Peter Clegg House
The Peter Clegg House is a 2-story Central-Block-with-Projecting-Bays single-family dwelling exhibiting Victorian Eclectic style. Built in 1903, the home is located it the city of Tooele, on the south side of Vine Street—the main east-west road through the heart of the historical community area—and one block east of Main Street. The building sits on a corner, 0.36-acre lot that is somewhat unusually wide for the area and contains numerous mature trees. Surrounding lots are generally narrower and longer and host small, 1-story cottages dating to the late-1910s through 1930s and 1940s. The Clegg House is constructed of several different types of brick, including used kiln bricks, adobe bricks, and red fired clay facing bricks, and includes two projecting bays, one of which (an octagonal bay with a bellcast roof) provides a Queen Anne influence the dwelling. There are two formal porches attached to the residence—one on the primary façade facing 100 East, and one on the secondary façade facing Vine Street. Both date to the historic period. The building has seen a single addition over its history. This addition, which was constructed prior to 1931, is a two-story, wood-framed ell attached to the southwest corner of the dwelling. The structure appears to have served as a summer kitchen (main floor) and sleeping porch (upper floor). The Clegg House has seen little exterior alteration outside the historic period and the period of significance for this property. Vinyl siding has been applied to the aforementioned addition, two small gable walls, portions of the porch covers, and in the soffits. Collectively, these areas comprise a very small portion of the structure, both physically and visually, and do not detract from the overall historical integrity of the building. Most of the original wood-framed windows throughout the dwelling remain intact and protected by storm windows; several post-1950 aluminum frame windows can be found in the addition. The interior of the dwelling also remains substantially intact and consistent with its historical design. Both the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom have been renovated within the last 10 years, and some of the original hardwood floors have been covered with carpet at different times. One interior doorway leading from the hall to the kitchen was exempted (blocked) during the historical period, but the original floor plan of the home remains otherwise intact. Interior wood finishes, including extensive baseboard, casing, and trim moldings as well as doors, built-in benches and bookcases all painted in a faux-wood finish, are still present throughout the home. There are two outbuildings on the property—one contributing and one non-contributing. The contributing outbuilding is a small stone cold storage shed that likely pre-dates the Clegg House and has a pre-1931 frame addition. The non-contributing outbuilding is a detached garage built ca. 2006.
The Peter Clegg House is located at 8 South 100 East in Tooele, Utah and was added to the National Register of Historic Places (#100004483) on September 30, 2019.
The Peter Clegg House (the Clegg House) property encompasses the dwelling and two outbuildings sitting on a corner, 0.36-acre lot on the south side of Vine Street and one block east of Main Street in the city of Tooele, Tooele County, Utah. The city of Tooele is the largest community in the Tooele Valley, which is located immediately south of the southernmost arm of the Great Salt Lake. The city is located in the southeastern part of the valley and on the western edge of the Oquirrh Mountains. Historically, the city of Tooele had two primary development areas referred to as Old Town and New Town. The Old Town section was centered around Main Street and extended roughly from present-day 150 North to 200 South. Vine Street was the primary east-west rough through the Old Town area. The New Town section, which existed by at least 1910, began (more or less) on Vine Street at present-day 250 East and extended to the north and east from there. The Clegg House is located between these two areas but is technically closer to Old Town.
The lot on which the Clegg House is located is found on the southwest corner of Vine Street and 100 East. It is somewhat unusual in its width for the area in that most of the platted residential lots in the neighborhood are narrower, though slightly longer. The Clegg lot contains numerous mature trees, including a ponderosa pine dating to at least 1890—before the house was built. The surrounding neighborhood to the northeast, east, and southeast is characterized by small, 1-story cottages dating to the late-1910s through 1930s and 1940s and heavily dominated by Period Cottages. Occasional bungalows and vernacular cross-wing cottages can also be found in the neighborhood. The most notable structure that is contemporary with the Clegg House is a small, vernacular, 1.5-story Victorian era home built in 1899 and located immediately west of the Clegg property. This collection of smaller and, mostly, later homes makes the 2-story Clegg House stand out in both size and style. In fact, of the roughly 600 historical buildings documented in the city of Tooele and still standing at last knowledge, only 28 were 2- story buildings, and of these, only 13 were residential structures. The Clegg House is the only one of these 13 dwellings that represents the Central-Block-with-Projecting-Bays form.
