When Monte Cristo was mysterious and isolated

                   Utah Highway 39 with Monte Cristo Peak, center, in the background.

BEFORE Utah Highway 39 was constructed, that would travel just a few hundred yards below Monte Cristo Peak, the only way to access the area was on foot or horse. And, it was a 10-mile trek up from Camp Kiesel, the nearest trailhead.

“Monte Cristo, that mysterious peak on the great ridge running between Weber and Rich counties, is a part of the watershed of Camp Kiesel,” stated O.H. Bybee in the July 2, 1926 Standard-Examiner.

Bybee had recently hiked to Monte Cristo Peak, elevation 9,148 feet above sea level, from Camp Kiesel, elevation 6,100 feet. He noted that some of the finest aspens he had ever seen were traversed and that on the Monte Summit he could see the High Uintas, Mt. Ogden and Ben Lomond peaks.

On the way down, he ran across the “fresh trail of a bear not more than 15 minutes before.” He proclaimed he was glad he was heading south and not the way that bruin was. He also said that any Boy Scout who makes this 20-mile trek “will be given a special award to show their prowess.”

(Note: The first road to Monte Cristo Peak was built from 1927-1928. And, the fact that the peak was named BEFORE Highway 39 was built, proves road builders did not name the peak -- by a road worker who was supposedly reading a book about the Count of Monte Cristo. It was likely named three decades earlier, back in the La Plata mining boom in the area.)

-The campfire has always been a key focus of any stay at Camp Kiesel. A July 3, 1925 Standard story said that all Scouts at the camp gather at the campfire each evening.

“The forepart of the program is confined to community singing. Then comes the scribes’ report, in which the scribe of each patrol reads his record of the day’s events from the humorous viewpoint of a boy. Following this the boys listen to stories of the great out-of-doors, of adventure and of thrills and exciting experiences,” the story reported.

The report concluded: “Nine o’clock is dismissal time. The boys arise, repeat the scout promise and law. Then, they bow their heads while a short prayer is uttered. Soon the melody of taps float away on the breeze and the day is done.”

  More historical tidbits:

-“Spectacular parade morning feature of Ogden’s celebration. Great throng lines streets; Logan and Brigham make fine showing; Plenty of band music adds to patriotic occasion,” was a July 4, 1924 Standard headline.

Ogden’s parade was described to be four miles long, with more than 80 floats, plus cowboys, horses and automobiles. Brigham City’s parade entry, with a peach theme, was judged as the best. Second-place went to a Daughters of Utah Pioneers float overflowing with patriotism; and Logan City’s float was ranked third-place.

-Back on July 4, 1888, Ogden’s Fourth of July festivities were described as “a glorious time,” with “processions, speeches, music and song,” plus with “baseball and games.”

The celebration concluded with 10 p.m. fireworks in Lester Park. However, earlier that afternoon a four-year-old boy, was playing with fireworks near Lester Park, had set his family’s eight-ton haystack afire, after his father refused to give him money to buy more. Joseph Wheelwright’s hay was a total loss, but firemen saved the surrounding buildings.

 (-Originally published on-line and in print on July 3-4, 2015, in the Ogden Standard-Examiner, by Lynn Arave.)

-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

South Fork: A dam started but never built

                                             Tubing the South Fork of the Ogden River.

By Lynn Arave

IMAGINE the South Fork of the Ogden River without all or most of its campgrounds/picnic areas.

No Bott, South Fork, Perception Park, Meadows, Willow or perhaps even Magpie. No tubing or fishing most of the South Fork River either. It almost happened …

That’s because in November of 1912 full scale work began “on Big South Fork Dam,” according to the Standard-Examiner of Nov. 16 that year. (Some preliminary work had been done in 1911.)

After 40 years of dreaming about a dam on the South Fork, machinery was working there.

(Bishop W.S. Steward of Plain City had previously spent considerable money in the South Fork area trying to find a suitable dam location, but had given up. Other had tried too. Only a revival of support by former Ogden Mayor/then Standard-Examiner Publisher William Glasmann had pushed the idea forward again.)

Fifty men, armed with powder, steam and machinery, began to prepare the site for concrete work. This dam was envisioned of being able to double Ogden and area’s population and serve water needs for 100 years.

Where exactly was this dam started? At the confluence of Cobble Creek along the South Fork, or near today’s South Fork Campground.

The proposed earthen dam was estimated to cost $1 million (or $24 million in today’s value) and initially rise 120 feet – and eventually 200 feet in height. It would have had a storage capacity of 50,000 acre feet. (Pineview is 110,000 acre feet.)

 “The camp at the dam presents a busy scene and the place is a tented city,” The Standard reported.

The dam was eventually a joint project between Ogden City and the Ogden River Reservoir Company. Electric power generation was also planned.

However, the project was very controversial and a March 23, 1911 Standard article called a meeting on the South Fork dam the most important meeting ever held in Weber County.

(Remember: in this era, there was no Pineview or Causey Reservoir, only a small dam at the head of Wheeler Canyon in Ogden Canyon.)

“The people in Huntsville looked with surprise as the big gasoline engine hauling seven tons at a time through that town,” The Standard reported.

What happened to the dam?

It was eventually determined that the core wall was located on a fault plain. Also, while the south end wall hit bedrock, the rest did not. Blasting revealed an almost bottomless mud plain.

Plans were even revised to take the dam about 1.2 miles downstream to the west, but additional shortcomings on a suitable foundation and delays/changes/politics in construction doomed the  project.

“Reservoir site abandoned,” was a Nov. 22, 1912 headline in the Standard. That proved to be somewhat premature as some work on the possible dam was still being done in 1913, as well as the late winter of 1914. The project was on-off again many times.

As a sidelight, some of the first moving pictures ever seen by Ogden area residents came in the fall of 1913. “Moving pictures of fashion show and big dam” was an Oct. 22, 1913 headline in the Standard. Images of work on the South Fork Dam were shown at the Globe Theater, 2530 Washington Avenue. “The picture of the big dynamite explosion at the damsite is interesting,” the article stated.

As recent as May 18, 1923, the Standard reported government officials still mulling the South Fork of the Ogden River as a possible dam site. Interestingly, then, one site was called “Magpie Reservoir,” with potential for a 200-foot high dam (and likely the location of today’s Magpie Campground).

By 1926, Echo Reservoir in Weber Canyon was started and then the Great Depression struck in 1929.

By the 1930s, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation controlled all dam construction and it started Pineview Reservoir in 1934 in Ogden Valley itself.

In 1966, Causey Reservoir was completed. It is on the South Fork of the Ogden River (and also included some of Skull Crack Canyon, another potential dam site explored in the 1920s).

Still, you’ve got to wonder if the South Fork Dam had been built in the 1910s, where would today’s South Fork campgrounds be? What about Highway 39’s route? Would Pineview and Causey reservoirs still have been built the same, or at all?

Additional sources: “Public Documents in Utah,” volume 1, page 68; and “The Irrigation Age,” volumes 20-21.

(-Originally published by Lynn Arave in the Ogden Standard Examiner on June 27, 2014.)

-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