"S.L. Lion recaptured: It fled Zoo" was an Oct. 14, 1953 headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.
This Associated Press story explained how a lion of the mountain lion variety had to be hunted a day earlier, on Oct. 13, after the animal escaped its enclosure while its cage was being cleaned.
Fortunately, it took refuge in some thick underbrush by Hogle Zoo's main gate. Zoo employees and four police officers kept a watch on the animal while two professional hunters were called in. Brack Noble of Salt Lake and Gordon Pace of Bountiful arrived within hours, accompanied by their pack of dogs.
First, they flushed the lion into a nearby tree. Then, they climbed the tree, tossed a noose around the snarling animal's neck and were then able to tie it up and return it to its cage.
For Pace, this was his second time catching the animal. About a year earlier, he had tracked and captured the mountain lion in the Wasatch Mountains and had donated the animal to the zoo.
The employee who was responsible for the animal's escape was fired for negligence.
Thus, it is quite a coincidence, given the above escape tale, that some six years earlier, in 1947, Utah sculptor Dr. Avard Fairbanks had sculpted two mountain lions atop 18-foot granite columns at the Zoo’s old entrance.
-MORE HISTORY: The Hansel Valley Earthquake of March 12, 1934 measured 6.6 and is believed to have caused at least two deaths. It also caused some significant damage to structures in Snowville, Logan and Preston, Id. However, it did provide one key benefit. According to the Standard-Examiner of Feb. 4, 1940, that quake provided Box Elder County with a salt spring industry.
That quake created three springs on the northern tip of the Great Salt Lake and that led to a new industry, where evaporation in a ditch produced salt to harvest.
-Taylor Canyon in Ogden is famous now for its hiking trail that leads to Malan's Peak and Malan's Basin. At one time in the 1890s, a wagon road in the canyon led to a mountain resort, run by the namesake Malan family. However, in the 1930s, Taylor Canyon also featured a ski hill in the decades before any ski resorts, like Snow Basin came along. "Bjorngaard Hill" is what a portion of the mouth of the canyon was renamed for an exhibition of professional skiing by four of the nation's elite in the sport, including Alf Engen (who would later start a ski school at Utah's Alta resort and also help develop some 30 other ski resorts in the west). That's according to the Standard-Examiner of Jan. 8, 1936. There were some 20 ski jumpers in all, including some local athletes. The story stated that in the 1920s, Becker Hill in Ogden Canyon had been used for similar event.
The Salt Lake Tribune of Dec. 12, 1937 stated that Taylor Canyon was being used as a lighted public ski hill almost two years later. There was even a public skating rink in the area.
-There's also a mysterious log cabin on the southern slopes of Taylor Canyon and no one today seems to know who built it, or when. The cabin is located in between switchbacks up the mountain toward Malan's Peak. However, since the 1980s, a shortcut trail that led past the cabin has been reforested, decreasing erosion, but increasing the cabin's isolation. A Feb. 5, 1910 story in the Standard Examiner chronicled the escapade of a violent, armed teenager in Ogden, who fled the City and took refuge in a cabin in Taylor Canyon. The young man, Vernon Hodge, spent a cold night in the cabin and tested his marksmanship with his rifle and nearby tree stumps and rocks. He was so cold, he returned to Ogden the next morning where he was arrested for threatening and holding a man hostage the day prior. But, could that cabin be today's mysterious structure in Taylor Canyon? Perhaps.
-It is no secret that Park City transformed itself from a mining town to a ski town in the 1960s and 1970s. And, a headline in the Idaho State Journal newspaper of Pocatello seemed to perfectly capture the essence of that redevelopment, The Dec. 20, 1963 newspaper carried the headline, "Utah city seeks to replace mined silver with tourist gold." The Associated Press story stated that on the next day, Park City would dedicate 10,000-acre ski area, featuring a gondola and chairlift. And, that was only the beginning of the town's transformation plans.
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