Park City Museum researcher
Miners in a double cage at the more than 2,400-feet-deep Ontario No. 3 shaft in 1891. The cage is wide open, as opposed to modern elevators with walls and sliding doors.
Park City Historical Society & Museum
In Salt Lake City, there are more than 10 buildings over 300 feet high and two extending up over 400 feet. Denver has 45 structures over 300 feet tall, eight over 500 feet, five over 600 feet – and the highest is just over 700 feet tall. The tallest buildings in the U.S. are in Atlanta (1,040 feet), San Francisco (1,070 feet), Los Angeles (1,018 feet), Chicago (1,450 feet), and New York City (1,776 feet).
Park City Museum researcher
This section of a 1932 Wasatch Range mine claims map showing the Park City Mining District illustrates how complex claims actually were and how easily they overlap.
Park City Historical Society & Museum, Jack Gallivan Collection
This is the fifth article in a series on the Conkling Mining Co. v. Silver King Coalition Mines Co. lawsuit.
As we learned last time, Trewek believed a patent on the Conkling claim was thought a full claim of 1,500 feet in length. Regarding said claim patent, a revision of the 1872 Mining Law provided a process by which claims could be patented (owned outright). Anyone who had properly located a claim could file a patent application. The application was to be accompanied by a plat map and field notes made or authorized by the surveyor general, and two affidavits verifying that the claim had been distinctly marked at the site and that notice of patent application had been posted.
Park City Historical Society & Museum, Emmett Wright Collection
You no doubt have stopped between the front of the Park City Museum and Dolly’s Bookstore to admire the statue of Emmett Wright, with his mismatched skis one 2 feet shorter than the other. It was just another day at the office 100 years ago when “Bud” Wright fell and broke one of his handmade skis and had to ski home with the odd pair.
Wright was an early Parkite, born in 1887, just three years after the new mining town incorporated. He was in just the third graduating class of Park City High School, after which he studied for a career in the new field of electrical engineering. After completing correspondence classes, he worked for various Park City mines. Meanwhile, Park City was just the third Utah town to install telephones. The Utah Independent Telephone Company had a phone line between the mining towns of Alta, Brighton and Park City, and Wright was hired on to maintain the lines year-round.
Park City Museum researcher
A 1996-1997 ski season map and guide for what was then known as Wolf Mountain. The terrain is now the Canyons Village side of Park City Mountain Resort.
Park City Historical Society & Museum, Sandra Morrison Collection
People have been skiing in Park City since at least the 1890s. Skiing was a local affair for a while, but as mining on our mountains became less profitable, we used our mountains to build skiing into Park City’s business.
The first ski jumps were made on the Creole Mine dump on the hillside west of Old Town. In 1937 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built three ski runs, a ski jump, a toboggan run and a warming shack in Deer Valley. After World War II, Otto Carpenter and Bob Burns installed creative homemade lifts to take advantage of these ski runs. They called it Snow Park. That tiny resort closed in 1969 and re-opened in 1981 as Deer Valley Resort. In 1963 United Park City Mines used its patented mining land to open Treasure M
Park City Museum
Visitors step out of the cage and into the Ontario Mine as part of a tour in the Silver Mine Adventure, circa 1995-1999.
Park City Historical Society & Museum, Myles Rademan Collection
If you explore the Park City area, I guarantee that you will bear witness to at least one of the historic mining structures scattered all around. Before Park City transformed into the posh resort destination as we know it today, it was a mining powerhouse. A hotbed for silver and many other valuable ores, the mines around Park City quickly became some of the top exporters in the nation.