GENE’S BINGHAM MEMORIES
By Gene Halverson
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| Our last house in Telegraph |
I
was born in Telegraph but I was too small to remember Telegraph this early. I do remember Frog Town and life after that. I remember Telegraph when we moved back a few
years later. Remember the song, “I owe
my soul to the company store” well that was us.
We lived in company town, in a company house, and required to buy from a
company store with high prices and poor quality. Dad worked seven days a week, ten hours a
day. When he became too sick to do this
anymore he was fired. So one day a
company truck came and loaded up our possessions and simply moved us away. This was also during the “Great Depression”
when everybody was suffering. Our new
home was now in Frog Town. In the George
Panos Apartments and I remember buying food from Chris Apostle in his store
just up the street. Hogan Dairy provided
us with milk. Everything on credit. It took years to pay back our many bills and
always felt grateful.
My
Klippiga Bergen books tells of strong young men who soon were sick and dying.
Men
were dying every day because the companies refused to provide water for the
drills and
water to sprinkle on the floor to rid the mine of dust.
Frog
Town
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| Panos Apartments |
We
lived in the top apartment and had a climb a stairs to our living room. The exit from the kitchen took you to the
back yard and a mountain. Below us and down
the canyon a ways was the abandoned Yampa Smelter with its giant smoke stack
and all kinds of walls and holes to play in.
Above this was a covered pipe-line that brought water line from Dry Fork. This made a nice trail to walk on. Now we had trees and a garbage dump to play
in. Cows and pigs to see and take care
and watch out for the rattlesnakes. We
walked the Bingham creek, mostly called the sewer. We played in the fine white sandy banks of
the creek. We had no idea it was the
town’s sewer and the mine’s copper-water drainage ditch. We loved to dunk an
iron nail in the water to make a copper one for you.
A
few years ago one of the Turner boys told me, his dad and George got quite
wealthy by diverting the sewer into a garage full of tin cans they got from the
garbage dump and selling the copper.
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| Frog Town with depot and smelter |
To
get to the mountain out front, we crossed the road and railroad tracks below
the train depot, ice house and a few houses.
It was covered with oak brush
and flowers. Higher up was two large rocks to
explore. The upper rock was an entrance
to a mine. I was scared of the cave. It was so spooky and a nightmare convinced me
there was a lion in there. I can still see him in my mind.
Lee
and I watched the trains come to town, they were “steam engines” and they huffed
and puffed and whistled. We put lots of
things on the tracks for them to flatten.
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| kids at Panos Apartments |
Out
the corner of my eye I saw a little girl come and disappear. Was she a ghost, a
fairy or an angel? She never came back. I’m not sure what I was looking for when I
began peeking in a couple of the churches.
No one bothered me until I peeked in in the Mormon Church and when a
little old lady came to the door and I ran away. A couple of weeks later she caught me and was
taken here and there and I must have liked it because a few years later I was baptized
there. I did a lot of reading and liked
the stories but I did not find what I was looking for. I was told to shun dark skin people, other
churches were evil. Well I was playing with
these kids and I knew better. My God
loves all people.
Mother
liked it here and had many friends. She
smiled a lot and visited, and shared coffee, and played cards. A refrigerator and hot water made life
easier. She had some “Tarot” cards that predicted
a death, he died and she burned them.
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| Frog Town |
It was New Year’s Day 1936 and we
were out of school and we were sledding down an alley next door into Main
Street. We were told the coast was clear
so down lee and I went and that is all I remember. Days later I woke up in the Bingham
Hospital. I was covered with sandbags so
I could not move at all. There was wires
stretching my leg and another pulling another way. There I lay for a week or a month, I don’t
know. My leg was broken and dislocated
at the hip and my pelvis was damaged. I
was a mess. Mother refused to let them
amputate. I could not walk for a
year. Lee had his face and sinuses
messed up and was lucky to survive.
We
were hit by one of the Hoyne boys, he was the son of the man who fired
dad. Mr. Hoyne knew his boy drove to
fast and was afraid of a law-suite so he gave dad him an outside job back in
Telegraph with a company house.
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| out house below US road |
Our house was a small three roomed ugly
unpainted little house without access to water.
No bath tub, no sink. Even our
coal shed was down a hill and across a ditch.
Nothing convenient but we loved it after living cooped up in an
apartment. Our house was set in a curve
in the road below the Giant Chief Dump, one side had a high rock cliff and the
other side was Chea’s house. One road
going up Bear Gulch and the other up Galena Gulch to US. The cliffs was a solid rock face that went
from Bodmer’s to the steep Bear Gulch ditch.
