Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, was the first constellation in focus.  Then there were Sirius, Ursa Minor and the North Star, and a few planets I couldn’t identify.  Blinking earth-orbiting satellites zoomed across the celestial sphere.  As the minutes passed, the visible star field multiplied until the sky was filled with points of light.

La Luna (photo by Scott Crosby, Salt Lake Astronomical Society)

The following is a blog-friendly adaptation of my piece that appeared in the November 5, 2009 edition of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

“You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light,” wrote naturalist Edward Abbey on the folly of using a flashlight while exploring the wilderness at night.  It’s one of my favorite outdoor quotes.  Unfortunately, the concept’s profundity sometimes outweighs its practicality.  Take, for instance, my bumbling pre-dawn trek at Timpie Point last weekend.

I could chalk it up to the darkness or the abnormal terrain or the fact that I didn’t bother looking for a trail up to the large limestone outcropping.  Yes, I should have brought a light– or at least waited until my eyes adjusted.  Then I might have noticed that huge mud puddle just outside my car door.  I also might have caught on sooner that those two out-of-place looking boulders I was heading over to check out were really two nervous cows.

But there I was—my ankle twisted, my ears frozen, and my agitated bovine companions looking on—under an extraordinarily clear sky.  “Well, whaddya know,” I told told myself, “those Internet sky charts were right.”  Now to find a rock flat enough to lie on.

I’ve been thinking a lot about space lately.  It started with a visit to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. last summer.  I love aviation history, but whenever I visit that museum I tend to spend most of my time in the space wings.  Nothing’s quite as exciting as seeing Buzz Aldrin’s space suit or studying the exterior of the actual Apollo 11 Command Module.  And my inner nerd doesn’t miss a chance to gawk at the original Star Trek production model of the USS Enterprise.

I tend to look up at the night sky with a little more contemplation after visiting that museum.  The fascination sparked by last summer’s trip has yet to wear off.  Perhaps it’s sheer curiosity about what’s beyond our world or the mysterious appeal of that cold, dark void.  Somehow in its mind-blowing infinity, the view of space from Earth always puts things into perspective.  Nothing’s quite as peaceful as looking up at the stars for a good, long time.

USS Enterprise original production model at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (photo by Clint Thomsen)

“You’re a little late for stargazing season,” local pros told me a few days prior when I contacted them to ask for tips.  An entire astronomical viewing community is centered on the Stansbury Park Observatory Complex (affectionately referred to as “SPOC”) where scores of pros and amateurs spend the warmer months examining the heavens through a collection of high powered telescopes.

My sons and I attended the last star party of the season there in October.  The boys thrilled at the opportunity to view nebulae and planets through the telescopes.  Equally captivating to me was watching the hushed crowd of stargazers politely line up to peek into deep space.

The area surrounding the complex is intentionally kept as dark as possible.  “Things that are interesting in the sky are very faint,” Salt Lake Astronomical Society (SLAS) member Scott Crosby told me.  “In order to see any detail [in an astronomical object], you have to intensify it using a telescope.  But the problem is when you do that, you also intensify sky glow.”

“Sky glow” is a type of light pollution.  Usually seen as a dome of light over population centers, it’s the brightening of the sky caused by excess artificial lighting.  Crosby chairs SLAS’s Dark Site Committee, a group that seeks out locations with low light pollution for optimal astronomical viewing.

The term “dark site” is more of a description than an official designation, though the International Dark Sky Association has established several International Dark Sky Parks throughout the world.  The first place to receive the designation was Utah’s Natural Bridges National Monument in the Four Corners area.  Light pollution prevents most places in our part of the state from competing for the label, but Crosby said there are several decent dark sky locations in Tooele County.  They include the mountain ranges and spots along the Pony Express Trail and in the Great Salt Lake Desert.

When online clear sky charts predicted excellent viewing conditions on Halloween Night, I couldn’t miss the opportunity for stargazing.  Since five kids plus five costumes plus five plastic pumpkins full of candy made for a rather exhausting Halloween night, early the next morning was the best I could do.

