The Arsenal Hill Explosion

This episode originally aired April 25, 2008.

This episode’s audio file may be found at http://www.utahhumanities.org/BeehiveArchive.htm

© 2008 Utah Humanities Council

 

The Script:

 

One hundred and thirty-two years ago, as Utahns were converging on Salt Lake City eager to attend the LDS Church’s general conference, a powerful blast rocked the northern part OF the city, shattering windows, demolishing buildings, and sending people scurrying for cover.  Some city residents, angered by the persistent presence of federal troops in Utah, thought the explosion was the work of commanders at Fort Douglas, who, they surmised, had issued an order to bombard the city and exterminate the Mormons.

 

Only when things had finally quieted down and crowds began fanning out to investigate the blast was the true source of the destruction discovered.  Climbing Arsenal (now Capitol) Hill in search of an explanation for the explosion, curious onlookers found that the powder magazines that once crowned the hill had detonated leaving only a few craters.  Observers also witnessed something far more grisly.  Strewn about the hill were scraps of clothing and human remains, some up to a half-mile from the site of the blast.  According to historical sources, the deaths of four people were blamed on the explosion.  The bodies of two teenage boys, Charles Richardson and Frank Hill, were never found.  Three-year-old Joseph Raddon was cut down when a rock ripped through his chest.  And a pregnant woman named Mary Jane Van Natta was felled by a flying boulder.  Other stories of the Arsenal Hill incident included hair-raising accounts of rocks hurtling through houses, sometimes smashing into just-vacated rooms and tables.

 

An investigation of the tragedy concluded that the explosion was caused by a burning wad from a firearm, perhaps fired by victim Charles Richardson, who had taken a gun with him to the hill that day.  According to a troop of boys who had been playing baseball near the magazine, a small cluster of young men had been hanging around the magazines shooting at flocks of geese in the area. 

 

In the end, close to 500 tons of rock and other debris had rained down on Salt Lake as a result of the explosion.  Leaders of the LDS Church still held conference, though nearly a thousand panes of glass on the north face of the Tabernacle had shattered, forcing them to have the holes covered with cloth.  According to historian Melvin Bashore, the destruction was so widespread that a Civil War veteran exclaimed that Salt Lake looked worse that the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia, after several days of artillery bombardment.

 

The Rest of the Story:

 

According to historian Linda Sillitoe, a representative of the DuPont Corporation, which owned one of the powder magazines on Arsenal Hill, had complained long before the tragic explosion occurred about people engaging in target practice on the hill.  Apparently, though, public officials didn’t take his warnings seriously.  Sillitoe also points out in her history of Salt Lake County that the explosion garnered substantial media attention in the United States and Britain and may have led other cities to evaluate the placement and security of their own powder storage units. 

 

Of course the explosion’s greatest impact was felt by the people of Salt Lake.  According to a story on page 8 of the April 12, 1876, edition of the Deseret News, the Arsenal Hill tragedy was the main topic of conversation for days following the blast.  “Years in the future,” the story read, “the time of [the blast] will be referred to as an era, whence and with which the happenings of other events will be calculated and compared.”

 

Sources:

 

See news reports about the Arsenal Hill explosion in the April 6 and April 7, 1876, editions of the Salt Lake Tribune, as well as the April 12, 1876, edition of the Deseret News.  Also see Melvin L Bashore, “The Arsenal Hill Explosion,” Utah Historical Quarterly 52 (Summer 1984): 246-255; and Linda Sillitoe, A History of Salt Lake County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Salt Lake County Commission, 1996), 87-90.

Beaver’s Settlement

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

The Script:

Nearly 152 years ago a small party of fifteen Mormon families left Parowan in Iron County intent on carving out a new settlement on the banks of the Beaver River.  Led by Simeon Howd, who came to the Great Basin with Brigham Young in 1847, the emigrant company was able to make the thirty-mile trip north in two days, meaning they only had to spend a single night on the frozen February ground.  According to Wilson Nowers, one of the Beaver emigrants, the company built a bonfire of sagebrush to thaw the hard earth, then buried their food to protect it from freezing before spreading their blankets over the newly warmed soil.  When morning came, they dug up their cached provisions, packed up their wagons, and headed into Beaver Valley.

Upon reaching the valley, the emigrants immediately began the process of building a new community, clearing new fields and throwing up makeshift cabins to protect themselves from the winter chill.  This was quickly followed by a move to help provide for their spiritual needs.  Just two days after reaching the banks of the Beaver, on February 8, the colonizers established a branch of the LDS Church, with Simeon Howd as president.  Ironically, that same day the new branch president also finished building a “house of entertainment” or tavern at the point where the road between Salt Lake and Parowan crossed Beaver Creek.  The tavern, read an article in the Deseret News, would be a “great accommodation to the traveling public.”

How ought we to interpret this temporal mixing of the sacred and profane on the Mormon frontier?  Well, perhaps it reinforces the reality that while the spiritual community the LDS people worked to build in the Far West was undoubtedly unique, the Mormons definitely felt a pressing obligation to provide for non-religious needs.  As in other parts of the nineteenth-century West, both facets of frontier settlement—the sacred and the profane—grew up together in Utah.

Sources:

See Deseret News, March 5, 1856;  Martha Sonntag Bradley, A History of Beaver County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Beaver County Commission, 1999), 51-52, 80; Will Bagley, ed., The Pioneer Camp of the Saints: The 1846 and 1847 Mormon Trail Journals of Thomas Bullock (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001); and Ronald O. Barney, ed., The Mormon Vanguard Brigade of 1847: Norton Jacob’s Record (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2005).