At the Point of the Mountain

AT THE POINT OF THE MOUNTAIN By Alfred Lambourne What! Sentiment? Yes sir — and we don't care who knows it — sentiment! But both of us, you and I, dear reader, are aware of the long distance between mere cheap sentimentality and rich, deep senti- ment. Yesterday we got our thrill of sentiment, of all places in the world, over at prosy, hard-working Magna, and on to Garfield and Black Rock, on the shore of our Inland Sea. For us the sentiment came out of the past, yet we admit it was intensified by contrast, of my first visit to the Point of the Moun- tain as it looked then and as it looks now after so many years. O, but that is only part of the changes wrought by time. Ideals, conditions, persons, they have changed. When I first looked on Black Rock it was in the Territory, not the State, of Utah. Deseret, we thought the State would be called, when it did come, but that is what our city should have been called, and then there would have been no disappointment. Ah! Well, that was a long while ago and our young people, many of them, appear to have a vague thought that the word "desert" and "deseret" are synonyms in some way. Ah! well, again — the desert is fast disappearing and we have no Deseret. What! No Deseret? Look around. Half a century! Can it be? But the view tells the tale. Is that the same Point of the Mountain that I first looked upon? Is that

AT THE POINT OF THE MOUNTAIN 743 the same beach that stretches along by Black Rock? How changed! Fifty years ago the northern terminal of the Oquirrh Range was crested with growths of dark green pine, the shore by Black Rock, save for one house, was an unpeopled solitude; now the pinegroveu art stark and dead, the trunks and branches of the distant trees, like skeletons against the sky, and the shore by Black Rock laced with tracks of steel and overlooked by huge, tall chimneys, countless pipes that pour forth white steam or blackness of smoke. Magna and Gar- field, infernos of labor as compared with the one time quiet, but speaking for the present of wealth and progress, a new era upon the land. Photo by Thomsen's Studio, Magna, Utah Top: Main Street, looking west, toward Utah Copper Plant. Bottom: Showing Magna, looking east, men on the way home from shift. Well, my days have been prolonged. Truly, I cannot recall one person now living, except myself, who took part in the festivities of the Play-House outing. Truly I was one of the youngest of the merry band, but I remember others as young who have passed away. It was the annual outing of the old Deseret Dramatic Company ana that year Black Rock was chosen as the place of fun. Never had the shore of our Inland Sea resounded to more noisy mirth, and not mirth alone, but song and music and the cadensed rhythm of moving feet.

744 IMPROVEMENT ERA Many a line, too, from the old dramatists might have been heard be- tween the beat of waves, for those were the days of the legitimate, and actor and actress liked to try their voices against the noise of winds and waters or the screams of astonished gulls. Comedy and tragedy, Thespians who had played the famous roles, were there, and now of them all not one is living. The big rock house where the repasts were spread stands now roofless and with broken walls. ' - 1 - 5 '-^ * to, ■ "The big rock house, stands now roofless and with broken walls." Geologically speaking, the Point of the Mountain is a most in- teresting place, its lower slopes are marked with the bench-lines, the water pauses in the life of ancient Bonneville. Those lines pass around on the eastern side of the Oquirrh Range, but on the west toward Tuilla (Tooele) Valley are still more ancient lines, those made by Lake LaHontan, and the Point of the Mountain is a great wedge between the valleys around which the waves of the long vanished waters fretted for so many centuries during the glacial ages in the dis- tant past. Upon one of those old beaches stands Garfield and Magna. The railway along which moves the cars loaded with the thousands of tons of ore from the Bingham canyon mines practically follows one of the highest lines. At the time of the Dramatic Picnic at Black Rock, there was a pair of golden eagles which made their eyrie upon the northern term- inal of the Oquirrh Range — Point of the Mountain. We noticed them

