The Redmond Hotel is significant as a good example of a public boarding house in a rural, Mormon community. Based upon a comprehensive survey of Sevier County, it is the best example of this building type in the county. It is also an excellent example of structural adaptation of a building to local events for the “hotel” has evolved as the community evolved. The Redmond Hotel stands today as one of the best remembered “old hotels” in Sevier County.
The Redmond Hotel is located at 15 East Main Street in Redmond, Utah and was added to the National Register of Historic Places (#80003964) on June 20, 1980.
Ifedmond Utah is a small agricultural community settled in 1876, surveyed in 1879 and “given” a local government in 1878. in 1879, John Johnson, an early Jtedmond settler, town surveyor and Mormon bishop contracted to have a three-room stone home built on Main and Center. The probable builder of the home was Jacob Nielsen, a Mormon, local stone mason, and Danish immigrant like John Johnson. This early structure is the core of the Ifedmond Hotel on which later additions were built.
The appointment of Johnson to the office of bishop, a position he held for 10 years, reflected his growing economic and social importance in the area. Around 1888 Johnson had a larger and more stylish home built east of his first home on Main Street. The older, smaller home was rented out, probably to his son-in-law and business partner, John B. Sorenson with whom he established the financially successful Redmond Co-op.
In 1892, two years after the Denver and Rio Gande Railroad arrived in the Sevier Valley, Johnson sold his main street properties to Henry McKenna Sr. The latter was an early settler of Salina whose past and future experiences with hotel building leads one to suppose that his purchase was a form of “hotel speculation.” Redmond was only a few miles from the Salina railhead and its untapped agricultural and mineral resources could be expected to bring in new residents. This demographic change was expected to cause, as it had elsewhere in Utah, the need for the temporary or seasonal services of teachers, salesmen, laborers, miners and entertainment troupes. To accommodate these mobile residents a pifolic house would be necessary for the community.
Henry McKenna sold his property in 1894 to his son, Henry McKenna Jr. Redmond’s economy continued to improve and so in 1503, the new owner mortgaged the Johnson properties to finance the remodeling of the three-room home into a public boarding house. In 1904, apparently unable to satisfy his creditors, McKenna Jr. sold the structure to James Frandsen who had been hired to do the remodeling work for the hotel (the new owner had done the remodeling work in the area before under taking the building of the Redmond Hotel). The daily operation of the boarding house given over to his wife Miranda as James continued to farm and raise livestock.
After sixteen years of successfully keeping boarders the Fandsen’s sold the building to Anthony C. Willardsen a local merchant. In B20 Anthony opened a store in the front and hired Ada Nielsen, granddaughter of Jacob Nielsen, to run the boarding house. The collapse of agricultural prices that followed World War I adversely affected the local economy and thereby affected the success of the Willardsen enterprise. With two outstanding mortgages and under threat of public sale for payment of back taxes, he sold the boarding house to Ada. With her extra income as post mistress and sales clerk, she was also able to keep the boarding business afloat. It was during her ownership that the public house became widely known as the Redmond Hotel. Ada continued to rent rooms through the depression. In 1946 Charles Hampton bought the building and continued to rent rooms until 1951 when he readapted the public house again, this time back into a private residence. The economic boom for Resdmond had come and gone and with it the Redmond Hotel.
The Elsinore Sugar Factory is significant as the single most important agri-business in Sevier County history. The factory’s economic and social impact on local communities, as assessed by a recent county wide historical survey, exceeds that of any other business enterprise for the years 1911 to 1928. Also, the Elsinore plant is significant as a good representative of the overall sugar beet industry in Utah and as an excellent example of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company’s contribution to the history of the state.
The Elsinore Sugar Factory is located at approximately 2905 North Highway 118 in Elsinore, Utah and was added to the National Register of Historic Places (#80003959) on June 17, 1980.
The first attempt at refining sugar from beets in Utah occurred in the early 1850 ‘s under the auspicious of the Deseret Manufacturing Company. With the strong financial and social support of Brigham Young, and with imported French machinery, a sugar beet factory was erected in Provo. This primitive plant was unable to recrystallize the sugar from the beet juice. With the company near ing financial ruin, it was purchased by the Mormon Church. After removing the machinery to Salt Lake City, the church tried anew, and again the process failed. This second attempt was the last try at refining sugar in Utah until 1891.
During these thirty plus years the MDrmon desire for economic self-sufficiency kept alive the “sugar beet hope”. Experimentation with sugar beets reached Sevier County in 1878 as William Seegmiller and C.A. Madsen each produced a few high quality plants. Local soil conditions were discovered to be excellent and with improved irrigation systems, large yearly crops were predicted. The improved refining techniques used by E.H. Dyer at his California plant that resulted in the production of a high quality sugar, helped revive the sugar beet interests in Utah. With increased tariffs on sugar that came with the Merrill Act, 1883 and the McKinley Act, 1890, the atmosphere for the “sugar business” improved.
