A 19th Century Look at the Oquirrh Mountains

              The north end of the Oquirrh Mountains, as they appear from West Valley City.


By Lynn Arave

OFTEN forgotten mountains in Northern Utah are the Oquirrh Range. Rising to just over 9,000 feet, these mountains are the home to Kennecott Copper's huge open pit mine, to a variety of FM radio and TV transmitters and plenty of wildlife. These mountains are also often a "rain shadow" in meteorological terms to the Salt Lake Valley, tempering its total precipitation received.
But where did the Oquirrh name come from?
The first newspaper mention of the Oquirrh Mountains was in the March 2, 1864 issue of the Deseret News. That report stated Oquirrh was "the Indian name of the range on the west side of the G.S.L. Valley." It also proclaimed recent mining for lead and silver in those mountains.
The Salt Lake Herald Newspaper of Nov. 19, 1874 noted that the Utah Western Railroad had named one of its locomotives "Oquirrh."
The Salt Lake Tribune of May 28, 1878 stated that there was a local group, named the Oquirrh Club, so the Native American name became a fixture, through it was not nearly as popular as "Deseret."
The Salt Lake Herald on May 28, 1879 reported the exploration of several caves at the north end of the Oquirrh range. The larger of the two caves even had pioneer names carved into its interior walls, dating back to 1862. The larger cave, called "Giant's Cave," boasted a 10-foot-square opening and was almost 200 feet deep. The smaller, unnamed cave was only about 50 feet long.
The Salt Lake Telegram of Dec. 27, 1948 published a reader's research on the name Oquirrh. It did not dispute that the common held belief of that word meaning "Shining Mountains," but stated that Native Americans also had several alternate meanings to that word -- "Grassy Hills," "Yellow Mountains" and even "Black Mountains." 

Sitting at the north end of the Oquirrh Mountains is Kennecott's Garfield Smokestack, which rises 1,215 feet, or just 35 feet lower than the main frame of the Empire State Building. Although this stack is the tallest free-standing structure west of the Mississippi, it is dwarfed by the nearby height of the Oquirrh Mountains, which rise more than 3,500 feet above it.

The Most Important Mountain Peak in Utah?

    Farnsworth Peak, center, is the most important summit in the Oquirrh Range.

The most lonely outpost in Salt Lake County is Farnsworth Peak.
Situated in the Oquirrh Mountains, west of Salt Lake City, this 9,054-foot peak is perhaps the most important peak in Utah and yet also perhaps the hardest to reach, because of locked gates and private land issues.
Farnsworth Peak houses the transmitters for several TV stations and a fleet of FM radio stations. 
It is manned year-round, 24/7 to ensure all equipment operates properly.
Indeed, it is entertainment/news central for the Wasatch Front.
A steep, windy, 12-mile dirt road provides access to the peak and it crosses private land, owned by Kennecott.
The public at large is not permitted there. Authorized visitors are allowed, but otherwise there's no hunting, driving, hiking or biking. Two locked gates regulate access.
"Oquirrh" is a Goshute Indian word, and one of its meanings is said to be "shining mountain" - a definition that has come to be quite appropriate in modern times: Several of the peaks bristle with shiny metal towers. All of Utah's major television station transmitters and many of its FM radio broadcast antennas sit atop the Oquirrh peaks, high above the valley floors in locations just about ideal for beaming signals along the populous Wasatch Front.

The view from Farnsworth is simply spectacular. Not only is most of the Salt Lake Valley visible, but so are Grantsville and Tooele to the west, the Great Salt Lake and Ogden to the north, and Utah Lake and Timpanogos to the southeast.

That line-of-sight perspective is precisely why the Oquirrhs offer the best broadcast transmitter sites for the Wasatch Front. The Wasatch summits wouldn't serve the purpose nearly as well. Peaks and ridges and the lay of the range in general would likely block reception north and south, to the Ogden and Provo areas.

Signals from Farnsworth reach to the Idaho border on the north and to Nephi on the south. Translator stations relay the signals even farther.

Farnsworth Peak was originally known as Coon Peak, in honor of Abraham Coon, a Mormon pioneer who arrived in Utah in 1850. He was a farmer, stock raiser and cooper who also served as the Salt Lake County road supervisor for eight years. Coon died in Salt Lake City in 1886.

Today the peak is named in honor of Philo T. Farnsworth, a Utah native born at Indian Creek, near Beaver, and the inventor of television. On Sept. 7, 1927, he slipped a glass slide into place inside a transmitting set and television was born.Shortly after Farnsworth died in 1971 at age 64, Arch L. Madsen, then the president of Bonneville International, the parent company of KSL-TV, began a campaign to rename the peak in the inventor's honor.