AT THE POINT OF THE MOUNTAIN 745 that day circling in the blue above the groves of pine. A good point of security and lookout it was for the birds. The gnarled and ancient spruce, where the young eaglets were nested, commanded a view which includes the entire surface of the Inland Sea, to the north and to the west lay the Tuilla Valley, and eastward, the Valley of the Pioneers. It was several years after the picnic that the writer of this verified the above facts, for he climbed to the eagles' eyrie and almost paid for the intrusion into the ancient home of the birds with his life. In defense of their young, the pair of parent eagles made an attack upon the foolish little intruder of their realm, and almost caused him to fall — while fighting to save his eyes — over the edge of the precipice. But that has nothing to do with the Point of the Mountain to the The Magna Plant visitor of today. The incident is recalled by the writer in thought of the changing of the groves of pines; yes, the fumes from the tall chimneys of the smelters at Garfield and Magna have ended the life of the trees. The descendants of that pair of golden eagles must build their nests elsewhere. Like the vanishing red-man, they could not live near that scene of industry. Yes, sir, yes! Brigham Young was the first man of Utah in those days, and the theatrical company were all Church people. They all paid tithing, and they all earned wages that were partly paid in tithing. That's nothing to do with Garfield and Magna, only those theatrical Church people walked along the beach lines of old Lake Bonneville, and where now the many buildings stand, and the columns of smoke rise skyward, and the whistle of the locomotive incessantly sounds, the herd-boys brought the cows from neighboring farms, to find a scanty picking, and the ringdoves cooed among the shrub-oak

746 IMPROVEMENT ERA and sage. By the way, those same herd-boys explored the cave at Garfield and found the ancient skeletons of human beings of vanished tribes that for ages had sat in the rock opening, looking out it seemed upon the waters of the Inland Sea. One of the skulls was afterwards built into a cobble-stone wall that surrounded a sheep corral at the back of Profile Rock. The Point of the Mountain was an interest- ing place, something to be seen by the artist and the archaelogist, as The Arthur Plant, showing the Point of the Mountain towards the left well as offering a chance for the Pioneer home-maker. But now an entirely new chapter marks its history. Very little does the one who does this writing know about the smelting operations at Garfield and Magna, he only looked upon it from the picturesque viewpoint. Don Quixote and his Squire Sancho knew more about the fulling-mills than I do about those piles of buildings, those vats, those coils of pipe, those falling waters and jets Showing terraces in the Bingham copper mine, where a mountain of ore is being removed. of hissing steam. My first trip to Bingham Canyon was to make a sketch of the Telegraph Mine, then newly discovered. On that day I climbed amid Oquirrh Summit and watched the sunset light fade from off the peaks of the adjacent mountains, the Wasatch to the east-

AT THE POINT OF THE MOUNTAIN 747 ward, and the Tintic Range to the south. I remember indulging in a dream about the veins of silver ore that laced, as it were, the mighty ledges of each near or distant range, but I did not think anything about the vast deposits of copper that was in the heart of the moun- tain upon which I stood. Now that mountain is world-famous, for it is being cut away terrace by terrace, and has yielded millions of dollars in value of the ruddy metal. Had there been no copper mines at Bingham Canyon, there would have been no Magna with its shifts of sturdy workers. What? No romance at Magna! Don't be de- ceived. Wherever men toil there is romance, and some new order of poets will come to find it out. Reader, on our State Capitol steps, you may sometimes hear the roar of the blasts that tear the mountains at Bingham to pieces, and you can also see the columns of smoke, volcano-like, that rise at the Point of the Mountain. Make note of it sometimes when you stand on the platform at the top of the granite steps — there is one great source of our material wealth. The Faith of Our Fathers I sit at the feet of the old, old folk, The bent and the halt and the grey, And I string the pearls from the good lips spoke, For a learned folk are they. I fondle the hands of the old, old folk, And a courage new is born, For theirs is the strength of the tempered oak, In the fingers gnarled and worn. I welcome the smile of the old, old folk, The wrinkled and comely cheer, And proud am I when I invoke The praise of an old compeer. I look in the eyes of the old, old folk, In the windows dulled and dim, Where vision lightens with master-stroke The sight that is turned to Him. I follow the wake of the old, old folk, And reap of the goodly seed, Over fruited trail that their feet have broke Where the steps of the fathers lead. I stand for the faith of the old, old folk, The light of the world to be, I live for the standards their lives evoke For their faith is the faith for me! Mesa, Arizona. BERTHA A. KLEINMAN.