08 Sunday Jan 2023
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Edward Theater
On this site was the first freestanding theater in Mesquite, which operated until 1960. This site is part of the original Tithing Lot (Marker #4). Prior to building the Edward Theater at this location, movies were shown in garages and at schools.
This is Mesquite Historic Marker #6 (see others on this page) located at 29 Willow Street in Mesquite, Nevada
06 Friday Jan 2023
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Cedar City, Historic Markers, Iron County, Statues, SUP, utah
Ellen (Nellie) Purcell Unthank
Ellen (Nellie) Purcell was born November 6, 1846 in Tintwhistle, England. At 9 she, with her parents and sister Margaret (Maggie), 14, began the trek from Iowa to Salt Lake Valley in 1856 with the Edward Martin Handcart Company.
Early snows overtook the company, both Nellie’s parents died on the trail. Nellie’s feet were frozen.
On arrival in Salt Lake Valley, she was strapped to a board. No anesthetics were available. Both her legs were amputated just below the knee with a butcher’s knife and carpenter’s saw.
For the rest of her life she moved about on the painful stubs of her legs.
At 24 in Cedar City she became the plural wife of William Unthank. His income was small.
Beginning as a wife in a one-room log house with a dirt floor, she kept her home spotless. Nellie took in washing, she knitted stockings to sell. She gave birth to 6 children. Her Bishop and Relief Society occasionally brought food to her family. To even the score, once a year she and her children cleaned the meeting house throughout.
Nellie died at 68 in Cedar City — A noble representative of the rank and file of Mormon Pioneers.
This marker #38 of the historic markers by the Sons of Utah Pioneers, located on SUU Campus at 400 West 200 South in Cedar City, Utah.
03 Tuesday Jan 2023
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Civilian Conservation Corps, Leeds, Utah
The Leeds CCC camp opened in October 1933 under the direction of the Dixie National Forest Service on the site of an existing ranger station. Leeds, a town of less than 200, more than doubled with the opening of the camp. Two hundred young men from all over the country now resided and worked at Camp #585. Townspeople were relunctant at first about the impact the camp would have on local life, but support grew as the CCC camp clearly provided a boon to the struggling economy of Leeds. The community became even more accepting as the men worked on local projects, like a swimming pool, in their off-duty hours.
Related:
This historic marker is located on the northwest corner of Mulberry Lane and Main Street in Leeds, Utah
26 Monday Dec 2022
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Curved Trestle Bridge
Utah Railway was created in 1912 to provide improved service to the coal mines of western Carbon and Emery counties. Tracks from Hiawatha to the Utah Railway junction near Martin were completed in Oct. 1914. A steel girder bridge 135 ft. high, 634 ft. long and on a 60 percent curve was constructed in order to span Gordon Creek. This remains the longest steel girder bridge of its height in the state of Utah. Original trains were 50 ton capacity cars pulled by steam locomotives. But this same bridge supports todays 100 ton capacity steel cars and 105 ton capacity aluminum cars pulled by modern diesel locomotives. Utah Railway began as a single commodity railroad and remains so today.
This historic marker is located at the Helper Museum at 294 South Main Street in Helper, Utah and was dedicated by the Matt Warner Chapter 1900 of E Clampus Vitus on July 11, 1998.
26 Monday Dec 2022
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Caboose No. 55
This caboose was built in 1918 by the Mt. Vernon Car Company for the Utah Railway Company. It was refurbished in 1958 at which time the steel siding was added. Caboose No. 55 traveled the route from Provo to Mohrland from 1918 to 1975. That’s 57 years!
This is located at the Helper Museum at 294 South Main Street in Helper, Utah
26 Monday Dec 2022
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Matt Warner
April 12, 1864-December 21, 1935
The Bandit Who Became Judge
Matt Warner was born Willard E. Christiansen in Ephraim, Utah. He left home at the age of 14 after a fight in which he thought he killed the town bully. He took the name Matt Warner, became a cattle rustler, bank robber and rode with Butch Cassidy until going to prison on trumped up charges in 1897. He was released in 1900, with a full pardon from Governor Wells. In the following years, he became one of the best deputy sheriffs, city police officers, and justices of the peace Carbon County has ever known. As a man of the law, Warner won the love of all Carbon County, except the lawyers, and stuffed shirts. He was strictly a man of the people.