The goal was to isolate myself from Tooele Valley’s sky glow behind the Stansbury Mountains, so I drove to Big Springs at the north end of Skull Valley during what the kids call “early dark time.”  Eager to test out the night vision maximization tips I had read, I parked next to the spring and immediately started hiking, sans flashlight, toward the large rock outcroppings at Timpie Point.

Clear sky chart for the Stansbury Park Observatory Complex (SPOC) (screen cap from cleardarksky.com)

Dark vision adaptation involves a complex anatomical process wherein the rod and cone cells in the retina become more and more light sensitive.  It takes between 20 and 30 minutes for the eyes to completely adapt to dark surroundings.  With practice, dark acuity can become quite developed.

In hindsight, I would have been wise to stay by my car until my vision had fully adapted.  Instead, I adapted while boulder hopping (I’ve always been a multitasker).  I didn’t see the cows for what they were until I was almost face-to-face with them.  If I wasn’t fully awake before, I was now, and I perched on a cold slab nearby.

Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, was the first constellation in focus.  Then there were Sirius, Ursa Minor and the North Star, and a few planets I couldn’t identify.  Blinking earth-orbiting satellites zoomed across the celestial sphere.  As the minutes passed, the visible star field multiplied until the sky was filled with points of light.

I watched the sky until the sunrise upstaged the stars and cast a soft glow across the Great Salt Lake.  I hiked around for a while before driving back home, my space fix satisfied.  Satisfied enough to stop collecting Cheez-It proofs of purchase for that free Captain Kirk t-shirt?  I’m not making any promises.

Facebook:  Where everybody knows your name

I’m very tempted to break my personal policy of not posting direct, recognizable pictures of the babies.  Why?  Because I took a priceless photo of Miss Ella Saturday night.  She went as Mickey Mouse for Halloween.  No, not Minnie.  Miss Ella has a love/hate relationship with Minne.  She wishes she were Minnie; she’ll wear Minnie outfits.  But she sees Minnie as the one thing coming between her and her man, Mickey.  If Mickey Mouse had a lunatic stalker, it would be 2 year old Miss Ella.

Miss Ella and her man (February 2009)

So Miss Ella was Mickey Mouse for Halloween.  This was the first year she’s really caught the gist of trick-or-treating, and she happily walked for hours Saturday night collecting bucketfuls of the only thing she may like as much as Mickey: candy.  In fact, if memory serves, “cany” (candy) was one of Miss Ella’s first words– somewhere close behind “Da-y” (Daddy) and “mouse.”

After she had made her rounds, she sat on the couch and commenced the Great Candy Binge.  Before we could intervene, she had eaten a good fourth of her stash.  We found this little gem on the floor.

No time to unwrap. Must consume it. Now.

By the time her brothers finished their extended trick-or-treat session, Miss Ella was sacked out on the couch, laying upside down in a pile of candy wrappers with blank stare.  I had to take a picture, and maybe some day I’ll post it.

Here’s the amazing thing:  That night, Meadow covertly gathered up the rest of Miss Ella’s candy and hid it away.  Yet Miss Ella continues to bring us suckers, Tootsie Rolls, and mini Snickers bars with the same demand delivered in almost zombie fashion:

“Op’nut” (Open it).

We were certain that by now even her secret stashes must be depleted.  Nope.  There’s apparently still plenty of candy to go around.  My theory?  She’s raiding Coulter’s  candy bucket when he’s not looking.  It can’t be Bridger’s– his is already gone.  And Weston carefully inventories his candy.

So we’ll be confiscating Coulter’s candy today and rationing it to him personally.  It’s the only way to destroy this monster.

The Old River Bed haunted?  Not likely.  But what were those strange rumbling sounds that seemed to echo through the prehistoric corridor?  Why were the hairs on my neck suddenly rising?  And who was behind the wheel of that truck that was slowly rolling through the brush toward me?

The Pony Express Trail snakes up the eastern lip of the Old River Bed (photo by Clint Thomsen)

The following originally appeared in the October 29, 2009 edition of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

They said the Old River Bed was haunted.  They said that’s why stagecoach passengers were uneasy about stopping at the station there—especially overnight—and why Riverbed Station could never keep a manager for more than a few months at a time.  They were adamant.

