The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-05-18
j. F. Gibbs Gives His Impressions of
the Great District


In Camp, Near Marysvale, Utah. May
Il, 1896.
By the light of Pickering candle.
and while the roar of a mountain storm
fills the canyon with solemn and un-
canny noises, and while the perturbed
air rolls ana whirls the descending
beautiful in every direction, sending
it through every crevice in the walls
and roof of our diEapidated miners
cabin, l will endeavor to fulfil my
promise to The Herald by writing
something of Marysvale, and will open
the subject by brief history of its.
ups and downs, from which the reader
may draw conclusions as to why 1T sits
in sackcloth and ashes while a score
of younger camps have, to quote from
the initial number of the Piute Pioneer,
become rich, affiueDt and copious.
Away back in the time of '65 and sc,
settlements along the Sewer river were
few and far between. Gunnison, Sa-
lima and Richfield were the only towns,
or rather villages, in the Sewer valley.
The principal cause of the absence of
settlers was the hostility of the red
skins, who periodically raided the set
Elements, killing tf15se of the people
surprised in the canyons or fields. In
1866 a man travelling from Salt Lake to
Arizona oamped on Pine creek, which
comes tumbling down the eastern side
of the Mt. Badly range and empties its
crystal waters into the Sewer river,
which pursues it's sinuous course
through the bottom land, mile or 50
wide, then enters the canyon in the
northeasterly corner of the vale.
about two miles from the junction of
the river and Pire creek.
The Grass Valley range forms the
eastern boundary and is quite lofty.
Along its western base a chain OF ba-
saltic foothills rises darkly against the
lighter background of the main range.
Those basaltic upheavals encroaoh on
the base of the Badly range in the
northwestern part of the vale" Just
south of the little tree-embowered
town, a graveIly bench abruptly rises
to a height of about 100 feet and fur
rfshes a fine shelter from high winds.
From the numerous terraces and other
evidences there is no doubt that the
present site of MarySvale was once
covered by the chilly waters of post
glacial lake probably contemporary
with the great Bonneville into which
it emptied by the same route now occu-
pied by the Sewer river, and which,
during centuries, has been slowly cut
ting its channel deeper into the can
yon up which the r. G.. W. railway is
expected to come TO this place. The
busy waves of the ancient lake worked
over and over the debris which came
down from the remote recesSes of Mt.
Badly and smoothed down the surface
of the bench to which reference has
been made. Along with the boulders of
quartzite, trdchite, granite, etc, from
the very apex of Mt. Baldy's bare dome
there also came fragments of gold
bearing quartz. Those fragments were
rolled about by the waves and ground
by attrition into almost impalpable
dust By that process the gold was re-
leased and distributed through the
gravel of the bench and along Pine
creek gulch until today the weary feet
OF persistent prospectors IN this local
fty press the soil that contains I'M
told millions of the yellow god Of the
'goid-bugs In fact, if all the gold
held by the aforementioned bench, by
Revenue, Pine creek, California, and
other gulches here could be collected
gold would be demonetizad. But, alas,
lame Nature was in a diffusive mood
and distributed those precious golden
| atoms so widely that they will not be-
come available until other processes
for working placsrs shall be discovered
and the auriferous bench will continue
to produce the succulent alfalfa which
can be turned into gold.
1t was the presence of the golden
sands that caused our traveller to pro-
long his stay in the vale" He con-
structed a ditch and conveyed the
water of Pine creek to the upper ter
race and began sluicing. AZ the pres
ent time the ditch carries water to a
few acres of alfalfa.
In the meantime, veins of ore con-
tanning the precious metals were dis
covered in Pine Creek canyon, and
quite number of prospectors came in.
during the spring and summer of 1866
the restless redmen were unusually
hostile and active, with the result that
Salina was deserted and Scipio, Willard
county, was raided, a man and boy
killed and 500 head of stock driven
away. Ali but the most adventurous
spirits deserted the young camp. The
vale" was and is an inviting place in
which to reside, and those few hardy
miners remained and formed the nu-
cleus of small community of ranch
ers that subsequently, settled in the
beautiful little valley.
Shortly after the Indian hostilfties
ceased, active mining operations were
| begun. Among those who secured good
claims was Mr.. r. G. Chambers of your
city, and who still holds them. The
Pinto Mining company, comprised of
Chicago men, put up little two-stamp
mill and ran the burlesque with a
donkey engine. 1 have it from eve
witnesses that pinch-bars were used to
assist the donkey engine to raise the
! stamps when gravity relieved the lit
tie engine of further labor. The rock
was hard, and as a matter of course
the Pinto company came to grief An
other drawback to the young camp,
and one which has not yet been en-
tirely overcome, was its isolation: and
another was that Park City and Bing-
nam began pouring forth their streams
OF mineral wealth, and the little camp
in the vale" sat in the midst of untold
wealth and the grandest and most
beautiful natural scenery and pined for
the attention of capital which never
came. Marysyale was seemingly for
| gotten until 1878, when the Deer Trail
mine was discovered The ore ran up
into the hundreds and it's fame soon
attracted a large number of prospect
ors, principally from Silver Reef, who
had been out on a fake stampede to
the Buckskin mountains. The Deer
Trail company was the only employer
of men at the time, and as the pros
pectors failed to find bonanzas at the
| grass roots" one by one they folded
their tents like the Arabs, ard as sill
emily stole away" In the meantime.
| Walker Bros. of Salt Lake bonded the
Deer Trail for $50, 1000. An enormous
body of SIS to SIS ore was developed,
but IT was too low grade for the pro-
prietors of the famous Alice mine of
! Butte, and they dropped it, offering.
SO it was reported $4,000 for the mine,
which was declined. Unfortunately for
the owners OF the Deer Trail and the
camp, with their usual foresight,
| Walker Bros. had tackled a mortgage,
covering their expenditures, to the
| bond. Messrs. Gilmer and Salisbury