However, the renamed mountain peak - with its numerous TV and radio transmitters - provides an eternal monument to the father of TV. Coon Canyon, the main road access to Farnsworth, continues to bear the name of Abraham Coon.

KSL-TV began its broadcast operations on the peak in November 1952. During the first four winters, engineers had to snowshoe in. Noel Clark, an early engineer, once took eight hours to snowshoe to the mountaintop.

Alternate modes of transportation to the peak were examined. After a mine shaft through the mountain was ruled out, KSL decided to construct a long tramway up the mountain in 1953, going from Lake Point on the northwest side. 
The 6-mile tram traversed some deep canyons and was said to make for an extremely thrilling 45-minute ride.

Wind gusts, however, sometimes made it more than thrilling - even dangerous. Some passengers suffered broken bones and ribs when sudden gusts struck while the tram was suspended, 1,300 feet in the air, along the unsupported 5,000-foot-long stretch over Big Canyon. The force tossed people like rag dolls against the side of the aluminum cable car, causing injuries.

In 1962, the cable broke over Thanksgiving weekend. No one was hurt and the cable was soon spliced. However, regulations for trams soon became quite strict and such things as splices were no longer allowed. KSL stopped using the tram in 1983, and much of it has now been disassembled. Some support pillars are visible on the mountain's west side, but the tram's summit warehouse is to be removed in the near future.

The first radio station to arrive on Farnsworth Peak was KSL-FM (now KSFI), in November 1957. A Secret Service transmitter was put into operation there in 1972. 

--Note that Farnsworth Peak  isn't the only mountaintop with broadcast facilities in the Oquirrhs. There are many two-way radio towers on Kessler Peak, just to the north. A jeep trail leads from Farnsworth to that 8,820-foot summit. (Farnsworth is the third peak from the north in the Oquirrhs. The northernmost is 7,758 feet above sea level.)

South of Little Farnsworth (only slightly below Farnsworth), is Nelson Peak - the highest point in the Oquirrhs at 9,359 feet, with its own transmitter equipment.

Curving around to the southeast is Mount Vision. At 8,466 feet above sea level, this peak sports another transmitter.

Where are the AM radio station transmitters, you might ask? AM transmitters do not need the height and line of sight so conducive to the FM band. AM radio waves follow the ground and do especially well when broadcast near sources of water.

UPDATE for 2018: There are a dozen TV transmitters atop Farnsworth Peak now (counting low power stations) -- and about 75 percent of all Salt Lake FM radio stations have transmitters on Farnsworth Peak too.

-Note that authors Lynn Arave and Ray Boren got permission to visit Farnsworth Peak.

-Distilled/revised from a story originally published in the Deseret News, Oct. 7, 1994, by Lynn Arave and Ray Boren.

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net  

Utah's Vanished Mountain -- Kennecott Copper Pit

By Lynn Arave

One of the hardest things in the world to move could well be mountains.
They are considered fixed and immovable -- the ultimate in steadfastness.
However, a real Utah mountain -- one from the Oquirrh Mountains -- is completely gone and a gapping hole remains.
The Kennecott open pit copper mine is Utah's most impressive man-made feature. It's only one of two unnatural things on the planet than can be spotted by orbiting astronauts (The Great Wall of China is the other). At 2.5 miles across and almost a mile deep, you could stack two Sears Towers on top of each other and still not reach the top of the mine.
However, most people probably don't realize that there's a "missing mountain" at Bingham Canyon — not the mountain of earth removed from below ground but a large mound that once soared skyward.
"It was a mountain," said Philip F. Notarianni, director for the Utah State Historical Society and lifelong resident of Magna.