I was skeptical.  Is the place mildly eerie?  Of course.  You’d be hard pressed to find a remote desert spot that isn’t.  But haunted?  No way.  “They” were delusional.  And I had driven 70 miles at dusk on the weekend before Halloween to prove it.  The mind has a tendency, when stifled by darkness, to tap imagination to fill the visual voids.  This must have been the case at the Old River Bed.  Yes, that was it.

Still, I couldn’t help but notice how unnervingly lonesome it was out there in the dark, with no cell phone reception, far from my car, at the bottom of a massive ancient river bed.  Haunted?  Not likely.  But what were those strange rumbling sounds that seemed to echo through the prehistoric corridor?  Why were the hairs on my neck suddenly rising?  And who was behind the wheel of that truck that was slowly rolling through the brush toward me?

Dropping abruptly below the desert plain eight miles west of Simpson Springs in southern Tooele County, the Old River Bed is a naturally vulnerable place.  It’s a naturally strange place, too: a clear-cut channel as broad as the Mississippi at its greatest width, in the middle of this dry no-man’s-land.  The ancient watercourse owes its existence to Lake Bonneville.

As Bonneville shrank, water in the Sevier Basin drained northward via a low channel into the Great Salt Lake Desert, carving a mile-wide, 100 foot deep gorge as it went.  This river flowed for roughly 3,000 years.  Evidence of early human activity has been discovered in its delta.

The Central Overland trail crossed the river bed in the 1850’s and served as a major transportation artery until 1869.  The famed but short-lived Pony Express used the road from 1860 to 1861.  Riverbed Station was almost certainly built in 1862—too late to serve the Pony Express.

Drivers and riders hated the Old River Bed because although it’s wide and deep, it’s completely hidden from view until you’re right on its lip.  Bandits or hostile Indians could easily ambush a rider as he popped into or out of the channel.

The constant fear of ambush aside, there was always the chance of flash flooding.  Major Howard Egan recorded one nail-biting event in his diary about a Pony Express rider who heard a heavy rushing sound upon entering the channel.  Realizing something was horribly wrong, the rider “put spurs to the pony” and narrowly escaped a fifteen foot wall of water that surged through the river bed and washed out the road.

This concrete post marks the old Riverbed stagecoach station site. Note that while the words "Pony Express" are etched into the concrete, Riverbed Station never served the Pony Express-- it wasn't built until 1962 (photo by Clint Thomsen).

One rightly questions the rationale of building a stagecoach station in the dead center of the Old River Bed.   Perhaps it eased the fear of ambush or made ground water more accessible.  The station is gone now; flash floods eventually washed its ruins away.  All that’s left are a concrete post marking the station site and a few scattered rocks that may have been part of a foundation.  A Civilian Conservation Corps monument stands nearby.

Station keepers could deal with the natural and human threats.  It was the paranormal that kept them awake at night.  They– the managers, stock tenders, the stage drivers and their passengers– swore the place was haunted, specifically by “desert fairies.”

Former station operators claimed the fairies were the ghosts of two young girls who fell from a wagon in the area and died.  No records of the deaths have ever been found.  There are no individual accounts, no well-documented haunting.  University of Utah professor David Jabusch spent the night there while researching the site in the early 1990’s.  Of the desert fairies he wrote, “During our overnight sojourn, while mapping the site, we were not visited.”

Yet the story still lives on in journals and lore.  And though I’m a skeptic, there’s something about being in the Old River Bed at night.  Is it haunted? It’s hard to say.  As I walked along the river bed I wondered about those deep rumbling sounds.  I was convincing myself they were thunder or aircraft from Dugway, when the pair of dim headlights on the road that I had been carefully watching paused beside my car.

Then they turned and started out toward me.  I knew they weren’t there for the monument.  The old Chevy passed it and pulled off the double track toward me.  A chill went up my spine.  What could I do but introduce myself?

