[Linda Shelton:] This is Linda Shelton, and I am in Teasdale,
Utah interviewing Dwight Williams and his
wife, Carol Williams. I am also with Roma
Roderick, who is helping us interview, and
it’s
February 20, 2012. And we’ll keep this really
informal. We’ll just have a conversation,
but
we just have to use that formality to get
started is all.
[LS:] Dwight, tell us a little bit about yourself.
[Dwight Williams:] Well, on April the twelfth this year,
I will be eighty-four years old. I was born
on April 12th, 1928 right here in this house,
which was my great-great grandfather's home.
He built it in 1882 when the family came here
and took up the land and homesteaded what
is now Teasdale—what used to be called Bullberry
Creek and then was changed to Teasdale.
[LS:] Wow. That's amazing. That's great. Tell
us what you remember about your childhood.
[DW:] There's lots of it. My childhood was—I
guess it was a little different than most
of the young people here in Teasdale in the
fact that—well, I'll start by this: I remember
very
vividly hiding under that old table over there,
which is over a hundred years old, and the
Indians coming to our house for food. Of course,
as a youngster, I would hide under that
table, because my folks would say, “Now,
if you're not good, we're going to give you
away to the Indians.” And so that table
was my mother's table that has been in this
house
for a hundred years.
[LS:] Ah, that's fabulous.
[CW:] His oldest brother would be a hundred.
I'm going to tell you a little bit about his
beginnings, because he won't say it. He was
two years old when his dad had a stroke that
crippled him quite seriously and only twelve
when his father died. And, right after that,
his mother was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's
disease.
[LS:] Oh, my goodness!
[CW:] So, [during] his teenage years, his
mother was bedfast, and she actually died
on his twentieth birthday, so he literally
grew up with no parents. And in those days
in the community, you could do that, because
everybody was good, and everybody stuck some
food in your mouth, and you had friends and,
anyway—so, that—
[LS:] Who did you live with after your mother
died?
[DW:] Well, shortly after my mother died,
I lived here with my brother in the home for
a year or two. Then, I went on an LDS mission
for the church, and that took two years of
my life. And then when I came back, the US
government was ready for me to go in the Korean
War. So, instead of being drafted, I enlisted
in the Air Force and I spent four years in
the Air Force, and then I came back in fifty—
[CW:] Fifty-five.
[DW:] —five, I guess. And bought my brother—who
owned this place and the farm—bought him
out and then looked around until I found a
wife to live with me, and we've been here
ever since.
[LS:] Awesome, awesome. That's great, that's
great. Now, these Indians that came, would
they
have been Paiutes then?
[DW:] Yes, they were the Paiutes, who would
come here and—most of them at the time lived
on a reservation in Koosharem, just out of
Koosharem. That was the Paiute Indian Reservation.
But, the tribe's—I'll have to think a minute
about the old man's name, if I can think of
it.
[CW:] Pogneab?
[DW:] No, it was a different one.
[CW:] Walker?
[DW:] And they would come through the country
begging, because they had nothing to live
on, and so they'd just come through the country
begging for food. Then, once a year in the
fall of the year, we would get the Navajo
Indians, which would come from the Navajo
Reservation. And this is one thing I might
just as well get down on tape that bothers
me.
The oldest trail that I know of across the
southern part of the state down here was a
trail we called the Ticaboo Trail, and it
was an Indian trail that came from the Navajo
Reservation across the Colorado River at Ticaboo,
then it made its way up Ticaboo Canyon, across
what we call now, “the Coal Bed.” And
then it crossed the Thompson Steep Benches,
and on to Big Thompson—'off into the Gulf',
we call it—up the Gulf to Muley Canyon,
up Muley Canyon, and then on into the Burr
Trail or the Circle Cliffs, and then up a
trail they call the Indian Trail Bench, on
to the Boulder Mountain. And they'd hunt.
And then when they'd get through hunting,
they would come and visit all of us here and
trade for horses and Indian—they'd give
us Indian blankets for horses. So, that's
kind of my experience with the Indians in
my younger day.
[LS:] Wow.
[CW:] Well, now you've got to finish your
story. You were going to tell her because—what's
happened?
[DW:] The what?
[CW:] The park has renamed the trail—
[DW:] Oh.
[CW:] — and you've got to finish your tale.
[DW:] The thing that makes me really, er—
shall I say 'angry'?
[LS:] Um-hm.
[DW:] The park now has closed that trail—
[CW:] And renamed it.
[DW:] —and now they call it the Brimhall
Look-off, off into the gulch. They will not
even let a horse go off from it, it’s all
footman and— Yep, that was the oldest trail
that I know of and now it's closed.
[CW:] They've not only closed it; they renamed
it.
[LS:] Why did they name it “Brimhall?”
[DW:] [Dean R.] Brimhall is a, quite a prominent
person, who came into the valley here.
[CW:] Came into Capitol Reef.
[DW:] What brought him here?
[CW:] Well—can I tell that part of the story?
[LS:] Of course, of course.
[CW:] He and his wife had both been professors
at the U [University of Utah], and his wife
was a very famous actress at the U. Her name
was Lila Eccles Brimhall; she was part of
the Eccles Finance family. And he loved it
here, and so he bought a piece of property
in what was then Fruita, but is now Capitol
Reef and built the home—Does Al live in
that
home?
[RR:] Unh-uh
[DW:] No.
[CW:] Does anybody live in that house, Roma?
[RR:] They use it for uh storage mostly now.
[CW:] Oh. Anyway, he built, and he loved it
here. And he did lots of exploring—he did
lots of exploring over in Canyonlands—and
that was before any of it was a park. And
then Lila Eccles would come, and they had
a beautiful home up on the east bench of Salt
Lake—because I've been in the home; somehow,
they liked me. But he wasn't a part of the
community—he actually became a part of the—he
was the Hanksville/Caineville representative
on the school board for years, and was a contributing
part of the community, very much an environmentalist,
and was interested in, you know, now, what
disturbs some of us because it's just been
taken way too far, in our opinion.
But his wife continued to live in Salt Lake
and was—and the University of Utah would
have plays; she was often one of the lead
characters. She was a very pleasant, very
interesting person. So, that's the Brimhalls,
and why they thought they had to take the
Ticaboo Trail—which was an old, old, historical—and
rename it. I'm glad they—it's okay they
named something after Dr. Brimhall, but—anyway,
that's the story (long pause) as we know it.
[DW:] I think they've also named part of it—some
of the formations down in the gulch—like
the Brimhall Bridge and Hall's Creek. Some
of those names have been given to Brimhall
that we used that were not old names, like,
I say the—
[CW:] —Well, there were much—there were
many more early, early people, before Brimhall—
many years before Brimhall—that did lots
of exploring. There were the Pectols and the
Inglebys, and the—her folks and my folks
and—
[DW:] So, anyway—
[CW:] —none of them were recognized.
[DW:] —Now it's known as the Brimhall Look-off.
[LS:] The Brimhall Look-off.
[DW:] Uh-huh.
[LS:] Wow. Wow. Well, I can see why that would
be upsetting.
[DW:] Yeah.
[LS:] Absolutely. What are some of the other
things that you have feelings about that you'd
like to talk about?
[DW:] Well, I suppose the environmental group
feel that we're going to destroy everything
that we get our hands on, which is far from
the truth. Like I told you, my roots go back
to 1882, and that was long before the park
was in existence down here. And it wasn't
destroyed when the park came into existence,
but yet they have that feeling that we're
going to destroy everything, which I think
is just the opposite. The settlers who settled
here wanted to keep this place a beautiful
place, and they didn't destroy anything. I
was always taught [that] if I came across
some Indian relics, I was never to touch them:
leave them alone. I know where there's Indian
graves. I was taught, you do not disturb those
graves. Well, that was our philosophy, but
now they come in, and if I show someone an
Indian grave, they'll bring a crew in and
dig it up.
[LS:] Ah, yes.
[DW:] So, some of those things bother me—that
they give us the title of being the destroyer
when they are really the destroyers.
[LS:] You feel a great contradiction there.
[DW:] Yeah, that's right.
[LS:] And you were taught respect.
[DW:] That's right. We respected the—
[LS:] For the antiquities.
[CW:] Oh, and so was I. The reason I lived
here was my dad fell in love with this country,
and we took care of it. You didn't leave your
trash and you didn't—
[DW:] I can tell you one story here that my
Aunt May, who lived just up the road here—I
think
his name was Teewaq.
[CW:] Yep.
[DW:] I could be wrong on that, but in my
mind it's Teewaq. And he was a very cruel
Indian.