I looked and looked for a way to climb up and over it. Next thing I knew Carmela Chea had done the
impossible. Now we had a secret passage
to a new playground on a forested hillside.
We had twelve families living in the
apartments and five houses so there was usually enough kids to play with. Every one of them built on an ore dump. There was a huge wooden cribbing under
neither the apartments. The cribbing made
a home for many squirrel and chipmunks. One
day we would feed them and the next we would throw rocks at them. So they were to wise not to trust us.
We
had floods that came from snow melt and rains.
They were scary and fascinating.
At times wild animals would come wandering through. Spring brought the flowers and birds. Mother always had something for the little
redheaded that came birds came to the kitchen window to be fed. Winter came early with cold and snow. Lots of snow with no place to throw it. When the tap in the shed froze I had to carry
the water home. A yoke over my shoulders
allowed me to carry two buckets at a time.
Our water came from a spring, to a tank that was piped to a tunnel. It was so good that people came from miles
around, it was famous.
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| siblings with Tippy Telegraph |
Grandma’s
House
I
wanted to stay and explore this new home but I was sent away to Mapleton to
live with grandma on her farm. I was
lonely but it was fun feeding and caring for the animals. There was all kinds of things to do on a farm
and everything was new and fascinating. Like
it or not I healed and grew strong. Uncle
Joe had cut this field of wheat with a hand scythe with cradle, a day's work on
the scythe was real hard work. I could
barely lift this huge contraption but I did cut a little. I then bound and tied the stock with a few
strand of wheat, and later stacked grain side up to dry. These standing stocks would be loaded on a
horse drawn wagon and taken to the thrasher.
I could hardly wait for the thrasher and neighbors to come. The thrasher would soon begin to growl and
grown and dust would fly. In time a
large straw stack would form on one side and grains of golden wheat was being
loaded in the bed of another wagon to be taken to the granary. I loved to run my hands through the grain and
chew on these grains. Hay for the cow
was planted and cut at least twice while I was there. I remember the hen and chicks scrambling to
get away from the cutter. After drying
it would be raked and loaded on a wagon.
Huge forks would pick it up and carry it into the barn.
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| grandpa's barn storing hay |
I
loved to watch Uncle Joe milk. He was
good with a flick of his wrist would give each cat a squirt of milk right in
the mouth. I tried but never hit close
to the cat. I fed the pigs and chickens, turned the crank to separate the cream
from the milk, and then make butter out of cream. Grandma made money selling her butter. One lady drove all the way from Salt Lake
City to buy some. Oh, how I loved the
buttermilk. We had meat, vegetables and
fruit with every meal. But no one to
play with or talk with.
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| farming |
West
of the farm was a ravine with a pond and a creek with, ducks, birds and
snakes. We called it the “Hollow”. I loved it there.
One
day we all went for a picnic up Hobble Creek where I met our double
cousins. We had two Halversons that
married two Petersons. I was bored and
restless and went off by myself looking in the creek. She said don’t look at him, catch him. It was my Aunt Mary Halvorsen Peterson and
she showed me how to fish. I found a
pole, she found a hook and string and off we went. What a wonderful day with a wonderful
lady.
I
had no idea why I was sent down to grandmas.
I thought no one loved me. And
where did these babies come from? First
there was Paul, then Vivian.
They
came and brought me home just before school was about to start. I had missed so much school last year they
decided to put in the first grade again.
School was a about a mile down the canyon and the way was steep.
Copperfield
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| Copperfield road along side sewer below E Bridge |
Walking
from Bingham to Upper Bingham was quite an experience and dangerous. You were walking through the main part of the
mine right next to the trains, trucks, giant shovels. If you heard a whistle you had to run to a
shelter. They were springing and
blasting and rocks were falling everywhere.
Rocks were also falling from the bridges you had to walk under. A few years later they built a mile and a
quarter tunnel to walk through.
It
seems like the new boy in town gets tested.
I had many fights. It seems like
I always had a bloody nose or a lump on my head until I got the hang of
it. I even got to like fighting. Max was taller and had a longer reach so I
learned to take my lumps until I wore him out.
Then I took him down and got even.
Then he would take me home and his mother would feed us. He was a lifelong friend. He would go on to be quite famous.
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| school house |
In
the fourth grade I got real good in arithmetic and multiplication. The fifth grade was with Miss Holbrook and school
began to be interesting and my report card showed it.