Two men sat in the truck.  They reminded me of a hermit version of illusionist duo Penn and Teller.  The thin driver remained silent, letting his larger passenger do the talking.  “We saw your car, then we saw your light out there,” said Penn.  “We wondered what was up.”

It turns out the two live in the area—Penn in an old trailer and Teller on a nearby ranch.  Sometimes they drive around helping people change flat tires (the Old River Bed is a notorious flat-maker).  “You’re tires looked fine,” Penn assured me.

“I’m Clint, and I’m hunting ghosts,” I declared, a bit surprised at my own whimsy.  “Do you believe this place is haunted?”

“Of course it’s haunted,” Penn said.  “When I first moved out here I was scared to death.  I thought maybe monsters would come up on me at night and tear me apart.”

We chatted for a while before they turned and left me alone again in the Old River Bed.  I was relieved that my new friends weren’t madmen, but my enthusiasm about this place had given way to discordant unease.   I glanced once more down the blackened corridor, just to give the desert fairies one last chance to show.  Then I was more than ready to leave.

They said the Old River Bed is haunted.  Who am I to argue?

An orb weaver spider basks on the southern shores of the Great Salt Lake (photo by Clint Thomsen)

HALLOWEENTIME RECAP
Have you missed any of this year’s Halloweentime features?  Here’s a recap:

‘There’s a body in there’
Saltair’s spooky side shines in “Carnival of Souls”
Terror in the Trees: A yarn from one of my favorite writers

FROM THE ARCHIVES
Were there more weeks in October, I would have reposted these:

My First Ghost Town Trip, Part II: Cortez, NV
Spring Canyon Spooks: In search of the White Lady

OTHER NEAT STUFF
Other good stuff to gear you up for Halloween:

How Halloween Works (HowStuffWorks.com)
How Ghosts Work (HowStuffWorks.com)
How to Scare People and Win Friends (Backpacker Magazine)
Halloween Horrors: 5 Spooky TV Shows You Can Watch Online (Wired.com)

TOMORROW…Ghost Story of the Year!

The following article was inspired by my earlier post on this topic, and originally appeared in the October 22, 2009 edition of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

My Coulter in his element - the Uinta Mountains

When my 4 year old son, Coulter, says he’ll be right back, it usually means two things: first, he’s decided to act on an impulse that’s been brewing in his head for hours.  Second, he’ll be anything but “right back.”

As impractical and futile as this ploy may be, I give him an ‘A+’ for the effort.  One of his more amusing uses of it occurred when he was 2 years old.  Having set his mind on walking to the Oquirrh Mountains from our house, he donned his yellow SpongeBob sandals and marched toward the front door.  ”I goin’ for a walk in my mountains,” he announced.

Never mind that even the most direct route would be at least three miles and would have required the toddler to navigate a neighborhood and cross a major highway.  But logistics weren’t important.  “Gotta get in those mountains,” he affirmed.  And that’s all that mattered.

I didn’t turn him around immediately.  Instead I let him walk to the end of the driveway and gaze up at the range’s western slopes.  “How about we both go?” I asked.  It was a compromise he could live with.

Coulter’s affinity for mountains isn’t unique in our family.  His two older brothers live to explore canyon trails and claw their way up rock faces.  They love the sights, the smells, the spirit of adventure.  But Coulter’s connection with the mountains is more intrinsic.  Bridger and Weston love the mountains—Coulter needs them.

Last spring, my wife, Meadow, and I were able to understand Coulter’s passion for mountains in greater context.  He was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a disorder on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum.

Asperger’s syndrome (AS) is characterized by marked deficiency in social skills and significant difficulty with both verbal and non-verbal communication.  Other symptoms include enhanced auditory and visual perception, atypical use of language, and intense specialized interests.  All of these can range from mild to severe, depending on the person.

Persons with AS often compare living with the disorder to feeling like a perpetual fish out of water—especially when it comes to social situations, where things like speech inflection and body language are lost in translation.  The resulting confusion and anxiety, combined with overstimulation, underpin much of the eccentric behavior.  Coulter’s heart races when he gets overwhelmed.  Or as he says, his heart “wiggles.”