This historic marker is located on the Carbon Hotel at 262 South Main Street in Helper, Utah and was dedicated by the Utah Outpost Mountain Charlie Chapter 1850 of E Clampus Vitus on July 25, 1981.
20 Tuesday Dec 2022
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Pipe Springs National Monument
Fifteen miles southwest of historic “Pipe Springs” early pioneer outpost and first telegraph station in Arizona.
This is U.P.T.L.A. historic marker #29, located in Fredonia Roadside Park in Fredonia, Arizona and erected September 2, 1933.
19 Monday Dec 2022
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Prickly Pears and Pinon Nuts
A worn and hungry band of Spanish explorers made camp at Johnson Wash, six miles to the east, on October 21, 1776. Fathers Dominguez and Escalante called it Santa Barbara. They found no water for horses or the men who were subsisting on meager supplies of pinon nuts and prickly-pear cakes obtained in trade from the local Paiutes.
The Spaniards had already spent nights without water and only minimal nourishment. Lorenzo de Olivares was nearly mad with thirst after eating too many of the salty cactus cakes. He disappeared that evening stumbling up the wash. Having worried about their companion all night, the padres found him the next morning at some small pools near the base of the red Shinarump Cliffs to the north.
The territory known as the Arizona Strip confronted the expedition with some of its most brutal difficulties. Wandering first southeasterly then north, without the aid of native guides, they struggled through a harsh and rutted land searching for the Ute crossing of the Colorado River.
Dominguez and Escalante returned to Santa Fe in January, 1777 after exploring much of what is now the Four Corners region but having failed in their effort to open a land route to Spanish settlements at Monterey.
15 Thursday Dec 2022
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The Lincoln Highway
America’s First Coast-to-Coast Automobile Highway
The Lincoln Highway was established in 1913 when a group of businessmen involved in the automobile industry decided to sponsor and promote a transcontinental highway for automobile traffic.
They organized the Lincoln Highway Association and dedicated their proposed highway to the memory of President Abraham Lincoln. On September 10, 1913, the route of the highway was announced, and the general public was invited to become members of the association. Contributions to help finance the improvement of the highway were solicited from businesses and private citizens.
The route that was chosen for the Lincoln Highway went from New York City to San Francisco, following the straightest line that was possible. In the beginning, the route was laid out along already existing roads, but an important part of the plan was that these roads would be improved and the route shortened wherever possible.
A major goal of the Lincoln Highway Association was to persuade local, state, and the federal government to get involved in the improvement and construction of automobile roads and highways. The Association wanted the Lincoln Highway to be a model for the building of roads throughout the United States. By 1928 they felt that for the most part they had achieved their goals, and it was decided to dissolve the association. But the Lincoln Highway lives on. Although most of the original highway has been replaced by modern roads such as US Highway 30, US 40, and Interstate 80, many sections of the Lincoln Highway are still being used today.
In western Utah, the original 1913 route of the Lincoln Highway came through the city of Grantsville, then continued west through Skull Valley, Fish Springs, Callao, and Ibapah. In 1919, construction projects at Johnson Pass in the Stansbury Mountains and on the mud flats west of Granite Peak were completed, and the route was changed to go through Tooele and Gold Hill, which shortened the route by about 50 miles. Grantsville was dropped from the route. But another change came in 1927. For several years, the state of Utah had been working on a road across the Great Salt Lake Desert to Wendover, a small town on the Nevada border. This project was completed in 1925, and two years later, the Lincoln Highway Association made the decision to incorporate this new road into its official route. Grantsville was on the Lincoln Highway again.
This is Sons of Utah Pioneers historic marker #178, located at Lincoln Park, 550 West Clark Street in Grantsville, Utah
09 Friday Dec 2022
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The Historic Dixie-Long Valley, Utah Pioneer Trail
Segments of the old Indian trails between St. George and Long Valley were used by Mormon pioneers to settle Long Valley in 1864 and for its resettlement in 1871 following Indian conflicts. The trail divided at the area of this marker, the Elephant Trail took a northeasterly route while the alternate Cottonwood Canyon-Sand Ridge Trail went more easterly before joining the Elephant Trail after it descended into Parunuweap Canyon/Long Valley. The desert trail, about 85 miles long, traversed deep sand, sandstone ledges and lava faults and was the primary transportation route, including mail and heavy freight, for half a century. It took four days for loaded wagons drawn by horse or ox teams to travel the distance.
This is #119 of the Sons of Utah Pioneers historic markers.
