Category Archives: Railroad

Bountiful Streetcar

Published April 3, 2020 / by Christopher Bird / Leave a Comment

The Immigrants

Published February 5, 2019 / by Cathy Gilmore / 1 Comment on The Immigrants

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write-up by Cathy Gilmore

Placed By: Carbon County Historical Society

GPS Coordinates: N 39° 35.964 W 110° 48.509

Historical Marker Text:

This monument is dedicated to Carbon County’s proud immigrant heritage. In the early part of this century, Thirty Two nationalities lived in Carbon County. Most of them came here to mine the coal. Carbon County is Utah’s melting pot. Because of its polyglot population, refined and tempered in the melting process, the religious, social, and cultural life of Carbon County has a broader, more tolerant, cosmopolitan type of lifestyle that sets it apart from the rest of Utah. These immigrants, together with the Native Americans, have left their imprint as part of this rough, often cruel, yet proud heritage.

Extended Research

“The Biggest Little City on Earth”

In the fall of 1914, contractors working for Italian immigrants Charles Bonomo and Frank Viglia broke ground on a large, two-story building on Main Street in Price, Utah.[1] Large enough for their own grocery store and several tenants, the Viglia-Bonomo building symbolized a tangible and permanent presence for the former miners. For Charles, who spent his first thirteen years in America in the shallow, back-breaking coal fields of Kankakee, Illinois, it must have been satisfying to see another man swinging a shovel instead of him.

Near an Italian bakery, a Greek saloon, a Russian mercantile, and a French farm store, the Viglia-Bonomo building was home to a multitude of religious, ethnic, and national identities that earned Price the title of “the biggest little city on earth.”[2] Called “Utah’s Ellis Island” by historian Philip F. Notarianni, Carbon County was the gathering point for not just the Bonomo and Viglia families, but the gateway through which thirty-two different nationalities entered.[3] A jewel of diversity amidst the largely homogeneous landscape of Utah’s pioneer settlements, Carbon County’s distinct immigrant identity reveals a history that is both exemplary and cautionary. The experiences of the Viglia and Bonomo families are illustrative of both the trials and triumphs experienced by immigrants of Carbon County in the early 20th century; their photos and records—generously provided by the descendants of Charles Bonomo—will be shared in this essay.[4]

Margaret Corigliano with Charles Bonomo in 1901

The First Immigrants

In 1882, rail workers searching for a route from Denver to Salt Lake City discovered coal in what is now Carbon County, transforming the sparsely-settled Price river from a scenic canyon into a worldwide labor destination. Immigrants, eager to fill the demand for cheap mine labor, poured in from Europe, Scandinavia, and Asia. By 1900 Castle Gate became a floodgate, with immigrants from fourteen countries laboring in coal camps in Winter Quarters, Castle Gate, Sunnyside, and Clear Creek.

Bound together by cultural, social, and economic ties, immigrants initially lived and worked in communities that reflected their countries of origin. Slovenians initially arrived as railroad workers, then switched to coal mining to fill in the labor gap. South Slavs moved to Helper to grow their business ventures, and Finnish immigrants settled Pleasant Valley in the 1890s to work the mines in Winter Quarters and Clear Creek. At the same time, Northern Italians worked the Castle Gate mine, after which the Greeks immigrated in 1904 to replace the striking Italians. French from the Hautes-Alpes and Pyrenees prospered as sheep and goat herders. Japanese laborers, who initially arrived to work the railroads, also found success as coal miners and farmers.

The earliest of Carbon County’s mining immigrants were most vulnerable to poverty, discrimination, and poor working conditions. Language and cultural barriers inhibited immigrants from effectively advocating for improved conditions and fair labor practice. Desperate for shelter, some miners converted rail cars into homes and built hastily constructed enclosures made of tar and paper. Italians lived in “Rag Town,” a tent community in Sunnyside, and until 1915, most mining camps lacked water and electricity.

Most early immigrants to Carbon County arrived as recruits of labor agents seeking workers within their home countries. Many families of these first immigrants eventually followed, creating a ragged chain of relocation that spanned many years. Other paths to Carbon County, like those of Charles Bonomo and Greek immigrant Yoryis Zisimopoulos, took a more circuitous route. Their paths convey the often fluid, transient nature of immigrant life that many experienced before finally calling Carbon County their home.

Corigliano family with Charles Bonomo (front right)

“Pleased with Price”

When the coal seam in Kankakee, Illinois ran out in 1900, Charles migrated west to the mines in Las Animas County, Colorado, where he married Trinidad resident Margaret Corigliano. Over the ensuing years, Charles abandoned mining and entered the saloon business in Rock Springs, Wyoming where his mother and siblings immigrated. In 1908, Margaret separated from Charles and moved to Price, Utah. Charles, now the owner of a successful saloon on Front Street, sought further investments and like many in the intermountain region, he had his eye on Price, Utah.[5]

Frank Viglia with wife Anna Bernardi on July 14, 1914

“Pleased with Price” from The Carbon County News, April 9, 1914.

In early 1914, two Italian businessmen drove from Rock Springs to Price, Utah on an entrepreneurial mission.[6] Price residents and first-generation Italian merchants Frank Grosso and Frank Viglia hosted the visitors, and procured the help of Lars Anderson, a local contractor, to chauffeur the visitors around Price. The businessmen returned to Rock Springs with favorable reports, and a short time later, Charles Bonomo moved to Price and established a partnership with Frank Viglia, a relative through marriage and a former resident of Rock Springs. With his move to Price, Charles was also reunified with his wife and daughter Mary. It was a triumphant, if not tenuous, fresh start.