The Victorian cottage west of the property now serves as a buffer between the Clegg House property and a large complex of modern commercial and governmental buildings with a grand expanse of asphaltpaved parking lots that now abut the Clegg property on the south. A row of trees on the property line provides a screen of vegetation between the parking lots and the Clegg property. To the north of the Clegg House, across Vine Street, lands once occupied by historical dwellings have been redeveloped with commercial structures dating to the period after ca. 1974.
As noted, two outbuildings share the property with the Clegg House—one (a stone and frame cold storage shed/workshop) is contributing, and the other (a garage) is non-contributing. All of the resources of the Clegg House property are described in more detail below, beginning with the contributing resources (i.e., the dwelling and shed/workshop) and ending with the non-contributing resources (i.e., the garage).
Contributing Resources
Two contributing resources are present on the property and included in this nomination. These are the Clegg House and an associated storage shed/workshop. Following are detailed descriptions of each building.
The Clegg House (1903)
The Peter Clegg House is a 2-story CentralBlock-with-Projecting-Bays single-family dwelling exhibiting Victorian Eclectic style (see Figure 1). Built in 1903, the Clegg House includes two projecting bays, one of which (an octagonal bay with a bellcast roof) provides a Queen Anne influence the dwelling. There are two formal porches attached to the residence— one on the primary façade facing 100 East, and one on the secondary façade facing Vine Street. Both date to the historic period. The building has seen a single addition over its history. This addition, which was constructed prior to 1931, is a two-story, wood-framed ell attached to the southwest corner of the dwelling. The structure appears to have served as a summer kitchen (main floor) and sleeping porch (upper floor).
The Clegg House is constructed of several different types of brick, including used kiln (fire or refractory) bricks, adobe bricks, and red fired clay facing bricks, though the face bricks—in both smooth and rockfaced varieties—are the only ones visible in both exterior and interior views. According to the current residents, Glen and Marilyn Clegg Lowry, the exterior walls and some of the interior walls are formed with used fire bricks taken from kilns or furnaces of a regional smelter and laid in an alternating crosswise fashion with locally produced adobe bricks. In some cases, voids in the walls were filled with cobbles and other rubble before the refined face bricks were applied to the exterior walls and hardware cloth/chicken wire and plaster were applied to the interior walls.1 There is a narrow, projecting beltcourse of the smooth face bricks several inches above the foundation that serves as a water table to deflect rain water away from the foundation. The rock-faced face bricks are used sparingly and are only present at the joints of the facets of the projecting bays for aesthetic emphasis.
The house rests on a raised foundation of coursed and mortared dressed reddish-tan sandstone blocks. There is a partial, unfinished basement that would have functioned historically primarily as a cold storage area, possibly a coal storage area, and as access to plumbing and electrical equipment. The roof of the house is complex and asymmetrical. The portion over the central block of the dwelling is best described as a gablet or Dutch Gable form with the gablets facing east and west. The roof over the projecting bay on the primary elevation of the house has a bellcast form and is topped by a tall decorative finial, and the roof over the projecting bay on the secondary (north) elevation of the house is a front gable form with a pent roof. The entire roof is clad in modern asphalt shingles. Three salmon-colored brick chimneys extend from the roof. One is located along the north elevation of the building, near the center of the elevation. A second is located in an almost identical position along the south elevation of the building, and the third is located in a similar position along the west elevation. All of the chimneys exhibit identical brick corbelling at the top. The chimney near the north elevation serves a fire place in the living room/parlor. The one near the south elevation would have served a fireplace or stove in either the library on the first floor or a bedroom on the second floor. The fire place/stove no longer exists. The chimney near the west elevation served a fire place/stove in the kitchen that served as the primary cooking stove until it was removed in the 1930s.
The Clegg House has seen little exterior alteration outside the historic period and the period of significance for this property. Vinyl siding has been applied to the aforementioned addition, two small gable walls, portions of the porch covers, and in the soffits. Collectively, these areas comprise a very small portion of the structure, both physically and visually, and do not detract from the overall historical integrity of the building. Most of the original wood-framed (single-hung and fixed sash) windows throughout the dwelling remain intact and protected by storm windows; several post-1950 aluminum frame windows can be found in the addition. Overall, the exterior of the dwelling retains a high degree of historical and architectural integrity.
