24 Monday Aug 2020
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“These are the mill stones from the first grist mill in this area”
It was built in 1863 by Elam Cheney, Sr. a pioneer of 1847. At the request of President Brigham Young he quarried & shaped the stones & moved them & his family to Fairview where he also blacksmithed the iron & carpentered the wood.
The stones were turned by an overshot water wheel with water from the Sanpitch River.
– By the Cheney Family Association – 1965
23 Sunday Aug 2020
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20 Thursday Aug 2020
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Mountainville was settled in 1882, officially named in 1906 but has since faded from being a separate community and is now just the area between Fairview and Mount Pleasant.
Some of the first missionaries from Mountainville were George Stansforth, Allen Rowe, Richard Brown, William L. Shelley, William Keith Brown, John Mason Burnside, David A. Shelley, John Bell, Mitchell Burnside, June Shelley and Betty Shelley.
In the 1880s a small log church was built and the Relief Society was organized.
There are some great photos on these pages:
19 Wednesday Aug 2020
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The Niels P. Hjort house is architecturally significant as an example of a modified temple-form, gable-facade cross-wing type, which was one of the basic residential building types implemented by early Utah settlers. The vernacular classical design of the house, with subtle Greek Revival influence and stone construction, is in many ways typical of early Sanpete Valley dwellings, where oolite limestone was a common building material. This particular type of limestone was used not only in swellings but in larger commercial, public, and religious buildings including there prominent Manti LDS Temple. It was even exported for out-of-state construction projects.
Sanpete Valley had an ethnically diverse population, drawing immigrants from all parts of northern Europe. Neils P. Hjort, as a Norwegian immigrant, was a member of the Scandinavian population in the valley. Although some Scandinavian immigrants constructed houses after the traditions of their homelands, Hjort, perhaps feeling the need to acculurate with other Mormon converts, chose to build his house in a traditional American form.
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16 Sunday Aug 2020
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08 Saturday Aug 2020
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A cool city park, themed after the fort that used to be in its location in Fairview, Utah.
The plaque outside the park says:
Iven R. Cox
May 8, 1914 – November 13, 1992
His life was dedicated to his fellow man and woman. Fairview is brighter and better because of his service. We honor his incolvement in many civic projects and business endeavors including:
With his example of hard work, he exemplified that challenges are not limiting. Respectfully we dedicate this park and monument to his memory.
06 Thursday Aug 2020
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The Fairview Museum of History and Art
Home of the National Shrine to Love and Devotion
This page is documenting the exterior of the museum, see the link below to see the interior.
The museum consists of 2 main buildings: the 115+ year old, former school, Heritage building which contains historical collections and the works of world renown sculptor Dr. Avard T Fairbanks, and the more contemporary Horizon building which houses regional art, the Colombian Mammoth (named Spirit), historical displays, Clark Bronson bronze collection and other services.(*)
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19 Friday Jun 2020
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21 Thursday May 2020
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The Fairview Amusement Hall, built c.1927, is significant under Criterion A as the primary social meeting place in the small central Utah town of Fairview. The Amusement Hall is built around the original dance floor of the Eclipse Pavilion, which was constructed in 1895. Theater, music, and social dancing were popular activities in early Mormon settlements of Utah where several miles often separated isolated communities. The Fairview Amusement Hall is the only remaining such building in town and one of very few remaining in the state. The Fairview Amusement Hall has been in continual use since its construction and is still used for dances and other social events. The building retains its architectural integrity and is one of a number of contributing historic buildings along Fairview’s Main Street.
About 1878, a social hall was erected. This building had a good dance floor and stage and served as amusement hall for the people until the summer of 1899, when it was destroyed by fire. However, before this time, in the year 1895, a new dance hall known as the Eclipse Pavilion was built. After the social hall burned, a stage was put in the Eclipse Pavilion, and this served as both dance hall and opera house until 1927, when it was replaced by the current amusement hall. However, the floor of the Eclipse was retained in the new amusement hall.
The group who built the Eclipse purchased the land from Joseph Wing. The 1/4-inch quarter-sawn oak flooring was ordered from a Mr. Jex in Spanish Fork, Utah. The building was 108 feet long and 50 feet wide. A Confectionary and ice cream parlor were built at the west end. The Post Office was also in the building part of the time. The Eclipse was sold in 1907 to Lindsay Brady who sold it to the Mormon Church in January 1910. It continued to be used as a community center and dance hall. In June 1921 the Fairview Ward was divided into two wards and Allie Carlston, a builder/contractor, was “chosen to manage the Pavilion or the Eclipse Dance Hall as it was called then… As manager, the debt was paid off and.. .a sinking fund accumulated.”