***Greek immigrant Yoryis Zisimopoulos (George Zeese) held fifteen jobs in over ten locales across the U.S. before settling in Helper, Utah. Photo courtesy of Ancestry.***

The story of Greek immigrant Yoryis Zisimopoulos is likewise a series of dead ends and new beginnings.[7] After unknowingly taking a job as a strikebreaker in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, he quit and moved to Oklahoma City, then to Pueblo to work for Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. After several miners were killed, and with more Italians, Greeks, and Slavs ready to take their place, Yoryis, now calling himself George Zeese, crisscrossed the nation over the next several years working in mines, farms, railroads and coffeehouses. Suffering from corrupt labor agents, lack of work, and bad luck, he had yet to find lasting success. Ten years and fifteen jobs later, he finally found a home for his wife and growing family in Helper, Utah, where he and his business partner purchased the first of eleven Success Markets. Carbon County, at last, was the right place.

A Connected Journey

The paths of immigrants like Charles Bonomo and Yoryis Zisimopoulos suggest the interconnected nature of the broader intermountain region that relied heavily on family and social networks. Many immigrants entered Carbon County not as fresh-faced coal miners, but as seasoned entrepreneurs who opened restaurants, purchased property, or managed stores. As Elliott Barkan suggests, “the fact that many persons were migrating not only from outside the region but also crisscrossing and resettling within the West suggest that such persons could well have established bonds that threaded the different parts of the region together, along with the many economic connections that were materializing.”[8]

For enterprising immigrants in Carbon County, family and social ties were vital in generating opportunities for collaboration and business partnerships. Postcards from Hiawatha, cards from New Mexico, and photos from Trinidad and Rock Springs that survive from the Bonomo family give evidence of strong immigrant family networks of which Carbon County was a part.

A postcard from Katherine Corigliano De Fillippe of Starkville, Colorado to her sister Magaret Corigliano Bonomo in Rock Springs in 1909. Pictured is likely Katherine’s son Charles. Katherine’s husband, Bartholomeo De Fillippe, died the following year.
A postcard from Frank Grosso of Price, Utah to his friend Charles Bonomo a few months prior to Bonomo’s relocation to Price. Frank’s Austrian wife, Augusta Guarlenti Grosso, is pictured standing on the porch of her home in Price. Grosso, a successful investor and businessman in his own right, arrived in the United States in 1900 .

Identity and Integration

Beyond family ties, immigrants in Carbon County found strength and unity in forming fraternal organizations, labor unions, bands, and sports teams that identified with their home countries. These groups functioned to foster national pride, ensure security, and ensure cultural maintenance.[9] Gathering places like coffeehouses, restaurants, pool houses, saloons, and saunas, strengthened social ties both within and beyond their national identities. The relocation of religion to houses of worship was especially vital to the Italian and Greek communities in reestablishing ritual as a public, communal event.[10]

Frank Vigia with his brothers, wife, and children in 1914, a few years after they left the camp town of Sunnyside where Frank worked as a delivery man for a dry goods store. This portrait was taken on 15 July 1914, the same month Frank Viglia and Charles Bonomo purchased the lot for their new grocery building. Rear left to right: Frank, Peter, Alex, and Sam Viglia. Front left to right: Lotta, Anna Bernardi Viglia, Albert, and Mary Viglia. From the Viglia-Bonomo Papers.

While language barriers confined many immigrants to their own neighborhoods, school, social events, and even funerals encouraged intermingling beyond their immediate communities. Some immigrant children attended Mormon Primary classes despite their religion or nationality, while other immigrant adults preferred the familiarity of their own religions. Most mining camps welcomed regular visits from Catholic and Greek priests who performed ad hoc mass services in amusement halls. Castle Gate built their own Catholic church and Sunnyside welcomed a Catholic mission.

Charles Bonomo’s niece Violet Morgando pictured in her communion dress. Rock Springs, Wyoming, 1927.
It took Charles Bonomo several years to pay off his alto saxophone from Consolidated Music Company.

Mary Viglia (2nd row, left) with her classmates in Price, Utah c. 1915. As second-generation immigrants attended school, assimilation into American culture became easier for the entire family.

Despite these advances, mining work—and the society that came with it—often undercut immigrants’ ability to be recognized as first-class citizens. Long-time residents were concerned about the outflow of money to foreign countries, and the foreign influences that were flowing in. While many were welcomed, many residents resented the instability that the labor agents and mine owners generated.

Mine owners themselves contributed to this tension by showing a preference for unorganized, uneducated labor and willingness to exploit nationalities and regions against one another. With the help of private employment agencies or independent labor contractors, a steady stream of cheap, unorganized migrant labor could always be ensured. As Frank Van Nuys explains, “agents [were not] averse to exploiting inter- and intraethnic antagonisms on behalf of management, for instance when a labor contractor imported mainland Greeks to break a Carbon County, Utah copper strike led by islanders from Crete in 1912. The influx of different groups, in Utah for example, frequently began with strike-breaking: Finns, Italians, and Slavs for English, Welsh, Irish, and Americans in the 1890s, Greeks for the Italians and Yugoslavians in 1903, and Mexicans for the Greeks in 1922.”[11] For many immigrants like Charles Bonomo and George Zeese, the answer was to leave mining behind and integrate themselves into the business community.

