THE
SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
Said, “Chicken
Little”.
Eugene Halverson
One
day the sky fell and my world ended too.
We
were told to, “Pack up and get out”.
So
we moved to the valley below, they didn’t want us either.
 |
| Old Mine |
My
world has vanished and Bingham will never be seen again. At least Brigadoon comes back
for a day every 100 years. Bingham is
buried never to be seen again.
Nothing
for the old to see and the young will never understand our sorrow of losing our
town and the scattering our friends.
Bingham
is Gone Author Unknown
Men
took a mountain of grass and pines,
And
left in its place what they call a mine.
Levels
of orange, green and tan,
The
“Worlds Eighths Wonder”---a work of man!
Into
the canyon they called all the folk,
To
dredge out its minerals by daily yoke.
Work
from the morning till setting sun,
Until
another level of copper is begun.
Into
the cant the worker brought homes,
The
mountains surrounding for the wee folk to roam.
No
green yards nor big front window pane,
No
blade of grass or country lane---
Just
hung on the hills up to the skies,
Level
on level their homes did rise.
They
built them shacks on the sides of the hill.
But
the people made homes as all miners will.
Clean
and neat and happy the places,
Peopled
together, a number of races.
They
lived together and loved their town.
But
now today, men are tearing it down.
Under
tons of rock they can no longer can bleed.
They
are leaving people with a desperate need.
Children
were born in the canyon gorge,
Went
on to good lives and ways to forge;
Loved
this ugly place so well.
Stories
to their children their strange life did tell.
They
told of the mountains they could climb.
They
told of the snow slides, and the dead at the mine.
Of
dancing in the streets when finally paved.
At
the Greyhound tourists from their windows waved.
They
had a good life and loved their town.
You
tear up their roots as you tear her down.
You
leave old people with nowhere to rest.
To
Giant on the mountain they have given their best.
No
home for the children now grown.
You
scatter them farther with each rock thrown.
Would
that the progress and knowledge of today,
Could
find other means to make the mine pay.
To
have left her old, but a lady proud,
Tumbled
down shacks under blue sky and cloud,
Not
buried deep—without even a sign.
BINGHAM
was the once rowdy lady at the base of the mine.
 |
| A TREE LIKE OURS--IN SILVER SHIELD |
Another
Poem
There
used to be a town there,
With
trestles, trains and play’
We
climbed up to our homes there,
“Til
giants moved it away.
The mountain lived until the White-man came. The Indians worshipped it and took care of
it. It feed, clothed and housed
them. At every mountain pass, every
spring and every stream I found a camp. There
were chippings and arrowheads other signs.
Every canyon had a stream of water.
Grass, bushes, trees of all kinds showed its self in all of nature’s
glory.
 |
| CREEKS FROM EVERY CANYON |
One day I found a four hundred year
old forest. Years later I found a mining
journal that called it the “Red Grove” and the Mormons cut it to build Salt
Lake City. I had no camera to take a
picture. The stumps were humongous, they
were over five feet in diameter. Several years ago I found a picture of a tree
like ours high on Mount Timpanogos. The
tree was twenty-two feet in circumference, it was a tree when the pilgrims
landed. It survived fire, bugs, and
lightning.
They built houses and farms in the
flats below the canyon but disappeared creek waters became too polluted to use.
Stories were told of gold and
silver, and the miners came. Placer
miners found gold in the creeks. Silver
with lead was found just lying on top of the ground in upper Galena Gulch. Thousands miners and soldiers were out searching
and scarring the mountains, but they mostly ended in failure until the
railroads came.
 |
| HIGHLAND BOY-- SEWER ON LEFT |
MONEY
CAME and everything changed. When Placer Mining ended tunnels
began following the color. There were
many specimens of metal but they could not separate the copper with the
“cyaniding process”. “Big Money People
from back East and around the world began buying up entire mountain sides. The Rockefellers of Standard Oil bought out most
of the underground mines, while the Guggenheims put their money on open-pit mining. The money allowed the Utah Copper to build their
railroads. Back then both trains and
shovels needed tracks. Rockefellers D&RGW
Railroad were hauling the ores from the U.S. mines and Copperfield as well as the
Utah Copper’s ore from the Assembly Yards in the pit. Copper Belt Trains with their elaborate
gearing system climbed the mountain easily but very dangerous because of a poor
braking system. Many a train rolled off
the mountain to the town below.
 |
| COPPERFIELD IN WINTER |
People were coming in and Bingham was growing.
