The Mystery of the Granite Record Facility

THE Granite Mountain Records Facility in Little Cottonwood Canyon contains what is very likely the world's most extensive collection of family records.

Operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, these vaults are encased in the mountain, located about 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

When these vaults, about one mile up the canyon, first opened in 1963, the public was invited for tours. However, by the end of the 20^th Century, they were off limits to all but vault workers. The media were also never invited there, likely after the 1970s.

“LDS buys quarry tract as records repository” was a Sept. 29, 1959 headline in the Salt Lake Tribune. The story stated that the Utah Granite Company and Temple Granite Quarries Corporation had sold the land needed for the records vault to the Church. Exact details of the transaction were never made public.

“Church cuts vaults in Granite quarry” was a Jan. 12, 1961 headline in the Salt Lake Tribune. The story reported that some 80 years after the Latter-day Saint Church first began chipping and hauling away granite blocks for its future Salt Lake Temple, the Church was back in the same canyon doing other work with the dominant stone there.

Work had started on the project in the summer of 1960.

The Centennial Development Company of Juab County had the contract to do the excavation in the canyon. The company first drilled a 700-foot exploration tunnel, to be followed by larger tunnels.

President Henry D. Moyle, Second Counselor in the Church’s First Presidency, told Malin Foster of the Tribune that the vaults are being built at the safest known place from disasters in the area for storing records. The rock vaults were also considered an ideal location for the storage of records based on temperatures and humidity.

“Drills deepen sanctuary for Church records” was a May 29, 1961 headline in the Tribune. Staff writer Don LeFevre reported that a crew of 14 men were cutting through granite to create large caverns.

“Their environment is a dark, damp and cool one as they labor on the construction of the vault which will one day house millions of dollars worth of valuable microfilm and documents,” LeFevre wrote.

To that date, the drilling was through some 1,800 linear feet of rock and completed channels measure 27 feet wide and 16 feet high. A total of six portals had been drilled into the mountain, on the north side of the canyon, above Utah Highway 210.

(The canyon road leads to Snowbird and Alta ski resorts. The Church has a historical trail just inside the mouth of the canyon and on the opposite, south side, that commemorates the granite quarry when the S.L. Temple blocks originated from.)

“Crews work in LDS ‘cave’ project” was a Jan. 27, 1962 Tribune headline. By early 1962, crews were done drilling and were pouring cement and deciding the best type of flooring, walls and ceiling for this “cave.” Trenches in the floor had also already been made for future plumbing and electrical lines.

This story also stated that the First Presidency itself chose the site for this granite vault records repository.

“Impregnable storage vaults safeguard LDS genealogical records” was an Oct. 6, 1963 headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner. This Associated Press story stated that the vaults were originally called “The Little Cottonwood Project,” had cost more than $1.5 million, had been more than three years in the making and was slated for completion in about one year.

There were three 600-foot-long storage vaults, lined with 18 inches of cement and corrugated steel. Three large heavy bank-like vault doors covered the entrances. The three main passages were also intersected by three others, more than 400 feet long and all interconnected.

“LDS grants look-see of tunnels” was a Dec. 2, 1963 headline in the Salt Lake Tribune. Church leaders first toured the new granite vaults. Then selected civic and business leaders had their turn on day number two; and finally on the third day, the general public got to come and take a look on a guided tour. They were titled "Church Records Vault" when they opened. (Their current title is "Granite Mountain Records Facility.")

The Tribune story stated the inside of the vaults were painted in pastel colors and boasted self-contained power, water and ventilation.

The story also said that the vaults were “buried beneath 600 feet of solid granite.

There have been no public updates by the Church on these record vaults. Presumably, they have been updated and likely contain not only original microfilm records, but likely the cutting edge in records storage, including CDs and other high-tech equipment.

-Similarly, the U. S. Air Force had began work on its own Cheyenne Mountain Complex in 1957, inside a granite mountain in Colorado, near Colorado Springs. That much larger vault was not completed finished until 1967, cost more than $142 million and sits underneath an estimated 2,000 feet of granite.