The Grocer Next Door

The respect and acceptance Carbon County immigrants could not obtain through coal became achievable with brick and mortar. The arrival of women to establish households, the growth of second-generation immigrants, and the abandonment of mine labor all contributed to greater integration of immigrants within their communities. The town of Helper was especially welcoming to immigrant merchants. In 1903, the Helper Gazetteer listed five foreign merchants, but by 1919, that number had grown to thirty-five—over half of all businesses listed.[12] Compelled to engage with all residents of Carbon County through business transactions, immigrants transformed from the temporary foreign worker to the grocer next door.

Sam Viglia delivering groceries on a snowy day in Price, Utah.
Unidentified Italian relatives working at a service station.

Not every business was welcome, however. The same year Charles Bonomo moved to Price, E.A. Horsley, President of the Carbon County Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints decried the influence of saloons in Helper and Price, saying, “I saw men [in Helper] on the Sabbath Day lying around in a drunken condition…Conditions in Price may not be of the best, but in the language of the street Helper ‘had us skinned seven blocks’ …So much unfavorable notoriety has been published from this town that when I go into Salt Lake and people ask me where I am from and I say Price, they exclaim, ‘Oh, for Lord’s sake!’”[13] In the end, Horsley was not successful in convincing Carbon County to become “dry”.

Charles Bonomo’s in-laws in the saloon business in Trinidad, Colorado. The Corigliano brothers c1910.

Becoming “American”

Stuck between maintaining cultural ties and adapting to their American environment, immigrants in Carbon County struggled to identify and achieve what was becoming the moving target of Americanism. As Philip Notorianni explains,

“The desire for cultural maintenance was natural, but the realities of the new environment often produced irony in the attempt. In trying to maintain and foster cultural ties, immigrants altered or adapted to new conditions, customs, traditions, and beliefs; thus their practices were assuming new meaning and form. Gradual change occurred as immigrants came into contact with American institutions and ideas, but those who favored 100 percent “Americanization” of the new immigrants sought to expedite the process by the abrupt stripping away of cultural differences.”[14]

The Greeks and Italians were especially nationalistic and saw themselves as emissaries of their native culture. Mark I. Choate explains the nature of Italian emigration as an expansion of Italy itself: “For the Italian state, emigration represented not just physical movement beyond the Italian peninsula, but a cultural and economic enlargement of Italy worldwide….At the high point of Italian migration from 1880 to World War I, the Italian state viewed migration as a form of colonialism…”.[15] This competing nationalism suggests that the Italians not only wanted to become American, they sought to make America more Italian. With each passing generation, however, immigrant families inevitably adapted while their native identities diminished over time.

Through the lens of clothing and aesthetics, the following photos from the Viglia Bonomo Papers suggest a hybrid of both Italian and American identities.

The Price Boys

Despite significant strides by many immigrants in Carbon County, many still received criticism for not being “American” enough. The advent of World War I further amplified this rhetoric as concerns over loyalty emerged. By 1917, the move toward Americanization merged with the war effort, amplifying expectations that immigrants should display their loyalty to America through war service. As nativist sentiment grew across America, the pressure of war emphasized the responsibility of the foreign-born to do all of the melting in the melting pot.[16]

A postcard from Camp Kearney from Alex Viglia to Mary Bonomo. Above is evidence that many of their family and associates served in the armed forces.

Immigrant enlistment in World War I was one avenue that instantly silenced calls for immigrant Americanization. Brothers Sam and Alex Viglia were among many Carbon County residents to enlist, earning them credibility and admiration among Price’s citizens. Carbon County newspapers gave updates on their war service, including family members in Price who shared postcards and letters with the local papers.

Following World War I, nativist sentiment increased dramatically, resulting in a more restrictive immigration policy, mandated “Americanization” classes, and greater hostility toward minority groups—especially southern European immigrants. For many immigrants of Carbon County, it was a time of contingency. By the 1920’s Charles Bonomo was a successful merchant and real estate investor. His family chose to remain in Price. Following some legal challenges related to the Viglia-Bonomo building, Frank Viglia and his family moved to San Francisco in 1924. Two of Frank’s brothers returned to Italy, married, and raised families. Another branch of the Viglia family moved to Mexico to escape the discrimination they faced in the New Mexico mines.

Charles Bonomo’s path to Carbon County was not a simple one: the currents that guided him to settle in Price were a mix of family dynamics, economic opportunity geography, and connectedness to their Italian relations and friends. His story—like stories of most Carbon County immigrants—has elements both unique and typical to the immigrant experience. In the end, Carbon County largely embraced immigrants like Charles and gave space to the complex and diverse identities that exist today. Historian Sarka B. Hrbkova acknowledges this complexity, writing, “It is indeed a problem to make Americans of these surging, ebbing, responsive, sullen, singing, cursing, sorrowing, carousing, harmonious, disputatious elements, some coming from lands of liberal thought, others from age-old autocracies—all of them with dreams of a more or less realizable Utopia, which the magic word ‘America’ spells to them.”[17] The tolerant and progressive nature found in Carbon County was that sort of Utopia for many, setting it apart from the rest of Utah in its broad embrace of what it means to be a Utahn.

Notes

[1] The Carbon County News, “City and County,” November 11, 1914. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/31022342/the_carbon_county_news

[2] Carbon County News, “Why You Should Invest Your Money in and Live in Price, Utah” November 11 1913, 8. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/31020374. The phrase “biggest little city on the earth” began to appear in Carbon County newspapers in 1913, and was added to the masthead of the Eastern Utah Advocate on 3 July 1913 when the newspaper came under new ownership.

