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Show Special Edition Page 7 Town History With A Silver Lining Observation and conversation during this 8th Annual Arts Festival will make it impossible to escape the atmosphere of prosperity which presently permeates Park City - despite Mother Nature's parsimony last winter. Building is booming, new plans are blossoming and it appears that our town is ready to take its place among the country's premier recreation areas. The prosperity is nice but not novel. Park City has known heydays before, wild and flamboyant ones. It has also experienced black days which, in other places, produced ghost towns with lively pasts and no futures. Park City is nothing if not resilient. For more than a hundred years it has alternately ridden the heady tide of fame and fortune and suffered through economic depression and natural calamities. The city's roots go deep into the surrounding mountains which made it the nation's biggest silver mining camp in days gone by. It was silver that lured Col. Connor's prospector-soldiers into the area when they weren't keeping an eye on the Indians and Mormons in the early 1860's. In 1868 three of these soldiers inspected a ridge above Parley's Park, chipped away at an outcropping of metal-bearing quartz and found silver. Whether this was the first Park City strike is disputed. What is not disputed is that the ensuing years produced a silver bonanza that was, and is, mind-boggling. The myriad of tunnels which penetrate our mountains eventually surrendered more than $400,000,000 in silver and fostered twenty-three millionaires. By Steve Dering The Park City Mining District's first claim, the Young American Lode, was filed on December 23, 1868 but it was the Ontario strike in 1872 that really started the silver wheel rolling. Purchased for $27,000 by a group that included George Hearst, the. Ontario Mine yielded $50,000,000 in deposits. It was in the bowels of the Ontario that the Hearst empire, including the famous newspaper chain, was born. As the Ontario proved its worth, numerous new claims, such as the Walker and Buckeye, the Woodside, the Tenderfoot and the Northland, began to dot the mining map. Concurrently, shanties and tents dotted the land below . As the mines continued to give and the shanties and tents gave way to log cabins and more substantial board houses, on July 4, 1872, a makeshift flag of flannel and silk was hoisted to declare the existence of Park City, Utah. That same year, a large number of big ore discoveries were made, further accelerating the town's growth. But the growth was not always harmonious. The mines attracted a volatile mix of nationalties - Irish, Cornish, English, Scotch, Chinese and Scandanavians - which made paydays at the more than two dozen saloons a hazardous, and sometimes fatal, occasion. Boasting a population in excess of 5,000 in the early 1880's, Park City's commercial district began to emerge with the addition of telephone service, a new bank, stable, grocery store and general store. Hotels and rooming houses also mushroomed. The mines continued to flourish and on March 8, 1884, Park City was granted a charter of incorporation the gypsy's arm ... . restaurant Opening for Dinner every evening during Art Festival Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner 8:00-10:00 Weekdays, closed after Lunch at 4:00 despite a history of resistance from the predominately Mormon Utah territorial government. Park City is not without its legendary rags-to-riches stories. Thomas Kearns reportedly came to town with a pack on his back and ten cents in his pocket. After working in the mines and studying the area, he became a partner in the Mayflower Mine, quickly rose to vice president of the Silver King Mining Company, and went on to fortune as a businessman and fame as a United States senator. One of Kearns' partners, Albion Emery, died in 1894, leaving a wealthy widow, Mrs. Susanna Emery-Holmes (after remarriage) who became Utah's famous Silver Queen. Opulent in her ways and far-ranging in her travels, the Silver Queen made the local silver boom known throughout the world. The wild times were tamed and the "indiscriminate shootings" were history when the Gay Nineties arrived, finding Park City an established and "respectable" town. Both the people and building populations were expanding rapidly when Utah Continued on Page 10 lf anoN (zoo) fJlucSteeewfrp COU&TfiBUE Ve R34Kfte AT ALL Camping Equipment TENTS, SLEEPING BAGS, BACKPACKS SALE STARTS Aug. 13th NOW OPEN DAILY 10 to 6 Resort Center |