Not long ago, Rhea Cone, director of conservation at the Swaner Nature Preserve and EcoCenter, was visited by two men who had camped on the land in the early 1990s as participants in a Boy Scout Jamboree.

“They called it a dust bowl,” she said. “But I think that that dust bowl of the early ’90s … today would be too wet to camp in for a lot of the year.”

In the 32 years since the Swaner family set out to restore 190 acres of their ranchland near Kimball Junction to their natural state, a remarkable transformation has been taking place. Those 190 acres have become 1,200. Streams have returned to their original meandering channels. Willows sprout along their banks. Birdwatchers have spotted more than 170 species, from American kestrels to mountain bluebirds. Elk, mule deer, beavers, red foxes, bobcats, jackrabbits and numerous smaller mammals call the preserve home for at least part of the year. 

In May 1993, landscape architect Sumner Swaner unveiled a plan to create a nature preserve in honor of his late father, Leland S. Swaner. They would combine 190 acres of his family’s ranchland south of Interstate 80 with about 400 acres contributed by other developers, including Mike Milner of Ranch Place Associates, Jim Lewis of Double M Investments (Mountain Meadows), and the Jack Jarman family (developers of the original K-Mart parcel at Kimball Junction). Those donations would help them meet the open-space requirements that Summit County had imposed on all developers of major projects in the Snyderville Basin.

It was a bold proposal. Summit County commissioners had to be persuaded that the taxpayers wouldn’t be responsible for maintaining the preserve. The Army Corps of Engineers had to approve any wetland mitigation. Eventually, Summit County agreed to a plan calling for the newly created Swaner Memorial Park Foundation to hold the title to the land and for Utah Open Lands to hold the protective conservation easements (which guaranteed that the land would never be developed). Groundbreaking for the new Leland S. Swaner Memorial Park took place on June 22, 1994.

The Swaner family expanded the boundaries of the park in 1998 by donating more than 300 acres on the north side of I-80. In 2003, the purchase of the Wallin Farm added another 107 acres east of SR 224. All told, it eventually involved about 30 individual parcels. The whole area is known today as the Swaner Nature Preserve. It covers about 1,200 acres: 350 acres north of I-80 and 850 acres south of I-80 and east of SR 224.

In 2010 the Swaner Preserve donated itself to Utah State University, providing expertise and stability to the organization and an open-air laboratory for USU students in a variety of fields.

At least 550 acres of the preserve were once high-quality wetlands, according to the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). That was before European settlers drained the “swamps,” turned streams into irrigation ditches, cut down trees, and introduced cattle and sheep. 

“Because the water table … had been drained, a lot of that historic vegetation died off,” noted Rhea Cone. “The willows couldn’t reach water. They got eaten by cows. They got trampled. … It truly was a dust bowl in many places.”

Reversing 150 years of abuse has meant an enormous effort involving consulting groups, government agencies, private organizations, preserve staff, numerous volunteers and many donors. And it’s still going on. 

According to Cone, the initial restoration work included filling in six miles of ditches, digging out over ten miles of historic stream channels, and creating some of the ponds on the preserve.

More recently, volunteers have installed almost 100 beaver dam “analogs” — manmade dams designed to mimic the work of beavers — to encourage the streams to spread out and replenish the wetlands. Meanwhile, other groups have been installing bird boxes, pulling invasive weeds, and planting dogwoods, cottonwoods, shrubs and native grasses.

Among the streams is Spring Creek, which flows from south to north through preserve and joins East Canyon Creek on the north side of I-80. Volunteers have planted thousands of willows along the banks of both creeks to stem erosion and provide shade for struggling fish populations.

“Historically, East Canyon Creek especially was a blue-ribbon fishery — which is a designation by the state — and had big Bonneville cutthroat trout,” Cone said. However, by the year 2000 it had been included on the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of impaired water bodies.

Although their efforts have improved the quality of water leaving the preserve, the water table continues to feel the impact of explosive growth in the surrounding area, which has added unwanted nutrients, warmed the water, disrupted fish movements, and diverted creek flows for recreation.

Impressive and historic though it is, the Swaner Preserve is a small piece of a very large and ongoing puzzle.

Keep an eye out for Park City Museum events at parkcityhistory.org. And be sure to support us in a few weeks for Live PC Give PC!

The post Way We Were: Making room for Mother Nature appeared first on Park Record.

Editor’s note: This article is continued from last week.

“In all the years I worked at the Claimjumper, I always said I was going to write a book [about the shenanigans at the Down Under private club in the late 1970s and early 1980s], but I’d have to leave town,” former bartender Debbie Hansen said recently.

Well, Debbie moved to Reno 17 years ago and we’re still waiting for that book. In the meantime, we’ll have to read between the lines.

Debbie described Lloyd Stevens, the Claimjumper’s low-key co-owner, as the Down Under’s grand marshal.

“He was such a gem,” she said. “And he was so quiet. If there was ever a fight and he was sitting in there, he always knew we could take care of it. He would just sit at the table.”