Asperger’s syndrome distinguishes itself from other autistic disorders in that cognitive development is fairly normal.  Children with AS often command a rich vocabulary at very early ages—even if social interactions hinder its use.  This explains why Coulter sang the Happy Birthday song to himself, word for word, a week before his first birthday, yet can’t give a straight answer when somebody asks how old he is today.

We knew Coulter was a unique child when, by age 3, he had memorized verbatim the entire scripts of every episode of the first three seasons of SpongeBob SquarePants.  SpongeBob was just one of a short list of eclectic “preoccupations,” which also includes anything related to pirates, Star Wars, or musical structure.  The other day he asked Meadow, “Why does music live in my head?”

"Gotta get in those mountains."

The primary challenge for Meadow and me is helping others to understand Coulter’s disorder.  After all, he seems like every other kid—until you interact with him.  Then it becomes a mixed bag of confusion, amazement, mild animosity, and sometimes even hilarity.

Woven throughout Coulter’s neurobiological tapestry is his fascination with being in the mountains.  It’s amazing how even a short canyon drive can visibly calm his nerves.  He doesn’t need to hike or boulder-hop.   He just needs to be there.

Coulter’s connection to the mountains makes perfect sense to Salt Lake City based blogger Forrest Gladding, who also has Asperger’s.  “He feels he can be himself,” he said.  “There is a sense of calm being outdoors.”  Forrest, 35, discovered he had the disorder only 5 years ago and is coming to terms with the diagnosis.  We became acquainted after I wrote about Coulter’s AS on my blog.  His perspective on Coulter has become invaluable.

“The stimulation [of being in the mountains] makes more sense than being in a classroom or in a grocery store,” he said.  “Being outside is pretty predictable for our brains.  We know what we are in for most of the time.”

Forrest leads an essentially normal life as a husband and father.  He considers himself a success story, crediting his mother with building a foundation of love and guidance.  The outdoors expanded that foundation and provided a balance for him.

A native of Baltimore, Forrest moved to Utah as a teenager and was instantly hooked on our wilds.   He became obsessed with snowboarding and mountain biking, and now considers the activities elemental needs.  He’s drawn to them because they are solitary sports—sports that don’t necessitate social interaction.  He admits that motor skill deficiency—an almost universal symptom of AS—makes learning snowboarding tricks more difficult.  They take longer for him to master than they would for somebody without AS.  But master them he does.

“We just don’t give up as easily,” he said.

Coulter showed similar resolve on a recent hike in the Vernon Hills.  While his older brothers scampered toward a 6,300 foot summit with a natural grace, Coulter labored along the trail.  It was his first unassisted hike, and he was exhausted by the time we reached the top.  But couldn’t have been prouder—or more at peace.

Forrest expresses his feelings for the outdoors in the photos he takes and posts on his blog.   Coulter conveys his with a simple smile.  He hasn’t latched onto any specific facet of mountaineering, but when and if he does I’ll be there to nurture it.  For now, he’s content just to be there, finally comfortable in his own skin and free from the clutter of everyday life.  No confusion, no anxiety, no heart wiggles.

While Coulter’s preoccupation with mountains may be more clinical than mine, it’s one I’m glad we share.

———-

RELATED LINKS
Forrest Gladding

I feel bad about breaking this semi-regular posting streak I’ve had going this month, but the last few days in the Mariner household have been nuts.  This is just a quick note to 1) keep regular here and 2) let you know what to expect the rest of the week.

Wednesday: After writing about Coulter’s Asperger’s syndrome recently, I decided to make it a subject for my column last week.  I’ll post that article here tomorrow.  If’s a more in-depth look at AS and Coulter’s need for mountains.

Thursday:  A Halloween round-up. There are a few stories I never got a chance to tell or link to.  Thursday’s post will gear you up for the weekend.

Friday: This year’s big Halloween story.  This one’s about a trip I took last weekend to the Pony Express Trail and a spooky little place called “Old River Bed.”  It should be a good one!

As we got into the car, I glanced back at the diner. Kath was sitting at the table with the guys in robes. Was it my imagination, or were they talking to her? And was she nodding? And were all of them smiling, looking out the window, straight into our car, as we pulled into the night? Would you believe me if I said it was the first time in my life people smiling made my fingertips icy?