And he had a little family, and my Aunt May
told me that one night Teewaq and his wife
was camped—they used to camp right up here,
just west of us on what we call the
Orchard Hill—and they camped right there.
And the baby got crying in the night and he
got up, got a-hold of the baby, mashed its
head. And it's buried right up here on Orchard
Hill.
[CW:] On our property.
[DW:] So, those Indians weren't, you might
say—as you might have always thought—a
kind, loving people to their own. Some of
them were very mean people.
[LS:] How shocking!
[RR:] Yeah.
[LS:] Oh. That's terrible. When did your parents
come? Were they the first in your family,
or were your grandparents here?
[DW:] My grandparents were called by the Latter-Day
Saint church—the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints—to go down and settle
the Muddy River. Now, that's down next to
Las Vegas there, in that area. And they, at
first—I've had to have my mind changed a
little by some research. What they used to
tell me was probably not the truth. The story
that they always told me was that they got
as far as Parowan, Utah. And the Indians and
the Territory of Arizona were so mean to the
Mormons that Brigham Young called the mission
off and said, “You can go anywhere you want
to go.”
[LS:] Hmm.
[DW:] Well, I thought at that time that my
folks then went to what is now Escalante,
which wasn't [named] then, but—I guess it
was called Potato Valley; they named it Potato
Valley. But to get back now—to correct that—I
now find from the records that they did go
all the way to the Muddy River. And then,
like I mentioned, the Indians and the territory
of Arizona were so mean that they came back
to what is now Kanab. And then from Kanab—they
spent a year or two there in Kanab—and then
they came into what is now Escalante and started
what is now Escalante. They were there in,
well, somewhere in the late seventies—1870s;
they came into Escalante.
[LS:] And these are your grandparents.
[DW:] This is my grandparents—
[CW:] His Williams grandparents.
[DW:] And my great-grandfather and my grandfather.
[LS:] Hmm.
[DW:] And then, my grandfather and my great-grandfather
with the Colemans heard about this place on
this side of the mountain—of the Boulder
Mountain, and so they came to what is now
Teasdale. And they settled here in Teasdale—and
it was known as Bullberry Creek, and they
came here in 1882, and took up their land,
so—homesteaded their land. And, like I said,
this home we're sitting in now, was built
in 1882 and this was—
[CW:] The original part was—
[DW:] —this was my great-grandfather's home.
And my grandfather lived in the house next
door. It’s been torn down and a new home
built, but my grandfather lived there and
my father. And so, then we've been here since
1882.
[CW:] The first part of the house is an adobe
home—the back two rooms, back there. And
that the first part of the—I just want to
mention something about the settling. When
I was a kid, my family moved to Wayne County
when I was just little. My dad was sent here
as the first cheesemaker, but, then I went
to grade school in Loa. And then, when you
study the history, you think everything came
across the park, the Blackburns, the Taylors
and the settlers of Loa, but when you get
into Wayne County history, every community
has a clear, different history.
[LS:] Ah.
[CW:] It's not somebody out of Loa that moved
to Teasdale or Torrey or Caineville or Hanksville.
Every community has a distinct, beginning
history that is not connected to each other.
And Steve Taylor is doing pretty good research
of getting that put together, but that was
kind of a revelation to, you know, the people,
because they teach it as if it was one, but
it's very—the stories are very distinct
for each community.
[LS:] Interesting. Interesting. Rather than
just progressively going down the river—
[CW:] Right.
[LS:] —it all happened in a unique—each
has its unique story.
[CW:] Beginnings. Exactly.
[LS:] Wonderful, wonderful. What a great,
great story you have. And so, what do you
remember, Dwight, about growing up here, besides
hiding under the table from the Indians? What
about your school and early life here?
[DW:] The schoolhouse used to sit—if you
were going out of town north here to the cemetery,
just north and the school just sat south of
the old cemetery, and where the park, right
now—it was quite a modern school building
that we had built. It had restrooms. You didn't
have to go outside. The restrooms were down
in the basement. As I went to school here
as a young boy it had, let’s see—four?—four
rooms. And there was, I think, two grades
in each room and there was a teacher for each
room. Like, the first and second—they didn't
have kindergarten, but they had first, second,
third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh and
eighth. And then we had—after you got to
the eighth grade, then you went to Bicknell—to
the high school—we called it, up there.
There was four teachers, most of the time
in the school, that taught us and it was a
good, good system. We had a good school system
here.
[CW:] Mine was just a little different. I
grew up in Loa, and there were two of those
big old two-story stone buildings that the
schools [were] on that same lot, and they
used some of the same stone. But the school
that I was in had one spigot of running water
and our—we had outdoor toilets, two-seaters;
and we didn't have any, not in either building.
And I went to —six grades in the building
that was in the center of the block, and then
there was a building down on the corner, where
the south entrance of the elementary is now,
and it had been the bank, you know. Main street—Loa's
main street used to come down that street,
and that was the main street. And there was
a building that was the bank, and then it
was the library. And I went to seventh grade
in a top room of that school, and they used
to have school lunch in the top floor of the
old school, but there was a gymnasium.
And you know, I think [for] sure Dwight did,
too; there was a pot-bellied stone in the
middle of each room. But I never did have
to share a grade. Well, I finally did my last
years, but there were enough kids in Loa my
age—twenty-five of us in first grade. Now,
Roma, that's very different from what—there
were twenty-five of us just from Loa. And
so, we never did have to have two grades.
And I've wondered—until recent years, mine
was the biggest graduating class; and most
of my class have college degrees. They didn't
get all of them right out, but they've eventually
gone back. And I've wondered if part of the
reason was that we had the privilege of not
having to—we had one teacher, and—I don't
know. Then, I think another credit is we got
Mr. Lee for three years for English, so we
could all pass him. But, she can tell you
about that one. So, you know, like I said,
it's
a little bit—but each town had a school.
[DW:] Teasdale was a very progressive town.
[CW:] Probably the most progressive.
[DW:] Probably as progressive as any town
in the county. It had one of the first water
systems, culinary water systems that was put
in. And then it had one of the first total
pipeline irrigation systems that were put
in, in the valley. So, and we used to have
two stores here in Teasdale.
[CW:] You had the church.
[DW:] We had the church. Our church was a
little different than most churches in that
the chapel part was over here a block. But
the recreation part of the building is this
old rock building that you see in the background
here. Separate from the church building itself.
And the reason for that was that, they felt
that they needed some recreation—a place
for recreation and they didn’t want to have
it in the church because it was too restricted.
So, the fathers there in Teasdale decided
they would build a recreation hall and so
they built that old recreation hall over there.
And I’ve read not too long ago about the
completion of it and what a celebration they
had because most—the reason that each town
had to have some place for recreation was
that we were so far apart that it was hard
to get from here to Loa or from here to Torrey,
and so each town had a place for recreation.
And this was one of the first down in this
end of the valley that was built for the sole
purpose of recreation.
[CW:] But there were dances almost every day
even when I was a kid, and still when you
were a kid there was a dance somewhere, probably
every Friday and most Saturday nights. And
everybody learned to dance. There were orchestras,
live orchestras and then it got so you couldn’t
afford, you couldn’t find an orchestra and
you couldn’t pay for it if you found it.
But we had live music, we learned how to dance—danced
every weekend to live music.
[DW:] I remember Emery Porter, he married
one of the Coleman girls and lived right over
here but, he came back a few years after.
Well, they moved away, and he came back and
he came into the old recreation hall and he
said to me, “Dwight you know what that stage
needs?” He says, “It needs me up there
step dancing knocking the dust off of that
thing.” He was a great step dancer and oh,
he loved his step dance. And he’d really
go.
[CW:] We’d call it clogging now.
[LS:] Oh ok. How neat. Why do you think Teasdale
was so progressive?
[DW:] We had four or five families here that
were big sheep people, and then we had four
or five families that were in the cattle industry.
And so, they had means. And –
[CW:] They had money.
[RR:] So, what are the names?
[DW:] King was in the sheep business. There
were four King brothers. They were in the
sheep business here and then—
[CW:] The Williams were in the cattle business.
[DW:] The Williams and the Colemans were in
the cattle business. And, so it was a progressive—
we were really progressive here in Teasdale.
[RR:] So, Coombs would be one of, considered
one of the rich—
[CW:] Well he married one of the Williams’
sister. Guy Coombs mother is a sister to his
dad.
[DW:] Coombs and the Williams are connected
to—
[CW:] He and Barbara Pace are first cousins.
[DW:] That’s the woman that you just saw.
I and her are the only ones left of that generation
now.
[LS:] Oh, my goodness. So, you and Barbara
Pace are cousins?
[DW:] Yes, and we’re the only ones left.