Cold Storage Shed/Workshop (ca. 1890)
The cold storage/workshop outbuilding is located immediately south of the Clegg House, a few feet beyond the south elevation of the frame addition. The 1-story building measures approximately 26 feet long by 16 feet wide and has a gabled roof covered in corrugated metal sheets. It comprises two separated cells. The eastern cell is the larger of the two and is part of a mortared, locally procured stone (sandstone and other types) building covered on the exterior in plaster board. The walls of the stone section are roughly 16 inches thick. Most of the historical mortar joints are wide, and the mortar is a low-quality material that is currently disintegrating. The current owners have begun to repair and stabilize the structure by removing stones individually, clearing the loose mortar, and reinstalling them with modern mortar. This repair work is distinguishable from the original mortar but does not substantially detract from the integrity of the structure. The western cell is part of a wood frame structure clad in wooden drop siding. The stone section of the building rests on a mortared stone foundation, while the frame section rests on a cast-in-place concrete slab foundation. Per a Sanborn fire insurance map, the frame addition was present by 1931; earlier Sanborn maps for Tooele do not illustrate the Clegg property. According to the present owners, the stone building is visible in a ca. 1890 photograph of Tooele, which indicates it pre-dates the construction of the Clegg House.5 No information was found to indicate who constructed the building. Land records indicate the presiding Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) bishop at the time, Hugh S. Gowans, received the official patent for the property in 1872. Given LDS land allocation patterns of the day, this does not indicate Gowans occupied or developed the property but that he served as the “ecclesiastical clearinghouse” for deeding parcels to other church members prior to the implementation of the more secular land recordation system that exists today.
The cold storage/workshop building has two doorways and two windows. One doorway is located at the north end of the west elevation (in the wood frame cell). The other is located in the approximate center of the south elevation of stone cell. One of the window openings in located in the south elevation of the wood cell. This opening is small and rectangular in shape with the long axis oriented horizontally. This opening has been boarded up from the inside. The other opening is located in the center of the east elevation of the stone cell. The opening is largely obscured from outside view by a dense growth of ivy that covers the east and north elevations of the stone cell. The opening, which is roughly square and exhibits a slight tapering from wider on the inside to narrower on the outside, is boarded up on the inside of the building. A third “window” opening is present in the building in the gable wall between the stone and wood-framed cells. This opening is small, roughly square, and tapers on the sides from wider on the inside to narrower on the outside of the stone wall. While wood framing is present in the opening, it appears this feature served as a vent and never did hold a window.
The interior of the stone cell is characterized by exposed mortared stone walls, a wood plank floor, and milled lumber beams. The remains of a beadboard ceiling are present; it is unclear if this ceiling is original to the structure or was added later (though still during the historical period). The interior of the wood-frame cell was not inspected in detail but reportedly once held saddle trees, suggesting it was used as a tack room for horses associated with the property.
Peter Clegg
The Clegg House is locally significant under Criterion B in the area of Politics/Government for its direct association with Peter Clegg, an important figure in the history of Tooele during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Clegg served in numerous political, social, ecclesiastical, and business roles that shaped the development of Tooele and, to a lesser extent, the State of Utah. As mayor of Tooele, county commissioner, and a senator in the state legislature, Clegg implemented policy, introduced bills, and chaired committees that established many of the municipal programs that exist in one form or another today. As president, director, and chair of numerous industry groups, particularly in the livestock industry, Clegg lobbied for land use and taxation policies that influenced the economic prosperity of these ventures. As a businessman, Clegg invested in and established myriad new commercial entities that influenced both the built environment and the economic viability of Tooele during the historical period, and as a long-time member of the local LDS bishopric, he played a significant role in shaping the social and spiritual lives of his fellow church members in Tooele and in connecting those members to the higher leadership of the LDS Church.
Peter McIntyre Clegg was born in Tooele on October 15, 1859 to Benjamin and Grace McIntyre Clegg. Benjamin Clegg had arrived in Utah around 1849 after converting to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS Church) in 1848 and travelling to the Utah Territory in the emigrant company of Ezra Taft Benson.8 In 1850, Benjamin was sent by the LDS Church to settle the Tooele Valley with several other pioneers. That same year, he married a widow named Elizabeth (last name unknown) who had five children—Ann, Mary, Joseph, Susanna, and Charlotte—ranging in age from 1 year old to 14 years old. Three years later, Benjamin entered into a polygamous marriage with Grace McIntyre with whom he would have five children, including Peter McIntyre Clegg.
