(from findagrave) Olympic Games Gold Medalist Athlete. On July 8, 1912, in Stockholm, Sweden, he sailed over a bar 6’4″ high to win first place in the running high jump at the fifth modern Olympic games. He was a student at Brigham Young University when he went to Chicago to try out for the United States Olympic team. Some athletes trained on the ship that took them to Europe, but Richards felt that his event was not suited to shipboard practice so he just relaxed. He began intensive training in Antwerp, where the team had a layover, and continued to train until his event was called. He excelled at many events including the broad jump, pole vault, shot put, discus, and the 100 and 400 meter races and competed until 1932. During his career he set 55 records. Besides his Olympic feat, other major achievements included decathlon champion at the National AAU meet in San Francisco in 1915 and high point honors at the Inter-Allied World Games in Paris in 1919. He attended Murdock Academy and BYU, graduated from Cornell University, and received a law degree from the University of Southern California. He served in the Army during World War I. Although admitted to the California Bar, he elected to teach school (Venice High 32 years) rather than practice law.
Mercur is located in Mercur Canyon (formerly Lewiston Canyon). Silver was discovered in the 1860s and it was a booming mining town called Lewiston, that town burned down and in 1882 mercury was discovered and a new town built up to mine it.
Built c. 1880 of native rock, it served as a hotel for many skilled workers on the Manti Temple. It was acquired in 1897 by John D. T. McAllister, prominent Utah pioneer and churchman.
This house, built about 1858, is a significant example of one of the traditional building designs found in early Utah Vernacular architecture. Three of Manti’s most prominent families lived here. Orville Southerland Cox, the builder, was a leading Mormon colonizer. Jezreel Shoemaker who took over the house in 1861, was three times mayor of Manti. In 1879, Edward Parry, a stone mason from Wales, moved into the house to supervise the masonry work on the Manti Temple.
Located at 50 North 100 West in Manti, Utah – this home was added to the National Historic Register (#82004157) on August 4, 1982.
The Cox-Shoemaker-Parry house is an excellent example of early vernacular architecture in Utah. Constructed around 1858, the six-bay, double-pen plan is representative of the range of traditional building designs found in the state during the second half of the nineteenth century. The house also demonstrates the process by which older houses were remodeled to meet the demands of changing architectural fashion. The home is also significant as the residence of three of Manti’s most prominent families. The builder was Orville Southerland Cox, a leading colonizer of the Mormon West who personally figured in founding and settling a dozen towns. When Cox was called in 1861 by Church authorities to colonize the Big Muddy in Nevada, the home became the property of Jezreel Shoemaker. Shoemaker was a wealthy convert to the LDS Church who arrived in Manti in 1849 with the first contingent of pioneers. He participated on the first city council and later, in addition to his many ecclesiastical duties as a member of the local church hierarchy, served three terms as mayor of the city. Shoemaker died in 1879, just as work was commencing on the monumental temple which the Mormons were planning to build in Manti. Edward Parry, a stone mason from Wales, was called to Sanpete County to supervise the masonry work on the massive limestone edifice. In local tradition, the home is primarily associated with Edward Parry, the master mason of the Manti Temple.
Manti was settled by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, in 1849 as part of their larger colonization of much of the Intermountain West. Although the town was surveyed in 1850, tension between the newcomers and the native Utahns, the Sanpitch (Shoshone) Indians, confined most families to the protective forts which were constructed in the town during the first decade of settlement. 2 A large fort, enclosing nine city blocks was completed in 1854 and several families began building private residences within its stone walls. Orville Southerland Cox, one of the members of the first company to reach Manti, began hauling oolite limestone from the nearby quarry in 1858 for his two-story home.
Orville S. Cox was born in 1815 in Plymouth, New York. 4 A blacksmith by trade, Cox followed the westward moving frontier, landing by 1837 in the Mormon settlement near Lima, Illinois. Here he met and married a Mormon girl, Elvira P. Mills. In 1839, the young couple visited Nauvoo, where Orville was converted and baptized by the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith. After the martyrdom of Smith and the expulsion of the Saints from Illinois, the Coxes followed the general exodus to Utah in 1847. Orville served two years as the presiding bishop of Bountiful, a town several miles north of Salt Lake City, before being sent in the pioneer party to Sanpete County in 1849. In the new community of Manti, Cox was primarily engaged as a blacksmith and lumber dealer as well as serving as counselor to Bishop John Lowery, Sr. By 1860, Orville Cox had entered into Mormon sanctioned polygamy and had three families. In 1861-1862, he moved his first wife, Elvira Mills, to the town of Fairview, Sanpete County. In 1864, Cox moved with his two other wives, Mary Alien and Eliza J. Losee, to the LDS settlement on the Big Muddy, in Nevada.5 In later years, the Coxes also participated in the cooperative, Utopian experiment at Orderville. Orville S. Cox died in 1888 at Fairview. When Orville Cox pulled out of Manti for Nevada, the big stone house was purchased by Jezreel Shoemaker.
