation Corps], right there
on that hill. Yeah. And Logan High used to hold a winter carnival down there also.
BC:
And the CC Camp, that was at the Sinks area?
TS:
No, The CC Camp is – do you know where the road to go to Tony Grove is?
BC:
Um-hmm.
TS:
Okay. Right across the street from that, they call it USU Training Center now.
BC:
Right.
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�TS:
But that’s the old CC Camp. And of course that come out of the Depression, like the
PWA did. And Utah State held their winter carnival – because it wasn’t until 1939 that
the road to Logan Canyon was open to Bear Lake; ’39 it opened to go to Bear Lake and
that’s what permitted us to move the ski area from down where it was, up to the Sinks.
Because we had to walk in; we parked down on the highway down there and walked into
the ski area.
BC:
At Beaver?
TS:
At Beaver, yeah. We didn’t go around the road – we cut through, you know; walked
across the creek and walked through the draw I’m telling you where the rock deal was?
That’s the canyon we went up. Now I’m jumping all over, but my feeble mind doesn’t
always work in a straight [line]!
CP:
Yeah, well since you mentioned the road, maybe we could talk about that a little bit. In
the early days – in the ‘40s when you first started having a big role in managing the ski
resort – what was it like getting up to the ski resort through the canyon from Logan?
TS:
In most cases the road was plowed like it is now. Of course, let’s be honest – the plow
trucks then probably went 20 miles an hour; today they’ll go 40-plus, or 30-plus,
whatever the turns will permit them to. The roads were in good shape, but what would
happen was the road would narrow and narrow and narrow because they didn’t have the
quality equipment to blow that snow off the side 100 yards or 100 feet or whatever. And
they did not use graders (patrollers with the wing on them) where they could come along
and slice the top of that off so the next time the truck come it could blow it over the bank.
And I’ll guarantee you they’ve made strides in building roads to help winter. Because
you never build a road lower than the sub-grade out the side. Because when the wind
blows, all the snow goes on the road. So you elevate the road so the snow blows crossed
it. And they have done that in several places in the canyon. But the road equipment today
is far superior. You have better tires on your automobile; you also have more four-wheel
drives. So driving today is much easier than it was then. But in conversation with a lot of
ladies that drive, it’s a terrible road! It’s unsafe! It ought to be closed! My goodness lady!
[Laughing]
CP:
So what was the condition of the actual road in the ‘40s when you first started working?
Was it paved all the way?
TS:
It was paved all the way – it was paved to Garden City. But it was much, much narrower.
Over the years they have been able to widen the road in various places. Environmental
restraints stop the road, like in the Forks, on up through there – environmental restraints
have inhibited the width of that: right, wrong or indifferent it depends on which side of
the fence you’re on. My complaint about the narrow road is that one tree blown across
the road can stop traffic and I’m saying, “Wait a minute. Is this modern times or is this
horse and buggy stuff?” And that’s one little complaint I have about some of the
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�restrictions. I am very environmental. But I’m also on the safe side for you and I to travel
the roads.
BC:
Yeah.
TS:
That’s where I’m coming from on that. We could do things to ruin that ski area, but we
won’t do it; we won’t do it. Because once we take all the trees, once we push all the
brush off and those things, now we’ve ruined the aesthetics and you’re probably not
going to come up there. At least that’s our thinking; now maybe our thinking isn’t good.
But that is our thinking on it. We’re in need of some more parking lot but we don’t have
any place to go other than start cutting down trees. We’re not very enthusiastic about that.
We’re in conversation with the state to use some of the flatland down below and they’re
not very enthusiastic about that! Because of aesthetics. So what do you do? You say
okay, we’ve only got parking for 800 cars and when anybody else comes, we send you
home? Is that what you do? I guess it is. When the restaurant is full you sit down and wait
until somebody leaves, don’t you?
BC:
Yeah, that’s true.
TS:
And that’s the only answer I have right now because my wife is part of this; one daughter
and one son and their significant others. And I think they feel like I do, that we’re not
willing to cut down trees to make a place for you to park: right, wrong or indifferent. So
anyway, I keep getting off the subject.
CP:
That’s fine. I just wanted to ask you I guess during the 1960s they started to widen some
of the road down here closer to Logan; and then during the ‘70s and ‘80s it was kind of in
a gridlock because you know, they had to do the environmental assessment on the rest of
the road to see if they could widen it further or straighten it further. And there was a lot of
discussion I guess, in the valley and elsewhere, about how they should go about doing
that. And there were some people I guess who were very, very much for the straightening
and widening so they could get back and forth to the ski area, to Bear Lake –
TS:
Well not just ski area, but Bear Lake, but consider one other thing; think about one other
thing besides you and I to ski and to camp and that. This guy that lives in Bear Lake – he
doesn’t have access to a quality hospital. He has access to an ambulance, he has access to
an ambulance – but he is 40 miles away if he lives in Garden City, from a quality
hospital. Now do we deprive him of that privilege?
CP:
Right.
TS:
He’s got a hospital in Montpelier that’s like this one down here was 10 years ago. See. So
there’s more to it than just a place for you and I to drive; there’s other people to think
about to in the use of that –
CP:
So when all that debate was going on, did the people at the ski resort at all get involved
with the discussion with the –
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�TS:
I sit on the board on Logan Canyon to decide – not decide – put input into the decision to
do what we do with the highway. We are restricted extremely by the Corps of Engineers.
The Corps of Engineers will decide what you’re going to do. Let me give you one
example of what our group did just on the last section from the dug way – from the twin
bridges – up.
Okay originally there was a design on that big cut right at the top of the twin bridges, to
take and cut that side off and go out around the side where all the timber is. We sat there
and looked at that and said, “What kind of a fool’s trick is that? Why don’t we go this
way, move the bridge downstream, we’ve got a barren hole here that we could lay the
sides back, whatever degree you want. We’re going to cut down a few trees, very few,
and you pull the road out of the shade and you put it up here on the hill and you don’t cut
down all this old forest.” Well imagine that! Somebody else can think just a little bit too!
So it’s just things like that, that they have people like me on the board because we all
have tunnel vision occasionally.
BC:
And that board – you called the Logan Canyon Board?
TS:
I’ll think of the name of it in a minute. There’s ten people sit on it. And you know what?
I’m the only one that doesn’t have my hand in the county or state’s pocket. I’m the only
person that doesn’t draw a paycheck from a government agency.
BC:
So that was a sort of inner-governmental board?
TS:
Yeah, it’s still there. It’s still in effect. I would be getting called in – they’re getting close
to doing a piece from the Beaver on up over to the Summit. My mind is getting weaker,
but I’ll think of the name of that board in a minute. There’s ten of us on there but I’m the
only one that doesn’t belong to a government agency.
BC:
So how do you feel with all the input and push and take – how do you feel like the road
project came out?
TS:
I think it was good. See, had you been here 30 years ago that road from the head of the
dugway was going to have cut right across the mountains and come in at Ricks Spring. It
would have crossed the river twice. See the thinking on roads has changed so much in the
last 50 years or 40 years. Years ago it was a straight line was the shortest route and the
best route. Well, in some cases yes, but many cases, no. That would have been a hell of a
mess if we’d have cut through and built a bridge across the road there and then cut that
mountain and crossed the river again to come in at Rick’s Spring. And see you’d have the
same thing at Hattie’s Grove. Instead of going around the bend and up – cut a chunk on
the upper end of Hattie’s Grove off and Bear Hole, then up to the cattle guard. To me that
wasn’t an appropriate route in those days – or even today even. So by getting more
people together and talking about it – and you’re always going to have conflicts. No, I
think they’ve done a good job on the road.
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�Mr. Weston who used to sit on the State’s – he used to sit on the UDOT Board [Utah
Department of Transportation] (he used to be the president – they have a committee just
like everybody else, the state does). He thought, “Well,” he said, “We’re going to get this
middle section of the road done. We’re going to get that done eventually.” He says, “Now
what we have is an hourglass. We’ve got good road on this end. We’ve got good road on
this end, and we shrink down in the middle.” He thought that the public would demand
that they do something through there. Well guess what? It won’t be in my lifetime. It
won’t be in my lifetime that that will happen. And there’s not much in my mind that they
can do there. Where do you go? You’ve got [a] steep mountain here and you’ve got river
there. Where are you going? Are you going to put an overhand over the river and let them
drive out there?
[Laughing]
You going to put up on the mountain 100 yards to get 10 more feet of road? I don’t think
so. The only thing that I can see that gets obnoxious is that they elevate the road, raise the
road up itself and leave the mountains. That ain’t gonna happen either. See, that’s what
they were going to do in Little Cottonwood Canyon because of avalanches.
BC:
Hmm. They were going to elevate it?
TS:
No. What they were going to do is they were going to build a wall here and build a bridge
over the road – just the opposite – and let the avalanches go over the road. Oh yeah!
There was a big study on that. Because it’s big dollars! Huge dollars! And believe me,
money talks! If you don’t think so, look at the last election.
[Laughing]
Let’s not get into that one. But anyway, you know we’ve done a lot of things at the resort
and a lot of changes take place. Roads are important; I’ve been screaming for seven or
eight years now that they get our entrance to the Beaver changed. And I finally got it this
summer. Because see, what was happening there when you came out of the Beaver you
would start a right hand turn – here comes the highway and you couldn’t see back up the
road to see if anybody was coming because the snow was piled too high. And let’s be
honest – the State can’t be responsible for every little piece of snow that you and I can’t
see over; they just can’t do it. And so by making it come straight out at the road, now you
and I can see up and down the road. Built a passing lane. Good. We haven’t had many
accidents – to my knowledge we’ve never had a real serious accident there; we’ve never
had a death. So maybe it wasn’t all that important. I’ve been cussed by a couple of people
because it is a little inconvenient to turn and then have to get down, whereas the other
way they’d be on the turn. But that’s okay, they’ll get over it. I think it’s a good thing. So
yes.
BC:
So after you moved back down to Beaver when did the first major lifts come in? You said
you had a rope tow and T-bar?
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�TS:
We had a rope-tow and then we put the T-bar in. Put the T-bar in ’48.
BC:
Um-hmm. And how far did the T-bar go up the mountain?
TS:
Okay. The T-bar went up about 1800-1900 feet. That was in ’47-’48. Then in 1960 we
put the first chair lift in. That would be the Face Lift. It’s still there and it’s still in the
same place. It hasn’t been remodeled; it does have a new drive; it does have new bull
wheels top and bottom. Still use the same chairs, new rope; same terminals. So it’s
basically the same place.
The ticket office that’s there now was built in ’47. One of these days we’re going to find
enough money to get it out of there. And in 1964 we put the Little Beaver Lift in. And the
same year we put that in we built the Lodge. Now the Lodge has only been remodeled six
times since we originally built it. And we’ve got a big addition going on it right now.
And then in 1967 we put the T-bar in – which neither one of you I think has seen run. It
was one of them good ideas that didn’t work. [Laughs] And then in 1969-70 we put the
Dream Lift in. And then six years ago, whatever that was, we put Marge’s Triple in. Then
we built a tube hill and that was another one of those good ideas that didn’t work. The
only thing that we salvaged out of that is the yurt and the yurt deck. We turned that into –
well we rent it out during the summer, okay. But now it’s rented every weekend in the
winter (with family groups or birthday parties or whatever; some are a few weddings,
things like that, family reunions, church groups, scout groups). But the yurt wasn’t a
terrible investment, but the lift [to tow tubers up the hill] was. Of course we were able to
sell that so that wasn’t too serious.
CP:
So when – I guess maybe we’re jumping ahead a little bit – so when snowboarding first
became popular was there any discussion at all about what Beaver Mountain would allow
and what they wouldn’t?
TS:
No. In the original – when snowboards first came out they had an organization (don’t ask
me the name of it) that they had for boarders and had a gentleman from Salt Lake that
would come up here, a young person. And he would watch you with your board and see
what you could do with your board. And when he decided that you had the ability to get
on the lift and off the lift with your board then he would give you a piece of paper or slip
that said we may sell you a lift ticket because you now have the ability to board and get
off the lift.
Okay, at first we restricted them from Little Beaver. Why did we do that? Because we felt
that the ability of a boarder to handle his board, we were concerned about mixing two
beginners. We also used to keep them off the ridge for the same thing. And all that
happened there was it created a big argument between our ski patrol and the boarders,
because the boarders were always deaf to the ski patrol, to see if they could get down
there without getting caught. But then what happened about the third year with boards – I
jumped over this – boards did not have medal edges. Just like skis didn’t used to have
medal edges. And so the industry said, “Wait a minute. You have got to have medal
edges.” And why? Control, control. And so then they started to put medal edges on them
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�and I think probably better bindings and blaty-blaty-blaty-blah. And today it’s – I think
there’s only three ski areas in the United States that don’t permit them and two of them
are in Utah: Alta and Deer Valley.
And that’s a business decision they’ve made. So I don’t think you ever will see them at
Deer Valley; I think someday possibly at Alta. And the reason I say that – these kids, the
skiers and snowboarders now – they hang together, they all come up in the same car or
whatever. They’re not like before, in my recollection of snowboards is that they were one
bunch and skiers were another bunch; they didn’t co-mingle, but they do today. They ski
the mountain together, they ride the same chair and eat lunch and all that. So Alta
(between us girls) is actually losing skier days. Finest ski area in America, there ain’t
nothing better than Alta.
BC:
Yeah.
TS:
Bar none. It’s the best. Their older set that skied there forever – the Spence Eccles and
those types – do not want to mingle with the snowboarders because they’re a little lower
grade of people.
[Laughing]
That’s the philosophy! And they have convinced Donald and before him Chick Martin,
that Alta would be a better ski area without them. I do know of some things that we have
problems with boarders. One is visibility, and we do have more collisions with boarders
than we do with skiers. That is a problem. They’re smart-mouthed (boarders), but you
know what? There are smart-mouthed skiers too!