-The Salt Lake Tribune of Aug. 23, 1967 reported that landowners in Little Cottonwood Canyon had dropped a plan to build a housing subdivision at the mouth of the canyon, in favor of constructing a private facility for microfilm and other storage inside the mountain itself. Located just up the canyon from the Church’s granite vaults, they were designed to be similar to those man-made caverns. Today, they are called Perpetual Storage, Inc., located at 6279 Little Cottonwood Road.

-The accompanying illustrations above are some of the images from a mid-1960s brochure, published by the LDS Church on the Vaults.

Alta was a synonym for avalanche in late 19th Century Utah; Plus, humor from many decades ago

                    The lower end of Little Cottonwood Canyon. 

THE most dangerous place to live in Utah during the late 19^th Century was undoubtedly Alta.

“Unhappy Alta,” “The Awful Avalanche,” “Terrible tragedy,” “Latest Alta horror,” “Alta is Swept away,” “More snowslides – Six persons killed at Alta,” “Terrible snow-slide in Cottonwood” and “Another horror.” These were all newspaper headlines from avalanche disasters in the historic mining town of Alta.

Indeed, one newspaper story called Alta “home of the avalanche.”

From 1872 to 1927, at least 87 people were killed in 14 different avalanches at Alta, according to research on digitalnewspapers.org.
(The primary reason that avalanche deaths in Alta dropped after 1927 was that the price of silver plummeted in 1927 and then this silver mining town was all but abandoned until the skiing era arrived.)

Yes, avalanches occurred in other Wasatch Mountain locations during that era. For example, the most deadly single avalanche on Feb. 27, 1926 in Bingham Canyon killed 40 people. And, other slides at Bingham had killed at least 3 others in earlier years. However, Alta had the most slides and several times the entire town was swept away.

Many animals also perished in these slides, usually mules or horses.

Here’s one example from the Deseret News of March 12, 1884: “Avalanche at Alta. Twelve people killed at New Emma Mine. The awful news reached this city yesterday of a fatal snow-slide near Alta, Little Cottonwood Canyon, in which twelve persons, nine men, two women and a boy perished.”

Here’s another from the Deseret News of Feb. 18, 1885 of a snowslide that killed 16 people: “The Alta avalanche. Further particulars of the sad catastrophe … The avalanche covered more ground that any before known in that vicinity, and its effects were far more disastrous … Of the many buildings in the main part of town, only seven were left standing.”

Why did people keep living and working the mines in Alta despite one disaster after another?

A Salt Lake Herald newspaper story from Feb. 15, 1885 (and right after the slide that killed 16) may have the best answers. It referred to the avalanche as “the same old story” and eventually states:

“The poor men and women who have been ruthlessly stricken down were not in Alta because they preferred the isolation, the discomforts and dangers of the snow-bound camp to the pleasure and safety of city homes; they were there for the same reason which induces the Swiss peasant to brave the terrors of winters in the Alps … they were there for the bread that they must have … We can honor them, for they were heroes and heroines, for they had the courage to fight nature’s battle against nature’s threatenings.”

Avalanches have historically been one of the biggest natural killers in Utah. However, the Utah Avalanche Center didn’t begin recording accidents until the post-mining decades, beginning with 1940. (The first avalanche death by a skier at Alta was in January of 1941.)
-Even today avalanches are a hallmark of Little Cottonwood Canyon, the home of Alta and Snowbird ski resorts.
Highway 210 heads up Little Cottonwood Canyon and is one of the most avalanche-prone roads in the world. That's because the 13.6-mile-long highway in the canyon crosses through 64 different avalanche paths.
Artillery is regularly used in the canyon to keep it avalanche free today. In fact, using such explosives to control avalanches had their first world-wide usage as such in Little Cottonwood Canyon during the 1940s.

-Given that heavy dose of early Alta’s grisly history, here are examples of so-called humor, as published in the Ogden Herald on Aug. 24, 1882 and on Nov. 9, 1882:

“Man proposes and the girl weighs his pocketbook and decides,” “Turf reform: mowing your lawn,” “A lady said that it takes many men a lifetime to carry a 10-dollar bill home without breaking it,” “Yellow fever: Man’s thirst for gold,” “Ingersoll says that no such man as Noah existed. He probably bases his belief on the assumption that no man would invite a pair of mosquitoes into the ark” and “The only human being that can step on a heavenward pointed tack and not say something that would cause the recording angel to weep is a mute.”

