View from a Stalled Carnival Ride in Lehi, Utah

Wayne E. Clark1 Lehi, Utah, 2016

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corrections or additions welcome, [email protected]

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I once won a teddy bear. When I was about fifteen years old I was at a carnival in American Fork, Utah. It was one of those things where you threw a bean bag or something and knocked over a bottle. Lehi had carnivals as well. They came to town during the rodeo (Lehi Roundup). One year when I must have been 6-8 years old, the games and rides, carousel, Ferris wheel and all of that were set up on the block west of the Lehi High School/Junior High School building. The Lehi Primary School where I attended First, Second and Third grades was still there, as was the Lehi Grammar School on the other side of the block so the carnival took place there before 1956. I got on a ride with a friend. The ride stalled and we were left sitting high in the sky and going nowhere for what seemed an excessively long period of time. I was unsettled.

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A Mormon pioneer named William Gurney (1834-1905) once had a home about where that carnival ride had us stranded in the air. His adobe home is depicted on the Northeast corner of Block 49 on an 1898 Sanborn Fire Insurance map. He had some stables and a corral on his property, just east of the city jail that’s depicted at about Position 6 on the map. The jail and the Gurney home were on Second North Street, between First West Street and Center Street. It’s not on the map, but the Northwest corner of the block, west of the jail, was occupied by what they called an “estray pound.” Stray livestock found wandering about town were enclosed there until their status in the community could be resolved. A wood frame dwelling is depicted down Center Street south of William Gurney’s home on the Southeast corner of the block. That was the home of Peter McIntyre (1790-1872) and his wife, Elizabeth Marie Colville (1802-1874). They were William Gurney’s mother and father in law. Their home was later replaced by the brick home of Samuel Joseph Taylor (1862-1921) which was used at one time as a public library in Lehi. Charles Barnes Jr. (1827-1911) appears also to have been a neighbor of William Gurney. Like Gurney, Barnes was a Mormon convert from England. A descendant of his, Jonah Ryan Barnes, says that Charles had a “one-room log-cabin” near the northeastern corner of the fort, at First North and First West in Lehi. His property, Jonah Ryan says, shared a fence line with “an immortal Nazarite commissioned by God to protect the Prophet Joseph," "an appointed territorial U. S. Marshal-for-life who purportedly killed more men than Jesse James, Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid combined.” That was Orrin Porter Rockwell (1813-1878). According to Jonah Ryan, “Rockwell’s monument stands on his own property in Lehi today, across the fence from Charles’ original homestead.” That, of course, was just outside the fort. If Charles Barnes’ oneroom log-cabin was at First North Street and First West Street in Lehi, it must have been on property that would later become the Block 49 property on which a corral and stables on the extreme southwest corner of the block are depicted on the 1898 Sanborn Fire Page 3 of 6

Insurance map. My second great grandfather, William Clark (1825-1910) acquired title to that property, and to the rest of the southern three-fourths of the block, in 1870. At some unspecified time, according to Jonah Ryan, Charles Barnes left his city residence and moved his family to a cabin located on the bench just northeast of the cemetery, about where Lehi Junior High School stands today. He must have sold his property on Lot 49 to William Clark, but there's no known record of any such transaction which would have taken place before the 1869 Act of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah that resulted in issuance of deeds recorded on the Utah County Recorder's Office. It's conceivable that the adobe home depicted at Position 67 on First West Street on the east side of the block was once Charles Barnes' "city residence". William Clark lived with second great grandmother, Jane Stevenson (1820-1895) in an adobe home on First West Street on the block south of the block where I sat stranded that day. William and Jane were the parents of six daughters and one son, my great grandfather, William Wheeler Clark (1855-1834). William Clark, however, was a polygamist. One of his plural wives, Margaret Boardman (1840-1894), lived in that small adobe home on First West Street depicted at Position 67 on the 1898 Sanborn map. Like William Clark himself, Margaret Boardman was from England. She came to Utah with her family and was married to William in 1864. Various family narratives assert that her home was on the site of the Lehi Grammar School. The home is not on the 1907 Sanborn map. Everything on the western part of the block, including Margaret’s home, had been cleared away by then. The Grammar School would be built three years later. The Lehi Primary School, built in 1905, is depicted on the 1907 map. William Gurney’s adobe home had been removed, but the jail remained. The Samuel

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Joseph Taylor brick home is depicted on the Southeast corner of the block where the McIntyre home had been located on the 1898 map. I couldn't see any of that when I was stuck in the air on that carnival ride that summer day. I could possibly have seen the Lehi High School/Junior High School athletic field from there where William Clark’s pioneer adobe home had stood before May 1, 1930, when the home was removed. In the days that followed the area was cleared to make way for a site for a big celebration called Lehi Beet Sugar Days. There must have been a carnival there in those days. The carnival/athletic field/Primary School/Grammar School/Jail/Beet Sugar Days/ Blackhawk War commemoration are all gone. The William Clark pioneer adobe home is under the parking lot of the Lehi Legacy Center which occupies most of Block 49. Margaret Boardman’s home is now occupied, I calculate, by the Legacy Center swimming pool. I estimate that the carnival ride, where the William Gurney adobe home stood, was on the site of the Senior Center portion of the Legacy Center. I was there recently. Nobody mentioned the carnival ride or the old Gurney home or any of the other interesting things that once stood on that Legacy Center block. Note : This story is drawn from information in the following documents which contain the supporting references and documentation. The Old Fort Wall, a Herd of Cows, and a Near and Dear Neighbor in Lehi, Utah, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wDxipAGQN2UG02ZnVLd2JRbVE/view? usp=sharing, 37 MB

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Melissa Lott Smith Bernhisel Willes and three Joseph Smiths, https:// drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wDxipAGQN2RFNmLW1sdTNSMlk/view?usp=sharing, 2 MB My "Aunt Melissa:” Melissa Lott Smith Bernhisel Willes, https:// drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wDxipAGQN2OTFNUUVSR0h4TTA/view?usp=sharing, 11 MB William Clark (1825-1910): His Pioneer Adobe Home in Lehi, Utah, and the Homes of his Neighbors and Descendants, https://drive.google.com/file/d/ 0B5wDxipAGQN2cmRUN0Z0NklMaTA/view?usp=sharing, 21 MB Pioneer Adobe Homes on the Memorial Building and Legacy Center Blocks in Lehi, Utah, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wDxipAGQN2MWRJVk1GNlVPVWM/ view?usp=sharing, 16 MB These, and similar documents, as well as other stories by Wayne E. Clark, are posted at Index to Documents by Wayne E. Clark for Lehi Historical Society and Archives, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wDxipAGQN2WFJNbXlwNDdyUjg/view?usp=sharing

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