[3] Philip F. Notarianni, “Utah’s Ellis Island: The Difficult Americanization of Carbon County,” Utah Historical Quarterly Vol 47, no. 2 (Spring 1979), 178-192.

[4] Except where noted, all images are from the Viglia-Bonomo Archive, Kindex, https://bonomo.kindex.org/. Original owner, Kay Cafarelli, granddaughter of Charles Bonomo. Original papers in possession of family friend Christina Mickleson. Digitized and archived by Cathy Gilmore, owner Kindex LLC. For further information on these families see their family tree on Ancestry: https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/120287259/family.

[5] Carbon County News, “Our Reasons Why You Should Invest Your Money in and Live in Price, Utah”. The article touts its progressive citizens, schools and religious institutions, business savvy, and rich natural resources as reasons to invest in Carbon County.

[6] The Carbon County News, “Pleased with Price”, April 9 1914, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/30288569/the_carbon_county_news/

[7] Elliott Barkan, From All Points: America’s Immigrant West, 1870s-1952, (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2007), 39-40.

[8] Elliott Barkan, From All Points, 115

[9] Notarianni, “Utah’s Ellis Island”, 7

[10] Elaine M. Bapis, In the Hands of Women: Home Alter Tradition in Utah’s Greek Orthodox Homes, Utah Historical Quarterly, 65, (Fall: 1997), 312-334

[11] Frank Van Nuys, Americanizing the West: Race, Immigrants, and Citizenship, 1890-1930. (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2002), 71.

[12] Ronald G. Watt, A History of Carbon County, (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1997) 212.

[13] Eastern Utah Advocate, “President Horsely Wants a Closed Town,” March 12 1914, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/30976950/eastern_utah_advocate/

[14] Notarianni, “Utah’s Ellis Island”, 8.

[15] Mark I. Choate, “The Frontier Thesis in Transnational Migration: The U.S. West in the Making of Italy Abroad” in Immigrants of the Far West: Historical Identities and Experiences, Ed. by Jessie L. Embry and Brian Q. Cannon. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015), 365.

[16] Van Nuys, Americanizing the West, 68.

[17] Van Nuys, Americanizing the West, 60-61.

For further reference:

Primary sources

Viglia-Bonomo Papers, private collection of Kay Cafarelli, loaned by Christina Micklesen, Salt Lake City, Utah. Digital images hosted courtesy of Kindex at viglia.kindex.org.

Secondary Sources

Alexander, Thomas G. “From Dearth to Deluge, Utah’s Coal Industry,” Utah Historical Quarterly 31 (1963).

Bapis, Elaine M. “In the Hands of Women: Home Altar Tradition in Utah’s Greek Orthodox Homes.” Utah Historical Quarterly 65 (1997): 312-34.

Barkan, Elliot. From All Points: America’s Immigrant West, 1870s–1952. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2007.

Carbon County Commission Company. “Our Reasons Why You Should Invest Your Money in and Live in Price, Utah.” Carbon County News. November 11 1913. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/31020374.

Choate, Mark I. “The Frontier Thesis in Transnational Migration: The U.S. West in the Making of Italy Abroad” in Immigrants of the Far West: Historical Identities and Experiences, edited by Jessie L. Embry and Brian Q. Cannon. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015.

“City and County.” The Carbon County News. October 1 1914. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/31022342/the_carbon_county_news/.

Eastern Utah Advocate. “President Horsley Wants Closed Town.” Newspapers.com. March 12 1914. Accessed April 26, 2019. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/30976950/eastern_utah_advocate.

Guglielmo, Thomas A. White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Notarianni. Philip F. “Italianita in Utah: The Immigrant Experience,” in Helen Papanikolas, The Peoples of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT: Utah State Historical Society, 1976.

Notarianni, Philip F. “Utah’s Ellis Island: The Difficult Americanization of Carbon County.” Utah Historical Quarterly, Winter 1979.

Orsi, Robert Anthony. The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

“Pleased with Price.” The Carbon County News. April 9 1914. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/30288569/the_carbon_county_news.

Van Nuys, Frank. Americanizing the West: Race, Immigrants, and Citizenship, 1890-1930. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002.

Vecali, Rudolph J. “European Americans: From Immigrants to Ethnics,” in William H. Cartwright and Richard L. Watson, Jr., eds., The Reinterpretation of American History and Culture. Washington, D.C: National Council for the Social Studies, 1973.

Watt, Ronald G. A History of Carbon County. Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1997.

Connor Statue at Historic Park

Published April 20, 2017 / by Zach Vayo / Leave a Comment

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Connor Statue at Historic Park

Write-up by Zach Vayo

GPS Coordinates: 40.764399°N, 111.832891°W

Historical Marker Text:

“PATRICK EDWARD CONNER BRIGADIER GENERAL AND BREVET MAJOR GENERAL UNITED STATES VOLUNTEERS 1820-1891

Born in County Kerry, Ireland. Emigrated as a child to the United States. Enlisted in the army at age 19. Attained rank of Captain in the Mexican War. As Colonel, commanding the Volunteers, established Camp Douglas on Oct. 26, 1862. A soldier-statesman of great energy and vision, he was the “father of Utah mining”, published the first daily newspaper in Utah Territory, and founded Stockton, Utah. * * * * This park presented to the United States Army by the Fort Douglas Museum Association on the 124th Anniversary of the founding of Fort Douglas. Oct 26, 1986.”

