The Evans Family Singers

This episode originally aired on KCPW December 28, 2007.
This episode’s audio file may be found at http://www.utahhumanities.org/BeehiveArchive.htm.
© 2007 Utah Humanities Council

The Script:

On May Day, 1900, two brothers, David and Richard Evans, were killed in a tremendous explosion that rocked the Winter Quarters Number 4 mine near Scofield in Carbon County.  The Evans brothers were only two of two hundred miners who lost their lives in the deadly Winter Quarters blast, but what makes their deaths so poignant is the fact that they had recently begun to achieve local fame as part of their family’s musical performance troupe.

The Evans family immigrated to Utah from their native Wales, where Isaac, David and Richard’s father, had honed his skills as a poet and musician and their mother had developed a reputation as a talented vocalist.  Upon reaching Utah, the Evans family put down roots in Castle Dale, and Isaac and his sons—five in all—worked as coal miners. 

Mining, however, seems to have been just a way to make ends meet for the Evanses.  Their true passion was music.  According to a contemporary observer, the Evans family singers were consummate professionals.  Not only had they won several prestigious local awards for their fine musical talents, the observer noted, but they had the “best orchestra” in the Emery County area.

Such positive reviews of their music make the loss of David and Richard Evans in the Winter Quarters tragedy all the more unfortunate.  Ironically, they appear to have survived a mine explosion eighteen years earlier while still living in Wales.  But they weren’t so lucky in Utah.  The personal impact the brothers’ deaths had on their family is hard to detect from historical sources, but it’s not hard to imagine that it hurt them deeply.  It’s possible to even speculate that their deaths contributed to their father’s passing not even a year later in Castle Dale.

The Rest of the Story:

The Winter Quarters explosion was a tremendous community tragedy.  There are other stories equally as compelling as that of David and Richard Evans.  Nancy Taniguchi, in her book Castle Valley, America, for instance, relates the account of Jack Wilson, who was thrown more than 800 feet into a gulch by the blast.  Miraculously, Wilson survived, though the force of the explosion had sent a huge splinter through his abdomen and the impact of his fall broke his skull.  (Wilson’s three brothers—James, Willie and Alexander—weren’t quite so lucky; they all died in the explosion.)

Another interesting story from the Winter Quarters tragedy involved Tom Pugh, a young miner, who, when he heard the explosion, put his cap over his mouth and ran more than a mile through the pitch-black mine until he finally reached a door to the outside where he promptly fainted.   Pugh lived, but his father didn’t.  Another boy named Willie Davis tried to do as Pugh had done, but died when he dropped his cap trying to help an older miner who had become trapped by falling rubble.

Sources:

See Edward A. Geary, A History of Emery County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Emery County Commission, 1996), 158-159; J. W. Dilley, History of the Scofield Mine Disaster (Provo, Utah: Skelton, 1900); and Nancy J. Taniguchi, Castle Valley, America: Hard Land, Hard-Won Home (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2004), 109.

The Building of Flaming Gorge Dam

This episode originally aired on KCPW January 11, 2008
This episode’s audio file may be found at http://www.utahhumanities.org/BeehiveArchive.htm.
© 2008 Utah Humanities Council

The Script:

Nearly forty-four years ago, the Flaming Gorge Dam in Daggett County was dedicated by Ladybird Johnson, wife of then-President Lyndon Johnson.  Initially, plans to build a dam on Utah’s stretch of the upper Green River seemed to center on Echo Park inside Dinosaur National Monument, rather than the present-day site of Flaming Gorge, but opposition from conservation groups including the Sierra Club stalled the approval process for the Echo Park Dam and began to turn public support away from the plan.  When President Dwight Eisenhower signed into law the bill allowing the development of water reclamation projects on the Green and Upper Colorado River basins, the vision of a dam at Echo Park melted away and was replaced by the very real plan to build the Flaming Gorge Dam.

Construction on the dam began in 1958, but the first concrete wasn’t poured until two years later.  To house the workers that built the dam, the federal government and the company that won the construction contract brought trailers and temporary houses to the dam site, creating an entire town, known as Dutch John, almost overnight.  The population of the town, at the height of construction on the dam, numbered over 3,000 people.

By the time construction on the dam wrapped up in 1964, it wore a price tag of $65,000,000.  Not surprisingly, opinions about the dam and the reservoir it created are mixed.  Some Daggett County residents claimed the project unleashed a much need economic overhaul of the region, while others miss the tight community they believe vanished with the changes brought by the dam.