Today’s Halloweentime offering comes from one of my favorite writers, Steve Friedman.  This piece, billed as “the scariest ghost story ever told,” appeared in the October, 2005 edition of Backpacker Magazine.  Awesomely, they’ve still got it up at the website.  You can read it there, but I’d recommend printing this baby out and reading it somewhere dimly lit and slightly chilly.

The Scariest Ghost Story Ever Told: TERROR IN THE TREES by Steve Friedman

Some dreams die, but they need not be forgotten.

The Skidmore-Jorgensen homestead as it looked in the early 1900's. This photo must have been taken from the vantage point of the barn loft. A photo of the same house today led part 1 of this story.(photo courtesy USDA Forest Service)

The following is part 2 of a more blog-friendly adaptation of a piece I wrote for the Tooele Transcript Bulletin last week on the ghost town of Benmore, UT.  It originally appeared in the October 13, 2009 edition.  Click here to read part 1.

Israel Bennion’s dream was materializing, but it wouldn’t last long.

Annual precipitation proved too low for successful dry-farming in Benmore.  Homesteaders got discouraged and began to sell out.  To make matters worse, the wheat market collapsed, rendering an already impractical operation impossible.  By 1918, most of Benmore’s residents had moved away or were commuting to city or mining jobs.

The Benmore Ward was dissolved in 1920.  As the ward went, predicted Bennion at the outset, so would the town.  Most homesteaders eventually sold their claims to the Agricultural Resettlement Administration in what Thompson describes as a 1900s-style bailout.

Only the Bennion ranch remained.  Israel Bennion’s great granddaughter, Elizibeth Mitchell, still operates it today with her husband, Alan.  The rest of the land that purchased by the Federal government eventually came under the jurisdiction of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest.

Some dreams die, but they need not be forgotten.

Compared to many other Utah ghost towns, Benmore is well documented.  Most of the information on the town was gleaned from land and church records.  Israel Bennion’s journal was preserved and oral histories fill in some of the gaps.

Beginning in 1999, Passport in Time (PIT), a Forest Service volunteer program, began recording and mapping the site and documenting the artifacts still there.

“Sometimes the only way we can learn about some of these families is to looking at the objects that are left out here,” explained Thompson.  “So these little objects are connections back to real people’s lives.”

Across the road from the schoolhouse is a historical jackpot: the partially intact remains of the Skidmore-Jorgensen homestead.   The house was a large one for its day, once boasting a second story and a large kitchen addition.  The skeletons of a fruit tree orchard lay amongst the brush along the approach to the old house.  The entrance to the yard was marked by the massive trunks of fallen poplar and Box Elder trees.

This photo shows the surface of the walls inside the Skidmore-Jorgensen house. These thin planks would have been covered with plaster. (photo by Clint Thomsen)

The house’s upper story and back kitchen have collapsed, but the main four walls still stand.  Its floor is littered with broken planks.  Non-native vines snake up the walls and through their timbers.  The scene is iconic.

Nearby are the remains of a workshop, a barn, a water cistern, and an earthen dam.  According to Thompson, some living Skidmore descendents grew up in this house.  Some of them even remember their mother dying during childbirth in the house.

“There is a very personal connection with this house.” She said.

The Benmore sites have fallen victim to vandalism and looting over the years, despite the best efforts of the Forest Service and the Mitchell Family.   Recently, a log barrier was erected across the drive to the Skidmore-Jorgensen house, but that hasn’t stopped shooters from targeting the remains.  Nor have the laws against stealing artifacts stopped scavengers from digging on the sites.

Despite the ongoing problem with vandalism, the Forest Service hopes Benmore’s remains will serve as self-discovery place where people can come and live the history in a very personal way.

Thompson recalled how during a PIT project, one of the volunteers found a little roller skate and thought of the cobbly roads.