Extended Research:

Aside from Brigham Young, perhaps no individual played a larger role in shaping nineteenth century Utah than Patrick Connor. Indeed, prominent Utah historian Dean May has hailed these men as the two founding fathers of modern Utah.[1] Today, Connor’s statue in Fort Douglas quietly rivals Young’s much grander memorialization across Salt Lake in Temple Square – a silent reenactment of what was in its day a bitter public rivalry between these two men and their competing visions. Young sought to establish Utah as the Kingdom of God on Earth according to the unique sensibilities of the LDS Church. Connor, meanwhile, aimed to bring Utah into the American mainstream by conquering the land’s indigenous peoples and opening the door for white settlers like himself, looking to make their fortunes out West. Intensely distrustful of Utah’s Mormon population, Connor was himself an immigrant who, having undergone a process of Americanization, now sought to “Americanize” Utah along the same lines as the rest of the West. Portrayed as everything from hero to murderous plunderer, Connor has been sweepingly characterized as “the archetypal nineteenth century man”, who was “representative of all that was good and bad in that age.”[2]

The man who would come to identify himself as P. Edward Connor was born Patrick Edward (“Paddy”) O’Connor in County Kerry, Ireland. Very little information exists on Connor’s early life; he claimed to have been born on St. Patrick’s Day, 1820.[3] Economic stagnation in Ireland drove his family to emigrate to New York when he was perhaps sixteen. Connor spent several years working odd jobs as a laborer before beginning his military career by volunteering for the First Dragoons in 1839. It is possible the young Irishman viewed military service as a useful means to “Americanize” himself in an era animated by nativism and anti-Catholicism.[4]

Connor’s five year tour with the Dragoons took him to the lands in and around the newly-created Iowa Territory to maintain relations with the region’s native peoples. This fledgling military presence in the trans-Mississippi West, with the US fresh off the Jacksonian ethnic cleansing of native peoples in the East, would foreshadow atrocious military violence against the indigenous peoples of the West during and after the Civil War, in which Connor himself was to play a leading role.

While relatively uneventful, Connor’s tour with the Dragoons gave him valuable experience as a soldier. More importantly, he appeared to become enamored with the West, where he would spend almost all of the remainder of his life. Following the end of his tour of duty, he returned to New York for several years, engaging in “mercantile business” and becoming a naturalized citizen (a process no doubt made easier by his military record).[5] Also around this time, he removed some of the conspicuous Irish-ness from his name by dropping the O’ in his surname and shortening Patrick to an initial, becoming P. Edward Connor. With the outbreak of war with Mexico in 1846, Connor headed west again, joining a company of Texas Volunteers. He participated in the US victory at the Battle of Buena Vista, receiving praise for his bravery.[6]

Connor ca. 1860s

The war resulted in the US seizure of a vast swath of land claimed by Mexico. Connor was among many who viewed these lands as a place to make it big, travelling to California in 1850 on the heels of the Gold Rush. After an ill-fated attempt to establish a community on the Trinity River, he settled in Stockton. Over the next decade, his numerous entrepreneurial ventures, particularly a gravel quarry on his property, resulted in Connor accumulating a degree of wealth. He emerged as a leading citizen of Stockton and came to head its militia, the Stockton Blues. In 1854, he married Johanna Connor, another emigrant from Kerry County.[7] The couple would raise five children to adulthood, enduring the loss of two sons who died in childhood.

This relatively peaceful period of Connor’s life came to an end in 1861 with the outbreak of the Civil War. Eager to serve his adopted country once more, he took the lead in recruiting several companies of California Volunteers to serve under his command. In spite of his (and his troops’) desire to fight the Confederacy in the East, he found himself assigned to protect overland mail routes in Utah, as the Lincoln administration sought to preserve California’s tenuous connection to the Union.[8] In Utah, Connor’s troops were to serve as an occupying force to both native peoples such as the Shoshone and to the territory’s Mormon population, practitioners of an enigmatic and fanatical religion in the eyes of many, whose loyalty to the country seemed particularly dubious, particularly in light of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre.

During the journey across Nevada, Connor began to hone his reputation as an Indian fighter, launching attacks that killed several dozen Shoshones. Reaching Salt Lake City in 1862, Connor remarked with disgust on the apparent un-Americanness of the Mormons, calling them “a community of traitors, murderers, fanatics, and whores,” claiming “the people publicly rejoice at reverses to our arms,” and “Brigham Young rules with despotic sway.”[9] For their part, the Mormons had good reason to fear federal troops due to the “Utah War” of 1856-58. As such, they were none too happy when Connor, despairing of the state of the old Camp Crittenden (Camp Floyd) in Utah Valley, planted his troops directly above their capital, establishing Camp Douglas on an eastern bench of the Salt Lake Valley on October 26, 1862. Connor cited this new location as all the better to “say to the Saints of Utah, enough of your treason.”[10] Connor’s troops thus became the most visible symbol of “Gentile” (non-Mormon) presence in the territory, sparking a war of words between the two groups lasting for decades.

Camp Douglas (later Fort Douglas) ca. 1865. Connor named the fort for Lincoln’s great political rival, Stephen Douglas.