CP:
Yeah.
TS:
It doesn’t all – just because you’ve got a board on you you can use bad language because
you could put skis on you and use the same language. That’s kind of a far-fetched deal
there. But no, boarding has changed a great deal and it’s probably 47-50% of our
business. We haven’t done a little survey in a while. Depends on the day; depends on the
day how many boarders we get. I think boarders are becoming more acceptable than they
were 15 years ago, or 10 or five even. I have concerns over some over the other
gimmicks that we’re using: bicycles on the mountain on snow. I have concerns over that.
We talk about – I don’t know if you’ve ever – do you ski?
CP:
I do.
TS:
Okay. Have you seen them up there on their – they’re not a bicycle with tires but they sit
on it, yeah. I have a problem with them in that they don’t have anything on their feet.
And so when they get on and get off the lift they can leave bad marks in the snow.
CP:
Right.
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�TS:
I think they have good control. Most of the people I’ve seen on them are a little older set.
100 years ago when Merlin Olsen and them guys were skiing we had what we called a
“sit ski” and it was very similar to these. And my hell, when them guys would fall they’d
leave a crater a size of this room!
[Laughing]
And not just him; I just can remember – I’m trying to think of the other guy that used to
play football same time Merlin did. Both of them skied. My hell they’d get in the chair on
the Face Lift together, the chair would almost come off the rope! [Laughing] Because,
you know, they were both big people. But we don’t have them to rent and we probably
won’t. How many things do you let on your mountains? You know? I think there’s a limit
to what should be permitted on a mountain to have fun with. If somebody else wants to
do it, that’s fine. And that’s Alta’s thinking on the snowboard and that’s Deer Valley’s
thinking on the snowboard: let them go someplace else. There is a place for them so,
there you go.
CP:
So I assume you’re a skier yourself?
TS:
Yep.
CP:
How long have you been doing that? All [of] your life?
TS:
Yeah. I won my first race at Alta at the age of 12.
CP:
Yeah?
TS:
I won at Snowbasin at the age of ten, before they had a lift. I won a metal at the NC2A
[NCAA].
CP:
Okay.
TS:
So, been around a little bit; been around a little bit.
BC:
So have you tried to snowboard?
TS:
No!
[Laughing]
No, something we ought to have at our resort is we ought to rent padding for first-timers.
[Laughing]
And thumb restraints. Because that’s what we’re hurting; we’re hurting thumbs, elbows
and shoulders with boarders.
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�BC:
Um-hmm; right.
TS:
The thing about boarding – a boarder the first day and a half, two days has more trouble
than the skiers. But by the third day he run off and hide from skiers. It’s a faster learned
sport. At least that’s what we’re seeing; even with or without lessons, it doesn’t seem to
make that much difference. I don’t know why it’s easier to stand on a plank with two feet
than it is to have two feet out here. I don’t understand that. But they do, they just run and
hide from skiers. Yeah.
CP:
Um-hmm.
TS:
The demand that we have now for board use – we entertain a lot of schools. Last year I
think we had 32 different schools. Some of them came twice, but not many – and the big
demand was for boards. It cramps us to have enough boards for all the kids that want
them. Another thing that’s happening in the ski industry in the last three years really has
been strong is the helmets. And we have some helmets to rent, but on the weekends we
pretty much rent whatever (I don’t know we’ve got 12 or 15 of them). When these kids’
schools come, every kid wants a helmet.
CP:
Um-hmm.
TS:
Are they necessary? I don’t know. I think there’s a deterrent with them. If you’re not
going to fall and hit a tree, I don’t think you need one. If you’re going to hit the tree the
next turn, then I think you better have one on!
[Laughing]
But they don’t solve all the problems; I’m sure they solve a hell of a lot of them, but they
don’t solve them all. Like the girl that hit the tree up at Beaver last winter and broke her
neck. But she hit – I mean I’m sure she had good speed – but it just pshh and that was it.
If she’d had a concrete block on there she would’ve still done it; it’s just one of those
things. And they happen. Thank goodness that’s the only second one in our ski area
career, you know we feel good. We don’t feel good about it; we feel good that we’ve
only had two.
BC:
Could you tell us a little bit about your relationship with the Forest Service? How does
the ski area work within the National Forest? I assume you don’t own all the land, but do
you own some of it, or . . . ?
TS:
None.
BC:
None. Okay.
TS:
Incidentally right now it is not owned by the National Forest. It’s owned by the SITLA.
You know SITLA is the School Institute for Trust Land.
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�BC:
Right, okay.
TS:
Years ago, early, early in life doing business (and I’m talking now when I’m 15, 16, 17
years old) listening to my dad talk to Owen Despain and all the other Forest Rangers that
we’ve had; and MJ Roberts and on and on – Dave . . .
BC:
Baumgartner.
TS:
Yeah. Until environmental thing became strong we could do about whatever we wanted.
In other words if we wanted to cut a trail here, we could cut a trail there; if we wanted to
build a road here, we could build a road here. And then as the environmental movement
got stronger, now we were more restricted; we had to do assessments and blahty-blahtyblah. And I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, but you asked about the association.
BC:
Right.
TS:
Life with MJ Roberts, when he was Ranger up here, became almost unbearable.
BC:
And when would he have been Ranger?
TS:
Dave Baumgartner replaced him.
BC:
Okay. So Dave came at about 1990 –
TS:
Yeah, 1990-something. But see MJ Roberts had a long, long span. MJ Roberts and I did
not get along; at all. I guess we were both too hard-headed.
BC:
[Laughing]
TS:
Dad got along with MJ. But I couldn’t. MJ insisted on – we wanted to drill for water –
MJ wouldn’t let us drill for water. You know why? Because he didn’t want a ski area on
the National Forest. We had to have water! We were getting two gallons a minute from
the Logan Canyon side through a pipe that was buried that deep [gesturing]. We had
winters that that froze up – then what did we do? We hauled water up there in milk trucks
and pumped up to the reservoir and then feed it back in during the day for our restrooms.
There was things that wanted to go on Mount Logan that MJ – that would take power up
there to run the microwaves and stuff that’s up there – MJ about had a fit! He wouldn’t
let them put them on the poles because that was visible, and he also wouldn’t let them dig
a trench because of erosion. So he was kind of anti-everything. The forest itself I don’t
think was that way. You have to understand that every Forest Ranger runs his own
district as if he owned it.
BC:
Um-hmm.
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�TS:
Then when Dave Baumgartner got in – and others – life became a little easier because
they could see all they was doing was tying our hands. There is a demand for skiing;
there is a demand for picnic grounds; there is a demand for motor bikes. We have to have
sacrifice areas. It can’t all be trees and cows and deer and elk. That forest is used by
everybody; we all own it. We can’t destroy it; we can’t destroy it, but wise use. The
difference between an MJ Roberts and Dave Baumgartner was let’s see what we can do
and do it right.
Fred Lebar was my mentor and he was Assistant Ranger under MJ Roberts. Fred Lebar
could see – if I told you where we took the material on top of the mountain to build the
Dream Lift, you’d call me a fibbing liar. I mean we pulled everything on top of the
mountain behind dozers up roads that were that steep. Because MJ didn’t want a road
built (which would have been much nicer). You go up there in the summer, you look up
the rig and you see that road.
BC:
Yeah, huh.
TS:
We wouldn’t have had to build that road if he’d been not so dang hard-headed. So what
happens? You build a road straight up a mountain – which way does water run? Straight
down. You can build [in] all the cross members you want; until the sheep lay in them and
knock them down and then you’re right back where you started again. But anyway, after
Fred Lebar came in, I talked some sense into Fred; he talked MJ into letting us drill for
water. He talked him into building better roads; a road that was out of sight out of mind
to the top of the mountain. You can’t see it from the highway anywhere, and we could
use it without all the watershed problems, this, that and the other. Then President Clinton
made the Escalante Staircase down there a National Monument.
BC:
Monument, yeah.
TS:
Underneath that evidently is a lot of coal. And of course SITLA owned that land, but
when they made it a National Park now SITLA was booted out. So in order to satisfy
SITLA to replenish their income, they gave SITLA the privilege of choosing the land that
they would like to own to replace what they had lost down there. Well that went on for
two years and the attorneys fought and fought and finally the President stepped in and
said, “Hey this is bullshit. You take what you need without disturbing the forest and the
forest will relinquish it and do all these trades.”
Well SITLA owned 17,000 acres of land in Franklin Basin. SITLA has one thing in mind,
and that’s to make money. That’s their sole function is to make money. They were
making somewhere between $2500 and $3000 a year leasing that out to sheep and cows.
Not very much is it? The first year they claimed and took over Beaver Mountain they got
a check for $30,000 – which would you rather own?
[Laughing]
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�You know? You don’t have to be too bright to figure that one out. The difference
between SITLA and the forest is that SITLA wants you to do things that make money,
because if you make money, we make money. Now, we run stuff by SITLA – we just had
a meeting with them here a while ago. We’re up against a master plan; the county says
we got to do a new one. So we met with SITLA and told them of things we wanted to do
and they pretty much approved everything except a parking lot down on the road. Well,
okay if they’re not willing to do that then we’re going to have to restrict people (some
days) that want to come skiing. That’s just the way it works. Other than that, we pretty
much have a green light. We do need more water if we ever want to make snow. We have
enough water to give you a drink and flush the toilet. But if we ever want to make snow
we do not have enough.
SITLA would love to take all that land down there and develop it. I think it’s a ways off.
I think it’s a long ways off after seeing – well we’ve all seen. We have some friends in
Bear Lake that want to do some things with us up there to try and entice people to buy
their property. And I talked to them the other day and they said, “Forget that for awhile
because there isn’t any money.” There isn’t any money.
BC:
Yeah.
TS:
But that’s the difference. One wants you to do things to make money, the other was more
apprehensive about growth, about growth. We never see SITLA. The only time we see
them is when we send them a check!
[Laughing]
BC:
So when you worked with the Forest Service did you actually have to buy a lease from
them? Or how does that -- ?
TS:
Okay. SITLA and the forest – it used to be that we could get a ten year lease, then it went
twenty, okay? Large ski area that have to borrow millions and millions of dollars, the
banks wouldn’t loan them any money. So it took about six or seven years of the National
Ski Area Association to go to Congress and say, “Look, we have got to extend the lease
that permits on these ski areas because these people can’t grow. We need the long term to
borrow money. We don’t need more land until we need more.” I mean you know how
that works, you know?
BC:
Yeah.
TS:
I don’t need more potatoes until I empty my plate you know? And so finally they got the
Forest Service to give us a 40 year permit; 40 year permit. SITLA doesn’t like it. I don’t
care whether SITLA likes it or not! If I’m going to spend millions of dollars I want to
know that my permit is safe; I want to know that my permit is safe. I’m not going up
there to invest millions in this place and some attorney in Salt Lake that sits on SITLA’s
board and says, “That’s too long of a lease.” I don’t give a damn what he thinks! You
want to put your money into it Jack? So they’ve been pretty good.
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�They have wanted to re-write it. We have two permits there because at one time on the
Beaver, on the Dream Lift – there’s 31 acres there on a run we call Gentle Ben that
belonged to the forest. So (this is after the land trade) then we had to get another permit
for that. Wait a minute, maybe I’m telling you the wrong story here. That was state land,
that’s right. That was state land when it was forest because that little piece in there
belonged to the state. The state owned the other side. So we had to get a permit from
SITLA to use that 31 acres. Well now we’re still carrying that 31 acres and we’re
carrying the other one for 1000 acres. And they’re kind of holding that over our head a
little bit. Instead of putting both of them together (it would save us a little bit of money,
but no very darn much). They want to re-write the permit and go from a 40 year permit
(we’re good until 2038). And see then what we want in a permit is an automatic
extension for five years and five years. Now, how good is our permit? I don’t know.
BC:
Yeah.
TS:
Until somebody really tests it and somebody wants to own Beaver Mountain and wants to
kick us out, I guess that’s the day we’ll test it. My personal opinion is, the way it would
really be tested if somebody came in and wanted to develop all this down here, wanted to
take this 3000 acres and they wanted the ski area to do it and so they put the bite on the
state, says, “We won’t do it unless we own the ski area.” Then I think you’d start to see
some fur fly. I think that’s when it would get down dirty and ugly. But that’s not going to
happen in my lifetime. Because the money isn’t out there to buy. Bear Lake’s got what?
500 lots over there to sell?
BC:
Yeah.
TS:
Why would you buy one at Beaver Mountain? If you wanted to use Bear Lake’s you’ve
got the 12-15 mile travel; you could own one at Bear Lake and sit on the lake in the golf
course, if you want to go skiing you drive your 13 miles, go skiing and come back to your
place. That’s what I think. To me, Beaver Mountain is not a very attractive place, unless
that’s all you want to do and have a summer home. Then Beaver Mountain is not a very
attractive place. Whoever does it has a got a big row to hoe: they’ve got to bring more
power in. Now sewage is the big problem; we can bring power in and we can drill for
water – but something’s got to happen to that sewage.
CP:
Yeah.
TS:
And if you come in there with a 500 unit development or 200 unit development – that’s a
hell of a lot of sewage.
CP:
You can’t just get a septic tank, you know.
TS:
That’s BIG septic tank! We have seven septic tanks. We have seven septic tanks and we
pump them twice a year. Knock on wood, our drain fields are still holding up. See, a lot
of that land up there is clay.
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�BC:
Yeah.
TS:
And clay doesn’t take water. Well, when we hit a rock bed we just jump up and down!
We just jump up and down. But you know, I don’t think it’s going to happen for awhile.
But that was SITLA’s mission: to make money for the state of Utah.
BC:
Right.