A member of the local theatre group Park City Players, Lloyd once played Oscar Madison opposite Jere Calmes’ Felix Unger in a production of “The Odd Couple.”

Yes, Jere Calmes was also a regular at the Down Under, along with fellow thespians Val Thurnell and Richard Scott. Calmes was known to team up with Father Pat Carley of St. Mary’s Catholic Church after the regular musicians had packed up. “They would sing Irish songs till we threw them out,” said Debbie’s former coworker, Karen Warren.

There was Darryl, the flamboyant Alamo Saloon bartender who wore twin bandoliers loaded with mini-bottles instead of bullets, often sitting next to Dick Wilde, the president of Silver King Bank.

There were the politicians, including Mayor Hal Taylor and a revolving cast of Park City Council members.

“Council members and city staff and reporters and the ski resort owner would take equal turns buying a round,” Park Record columnist Teri Orr reminisced in 2013. “There, the real issues of the day were slugged out and shouted down and building plans and water systems were sketched out with equal style on the back of cocktail napkins.”

Often among the city staff was Tom Clyde, then the city attorney, now a gentleman farmer and Park Record columnist. Tom was even interviewed for his city attorney job in the Down Under, as it was more inviting than what City Hall looked like at the time. The reporters included Blair Feulner, the baritone voice of KPCW, who would sniff for scraps he could turn into scoops, and The Park Record’s affable David “Flash” Fleisher, who would get up and shake it — a tambourine, that is — to the melodies of Kat and Mickey James.

There was airline pilot Bob Powers, who would entertain people on the piano when Kat and Mickey were off duty.

Then there were the celebrities, including actors Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Kate Jackson (who owned a home in Park Meadows), and Dan Haggerty (who played the bearded Grizzly Adams in the locally produced TV series).

“Dan Haggerty was in there almost every night,” Debbie said. “[One night] he was drinking flaming Southern Comfort shots … at the end of the bar, and he caught his beard on fire.”

Musicians Kat and Mickey James were often joined by well-intentioned patrons. Then came that magical August night in 1980 when they shared the limelight with outlaw country singer/songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, who had played at an outdoor concert at ParkWest the night before.

“I didn’t know who he was,” Karen confessed. “He just came in and sat at the bar at, like, four o’clock on a Sunday. There was nobody there. And I served him. And I could tell he … didn’t want to be bothered, and so I just left him alone. And around six o’clock Mickey James came in and started jumping up and down, going, ‘It’s Jerry Jeff! It’s Jerry Jeff!’

“And so the next thing I knew Jerry Jeff Walker was up there playing with Kat and Mickey. And the word went out on the radio … and we must have had, I don’t know, three or four hundred people, at least. And I called in everybody I could to help. And Kat and Mickey would be behind the bar helping me bartend. And girls from other bars came in who were cocktail waitresses, and I made them work.

“When it was time for last call, nobody would leave. And the cops came in about 2:30 and … I said, ‘We can’t get people out!’ And they said, ‘OK, we’ll give you till 4.’ And he just kept playing and singing till four o’clock. … That was just the most amazing night.”

Debbie said the golden age of the Down Under lasted until about 1983, when locals started drifting away to other bars such as Sneakers at the Park City Racquet Club (now the MARC). However, the club survived until 2006, providing a platform for many other musicians.

Sadly, several participants in this years-long group therapy session left us recently, including Kat James in 2022, Lloyd Stevens last November, and Jere Calmes this past St. Patrick’s Day.

“[Jere] was such a prankster,” Karen said. “He always said, ‘Nobody cares. Nobody cares.’ That was his saying. And so, at his funeral, everybody said, ‘Nobody cares.'”

Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

David Hampshire is a Park City Museum researcher.

The post Way We Were: Last call at Down Under appeared first on Park Record.

In an essay called “The Hidden Life of a Miner,” Park City historian Gary Kimball recalled overhearing a couple standing outside his home on Woodside Avenue. The woman was studying a huge steel tower looming in Kimball’s yard, a rusting remnant of the Silver King Mine’s 1901 aerial tramway.

“Oh that,” her companion said. “That’s the remains of an old ski lift that was abandoned a few years ago. Those towers were just too high. Can you imagine what would happen to a skier if he fell from that thing? I bet the liability insurance was outrageous.”

The man was wrong, though the museum still gets questions about its prior use. But there was a time, 65 years ago, when Park City’s old ore tramways actually were being considered as devices for carrying skiers.

It was 1958. Salt Lake City planning consultant M. Walker Wallace had been hired by United Park City Mines to study the feasibility of developing a resort in the mountains west of Park City. And mine management had asked him to look at the possibility of involving the old tramways.

“I kind of — like I just did — rolled my eyes in my head [and said], ‘I don’t think that’s possible, but I will find out,'” Wallace told me in a 2013 interview.

