Soren Hansen Castle

Constructed between 1905 and 1907 for Soren Hansen, this house is an important example of the Queen Ann Architectural Style in Utah. The house is significant for its association with Soren Hansen who was a pioneer in the poultry industry of Utah and one of the largest dealers in poultry eggs in the inter-mountain west.

166 West Main Street in Hyrum, Utah

In pioneer days, eggs were used almost as much as money as a medium of exchange. Profits were good. Soren Hansen built a cold storage plant where as many as 4,000 cases of eggs could be stored. One year he stored several carloads of eggs and within three weeks’ time he had resold them for a profit of about $22,000. One autumn evening in late 1880, Soren told his wife he was going to build her a new home using the profit from his eggs. Their log cabin was replaced by this $30,000 Queen Anne home. In 1907, when this home was built, he told his wife, “This is the house that eggs built.” It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Notice the detailed woodwork and the extensive use of it in this home.

“The House that Eggs built”
written by Soren Hanson Jr.’s son- Russell S. Hanson

Sometime between 1885 and 1890 father started in the egg business. He found it necessary to have some sort of storage facilities to store the eggs until he accumulated a wagon load to haul to Ogden. He built his first storage plant, which was nothing more than a cellar dug about five or six feet in the ground, with walls two to three feet thick filled with sawdust for insulation, and with a dirt roof. The cool air in the cellar permitted keeping the eggs for not more than sixty days. Undoubtedly the quality of the eggs when sold left much to be desired, but they were the best storage eggs available at that time.

The cellar storage was located about one hundred feet from the southwest corner of the large storage plant built some years later.

Despite the crudeness of this cellar storage plant, father continued to make good money selling his various products. In 1895 the egg business had become so good, and father prospered to such an the extent. that he decided too build a new and modern storage plant of a large enough capacity to carry the eggs from April, May, June, and July until the winter months, when the were sold to best advantage.

He took a trip back East and visited several plants. While there, he employed an architect to draw plans for his new building. He returned from the trip eager to start construction. Hyrum Hokenson, who had been buying chickens for father, was also a carpenter, and father put him in charge of construction. The new building was a large two-story structure about fifty feet wide by 120 feet in depth. It contained six rooms on the main floor. The first two rooms were uncooled. It was here that incoming eggs were unpacked and outgoing eggs were crated for shipment. The next two rooms were partially cooled and it was here that the candling of the eggs was done. Candling then was done in much the same manner as it is today except the light for the purpose was then supplied by kerosene lamps, while today and electric light is used. Through the candling process, it is easily determined whether the egg should be discarded because of defect, or held for storing.

The next two rooms were then called storage rooms. As I recall, they had a capacity of 4,000 cases of eggs. In the west end of these rooms were built huge ice tanks, which did the cooling. There were four of these–two in each room. They were five feet in diameter and thirty-two feet high. These tanks were kept filled with ice. If a lower temperature was desired in the storage rooms, hundred pound bags of coarse salt were poured over the ice. This made the ice melt faster and caused a lower temperature in the rooms.

We had large ice pond situated about one mile north of the cold storage on 2nd West Street. Here in the winter time the ice froze to a thickness of between eight and ten inches. This was cut with huge saws into cakes about twenty-four inches by thirty-six inches in size. It was then hauled to a large ice house adjoining the cold storage. It was stacked p in this building to a height of about twelve feet, until the building was filled. The ice was then covered with about ten inches of sawdust. This kept the ice from melting in the hot summer weather. The supply of ice was sufficient to maintain proper temperature in the cold storage until the next cutting season.

These huge cakes of ice were hoisted to the top of the building on a horse-drawn elevator. A child could lead the horse for this purpose as well as a man. We boys always had to lead the horse past the old “Rotten Egg Hole,” which stank to high heaven! Of course, the odor we had to endure was our own fault, as we were supposed to keep the rotten eggs in the deep hole covered with dirt.

To the south side of the cold storage plant, a salt house had been built. There was a second elevator on that side of the building for hoisting hundred pound bags of salt to the top of the building. We bought this coarse salt in train carload lots.

Just after the new cold storage plant had been finished, the first summer in fact, it was found that it was poorly insulated. The architect had asked that the hollow walls be filled with, of all things, sand. Sand is a conductor of heat, and an insulator. So, that fall if became necessary to “bleed” all the walls of sand, and fill them with sawdust, which is the perfect insulator.

On the north side of the storage there was a large “lean-to,” through which the wagons could be driven. This was built so that wagons coming in at night loaded with eggs, would be under cover until the next day.

In pioneer days. eggs were used almost as much as money, as a medium of exchange. Farmers, as a rule, would have anywhere from a dozen to two or three hundred chickens. They could take their eggs to any store and exchange them for merchandise, just as readily as money. Father purchased these eggs from merchants all over the valley. The profit was very good. Father made what was then considered a sizeable fortune in them. Eggs were often purchased for as low as eight cents per dozen, and then resold for many times this figure. I remember that we shipped eggs all over the Intermountain country, particularly to the mining towns of Butte, Anaconda, Rock Springs, Superior, and Winnimucca. Names of merchants were taken from the Dunn & and Bradstreet book of credit ratings. Father would mail penny post cards containing egg quotations to a long list of prospective customers every week or ten days. The eggs which cost Father $2.88 per case, or thirty-six dozen, usually sold for $6.00 or a little better, f.o.b. the railroad at Logan.

When father first started in the egg business, Cache Valley wasn’t served by the railroad, so he hauled them to the mining camps of Montana in a wagon with an eight-mule team.