TS:
And they do make a lot of money. They do make a lot of money for the state. They have
coal fields and that down there that are generating $100,000 a month! That’s a lot of
money for the school systems! A lot of money, that’s fine. The only thing I object to is
that Cache County charges us property tax on that land – not on the lift and that (they
charged on that, and that’s fine), but they are charging us property tax on that (I call it
real property) –
BC:
Right.
TS:
Okay, as if we owned it as developable property. They’re saying out of this 1,000 acres,
800 of it is developable. And I’m saying, “Bullcrap.”
BC:
Yeah.
TS:
It’s not developable! You’re not going to build on 32% slopes!
CP:
[Laughing]
TS:
And I haven’t been able to convince them (and I haven’t taken them to court) over the
fact that we really don’t want to give you $30,000 in taxes for something we don’t own.
BC:
No.
TS:
Now, it ought to be one or the other: we either ought to pay the state or we ought to pay
the county. One of the two, but not both, at least that’s my thinking. I’m sure I’d get some
arguments over that. [Phone ringing] Yeah, that’s my wife. Excuse me, please.
CP:
Sure.
[Stop and start recording]
CP:
Make sure it’s going there. Alright, we’re back. So we were just talking about your
relationship with government agencies and things that you have leases from and
everything, for the ski area. Just to kind of maybe get a base line here – we talked about
SITLA and the Forest Service; there’s some state land that you all lease from right now.
When you first started working at the ski resort was the land ownership different than it is
today?
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�TS:
Well the land ownership when we first started, either up at the Sinks or down at the
Beaver, was all Forest Service land. Either place it was. And then – hmm, I’d have to
look it up, but probably nine years ago it was turned over to SITLA, which is the School
of Institutional Trust Lands and they became the landlords. Their function is to develop
the land and make money for the school systems. So it’s just been the two different land
owners; both of them with very different missions – not different missions, but different
attitudes. One wants to make money and the other doesn’t care whether they make money
or not because they get a blood transfusion every July. But SITLA needs to make their
own money for themselves, the people that run it and also for the school systems. So that
in essence is the two different people that we do business with.
We do have to account to Cache County for all building permits, for taxes, for building
inspections, for food service inspections, for water testing, all of those types of things. So
we’re just like any other. We’re almost [like a] city in that we have to adhere to all the
rules and regulations almost that Logan City would have to adhere to. Safe drinking
water, fire prevention, water systems for fire – you name it. We do have ambulance
service up there, we do have ski patrol that has excellent facilities to take care of injured;
we do not have the ability to shock a patient in case of some heart problems from
afibrillation – we do not have that, but almost that good of communications with them.
As soon as the county gets this 800 megahertz [MHz] in, then we will have direct support
from the hospital to run some of this equipment that we do not have – oh, you get 100
people and somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing, but with the direct support from
the hospital and this 800 MHz comes in will be a good thing. It will also mean that the
Fire, Sheriff’s Department, Police Department can talk all the way through Logan
Canyon without the help of repeaters. They’ve tested it; they can talk right from Third
Dam to Garden City from the top of the Beaver. And this side is being developed; they’ll
build it next year which will be a good thing. There’s no site up there for cell phones;
there’s a little difficulty there going on between the state and federal government because
the state wants it on their land because they make a lot of money off of cell phone towers.
CP:
Um hum.
TS:
SITLA has given the state the right of way over the land to get to Beaver Mountain. But
also written in that right of way is the fact that they will not be permitted to put cell
phones on their tower.
CP:
Ah.
TS:
Right, wrong or indifferent, when you have the power you can do what the deuce you
want, you know?
CP:
Right.
TS:
If you have to ask permission you do what you are told usually. That’s the way it works.
So, it will be a good thing.
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�CP:
So, can you think of any government policies: national, local, state policies that have had
a major impact on your operations over the years?
TS:
The big thing was when they made our permits to the National Ski Area Association they
made the permits for forty years. But also within that system is the fee system; it’s locked
in for forty years. With so much based on income; as you make more money you pay
more. It’s based on a million income, two million, three, four, five up to a hundred
million dollars: which some ski areas would do; some of your large Colorado areas. And
it is all predicated on the dollar’s worth. When the dollars up it costs us a little more and
when the dollars down it costs us a little less. It is something that set in concrete so small
little resorts don’t have to go negotiate that with our Forest or the state or whoever owns
the land.
If you are on private land then that is something else. But we do pay income taxes on
every dollar that comes in like anybody else. We do pay sales tax. We do have a small
exemption on sales tax and that is for the lifts, our snow making equipment, our snow
grooming equipment. Now why did the state of Utah do that? Because Colorado has no
sales tax on lift tickets; so we compete directly with Colorado for skiers. (Not Beaver
Mountain so much but the Salt Lake resorts.) So the Utah Ski Association met with the
legislator a number of years ago and said “Hey look, we are at a disadvantage; we need
something to kind of offset this sales tax on lift tickets.” So they did give us the
exemption on the purchase of ski lifts, on the maintenance of them and on snow making
and on snow vehicles: over the ground vehicles. But that is the only break we get.
CP:
So how has the environmental movement changed what you do at the ski area? Have
there been any laws enacted or anything like that or environmental laws that have
changed how you [do things]?
TS:
Not that I am aware of. The state is not immune to the environmental movement. But
they are immune to . . . In other words if SITLA did not want to adhere to Cache County
rules they wouldn’t have to. They’d just tell the County to go jump in the lake. They may
end up in court. I’m not saying they wouldn’t do that. But, I remember a statement that
the director of SITLA [made]. He came up here I took him around and introduced him to
all the [Cache] County Commissioners and Lynn Lemon and all those people that’s
involved in that, our state representatives when this thing was taking place. And the lady
who was chairman of the County Commission asked this person “Well, would you adhere
to County zoning?” And he said “Yes, if it doesn’t interfere with what we want to do.”
What did he tell her? “Yeah, if you don’t bother us, we’ll go along with you.” You know.
CP:
Right.
TS:
So that’s between the state and the county. Our deal with the county, we have a master
plan: we work on a master plan. We have to submit drawings, we have to get building
permits. Blah de blah de blah; so nothing’s really changed.
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�CP:
So aside for that one forest ranger that you mentioned, your relationships has been pretty
good with the government?
TS:
They have, they have. You have to give and take. You can’t be overly demanding, but
you have to go in and – See the difference between the Beaver Mountain and the Forest
Service: we have to make money because we don’t get a blood transfusion every 12
months; we have to make our own money. And if they make life so miserable and so
expensive that we can’t make a profit and then we cease to exist. So they have to be (I
don’t know what word I want to use here) but they have to be sympathetic to our needs
because Beaver Mountain entertains more people on that 1,000 acres of land than the
Forest Service does – not on the whole Cache – but on the Cache/Blacksmith fork/Logan
Canyon and then up toward Richmond. We entertain more people than all the
campgrounds and that put together on this part of the Cache except maybe during the
deer hunt.
CP:
Whoa.
TS:
So as far as campers, trailers, hikers, bikers, horse riders; we entertain more than they do.
We entertained last year 87,000 people.
CP:
So what kind of – you know, 87,000 now – what kind of increase have you seen since
you started working at Beaver Mountain?
TS:
When I was a kid and we were up at the Sinks, lift tickets were $1 a day. And I can
remember when $39 was a big day.
CP:
Wow!
TS:
This book right here you saw me digging out?
CP:
Uh-huh?
TS:
That book, that book is one that my folks kept that tells what money income was at the
ski area. For example, (let me go back) – [flipping through pages of a book]
CP:
This is a ledger?
TS:
Yeah, this is a ledger.
CP:
With the date?
TS:
This is the date: on December 15, 1956 we took in $47.25 on the lift and $13.30 on the
shelter, in 1956.
CP:
Uh-huh. Yeah.
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�TS:
So how many people is that? I don’t know what lift tickets were at that time. This doesn’t
tell me. For the month of December we generated $1,128; in the food service we
generated $331.
CP:
That’s where the money is, or was then.
TS:
Yeah! I mean, you know. And here it says it started a lift December 19, 1954. December
19 they did $41.25 on the lift and $12.80 on food service. The month of December we did
$175.50 on the lifts. That’s not very much money!
CP:
No, no. Especially now, with passes being a few hundred dollars, so.
TS:
And this goes back – I talked to you about the Mount Logan Winter Carnival; Mount
Logan Ski Club Carnival – here’s all the people that raced and the times. And a lot of
these people are still alive, like Jerry Wallace and Max Sears, John Croft – these are
people that are my age. Eldon Larsen’s dead, but I mean that doesn’t mean anything to
you, but my dad kept records of everything.
CP:
Yeah. So what years, what time periods does that book cover there?
TS:
[Looking in the book] March 10, 1946. And here’s the cross country, the snow sculpture I
talked to you about snow sculpturing.
CP:
Uh-huh.
TS:
American Vets Rotary Club Mountain something, somebody – I can’t remember. (Some
of the book’s had water spilled on it.) But this book here, this little one, gives all the
times that our people worked. This one is not so old here; who worked, how many hours
and what their pay was. It’s kind of fun to dig back in that when we paid people $2.20
and hour.
CP:
Right, right.
TS:
You know, kids in high school.
CP:
So how have people’s demands changed? Skiers’ demands changed over the decades?
TS:
Well.
CP:
I’m sure what skiers expect from Beaver Mountain is much different than something they
might expect somewhere in Park City, or –
TS:
Right, right. It depends. Skiers today want lifts that run good, lifts that are comfortable;
they would like high speed lifts. Beaver Mountain can’t afford high speed lifts for a
couple of reasons: first of all the expense in buying them; and second of all, the expense
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�in hiring the qualified people to run the electrical system in them. See you would need –
on high speed lifts – you have to hire EEs (Electrical Engineers).
CP:
Really?
TS:
What would you have to pay an Electrical Engineer? $50, $60, $70,000 a year? Psh.
Maybe $80 maybe $90? That’s a lot of money!
CP:
Right.
TS:
Where we can get guys with the lifts we have now, we can hire them for 35-$40,000.
CP:
Um-hmm.
TS:
But the public does want the faster lifts; they want better groomed ski runs (which we
have the ability to do); they want good food, fast; they want a place to lounge (which you
can’t always supply – you get 1,000 people, you’re lodge holds 300 you know,
somebody’s going to have to leave) that’s a problem for us. We do not have the problems
with our clientele that the Salt Lake resorts do. Why? Most of our skiers are local. 85% of
their skiers are out of state, probably people that make a little more money who seem to
be more demanding. Now somebody don’t misunderstand what I just said, “seem to be.”
You can talk to the guys and gals that work at Alta on the lifts and they’re very happy
when spring comes because they’re tired of putting up with people who are demanding.
CP:
Right.
TS:
The Deer Valley will tell you the same thing; Park City will tell you the same thing. We
have a totally different – not totally – but pretty much different clientele than they have.
So a ski area ought to be a fun place to work, because whomever’s there is having fun;
they want to have fun. They’re there for enjoyment. Maybe they only take one ride and
go out and tailgate the rest of the day.
CP:
Yeah.
TS:
But that’s their entertainment! That’s what they do! Who says that because you buy a lift
ticket that you’ve got to make 15 runs a day? It’s an activity, it’s a sport, it’s a recreation,
it’s a happening.
CP:
Yeah, yeah.
TS:
And we’re seeing more and more of that all the time. We’re selling, oh 4 or 5,000 season
passes. Do you think them people are going to come up there everyday and beat their
head against the wall and run, run, run? No. They’re there for the experience; they’re
there to have fun; they’re there to socialize.
CP:
Right.
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�TS:
That’s good. That’s the way it should be; that’s the way it should be. Sure we have young
people that come up there (and older ones) that they got to get as many runs as they can
get because they spent $38 for a lift ticket and “by God, I’m going to get my money!”
Fine, fine. You can ski just as dang hard as you want. It doesn’t bother me. If you want to
go out and tailgate on your parking lot and fix whatever you fix – fine with me! Just don’t
leave your mess! [Laughing]
CP:
So then back in the ‘40s, you’re saying that basically the people just wanted a way to get
up the mountain and –
TS:
Okay. Back in the ‘40s we had a different ski area than we got today.
CP:
Right.
TS:
Back in the ‘40s you had the outdoor, mountaineering-type person – that was rugged (I
don’t like that word), but the rugged type individual. Today what have we got? The sick,
the lame and the lazy!
[Laughing]
Included with these others.
CP:
Right.
TS:
Who would’ve ever thought back in 1940 that you would have had adaptive scheme for
somebody that didn’t have his legs.
CP:
Mm-hmm.
TS:
Or somebody that didn’t have any arms; or somebody that couldn’t stand up that had to
be in a wheelchair. Who would’ve ever thought of that in 1940? We’ve got them
everyday up at the Beaver!
CP:
Uh-huh.
TS:
Thank the good Lord there’s people that are willing to do that for those people.
CP:
Uh-huh.
TS:
We, at Beaver, try to make life easy for them. We donate lift tickets to those people. And
here again, what I just said, the sick, the lame and the lazy. And I don’t mean that
derogatory, but that’s how it’s changed! We don’t just have a fur coat that we pull on and
go skiing, we got underwear and we got clothing that would keep you warm at 40 below!
CP:
Right.
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�TS:
And doesn’t have to be six inches thick like the old suits we used to wear. And the big
awkward shoes and four layers of socks! Now we wear one layer of thin socks and keep
warmer than the days when we wore six pair of socks!
CP:
Yeah?
TS:
So things have changed. Our equipment has gotten better; the lift has gotten better, the
food service has gotten better, the lodging has gotten better. Not just at Beaver Mountain,
at ALL resorts.
CP:
So have you ever tried to actively draw any of the crowd from Salt Lake City?
TS:
No.
CP:
Never tried? Never had any desire.