[CW:] Barbara Pace is ninety years old, and
she can see without glasses.
[DW:] My, my father was Gustavias Williams
and Barbara Pace’s mother was May Williams,
a sister to my father. And then they had two
other—they had one other brother and what—two
other sisters? Two other sisters. Well, in
1910, most of the family then were called
to go to Canada and pioneer in Canada, and
so they went to Alberta, Canada and bought
land up there. And so, the only ones that
was left here was my Aunt May Coombs and my
father. All the others of the Williams family
went to Canada,
[CW:] His cousins
[DW:] To homestead up there.
[CW:] And then his mom’s—
[DW:] And then my mother, I’ll have to tell
you this story. My mother was from Idaho when
this transition of everyone moving around,
in about well the early 1900’s. They were,
one of the sisters had married a Covington,
and so they had moved to Blackfoot, Idaho,
and my father went up there to visit his sister
and fell in love with this lovely little girl
and just out of—there’s a little town
by the name of Thomas just out of Blackfoot,
Idaho—and so they decided to get married.
Well it took 'em one day from Blackfoot, Idaho
to —
[CW:] Well, it was several years, it was years
later cause she wasn't old enough. He went
on a mission and all; it was like seven years
later before he goes back to marry her.
[DW:] To get to Salt Lake where they were
married in the LDS temple there, then it took
‘em a day on the train to get to Salina.
Then they got on the buggy and it took ‘em
two more days to get to Teasdale. And when
my mother got there, she looked at my father
Gus and said, “Gus, I think you’ve brought
me to the end of the earth.”
[LS:] That’s right. That would be a shock.
I mean some people would regard Salt Lake
as isolated.
[CW:] Well, not out of Southern Idaho.
[DW:] But I’ve often wondered, I see why
the men could stand it here because of their
work they had. But I’ve often wondered,
how the women ever was able to stay.
[CW:] Well most women were local. Most women
came in early. There were schoolteachers that
came like Roma in later years, and young women
would come to teach school and marry a local
person. That’s how a lot of them got here.
Rex Brian’s wife and Lola Brown, and there’s
a lot of those women that came to teach, kind
of one generation later, came to teach school
and married local and stayed forever.
[LS:] And so, you’re wondering how the women
dealt with the isolation and the hard work,
the physical labor?
[CW:] Well even my mom—
[DW:] My mother, my grandmother trained to
be a midwife—my grandmother Williams. And
in her midwife deliveries, we have the record
that she delivered ninety babies and never
lost a one. Loraine Baker was her last child
that she delivered in Teasdale.
[CW:] But even my mom and my parents came
here much, much later. I was, like two, when
they came. And my dad just loved it, and I'm
not sure my mother suggested it, and she’s
ninety-nine years old!
[LS:] Is she still living?
[CW:] Uh huh. By herself.
[LS:] Oh, my goodness. Amazing!
[DW:] So, that’s always been a question
in my mind. How did the women ever stand it?
They were strong women I can tell ya.
[CW:] You men didn't give us much choice.
You can leave if you want but I'm not goin'
with you.
[RR:] My mother didn't grow up here, but she
loved it. She loved Wayne County.
[DW:] Yeah?
[CW:] Course she had a good education when
she got here. But some of her life wasn't
easy either.
[RR:] Oh no.
[DW:] She lived about as far out as anyone,
in her day.
[RR:] Oh yeah, Notom.
[LS:] That's great, great. Well, how did you
earn your living?
[DW:] Well, like I say, my great grandfather,
who was called to go on a mission, when he
came across the plains with the Saints, he
came to Salt Lake City, and now I found records
that he lived in the Thirteenth Ward in Salt
Lake City in the Territory of Utah. In the
year 1850, he recorded his
brand for his cattle, and we've been in the
cattle business ever since.
[LS:] Wow, wow.
[CW:] And I, I taught school, and then I got
a Master’s Degree in nutrition and went
to work for Utah State University as an extension
agent. Worked for them for thirty-eight years,
so—
[LS:] Amazing.
[DW:] But that was what brought my parents,
my grandparents into this area was the cattle
business.
[LS:] So, you got into the cattle business
fairly young?
[DW:] I bought in Halls Creek when the Baker’s
Ranch sold out in 1946, and I was about sixteen
years old. But before that time, my father
died at twelve, when I was twelve, and so
the estate was divided up. And I received
my portion of the cattle when I was twelve
years old, so I’ve been in the cattle business
since I was twelve years old.
[LS:] Oh.
[RR:] Okay, tell her what happened to your
property.
[DW:] We bought property in Halls Creek—might
not know it as Halls Creek but it’s just
right in the Bullfrog Basin, where Bullfrog
Marina is now. It was 1,300 acres there in
the ranch at the bottom of Halls Creek. And
so, we bought into that like I say, when I
was about sixteen we bought into that. Well,
I used to ride up the canyon there, there
was an old home there—rock home. And in
the morning when we’d be down there gathering
cattle, I’d get on my horse and ride up
the canyon and just at the boundary of our
boundary fence it went across, in the sandstone
ledge was a plaque, and this plaque said it
was put there in 1923 by the Bureau of Land
Reclamation. And I used to—and it was just
high enough that when I’d ride my horse
it was just eye level and I’d look right
at it. And I used to wonder what is that plaque
in that ledge doing there? Well, in the 1960’s
when Lake Powell came in, then I find out
that is the high-water mark for Lake Powell,
which had been surveyed in 1923, and so they
condemned all our land. Give us—they offered
us twenty-five dollars an acre for it—the
government and took everything.
[LS:] Oh, my goodness.
[CW:] Said you could either take the twenty-five
dollars or leave it. You had no other choice.
[DW:] So that’s my experience down in Halls
Creek.
[CW:] So, if you sort of sense, we get a little
irritated, he might, you know.
[LS:] It’s because he has a good reason.
[DW:] And as I read the story about the Mormon
trek down through the Hole in the Rock you
know, I used to think, why did the Mormons
go out there and set there for six months
blasting that hole down through the ledge
when they coulda came over from Escalante
and down. And Hall had a ranch just above
our ranch, the old remains of his ranch are
there just a little higher up in the canyon
and he had a ferry on the Colorado right there
and he ferried people across and the story
was— I never knew the old man Hall, that
was before my time. But the story was that
he was high enough up in the canyon that he
could take his binoculars and look down to
the Colorado River right there and they had
a flag on the other side you know if there
were travellers coming from the East going
West they’d put this flag up and then he’d
see the flag was up and then he’d go down
and ferry them across. And then if they were
coming from the West going East, they’d
have to pass right by his house so then he’d
take them down. So that’s always been a
mystery to me why they spent all that time
doing that. Cause that rock was there.
[CW:] And that Hole-in-the-Rock, I had the
privilege of goin’ down it before the lake
came in. Keith’s class, I was their class
advisor. That’s where we went on a senior
trip, and it was astonishing.
[RR:] Well it still is, even with the lake
there.
[CW:] We went down and the boys got—
[DW:] So, when I was talking to you bout how
the women ever stood it. Now that woulda been
a test for any woman to live in Hall’s Creek
or Woodruff or any of those places that were
homesteaded. Never see a, never see another
individual for months at a time.
[CW:] What Dwight forgets is that women had
no education, no rights. They couldn’t leave
if they wanted to. They had no place to go,
no way to make a living. When they made a
decision, they were done. And it’s a new
world for women now, and that’s one of the
reasons that pays too, because women had no
rights. They were lucky to marry.
[DW:] I think they had some rights. In this
old history book, right here, of E.K. Hanks.
When the Manifesto came and the Tucker Act
came into existence, this book tells me that
E.K. went to his three women, he was married
to three women, and he said “Do you want
to stay with me, or do you want to divorce
me?” Well, the book says two of them chose
to divorce E.K.
[LS:] Really?
[DW:] And so, they divorced him, and Thisbe
stayed with him, and they were the ones who
started the Floral Ranch. And then this book
tells about a lot of his experiences on the
Floral Ranch in the area there. And then,
I’ve known the Floral Ranch for, well—
in the forties. When I was big enough to ride
a horse, I used to go by the Floral Ranch
and one of the things that I remember very
vividly in my mind about the Floral Ranch.
Now, Knee had acquired the Floral Ranch by
this time. Knee built the big house up on
the hill there. They didn’t live in this
house; this book talks about it, the Hanks'
house. Although I’ve stayed in that house
often too, about every year when we’d drive
our cattle by, why, we used to camp in that
house. But Knee had the big house up on the
hill. I’ve never seen a windmill, but he
had a windmill with a charger on it. He would
charge his batteries so that he could—and
then he had a two-way radio, and he used his
two-way radio. And, oh it was a cold spring
day, I don’t know, it must have been in
April some time and I and my brother went
down there to get some cattle, and we rode
up to the home up on the hill, Knees home,
and he invited us in. His wife was an interesting
person.