For all intents and purposes, Peter Clegg would become a selfmade man. While his father had amassed a relatively impressive agricultural spread by the late-1800s, the family had many mouths to feed, and financial resources were stretched accordingly. Peter acquired a “common school education”9 and went to work in the railroad industry as a freight laborer, presumably in his late teens or early twenties. As Peter began to build his financial stability, he shifted his focus toward the livestock industry—specifically sheep and cattle—and started acquiring land and stock animals in short order. By 1919, he owned nearly 1,000 acres of land near Tooele and 330 acres of land in southeastern Idaho and ran his cattle and sheep on those lands with the help of several employees.
It was during this period of Peter’s ascendancy to financial success that he acquired the property on which the Clegg House is located. The property had belonged to Peter’s first, and by then his former, father-inlaw, Thomas Atkin, Jr., and was part of a large land holding Atkin had amassed by the time of his passing. As was common at the time, Atkin and other LDS pioneer settlers were assigned small individual plots of land and larger communal plots of land for agricultural activities that would sustain individual families and the broader community. Titles of ownership were not issued. In 1872, following the passage of the Homestead Act in 1867, Hugh Gowans, who was the presiding LDS bishop of the area as well as the settlement’s mayor, received the official federal land patent for lands in the Tooele area. Per the custom of the time, the presiding bishop (in this case also the mayor) would receive the patent and then distribute the land to the church members in the area—usually, though not always, according to the lands they were already occupying or working at the time. Atkin would have received official title to “his” land around that time. Atkin passed away in 1900, and in the fall of that year, Peter Clegg, purchased Lot 8 on the corner of Vine Street and 100 East from Atkins’s estate. Two years later, in 1902, Benjamin Clegg (Peter’s father) and his wife Grace deeded the Lot 7, just to the south of Lot 8, to their son, Peter. The house on Lot 8 was completed the following year.
Agnes McLaws, who passed away in 1903 from complications from surgery to remove a tumor. Peter and Agnes did not have any children. Agnes was married to Peter at the time the Clegg House was constructed and, reportedly, had requested certain features be included in the home, including the faux burl wood painting of interior wood finishes. Three years after Agnes’s death (i.e., in 1906), Peter married Ellen Matilda Lindberg. The couple had a single child, a daughter, but Ellen died in giving birth to her in 1908. Two years later, in September 1910, Peter married his fourth wife, Ida May Lane, and together they had four children, three of whom survived to adulthood. Ida was longest lived of Peter’s wives—outliving Peter himself by nearly two decades—and can claimed the longest occupancy of the Clegg House to date.
Peter Clegg’s roles in public life, the roles wherein he directly influenced the history of Tooele and its citizenry, were myriad and varied across his life. Rather than present an exhaustive discussion of these roles, they are summarized here in a general timeline followed by brief discussion of select points of emphasis:
1883 – ca. 1888: Tooele City constable/marshal
1892 – 1894: Tooele County Revenuer (tax collector)
1894: Elected Tooele City school board trustee and treasurer
1896: Appointed secretary of a board to work with projectors of Deep Creek Railroad to lay its
line via Tooele. The effort was ultimately unsuccessful.
1899: Elected as one of the directors of the newly formed creamery company in Tooele
1902: Elected to the finance committee of the Utah Irrigation Association
1903: Helped found and incorporate the Settlement Canyon Irrigation Company. Clegg first
served as one of three directors and later became president, a role he held until his death.
1905 – 1924: Bishop’s counselor in the Tooele Ward, Tooele South Ward, and Tooele Stake of
the LDS Church
1906 – 1909: Senator in the Utah State Senate
1906: Delegate to the national convention on behalf of the Utah Woolgrowers Association
Regional delegate to irrigation conference in Idaho
Co-incorporator of the Lovelocks Land & Livestock Company to buy pastureland in
Idaho
1908: Part of movement to oppose Burkett bill—a bill that would centralize control of grazing
authorizations on public lands with the Secretary of Agriculture instead of leaving it to
states
Joined other businessmen to purchase the Tooele Trading Company—a general
merchandise company specializing in harnesses, lumber, and coal—and became
president
Primary founder of the Tooele County State Bank of Tooele City;28 served as president
for 2 years (until 1910)
1910: Incorporated the Tooele Hotel Company with other local businessmen and served as one
of the directors of the board.
The company opened the Oquirrh Hotel less than a block west of the Clegg House later that year.