TS:
Well, okay. We do a little of it. But why should I solicit you if I don’t have a place for
you to stay?
CP:
Right, right. I mean you’ve got your niche, so.
TS:
Yeah, we’ve got a niche!
CP:
Right.
TS:
We think that if we ever get Bear Lake organized – have you been to Bear Lake lately?
CP:
I have!
TS:
Have you been there this winter?
CP:
I haven’t been this winter. Last time I went was – well, actually last time I went was this
summer.
TS:
Okay, there was a few food places open, a few places to go eat weren’t there?
CP:
Uh-huh.
TS:
A couple of service stations, weren’t there?
CP:
Yeah.
TS:
Do you know what you’d find if you went over there now?
CP:
What’s that?
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�TS:
You’d find three food services open – one of them’s just Thursday, Friday, Saturday; the
other one’s open seven days a week and the other one’s open five days a week. Is there a
grocery store? Well, not as big as this office we’re in.
[Laughing]
See. You got a place to go to a movie?
CP:
Uh-huh,
TS:
Do have a place to go bowling?
CP:
No, none of that.
TS:
Have you got a bar to go in? What have you got? Nothing. So would you want to take a
vacation and go and stay at Bear Lake with nothing to do after seven o’clock at night?
Probably not. So why should I solicit you to come to a place that I don’t have a place for
you.
CP:
Right.
TS:
Now, let’s be honest. I think there’s people out there that we could solicit and tell them
honestly what we are that would come and stay at a hotel/motel in Logan, and travel the
30 miles to the resort. Why? Mon-ey! They can stay down there for 40, 50, $60 –
whatever it is – they can ski for $40.
CP:
Um-hmm.
TS:
That’s a damn cheap ski trip.
CP:
A good deal.
TS:
It is! But you have to be willing to relinquish the assets that are at Deer Valley or Park
City.
CP:
Right.
TS:
You have to say, “Well they’re not of value to me.” I don’t have them, I don’t have any
money to pay for them either.
CP:
So has anyone in your business actively tried to encourage development of Bear Lake at
all, or is that kind of outside your –
TS:
I think they need a large convention center over there; they need a decent grocery store
over there. They need some entertainment over there. But what I can understand, that of
the people that own homes in Bear Lake, Garden City, all that area – that maybe 5% of
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�them use them year-round, and the other 95 are used for a few weeks out of the year
when Bear Lake is handy or if they came from the Wasatch Front, come up here and take
over the Christmas Holidays. We do get quite a few people from the Wasatch Front over
Christmas because they own places over there.
But for us to go out and solicit large groups of people to come to Beaver, it might work
once, but you’d never get them back. You’d never get them back because we are not that
kind of a ski area. We’re that kind of a ski area, but we’re not that kind of a facility ski
area (if that makes sense to you).
CP:
Yeah.
TS:
People say “Well look at all these people that go to Park City!” I said “My Lord! Look at
Park City! It’s a mile long with stores on every side: hotels, motels, bars, eating food, rent
skis, buys skis, buy a fur coat, buy a diamond ring, what do you want?!”
CP:
[Laughing] And they got a airport, you know, not very far away, so.
TS:
Yeah! See, so that what I think most ski vacationers want. Not all, not all.
CP:
Convenience. Yeah.
TS:
Convenience! I was in Ketchikan five years ago. And at Ketchikan these –
CP:
Alaska?
TS:
Alaska. Ketchikan, Alaska. Where these ships come in from these people that are on
these cruises; cruise ships come in there. There were two cruise ships come in there that
would hold roughly 4,800 people a piece. They both pulled up to the dock; long as a
football field; four stories high – I don’t know how big. And we’d sit in there waiting for
an airplane out of there, we had a day to loiter. And the town there at Ketchikan is about
four blocks long, (the whole thing it’s a lot longer than that). Those tours were totally full
of those people coming to buy stuff to take home. You think those locals didn’t know it?
You could walk there at 10 o’clock and there would’ve been nobody in the store, but at
11 it would have been full of people taking your money and people shopping. And they
would blow the whistle and all those people would leave and they’d go back on the boat
and it was a ghost town again. So people will spend the money if you’ve got a place for
them to spend it. And you don’t have that at Bear Lake. Now, summer pretty good;
winter, not so good.
CP:
Well I just wanted to go back and ask you one more question about an environmental
policy that’s come up in recent years, and just was wondering if it affected your business
at all. Just the debate over motorized versus non-motorized transportation: snowmobiles –
TS:
It hasn’t got onto to us because we so far have been able to keep the snowmobilers out of
there in the winter: because skiers and snowmobilers collide.
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�CP:
Um-hmm.
TS:
If they go up there on the mountain and they dig a deep hole and some skier falls in it,
hurts himself, who’s responsible? I don’t know where that guy is that left it with a
snowmobile. Those are things that we get concerned about when we groom, that we don’t
leave bad places for you to drop a ski or a board in and get hurt. Those are things that we
try to avoid. No, we have stayed out of that fight between the cross-country skier and the
snowmobiler. No, it hasn’t affected us because we’re a different – no, we don’t permit
them to park in our parking lot; we need it for our people. There’s a parking lot down
there, go use that and if it’s not big enough, don’t bother me go to the state. That’s their
concern, not mine.
CP:
Right.
TS:
See, what happened with the environmental movement – when we first started to develop
in the ski area in 1977. We had to do a big master plan: that was it. (Fact it was before it.)
So what we did, we hired some people to make all the lines and the circles, and write the
write-ups. And we had two meetings and we invited all the politicians, we invited all the
environmental community, of course the Forest Service, ski groups, anybody else. And
we met at the ski area. We had a few hundred people show up and we had about eight
tables. And we had a chairman at each table: he talked about power, or he talked about
whatever it was – cutting trees, or putting up ski lifts, or parking lots, or whatever. And
so all of these environmental groups, they came and they got their input, they got their
input to what they thought ought to happen. And those inputs were considered and then
we wrote up the EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) and those things were put in
there weighed against something else. You know what? We never had one complaint
from the environmental community because they were invited to have their say. Now if
we would’ve done that without including them, they would’ve found reasons to block it
or get our master plan. But because they were involved, they had input into it, they were
happy with that. So, we’ve done a couple of things right.
CP:
Right, right. I just wanted to ask another thing about how the ski area has changed over
the years. How has it changed in terms of summer use?
TS:
Okay, years ago – of course when we were in the Sinks, we had nothing. We come into
Beaver in ’47, we had nothing. Then about 12-15 years ago we decided to try summer
activities. And so we planted three semi loads of grass out around the deck at the lodge so
that it looked nice. We cleaned up all the brush and the rocks, we cleaned all that up. I got
pictures to show you what it looked like, the devil. And so then we put the RV hookups;
put in 15 of those. And slowly we started renting them. So now 15 on the weekends, 16 is
not enough. So we put people on what we called the “upper side” and they can run a cord
and get power; they don’t have sewer, they don’t have water. And then we have tent sites;
six tent sites. Some of them one tent, two tents; some of them 7, 8, 9, 10 tents. We have
permanent pitch tents. We have four, ten-man tents that are permanently pitched that you
can rent for whatever you want. And you have water there, but no power, no sewer. But
we do have toilets, temporary toilets. Then we have the yurt, we rent the yurt out. That’s
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�rented out a lot in the summer. The day lodge, we rent the day lodge out. So we’ve gone
from doing nothing, to finding everything we’ve got at the resort where we can put a tent,
where we can put an RV spot. Now we can build some more RVs in the upper parking
lot, we can do that and we will do that. But we’re looking for a little more demand
because you understand in economics if you build and they don’t come, you still get to
pay for it.
CP:
That’s right.
TS:
But when there’s enough demand and you build and you know they’re going to come,
then you’re fine. So maybe our financial philosophy is different than the others: we don’t
like to borrow money. We don’t borrow money. Beaver Mountain has not borrowed
money since 10, 11 years ago when my wife and I bought my brothers and sisters out, we
didn’t have the money so we had to borrow it. Since then we’ve been able to do whatever
we’ve done, on our own money. And that’s good because we do not build, we do not
spend before we’re sure of our return. That’s the way it works. That’s the way it should
work! It’s worked for us.
CP:
So then, just to kind of sum up everything we’ve talked about – what do you feel is the
future of Beaver Mountain? What do you think will happen after, when you pass it on to
someone else?
TS:
Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but what I hope happens – two of our kids
and their significant others are in the business with us. Our son Travis is around 50-ish;
Jeff [son-in-law] is around 57, 58. Travis doesn’t have any boys; Jeff’s got two boys. At
the present time they’re not very interested in the business. Will they become interested?
Will the girls take it over and run it, do the man’s work? I don’t know, I don’t know. I
would like to see it stay in the family; I’m sure my folks would, you know? What
happens with development down below? Are they going to find an opportunity there to
sell it and walk away from it and make a lot of money? Or will they cherish it like we
have and say, “No, I don’t need the money, I don’t need the money”?
I think the ski area will grow more. I think there will be a couple more lifts put in; there’s
going to be some lodge additions, those types of things. We know that there’s going to be
more food service put in up towards the other side of the ski patrol building. There’s
going to be some buildings put in over at Marge’s Triple for food service and for
restrooms; that’s going to happen. So I see the ski area staying together, unless, as we
talked earlier, that the state finds a buyer for the whole thing and the only way he’ll buy it
is if the ski area’s included and they find a way to boot us out of there.
So that’s my hope. Now are you the one that asked about a mission statement?
CP:
No.
TS:
Oh, I got another meeting at 12:15 or something with somebody else on similar stuff.
They want to talk about bicycles and summer bicycle rides and where’s your mission
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�statement? Where are you headed? Well, I think mission statements are for a little bigger
company than we are. I think if you sat Jeff in that corner and Travis and the rest of them
in these other corners, you went around and asked them, “What do you think is going to
happen to Beaver?” I think almost without exception you would get the same answer,
because we’re a small company and we have meetings and get-togethers all the time and
discuss where we’re going, so. Anyway, we’ll see what he wants to know.
CP:
Right. So you think it will stay –
TS:
A “Ma and Pa”?
CP:
Yeah a “Ma and Pa” that caters to a local crowd?
TS:
I think so.
CP:
Think so.
TS:
They say Logan is going to double in the next 20 years. Maybe, maybe. We do have
room up there to build more day lodges and that if we need. We hope to build one now,
we got problems with the ski shop, we got problems with the ski school, we got problems
in food service. We need more room. We need more locker space, if you want to rent a
locker. Our lockers are totally booked, and they have been. People they keep them and if
they decide they’re not going to stay, they turn it over to somebody else.
CP:
Do you think that the warmer climate is going to affect the way that your business is run?
TS:
I read an article here awhile ago that scared me to death because they predicted that by
2038 it would not snow – and that’s the last year of our permit with the state. How
expensive would that be? Yeah, I’m concerned over the climate. But the thing that
bothers me is Congress or whoever, the Environmental Protection Agency, is not willing
to let business do things that we hold down the greenhouse gases. They’re still running
their coal-fired generating plants, when they could put nuclear in, that puts out one-tenth
the emission.
CP:
Right.
TS:
And probably safer, if the truth was known. They said we would have to have two
Chernobyls a week to be any more than dangerous than the coal-fired plants. Do you
think we’re going to have two of them a week? I don’t think so. Three mile island? I
don’t think so. Now, they’re talking about the down-winders. Yeah, that was probably a
mistake. No, I don’t know. I think sometimes people do these things and say these things
to try and get some notoriety. I wish they had a little more technical data to tell us about
before they opened their yip. You know? Everybody wants to be up here; everybody
wants to be the knowledgeable guy or gal and I think sometimes the stuff they throw at us
is total bullcrap. But it is a concern because we do not have the snow now that we had
when I was a kid. We do not have that, I know that. I know that.
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�CP:
What kinds of measurements do you remember?
TS:
Well, that’s been so long ago. I can remember years of 120 inches of collected snow. We
can get 350-400 inches of snowfall, but it settles down;120-140. But now, if we get 80 or
90 it’s pretty good.
CP:
Right.
TS:
It’s pretty darn good. I can’t remember what last year’s was, I’d have to – let me write
that down in the book that I don’t have here.
CP:
It was pretty good last year.
TS:
Oh the skiing was good, yeah! It was slow coming. We didn’t open until the 22nd of
December!
CP:
Right.
TS:
I remember one year, ’77 or ’79 we opened the 23rd of February and closed the 15th of
March. That wasn’t too prosperous; we didn’t make too much money that year.
CP:
Um-hmm, right. So you save your money during the good years for when you have lean
years?
TS:
Well some people save for a sunshiny day and we save for a rainy day.
CP:
Yeah?
TS:
But you know, it’s been good to us. And so I’ve been wise with our money, we’ve tried
not to overbuy; we’ve tried not to over-speculate. Yeah, we’ve made mistakes; will we
make more? Oh yeah, I’m sure we will. If we do anything we will, if we do anything
we’ll make mistakes. It will be interesting to see what happens in the – wish I could look
back on this in 10 years and remember what we talked about. But I think the ski area will
continue to grow, as long as we have winter. As long as we market it right and treat our
people right – and that’s part of marketing – and provide a fair service for a fair price.
That’s what it’s all about. If you didn’t like hotdogs you got a Joe’s, you wouldn’t go
you’d go somewhere else won’t you?
CP:
That’s right.
TS:
Yeah, that’s right. And our transportation any more, yeah it’s kind of expensive, but it’s
not very far to Powder Mountain or Snowbasin, or Wolf Mountain, or you get a little
further down into Salt Lake. But it doesn’t seem like it bothers people to drive that far
anymore.
CP:
Yeah, well is there anything that you’d like to add?
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�TS:
No, I’ve probably said more than I got knowledge to say. But if you have any questions –
why, the phone’s here. Don’t be afraid to call.