“She started to cry.”  Thompson recalled.  “She was suddenly struck with this impression of a little boy or girl wanting to own a pair of roller skates and not having a place to use them.  She could visualize this little kid out there still trying.  That roller skate in a museum is just a roller skate.  Out here it’s in context, a testament to the desires of these families out here to make good lives out here.”

The Benmore experiment may have ultimately failed, but its crumbling foundations continue to tell a unique story of grit and resolve.

———-

Special thanks to Elizabeth Mitchell and USDA Forest Service archaeologists Charmaine Thompson and Jennifer Beard.

Forest Service preserves remains of short-lived town in southern Rush Valley as ‘outside museum’

The semi-intact remains of the Skidmore-Jorgensen home in the ghost town of Benmore, UT (photo by Clint Thomsen)

The following is part 1 of a more blog-friendly adaptation of a piece I wrote for the Tooele Transcript Bulletin last week on the ghost town of Benmore, UT.  It originally appeared in the October 13, 2009 edition.

“Welcome to downtown Benmore!” exclaimed USDA Forest Service archaeologist Charmaine Thompson after parking her truck along a random-looking stretch of Forest Service Road 005, six miles south of Vernon.  An autumn breeze swept across a vast, seemingly empty field of brush.  Thompson smiled as she pointed to an area on the north side of the dirt road.  “Right over here is the old schoolhouse.”

The building’s foundation became visible after a few steps into the sagebrush.  Its footing was the size of a large shed.  Scattered about were fragments of ceramic and rusted metal—some unidentifiable, some clearly embossed with the decorative markings of early twentieth century school desks.

The structure’s brick edifice was dismantled in 1932—a mere 18 years after it was constructed.  Its materials were salvaged and reused somewhere else in the valley, leaving only the floor and strewn metal as a testament to the determined people who once called this place home.

It’s difficult to imagine now, but this schoolhouse was once the centerpiece of an organized and bustling community.  Tucked at the southern end of Rush Valley in the shadow of the jagged Sheeprock Mountains, Benmore was an experiment in human tenacity.

Most of the town’s land is now managed by the Forest Service.  Thompson is part of a team dedicated to preserving its remains as an outside museum.

“They came here to establish life,” Thompson said.  “But if I’m responsible for these remains, something went horribly wrong, because they’ve reverted to public ownership.”

“But at the same time,” she qualified, “Since this is now public land, their stories become part of all of our history, and we can come and visit them.”

Benmore was the brainchild of Israel Bennion, whose family had settled the area in the 1860’s.  Originally from Taylorsville, Utah, the Bennions were drawn to this clime by the prospect of free land under the Homestead Act, and the opportunity to escape what they considered an overcrowded Salt Lake Valley.  Israel’s father, Samuel Bennion established a successful livestock ranch in 1863.  He befriended the Goshute Indians, some of whom would winter next to his ranch.

A metal relic of an old school desk lies near the foundation of the old Benmore School (photo by Clint Thomsen)

To say that making a life in this harsh environment was tough is an understatement.  Rainfall averaged about ten inches per year.  Extreme weather only allowed a brief 130 day growing season.  Water from the narrow Sheeprocks was scant, and was eventually threatened by overgrazing.

Yet the Bennions persisted, driven by dreams of a thriving, close-knit community.  In 1905, Israel Bennion successfully lobbied to include the Sheeprock Range in the National Forest system.  Later he convinced the county to adopt and maintain the road that would become the town’s main street.  Bennion was serious enough about Benmore’s success that he would often give land, or sell it at reduced cost, to impoverished families.

“I want this waste place of Zion redeemed,” He wrote in his journal.  “I want the poor Saints provided with homes.  I want living here made tolerable now.” (emphasis Bennion’s)

The Bennions’ community-building effort was joined in 1905 by Charles H. Skidmore and family, who purchased 10,000 acres for a dry farming operation.  The town’s name was created by combining the two surnames.  The schoolhouse opened in 1914 and served 20 students from eight families.  The Benmore Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints became a ward the following year.  During its brief existence, its records boasted 187 members, 20 births, three marriages, and four deaths.  Benmore’s boon was hard work, resourcefulness, and a surge in wheat prices spurred by World War I.

———-

Click here to read part 2.