[CW:] Well, he had two of them.
[DW:] Well, the wife that I’m talking about—
[LS:] This would have been Alice.
[CW:] The second one.
[LS:] The second one?
[DW:] No, the first one
[LS:] Oh, the first one?
[CW:] The mother of his children.
[DW:] The first wife. He invited us in, and
I remember that big fireplace and that fire.
And I backed up to that fireplace, and oh,
how I hated to leave that house and get on
my horse and ride off again. It was so nice
in that—
[CW:] The Knees were some of the first people
that my dad got acquainted with when he came
cause he loved Dr. Ingelsby, the Knees, the
whole thing. And we’d go down there, and
we knew Lurt and the first wife. Her name
will come to us. The first wife, she had a
voice like a man.
[DW:] Yeah.
[RR:] Vicky was her first son—her daughter,
and Joel was her son, but I can’t think
of her name.
[DW:] Alice.
[RR:] Alice? That was the second wife.
[DW:] No, that was the last wife. What was
her, anyways—
[CW:] She was a registered nurse that came.
Did she go on a—she went on a trip down
the river. And that—isn’t that how she
met Lurt?
[RR:] See, Lurt knew how to marry rich women.
Lurt didn’t come from money, but he knew
how to marry rich women.
[CW:] He had learned that, he had learned
the tourist trade the Indian place in Monument
Valley. What’s the big?
[DW:] Goulding’s Trading Post in Monument
Valley is where Lurt had got started and then
he came here. But before Hanks owned the Floral
Ranch, now I might miss somebody here, but
Hanks owned it and then a fellow by the name
of Baker and I don’t know whether Baker
leased it or whether he owned it. Now, why
I know it was Baker. My father had bought
some cattle from Baker, and we had one old
cow we couldn’t ever get, so we called her
the old wild Baker cow, and we finally had
to shoot her and bring her home.
[RR:] And eat her.
[DW:] And then get back on the horse. But
then there was Hanks and then Baker and then
Cook. No, yeah, then Cook, then Bullard and
then Knee, as I remember it.
[LS:] It’s great to have that history, yeah.
[DW:] Yeah, Bullard traded the Knee ranch
and got the money and bought right there next
to us in Fish Creek. Yeah, now that’s kind
of the way I remember it. There might have
been another
owner in there, but that’s the way I remember.
[CW:] Well, I bet you that UVU now has those
records.
[LS:] They might.
[CW:] With the, the— they used to do abstracting,
but when you change a property they don’t.
They can’t give you a—
[DW:] Knee’s last wife, Alice, loved Arabian
horses. And so. in the fields there they weren’t
much farmers. They didn’t like to farm much.
But there was still a little green grass in
the fields when they lived there. But she
loved those Arabian horses; she had some beautiful
horses.
[RR:] Well, she was a Goulding.
[CW:] Is that right? Was she— she was a
registered nurse, I know. Somehow, I have
in my head—
[DW:] Now, I’ll give her a little experience
about her, but black this out when I say black
it out. Roma told you that his first wife
had a very low voice, like a man. And, the
road conditions in Wayne County in those days
were, if it rained, and rained hard, you were
always stuck in the middle of the road somewhere.
Well, Otto Brink was coming up from the desert
and he got right there, oh just above the
Capitol Gorge and there was Knee and his wife
stuck in the road in their vehicle. So, Otto
gets out to help them. Well, he hears the—
he thinks it’s two men, it’s dark, and
so he thinks it’s two men there. And so
of course like a man, he had to go to the
bathroom, and so he just steps out there and
goes to the bathroom. And then when the man
that he, the woman he thought was a man came
around in the light it was Knee’s wife and
then he was embarrassed.
[LS:] That is great.
[DW:] So, you had to be careful, if you were
in the dark with Knee because his wife sounded
just like a man.
CW : But his son, Joel—
[DW:] But Roma was telling me, well Chad was
telling me that somewhere you got the information
that the old hideout up Pleasant Creek, that
Hanks used to use that to put his wife in.
That’s wrong.
[LS:] Glad to get that straightened out.
[DW:] The old, it was used as his hide out
alright, when the U.S. — See, I didn’t
know until I read this that his first two
wives divorced him and that, so he was only
living with one wife. I thought he was still
living in polygamy down at the ranch there.
But the story that my friends always tell
me—see, they always watched and when the
U.S. Marshal came over the mountain up here,
he always drove a white top buggy. He never
came in other than in the white top buggy.
So, the man folks and the word then would
come down the valley: the U.S. Marshal is
coming. Well, my father said then it was his
job to— and the rest of the young boys in
Teasdale here, when they heard of the marshal
coming. Why, the men would all take off to
the hills and leave the women.
[CW:] But there were very, very few polygamists
here.
[DW:] And so his job then as a youngster,
was to take food out to the men until the
U. S. Marshal left. And well what, we’d
go down to the ranch there, on Sleeping Rainbow.
and I think Knee called it—or Hanks called
it the Pleasant Creek Ranch or—Floral Ranch.
[RR:] No, the Floral Ranch—
[DW:] Floral—
[LS:] The Floral Ranch—
[DW:] It had been mentioned both ways in the
book, mentioned both ways, the Pleasant Creek
Ranch or the Floral Ranch, so, but anyway—
When the U. S. Marshal would come, why—
then the story was that he would go down and
get in the creek, Pleasant Creek, and would
walk up Pleasant Creek and, this hideout is
about, oh, maybe a quarter-of-a-mile above
the farm there, and it’s on the right hand
side of the creek as you’re going up the
creek and, as I remember it, it still had
the door frame in but he’d built a little
room back in that ledge there and then he
would walk up the creek and go up to this
little hideout and stay until the U. S. Marshal
left and then he’d come back down—
And then he’d come back out and it was used
as his hideout. Now, that’s what the old-timers
used to tell me it was used for.
[CW:] But but let’s back up a little bit—
[LS:] Um-hm.
[CW:] By the time Brother Hanks got to Pleasant
Creek Ranch he was not a polygamist—
[DW:] That’s right.
[RR:] Now, according to this book, he had
three wives.
[DW:] Yep.
[RR:] And two of them left him. And then he
still had Thisbe.
[CW:] So, he wasn’t a polygamist when he
lived at the Floral Ranch.
[DW:] Well, I guess not technically according
to this [book] he was not because they’d
divorced him.
[CW:] They weren’t with him is what I’m
trying to say. I don’t know how you divorced
someone when you’re a polygamist because
you’re not legally married anyway—what
I’m thinking of, why would there be that
story when those women weren’t there?
[DW:] Well, I think they still— they knew
him as a polygamist, and so they would visit
him quite often.
[CW:] Well, maybe once or twice.
[DW:] But anyway, and then the old road from
the Floral Ranch, well the—I’ll back up
just a little, the road to Boulder then left
Teasdale here and went down through Grover
and down what we call Sulphur Creek to Pleasant
Creek and then up Pleasant Creek to the Lower
Bowns Reservoir and then over from the Lower
Bowens Reservoir, it went to Oak Creek and
then up through the Salt Lick and up to Round-Up
Flat and then when it got to Round-Up—that’s
the top of the mountain and then you start
down—by then it went down, Long Neck into
Boulder—that was the old highway—and so
Truman Lyman used to tell me that their family
lived in Boulder in the early days and so
they would, Fruita was the place that raised
the fruit.
[LS:] Um-hm.
[DW:] So, instead of coming to Fruita and
buying fruit and taking it back to Boulder
to can, they would bring all of their canning
material and they would come to Fruita and
spend a week, can their peaches or whatever
there were and they would load them and go
back.
[LS:] Um-hm.
[CW:] I don’t know what they would get home
worth having if they—
[DW:] And so that old road that went to the
Floral Ranch also went down Pleasant Creek.
But then there was another one as you go down
out of Fruita and you go down toward the head
of the Gorge, there’s a rock I call the
Dinosaur Rock. Have you ever seen it along
the road there, it looks just like a dinosaur?
[RR:] Clear down in?
[DW:] No, before you get to th— -before
you get to the wash there.
[RR:] I know of the dog face, but I don’t
know the—
[DW:] Okay. No, this is, this is over on the
old—
[RR:] I know, but the Snoopy is on th—-
[DW:] Oh, Snoopy—oh, okay. But anyway, then,
the, the road that Hanks would use to come
to his ranch in Grover came up over the Miner’s
Mountain, and then he’d use that road up
over the Miner’s Mountain, to get to his
ranch in Grover. And now I’ve gotta tell
you a little funny story about that.