Beverly
Barrett was “Taffy Ann” and I really do not know who or what I was. I was happily singing away when the teacher
said, “Stop” and everyone looked at me, Halverson just move your lips, “do not
sing”. I cannot carry a tune to this
day.
Then
we did “The
Copperfield Wood-Burned Mural”
and it was one of the most ambitious projects in all the 350 school-works by
Utah school children in the all-Utah school arts exhibit at the Utah Arts
Center in the Utah State Arts Center in Salt Lake
City. It
is a ten foot by four and a half foot wood-burned mural done as a community
project by the children of the fifth grade of Upper Bingham School. Committees of the fifth grade were chosen to
visit various buildings in Upper Bingham, Included in the mural was the First
Utah Copper Mine Office behind it was the Mine itself with its levels and
operations. The center piece was the
large figure of a miner, the mural accurately shows stores, boarding houses,
schools, mine buildings and other familiar scene to Bingham residents. The children of the Upper Bingham School have
developed the mural until it is representative of life of life in this community.
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| Jap Camp |
We had a tall Japanese was our main
artist. He was very talented and he drew
the center piece, a miner with a pick and a shovel. Our mural look so real. Isabell Rose drew and burnt the Copperfield
side of the tunnel. Our school was in the lower right-hand corner. I remember sitting on the floor burning and
shading it.
The
companies divided Copperfield by national and racial housing. Whites lived on Main Street in brick houses,
Mexicans in Dinkeyville, Greek Camp for single men and Jap Camp. I loved to go with Jackie Myaki to bathe in
their large hot tubs. And before the war
they had a school to teach the kids how to draw and write the Japanese
language. This extra help made them very
good students in our school. It was a
shame to see them close these schools after the war. But even before if any child spoke any
language other than English they were punished.
The many nationalities, cultures, customs, dances, and food made Bingham
what it was. I loved everything about
what we had. I am afraid it is lost and
gone forever.
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| Copperfield and Dinkeyville besides you, who have you told, what about your parents? Then the two of us sat down to talk. He didn’t tell me how he found this body of ore (silver and lead, whatever) but I believe he went down to bedrock for gold and found it by accident. He asked me to keep quite or he would be sent away. So, I promised. He worked with a pick, shovel and wheelbarrow. He mixed waste dirt with his ore to fool the US Mine who he was leasing from. If they even had an idea how rich a claim he had they would have shut him down. One day he retired and went to Salt Lake to live. |
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| Copperfield 4th of July |
One day a dump truck
stopped on the road and dumped about seven powder boxes of glass negatives that
had been stored in a warehouse somewhere. They would have been worth thousands
of dollars today. I saved about a dozen
years until dad put them in the garbage dump along with my collection of
carbide lamps and brass candle holders.
We
lived in a dangerous world. There were
working mines and abandoned mines right amongst the houses. Two men went in a tunnel in Dinkeyville and
died of poison air. It was a quick way
through the mountain to Yosemite. I went
through it but never with a flashlight. There
were mine shafts, holes where the surface caved into a mine. I lost a dog and the Ivies lost a horse. Two boys were found dead in a ventilation
shaft.
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| Old Telegraph Mine |
Flying
There wasn’t much for a
crippled boy to do and I was bored.
Mother noticed this and gave me a balsa wood airplane kit. The more I made the better I got. The first were proper driven, then I went
into gliders. Then in wings. Now I needed to make a big one. I soon found myself in a place I should not
be and took an armful of ¼” by 1 ½’ by 14 foot fir strips from US Carpenter
shop. It took a while to build and a
while before I tried to fly it. Kids came in from Dinkeyville and Copperfield
to watch me fly it. A half hour later we
were up on the Giant Chief Dump and tying a 25 pound bearing cap to the
nose. Everything was perfect, a good
rising wind coming up the dump and all I had to do is find the right balance
and send it away. On the third attempt I
was lifted off the ground and flying away.
They told me I was still running even when my feet was ten feet off the
ground. I was in trouble and knew it. If I dropped off now I would be dead, but
when I got to the end of the dump I was twenty feet in the air and going faster
every second. Well I
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| Karl John |
dropped off before
the hundred foot death drop. I ended up
with all kinds of cuts and bruises and bleeding in many places. All the time trying to see my giant
wing. I was looking down the canyon when
it went straight up higher than the dump and then see-sawed its way down into
Marsell Chea’s garage. The bearing cap
busted its way into the top of the garage leaving the poor wing for us to take
away. He never asked anyone about the
hole we knocked in his garage or the bearing cap inside so we came out of
hiding. He must have known but took it
with a smile. We never even told mother
what we were up too.