The Mormon desire hope for financial autonomy now had the technological means, the capital and the interest to form the Utah Sugar Company in 1889. Two years after incorporation a sugar beet refinery was erected in Lehi under the direction of E.H. Dyer. As in the 1850 ‘s the Mormon leadership strongly endorsed the enterprise. Church wards encouraged local farmers to plant sugar beets in the spring for processing in the fall. The refinery was from the beginning a technical success but it took time for utahns to accept the fact that beet sugar was as good as cane sugar.
As the financial success of the sugar beet enterprise became apparent, it accelerated the proliferation of other sugar beet refineries. In 1898 sugar produced from beets made up 2% of the American sugar out-put, by 1901 it was 7% and rising. At this time that the American Sugar Refining Company, which controlled 98% of sugar cane market decided to buy stock in western sugar beet companies. In 1902 ASR purchased 50% interest in the Utah Sugar Company the result of which liquified assets for investment in new sugar beet refineries.
Around this same time the farmers of Sevier and San Pete Counties began to agitate for the location of a plant there. In 1906 the Utah Sugar Company promised to help build a factory at Moroni and towards implementing this offer a local sugar company was incorporated. An infestation of “curly-top”, a sugar beet disease, and opposition to the San Pete County location by Sevier County farmers, killed the proposed plant. The next year, 1907, the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company was created by the merger of Utah Sugar, Idaho Sugar and Western Idaho Sugar companies. The new corporation, as a result of increased assets and decreased competition, was able to increase its factory building program.
After getting a promise from Sevier County farmers to raise at least 6000 tons of sugar beets, a factory site was selected east of Elsinore and North of Monroe, near a small settlement named Frogs Jump. The land was purchased in 1910 and the construction of the rail spurs and beet silo sheds were begun. The following summer the main structural elements of the factory were completed so that by the fall of 1911 the first sugar beet campaign was carried out in Sevier County. The Elsinore plant like the one in Lehi was erected by the E.H. Dyer and Sons Construction Company. It was built at a cost of 620,000 dollars. In 1916 and again in 1925 the factory was enlarged to handle an ever greater number of beets. In its lifetime the Elsinore plant produced 1.9 million, 100 pound bags of high quality sugar.
The impact of the new enterprise on Sevier County was immediate and profound. From a steadily widening area of expenditures, through workers wages and payments to farmers, new homes, barns and schools were built, and new farm machinery purchased. The influx of technicians needed to operate the plant settled in Frogs Jump, changing the scattered community into an organized company town which was renamed Austin. In addition to the direct impacts of the plant, one must consider an important secondary economic consequence of sugar beet production. Local livestock interests were able to use the beet tops, pulp and unrefined molasses to feed both sheep and cattle. Southern Sevier County became Central Utah’s center for fattening livestock.
In 1926, one year after increasing the beet capacity at the Elsinore factory, the plant was forced to shut down. It reopened in 1927 but the sugar production was so low that U & I officials closed it for good in 1928. There
have been four explanations advanced for the plant’s failure. The first justifies closure by the recurring infestation of the “curly-top” disease in the Sevier Valley. Competition for locally grown beets by the erection of the Gunnison Sugar Beet Factory in 1918 is offered as the second; and the third argues that the relationship between the farmers and U & I officials continued to decline as both struggled to stay alive during the agricultural decline of the 1920’s. The fourth explanation argues that low tariffs on sugar confoined with a 20 million dollar mortgage hanging over U & I properties did not allow for keeping marginal factories in operation.
In 1928 the beet processing machinery was sold to a firm in Quebec. Fourteen years later, in 1942, the factory’s main structural elements were dismantled leaving only the office and sugar warehouse intact. At the end of World War II the warehouse was converted into a drying plant for potatoes from which a flour was made and then shipped to Europe. The operation was owned by Utah Food Products Cooperative and was a locally owned concern. In 1945 the business was forced to sale the property because it had failed to meet its mortgage payments. American Food Products Corporation bought the site but it suffered the same fate as the Utah Company. After a series of owners the Elsinore Sugar Factory property was purchased by Wilson Milburn. He has converted the office into a home and hopes to reuse the sugar warehouse as a local shopping mall.
Only two buildings of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company’s factory complex in Elsinore, Utah are extant. The warehouse is a large brick building of symmetrical rectangular plan with a gabled roof. Piers divide the elevations into bays. Brick corbelling at the roof line creates the effect of a cornice. All openings have segmental arches.