CP:
Sure.
TS:
Don’t be afraid to call. And I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of stuff, but you know, you can’t
live a lifetime in two hours.
CP:
Right, right. Well, it was good to talk to you.
TS:
It was good to talk to you and good luck to you with what –
[Stop recording]
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�
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<a href="http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/LoganCanyon/id/337">http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/LoganCanyon/id/337</a>
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Hosted by: Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library
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2012-10-17
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Title
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Ted Seeholzer interview, 19 November 2008, and transcription
Description
An account of the resource
Ted Seeholzer is the owner of the Beaver Mountain ski area in Logan Canyon and talks about the history of Beaver Mountain (which has been owned by his family since its inception), and his varying roles with the ski resort – beginning in childhood. He also discusses his interactions and relationship with the Forest Service and School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) over the years.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Seeholzer, Ted, 1932-
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Cole, Bradford R.
Pumphrey, Clinton R., 1984-
Subject
The topic of the resource
Seeholzer, Ted, 1932---Interviews
Seeholzer, Ted, 1932---Family
Seeholzer, Ted, 1932---Career in the Ski Industry
Beaver Mountain Ski Resort (Logan Canyon, Utah)--History
Beaver Mountain (Utah)
Fishing--Utah--Logan River
Hunting--Cache Valley (Utah and Idaho)
Shupe, Don
Skis and skiing--Utah--Logan Canyon--History
Ski resorts--Utah--Logan Canyon--History
Seeholzer, Harold
Seeholzer, Luella
Sinks (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Utah State University. Forestry Field Station Camp
Roads--Utah--Logan Canyon
Roads--Snow and ice control--Utah--Logan Canyon
Roads--Widening--Utah--Logan Canyon--Citizen participation
Skis and skiing--Utah--Beaver Mountain
Snowboarding--Utah--Beaver Mountain
Utah. School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration
Cache National Forest (Utah and Idaho)
United States. Forest Service
Land use--Utah--Logan Canyon
Winter festivals--Utah--Logan Canyon--Anecdotes
Skis and skiing--Utah
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Logan Canyon Reflections
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http://highway89.org/files/original/1853497373d1d4843e9aa136dab68917.mp3
27b65a76fabe9258b3dc42c7ce924cb2
http://highway89.org/files/original/618db0fe3620b2b683c89edb9c9d64ff.pdf
4f9cc6b888007ed303d7aee78e8747da
PDF Text
Text
LAND USE MANAGEMENT
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee:
Ted Kindred
Place of Interview: His home in Hyrum, Utah
Date of Interview: 13 August 2008
Interviewer:
Recordist:
Darren Edwards
Darren Edwards
Recording Equipment:
Transcription Equipment used:
Transcribed by:
Transcript Proofed by:
Marantz PMD660 Digital Recorder
Express Scribe Transcription Software
Glenda Nesbit
Elaine Thatcher, January 2009; Randy Williams
(1/13/2011 & 7/13/2011)
Brief Description of Contents: Mr. Kindred talks living in Logan Canyon at Beirdneau,
his work with Thiokol as an engineer, his family activities up Logan Canyon, and his
local history efforts.
Reference:
DE: Darren Edwards (Interviewer; USU graduate student)
TK: Ted Kindred
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “uh” and starts and
stops in conversations are not included in transcript. All additions to transcript are noted
with brackets. The interview is broken into five-minute tracks, which are noted in the
transcript.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[Disk 1, Track 1]
DE:
This is Darren Edwards. I’m here with Ted Kindred at his home in Hyrum, Utah,
for the oral history of Logan Canyon Project. So what’s your full name?
TK:
What?
DE:
Your full name.
TK:
Theodore J. Kindred.
DE:
And when and where were you born?
TK:
Kansas City, Missouri, 1918.
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�DE:
So how did you get from Kansas City to Logan?
TK:
Oh, I was out here with Thiokol when they first started. I was a management
consultant. And, I don’t know. When they first called me to come out here I asked
them where it was at and they said Promontory. I said “You’ve got to be kidding.”
I said, “There’s nothing out there but sagebrush.” And they said, “No we’re
building a big plant out here.” So I came out and I stayed. Been here ever since,
this is home.
DE:
You decided you liked the sagebrush.
TK:
Oh, I love it here. I didn’t want to stay on the other side of the mountains [Box
Elder County]. So I wanted to come over here. And now it’s getting too crowded.
DE:
So what’s your earliest memory of Logan Canyon?
TK:
The very earliest is at the mouth of the canyon. It was a two-lane road at that time.
And the trees made a tunnel over the canyon there at the mouth. And you drove
that way almost to Malibu and Guinavah in that. Of course then when they
decided to widen it all the trees came out. No more up there. But, we used to go
camping up there and then later up at St. Anne’s. I used to go up there.
Monsignor Stock [of the Catholic Church] looked after it [St. Anne’s Retreat
when it was] left to them. And he only had a small parish here, and I was one of
the few in that. But anyhow he was trying to look after it, and so I sort of took
over half of it to look after. And oh, did a lot of repairs and things up there. And
then there used to be a tremendous amount of vandalism done up there because,
there are all kinds of stories you’ve probably heard and that. But it was basically
used as a, we [Catholic Church] called it retreat. But it was a vacation place for
the Holy Cross Hospital [in Salt Lake City] and the Benedictine Hospital in
Ogden, for them to come up and spend a week or two. But I don’t know. After
winter when it was closed up, they [vandals] used to break in and the furniture
was getting torn up and burned in the big fireplace and stuff. And I don’t know,
maybe you’d like some background of that St. Anne’s.
DE:
St. Anne’s is the Catholic retreat just up Logan Canyon? Yeah. Background
would be great.
TK:
Well some of the background: That land originally belonged to the Hatch family.
And they gave it to the Forest Service for lifetime lease on it. They kept it forever.
But Boyd Hatch took over and built, oh, a nice place up there. And I don’t know I
don’t believe a whole lot’s known here about him other than the Hatch Room up
to the University in the Library. That was donated by them. But he had a partner
at the Atlas Corporation: Floyd [Bostwick] Odlum. And he and Floyd, I’ve
always said, were the first conglomerate people. They had the RKO Studios and
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�Bell & Howell Camera, United Fruit, Bonwit Teller department stores: a whole
group of things.
But they would bring people in [to the St. Anne’s Retreat, then called Pine Glenn
Cove or Hatch's Camp or Forest Hills. It was placed on the national Register of
Historic Places on 28 December 2006]. They had a large closed-in porch,
screened in. And they’d fly people in from New York and Los Angeles, friends.
They had barbeques down by the river. And then on that porch they’d have big
name orchestras out of the, like RKO Studios. Bring them in for dances here and
things.
But [Track 2] anyhow, Boyd was going to build a Tudor mansion in Providence
up on the, up where Edgewood Farms is there. And he had a heart attack and died.
So all they ever got done was the foundation. [The furnishings for the library for
this mansion were donated to Utah State University and are now housed in the
Hatch Room in the Libraries’ Special Collection & Archives.] But then, they
Hatch and Odlum were both married to sisters: the McQuarrie sisters.
[Speaking of St. Anne’s Retreat]: Boyd died. Mary Anne [his wife] gave the
lower Hatch part to Monsignor Stock for the church. And later Hortense
[McQuarrie] Odlum she’d be up there by herself. She decided there’s no use her
coming up there anymore because Floyd had got a divorce and married Jackie
Cochran, a jet flying woman, jet flying ace. And so she called and told him
[Monsignor Stock] he could have hers, too. So they had the whole thing. But it
was a wonderful place. I used to clean out the pool up there, the swimming pool.
DE:
What were the names again of the people that donated that land?
TK:
Boyd Hatch and Floyd Odlum. It was actually their wives, Mary Anne and
Hortense.
DE:
Mary Anne and Hortense.
TK:
Hortense. Uh huh
DE:
How do you…Do you know how to spell that?
TK:
HORTENSE I think it is: Hortense. But there’s an interesting thing about that.
They were sisters – McQuarrie sisters. And their father died and Boyd’s [Hatch]
mother died—Eastman Hatch’s wife; the older one. And they met each other and
they got married. That made Boyd and his wife step-brother, step-sisters. It’s
interesting, it’s complicated.
But anyhow that covers pretty well what that was [history of St. Anne’s Retreat].
They finally, the nuns wouldn’t go up there anymore because there were too many
people trying to get in there. And they just didn’t want to be up there bothered at
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�night especially. So anyhow they had it for oh, the kids, needed places to go you
know, on that. And it didn’t last very long and they weren’t taking care of it. So
the church sold it; got out of it. But anyhow, aside from that the sisters still
wanted a place to go. And I had bought a place at Beirdneau; and I let them use
that place. They could come up there, small groups of them. It wasn’t big like St.
Anne’s. But they’d come up and I’d take vegetables and things up for them to
have while they were there.
DE:
Where was that again?
TK:
At Beirdneau.
DE:
OK; Beirdneau.
TK:
And I don’t know if you ever knew Tom Lyons? [He] taught English here at the
[Utah State] University for years.
DE:
Must have been before my time.
TK:
Well. Yeah, it was. He lived next door there [at Beirdneau]. They lived there the
year round. I don’t know what all you want me to tell about this. But I’ll tell you
an incident that I was involved in. They had three little boys. And we had six
children, some of them about the ages of those kids. Of course they were up there
by themselves so they would come over as soon as they heard the car come up to
our place, to have somebody to play with. Well, one time they came over and they
were turning handsprings and things. And they asked me if I could do that. And I
said, not any more. I said, “I practice yoga.” And they said, “Oh we’ve got an
Indian teaching us yoga comes up to the canyon.” I say, “Well, I tell you what,
next time I come up I’ll dress, everything on for that. But you got to be quiet
when I go.” Well I had a Chautauqua outfit. Years back those traveling operas and
things. It was a brocade and velvet outfit, you know; spangles all over it. I don’t
know all kinds of stuff. And I had a fez, and I had a pair of turned up boots, or
shoes, like the Turks. I had those on [Track 3] and so the kids caught on what I
was doing and they had all kinds of garbs to go with me up there. Well, when they
got up there, their lands were gone. I and told them there’s no use wasting that.
And in the front of our place there’s a bend going around in front of Malibu and
Guinavah, just a slight bend. Well, we . . . out on the end of that and it was open.
So the wild phlox was all in bloom. And we had our dog Gabby with us and we
picked phlox and put in his collar. And the kids had him, we’d go down to the
corner, a car came around we’d give them a peace sign and throw phlox out, you
know. [Chuckling] Two weeks later there was a rumor going around town that a
hippie family moved up Logan Canyon. But it was fun.
DE:
And you guys were the hippie family?
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�TK:
Yeah. But anyhow we used the place we had up there; we’d use it the year round.
We had a big fireplace in it and we had a wood/coal stove like that. Go up there in
the winter and build a fire in the stove and the fireplace, heat it up. The kids
would go snowshoeing or sliding up there. And have hot chocolate and things for
them to warm up with. But I don’t know. On up the canyon in the early days, we
used to cut Christmas trees up at the Sinks. And I’ll never forget that. Our two
oldest ones weren’t too old then, that we had. It was quite a lift, must be a half a
mile across the land there to get over to the trees. There was about three feet of
snow on the ground. I went over, I cut a tree and took, the two older ones wanted
to go with me. Well, by the time they got over there they were tired and they
wanted to be carried. And I had that Christmas tree and those two kids to get out
of there. Well, a friend at that time, Jim Cannon, worked for the Forestry. And he
arrived with a snowcat just as I was getting back off of that. And I said, “Why did
you have to wait until now to come up?” [Chuckling] He’d have got me out of
here. But that’s the only time I ever cut a tree up there. Never went back to get
another one.
DE:
Where was that again?
TK:
At the Sinks.
DE:
Okay.
TK:
That’s, you turn at Beaver to go up and you get about half way up the slope, it
was down in the Sinks. All down there, the low part.
DE:
So just past Beaver in those sinks there?
TK:
Yeah, uh hum. But you had to go clear across that to the trees. And that’s where
they issued permits to cut them. And we used to like to go up to Sunrise
Campground, up there and camp. We’d do that a lot. But it’s hard to get into any
of those places anymore. There’s everybody wanting in them.
DE:
Yeah. Now when you say “we” is that you and your family?
TK:
Yeah.
DE:
Your kids and wife?
TK:
Yeah. We did a lot of camping before, well even after we had our summer place
up there. We liked to go up the Wind Rivers. But anyhow back to Logan Canyon.
It had the most beautiful view [at Sunrise Campground] coming up, looking down
on the blue there at Bear Lake from the outpost there. But also I think a place they
forget about--there where they turn off to Temple Forks in Logan Canyon there’s
a privately owned place right there that looks like oh, a nice brick ranch house
built down there with a boat. There’s four acres or something in there. And there
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�had been a juniper place in there they called it Juniper Inn. You’d go up there and
eat and things. And it burned down. And it was a long time ago. Anyhow, I
inquired about that land up there because they have water rights, everything for it.
And at that time the forester, M.J. Roberts, he was looking for it too. Well, I
found the guy he was in the army over in Germany. [Track 4] And I contacted
him. He wanted $26,000 for that. I wished I bought it now.
DE:
So did M.J. buy it?
TK:
M.J. Roberts. That was the Chief Forester at that time. Everybody knows him,
he’s been around …
DE:
So did he end up buying the land?
TK:
No.
DE:
No.
TK:
I wouldn’t tell him who it was [that owned it]. [Chuckles] No, that’s private—
they built that ranch house up there on it. And they have water rights and
everything for it, on both sides of the river.
DE:
That’s a good setup.