First to come were the hard-rock miners like the Welch, Irish and
Cornish. Then companies began bringing
all the cheap unskilled workers from all over the world. Thousands of Greeks, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes,
and Italians answered the call. Hundreds
of Swedes and Finns came. Most were
placed in “Company Towns” so all their wages came back to the company. They rented houses or boarding houses, all
clothing and groceries had to be bought at the company store and some had
company Bars. Some went to tent towns or
shanty towns, and dugouts (hole in the ground with a door). Businesses were built along the single
one-way road so the houses climbed the mountain almost one on top of the other. Eventually we became the third largest city
in Utah. Aunt Edla Antbrams came to
Bingham in 1903 and wrote about how she loved Bingham and how beautiful the
mountains were to picnic in. She tells
about a bear in a mine and how scary it was to see a mountain lion in
town. “Look them in the eye but do not
run”. She tells of the steep sloping
mountain side that made the houses look like they were stacked one on top of
another up along the mountainside. She
described the town as 10-Kilometer long draining ditch.
 |
| COPPER WATER IN COPPERFIELD |
This “drainage ditch” was really a
“sewer” many out houses were built over it.
It was also a drainage ditch running out of the mines. The water was the color of the minerals
leaving the mines. It was so poisonous
that it killed the smell as well as the bacteria in the water.
We called it the sewer but at times
it was mostly “copper water” and it was valuable. The Utah Copper had a large precipitating
plant at Lead Mine to collect and use it and Robbie had one below it. Little did they know that others like George
Panos and Lance Turner were collecting tin cans and making copper as well. You could put an iron nail in the water one
day and it would be a copper nail the next morning. You could see the nail change color in a very
short time. The sand along the creek was
soft and pure white and fun to play in.
Across the street from the
precipitating plant was the Copperton Smelter and closer to Frog Town we had the
Yampa and Winnemucca Smelters, they were all abandoned long before my
time. The new smelters were built in
Murray, Sandy and Midvale but the valley farmers didn’t like the smoke either and
had them shut down.
 |
| Precipitating plant fell down vats still in use |
The English Dairy was at the bottom
of Dry Fork with milk cows and pigs running free. Here we also had old Bingham Cemetery with
Chandlers Mausoleum. The Dry Fork shops was
just below the cemetery. And right in
the middle we had the Garbage Dump. Just
above the dump was a pump sending drinking water to Lower Bingham.
There was lots of things to do for
a boy in Frog Town. Across the street we
had the train depot and the Ice House (no refrigerators then). It was fun to watch the steam locomotives
blowing their horn as they came to town.
Like a monstrous dragon they came whistling, hissing, and smoking.
We played in the ruins of the Yampa
Smelter the square smoke stack was still standing but the walls were caving in
and the roof was gone. We played on some
giant black rocks across the road, around a few mines and buildings that were
falling down. In the spring when the
flowers bloomed the hill side turned pink with the Pink flowers. It was quite a hike up over the Utah Copper
Dumps and down to the beautiful creeks in Freeman and Markham. The streams ended at the dumps and make big
wonderful ponds to play in. Sometimes
they would break loose and flood the town below.  |
| Yampa Smelter Frog Town |
Little
things I Remember
We could hardly wait for the sun to
go down. Work and cleaning ended and the
old folks came out to talk and the kids came to play. It was a different world in those days. Women with a dozen kids had time to
socialize. Men with stories to tell.
No yards, no grass and no fences,
we could go everywhere. No playgrounds
so we played in the streets or someplace not in use. Mostly some place the bigger boys wasn’t
playing in. I liked to play with the
older boys. They had all the toys and things
to play with. They had the only ball in town.