The Rest of the Story:

The late Marc Reisner, in his masterful book Cadillac Desert, argues that there was a clear link between the denial of funds for the Echo Park Dam by the U.S. Congress, the building of the Flaming Gorge Dam, and approval to build the Glen Canyon Dam in southwestern Utah.  The way Riesner lays out the history of the Echo Park project, Flaming Gorge was part of the sacrifice David Brower and the Sierra Club had to make for helping kill the dam in Echo Park.  According to Reisner, Brower, who became the Sierra Club’s first executive director in 1952, believed he was partly to blame for the “death” of Glen Canyon.  In Reisner’s words, Brower vowed to “never again …  compromise over such a dam” (285).

Sources:

See Michael W. Johnson, with Robert E. Parson and Daniel A. Stebbins, A History of Daggett County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Daggett County Commission, 1998), 189-219; Doris Karren Burton, A History of Uintah County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Uintah County Commission, 1996), 320; and Jay R. Bingham, “Reclamation and the Colorado,” Utah Historical Quarterly 28 (July 1960): 233-249.  Also see March Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (New York: Penguin, 1993).

Isom Dart

This episode originally aired on KCPW March 28, 2008.
This episode’s audio file may be found at http://www.utahhumanities.org/BeehiveArchive.htm.
© 2008 Utah Humanities Council

The Script:

Nearly 108 years ago, African-American rancher Isom Dart was gunned down while walking from his cabin to his corral in Browns Park, a valley that straddles the borders of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.  No one was ever charged with Dart’s murder, but it’s widely thought that his killer was legendary hired gun and range detective Tom Horn.

According to historical sources, Darts’ real name was Ned Huddleston, a former slave from Arkansas, who after gaining his freedom turned to cattle rustling, first in Mexico and Texas, and then in Colorado.  The life of a cow thief, however, seemed eventually to run its course with Huddleston.  He changed his name to Isom Dart, moved to Browns Park, and formed an alliance with a group of small-scale cattle ranchers, including Matt Rash and Ann Bassett, to resist incursions by powerful cattle barons connected with the Snake River Stock Growers Association.  The Association charged Dart and his friends with stealing their cattle and altering their brands.  When Dart and other Browns Park ranchers began receiving threatening notes, likely from the stock growers association, advising them to leave the region or face grim consequences, Dart defiantly stayed put.

Within weeks of the warnings, two men found the decomposing body of Dart’s friend Matt Rash in his cabin.  He had been shot at least twice in the torso.  Locals suspected that Rash’s murderer was a drifter named James Hicks, who mysteriously left the area right around the time Isom and others began receiving the ominous notes telling them to make themselves scarce.   When Hicks popped up again after Rash’s death, whispering that Dart was the dead man’s killer, the Browns Park community refused to believe it.  Their support, however, couldn’t save Isom Dart.  That fall, he was ambushed, and fell dead from gunshot wounds only a few steps from his cabin. 

Rumors later surfaced that Hicks, the presumed assassin, was none other than Tom Horn, who had been hired by the Snake River cattle barons to snuff out opposition from Browns Park’s lesser ranchers.  Ironically, Horn was later hanged in Wyoming for the alleged murder of teenage sheepherder Willie Nickell.

The Rest of the Story:

According to researcher John Griffin, Dart’s grave is located in Moffat County, Colorado.  You can see a photo of it here.

According to Philip Fradkin, after the deaths of Dart and Rash, Ann Bassett was also targeted for extermination.  Fradkin writes in Sagebrush Country that two shots “fired through a hole in the front door narrowly missed” Bassett “while she sat surrounded by friends and family one rainy night in her home” (145).

There have been rumors that a group in Hollywood is planning a made-for-TV film about Isom Dart that will air on AMC.

Sources:

See Michael W. Johnson, with Robert E. Parson and Daniel A. Stebbins, A History of Daggett County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Daggett County Commission, 1998), 110-116; Ronald Gottesman, ed., Violence in America: An Encyclopedia, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999), 143-144; and Philip Fradkin, Sagebrush Country: Land and the American West (Boulder, Colorado: Johnson Books, 20904), 144-145. You may also want to consult the entry on Dart on the “African Americans in the Old West” website, hosted by Long Island University: www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/african/west/west.htm#huddleston.