Indeed, two large paintings in the Utah Governor's Board Room at the Capitol depicts clearly how the earliest Bingham Canyon mining, located about 17 miles southwest of downtown Salt Lake City, looked. In the early 1900s, the reverse of what we see now was true — a road spiraled upward as the process slowly mined the mountain away before the "pit" came to be.
According to Lila Abersold, visual arts coordinator for the Utah Travel Council, "Harry" H.L.J. Culmer made these two paintings of Bingham Canyon, probably some time between 1910-20, though no exact date has even been recorded.
They were among the earliest of paintings in the Utah State Capitol and capture Culmer's fascination with the mining industry.
"They are important paintings," Abersold said. "They offer a very early view of Bingham Canyon."
With more than 16 million tons of copper mined there — more than any other mine in history — a mountain is long gone and a gigantic hole is now there that could be up to 500 feet deeper in the future.
(How deep is this deep? During an insider media tour of Kennecott's Mine in the early 21st Century, I was offered a chance to take a ride to the bottom of the mine. I recall asking how long that would take. The answer was a couple of hours! I didn't take the time to go  ... wish I would have.)
Also, even holes can change. A massive slide inside the Kennecott Mine in early 2013 changed the face of the mine from the accompanying photos. (The visitor center is having to be relocated and could reopen in the spring of 2014.)
In Bingham Canyon's early days (1863-1900), all mining was done underground as tunnels were dug into the mountain. Miners were also then looking for gold, silver or lead, because the 40 pounds of copper per ton of ore wasn't a profitable process then.
By the late 1890s, all the easy mining had been done, and new considerations for the area were made.
Engineers Daniel Jackling and Robert Gemmell surveyed Bingham Canyon and proposed that copper ore could profitably be mined from the surface, using railroad cars and steam shovels. Their first report showed that the cost of producing one pound of refined copper would be six cents. With the selling price of copper at 14 to 18 cents a pound, their report looked impressive on paper.
There were skeptics, but by August 1906, steam shovels mounted on railroad tracks began digging into the mountain.
Less than three years later, the Utah Copper Company had 11 steam shovels, 21 locomotives, 145 dump cars and 16 miles of railroad tracks on the mountain. After buying out the Boston Consolidated Mining Company, which owned a portion of the mountain, mining really took off.
The "hill," as it was called, got smaller and smaller, and in 1912, there were 5,000 mine workers.
A major improvement came in the 1920s, when electricity replaced steam to power the shovels and locomotives. Shovels were also mounted on caterpillar tractors, giving workers more freedom to move about.
In fact, the Deseret News in December of 1922 reported that "a mountain once more begins to move" as mining activity increased dramatically at Bingham Canyon. "A whole mountain of copper is actually being moved away," the News reported.
It was in the 1930s that the "hill" was gone and mining work started to dig a pit. In 1936, Kennecott Copper Corporation bought out the Utah Copper Company.
Go online to the Utah Historical Society's old photo collection site,history.utah.gov/Photos/C275/index/form.htm and search for Bingham Canyon to see many early 1900 black-and-white photographs of the former mountain and Bingham Canyon.

(-Adapted from a Dec. 31, 2003 story by Lynn Arave in the Deseret News.)

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net  

The Shining Oquirrh Mountains

                             The north end of the Oquirrh Mountains.

By Lynn Arave

FROM Copper and mining to one of the largest man-made holes on earth to broadcasting to weather effects, the Oquirrh Mountains have a strong impact on the Salt Lake Valley.

Often, however they are often overlooked and overshadowed by the taller, bigger, longer and more prominent Wasatch Mountains.
The Oquirrhs stretch north-south some 30 miles and rise to an elevation of more than 10,600 feet — 6,000-plus feet above the valley floor.
Oquirrh is a Ute Indian word that means "shining mountain." The Bingham Canyon cooper mine is located in the Oquirrhs and has produced the "mountain that isn't there," as well as a huge hole that is visible from space and more copper than any other mine in history at 2.75 miles wide and .75 of a mile deep. (You could stack 9 LDS Church Office Buildings on top of each other and still not reach the top of the mine.) 

Note that a huge landslide inside the mine in early 2013 disrupted mining operations there.

Not always a hole, there used to be an actual mountain sticking up where the Kennecott mine is now.

Also, before so much mining took place on the north end of the Oquirrhs, the mountains were apparently much greener and forested than they are today.

Farnsworth Peak, on the north end of the Oquirrhs, only rises to 9,066 feet, but it could easily lay claim to being the single most important mountain peak in Utah. That's because 16 FM radio stations and KSL-TV and some other TV stations have their transmitters up there.

 In fact, all of Salt Lake's TV stations have a transmitter somewhere in the Oquirrhs, given their superior location for proliferating the signals on the area airwaves — even over the tallest Wasatch Mountains.

KSL used to operate a tramway on the west side of the Oquirrhs, to service its transmitter site. That is lone gone, but some of its footings are still visible along the mountainside.

Weather wise, the Oquirrhs provide what meteorologists refer to as a "rain shadow." This means at least downtown S.L. is protected by storms, or they are sometimes delayed, because of the Oquirrhs acting as a barrier.
(In contrast, the infamous 1999 Salt Lake tornado appeared to have formed in its preliminary stages over the north end of the Oquirrhs.)
Because the Oquirrhs — especially on the north end — are much more barren than the Wasatch Mountains, snow can really "white out" the area below Farnsworth Peak, far more than most local mountains.

--The four tallest peaks in the Oquirrhs are:

1.    Flat Top Peak 10,620 feet above sea level.

2.    Lowe Peak, 10,589

3.    Lewiston Peak, 10,411.

4.    Sharp Mountain, 10,006.

UPDATE: Sadly in 2013, Kennecott closed a lot of historic public access in the Butterfield Canyon area.

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net