Exploring
the Mountains
I
got a brand new 22 rifle for Christmas, a pocket knife, a potato and a few
matches and Tippy a Rat Terrier grandpa gave me. He was quite a hunter and furnished me with
many meals. I ate squirrels, porcupines
and birds with my potato. A time or two
I didn’t even come home at night. When
some mother was looking for a child they’d call and told them if they were with
Lee they’d be alright. These were the
best years of my life.
We
even cooked grasshoppers. If an Indian
ate it we could too. You ever tried
stinging nettle? Boil it a couple of
times and it was tasty.
Snow
was melting and the water was running and I was there panning for gold. I followed Alvin Cole to a flat above my
house. I was not the best but I did find
gold.
Our
house at the head of Bear and Galena Gulch was the starting place for most all
trails into the mountains. From these
mountains I could see Salt Lake, Tooele and Lehi. What a place and time to live.
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| Telegraph being demolished |
We
had the coldest, sweetest water in the water tunnel next to Bodmer’s house? The Black Rock Trail started right
there. There were “Skinks” there they
were half snake and half lizard. Long
and skinny as a pencil. Dark brown with
tan corners and bright blue tail. These
were not the common blue belly lizards.
From
there we walked over the mountain to “Hawk Rock”. In late summer we would find
these crazy star shaped “Puff balls” that exploded when you stomped on them,
this would send these brownish/purplish powder spores all over your
ankles. They are actually a very
poisonous mushroom the 6/8 stars are the hard outer cover of the ball that
flattens leaving a tannish ball holding the spores. I now know them as the Earth Star Puff Ball
or the Devil’s snuff Box.
The
last stop on this trail was down to “Eagle Rock” sitting above the old Bishop
Mine in Yosemite Gulch, we could see Lark and all of Salt Lake Valley from
here. The mine head frame and building
were still in use, it pulled cars up from the shaft going deep down in the
mountain. We had a choice of walking
back over the mountain or a tunnel Dinkeyville?
The tunnel was about a mile long with shaft that was very dangerous to
tip toe past. It ended near Carter’s old
house near an old trail to Telegraph, this used to be the “Old Holden mule railroad”.
The
Bear Gulch/Queen/Butterfield Trail
Take
a left just behind my house on the road to Queen at the top of Telegraph, after
a steep climb the road levels out where a cement dam was used to save the creek
water for “gold mining”. Every time I
panned out a nice piece of gold, Alvin Cole would say, “That’s a good boy, here
put it in my bottle”. Across creek was
the most beautiful grove of ancient old Maple trees and the only lawn I ever
knew? It was a camping and picnicking
that I used many times. A half mile
latter you past the “Big Tree”. I remember
the spring there before the arsenic got in it?
This was an old Indian Camp where I found many arrowheads and flint
knives here. Can anyone remember Jack
Ass Gulch with all the old Quaken Aspen trees, this was the right fork? The center road went to a couple of mines
still being worked, I remember it as Bear Gulch. By staying on the main road about a mile or
two farther took you over the mountain to the town of Queen. I remember when
Queen housed at least several families and a boarding house for the single men. Travelling below the big Queen Mine Dump to
the first turn you would leave the road and make short climb to the mines water
line that went from Butterfield to Queen.
Then traversed the tops of Butterfield Canyon until we got to the Boy
Scout Camp. I remember the building with
its big fireplace where Lee and I spent a snowy night with one blanket. There were four of us to start with but the
others left sometime in the dark.
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| Copperfield, Telegraph, US road |
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| Telegraph above Copperfield |
The Bear Gulch Middle Canyon Trail
Starting
at the back of my house in Telegraph you would walk to the Queen Ridge leaving
the road for a trail that headed up toward Sun Shine Peak, to the left you
could look at Queen far below. At the
right was Doctor Frazier’s ski run and ski jump. I skied it and remember it well. Going up put you high above the “Silver
Shield Mine and the US Road. A little
higher and above Silver Shield was the stumps trees of an ancient forest called
“The Big Grove. It was clear cut to
build the Mormon Tabernacle. Did anyone
besides me ever go over and lay on the huge 5/6 foot diameter stumps. A half a mile father up the trail leveled off
a mile or so above Butterfield, passing through two large groves of Quaking
Aspen. I remember this part of the trail
because of the many Horny Toads found there.