At that point, Allie Carlston received permission to replace the building if he could find a way to pay for it. He visited LDS Church President Heber J. Grant and explained that they had a community firetrap as an amusement hall in Fairview and that they had plans to demolish it and build a brick structure around the present floor since it was in perfect condition. They would build the brick walls then demolish the remaining portion of the old building after the new one was completed. Arrangements were then made to go forward with this plan. Carlston supervised the job and Oscar Amudsen did the brick work with his son, Whit, helping on the interior layer of adobe brick. The new Amusement Hall was completed c.1927 and the two wards appointed a manager for the Amusement Hall and continued to oversee it. The LDS Church first approached the city about taking over the Amusement Hall in 1968. It was finally deeded to the city October 5, 1982, on a restricted deed that continued the no drinking or smoking policy that had been established in 1896 along with tenets of the LDS Church.
The Amusement Hall is located at 65 S State St.
The Amusement Hall has always been a very important part of Fairview Social Life. It has been used for many various events over the years. People came from far around to the regular and special-occasion dances. The young men herding sheep and cattle on the mountain would come down to the dances. People from Snow College in Ephraim (approximately twenty miles to the south) and the Brigham Young University (approximately fifty miles to the north) joined with the locals as well; the railroad that ran through Sanpete Valley was convenient transportation.
A church missionary farewell or homecoming called for a dance. Many courtships started and continued in the Amusement Hall. Young married couples went to the dance for their night out. Wedding anniversaries, ninetieth birthdays and other special events have used the Amusement Hall for family and friends. Old folks’ dinners and reunions were and still are held here. Theatrical presentations found a place for performance as well. Wednesday was roller skating night for many years beginning in the early 1950s. Dance Classes and wrestling instruction have provided youth entertainment and knowledge and craft shows are also a popular event. Santa Claus still visits every year, and civic meetings are still held here. Although the popularity of individual events has varied over years, the Fairview Amusement Hall retains its place in the memories and current lives of Sanpete residents.
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12 Tuesday May 2020
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Built in 1936, the Fairview City Hall is part of the Public Works Buildings Thematic Resource nomination and is significant because it helps document the impact of New Deal programs in Utah, which was one of the states that the Great Depression of the 1930s most severely affected. In 1933 Utah had an unemployment rate of 36 percent, the fourth highest in the country, and for the period 1932-1940 Utah’s unemployment rate averaged 25 percent. Because the depression hit Utah so hard, federal programs were extensive in the state. Overall, per capita federal spending in Utah during the 1930s was 9th among the 48 states, and the percentage of workers on federal work projects was far above the national average. Building programs were of great importance. During the 1930s virtually every public building constructed in Utah, including county courthouses, city halls, fire stations, national guard armories, public school buildings, and a variety of others, were built under federal programs by one of several agencies, including the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the National Youth Administration (NYA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), or the Public Works Administration (PWA), and almost without exception none of the buildings would have been built when they were without the assistance of the federal government.
I was reading here that apparently it was demolished and then the some stone was used to rebuild it exactly the same from the exterior, with updated interiors.
The Fairview City Hall is one of 232 buildings constructed in Utah during the 1930s and early 1940s under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and other New Deal programs. Of those 232 buildings, 133 are still standing and are eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. This is one of 22 city halls built, 19 of which are still standing. In Sanpete County 17 buildings were constructed, 13 of which remain.
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The local newspaper recorded the construction of the building as follows. “Work has just begun on the new Fairview City Hall and library to be built at Fairview as a government aid project.
“It will be a two-story building and will be constructed of sawed native rock, known as blue sandstone. The building will be erected on Main Street on the corner lot south of the amusement hall and will have accommodations for city hall, library, jail, Legion hall, kitchen and serving room and two rest rooms. “Thirteen men will be employed during January and 20 from then until June when it is expected the project will be completed, said Oscar Amundsen, foremen. “The plans for the building were drawn by Hugh Anderson of Fairview. $10,000 was appropriated for the building but this amount is not enough to complete the project, stated Mr. Amundsen “‘ Little is known about the construction careers of Oscar Amundsen and Hugh Anderson. This building has continued to the present to serve as the city hall and library for the town of Fairview. ” – Mt Pleasant Pyramid, Jan 31, 1936, p.1.
The Fairview City Hall, built in 1936, is a one-story stone building with a basically square plan, a raised basement, and a flat roof. There have been no major alterations made to the building.
This building represents an excellent example of the stark, abstract classicism associated with the PWA Moderne architectural style in Utah. The principal facade is symmetrically divided into three bays. The central bay is narrower and contains the front door, while the flanking bays have slightly wider windows on both the main and basement levels. The windows are Palladian-inspired and tripartite, and are topped by elliptical fanlights. A similar arch is found over the front entrance. Openings on the sides and rear are simple rectangles. The building is constructed of the local oolite limestone, finely dressed to a smooth ashlar surface. A band of low-relief dentils run beneath the cement coping at the edge of the roof. A very small concrete block addition was built on the rear of the building at an unknown date. Because of its small scale and its location at the rear, that addition does not affect the historical integrity of the building.