1911: Co-founded the Tooele Land and Water Company and served as its vice-president
Treasurer and co-founder of the Utah Aviation Association
Board member of new Carnegie Free Library in Tooele
1912: Lobbied for state legislation to limit taxation of sheep herds to the value of the time they
grazed in the state instead of as year-round assets – the latter being the common practice
in Idaho and Nevada, too
Became first counselor to the bishop in the Tooele South Ward, when the Tooele Stake was split into two wards
1914 – 1920: 3-term mayor of city of Tooele
1915: Nominal party to a lawsuit against the International Smelting & Refining Company to force the company to buy land over which dust and fumes had settled and had impaired the agricultural productivity
1916: Elected via a primary to serve as a delegate to the Republican state convention…with instructions to “vote for nominees for state offices who are in favor of prohibition” and also to “work for the adoption of a prohibition platform”
Became member of the executive committee for the newly formed Hughes Alliance Tooele branch—group supported Charles Evans Hughes as the Republican candidate for U.S. president against Democrat Woodrow Wilson
Elected chairman of a committee to seek the intervention of newly elected President Woodrow Wilson to launch an investigation into what was seen as an unreasonable and precipitous increase in the price of “foodstuffs, and the necessities of life”
Was an investor in mining concerns in the Gold Hill and Dugway districts at the Gold Hill Extension and Bonanza mines
1917: Stockholder in the Copper Metals Mines of California
Elected chairman of the
Before 1919: 12 years as member of Tooele school board; exact dates unknown
1920: Entered race for governor – he was unsuccessful
1922 – 1930: 2-term County Commissioner
1922 – 1930: Bishop of the Tooele South Ward of the LDS Church
After 1930: LDS Church Tooele Stake high councilmember and active as special adviser to LDS stake welfare commission in later years
While Peter Clegg clearly served in many public roles during this lifetime, perhaps those with the greatest secular impact were as a founder of the Settlement Canyon Irrigation Company, member of the Utah State Senate, co-founder and president of the State Bank of Tooele, and mayor of Tooele—all activities he undertook while residing in the Clegg House and using his library/office as a secondary work space.
The Settlement Canyon Irrigation Company was among the first, if not the first, organized irrigation company in Tooele and is among the most important and longest lived such companies in the area. For the first several decades after settlement, pioneers in communities off of railroad lines were heavily dependent on subsistence agriculture. Dry farming, which produces a lower yield than irrigation farming, was the sole means of agriculture for those settlers farming in areas away from perennial water sources. The pioneer settlers of Tooele had constructed individual irrigation ditches off of the Middle Canyon drainage by 1856, but the ditches were unregulated and only reached short distances from the water source. The creek in Settlement Canyon saw some irrigation development by 1856 as well, and was tapped to provide water to agricultural fields mostly located west of the Tooele settlement. Formal organization of water rights and irrigation systems did not occur in Tooele until after 1900. The Settlement Canyon Irrigation Company started, in part, by Clegg, was the first to be established (in 1903). This company, with the communal investment in developing, expanding, and improving the water delivery network, greatly expanded the agricultural productivity of lands on the west side of Tooele and as far west as the Grantsville area. Three years later, in 1906, the Middle Canyon Irrigation Company was incorporated to manage irrigation systems emanating from that watershed. Both companies continue to operate today. Interestingly, Clegg was well known as a dry farmer even after his founding of the Settlement Canyon Irrigation Company. His dry farm lands, a portion of which were located southeast of the Tooele townsite between the Middle Canyon and Settlement Canyon creeks, were known to be quite productive and were acknowledged in local newspapers as having produced an estimated 4,000 bushels of wheat in 1906.
Perhaps Clegg’s second-most influential non-political role was as a founder and president of the first bank in Tooele in 1908—generally referred to as the Tooele County State Bank. The establishment of the bank not only provided a local financial institution for Tooele’s residents, who were otherwise forced to address banking matters in Salt Lake City some 35 miles distant, but was seen as a sign by community members of the prosperity and stability of their small town. The establishment of the bank was announced with great fanfare in local newspapers, and Clegg, who stood as president of the institution, was described as “one of most prominent men in the county, having served in the state legislature and filled other positions of trust and responsibility, besides managing his large stock farm.” The bank served as the primary financial institution in the area for personal, commercial, and municipal matters. The bank, like many during the early years of the 1900s, fared well for several decades; however, when the stock market crashed in 1929, it was one of the first banks in Utah to fail. This was due in large part to the banks assets/deposits being heavily tied to the operations of the International Smelting and Refining Company, which had opened its doors in Tooele in 1910, and the deposits of paychecks made by its employees. When the stock market crashed, the smelter’s operations were severely curtailed and it laid off many of its workers. The workers, in turn, eventually pulled their savings from the bank. The smelter would recover during the war time economic boom, but the bank was long gone by that time. It was reported to be a great personal and community pride that despite the bank’s failure during the Great Depression, Clegg and his fellow bank officers ensured all public funds held there were paid in full and at least a portion of the personal funds for all individual depositors were paid.