The year 1863 was a critical one for Connor. Denied the chance to fight in the East, he seized on a chance to “chastise” the Northwestern Shoshone instead. Increased Anglo-American incursions into what is today southern Idaho had strained relationships with the Shoshone, producing intermittent fighting and claims of kidnapping. In the bitter cold of January, Connor marched his troops from Camp Douglas to a Shoshone encampment on the Bear River. One California newspaper offered a telling insight into the attitudes of the day by publishing a gleeful letter from a Salt Lake correspondent, stating that “before [Connor’s troops] quit the entertainment Mr. Redskin is to be well thrashed, and, if possible, ‘wiped out.’”[11]

Arriving at the encampment, Connor’s troops launched an attack on the 29^th of January. What began as a battle became a bloodbath as Connor’s troops flanked the Shoshones, trapping them in a ravine. The troops proceeded to massacre anyone within reach, including women and children. The death toll may well have exceeded four hundred, making it the largest massacre in the history of the American West. Connor’s troops destroyed homes and food supplies, murdering dozens more women who refused to submit to rape by the soldiers.[12] His actions would make him one of the most despised figures in Shoshone memory, with one survivor, Sagwitch, later recalling the bitter irony of “that merciless battle, when women and suckling babes met their death at the hands of civilization.”[13] Those same actions, however, made Connor a hero to white colonizers in the West, and earned him a promotion to brigadier-general.

Bear River Massacre site.

Back in Salt Lake, Connor became fixated on the notion of publicizing Utah’s mineral wealth so as to draw non-Mormons into the territory, contending that “inducements … to the teeming population of the East and West, seeking new fields of exploration and prosperity” would spell political and social doom for the Mormonism that he saw as “not only subversive of morals, in conflict with the civilization of the present age, and oppressive on the people, but also deeply and boldly in contravention of the laws and best interests of the nation.”[14] To that end, he founded the Daily Union Vedette, a staunchly non-Mormon newspaper that wrote extensively on the wealth to be had in Utah. Connor helped to establish and personally invested in numerous mining districts, including what would become Bingham Canyon, earning the honorific “father of Utah mining.” In 1863, Connor also established the town of Stockton, near Tooele, named for his former home in California. Connor intended Stockton as a hub for non-Mormon settlement, though his grand visions could never elevate it beyond a minor settlement on the fringes of Brigham Young’s Mormon kingdom. Of course, Young and his disciples were none too happy to see these capitalistic incursions into their Zion. After Young petitioned unsuccessfully to have Connor and his troops removed from Utah,[15] he was spared of the general for a time when Connor was sent to present Wyoming for the Powder River expedition in 1865.

Connor thus departed Utah to crush resistance from the Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho in response to a mining boom that had drawn a wave of white colonizers into Montana. While Connor’s campaigns failed to win any “victories” as decisive as that at Bear River, he nonetheless killed several hundred indigenous persons in a series of battles and skirmishes such as Tongue River (at times fighting alongside indigenous allies such as the Omaha). Such militancy undermined the capacity of indigenous communities to sustain themselves, leaving little recourse to federal economic dependency and reservations (with poverty ironically reinforcing white perceptions of indigenous nations as primitive and backwards). The Powder River endeavor was largely regarded as a failure, in part due to negative publicity surrounding another event to the south: namely, the army’s 1864 Sand Creek Massacre against the Cheyenne and Arapaho, which had soured the nation for a time on war with native nations.[16] Reflecting this shift in attitude, the Salt Lake Tribune expressed desire for “some sensible plan” regarding “the poor Indian race.”[17]Nonetheless, the expedition cemented Connor’s status as to hero to white colonizers in the West. This would be Connor’s last major military mission, as he resigned his commission in 1866.

After a brief return to Utah (and a trip to Washington DC to testify against the evils of the Mormons), Connor returned to California with his family. By 1869, however, the looming completion of the transcontinental railroad brought him back to Utah. This time, his family stayed in California, establishing a permanent residence in Redwood City. Over the next decades, Connor would become increasingly estranged from his family as he bounced between various mining and railroad endeavors in Utah and Nevada in largely unsuccessful attempts to amass his fortune, made all the more difficult by the market instabilities laid bare in the Panic of 1873. Johanna Connor would eventually die in 1889, making no mention of her oft-absent husband in her will.

In Utah, the railroad spelled doom for Brigham Young’s bucolic conception of an economically isolated Zion. Anticipating an economic and demographic influx to the territory, Connor took an interest in the town of Corinne, near the mouth of the Bear River, which emerged in the wake of the railroad’s completion as Utah’s leading non-Mormon community. His assessment of this emerging landscape proved somewhat overly optimistic, with his vision of a steamboat service across the Great Salt Lake connecting Corinne to Stockton never truly materializing. As the most esteemed non-Mormon in the territory, Connor became the symbolic leader of Utah’s anti-Mormon Liberal Party, which denounced polygamy and sought to block statehood for fear of losing federal leverage against the dominant religion. Speaking at an 1880 Liberal rally, Connor declared his intention of “taking up the fight with renewed vigor,” and “helping forward the good work of regulating and Americanizing Utah.”[18] This symbolic leadership notwithstanding, Connor proved unsuccessful in parlaying his notoriety into political office, losing a bid even for the modest office of Salt Lake County Recorder. He died in Salt Lake in 1891 with much prestige and little wealth, and was buried in the Fort Douglas Cemetery.[19]

Connor with President Hayes during the latter’s visit to Fort Douglas, 1880.