TK:
Yeah. It was a good deal. But I don’t know. There’s been such a change in the
canyon itself because everybody’s in a hurry to get up to Beaver or Bear Lake in
the summer. And even Bear Lake, I remember that. Gad, when Ideal Beach was
the place to go, and we used that a lot too on weekends. But I don’t know if you
want to cover anything that was that far up.
DE:
That’s good; whatever you want to talk about with Bear Lake or Beaver or any of
that.
TK:
Well I can tell you a couple of good stories about it. My son was in the Civil Air
Patrol. And often in the summer they would sponsor members coming in from
other countries here, spend a week or two. And one year they had boys from
France. And we had them up the canyon; they used the cabin up there to stay in.
But I wanted to take them up to Paris, Idaho. [Chuckles] And we went up there
just to show them the town. As we came back the north beach was crowded, it
was on Sunday; people all over the beach. And they saw it. And they wanted to
know if we could go in there, turn in there. They wanted to, the minute we turned
in there they stripped clothes down, they were going swimming. And in those
jockey shorts, it, if they get wet, they may as well have been naked, you know.
Well that was long before we ever had them here. But then that’s what they had
on. Everybody was staring over at them. But they had a good time up there
swimming and all.
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�But then another time we had them at our place from Denmark. And everybody
said, “Oh we’ve got to have the return missionaries come up so they can,” I said,
“We don’t need that they speak English.” I said, “We don’t, but they speak more
than one language over there.” So anyhow, I don’t drink, but I thought they do
because the water’s bad there you know. And it’s gonna be hot. It was in July. So
I had a guy bring up a few cases of beer. And I had a little stream running down
by us that come out of the springs and I had them set them in there, cooling. So
when we got up there, why, they had, they had the interpreters with them. That is
the other people that was with them. And I asked them when they got up there if
they were thirsty. Oh yeah, they are. I said, well, over in that stream, I said there’s
cold drinks over there. Gad, [laughing] they did away with all of them. They were
all gone. But I don’t know this.
I made a few notes here… Oh another thing. We had a very dear friend who was
James Holy Eagle from Pine Ridge Reservation.
DE:
Now that was James
TK:
Holy Eagle
DE:
Holy Eagle
TK:
He used to come and spend summers here. And, oh, the kids they just worshiped
him. He was their grandfather as far as they were concerned. But he liked to
spend all the time he could up at our place there in the canyon. And he, what we
call dogwood, they call that red willow. And he’d cut off pieces of that and let it
kind of dry. Then he’d scrape the outer bark off and then the inner bark he’d
scrape and save. And when it dried he’d grind it all up and that’s what they call
kinnikinnick or tobacco. He’d mix a few little, real tobacco in with it. He had one
cigarette every night for visions up there out of that. But I thought that was
interesting to find out what we call dogwood they call red willow and made their
tobacco out of it. But [Track 5] he’d wander around up there. He loved being up
there and that. And the kids loved having him up there, too. I was a special guest
for the first Sun Dance they had that was legal back in ’72. And I was able to take
pictures of all that. There was a porcupine up there.
DE:
Now when you say the first Sun Dance what was that?
TK:
That’s a very holy dance for them. They put a pole or a tree in a circle and then
their, whoever they’re going to dance for, they make kind of a rope that they
weave that’s tied up to that. And then they’d pierce themselves here and put that
rope in it. And they’d dance and that until, four days, until they’d pull that out
finally. And for the, in order to have the whatever they’re dancing for was done.
But I don’t know so many things. There’s something. I’m getting off of…
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�DE:
You’re okay. You’ve mentioned your family a couple of times. What were their
names?
TK:
My family? [Wife was Patricia Kindred.] I had six children. I just lost my
daughter [Jennifer Treibe died 22 July 2008]. She lived right across the street; the
only one that still lives here. [She] had liver cancer. But anyhow, my oldest was
Timothy Kindred; then Rebecca Kindred and Kathleen Kindred and Patricia
Kindred, Jennifer Kindred and Lindy Kindred. Most of them had a, only one
graduated from over here at USU. But they all had an introduction over there.
Some stayed and some didn’t. My youngest one she’s, teaches graduate students
in Bloomington, Indiana, in theatre. In fact she was a designer for Shakespeare
Festival, not this year, but the two years before.
DE:
Just here in town?
TK:
Salt Lake. But anyhow, I was trying to think what else I could tell you about…
DE:
Well, really to get just a little more on you. During all this time what was your
profession, what did you do?
TK:
Well, I was a jack of all trades, I guess. Out here, for instance, I was hired as
consulting, management consulting person. And I traveled quite a lot. More for
corporate than I did from the Wasatch Division, because they had other interests
that they’d call me for. We had, oh; we had a place, for instance, in Georgia, St.
Mary’s, Georgia. And they were going to build a big booster down there. But it
didn’t work out. So they started building ammunition down there and there was an
explosion. So it killed several people. So they sent me down there to get it started
again. And then they were in the rug-backing business. And that wasn’t working.
So they sent me here, there and yonder. They had, oh they must have had 25
places that made ‘em. But it didn’t take long to find out what was the matter.
They weren’t organized. But I spent time down at Virginia – at Waynesboro. That
was for the one that I, the main one was on it. And I don’t know. Then I spent a
year in Chicago when the wind tunnel at Calahoma [?], the Air Force. Somebody
left a ladder in there and they turned it on and destroyed it. They had to rebuild it.
And part of it was in Chicago. They weren’t building it very fast so I spent a year
commuting in there. But that was mainly what I was sent. But since I’ve retired
it’s been oh, history, local. [Track 6]
In fact here I think it was I don’t know [19]’96 -’97, I belonged to the Mormon
History Association. And they established the Thomas Caine Award and I got that
the first year they issued it. That’s for a non-Mormon doing Mormon history.
DE:
Now what is the Thomas Caine Award for?
TK:
The Thomas Caine? I collected all this data, local data and maintained it. I don’t
know they’d send people from everywhere here for information; anywhere in the
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�Valley here practically. Elaine Thatcher, her father was a really good friend of
mine – Ted Thatcher. And his mother was a very dear friend of mine: Hannah
Thatcher; Frank Thatcher’s wife. But she was a 106 years old when she died. She
lived a good long life.
DE:
And Elaine told me (Elaine Thatcher is one of the people who is over the project)
she said that you were quite a historian; that you had done a good deal of local
history work.
TK:
Well, her grandmother was not Mormon, and her grandmother’s father John oh…
I’m pushing 90 and I have, I don’t get instant recall of names. What was his last
name? Anyhow he was director of music. He came from Wales. He was director
of music out here in Benson Ward for different wards out there. Went to church
there all the time; but never joined the church.1 And he was the first Postmaster
out there. And his, he had to make a name for it. Wasn’t Benson then; he called it
King. And I have postcards from there that were never used. King, Utah.
DE:
Before it was called Benson it was called King?
TK:
King. Uh hum. Yeah. But I don’t know. I was trying to just think of other things
that maybe…
DE:
Some of the things that we’re looking into are the land use policies. The way the
canyon has been used. What are some of your views on land use policies?
TK:
Well, they put a stop on issuing any permits for homes up there. And they would
like to get rid of all of them. But that’s going to be a hard thing to do. I know they
had a committee a number of years ago do a massive study on that. And there
were some 98,000 summer homes on government land [all over the country]. And
they recommended that Forestry sell that land to the people that owned the places
and get out of the business. Don’t do it anymore.
Well, poor old M.J. Roberts, he had to call a meeting on that, you know. And I
kept asking when he was going to get to that part. And finally he was getting
angry about me asking him. He didn’t want to get it. He said, “You couldn’t
afford to buy it.” He said, “We want $3,000 an acre.” I said, “I’ll give you a check
right now for it.” [Laughing]
But they never did do it. They never sold them. They still lease the land. And it’s
high now, but the lease is not as high as the areas put on taxes, things like that,
you know, and insurance for up there. And I don’t know the taxes have gone skyhigh. There was hardly any taxes on those places [in earlier times]. They never
1
Note from Elaine Thatcher: Hannah Mathews Thatcher was 105 when she died in 1990. Her father, John
Mathews, was choirmaster for St. Johns Episcopal Church in Logan. He would walk to Logan from Benson
to serve in this capacity. I don’t think he ever attended the LDS Church unless it was for a wedding or
funeral.
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�did anything for them. But now the county, I think, on just a little place up there,
be $600-$700 a year on it. And they used to let students live there the year-round.
But not anymore; they got to be out of there, they close it.
DE:
You mentioned earlier some of the ways that you’ve noticed the way people use
the canyon has changed. [Track 7] You said it used to be a lot slower, and now
everybody’s in a rush to get to Beaver or to Bear Lake. Can you talk a little bit
more about that? How the way people use the canyon has changed in your life.
TK:
Well, yes. It used to, you know, you drove slowly up there because it was a
narrow road. And you could enjoy a trip up there. You weren’t hanging on to the
steering wheel wondering who’s gonna hit you next, you know, or something. But
now it’s a speedway going up there. Well, it’s getting to be the same way going
from Logan to Preston since they widened that. That’s 60 miles an hour now and
they go 70-75-80 on it. But it used to be an enjoyable trip to go up there. But I
don’t know; I don’t like it now. I go up to the Emigration Canyon going from
Preston over. Because it’s a bad road there, it’s narrow yet. You can go through
there and really enjoy it, going through, enjoy the whole place. And then there’s
Ricks Springs up there. I don’t think it’s even open anymore.2
DE:
Ricks Springs?
TK:
Uh hum. Everybody’d always stop there and get a drink. But I guess it was
dangerous to pull off there now. Or maybe it didn’t have no parking there after
widening it. I don’t know.
DE:
So it seems like widening, the widening of the roads and the making of the speed
limits faster has changed things a lot.
TK:
Yeah. The whole bit. And they had to widen the bridges. Then there’s that one
bridge up used, you kind of worried about even crossing it when somebody’s
coming the other way, ‘cause it was just real narrow.
DE:
And where was this bridge at?
TK:
Oh it’s after you . . . it’s quite a ways up there. I’m trying to think what the, it’s
when you’re going up high and there’s a deep canyon all around there. In fact a
fellow pushed a car off with his wife in it up there.
DE:
When was this?
TK:
Oh, a long time ago. Yeah. I think he went to prison for it. Because that must be a
150 feet down.
2
Note from Elaine Thatcher: As of this writing (Dec. 18, 2008), Ricks Spring in Logan Canyon is still open
and has pull-out areas for cars, interpretive signage, and a boardwalk for people to walk on going up to the
pool.
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�DE:
Now was this back when the bridge was narrow?
TK:
Uh hum. Yep.
DE:
So in dealing with the land use and the policies governing land use, have you, did
you personally have any hand it those? In creating policies? Or was there ever
something that you lobbied for?
TK:
No. The things that you used to argue about. They came up one time, for instance,
at me. I kept the lawn nice, because we had small children. And you have snakes
up there, you know. We’d have a rattler every once in awhile out there go across.
But I kept in down and one of the rangers told me I shouldn’t do that I ought to let
the grass grow. And I said well I’m not going to do it. I didn’t, either, because I
didn’t want my kids running out there to play you know, and stepping on a rattler
and get bit; because you never knew for sure.
But that brings up something else, you know, that… The students used that the
year round. They’d stay there the year round. And there was a couple of them.
One of them still lives over here in Logan. But he was kind of a real
environmentalist. And in fact he was against the North Slope pipeline in Alaska
coming down. But after we had the shutdown on oil coming in here for a short
period a long time ago. Well, he went to Alaska and he did write ups on the
pipeline. And he made quite a lot of money doing them. And he came back here
and he opened his own business here. I often have thought of him. He made all
the money writing all these things, you know. But I think he was hurrying them
up to get oil in, too. But they’d [Track 8] park in my lower parking and it’d be
muddy and they’d made ruts in there. So I called them one day, the three of them
up there and I said, you guys bring your rakes over here and clean up the mess
you left on my parking. They says, like what? And I said, “You’re all
environmentalists,” and I said “Look what you did down here.” I said, “You made
these deep ruts.” [Chuckles] But those same guys, I get, they used to come up and
we’d have, I had a fire pit and we’d do pit barbeques up there.
That’s something else I did too. When they used to have the Western Writers
Conferences here, I always knew who was coming and I’d do a pit barbeque up at
our place for the ones who were going to take part in it. Not the audience, but the
ones that were, and I met all these people, and I’d always have their book so they
could sign them. But I don’t know. They’re wonderful people, you know. The
only one I didn’t like, well, I guess he was alright. But he was different, was
Edward Abby.
DE:
Edward Abby?
TK:
Yeah. He was kind of foul-mouthed. But he’d have a couple of drinks, and start
in. But I don’t know. Wallace Stegner, he was a wonderful person. He just, they
were over to the house here, he and his wife two different times to visit.
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�But also this, the same ones, the environmentalists that I was telling you about,
one winter we went up to Mammoth Springs in Yellowstone and stayed up there
with a project officer and then the next day went over to, oh, what’s the, oh, that’s
awful when you can’t recall right quick. Anyhow it’s Windows Flat in the valley.
And we went over there and snowshoed in to get pictures of wildlife in there. Oh,
it was a beautiful thing. But they were worried about me. I was the oldest one of
them and they were afraid I was going to fall. But I made it. And oh, shoot. But
anyhow, we had lots of experiences like that. I feel I’ve had a good life. You
know, getting involved in all these things.
DE:
Had a lot of activities and things go on.
TK:
Well, in the early days. Now this is something else I guess I could tell you about.
We were very active with the foreign students. And back in the early 60s up ‘til
early 70s they had several thousand here.
DE:
The foreign students?
TK:
Uh hum. And a lot of them were from Iran, Iraq, and places like that. Arabia,
Egypt. But the main ones that came was from South America. And places that
don’t like us like Venezuela. The ones that turned on us, you know. But we had
lots of students. They used to call this house the Latin American Embassy. But
anyway some students were leaving to go home then they would bring students
coming in over and introduce them. So it was constant turnover coming in. But
we’d take them up the canyon. I don’t know, have barbeque and stuff up there.