A man of many talents, Wallace had grown up ski racing in the Wasatch Mountains. He had dreams of competing in the 1948 Olympic Winter Games until they were shattered by a broken leg suffered in the Olympic trials.

Wallace went on to earn a master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But when it came to planning ski lifts, he looked up an old acquaintance, Gordon Bannerman.

As recounted in a 2021 article in Smithsonian magazine, Bannerman, then an assistant tramway engineer for the American Steel & Wire Co., had collaborated with two Union Pacific Railroad engineers to design the world’s first ski chairlifts, which were unveiled in Sun Valley, Idaho, in December 1936. He went on to help introduce chairlifts to other resorts, including Aspen, Colorado, in 1946 and Mad River Glen in Vermont in 1947.

“Anyway, I was able to get in touch with him,” Wallace said. “He was retired. … I was able to finally get him here and we went up to Park City, and he did the same kind of double-take that I did. He looks at these tramways and he shakes his head, and he said, ‘Well, boy, that’s a stretch. But let’s take a look.'”

At that time the steel cables were still hanging from the towers of the Silver King tram.

“And [Bannerman] was afraid of heights,” Wallace said. “He didn’t want to go up on any of those tramway towers. I was [also], but I was younger, so I volunteered. He wanted to get the ‘rope’ size and the number of strands and so forth that were in those cables. So I went up there, hanging on for dear life, and measured the size of the cable.”

It turned out that the old cables were unsuitable for carrying skiers.

“The tensile strength was nowhere near as strong as they are now for chairlifts,” Wallace said. “I mean, they really stretch those babies [now].” And even if they had replaced the cables, he said, the towers “were not in the right relationship” to support a chairlift.

The new resort, Treasure Mountains, ultimately settled on a gondola as the main form of transportation up the mountain. However, in 1985 it opened a new chairlift, the Town Lift, that still whisks skiers and mountain bikers past the old towers of the Silver King tram. See the Way We Were article on that here: parkcityhistory.org/a-tramway-and-a-ski-lift/

This month marks the 60^th anniversary of the opening of Treasure Mountains, now Park City Mountain. Look for articles on that event spread over the next few editions of the Way We Were article series.

The Park City Museum has free admission on Saturday, Dec. 16, to allow locals and visitors to experience our world-class museum without a cost barrier! Free days are made possible by the Summit County Restaurant Tax Grant Program!

David Hampshire is a Park City Museum researcher.

The post Way We Were: Could the Silver King aerial tram carry skiers? appeared first on Park Record.

In June 1946, Park City restaurateur J.E. Jenkins, also known as photographer Pop Jenks, decided to treat his employees and their families to an outing at the beach. Yes, the beach. In those days if you wanted to play in the waves and dance to the music of a big band, you headed for Saltair on the south shore of Great Salt Lake. “The day started with all going in swimming, followed by a lunch,” the Park Record reported. “The evening was spent dancing to the music of Al Donahue’s orchestra.”

Today we turn up our noses, literally, at the thought of sharing the waves with brine flies. But, between 1870 and 1960, the resorts along the lake were the closest thing to Coney Island that Utahns had. Saltair was even advertised as the “Coney Island of the West.”

In their 1993 book “Saltair,” Nancy and John McCormick describe how the “strange salty sea” attracted early immigrants, journalists and other professional travelers. “After a swim during his visit in 1863 journalist Fitz Hugh Ludlow whimsically concluded that he felt the ‘pleasant sense of being a pickle, such as a self-conscious gherkin might experience,’” the McCormicks wrote.

Encouraged by the construction of local railroad lines, the first two resorts – Lake Side and Lake Point – opened in 1870. From Lake Side you could ride around the lake on a three-deck stern-wheel steamboat. Other resorts followed.

Then, in 1893, came Saltair, the most elaborate and expensive of them all. Financed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and designed by renowned local architect Richard Kletting, “Saltair was an architectural wonder,” the McCormicks said. The central pavilion measured about 250 by 140 feet and reached more than 100 feet high. It was surrounded by mosque-like towers topped with onion-shaped domes.

Initially, Saltair’s big attractions were swimming and dancing. By 1914 the resort also boasted a roller coaster. In 1919, Saltair attracted 450,000 people.

In April 1925, Saltair was gutted by fire. However, new owners moved quickly to rebuild, borrowing from Kletting’s original Moorish design. Saltair II opened in May 1926. It was this rendition that Pop Jenks and his employees visited 20 years later.

Facing stiff competition from Lagoon and other attractions, Saltair’s owner donated the resort to the state in 1959. Saltair was closed, the buildings deteriorated, and fire destroyed what was left in November 1970.

In the early 1980s, Utah businessmen bought an abandoned airplane hangar, moved it to Saltair and added a façade recalling the original design. However, Saltair III has never matched the appeal of its predecessors.

The Park City Museum just wrapped up an exhibit celebrating the Saltair of the East, better known as Coney Island, Brooklyn.

The post Way We Were: The Coney Island of the West appeared first on Park Record.