In his political roles as senator, mayor, and county commissioner, Clegg had a more direct influence on policy and economic development than in his other organizational roles. During his first state senate term, Clegg was instrumental in ensuring that the lands of the Bonneville Salt Flats, which had been given to the University of Utah by the federal government upon Utah’s statehood in 1896 did indeed end up in the State’s hands. The legislation giving the land to the university was vague in its description of exactly what lands (surface and subsurface) were involved, and left the door open for private mining operations, including those by large railroad conglomerates, that began to develop salt mines in the area. Clegg worked tirelessly throughout his first senate term to clarify the legislation and ensure the salt deposits, as well as the land beneath it, were the property of the university and the State of Utah. After several failed bills in Congress and several lawsuits over the matter, Clegg and his compatriots prevailed. A Supreme Court decision issued in November 1908 “ruled that all the saline lands in the state are the proper property of the state, and are to be devoted to the support and maintenance of the state university.” In the decades that followed, portions of the saline lands would come under the ownership of the federal government (through the Bureau of Land Management), and others would be sold or leased by the state to private concerns, but the success of Clegg and his colleagues in securing the bulk of the land for the State of Utah, had large and long-term financial ramifications for the growth of the University of Utah.
On a more local level, Clegg’s role as mayor of Tooele also had a long lasting impact on the community. In 1915, the year after he took office for his first term, Clegg spearheaded the effort to create the first city park and for the city to purchase the culinary waterworks that supplied the community. Until that time, the privately owned Tooele City Water Company operated the water system, and reports suggest its service left something to be desired. Clegg oversaw the effort to seek, and ultimately win, resident support for the tax increase of “between 1 and 2 per cent (sic)” to fund the purchase of the system. Clegg prevailed, and the purchase stood as the single largest municipal acquisition by the city until the modern era. The power of Clegg’s persuasion as a community leader was clearly displayed a few years later, when he was charged with leading the local effort to help fund the war effort (of World War I) through the sale of Liberty Bonds. To address lagging bond sales during the first two bond efforts, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury created a quota and reward system as part of the third iteration Liberty Loan/War Bond drive. This quota system set a minimum target for sales for a given municipality or organization, and rewarded them with a specially issued Liberty Loan flag if they met or exceeded their quota. The Tooele area communities were given a $3,000 quota, which, under the apparently spirited leadership of then-mayor Clegg, was “largely oversubscribed.”
On a countywide level, Peter Clegg’s influence was felt through his role as a county commissioner. Appointed to the post in 1922, Clegg’s specific mission in his first term was to fight against a proposed tax that would raise funds to improve the Wendover Road—the predecessor of modern Interstate 80. The tax was primarily to fall on the citizens of Tooele County, as the proposed improvements would occur almost entirely within the county boundaries. Clegg, fresh off his term as the Tooele City mayor and a little more than 10 years removed from his time in the state senate, was a savvy negotiator and successfully argued that the improved road was of statewide benefit as much as it was a local, county benefit. In the end, Clegg, and the other politicians that joined him, avoided the county-specific tax. The discussions that occurred around the subject led to the passage of Utah’s first state gasoline tax in 1923 as a means of funding road improvements throughout the state.
It is clear from his political and business accomplishments, that Peter Clegg was a significant figure in the local community and that his influence, at times, extended beyond the Tooele Valley. In a biographical manuscript prepared by the Tooele South Ward in 1935, Clegg was lauded as follows: “No two men in the history of Tooele have exercised a more powerful influence for its development than Benjamin Clegg … and his illustrious son, Peter McIntyre Clegg.” This sentiment was a common one reflected in many public writings about him. Nearly all of his major accomplishments—at least those for which he is publicly noted—occurred as he resided in the home on 100 East. It can easily be said then, that the Clegg House is significant in the local context under Criterion B for its association with Peter Clegg.
Peter McIntyre Clegg passed away May 1, 1945, at his home. Ida Clegg remained in the home until her death on December 27, 1963. At that time, the home passed to their son, Howard. Howard Clegg, who continued his father’s and grandfather’s tradition of ranching and public service, lived in the home until his passing in 2004, at which time the home passed into a family trust overseen by Howard’s children. At present, Howard’s daughter, Marilyn, and son-in-law, Glen Lowry, reside in the Clegg House.
