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Show The Swain brick kiln By Mike W. Brown During the period of roughly 1895 -1905 Vernal and Uintah County saw quite a building boom. Many substantial substan-tial brick buildings were erected and the area started taking on the look of a solid community. Putting up a brick building back then was quite a bit different than it is today. Freighting something as heavy and bulky as brick was for the most part impractical im-practical and economically not feasible. feasi-ble. That is until years later when the Bank of Vernal was hauled in. Anyway the only alternative for the settlers was to do it themselves and make their own brick right here in the area. And that's just what they did. In the late 90's and early 1900's four Swain brothers; Al, Ab, Nick and Hyrum went into the brick business in a big way. Their operation was centered in Ashley Ward, Mud and water were put into a giant vat and was turned by large paddles pad-dles using horsepower When the material was mixed up properly, two men would open a hole in the bottom of thevvat and the liquid was poured into molds of about four bricks each. These molds were then put outside in the sun to dry. After they were hard enough to be dumped out of the molds, the bricks would be scattered around everywhere, thousands of them. The next step was to construct solid kilns of bricks. They were stacked so that there was spacing in between them and at the bottom of the structure were holes, or flues running through the whole length. They were enormous structures of perhaps 20' square and ten feet high. Fires were built at the bottom in the flues and then the .bricks were fired or kiln dried. Sometimes 3 or 4 of these kilns would be done at one time. After the job was done and the brick properly cured, the kilns would be taken apart and the brick delivered to the job. Swain brick was used in several buildings that stood a long time; the old Naples and Central Schools, Congregational Congrega-tional Church and the Tabernacle. The buildings that haven't been zealously destroyed are still as solid as when they were built, leaving a legacy in this pioneer art. |