[LS:] Okay.
[DW:] Well, the sheepmen— see, would winter
their sheep up here on these mountains in
the winter. And then they’d go back in the
summer. And then in the winter they’d go
back down into the desert and winter the sheep
and so, we had a sheepman here by the name
of Oakland, Clair Oakland. He was the old
man Oakland’s son, and if you knew him,
he was a character All those Oakland boys
were characters. Anyway, it came time for
Clair to come down to the, now, the park has
come into existence.
[LS:] Um-hm.
[DW:] And so, the park met Clair out there
by Danish Hill.
[DW:] He said, “Now Clair we don’t want
you coming through the park with your sheep
this year. We want you to go up over the Miner’s
Mountain out at the old road.” And Clair
talked to him and gave him a bad time but
finally he said, “Alright, I’ll try it.”
And so, Clair took his sheep herd and went
up, this old road, I’m telling you, that,
that Hanks had used—
[CW:] No water. No feed.
[DW:] Up over this— what we call Miner’s
Mountain. Well now it’s fall, and it’s
time to go back to the desert with his sheep
herd, and so he goes down to the park to get
a permit. And they give him a bad time and
finally Clair said, “Now gentlemen,” he
said, “Look. I went up over the Miner’s
Mountain last spring with that sheep herd
and I had one hell of a time.” He said,
“I got down on my knees and I prayed to
my Heavenly Father that if I, if he’d help
me get over these Miner’s Mountain, this
time I’d never come back this way again.”
He said, “Now gentlemen, will you make me
break my promise to my Father in Heaven?”
[DW:] So, they gave him a permit and—
[LS:] That’s a good story. That is great.
[CW:] Might not work now.
[LS:] Might not work now, huh?
[RR:] So, did you ever drive your cows down
through the Capitol Gorge?
[DW:] Once or twice. Most of our permit trails
were— we would come down Sulphur and up
down Tantales, hit Pleasant Creek and go down
Pleasant Creek to Notom Bank—
[RR:] Okay.
[DW:] And then down Burro Draw to Grover.
And then one time we did go through the—we
thought we’d be like Clair, we’d try it
over the Miner’s Mountain and I’m like
Clair, if you’ll help me get through here,
I’ll never come back this way again—
[CW:] Well, and why would he want to put his
cows where there’s no water, there’s nothing
for them to eat?
[DW:] Well, if, if you’ve ever been up over
that old road—
[CW:] Awful
[DW:] It’s awful. I, I don’t know how
Hanks’s from the Floral Ranch ever— but
that’s the way they used to go, from the
Floral Ranch up over the Miner’s and then
to Grover.
[CW:] I went that way one time with the cows,
with my dad and Keith.
[DW:] Oh, it’s awful.
[CW:] I guess horseback it wouldn’t seem
that awful—
[DW:] Well, yeah, it does—
[CW:] Think about pulling a wagon or something—
[DW:] I, I think that night that we were puttin’
those cattle down over there, it got dark
on us but there was moonlight and the— I
don’t know if— we probably kinda exaggerate
just a little. But we’re lookin’ behind
us and Emory Snow, he was a, a— see, the
younger you were, the odder jobs you got.
So, you got the job of leading all the extra
horses while the older men, they rode lead
and you rode behind them with all the dust
and led the extra horses. And the story is
that one of them men looked back, and there
was Emory leading those five or six horses
and he said, “That country’s so rough,
it, those middle horses, they were tied head-to-tail
and you could just see under their belly they
wasn’t even touching the ground.”
[CW:] Emory was Vera Taylor’s brother?
[DW:] Yeah. Yeah.
[LS:] That was a very different way of life.
[DW:] Oh, yes. It took us seven days to go
from our ranch at Fish Creek to our ranch
at Hall’s Creek driving a bunch of cattle.
[LS:] On horseback.
[DW:] Uh huh. On horseback.
[CW:] When I first married Dwight when they’d
go in the fall to take the cattle down to
the desert, they were gone anywhere from three
weeks to a month. And in, and the same thing
when they’d go down and bring them back
in the spring. Now I’ve got to tell you
about the group of kids that are Roma’s
age. Several of them had parents that were
cattle people.
[LS:] Um-hm.
[CW:] And I was teaching school and I can
remember hearing, I guess it was Elvon and
Lana and some of you visitin— and I can
remember one of ‘em saying, I’ll be so
glad when my dad comes home, so we can quit
eating soup and sandwiches.
[CW:] When the men would leave, the women
would quit cooking.
I’ve always thought about that, because
they were gone a long time.
[DW:] Um-hm.
[LS:] Yeah, yeah. That’s right.
[DW:] Well, I, I haven’t let you ask any
questions. I’ve just talked—
[LS:] Oh, this has been wonderful! Wonderful.
No, that, that’s great. Any, anything else
you want to say?
[DW:] Well—
[LS:] What else—
[DW:] If you’d ask me it’d probably bring
something to my mind.
[LS:] Well, that’s ok. Do you remember when
the park was first made a monument and then
a park itself?
[DW:] Well-—
[CW:] Oh, I remember the park part, the monument.
My dad was very interested in that and we’d
kinda had mixed feelings about that because
he was excited. He was in government, he was
a state legislator, a representative and they
made him a state senator and he was a local
businessman and he wanted the place to, you
know, something for an income and something
to grow. And so it was a monument when we
got here-—
[LS:] Um-hm.
[CW:] And so that preceded— and I’m not
sure about that year but we, it was 1972 I
think—
[RR:] One
[CW:] One, seventy-one, and so we were very
much, we were very—and my dad, it was a
big deal and people were quite excited about
it and they used to call the tourist theme
that was, that it was always called— Oh
Roma, help, what did we call this place?
[RR:] Wayne Wonderland—
[LS:] Oh, Wayne Wonderland
[CW:] Wayne Wonderland! And that was the,
you know, anything, it was a sign, the—
[LS:] Um-hm
[CW:] And I remember the day the park was
dedicated and my dad was very much a part
of it— then. I, we were all quite thrilled
and quite pleased. We didn’t understand
what it meant for this little county to be
cut entirely in two by a national park.
[LS:] Um-hm.
[CW:] ‘Cause it means no power lines could
go through, no gas lines could go through.
The road is a miracle. And it was already
there. It wouldn’t have been through—and
if the park people themselves didn’t want
T.V. and power and telephones, it wouldn’t
be there, so, you know, it’s a two-edged
sword.
[LS:] Right.
[CW:] And so that’s when it was made a park.
That’s very much a part, I remember Senator
Moss came, and he had brought one of the Kennedy
brothers—he wasn’t there that day— to
see the place, sometime. They must’ve been
in the senate together, and I remember the
statement that he made. He said that if this
was back east every one of those pillars,
or what, those formations would have a separate
distinct name. They’re so beautiful and
so distinct, that everything would be a separate,
it would be that special. And I agree with
that, and I’m sure Roma agrees with that,
and we do appreciate the beauty and I don’t
think those of us who’ve lived here-—people
that come in here can’t like it any better
than we do, and that is something that we
deal with all the time. You know they think
that we don’t appreciate it.
[LS:] Yeah.
[DW:] Now, now on the other side—
[CW:] So, it’s a bad, it’s been a difficult
thing because it’s made life hard for people
who needed to make their living here with
livestock and—
[DW:] Now on the other side it has really
been very hard for those of us in agriculture—
[CW:] Oh, yes.
[DW:] Because they have stopped the grazing
on most of the park land and they—everything
now has—if you still can graze, it has restrictions
until you can hardly live with them, and so,
Pectol and them have, what was his first name?
Pectol—
[CW:] Ephraim.
[DW:] No.
[CW:] Ephraim Pectol. That was his name.
[DW:] Okay, Ephraim, and then a man by the
name of, oh, Hickman, Joe Hickman, not, not
the Joe we know.
[RR:] Right.
[DW:] Joe Hickman, were kind of the leaders,
that pushed to get the park—
[CW:] The monument.
[DW:] Now the monument didn’t affect us
too much because it just took in—it did
the people in Fruita because even when there’s
a monument, they had so many regulations,
they couldn’t live with them, you know?
And then as the years went on, it, became
a national park but the thing that happened
was it expanded and they expanded and it expanded
until it just about—
[CW:] Johnson’s last day in office, President
Johnson’s last day in office quadrupled
the size of Capitol Reef. That was his last
act, and he quadrupled the size of the park.
[LS:] Really.