I still remember the Grove kids and
their rubber guns. The guns were wood
mostly powder boxes. The bullets was
knotted bands of inner-tubes and were made of real live rubber from the rubber
trees in the Philippines. The gun had
either a cloths pin for a trigger or leather strap to pull to release the
band. The bigger boys like the Groves
kids needed a target so they let us play.
They tied knots in the bands and stretched them tight to make sure that they
would hurt. Our little clothes pin guns
couldn’t hurt anybody but if you hit one of them they were dead and they didn’t
shoot you, fairs is fair I guess.
“Can the Can” a game much like
cricket. Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played by two—two man
teams. One team at bat the other team
the pitchers. The pitcher throws a
tennis ball as hard as he can at the two opposite cans. Each can knocked over is an out. The batter tries to hit the ball hard enough
so he and his partner can run to the opposite hole and score a run.
 |
| Track Gang |
There was an ice-house near the
depot where train-loads of ice was stored and covered with saw-dust. We had no refrigerators back then so ice was
delivered to the homes. Our butter was
set in a wet burlap covered box to keep cool.
A water can with a small hole kept the burlap sack wet.
Milk was delivered from a few
different dairies. Some people even had
water delivered. Farmers from the valley
brought in fresh fruits and vegetables. Fresh
mead was hard to buy or keep in the homes.
Dad was out of work when we lived in Frog Town and too far away in
Telegraph. In Telegraph our pantry was a
door to the tunnel that made the dump our house was on.
 |
| BINGHAM MERC. in CENTER |
During the Depression people were
hungry. Someone down in Provo began
bringing Carp and Suckers and leaving them in barrels. Mother told me to look for the suckers or
small carp. I liked them both then. A few years ago I cooked a carp, sure looked
good but smelled terrible. I threw it
out.
Mother fed us lots of salted and
dried foods. I liked the dried beef,
bacon or pork in a white sauce over toast.
Mother made the best bread ever.
Bread and milk was my favorite breakfast.
The Bingham Mercantile always had
dried salted fish in wooden boxes setting outside the store.
When we moved to Telegraph Miner’s
Mercantile became our store. It was a US
Company store. We lived in a company
house. My dad worked for the company. In the summer I carried our water in two
buckets with a yoke up the hill from a little shed below the dump. When the line froze in the winter I had to
carry it from the water tank tunnel a hundred yards away. On bath day I carried lots of water and
mother heated the water on an old kitchen stove. When I turned 16 number two tub was a stand
only tub.
 |
| COPPERFIELD |
The “1912 Strike” was blamed on the
Greeks. They were then either fired of
quit working in the mines. John Leventis
who ran a coffee house in Copperfield said, “Stay out of the mines”, and they
did. They pooled their money and went
into being businessmen. I remember the
Pan Hellenic Grocery run by the Mackris’s, the Lendaris Mercantile, the
Independent Grocery, Mike the Barber, Cairo Club and maybe the Butcher Shop
were operated by Greek families. The
Saltis’s had a grocery store somewhere.
 |
| CHICAGO CHARLEY & QUEEN LUCY ZANARDI |
Dad was fired when he got sick and
we were forced to move from the company apartments and had no place to go. In Frog Town George Panos let us live in the
Panos apartments. Chris Apostol’s
Grocery store allowed us to charge our food.
It took me many years to realize just how poor we were back then and the
sacrifices my mother made to feed and clothe us. Another wonderful old Greek was Lew Ballamis,
I knew the family in Frog Town and later when I served as his helper and
apprentice. We still had several steam
engines to care for and he was the man too do it. I can still see him as we pulled the fire
from a jitney, threw wet rags in the fire box, then I covered him the best I
could and watched as he went entered the fire-box with a 90 pound rivet
gun. It took two of us on the outside
with our 90 pounder to hit the stay-bolt.
When the steam stopped escaping we knew we had done a good job. He was like a father to me and I loved
him. Eventually the old boiler work
ended and he ran the shop crane. Quite a
guy. They all were great and I was proud
to know them.
