--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Lambourne, Alfred collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 13 number: 10 published: 1910-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Alfred Lambourne, "The Mill in Liberty Park," *Improvement Era* 13, no. 10 (August 1910): 876–877.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera13010unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera13010unse start_page: 876 end_page: 877 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1910-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera13010unse publication_year: 1910 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1910, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Mill in Liberty Park THE MILL IN LIBERTY PARK. FROM A SKETCH BY ALFRED LAMBOURNE. It might be thought, perhaps, that in a country so recently settled as Utah, there would be very few buildings of a purely picturesque character. Such, however, is not the fact* There are all sorts of rustic bits, worthy the sketcher's attention, by the quiet valley streams and at the village crossroads— weather-stained mills with cumbrous wheels, odd cottages, all sorts of quaint pieces of architecture, surrounded by fields and orchard walls. The old mill in Liberty Park was once highly picturesque ; that is, especially in connection with its surroundings. In the spring time there was a bright and pleasant scene there, when the rushes of the mill-pond first thrust up their fresh green blades from the water, but growing more sombre as the season advanced until, in summer, the rushes formed an all but unimpenetrable fen, inhabited by all the marauding blackbirds of the locality. Perfectly in keeping with the mill and its environments were the rain storms of autumn, when the rushes were all withered and brown, and up amongst them were the tall milkweeds with faded, yellow leaves and silken tassels hanging from the bursted seed-pods. The above sketch was taken by the flume, where the waters of the pond emptied when the mill was at rest. ~**-„Tj^0^ ■ ■ 2l ' . - v ' '" ■ ,y--~- w ih i ;.u \\ v -■' . 1 J ^jmn 1 i^m 1 < " 1 ■- — ■ 1 I 1 »•»«*! 1 '^k~ g=ffa "" ."" ."':-— t: ■■ - *■**" « -p fr^~~~~ , g ~_-_ =L_^ .-^=33^^ THE SAW MILL, MOUTH OF NOISY WATER. FROM A SKETCH BY ALFRED LAMBOURNE. Hardly could we find a more pictorial scene than was once the Church blacksmith-shop, a short distance beyond the Eagle Gate. That is, in connection with the water mill that once stood by it. The gray adobe walls of the shop, the wheel and grass-grown flume of the mill, were reflected in a pool of the passing stream. And in the background were the bold outlines of the northern hills. No less picturesque was the saw-mill, a short distance beyond; and again the flour mill beyond that. In brief, the mouth of Noisy Water, a few years ago, was a sort of paradise for the sketcher of rustic scenes. There was something impressive in the thought, as one used to look at the mill or saw wheel, that the water that turned it came from the wilds that heard the eagle's scream and the cries of the wild beasts, and yet passed on to irrigate the fields and orchards of the Pioneers. And the logs that lay by the saw-mill, too ; they had been the solemn pines •which grew where raged the mountain storms; their branches had been vocal to the winds of summer and winter; the lightnings had played among them, and the wild snows had drifted. The pines had murmured like the waves of a summer sea; or shrieked before the fierce onslaught of the northern blast.