[CW:] So, we would have had the IPP power
plant here, a lot of other things that have
tried, and so it’s like I said, the park’s
beautiful, we’re glad it’s being preserved.
What did they think we were going to do to
it, anyway?
[LS:] Yeah.
[CW:] And you know, the Lord made it—
[DW:] That’s like—
[CW:] But it has been—it’s brought tourists
and that’s wonderful, but it’s a difficult
thing.
[DW:] There was a woman that used to give
the park a bad time. Her name was, oh—
[CW:] I used to go to economic development
meetings.
[DW:] She was— lived right there across
from the showhouse in that white house.
[RR:] Evangeline Tappan
[DW:] Evangeline Tappan, I remember being
at a hearing with Evangeline Tappan about
the park and she said, “Well, look at it
this way. I don’t know how many millions
of years that has been there, and the pioneers,
they’d been here then over a hundred years.”
[CW:] And the Indians had lived here thousands
of years before then.
[DW:] “And it’s still just as natural
as it ever was” and she says, “I don’t
think that in our lifetime we’re ever going
to wear that park out.”
[RR:] She grew up in Caineville.
[LS:] Oh, oh.
[DW:] She, she was a—
[CW:] Smart.
[DW:] Smart woman, well-versed woman, she
could hold her own in any debate that you
wanted to get into in a hearing.
[LS:] Wow.
[DW:] She was good.
[RR:] She was an Osborn?
[CW:] She was an Ostberg.
[RR:] Oh, Ostberg.
[DW:] And then for communication, I’ll give
you this little example; my sister-in-law
lived in Caineville and right there at the
big Caineville mesa, the south mesa and the
north mesa and they used to run sheep up on
those mesas. Now it’s— [video ends; audio
only continues]
—nothing can go up there. It’s a primitive
testing area. But anyway, they ran sheep up
there, and so she used to tell the story of
how the sheepherders would stay up there with
the sheep, but they’d run out of food and
so they’d come over to the edge of the ledge
there and their farm was right there next
to the—and then they’d stand up on the
ledge and holler down to ‘em and tell ‘em
to bring ‘em food up. So that’s—
[LS:] Oh, my goodness.
[DW:] But years and years ago, and this is
something that maybe you don’t know. The
communication system in Wayne County was very
good. We had telephone lines that went all
the way from, through the valley here and
just the other day down below Torrey there,
I was driving for my cattle and so one of
the old trails I knew went along one of the
old, the old, old telephone line and so I
got on because a number of years ago I and
Carol’s brother, Newell—we went along
and took all the insulators off that old—those
old blue insulators—
[CW:] Now I’ve gotta tell you, okay? That’s
the wildest country you could imagine. There’s
steep canyon every—I mean, you don’t even
know they’re there. But they got home that
night, and my brother said to me, “Carol,
if one night, Dwight doesn’t come home,
don’t bother looking for him. You’ll just
have to wait until you see the buzzards.”
[DW:] Anyway, that old, that—we had an old
telephone line that went all the way down
through to Hanksville. It went east of Torrey
down through those canyons and down what we
call Gates Canyon and into Caineville, and
then it went over and down through the gorge—remember
them old posts?
[CW:] Yeah, it, it even went all the way out
to Floral Ranch.
[LS:] Even today, in Capitol Gorge you can
see those posts—-
[DW:] Oh, yeah. They went all the way through,
and the remains of that old line is still
there. I was just following it the other day,
on one of the trails. I was trying to show
some of the other fellas some of the trails
that I know. I know not very many people know
where that is, but I followed that the other
day. And then we had them, we had telephone
lines to Wildcat Ranger Station, we had telephone
lines through the Aquarius Ranger Station.
They were those old kind that you rang, you
know, you’d give ‘em three rings and—
[CW:] I was a senior in high school before
we got telephones in our houses though—
[DW:] But I’ll tell you the story. This
is concerning Roma’s grandfather and Emery
King, who lived right here in this house south
of us. Now remember, Emery lives here and
Roma’s grandfather lives in Notom. And they
said, “There’s no need for a telephone
line for those two men, they can just stand
out on their back porch and yell every day.”
[CW:] Oh, yes. My grandpa could stand out
and you could hear him all over Notom.
[LS:] That’s great. Oh, that’s funny.
And so, what, what caused them to take that
line out?
[DW:] Well, then it was updated, and the next
line that went down through went over the
top of the Miner’s Mountain and then to
Caineville and then about the same route,
but the route there’s changed, was changed.
And then that, then they did away with that
line and now it’s buried along the highway.
[CW:] And, and Caineville didn’t get telephones
until, in the turn of the, the 2000’s.
[RR:] No, Caineville got—
[CW:] I was in the, was in Christy Peterson’s
house when she got her first telephone call.
[DW:] That was the new ones—
[CW:] The brand new ones. But they didn’t
have ‘em in their own homes, where you could,
you know, make a phone call.
[LS:] Wow.
[CW:] And Caineville didn’t get a good water
sys—Newel put their new water system in
just like, the nine, you know, the nineties.
[LS:] Really?
[CW:] Well, and see the early people had things
that were quite [good], and then what we’re
trying to say, things got stopped and so it
was very, very difficult then to—and see
the Caineville, Hanksville telephone system
comes from the east up, not from here down—
[RR:] Actually, Caineville is the same as
Notom. Caineville, Notom, and Sandy Ranch
are on Beehive.
[CW:] Yes, and it—
[LS:] Uh huh.
[RR:] And Hanksville comes in out of Green
River.
[CW:] Oh, it’s a different one—and see
because it’s so hard, so we’re—who are
we? We’re South-Central. Ah, but, and so
long-distance—from my house to her house
is a long- distance call and yet we’re the
same LDS ward, we’re in the same county,
we’re the same— because it—there’s
that line across the county.
[LS:] Because you cannot take the line across
the park.
[CW:] No, no, they won’t let us put in power
poles, they won’t let us go underground.
You can’t go above ground—
[RR:] See, the park is the only place where
the road, just pavement to pavement is, all
belongs to the state. Anything outside the
pavement does not belong to the state, so
the state can’t even let—
[CW:] Do you know what? Remember when the
big rock fell off, the whole rock wall fell
onto the highway? I said to [?] “Tell me
about that.” And I said, “Did the park
help get that moved off?” And he said, “Absolutely
not.” He said, “The park owned it until
it fell on our highway.”
[CW:] And then we went to move it and they
wouldn’t let us put one piece of it anywhere
in the park.
[LS:] Oh, my goodness.
[CW:] And it was a whole ledge.
[LS:] Where did it fall, where was that?
[RR:] I’ll show you when we go back.
[LS:] Okay
[RR:] But it fell clear across—in fact,
there was no traffic—the, the bus that,
that would come up, and then somebody would
come down and pick up the kids—
[DW:] The kids would walk over the rock pile
to change buses. Yeah. Oh, we’ve had a good—
over a hundred years here and, well, since
1882. It’s been a good time for most people
in Wayne County, most of ‘em good, after
the war years a lot of the people left.
[CW:] Well, they had to.
[DW:] And that’s when the agricultural system
changed. There was lots of sheep, thousands
and thousands of sheep, more sheep than cattle.
But then after the war they, the sheep people
could not get herders, so they all changed
then to cattle. Now there’s hardly any sheep,
what, about two herds of sheep left, that
runs on the Boulders here, where there used
to be thirteen, fourteen herds-—
[CW:] Well, two or three things happened,
the guys that were in the service got G. I.
Bills and they went to school. And then there
were good jobs at GenevaSteel, good jobs at
Kennecott Copper. A lot of the guys went and
made a good living, some of them when they
were old and retired came back. But the town’s
about emptied out. And now Teasdale and Torrey
and Grover are two doctors in this house,
a doctor in that house, head of University
of Utah Art Dept. for ten years in this house.
A counsellor in some thing over in Denver
in this house. So, that’s who owns and there’s
lots—there are 120 well permits in what
I call East Teasdale up here that they are—hardly
a native out there.
[LS:] Are these all retired people?
[CW:] Well, some of them are here full time
but many of them are part time. The artists
that are
here are full time. Oh, you can’t imagine
their art. These two doctors I think are
from Florida. They won’t speak to anybody.
I think they’re in St. George in the winter.
The doctor in the stone house, he just retired.
They are out of Salt Lake and they’re
practicing Jews and they’re delightful,
delightful people. They’re very—we’re
good friends
with them. And good friends with the artists.
We don’t see these people.
[DW:] That might be interesting to note that
when these little communities were established
by
Brigham Young, you know, sent church people
out to establish them, 99% of them were
LDS. Now, we’re getting to be about the
minority here—
[CW:] Wouldn’t you say it’s 40/60 in our
ward boundaries, 60% non-LDS and 40% LDS?