And entertain them. But I don’t know. Do you have more things there that you
could . . .?
DE:
A couple of things that I would like a little, if you can elaborate a little bit more
on, with the writers project; when the writers came in. Can you tell us a little bit
more about that?
TK:
Well, yes, it was a fabulous thing to me. They had quite a large attendance for
that. And, of course, the big names of all of them that came in. I know our son’s
name was Timothy Shane. And Frank, [Track 9] I’m trying to think of his last
name just off hand. That wrote the movie, the story Shane. [A.B. Guthrie wrote
the screenplay for Shane.] He was here. And when he found out our son’s name
was Shane he wrote a whole page in the book and gave to him. About Shane and
all. But oh, Guthrie, and here a while back, I can’t get the names, I can’t recall
them real quick for you. But those, some of those people still come for other
occasions here.
Like when they have the Leonard Arrington lectures. Every once in awhile I’d go
and here’s an old face comes in. And there’s one from Yale, he was here a while
back and I went down to talk to him. We had a nice visit there for a while.
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�Because he had the old memories of having a pit barbeque. He’d never seen one
before. But it’s been a wonderful life here you know, and stuff.
DE:
Are there any ways you can think of that the writers project, and having those
writers come in and share that Logan Canyon, and experience Logan Canyon, that
affected the development of Logan Canyon? Or the land use of Logan Canyon?
TK:
Well, we used to use up all the parking spaces up there at Beirdneau when we had
these. But I think the people enjoyed them. Like Tom Lyons lived right there, he
was from the University. And I don’t know but Ken Brewer. Ken was a
participant in that. And then there was another one that died not long ago – Mark
Sorensen. [Omitted part of interview at this point.]
In fact there were other things they had, too. They used to have the
Lawman/Outlaw Group. And they had all the western stuff. It used to all be
published here. But they’d just last so long; it was almost like the Heritage Farm
out here. Most of that was up on the campus and they moved it all out there now.
But I was involved in that when they first started out there. The first manager was
from here, Sven Johnson [Johansen?]. But I think they’re doing a better thing out
of it now, over there.
DE:
That’s the Heritage … Was it the heritage ranch you’re talking about?
TK:
Farm
DE:
The Heritage Farm.
TK:
Yeah. Out there by Wellsville. Yeah. [Ronald V. Jensen Historical Farm]
DE:
What can you tell me about Austin Fife?
TK:
Austin Fife. He was a real good friend. He and his wife used to come over every
once in awhile. And they always had these wonderful stories.
There’s something that I never did see documented that over here in Wellsville
they had, one of the families that came in from the east brought slaves with them.
And when the slaves were released they took their name of Brad what, it will
come to me in a minute. Anyhow one of them was Pokey. And over here in Mt.
Sterling he squatted on a piece of land. And they had a quarry in there. And a lot
of the rock that went into these Wellsville homes [Track 10] came out of that
quarry. And they have the cemetery over there. For the centennial I got people out
of range science to come and clean that up, because there’s still a lot of people
buried there. And when I, they put something in the paper about it. And I said that
I was worried about two places there. Said I was wondering if there had been
slaves that were buried there. Because they had sunk in; and Wilma Hall over in
Wellsville, she’s the historian for there. She called me up and she says, “What do
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�you know that I don’t know?” [Chuckles] That was under their control then. I
said, “I don’t.” I said, “But they didn’t make tombstones for them when they
died.” I knew that. And I said, “I’m trying to also get more information on it.” But
I said, “Most of them migrated to Salt Lake.” And I said “I have the phone
numbers of them.” But how do you call and ask “Are you black or are you
white?” To talk to them. So I said I haven’t done it. But I don’t know. There’s so
many things that they have up there.
Now Malibu, right across from where Malibu is the area called Malibu. There
used to be a large, oh, dance hall built in there. And later became a scout place.
And then finally they just tore it down, got it out of there. Then down where the
Stokes Center is. That was originally a scout place. And then the Legions had it
for a long time.
DE:
The who?
TK:
The American Legion.
DE:
American Legion.
TK:
Uh hum. And now, of course, it was kind of abandoned because the Legion was,
well, ‘cause they were dying off from World War I and II. That was the day. Not
going to be around too long.
DE:
Is there anything that you could tell me about Hardware Ranch?
TK:
Yeah. I love the Hardware Ranch up there. In fact, there’s a book on it called
Twenty Eight Years on the Anderson Ranch by Leon Anderson. And a number
of years ago when they had a young ranger up there, and they wanted to start
having an elk festival. So I called all over to find out who could give me
authorization to republish that book. And I found Leon’s son in Hawaii and he
gave me permission to publish a thousand of them. And we printed them for $3.00
apiece; we were selling them for $10 using the money for that up there to help
with that. And when I first came here the Legion in the wintertime had a trailer
that they’d park at the entrance up there and they sold hot chocolate and coffee
and hot dogs and hamburgers and stuff to people. Used to be a lot of people went
up there in the winter. And I don’t know that’s the way they raised funds for it.
But then the first year that they had this elk festival.
DE:
What festival was that?
TK:
Elk Festival
DE:
The Elk Festival
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�TK:
Yeah. Dan Christensen is the Superintendent up there. And he’s doing a lot of
new things. What’s his . . . Thad Box.
DE:
Thad Box
TK:
Yeah. He was the first speaker up there. I like him. He’s really a neat fellow. Even
at his house, the house he lives in there on Center Street. I had a call from Barbara
Howell one time, wanted to know if I’d come over and tell her about some light
fixtures that she had. And I went over and they were art deco style. And she was
showing them to me and wanted to know what they were worth. And I told her.
Well, then I was on the committee for places that we give awards to for
maintaining. [Track 11] And Thad’s house came up and we went down to take a
look at the house, and I looked at it and I said, “Oh, those fixtures, you got those
from Barbara Howell.” And Thad says, “You’re the culprit that told her what they
were worth.” [Laughing] But I get involved in a lot of stuff like that. I don’t
know.
But anyhow, I was afraid they were going to try to do away with Hardware
Ranch, maybe sell it or something. And so I’ve encouraged Dan to do everything
he can, you know. He’s doing a lot of new things up there now. And I know this
one time, the first year they had the festival later. They had an all day, oh, kits that
they got from Lowe’s and the Home Depot to make bird houses and things. And I
stacked up a whole bunch of bird seed. And the kids would put those together up
there for something to do, you know. And they began to draw a pretty good crowd
up there to that. And I loved driving up. But that’s another canyon where it’s all
privately owned up there now. Yeah, when I came here you could walk anywhere
you wanted to you know. It was privately owned then, but people didn’t, there
was just one place up there, the Adams Homestead.
DE:
The Adams Homestead?
TK:
Uh huh. It’s still there too. In fact, it’s still in the Adams family. He was the
principal here at the high school. And they homesteaded up there, and I think this
is the third generation now, has it up there. The house is still there and all. But it’s
a, I don’t know, it’s a—when I used to come over the summit up here and look
down I could tell every little town because there was just a block or two of lights.
Now the whole valley’s lit up. Everything, you know, just…
You know I gave, this is off the subject, but, I gave . . . after my wife passed away
I was going through things she had. And I had two years of newspapers bound
like they used in the newspaper office. And I thought they ought to be over where
somebody could use them, because the age of them and all. And I took them over
to Ann Butters and gave them to her.
DE:
Who’s Ann Butters? [USU Special Collections’ Western and Mormon Americana
Curator]
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�TK:
She was over Special Collections.
DE:
Okay.
TK:
At that time. Anyhow, she was amazed because they were from, there was a
Boston Record it was 1818 and 1819. And it was still very legible. No
deterioration on them. But they had all the stuff in there about slave ships coming
in, and missionaries going off from a hundred different churches. Everybody was
sparked with religion then. But then I don’t know, just other things I gave them. I
had, let’s see, Campbell. Yeah, Thomas Campbell and his wife they were the first
Presbyterian ministers up at Mendon. And it’s their wedding pictures, oh, that
high and that wide, you know. It was left here when they left. I don’t know if they
left in a hurry or what. And this house next door to me, it used to be the Methodist
Church here.
DE:
And now it’s a home.
TK:
Yep. I’m getting off the canyon for you.
DE:
I noticed when I was walking up to your house. You have a lovely house here.
You’ve got this great old wood burning stove behind you that we talked about
earlier.
TK:
Yeah. That came out of Park Valley [Utah, in Box Elder County].
DE:
Oh did it? Out of Park Valley?
TK:
Uh hum.
DE:
It’s a beautiful old wood burning stove.
TK:
It’s usable. I keep that wood out there. When I’m sitting here in the evenings, I
put a stick or two of wood in there and light it. And then it’s a [Track 12]
different warmth and that. And then the kids, I have two grandchildren who live
across the street. They’re 19 and 22. They like to go camping, so they come over
and swipe a few to take with them for fires when they’re up camping.
DE:
Well, I guess probably one of my last questions for you with talking about, you
know, you have this very strong connection with Logan Canyon, with the
outdoors and in working with the writer’s project, and, you know, you had some
great experiences with that. Was there any piece of literature, any piece of writing
that really affected your connection to the land?
TK:
A writing of it?
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�DE:
TK:
Uh hum. Well…
Well, like Old Ephraim. That story lives on and on. I can tell you a story about
that too. Scott Bushman, one of the Rangers…
DE:
Uh hum, Forest Rangers
TK:
Forest Rangers. He wanted to fix up for the centennial an exhibit there in the
rangers shop. And he wanted to get use of the Old Ephraim’s skull that they had
at the University [in Special Collections, on permanent loan from the
Smithsonian].
DE:
Uh huh.
TK:
This is bad. I told, I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what,” I said. “That really belongs to
the Smithsonian. But, I said, they let the University use it here. And I said you
call, I had the Director of Government Affairs for the Smithsonian, she’s a friend
of mine.” I told him, call her. And I said, “She’d give you permission.” He called
her and she said, “Old Ephraim’s skull. We’ve been trying to find out where it’s
at.” [Laughing] Anyhow, he told her who told her to call. And so she gave him
permission to use it. But that was funny you know that they were upset that they
didn’t know where it was. But that’s records I guess.
DE:
Now what’s the story behind the Old Ephraim.
[For information on Old Ephraim go to USU Special Collections digital collection
at http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/Ephraim]
TK:
Well, supposedly, this fellow was almost attacked, and he’d been watching for
him because he knew he was big. And he came in as a sheep herder type. And I
don’t know they give that lecture here all the time. They love to give that to scout
troops and all, you know, the ones that read it. But he was buried and was over
nine feet tall, on it. But, I don’t know, it gets overused maybe.
But I think of Yellowstone. I don’t like Yellowstone anymore, because, when I
used to go up there, you could stop, the bears never bothered you. They’d come
right up and you’d give them something, you know. I was more concerned about
moose those days than I was the bears; because the bears were smart. They could
get a handout. But now there’s more foreign people up there than there are United
States citizens. And, besides its speed [limits] changed, widened the highways.
And now around Old Faithful, you used to set up fairly close and now it’s all
gravel; a great big area that’s graveled.
DE:
Well, are there any last stories that come to mind that you’d like to share?
TK:
Well, I got lots of stories, but they’re not all about the canyon.
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�DE:
[Laughing] Well, we’ll narrow it down to any last stories about the canyon.
TK:
Yep. I don’t know. When they, when this American Heritage group were meeting
out at the farm out here for a long time. And I was involved in that. But then they
got to the point where, well, in four months I’ll be 90 years old. That’s getting
pretty awkward you know, to try to keep up with the younger people in this stuff.
And I drive, but I don’t like to drive at night. I’m just apprehensive. I don’t want
to cause an accident. But I was involved out there and I loved it. In fact I was
[Track 13] involved with the whole thing out there when it first started. I helped
to get it going. I used to furnish stuff for the June wedding; things that you never
see around there anymore. You know what bone dishes are?
DE:
Bone dishes? Uh uh.
TK:
Well there like a, they’re shaped, there’s some over there in that thing. But, they
sit beside your plate. And when you ate chicken you put the bones over there.
DE:
So it’s kind of like almost banana shaped dish that you would put the bones in.
TK:
Yeah. Well those and butter pads and knife rests. Two knobs with a thing. They
had a plate so the knife wouldn’t get on the tablecloth. Stuff like salt cellars with
little dips, for salt shakers and things like that. I’d take them out there and special
types of linens and things clear back then. But it’s getting to where it’s just too
much effort to do it anymore. I have Indian things though. I was telling you Holy
Eagle used to come here.
DE:
And what was Holy Eagle again?
TK:
James Holy Eagle. He’d spend a full summer and he’d have his mail sent here.
And he’d go up to the post office every afternoon to get the mail. The kids would
go with him. Everybody in town knew him, him being here all summer. But
they’d stop at the, had a drug store up there then, on the way back and get a candy
bar or ice cream or something for each one of them. Well this one day it was
raining, the kids said it’s time to go get the mail. And he said, No we’ll wait till
2:00 and it will quit raining. Well, 2:00 came and it quit raining. So he went and
got the mail and came back and it started raining again. Well, they figured Holy
Eagle could do anything, anything at all. [Laughing]
But I don’t know, he went to school here one fall to the high school. And, well, it
was up at Sky View, before Mountain Crest was here. And they had him on the
stage for all the whole school and audience there in the auditorium. And he kept
going on and on and we had Indian kids in front of him and his big arms stretch
out and emphasizing everything. And it was so quiet in there and finally he was
going way past time. And I asked the principal, I said, you want me to stop him?
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�And he said, No, not on your life. He said, they’ve never been a piece where it’s
been this quiet. Let him keep right on.