I remember when I was a young boy, father often sent my brother, Fay, and me with our large wagon to Paradise, Millville, and Wellsville, to get the eggs which had been accumulated by the merchants in those towns. We would help load the wagons with eggs and haul them to the depot in Hyrum, and place them on the freight cars. At that time we were shipping eggs in carload lots. We would be paid for our work, but Father made a deal with us boys. For every dollar we put in our savings account he would match it with a dollar.

Father not only stored eggs in Hyrum in those early days, but he would also buy them in the Middle West and store them at the Beatrice creamery Company plant in Beatrice Nebraska. One year he stored several carloads of eggs this way, and in three week’s time he resold then for a profit of about $33,000.00 He told mother that he was going to use this profit to build her a new home.

It was an autumn evening in the late 1880’s. Soren Hanson sat in his log cabin watching his wife as she cleared the supper table.

“Some day I’m going to build a fine home for you.” he told her. “Oh,” she said, looking around the single room that was their home. “We can make do with what we have for awhile yet.” There was another room in the cabin, but it was used as a general store, which provided a living for the family.

Soren made good his promise. He built the house for $30,000. When it was finished in 1907. he took his wife in his arms and said, “This is the house that eggs built.”

“The House That Eggs Built” stands today in Hyrum, Cache County, on the same lot where the log house stood. It is a monument to the resourceful Soren Hanson–and a reminder of the happy times he furnished to all his town folk.

“The Meeting House and the Mermaid”

Source: This story was told to me, David Barkdull, by Gloria Hansen Wright, grand-daughter of Soren
Hansen, in 2014.

At the end of the 19th century, Soren Hanson built a beautiful home on First North and a half a block west in Hyrum, Utah. This was the famous “House that Eggs Built” and is a “National Register” home. His brother-in-law, Peter Christiansen completed all the exterior metal work like the railing on the upper floors in his black smith shop. He was also a skilled carpenter and manufactured all the elaborate wood scroll work.

Soren also commissioned a stone engraving of a well endowed Danish mermaid, a topless one in fact. Even though such a depiction may have been acceptable back in his native Denmark, the land of the famous children’s author, Hans Christian Anderson who penned the “Little Mermaid”, it was not so in the proper little Mormon community of Hyrum, Utah. Soren’s scandalous “Little Mermaid” sculpture was placed high up on the chimney on the east side of his home for all to see. It simply was not acceptable for a partially nude woman to be displayed in such a public manner in those days. However, Soren was a fairly influential man of means in Cache valley so there was little anyone was willing to do or say, particularly since they were beholden to his considerable community generosity of which they had all benefited.

While Soren had been baptized at age eight into the Mormon faith, he was not a regular church attending member in the traditional sense. However, he had always been supportive of his wife and family’s church participation, he had always been a full tithe payer, supported other worth-while church and community endeavors, and had a warm regard for the faith of his parents and family.

In 1901, the old Hyrum pioneer church had out grown its usefulness and needed replacing. It had been some 40 odd years since the founding of the town and it had outlived its usefulness. During these years, the people had prospered fairly well and so it was decided that a proper brick edifice would be built. Construction soon commenced.

As the church neared it’s completion, Soren and his wife Eva decided to have a dinner party in their home and invited a number of townspeople. Lars Peterson, who was Chairman of the finance committee for the construction of the new chapel also attended. Following the dinner, the group was visiting and Soren asked Lars how the construction of the church was coming. Lars replied, “Didn’t you know, we ran out of money and had to stop the job?” Surprised, Soren asked him how much it would take to complete the building and Lars told him it would be about $17,000. “Well, I suppose I can stand that much” Soren replied and he wrote a check for the full amount right there that night. And so the Hyrum First Ward’s brick church was completed a short time later.

This story is related by Victoria Olsen Hanson, wife of Russell Hanson. It is a true Christmas story about a real Santa Claus with a heart of gold.

In the early days when Hyrum was in its infancy, about 1900, a prosperous young business man of Hyrum was always doing kind deeds for others. He conceived the idea of giving a real Christmas party for all of the people of the town, men, women, and children.

In preparation for the party he sent to a wholesale merchandise house (he had been a merchant,) for hundreds of gifts, barrels of candy, peanuts and walnuts. Among the gifts were harmonicas, umbrellas, balls, books, gold watch chains, and even violins and gold watches. Each child in the community received a lunch basket which was filled with candy, nuts, and other gifts. The basket also contained an orange. This was one of the most exciting gifts because oranges in Utah in 1900 were rare indeed. The party was held in the Opera house which this young man had built some years previous. The party consisted of a program and dancing besides a visit by Santa Claus who passed out the gifts.

Christmas parties similar to this were given for a number of succeeding years and they were fondly remembered by all of the people in Hyrum–men, women and children alike. This man of whom I speak was Soren Hanson.

A story of these Christmas parties appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune and it concluded by saying, “If the vote of every man, woman, and child in Hyrum could elect a president that man would be Soren Hanson.”
To show their appreciation to Mr. Hanson’s kindness to them the children of Hyrum took up a collection of nickels, dimes, and pennies and purchased a sterling silver tea and coffee service which they presented to Mr. and Mrs. Hanson. On it were inscribed these words.
“To Mrs. and Mrs. Soren Hanson for their Kindness To Us The Children of Hyrum.”

(Note: Some years ago I saw this tea set at the home of Mona Zundell, daughter of Soren and Eva. Having pictured it in my mind for years as rather grand, I was disappointed to see that it was a simple, rather inexpensive set. Not sterling, But none-the-less, given in gratitude. -Gloria Gene Hanson Wright)