[DW:] Like we said, in the ‘40’s they
all left after the war—they all left to
get good jobs and now
the oh, what shall I say, the retired people
have found us, and they’re moving in. So
it’s a
complete different set of people that live
here now than used to.
[CW:] Professors, doctors, attorneys, wealthy
business people that have— most of them
part time,
some full time. Some of them, this is their
primary residence, but they have money to
travel
and do—The two artists are still practicing
artists. He did retire, they both retired
from the
U.
[DW:] Before you go, I’m going to take you
over and show you the plaque on the old DUP
building about the settlement of Teasdale.
Then another very interesting thing—we have
some historical things in Teasdale, the old
hall over here. And then we have a house down
on the street here made out of bottles.
[CW:] Oh, that isn’t something—
[DW:] Did you see that?
[LS:] No, I didn’t.
[DW:] It’s right by Guy Pace’s, where
you were? It was right there, and we had a
woman by the
name of Nelson—
[CW:] Cora Nelson
[DW:] Cora Nelson, she had been a world traveller,
and she came here to Teasdale and wanted to
build. So, at that time the schoolhouse—she
wanted to put a museum up. She collected
articles from all over the world, and she
wanted to have a place to put them, a museum.
So,
they sold the schoolhouse to her. Then we’d
consolidated the schools, so they sold the
schoolhouse to her for a dollar.
[CW:] They sold it to Brimhall for a dollar.
[DW:] So, she could put her museum in there.
Well, it didn’t work. Then she used to hound
me
every day. Now I had an old log house that
we lived in, out south and east of town, and
she
wanted them logs on that old house to build
her a house. And she was alone.
[CW:] She bought a little bitty home, about
a three-room basement home—
[DW:] I knew she couldn’t build a house—but
anyway, she— I didn’t let her have the
logs and she
was mad at me after that for a long time,
but anyway, she told me one day, “You know,
just
Dwight, these little Mormon communities are
sure a good place to build a bottle house.
I
can go out here to this dump and there’s
just beer bottles everywhere.
[CW:] She’s one of the first people I knew
that was a women’s libber. She has been
married briefly and had one child, and the
time I first met her, she had no idea where
he was. And he would have been in his twenties
by then. He later came and—
[DW:] So, anyway, I’ll have to take you
around and show you the bottle house. Well
it came time to put the roof on the house.
Well, she wanted nothing to do with the LDS
Church, you know. No, but she wanted some
help to put the roof on. So, Brother Jackson
was the High Priests Group Leader, and so
he got the high priests together and they
bought shingles and went down and put the
roof on her house for her. But she would never
admit that it was the church. It was just
Brother Jackson and the others that put the
roof on the house, you know.
[CW:] And she didn’t have—her plumbing
started to not work down there, and I had
kind of made friends with her, and so I invited
her to come here. She came here once a week
to shower and to do her laundry, and she didn’t
ever want to be around men. And so, one time
she came and that’s when Dwight was probably
in the stake presidency and so he was gone
on a regular basis. And so, she’d come.
And one night she came, and he was home, and
she never came back.
[RR:] Oh, my goodness
[CW:] She was a fascinating person. She was
a writer.
[RR:] Well, she was not only a women’s libber,
she didn’t like men.
[CW:] Yeah, and then her son finally showed
up. His name was Peter and somehow, she finally
found him. She apparently had come to the
United States as a writer, and she met a man
from a wealthy, aristocratic family in New
York, I got. And she married him, and they
had this child and they came out to New Mexico
about the time as the famous painter, tell
her, the floral flowers—what’s her name,
come on you guys, you all know who I’m talking
about. Anyway, about that time they came and
that’s kind of what we call hippies—but
they weren’t hippies, the Bohemians, the
writers and the artists. Then that marriage
broke up and he took the child and apparently,
because of their connections, they got custody,
and when I first knew her, she hadn’t seen
him in twenty years and didn’t have any
idea where he was. But she was an excellent
writer, but she was nearly deaf, so it was
very hard for her to work, you know, to communicate.
But I found her very interesting. And when
I first came here. I didn’t know anybody
either. And she was here, and we used to hike
together but very interesting people. Like
we had the Jewish couple, and they’re Jews
by race, religion, practice. We had them for
Christmas Eve dinner, all the Christmas . They
were very gracious, fun.
[DW:] And then out here in our Teasdale cemetery,
we have the first bishop of Salt Lake City
buried. And that’s Tarlton Lewis.
[LS:] Oh, he moved down here?
[DW:] Well, his son, Beason Lewis was sent
down here— the church at that time took
a lot of the tithing that people tithed in
kind and so they would give them cattle. And
so, their cattle herds had grown so large
that they had to find new range for their
herds. So, they sent Beason Lewis and Brinkerhoff
down here to be with the church cattle and
so Tarlton, that was Beason’s father, came
down to visit him in the summertime and while
he was here, he died. Well, you couldn’t
ship him back to Salt Lake, so they buried
him out here. So, we have the first bishop
of Salt Lake City out here in our cemetery,
and then the bottle house. Oh, and then see
that old rock house right up through there?
[CW:] That was a hotel.
[DW:] That’s an old hotel that was in Teasdale.
We had a hotel here. We had two stores, one
little store set over there and one little
store set over here.
[CW:] When you go up past the church now there’s
a beautiful bed and breakfast and then there’s
that series of Pine Shadows cabins.
[DW:] So, Teasdale’s been a progressive
little town, and I guess it’s still progressing
but with a different type of people completely.
[LS:] A lot of changes.
[DW:] Lots of changes.
[LS:] You have wonderful memories and stories.
I have enjoyed both of your interviews. Anything
else that you would like to add?
[CW:] I’m going to show her one thing, and
this is personal. You don’t have to put
this on. Our oldest little boy was three years
old when he died of cancer.
[LS:] Oh, I’m sorry.
[CW:] And so, I’m gonna take you into the
living room and show you. It’s not part
of the history but you’re here and I’m
gonna show you.
[LS:] Of course. Anything else, Dwight, that
you’d like to add?
[DW:] I might say that Teasdale was kind of
a gathering place for people who then went
out and— alright as an example, the Lyman’s
and the Halls and the Buchanons and let’s
see, Haws, more Boulder people. They mainly
all lived here in Teasdale and then they went
from Teasdale over and settled the Boulder
country, those people. Kings, they were all
from the Teasdale area, so—
[CW:] There’s still quite a tie.
[RR:] Oh yes.
[DW:] Yes, there’s still a tie. I will tell
you this one story and we’re still looking
for it and you can come and help me and if
we find it, we’ll be rich.
[LS:] We’ll share
[DW:] My father had a—my father called him
Uncle Sam Coleman and when the kids went to
school and the teacher’d say, talking about
America and Uncle Sam, well they’d say,
“Yep, why we know Uncle Sam, he lives just
right over here, you know.” Sam Coleman,
he was—that family came here with the early
Colemans when they settled—the George Coleman
family when they settled Teasdale. But he
was an old shingle maker. He made shingles
for homes, and so he had mills all over the
mountains here. And it’s fascinating, his
great granddaughter, anyway she’d like—
his last ranch is up here on top of this white
hill, the old Durfey ranch up here and he
had a little old shingle mill up there. And
he’d cut those Ponderosa pines the right
size and then he’d bring down and he had
a steam house built that was—that he’d
steam ‘em in and he’d have a bend and
hot steam would blow in this bend and soak
these chunks of Ponderosa pine that oh, about
that big around, and he had a stump and a
big knife. I can still see that big knife
and he’d set this stump there and he'd pull
this big knife down and cut those shingles
on an angle so that the one end was thin and
the other end was thicker and then he’d
turn that and that is still there. But anyway,
he also had a mill on Bullberry Creek just
over this white hill here. And Parley Coleman,
who is the old gentleman that I know—well
I knew Sam too, but Parley was his oldest
son. And so, one morning when he was up at
the mill, the old milk cow had left. They
used to go up there and live in the summertime
to cut these shingles and the old milk cow
had left, so he sent Parley, who was 12 years
old to find this old milk cow. So, Parley
went up on the side of the mountain there
and finally found the old milk cow and she’d
had a calf so he couldn’t get around her,
but he followed her. And while he was following
the old milk cow through the rough country
up there, he came across this old digging.
And he said it was just like a hole in the
ground. Parley used to tell me this story,
so I believed him. He said there was a hole
in the ground there where the ore had been
brought out and dumped. So, he picked up an
old shovel and pick and said there was a piece
of blue vitrol ore or rock, and it was beautiful.