“Chicago Charley” was another
famous “Greek”. He was a “NUT” and he’ll
agree. I never had or seen anyone with
so much enthusiasm but that was what Bingham needed to wake us up and realize
there was a war going on. Charley had
been a soldier in a war and knew what soldiers missed the most. Letters from home. He had been wounded and personally decorated
by King Alexander of Greece.
 |
| Big Hook after remodel |
He started the “Victory Flag
Society” in Copperfield and it soon spread like wildfire. Charley wanted nothing but the best for the
soldiers fighting in some foreign land.
Soldiers wanted news from home and we wanted news about them. Every day Charley got a letter from a soldier
to share and Big Hookhe sent a monthly newsletter back.
They treasured his newsletter—it was unique no other city in America had
one. The letters written home were
treasures every one wanted to read. He
was raised money in many ways and made us proud. Charley wrote that Bingham was hit with 240
mile per hour winds and the snow was 30 feet deep. Mike Gerbich told about mosquitos in the
Tropics with bad dispositions and at night spiders and lizards fought each
other to see who would sleep with him. He was our “greatest patriot” and our famous “nut”. In addition to the monthly newsletter the
“VFS” published at year end books with messages and pictures of all those who
served as well as all those who were killed in the war. One thing about Bingham everyone was
different.
 |
| COPPERIELD AND DINKEYVILLE |
The Greeks were wonderful people,
who were persecuted by the “mining companies and the Mormons who hated all
foreigners. The Ku-Klux-Klan burning
“Crosses” in Frog Town and Copperfield to intimidate the Greeks and Mexicans. Life was hard for them for many years.
Mining was dangerous there were
many injuries and deaths. The loss of a
husband left many mothers with children living in poverty. The mother and children did what they could
to survive. My aunt was left with seven
children to raise. Mr. Isoluoma, who
could no longer work sat at the mine entrance in the hoping that some miner happened
to save something for him in his lunch-box.
 |
| COPPERFIELD |
I remember an old lady who was not quite
all there and she had look that could stop a clock. She wore two or more ragged dresses and a
couple of dirty coats to keep warm as she walked the streets some called her
“Dumb Dora”, I wondered if she could talk.
She would silently come around to the back porch and look in the windows
one by one until she was noticed. My
brother, was about five then and he was terrified of her. Lee was always watching and seemed to see her
first and came screaming to mother. Mother
always invited her in and sit by the stove and feed her. My mother seemed to have saved something for
her even though we had little to eat ourselves.
There was a great deal of suffering back then. I often wondered who she was and what ever
happened to her.
 |
| DOCTOR RICHARDS--GALENA DAYS |
When DOCTOR PAUL RICHARDS
came to the Bingham Hospital
in 1922 it was no more than a first aid station and a dirty one at that. At that time all the surgeries were performed
in Salt Lake City. Well he sure changed
that and in a few days many operations were soon performed and as the hospital
grew and he was accepted into the town’s activities. He fondly remembers being invited into
different Serbian homes for Christmas.
The hospital grew from five employees to 76 with five doctors.
With a town population near 20,000
and an open sewer running through it Bingham had many diseases. He organized immunization campaigns for
typhoid fever, smallpox, and diphtheria.
Then he began giving “tonsillectomies en masse”. I got mine out in the Copperfield School
just a few years after he saved my leg and probably my life. The other doctors wanted to cut it off at the
hip.
 |
| DOCTOR RICHARD'S BACKYARD |
He proved to the mine owners the
advantages of mine safety. Just the
wetting down of mine dust and wearing of safety hats and glasses would save
lives and money. His daughter, Lenore said, “He was going to be a ladies doctor
and woke up being the miners
savior. He was best in the country in performing disc
operations on the back. Doctors from
everywhere came to his hospital to learn his methods.
Galena Days was started because of
him. He also footed the bill for feeding
hundreds of Boy Scouts at Tracy Wigwam.
He certainly was loved in our family. My mother even name a son, Paul after him.