You see the Butterfield-Middle Canyon Pass a half mile below where you
would go over the pass to another to a spring above the Highland Boy water
tunnel and on down to the tunnel. At
times there would be kids my age who had arrived here from Highland Boy. These were my first friend I knew from
Highland Boy.
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| 2 mile Telegraph to US road |
The first half mile above my house was quite steep until you reached and crossed this huge air pipe 10 inches in diameter, coming from Copperfield to the US Mine. Did any of you try to slide down it too? Once was enough for me too. The road was mostly level for the next two miles to the US Town and Mine. The Utah Copper Dump on the right went straight to the US. The Silver Shield Mine had a dry-house for their workers too shower but the water was full of arsenic and tasted bitter but it was hot and Lee loved it.
I
remembers when US was full of houses and people, I had many friends there? Lorraine, Blackie Clinton’s daughter said,
“In the winter time when the roads were closed, they went down a mine shaft
through a tunnel to the Copperfield school.
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| Freeman Gulch |
The
“Water Falls Trail Freeman Gulch
As a kid I hiked all over the hills in
Bingham. My buddies at that time
included Art Bentley, Teddy Allen and Floyd Timothy. We had a favorite place we called
“waterfalls”; it was a real pretty spot with a nice stream and a pond. We made rafts and poled around the pond. The water was so cold we didn’t swim unless
we fell off the raft. The water falls
and pond was in Freeman Canyon just over the B&G railroad.
The
Markham’s Trail
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| Markham Canyon bridge before D Dump |
Winter
Time
We played in the snow did a lot of
sledding. We could ride over a mile or
so with no problems. We were at the end
of the road and the cars were mostly parked and snowed in. But one day I noticed ski tracks and we were
too poor to buy me some. So I went
behind a Copperfield store broke up a big barrel and made a pair of skis. I followed the ski tracks to the top of Bear
Gulch and found a much used ski run and jump.
I didn’t have much trouble with the run but I fell down on every
jump.
Changing
Schools
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| Latest Copperfield school |
One field trip we went to the
University of Utah to see experiments with electricity, vacuums and other
interesting things.
We got our first radio and at first
we would sit down and listen to some funny stories; I Love a Mystery, Tarzan,
Fiber Magee and Moly, Kingfish etc. Then
the Second World War began. War in
Europe, war in China and then Finland was fighting Russia. We still had family in Finland and we were
quite concerned. Now we were tuned into
the wars. China was in a losing
war. Germany had taken most of Europe
and was losing in Russia. Finland had stopped Russia at its border. But it was on the other side of the
world.
The war got closer when Bob Burke was
killed when his ship was sunk by a German submarine.
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| Harvey Halverson & Marcell Chea Telegraph |
Graduation classes for the next few
years several years had very few boys left.
War took so many men into the service
boys and girls were hired.
I hired out in 1944. Worked on the track-gang. At times the gangs were all young boys. I first worked on Bicycle Gus’s gang. He was a little old man with short legs. He peddled down the ties so fast he was hard
to keep up with. He was Greek from the
old country and I liked him very much.
He had quite an accent and we all tried to mimic his speech. We learned how to cut rails with chisel and
hammer. Drill holes in rails. We were the only gang at the mine who could
do this. I learned a lot from him.
Then I was a Dump man. Telling the brakeman where to dump his
train. When this berm when it became
long enough it was flattened and the track moved out for another berm.
Jack Whitely noticed me and I was
given a train to work with. I was now a
brake man who hanging on the lead car going to the dump. I learned all the tricks to keep them
running, and putting them back on track.
A couple of friends were killed so I moved on. I remember some funny times with “Wild Bill”
and we were helping him so he could eventually retire. He was a good man in his day but today he was
“blind as a bat”. Signals were never
seen. The brakeman stopped the train by
kicking the tail-hose. Gordon Hickman
was riding the end and signaling like crazy.
He jumped and watched his train run to the end of the track and over the
hill.
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| Mormon Church kids |
I bid on the machine shops to work
there. I helped Lewy Ballamis and it was
fun. He was the only real boilermaker
left at the mine and every day was a surprise when one of those old steamers
would come in. More than once we would
rake the fire from the boiler and the grate was still red. We covered the grate and I would cover Lew
with wet rags then he would climb in and tighten a stay-bolt or something. I loved that old man.
Then in 1948 the US Mine took our
house and tore it down. We moved to West
Jordan and my story ends.
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| Telegraph in winter |
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