So, he picked that up. Well, he went for a
while following this old cow and was lost.
So, he kept following this old cow around,
and he came to what we call Lost Flat and
then he knew where he was. Well he was tired
of packing this shovel and pick, so he left
them under the tree, but he kept this rock.
And he brought this rock home with him. Well
now, keep in mind he was 12 years old. So
now Parley’s 30 years old and he’s moved
over to Fault Gulch on Boulder. But his father
still takes fishermen up on the Boulder Mountain
fishing, packs ‘em in. So there was a group
that came in and wanted to go fishing so he
took ‘em up there fishing and one of the
people in the party was a geologist and he
saw that rock and he said, “My gosh, that
looks like good ore. Can I take that to Salt
Lake and have it assayed?” And Sam, Parley’s
father, said, “Yeah, you can take that.”
Now remember, he’s 30. Well, in a day or
two, why he was back down here and said, “Well,
that rock goes $50,000 to the ton in gold.”
That’s when gold was $33.00 an ounce. Well,
half of Wayne County and half of Salt Lake
converged here, and they tried to find this
mine.
[LS:] Everybody had the fever.
[DW:] They had the fever, but to this day
they’ve never found it. But I believe the
old man, Parley, cause he used to help me.
When he was 90 years old, he used to be around
here to help me, and he’d tell me that story.
Every day or two he’d tell me that story
about finding that gold.
[LS:] If we could find the cow, we could follow
it.
[DW:] That’s the answer.
[CW:] Now the interesting thing about that
mountain. Roma, you know this. It shifts.
It’s not through doing what it’s doing.
You can go and it will have sluffed off or
the creeks will have changed course. Or there
will be a big rock and a tree will have slid
down.
[DW:] I’ve just been in an Indian cave.
I shouldn’t tell you this, but I just was
in an Indian cave the other day down the river
there. I’ve been in it and there’s corn
cobs and squash vines in it, and stuff all
over in it. But they’re about all gone.
There’s been enough people in it, they’ve
about picked up everything, but in the upper
end of it, the whole ledge has fell off. So
I was standing there, and looking and I thought,
“Well, that looks like might be something
under there. So, it was soft dirt, so I just
started to move the soft dirt out with my
hand like that and there was a whole pile
of little corn cobs underneath that rock.
And if somebody had the patience to remove
those rocks, they might find lots of things
under there.
[CW:] He didn’t bring anything out though.
[LS:] Isn’t that interesting to think how
long ago people used those—
[DW:] Well—
[LS:] Well, thank you, both of you.
[DW:] I’ll take you now and show you the
sites.
[LS:] Absolutely
[CW:] Our plants—we have a daughter that
finished her PhD and is on the faculty at
BYU now. She was living in West Jordan and
decided she needed to live a little closer
to Provo and she couldn’t find a place to
live. But she put her house on the market
and thought it might take 6 months to a year
and maybe it wouldn’t sell at all. She put
it on the market on Friday and it sold on
Sunday afternoon. So, she was homeless, and
we’ve had her here. But they just found
a new home in Spanish Fork and it’s been
too cold to take her plants back.
[LS:] Oh, well this is a lovely sunroom. Just
lovely.
[DW:] You know how we keep it up so well?
Read my sign up here.
[CW:] Oh, my brother—I have a clever brother.
[LS:] “The Dwight Williams Fix-All Repair
Kit. If this can’t fix it, it ain’t worth
fixin.” That is cute. I love the wire, the
baling wire. That’s how my dad fixed everything,
baling wire or duct tape.
[CW:] Where did you grow up?
[LS:] It was in Fresno, California. But we
have a lot of farming background.
[CW:] Yes, you do. I’ll say you do. You
have lots. You lived where they really farm.
[LS:] Isn’t that interesting. I love that.
[CW:] Dwight has a pickup—well, when I first
married him, I had to go to Salt Lake up to
the U to some meetings, and so I took the
car—I never did have a car. I didn’t know—something
needed to be fixed and there was a, you know,
a hometown garage just down the street from
my sister’s, and I took it down there. The
mechanic came wheeling out on one of those
cart things, black, and he said, “Where
are you from?” I said, “Teasdale.” And
he said, “I was wondering because the bottom
of this car is put together with baling wire.”
And now he’s got a pickup, when you say
duct tape? He literally duct taped that whole
pickup.
[LS:] If it works, that’s alright.
[RR:] Tell her what your father’s name is.
[DW:] My father’s name is Gustavius Williams.
[LS:] Gustavius!
[DW:] My grandfather’s name was Gustuvus
Williams. And so, we had a son called Gustavius,
but he never knew it. He always went by “Gus.”
And he didn’t even know his name was Gustavius,
until—
[CW:] When he was about 12 years old—he
was really bright—and he took his gun safety
class. And he come home and later that night
I went up to tuck him in and he said, “Mom,
what’s my legal name?” And I thought why
is he asking that? Then I thought, “Oh,
Gus did you have to sign that thing that you
had never ever written and you had no idea
how to spell your name? Here you are the brightest
kid in your class, and you can’t spell your
name. He was in a class with a lot of really
smart kids.
[RR:] You know, she’s made the comment about
how Wayne County has a lot of educated people.
[CW:] Oh, I’ll say.
[LS:] Yes!
[RR:] And President Pace was complaining,
really, to one of the general authorities
one time about it. And he said, “You know,
the sad thing about it is our kids have to
leave because they can’t stay here to make
a living.” And the general authority says,
“Well, isn’t the rest of the world blessed
to have Wayne County people as an example!”
[CW:] Like, we’ve got a son who is a professor
at BYU, a son that’s an attorney, a daughter
that’s a professor at BYU.
[LS:] Oh, my goodness.
[CW:] And they’d all like to live here.
Ask ‘em if they’d let us sell the ranch
so we could have something to live on. And
they say, “No!” Ask your mother if she
got to sell the ranch, . so she had something
to live on. The answer is “No, it had to
be the kids.”
[LS:] Now what area—is it your daughter
that teaches at BYU?
[CW:] Well, we have a son that’s in Civil
Engineering and he’s at the “Y” and
she is a dietician.
She has a PhD in Nutrition and works for the
Dietetics Dept.
[LS:] Amazing!
[RR:] Now, you said something that’s really
interesting to me. How did you pronounce where
you went today?
[CW:] Oh, Panguitch?
[RR:] No, not Panguitch, no. The one with
the “E.”
[CW:] Escalante? [pronounces with “ee”
on the end]
[DW:] Escalante?
[RR:] Have you always pronounced it that way?
[CW:] And they call it “Escalant.” And
when I was a kid, they called it—
[RR:] My grandma grew up there and it was
“Escalant.” It was never “Escalante.”
[CW:] That’s right. You bet.
[RR:] I mean “Taters and gravy is the best
thing around exceptin’ for preserves”
and that’s a little Escalante thing.
[DW:] That’s just like Caineville. How do
you pronounce it?
[RR:] I always said “Cainesville.”
[CW:] Except it isn’t spelled—it’s “Caineville.”
[RR:] I know but I always said “Cainesville”
and I still have to correct myself.
[CW:] Yep, it’s not “Cainesville.” It’s
“Caineville.”
[DW:] I and my Aunt May Coombs, we have a
hard time with words.
[CW:] You’re dyslexically not with the way
they write or read, just the way they say
things. Aunt May Coombs, their kids, Bart
and Guy, were friends with a family in Scipio,
whose last name is Probert, and she called
‘em the “Probates.” And the Hale Theater
people? All the Hale Theater people had homes
here and the oldest sister’s married to
a Dietlein and Aunt May always called ‘em
the Hales and the Declines. And it was just
endless, and Dwight’s the same way.
[RR:] Now Dietleins, are they real conservatives—or
liberal? The Dietleins?
[CW:] They sort of tend—but now Pat, the
one that was the judge, is married to Sherry,
and they’re fitting ‘cause he grew up
here.
[RR:] Oh, yeah, he was very conservative.
[DW:] The Dietleins are conservative until
you get down to—what shall I say—wine
juices?
[RR:] Ok, alright. Was it you that was telling
me that he tried to—that he had tried and
tried to apologize to somebody?
[CW:] To Newell and Gaylyn for what he did
at the hearings that they had? In one of those
hearings, the commissioner chairman had to
say, “Mr. Dietlein, sit down and shut up.”
It was bad. And then he felt bad because he
tried to apologize to me, to Newell and tried
to be friends with Gaylyn because it was pretty
touchy.
[DW:] I’ll get my boots on. If you’re
here, you’ve got to see all of Teasdale.
[LS:] I want to.
