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Show Wasatch County Living WASATCH COUNTY TUESDAY ze If These Walls Could ~Tt Talk It’s not a home until someone lives there By JEAN CROASMUN split up the property- -Will Bonner got the farm, George Bonner got the store. Today,— LIFESTYLES EDITOR omewhere in the shadows of the hundred and fifty, or so it seems, new subdivisions under development at any given time in Wasatch County, sits the reminders of the first building boom to hit the Heber Valley.. Brick, Fs Lois Bonner : lives in Will Bonner’s -house. She and her husre. band. Floyd, é rock and woed structures peering out from behind the huge pine trees, usually the largest trees on the block, that cover the front lawns. Barns, or what’s left of © -one of Will’s § the barns, out back. Structures that have, luckily; lasted the tests of time, weathsons, moved er and wear. Structures that have their own stories to tell. in around Some of the structures are businesses now, their former owners moving on, 1937, added fag leaving the financial and time-consuming commitments necessary to maintain a hundred-year-old house in the hands of those more capable or committed. proudly as house and home. : . = : a bathroom fe Some of them are in disrepair, neglected or sitting in probate while relatives decide _ who gets, or gets stuck with the old homestead. And some of them still stand or | This is the story of four such houses and the families who made them homes-the © stories these houses might tell, . MJ STE DLA) ; Bd COURIER if they could talk. There’s an area in Midway fondly referred to as “Bonner’s Corners,” where to family wasn’t al that peculiar, in fact it was quite common, there was still something unique about the Boangt houses on Main Street. The first of the Bonner houses, Books and Beyond’s present-day retail store, was completed in 1876, when-the sons of George and Margaret Bonner commissioned English architect, John Watkins, to design and build the house for their parents. Watkins had recently finished his dream home just a block away, and built the Gothic Revival-style home to the Bonners’ specifications. converted ‘A year later, sons Will Bonner and George Bonner were married in their parents’ home. According to Lois Bonner, from oil to electricity, still hangs from Lois Bonner’s ne room calling. present ice and daughter-in-law of Will Bonner, each son walked with his "new bride home to his own new house. Both houses were designed by: John. Watkins in the same style as the senior Bonners’ house, on the corners opposite their parents. bees Bonners were | os | ; a 3 : ate ; z * Thomas Todd and his wife, Margaret, lived in Fort Heber for a while, a far cry from the two story | house the Todds soon thereafter constructed on the north-side of town. Thomas Todd was a farmer from Scotland who immigrated to house,” says Josie Hicken, granddaughter of the Todds and present resident of their 120-year-old house in Heber. But really it’s much more. The Todd house was a simple house built of stone back in 1879- no running water, no electricitly. A while later, two of Margaret’s brothers, both plumbers, decided to put a bathroom in the house, one of the first around. Hicken remembers, as a little girl, the neighbors asking to take baths there. This hand-made cabinet is one of the original pieces of furniture in the Todd house. “There were stoves in every room downstairs and chimneys into every room upstairs, but it stayed pretty cold upstairs,” Hicken says of the old house. Over the years, central heat was added, aswell as electricity, running water and a few other modern conveniences. Some of the Todds’ original furniture still remains in the house, including a china cabinet aay a | Thomas Todd House, Heber evenutally ended up in Heber City. “Tt’s just an old pioneer farm land blanketed the ground and the Bonner family owned the buildings on all four corners ofthe sleepy dirt road. While back in 1877, family living next An original chandelier, now sits onher porch, watches the traffic and can’t believe how nareh the farm- land around her has Renee? across the plains, the Todds | Bonner’s Corners, Midway _ The Todds moved to their house on the north side of town after living for a while in Fort Heber. The house was erected in 1879. the’United States back in the .1860s. After taking 10 wagons Books and Beyond is the current resident of George and Margaret Bonner’s house on Midway’s Main Street. John Watkins, the home’s architect, built his own dream house just a block away from the Bonners. and some closets, and reared Six. children of their own there. Now she that was built by aman named Murdoch who farmers, but also owned the helped Todd store that filled build the house. the fourth cor- “It’s as old as the ner of their block. Years later, after the Bonner children house,” says Hicken, but Josie Hicken, adeaddengliter of the Todds, stands in1 front of. ther roses ter still used grandmother brought from Scotland. today. | Perhaps the most eye-catching bart of the Suune: ote an Hicken’ S rk had children— Will Bonner had sons, and stenciled “Erected 1879” above the second floor windows, would be the rosesflowers her grandmother brought over from Scotland. George Bonner | dad ) ters, the boys _ Lois Bonner sits on the front porch of her Gothic-Revival style house in Midway. The Bonner family has owned the house for over 130 years. According to Hicken, these roses, still blooming well over a hundred and twenty years later, were the - first roses in the Heber Valley. And some of the most beautiful as well. » |