DE:
Now do you remember was he Shoshone?
TK:
No, he was Sioux.
DE:
Sioux.
TK:
Hunkpapa-Minneconjou, a mixture. But he was a grandson of Sitting Bull.
DE:
Of Sitting Bull?
TK:
Yeah, very interesting. But I don’t know my daughter that passed away [Jennifer
Treibe]. She has an oil painting of him upstairs that she did. But I got lots of
pictures of him. He was mistaken a lot of times for the fellows in the movies. Has
long hair, white hair, chief. I had him down to the airport one time and this fellow
facing the other side from us. I told Jim, I said, you better smile a little bit that
fellow’s going to take your picture. He was getting the camera way down there.
He was just gonna see it. After he took it I asked him, I said, “You wanna know
who he is?” He said, “Well, is he the one that’s in the movies?” And I said,
“Nope. It looks like him, but it’s not him.” But he was, he was in World War I
and he went to Parallel school in Pennsylvania when they sent the Indians out for,
but he was a wonderful person.
[Disk 2, Track 1]
DE:
Well, thank you very much.
TK:
Say what?
DE:
I said thank you very much. You’ve done a great job as a historian. Sounds like
you’ve done a lot of great work and lived a very wonderful, interesting life.
TK:
Well, I love this stuff. You know doing this. And, I don’t know, there’s times they
talk about maybe I ought to be in assisted living. And I said, No, I’m going to die
here, because everything that I love is right here.
DE:
You’ve got it all set up in the kitchen here.
TK:
Yep. And I’ve, I was in the throes of passing this stuff on to my daughter; because
she was my sidekick for this history and stuff. And we discovered she had liver
cancer. And so some of it’s over at her place and I’ve got boxes of stuff that I was
giving her. And I’m not sure what I’m going to do now with it. There was a
fellow here a while ago, Ray Anderson. He lives down at, just out of Cedar City.
And he grew up here in town. And typical, there was a big family. There were 13
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�children and they were poor. And they were kind of pushed around. But now he’s
writing stories about the town. And he comes to me for information. But there are
things, I don’t know if you want, if you’re interested in things that you won’t find
in a history book.
DE:
Oh sure.
TK:
Well, Hyrum had a dairy up at Hardware Ranch, in that area. In the early days it
was called United Order dairy: For butter, cheese and stuff. Well, I often
challenge people when they tell me Peter Maughan was the first settler here.
DE:
Peter Maughan?
TK:
Yeah. I say that’s not true. The first one here was Thomas Garr, when he drove
cattle up from Antelope Island: [LDS] Church cattle and their cattle into the
valley. And over in Millville they built the, there were three different ones. Each
one built a cabin over there. The other two left and went back, but he didn’t. He
stayed. And he never married, but he had an affair with a Shoshone. They call her
Susie. Now whether that’s the right one or not, nobody knows. Anyhow she had a
baby. And she left it with him. And he was known as Jack Garr: Indian Garr. And
he found out the church hadn’t filed on the land that the dairy was on. So he went
over and filed on it and made them move it. And that’s not in the history books.
They had to move it. And that became what is Anderson Ranch today, was
established by him. That’s where the church…
DE:
So Anderson Ranch was established by Garr.
TK:
Yeah. By Jack Garr
DE:
Jack Garr
TK:
And Jack would come in to Hyrum, he’d drive his wagon and horses in, you
know. And he’d proceed to get kind of drunk. And on the way back one time he
went to sleep and the horses got off to the side of the road and it turned over and it
killed him. And so there was a big lawsuit. There’s a schism in the Garr family
over this, that don’t believe that really Garr, you know Indian Garr. And the ones
that are. But Jack Garr’s grandson lives over in Millville and he’s an old fellow.
He’s well educated. His name is Jensen. Monroe Jensen. Nice old fellow. I go
over and visit with him every once in a while. But I’ve got the whole history of
the Garrs and the lawsuit and everything on it. But to me it’s interesting that its
history but they don’t want to document it: unwritten history.
So, and there’s a lot of that. There’s another one here, the reason I got interested
when I retired was [Track 2] I found photographs done by Hugo Peterson. And
he was born with one arm off at the elbow. But he was an artist and a, well, did
everything. Photographer. And anyhow, I was looking for pictures that he had
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�done: photos. And I got quite a few of them I found. I knew where he was born
over here, where he grew up. I called a fellow that lives in his house. And it was a
log house but it’s had additions to it and covered with sheeting now. Anyhow, I
asked who he bought the house from and he told me. He said, this fellow. And I
said, “Do you know how to get a hold of him? Oh, he’s an old man and he’s
dead. Well, I didn’t take that. Went to the Salt Lake phone book and I found this
Frank Boyd down there and I called him. And that was him. And he was a
grandson of Hugo Peterson. And he came up here. And I had a lot of information.
In fact I had their grandparents’ photos: big ones. And I just recently gave them to
his sister so they’d be in the family. But I don’t know; we became very good
friends over this. And I get a lot of data from them on it. But it’s just things I’ve
done.
In fact I can tell you the story of how I got the data on them. I had a fellow, there
was a Grover Christensen here in town. And I knew he had died and he had no
children. He had adopted a boy, the boy died before he did. And his wife had
died. And he married a May Nielson. And when May died, I wanted to find out
what she did with his documents and things. And they told me she gave them to a
woman across the street, a Mrs. Huron. So I went over to Mrs. Huron and asked
her if she had them and she said, “I have.” And she gave them to me. But she said,
“I wasn’t a relative. So I gave them to Mrs. Croshaw over in Brigham, a cousin.”
So I knew Mrs. Croshaw; So I went over to see her. And I said, “Do you have
those?” “Oh yes,” she says, “I’ve got all that stuff.” I said “Could I borrow some
to reproduce some of it.” And she goes and gets two great big cardboard boxes
and these two big pictures. And I said, “How much of that can I borrow?” She
said, “You can have the whole damn thing.” She said, “I didn’t like him.”
[Laughing] I waited for her to say something else. She said, “He’d come over here
and we had fruit farms.” Said, “He’d get cherries, he’d get apricots, he’d get
peaches.” And she said, “He’d never pay for them.” She said, he’d look me in the
eye and he’d say, “If you think you’re getting any of my money when I die, you
better think again.” And they were cousins.
But anyhow, here I have all that data, you know. And there’s a lot of stuff I’ve
never published, you know, on it. Because I’m telling things that maybe…
DE:
Is there any of the kind of unwritten history stuff about Logan Canyon that you
feel comfortable talking about?
TK:
Well, I don’t know whether there is or not. This fellow that just wrote the recent
book from National… well, teacher [referring to Michael Sweeney and his book
on Logan Canyon that was published by National Geographic: Last Unspoiled
Place: Exploring Utah's Logan Canyon.]
DE:
The journalism professor.
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�TK:
Yep. He was going to come over and talk to me about St. Anne’s. But then I think
he decided there was too much controversy over it. And he didn’t want to get that
in his book. But I have his book here. But I don’t know. I don’t know. Are you
LDS?
DE:
Uh, yeah.
TK:
Well, I’m Catholic. But I have to tell you. I told you I got the Caine Award for
that. But also they’re going to tear down the old stake house; it’s on the corner
here. It’s abandoned now. And a lot of people came to me about what could I do
about that. I said, “Nothing.” But I did do something. They were gonna tear it
down, [Track 3] but I took the initiative to call the Director of Temporal Affairs
in Salt Lake and asked if they would consider donating land to Hyrum for a little
children’s amusement park. And I think they’re going to do it. So it’s a two level
park. And it would just be ideal to get trees in there and have it; it’s not big
enough for too many things. But we don’t have any parks on the west side of
town. And so I called the Stake President and the Bishop and told them. They
were amazed that I talked to that level. I think they were afraid to.
But I figure if you talk to the head honcho. Just say, when we had foreign
students, Dr. Chase was president of the University then. I called him one day and
I said, “Dr. Chase, Eduardo Zapata, they’re not going to let him register for next
year.” And I said, “I don’t know why. I think you ought to know that his family in
Venezuela are the head of the Christian Democratic Party. And that could get
serious, not letting a son register here.” Oh, he said, “I can overrule the board on
that.”
So anyway I called him back later. And he says, “Well, I found out, he flunked
everything except one, you see, and he’s got an A in that.” And then I says, “Well
what was that?” And he said, “Soccer.” And I said, “Let him go home then. Tell
him to reregister as a tourist to come in and get things started again.”
And Eduardo went home and he called me from there. He was upset, he couldn’t
get back in. [Chuckling] But there’s so many. We had some high ranking people
here for things. I don’t know if you want to know. Maybe I shouldn’t tell those
things. The University and Venezuela were going to establish an irrigation college
in Caracas. And we were so heavily involved with foreign students from all over
there that they asked if we would work with Dr. Grant Reese and his wife for a
reception for the ones coming in. And I said, “yeah, that would be great,” you
know, so we were making all the arrangements and some of them arrived on
Sunday and they called up here about how did they get to Logan. And I said, “Just
cool your heels. You’re not supposed to be here until Monday.” Terrible, you
know. They were Ambassadors from the OAS. Well, they get here and they put
them up in the Metro Motel, it’s just the motel, the old one there on, up by
Frederico’s is it.
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�DE:
Okay. So kind of right as you’re heading out towards the canyon.
TK:
Yeah.
DE:
The hotel there.
TK:
Well, anyhow. They put them up there and they’re calling for room service. They
said, “We don’t have room service.” They wanted drinks, you know. And the next
thing, they go to the meeting and it’s in, we call it United Nations Room. It’s got a
horseshoe shaped table they all sat around. One of them was smoking a cigar, and
so he had to put it out. Another one wanted to know if they had coffee. I said,
“We don’t have coffee here.” Finally one of them gets up he says, “I thought this
was a joint venture thing.” He said, “I’m not staying here, if it’s one sided I’m
going home.” And oh, he broke the meeting up. Well they told, called Grant in
and told him, they said, “Don’t get involved in that reception, leave it alone.”
So I said “Well, we’ll have it anyhow.” And I called these Latin students and I
said, “We’re gonna have two bowls of punch.” I said, “Bring whatever you’ve
got.” Because they’d have rum and everything you know. And I said “We’ll have
sin and some: some with and some without it.” And then Sunday, what do you get
them? Pizza. No place open. So I order a whole bunch of pizzas there. We had
tables set up nice. But they had interpreters from Washington [Track 4] here.
And one of them came up to me and said, “Does the University always do things
like this? Oh no! I said, “This is very, very unusual.”[Laughing]
So anyhow they got straightened out and they went ahead with it and got it going.
And it turned out they put Hermano Scotegi [?] (he was from Caracas; just got a
doctorate degree at the University), and he was the first president of the college
down there – Joint Venture College. But I don’t know. It’s always been
interesting living here.
DE:
Very interesting. Well, this has been Darren Edwards interviewing Ted Kindred.
Here in his home in Hyrum, Utah. Thank you again for your time. The date is
August 13, 2008.
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�
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<a href="http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/LoganCanyon/id/334">http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/LoganCanyon/id/334</a>
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Hosted by: Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library
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2012-11-05
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Title
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Ted Kindred interview, 13 August 2008, and transcription
Description
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Mr. Kindred talks living in Logan Canyon at Beirdneau, his work with Thiokol as an engineer, his family activities up Logan Canyon, and his local history efforts.
Creator
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Kindred, Theodore J., 1918-
Contributor
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Edwards, Darren
Subject
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Kindred, Theodore J., 1918---Interviews
Kindred, Theodore J., 1918---Family
Kindred, Theodore J., 1918---Career in Consulting
Logan Canyon (Utah)
Saint Anne's Retreat (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Beirdneau (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Vacation homes--Utah--Logan Canyon
Sunrise Campground (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Camping--Utah--Logan Canyon
Sun dance--Utah--Logan Canyon
Holy Eagle, Chief, b. 1889
Land use--Utah--Logan Canyon
Roads--Widening--Utah--Logan Canyon
Entertaining--Utah--Logan Canyon--Anecdotes
Western Writers' Conference
Congresses and conventions--Utah--Logan--Anecdotes
Hardware Ranch (Utah)--History
Old Ephraim (Bear)
American West Heritage Center (Wellsville, Utah)
Cache Valley (Utah and Idaho)--History
Garr, Jack
Students, Foreign--Utah--Logan--Anecdotes
Medium
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Oral history
Interviews
Spatial Coverage
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Logan Canyon (Utah)
Sinks (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Hardware Ranch (Utah)
Blacksmith Fork Canyon (Utah)
Saint Anne's Retreat (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Beirdneau (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Malibu (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Guinavah (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Sunrise Campground (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Ricks Spring (Logan Canyon, Utah)
Utah
United States
Hyrum (Utah)
Cache County (Utah)
Utah
United States
Temporal Coverage
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1950-1959
1960-1969
1970-1979
1980-1989
1990-1999
20th century
2000-2009
21st century
Language
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eng
Source
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Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library, Special Collections & Archives, Logan Canyon Land Use Management Oral History Collection, FOLK COLL 42 Box 3 Fd. 7
Is Referenced By
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Inventory for the Logan Canyon Land Use Management Oral History Collection can be found at: <a href="http://library.usu.edu/folklo/folkarchive/FolkColl42.php">http://library.usu.edu/folklo/folkarchive/FolkColl42.php</a>
Rights
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Reproduction for publication, exhibition, web display or commercial use is only permissible with the consent of the USU Fife Folklore Archives Curator, phone (435) 797-3493
Is Part Of
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Logan Canyon Land Use Management Oral History Collection
Type
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Sound
Format
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audio/mp3
Identifier
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FolkColl42bx3fd7TedKindred
Date Created
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13 August 2008
Date Modified
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2008-08-13
Is Version Of
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Logan Canyon Reflections