The decades after his death saw Patrick Connor’s vision of an Americanized Utah come to fruition to a remarkable degree. Booming mining industries throughout the new state in regions such as Carbon County and Bingham Canyon attracted waves of non-Mormon immigration from countries including Greece and Italy, and, to a lesser extent, Japan and China. Mining in particular signified Utah’s increasing integration into the national economy; while providing economic opportunity, this new colonial economy also spawned appalling working conditions and environmental degradation. Connor would no doubt also have been pleased to see the LDS church, the object of his perpetual contempt, take a firmer stance against polygamy and recede from the political sphere in the first decades of the twentieth century (though the latter change did not prove permanent). Furthermore, the twentieth century also saw emphasis on Brigham Young’s model of economic cooperation decline as many Mormons made their peace with Connor’s capitalist vision. Indeed, while not abandoning their distinct identities, Mormon communities have undergone a noteworthy degree of Americanization since Connor’s time.[20] Connor himself practiced what he preached with regards to Americanization: the Irish-born immigrant epitomized the self-made man of fame and fortune. While this rugged, romantic image has become iconic in conceptions of the West, Connor’s case also illustrates its shortcomings. Never truly successful in making his fortune later in life, his obsessive quest for wealth resulted in considerable alienation from his family. Underpinning all of this is Connor’s darkest legacy (and one that is conspicuously absent from his historical marker): the brutalization of indigenous nations, on whose dispossessed land the processes of “Americanization” played out. Particularly for the Northwestern Shoshones, the impacts and bitter memories of Colonel Connor’s atrocious actions on the Bear River echo into the twenty-first century.

For Further Reference:

Primary Sources:

P. Edward Connor, Official Report on the Bear River Massacre, February 6, 1863.

Secondary Sources:

Madsen, Brigham. Glory Hunter: A Biography of Patrick Edward Connor. Salt Lake: University of Utah Press, 1990.

May, Dean. Utah: A People’s History. Salt Lake: University of Utah Press, 1987.

Varley, James. Brigham and the Brigadier: General Patrick Connor and His California Volunteers in Utah and Along the Overland Trail. . Tucson: Westernlore Press, 1989.

[1] Dean L. May, Utah: A People’s History (Salt Lake: University of Utah Press, 1987), 194.

[2] James Varley, Brigham and the Brigadier: General Patrick Connor and His California Volunteers in Utah and Along the Overland Trail. (Tucson: Westernlore Press, 1989), x.

[3] Brigham Madsen, Glory Hunter: A Biography of Patrick Edward Connor (Salt Lake: University of Utah Press, 1990), 3-5.

[4] James Varley, Brigham and the Brigadier, 2.

[5] Brigham Madsen, Glory Hunter, 18-19.

[6] James Varley, Brigham and the Brigadier, 4.

[7] Brigham Madsen, Glory Hunter, 30.

[8] Ibid, 48.

[9] P. Edward Connor, letter to Major R. C. Drum, September 14, 1862.

[10] Ibid.

[11] “A Big Expedition – Connor and the Volunteers after the Indians,” Sacramento Daily Union (Sacramento, CA), Feb. 7, 1863

[12] Scott Christensen, Sagwitch: Shoshone Chieftain, Mormon Elder, 1822-1887 (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1999), 52.

[13] F.W. Warner (Sagwitch), “Sagwitch Writes The Citizen About New Monument,” Franklin County Citizen (Preston, ID), Jul. 11, 1918.

[14] P. Edward Connor, letter to Major E. McGarry, October 26, 1863.

[15] Brigham Madsen, Glory Hunter, 114.

[16] Ibid, 121.

[17] James Varley, Brigham and the Brigadier, 258.

[18] Brigham Madsen, Glory Hunter, 237.

[19] Brigham Madsen, Glory Hunter, 271.

[20] Dean L. May, Utah: A People’s History, 190, 194-198.

Irish Railroad Workers

Published April 20, 2017 / by Amy Brown / Leave a Comment

Garfield and Lake Point Resorts

Published April 5, 2017 / by Ben Kiser / 2 Comments on Garfield and Lake Point Resorts

2 Replies

Written by Benjamin Kiser, MA History Student, University of Utah

Placed By: Daughters of Utah Pioneers Tooele County Company

GPS Coordinates: 40°42’57.0″N 112°14’21.9″W

Historical Marker Text:

Garfield and Lake Point Resorts Marker

DAUGHTERS OF UTAH PIONEERS No. 115

ERECTED 1954

GARFIELD & LAKE POINT RESORTS

From 1881 to 1893 Garfield Beach was the most famous and finest recreation resort on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, with its railroad station, lunch stand, restaurant, bath houses and pier leading to the dance pavilion, and with the pioneer steamboat “City of Corinne” exhibited at anchor. Lake Point was located 1 miles west. A three story hotel erected there by Dr. Jeter Clinton became a stopping place for overland stages. The boulder used for this shaft was taken from “Old Buffalo Ranch” one half mile west.

TOOELE COUNTY

Extended Research:

Marker with Great Salt Lake on Right, I-80 and Oquirrh Mountains on Left

From the beginning of Euro-American settlement in Utah, Utahns have enjoyed recreation. Before the rise of Wasatch Mountain ski resorts, hiking, and biking trails, residents turned to the Great Salt Lake for their recreational pursuits.[1] The late 1800s were the heyday of Great Salt Lake resorts. Two of the earliest resorts were at Garfield Beach and Lake Point. Dr. Jeter F. Clinton, Mormon physician and Salt Lake City alderman turned resort promoter, founded Lake Point resort, also known as Clinton’s Landing, in 1870, building a large “Lake House” near the beach at the northwest point of the Oquirrh Mountains. The resort remained small until 1875 when the Utah Western railroad completed a branch out to the area. Expansion began leading to the construction of a multitude of bathhouses along the beach.[2] Bathers came to Lake Point to experience the Great Salt Lake’s saline water, described by one local booster as “so buoyant; never chilling, it is so warm, free from danger, recreating and invigorating, a tonic for all, a healing for many ills, health restoring and strength renewing.”[3] Lake Point was also a hub for the renowned steamboat “City of Corinne” which would transport passengers across the lake to Corinne, a railroad town on the Bear River. Eventually, Black Rock and Garfield Resorts would eclipse Lake Point in grandeur and visitation.[4]