Jezreel Shoemaker was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, in 1796. Brought up along the frontier, Shoemaker was involved in farming and lumbering when he moved to Adams County, Illinois in 1828. Near Quincy, along the Mississippi, he homesteaded 160 acres and eventually built up the largest farm in the county. When he joined the LDS Church in the early 1840’s, he was one of the wealthiest men to affiliate with the young religious movement. When the church was forced from Illinois in 1846-1847, he sold or gave away his lands and migrated west to Salt Lake City. In 1849 he was called by Brigham Young to settle Manti in Sanpete County. Here he continued to prosper in the accumulation of material wealth as well as spiritual favor. Shoemaker served on the High Council of the local ecclesiastical ward and carried out three terms as mayor of Manti City. He died in 1879.
As the principal city in Sanpete County, Manti was selected in the late 1870’s as the site of a Mormon temple.8 Brigham Young, the church president, dedicated the land in 1877, shortly before his death. William Folsom from Salt Lake City was selected as temple architect in 1875 and work commenced in 1879. Since the monumental building was to be constructed of the local oolite limestone, a mason of considerable talent was required to supervise the work. Edward L. Parry, an immigrant from Wales, was brought into the project in the spring of 1877 as chief mason. Parry had been born in 1818 in Denbigshire, Wales, where he learned the mason’s trade from his father. He joined the LDS Church in 1853 and emigrated to Utah. During the late 1850’s he was instrumental in laying the foundations of the Salt Lake City Temple (not completed until 1893), but in 1862 he was sent south to St. George in Washington County. Here he built the city hall and courthouse and served as master mason on the St. George Tabernacle and temple. In 1877, Parry moved on, well-qualified, for his role in raising the Manti temple, a building considered by many to be the finest example of nineteenth century Mormon architecture. The temple was dedicated in 1888 and Parry then formed the company, E. L. Parry and Sons, specializing in stonework and marble cutting. Edward L. Parry died in 1902. The house remained in the Parry family until 1961.
Built in 1894 in Taylorsville, Utah – The chapel for the Taylorsville Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, now Al-rasool Islamic Center.
This mural depects the interesting places and people of Barstow Route 66.
On the far left of the mural you will see a 1947 three wheeled Harley Davidson Service Car used by Barstow Police department for parking enforcement to collect money and carry tools to repair the parking meters on Main Street Route 66. The Harley & the featured Model T are displayed at the Barstow Route 66 Mother Road Museum at the Harvey House.
Next to the Harley is a Barstow neon sign and lyrics for Bobby Troup’s “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” made famous by Nat King Cole.
Across the top of the mural are popular places found along Barstow Route 66. From the left you see the Beacon Tavern, the El Rancho whose six story sign has welcomed travelers on Route 66 since the 40s, Del Taco which was started and continues to be run by Barstow’s Hackbarth family, Fosters Freeze was a stand that at one time used car hops, and the Skyline Drive-In one of the last operating drive-in theaters in Southern California.
In the center is Frank Sinatra’s 1966 Cadillac, which drove through and was repaired in Barstow and a Ford Mustang, one of the most popular cars made in the U.S.
On the far right of the mural is a 1915 Ford Model T Touring. The Model T was featured in John Steinbeck’s classic book “Grapes of Wrath.” Steinbeck is credited with first calling Route 66 the “Mother Road.”
The small crowd in front of the mural are all interesting visitors to Barstow and are arranged for you to take pictures wit the stars. First up is Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, William (Hopalong Cassidy) Boyd, Winston Churchill, Mockey Rooney, Victor Mature and Jeanne Crain who was born in Barstow and was nominated for an Oscar.
Around the edge of the mural are road signs steering travelers to safety.
“Get your kicks on Route 66”
Master Mural Artist: David Brockhurst. Artists: Ray Valles, Juliette Tison, Nicole Monae, Lino De Leon. (December 2015)