-Finally, here’s a weird occurrence that happened in Ogden on April 8, 1918 – and a full week after April Fool’s Day that year: “Eat horse meat at luncheon given at noon yesterday to local and visiting guests” was an April 9, 1918 headline in the Ogden Standard newspaper.

The Ogden Horse Sale and Commission Company hosted a luncheon for those attending a big horse sale at the Union Stock Yards. The problem was that it wasn’t announced the bologna and dried meat consumed was horse until after the luncheon. Surprisingly, the story stated that “they all agreed it was a good joke.”

-Portions of this blog were originally published in the Deseret News on Feb. 18, 2019.

A Proposal in 1912 to add mystic charm to S.L. with various names changes -- Lone Peak, Cottonwood Canyons

JUST over a century ago, there was a brief effort to try and change some Salt Lake area geographical names, "to add mystic charm" and avoid the commonplace.
The Salt Lake Herald newspaper of July 25, 1912 stated that Joseph E. Caine suggested a change in some titles for the area during a speech given at Liberty Park.
City Creek and Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons were particularly mentioned as being too commonplace of names for an area so rich in pioneer history and effort.
"With such a world of romance in our history we should not have given to that magnificent gorge of the Wasatch so commonplace a name as Big Cottonwood Canyon. City Creek, Big and Little Cottonwood and Mill Creek Canyons, Twin Peaks and Lone Peak are all misnamed," the story reported. 
"There are a thousand cottonwood canyons in the western United States and as many mill creek canyons.Let us give to these and other great works of nature names that will mean something in the history of our state and that will carry with them the romantic charm of the days of the trail blazers."
Caine also suggested that Timpanogos be returned as the name for Utah Lake, as the Spanish explorers and Father Escalante had titled it.
He said more unusual name changers could "add to this state a mystic charm that will live forever in poetry, in painting and in song."
Sadly, Caine's suggestions were not heeded, or perhaps the commonplace names he wanted changed were already too permanent in the minds of Utahns.
And, certainly in the 21st Century, such names have well over a century of use.
Perhaps the "lone" example of a name Caine suggested that actually had an effort to alter it, was Lone Peak. For at least a few years in the mid 1910s, there was a temporary renaming to "Mount Jordan" instead. (Lone Peak is a distinctive, solitary peak at the far south end of the S.L. Valley.) The new name didn't stick, but it was used in many a newspaper story of that decade, including the S.L. Herald of Sept. 6, 1915.
Caine also neglected to mention that there are three sets of "Twin Peaks," found just along the length of the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake County. Why that name repetition? Who knows, but "Double Peak" and North and South Twin could at least have been a little less confusing set of titles.

-Regarding Lone Peak, it was thrown back into public notice at the end of 1936 when a plan crashed on that mountain and yet could not be found for almost six months.
On Dec. 13, 1936, a Western Air Express transport plane crashed some 43 minutes before it was due at the Salt Lake Airport.
In  early June of 1937, some hikers found some airmail blown around near the top of the mountain and that led to finally locating the plane wreckage and the remains of its  four passengers and three crew members, finally ending the tragic suspense of the disaster.
An elevation of 11,000 feet above sea level, an arctic-like weather made location and recovery vert difficult.
It was believed, according to the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper of June 7, 1937, that it the aircraft had just been another 20 to 25 feet higher, it would have cleared the granite mountaintop safely.

-Lone Peak was back in the news about 18 months later when four Salt Lake men climbed Lone Peak's summit in a record three hours and 58 minutes.
Orson Spencer, Odell Pedersen, W.C. Kamp and Keith Anderson made the speedy climb from the Alpine side, They are members of the Wasatch Mountain Club and their exploit was reported in the Telegram of Oct. 3, 1938.

(-Other sources: “Utah Place Names,”: by John W. Van Cott and the Salt Lake Tribune, May 28, 1916.)

-Originally published in the Deseret News on Dec. 26, 2017.