Day 49, Monday April 15, 2024: Park City, Idaho to Grand Junction, Colorado

Carnegie libraries visited: Mount Pleasant, Ephraim and Manti, Utah.

The bad weather made my day better. It would have been hard for me to leave Park City without venturing to the ski slopes if the weather gods were doing their the powder is perfect thing. This is the last week that they are open for the season, and the snow base is still good. When I looked out of the hostel this morning, clouds completely covered the mountain. It was 34 degrees and snow/sleet/raining. Not a good day for skiing, even if my body was up for it. It was easy to drive away.

Park City Library

My route was a mixture of sun and fog, rain and snow. I’m in the wide open part of Utah, not that there is any other, and the towns are few and far between. My route along Highway 89 takes me almost due south from Park City to Salina, before I swing east to through Green River and then on to Grand Junction, Colorado. 

I stopped at a Subaru repair shop in Provo to see whether the utility port for my refrigerator could be fixed. A friendly guy named Forest checked it out for me, and we bonded over travel stories. He used to be a long haul truck driver, and his dream was to travel the US like I am doing. The car’s fix was not simple, however: the problem was not in the port or the fuse box, but a wire somewhere between them. He told me it would take a couple of hours to find the time even to check it out, and I told him not to bother. I can live without the fridge until I get to a repair shop where I don’t mind waiting several hours. Forest told me he wouldn’t charge me if I wrote a favorable review on Google, and so I did.

I briefly visited Carnegie libraries in Mount Pleasant, Ephraim, and Manti, but found little to explore, mainly because I didn’t explore very hard. As in any scavenger hunt, the harder you look, the more you’ll find. After I returned home, and my hands had nothing on them other than time, I was able to scavenge more thoroughly. 

The first tiny library in Mount Pleasant was created through the efforts of the Home Culture and also the Twentieth Century ladies clubs. The Utah Digital Newspapers website goes back to 1912 – the Carnegie library there opened in 1917 – and some of the first articles digitized refer to the ladies’ library efforts. The earliest article (June 28, 1912) in the Mt. Pleasant Pyramid that references the Home Culture Club and its library interests describes its efforts to set the record straight: 

The Pyramid takes pleasure in calling the attention of the public to the fact that the Home Culture Club is doing as much towards helping the Library cause as the Twentieth Century Club is doing. It was stated in the last Pyramid that the Twentieth Century Club gave the skating party last week in the Armory Hall for the benefit of the Library, but both clubs, however, were united in the party given. Both clubs were united in sending representatives to the A. D. Sutton Drug Co. Saturday afternoon to assist Mr. Sutton in serving refreshments to the public. 

I’m glad we cleared that up: the Home Culture Club deserves its slice of the credit. PS: the clubs jointly raised $7 at Sutton’s Drug that day for the library.

In August of that year, the two clubs met together for a single agendum: “business pertaining to the library.” The next month, the Pyramid’s headline read “Opening of the Free Public Library” 

One year ago there was [sic] no signs of a Public Reading room for the young people of this city. Grass grew where now a large building standing on a quiet spot in our city with a room furnished with fine furniture, a nice rug on the floor, beautiful pictures on the walls, and a choice collection of good books. Everything to make it pleasant for one to go and spend profitable hours with the best of authors.

The library would be open from 3-5 in the afternoons (children!) and then again from 7.30-10 pm (adults!), and “Ladies will be there to wait on the public during these hours and anyone may have the privilege of taking a book to their homes for a period of two weeks if they desire, after which they must be returned.”

The ladies hosted a grand event for the grand opening of the library, in rooms at the town’s armory, and a “goodly portion of the leading citizens of Mount Pleasant who are interested in this good cause availed themselves of this opportunity and assembled at the Library to help the work along.”

Being ladies, members of the Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints, and residents of a small Utah town in the early 20th century, the Pyramid reports that “[t]he ladies in charge desired to have the men who were present voice their sentiments in relation to the library.” I’ll make a solid prediction that most of the speeches by local dignitaries were grandiloquently elongated. Mrs. Ferdinand Ericksen [presumably the chair of the clubs’ library committee, and the only woman named in the article] told “in short” what the two clubs had done and how they had been assisted by the Armory Hall Company, the Library Committee of Company D, city officials and “the good citizens of Mount Pleasant.” 

Caroline (“Carrie”) – Mrs. Erickson – was 41 when she gave her grateful speech, and she surely was proud of what the ladies clubs had accomplished. The mother of four, Caroline died in 1919, aged 48, after a failed operation. Afterwards, her four children lived with their father Ferdinand until he passed away in 1927. In describing his wife, Erickson wrote 

I consider myself exceedingly fortunate in getting so good of a companion. She is kind, considerate, and affectionate – ever aiming to please me. She is an intelligent woman, a good housekeeper and a most exemplary woman. My children love her dearly and she does all anyone can do for them.

The Mount Pleasant library caught my eye. It is designed in the “Prairie Style,” which was an architectural attempt to break away from the classical tradition (you know, columns, pediments, and so forth) and to create a uniquely American style. Frank Lloyd Wright became the most original and famous proponent of this style, which emphasizes horizontal elements that represent the flat, treeless, wide open plains. The Mount Pleasant library is unusual because it does not feature a centered front door; instead, the main entrances are through side bays projecting from the front. It’s a gem.

The Manti Ladies Club is responsible for bringing a library to that town. None of the capsule histories I’ve found online even mention them, although the architect is given prominent coverage. The club was organized in 1895 and, Facebook shows, it is still meeting monthly at the library. For a club with a 130 year history, it would seem that it’s history would be easy to find; it wasn’t. I’ve tried contacting the Manti Ladies Literary Club and it has not responded to my inquiries.