DOCTOR RUSSELL FRAZIER came to Bingham in 1918 as a company
doctor for the Utah Copper until 1961 when the town was evacuated to make room
for mine expansion. His story as told by
the UHS 1960 Quarterly.
 |
| Hospital |
I started to work for Dr. D.H.
Ray. My conveyance was a big, black
horse, my salary $100.00 per month, room board and experience. My competitors were Dr. J.F. Flynn and Dr.
F.E. Straup, the mayor of the town.
The Bingham district including Lark
had a population of about 9,000 people.
At one time Bingham had 17 different nationalities.
With the aid of Mrs. Breckon,
Grandma Mayne and Mary Jane Crow, we delivered over 4,000 babies in homes
without an infection, which speaks volumes for the good care these women gave
in the homes of Italians, Greeks, Slovakians and just plain Americans. Many of these mothers could not speak one
word of English, but the children from these homes became some of Utah's finest
citizens. I have seen them wade through
snow up to their waists to be at the side of some girl when she was having her
first baby. The comforting presence of
these kindly women holding the hand of a girl in pain made my work much easier.
 |
| new car in town |
On Saturday afternoons, the
"good" women and their daughters did not come uptown. The girls from "up the street" started
their parade to the doctor’s office for their weekly checkup. At one time there were over 50 of these girls
in town. As they came rustling down the
street in their silks and satin and big picture hats. The pool halls emptied on to the narrow steps
out in front to watch but there was no whistling or calling.
The narrow street was part of
Bingham --seven miles long and 40 feet wide, with a narrow strip of concrete
for a sidewalk. The houses were built
back up the mountainside. My roof was
your front porch and running right down through the center of town was the open
sewer. No stench and no bacteria. You probably wonder why we did not all die
from some epidemic. The copper water
from the mines killed both stench and bacteria.
 |
| Fire Truck |
Frazier claimed ancestry
and early upbringing for the adventuresome career be enjoyed as a mining camp
physician, river runner, and Antarctic explorer. I remember him on skis and poles above
Telegraph and his home-made ski jump on the Queen ridge. So, I made skis out of barrel stays and
talked mother into buying me a pair. I
have a picture of him running the Colorado River. I also followed him down to the “Wayne
Wonderland” red rock country.
By FOOT, By HORSE, By CRUMMY (a
company Train)
LOUISE VAN Ee--- came to Bingham in 1921 to School
Nurse teach general health care, the
washing of hands, faces and cleaning teeth.
It wasn’t easy with 27 poor foreign immigrant children. She had a difficult time of stopping the mother’s
habit of sewing the winter underwear on their children. She taught preventive medicine, vaccinations,
and clinics. She even started school
lunch program.
 |
| IVY SHELLING PEAS |
IVY BAKER PRIEST grew from a tomboyish miner’s
daughter in pigtails in Carr Fork to her position as one of the outstanding
women in government. Ivy’s Dad came home
one day and said, I’ve found a place to live.
“An’ what sort of “ouse ‘ave ye found” asked mother? The biggest in town. Luckily it was for her Dad was brought home
with a broken leg and now Mother ran a boarding house. The house soon had 20 boarders that meant 20
breakfasts, 20 lunch boxes filled with sandwiches, cake and fruit and 20 for
super. Ivy at 12 years old now had a
full time job. Ivy went to school in
Bingham and learned the many things that made her the lady she became.
Ivy’s mother’s successful campaign
to elect Doctor Sraupp as Bingham’s mayor was later used by Ivy to help elect
General Eisenhower to be our new President.
He in turn made her “Secretary of the Treasury”.
 |
| MAX SALAZAR |
Max Salazar and I got to know each
other in the 2nd grade after a fight. We had many fights. He was tall and had the reach on me but I was
strong and finished him off when he tired.
Then we usually went to his house, cleaned up and ate some soup his
mother made. I think we liked to fight
but other than that we were very good friends.