Most of the houses in Austin were built by the sugar beet factory for workers. They were all variations of a similar pattern of modest, detached single family dwellings typical of the period, ca. 1910. The different configurations of this building may reflect its different function and location near the factory. The factory office occupies the ground floor. Rooms on the upper floor undoubtedly served as temporary accommodations for seasonal employees.
The factory office and rooming house is a gable roofed rectangular structure. The ground floor of the 1 1/2 story building is brick while the upper level is frame with shingle siding. Piercing of gable end facades is symmetrical. The broad sides exhibit asymmetrical piercing and paired shed dormers. Ground floor openings have segmental arches. The original window configuration was a two-over-two scheme. A balcony and porte cochere have been extended from the main façade. A small gable roofed portico shelters the entrance of the rear elevation.
The boundaries of the nomination encompass almost the same acreage as was purchased by the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company in 1910 for their Elsinore factory. Its addition to the two standing structures, the office/boardinghouse and sugar warehouse, the foundations of the main factory, the boiler and machine shop, the beet sheds and, the numerous pulp silo storage pits are included.
The Redmond Town Hall is one of the best remaining examples in Utah of a building which served as a community center for religious, educational and political purposes. The original adobe structure with the larger rock addition also stands as an excellent example of the evolution of community buildings in rural pioneer Utah.
Located at 18 West Main Street in Redmond, Utah and added to the National Historic Register (#76001836) on September 13, 1976.
The community of Redmond was settled in the late summer and early fall of 1875 primarily by Scandinavians from nearby Salina. The first years were devoted to the clearing of farm land and digging of irrigation ditches and canals. In 1881 the original adobe section of the town hall was constructed. Citizens contributed both money and work in the commercial undertaking. The 24′ x 36 adobe structure was used for LDS Church services, as a school, and for town meetings. Within a short time the building proved too small to meet the various community needs and in the mid 1890’s a larger two story rock building was constructed adjacent to the original adobe building,
The two connected buildings served as Redmond’s church and school until 1911 when a school house was completed west of the town hall and 1917. when a-church was built-across the street southeast of the building.
The town hall continued to function as a community center after 1917. It is presently (1976) being renovated as a community Bicentennial project.
The Redmond Town Hall consists of an adobe structure built in 1881 and an adjoining rock structure built in the 1890’s.
The adobe building measures 24 v by 36 feet, contains one room, is one story in height and has a gabled roof. Entry was made through either of two doors flanking a single window on the east side of the building. The multi-purpose room was heated by a stove connected to the chimney still situated at the north end of the building. The adobe walls have been sheathed with scored stucco intending to imitate smooth cut stone. An unpretentious edifice, the only decorative elements were the Federal lintel caps, the corbeled brickwork on the chimney and perhaps the modestly adorned box cornice and plain frieze. The ends of two beams supporting the ceiling joists can be seen resting in the wall from the outside of the building. Metal tension rods or tie bars are also apparent on either side of a large vertical masonry crack in the north wall. After its discontinuance as a meetinghall, the adobe building served as a jail. Steel bars in a few windows remain as evidence of newer function.
Connected to the small adobe on the south is the two-story rock Town Hall, built apparently between 1891 and 1897. While the earlier building was vernacular in style and unpresuming, the newer structure took on an air of dignity and style, however, modest. The rectangular structure was built of a light colored limestone quarried east of Redmond. The stone was cut, squared, slightly rock faced, and laid in a plain ashlar pattern.
Formality of design was provided by a regular window schedule with windows on both floors being of equal size and type and being arranged directly over one another. All window and door bays are segmentally arched with stone voussoirs of the same dressing as the face stone. All windows are 2/2 double-hung sash type and have wooden sills. The roof is hipped and has a lowered belfry on the ridge which runs east and west. The chimneys are brick and corbeled and are secured to the roof by metal tie bars. The cornice is simply boxed and overhangs the building by about 20″. There is no frieze or any decorative wooden or masonry trim.
As one enters the Redmond Town Hall through its only door, a large single room is found at the right (east) while directly ahead (north) is a stairway which leads to the two upper rooms on the second floor. The main room on the ground floor was used for mass meetings and as a small library. The council room was the smaller of the two upper rooms (on the east), while the other second story room (on the west) was used for recreational functions.
The interior walls, ceilings, floors, moldings, doors, hardware, etc., are almost completely intact. The door and window mouldings are a post-Eastlake type and provide the greatest element of architectural relief.
Both parts of the Redmond Town Hall are in stable condition and are undergoing restoration as a Utah Bicentennial project.
Constructed in 1914 by the community. The wood frame hall contains a gymnasium, stage, kitchen and basement. As a community recreation center, the hall was used for dances, plays, basketball games, programs, and movies. It served as the annual meeting place for the Koosharem Old Folks Party, a well-known traditional town reunion.