Lake Point Illustration from the Great Salt Lake
Courtesy Utah State Historical Society

Lake Point also served as a backdrop to an interesting incidence in the Utah Territory. A breakaway from Mormonism, a group called the Morrisites under leader Joseph Morris, formed in the early 1860s. Conflict quickly ensued between the dominant Mormon population and the newly formed sect. In 1862, the territorial militia was called out to subdue the Morrisites, ultimately leading to the death of Joseph Morris. A member of the Morrisite presidency, John Banks, was mortally wounded in the skirmish. Dr. Jeter Clinton attended to Banks but he ultimately succumbed to his injuries. Shortly after Banks’s death, some Morrisites began spreading rumors that Clinton killed Banks while tending to him. Authorities largely left the rumors unheeded until 1877 when they arrested Clinton at his Lake Point home, indicting him for the murder of John Banks. While ultimately exonerated of the crime, the Deseret News reported the 1877 case as an example of “shameful abuse” of a “prominent Mormon” in which “the bigotry, intolerance and persecuting spirit of our opponents…have been among the bitterest and most unprincipled.”[5] Taken in the context of increased federal weakening of Mormon control over the territory through the 1874 Poland Act, the Clinton case provides a curious commentary on how Mormons perceived one instance of judicial persecution in the territory.

Garfield Beach Resort Pavilion and Bathers
Courtesy Utah State Historical Society

Garfield Beach resort, located approximately 1.5 miles to the east of Lake Point, opened its doors in 1875, remaining the premier Great Salt Lake destination until the opening of Saltair in 1893. A product of the Utah Western Railway’s expansion into Tooele County, Garfield Beach wowed visitors with a 165 by 62 feet dance pavilion over the lake. The resort cost $70,000. Six trains a day serviced Garfield bringing 80,000 people to the beach in 1888. The “City of Corinne” docked at Garfield, as well, where it furnished steamboat rides on the lake for 25 cents.[6] The great resort dwindled after Saltair’s opening, as it experienced a reduction in visitors and beach degradation due to the pesky nature of the Great Salt Lake’s fluctuating levels. Garfield Beach resort ultimately succumbed to a fire in 1904.[7]

Garfield Beach Advertisement
Courtesy Utah State Historical Society

A 2017 trip to the southern shores of the Great Salt Lake reveals a landscape greatly changed from the high point of lake recreation from the 1870s to the 1890s. An interstate highway runs where both resorts once stood. Little evidence remains of the great pavilions, lunch bars, railroad stations, and dance halls that were the highlight of a trip to Utah in the late nineteenth century. Though a reconstructed Saltair remains, the specters of Lake Point and Garfield are long gone, eclipsed in a recreational shift from the Great Salt Lake to the Wasatch Mountains.

Garfield Beach from the Foothills of the Oquirrh Mountains
Courtesy Utah State Historical Society

[1] Jared Farmer, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

[2] Dale L. Morgan, The Great Salt Lake (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973 [1949]), 355-356.

[3] Ovando James Hollister, The Resources and Attractions of the Territory of Utah (Omaha: Omaha Republican Publishing House, 1879), 66, accessed March 29, 2017, https://archive.org/details/resourcesattract00holl.

[4] Tooele County Daughters of Utah Pioneers, History of Utah’s Tooele County: From the Edge of the Great Basin Frontier (Tooele, UT: Transcript Bulletin Publishing, 2012), 177-179.

[5] “The Infamous Proceedings against Dr. Clinton,” Deseret News, April 30, 1879, retrieved on February 16, 2017, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/details?id=2661652&q=jeter+clinton&page=3&rows=50&fd=title_t%2Cpaper_t%2Cdate_tdt%2Ctype_t&sort=date_tdt+asc&gallery=0&facet_paper=%22Deseret+News%22#t_2661652.

[6] Marcus E. Jones, Resources and Attractions of Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Real Estate Board, 1889), 46-48, accessed on March 29, 2017, https://archive.org/details/saltlakecity1889eng.

[7] Ouida Blanthorn, comp., A History of Tooele County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1998), 154-158.

For Further Reference:

Primary Sources

Ovando James Hollister, The Resources and Attractions of the Territory of Utah (Omaha: Omaha Republican Publishing House, 1879), accessed March 29, 2017, https://archive.org/details/resourcesattract00holl.

“The Infamous Proceedings against Dr. Clinton,” Deseret News, April 30, 1879, retrieved on February 16, 2017, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/details?id=2661652&q=jeter+clinton&page=3&rows=50&fd=title_t%2Cpaper_t%2Cdate_tdt%2Ctype_t&sort=date_tdt+asc&gallery=0&facet_paper=%22Deseret+News%22#t_2661652.

Marcus E. Jones, Resources and Attractions of Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Real Estate Board, 1889), accessed on March 29, 2017, https://archive.org/details/saltlakecity1889eng.

Secondary Sources

Jared Farmer, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.)

Dale L. Morgan, The Great Salt Lake (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973 [1949].)

Tooele County Daughters of Utah Pioneers, History of Utah’s Tooele County: From the Edge of the Great Basin Frontier (Tooele, UT: Transcript Bulletin Publishing, 2012.)

Ouida Blanthorn, comp., A History of Tooele County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1998.)

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Garfield and Lake Point Resorts