We went to the High School until he lied about his age and enlisted in
the Navy. He was 13 years old then. He was Utah’s youngest veteran in World War
II and was honorably discharged when his age was discovered at 15 while
recovering from wounds he received at Saipan when he saved his commanding
officer who was trapped in some burning oil.
For this act of bravery, he was awarded the Presidential Citation. He then joined the Merchant Marines and had
that torpedoed and sunk. He was found a
month later living on some island in the Pacific.
 |
| MAX with PRESIDENT KENNEDY |
Then he was Union leader until he resigned
to be the Chief Mine Inspector. Then
became the Bureau Chief of Safety and Health for the State of Montana. Active in Little League. He ran for Senator. I have a picture of him with President Kennedy
and another with President Johnson.
He married Virginia Jones and
together they raised 15 children. She said, “Being married to a fellow by the
name of Salazar called for becoming an expert at enchiladas and tortillas
during her first year of marriage.” Virginia
dismisses cooking for the gang with the fact it’s easy because all her pans are
large so she just fills them. “I don’t
know what I would do if I had to cook for four people for a month.” she said
laughingly. “There sure would be a lot
of leftovers or waste or something.”
 |
| ADELA SALAZAR-- COPPERFIELD |
She said a nightly ritual is
someone in the kitchen boiling up a few potatoes for breakfast hash browns to
go with about two dozen eggs. ADELA
Coal was delivered to the house no
matter where you lived. We had at least
three coal yards. There were gas
stations all the way to Highland boy but none in Copperfield even after the
mine separated us from Bingham. We had hotels
and boarding houses from Frog Town all the way to US and in Highland Boy some
were also in Lark.
The “Princess Theater” in Bingham was
the biggest and best and we even had a Princess something in Copperfield all
owned by Harold Chesler. Someone asked
if he was a Jew. Yup! I told him about
my brother, Lee winning a race on Galena Days.
Harold came up in front of a big audience and presented Lee with a whole
roll of movie tickets, you should have heard the applause, but when a bunch of
Copperfield boys came to the show with one of Lee’s tickets. Chesler, said, “NO! NO! Not today! Galena Day is over.” Well, we still remember.
 |
| JOE BERGER'S COMBINATION BAR |
Joe Berger’s lost his morticians
license by displaying Lopez’s victims in his store. I remember the live rattlesnakes he kept for show
to advertise the feast when they were eaten.
He gave me money for bottles and gave me $50 cents for porcupine I
killed and dragged to his Bar. A gruff
old guy but I liked him.
Enough about leaders and heroes, it
was the everyday people you would meet. During
my generation skin color was never noticed and we were welcome in any
home. Whenever we would recognize anyone
from Bingham time stood still until we told our story. Down in the valley where I lived we were
shunned and it took many years before I made friends. They would rather avoid any eye contact and
conversation with people from Bingham.
 |
| DINKEYVILLE KIDS |
Bo hunk Christmas was a big day in
Highland Boy and it was a happy Doctor Richards when he was invited. Lambs and pork was roasted and most houses
had cabbage rolls called Sarma.
The Swedes had their Lutefisk
setting pots of lie and stinking Carr Fork up.
But what a dinner it made.
Christmas a pretty girl with a lighted crown serving coffee and cakes. Wreaths and a Christmas tree and dancing at
the Swede hall.
Jackie Myakki would take Max and I into
the hot tubs in Jap Camp. Before the War
the Japanese kids were taught to speak and read their own language, to write
and draw. They had two schools to go to. In ours we used their talents on a few class
projects.
The Copper-Belt trains brought the
empty cars around the Horseshoe Bend passed through Bingham up to Copperfield
replacing the Holden mule-train. The
“Aerial Trams day ended when the three smelters shut down.
The Bingham-Garfield railway
replaced the Copper-Belt which was replaced by the “Low-Line” to Magna.
The Low-Line was replaced by a pipe
pumping ore as a slurry to Magna.
Huge trucks and conveyers have
replace all the trains at the Mine.
We lived in harmony with all the
Mines as they grew up an around us and now we were removed and scattered.
Bingham is Gone
Where have all my “Neighbors” gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
