Historical Honeyville Utah

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Finally... the old train station revisited

I was finally in the Heber area and was able to go get some pictures of the old Honeyville train station.

What I was really excited about was that I could get inside. Unfortunately, so could everybody else - it was pretty trashed.

Doorknob

Sliding freight door

The money drawer (note: no money found inside the money drawer)

A quick recap of the old stations journey. Originally built in Honeyville it served the community for several years as the Union Pacific train depot. At some point it was moved to Corinne to act as a station there, but that was short lived as it was called into duty as the Golden Spike train museum. As the centennial of the driving of the golden spike drew near the Golden Spike National Historic Site was dedicated 1957. Thinking nobody would ever actually drive clear out there the Son's of the Utah Pioneers opened a museum in Corinne using the old train station in 1959. Once the Park Service realized people were driving 'clear out there' and local citizens had staged reenactments each 10th day of May, they finally built a visitor's center in 1978. The old train station then moved up to Heber City, Utah in 1980, where is became the train station for the Heber Creeper until the early 1990s. The Heber Valley Railroad built their own station and the Honeyville station now sits abandoned in a parking lot a few block north of the current Heber Valley Railroad station.

This has one of the original track switching levers

Upstairs living quarters.

Inside of the ticket counter

Ticket windows (although the signs are newer)

To my knowledge there are no pictures of the interior as it originally sat in Honeyville.
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I did find some pictures of it in Corinne.

While in Corinne in 1977 - courtesy John Pack

Courtesy Paul on Flickr (scanned image from Ebay)

The move to Heber City - Deseret News 1980

Monday, March 21, 2016

Passing Through

The New West Magazine was published in the mid 1890s, and I can find very little information about this publication. What I can find leads me to believe that it was only published for one year and records the author's impression of different towns he would stop at as he passed through by train. There was an engineer named William F Ellis (also author of this publication) that worked for the railroad and as it was common for railroads at the time to publish propaganda disguised as information in order to entice passengers, I suspect that may have been the intent of this "magazine".
In any case, here are his impressions of Honeyville - just passing through of course.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

A Trip to the Dentist

Wisdom tooth extraction has always hurt, but I cannot claim that mine felt as bad as the account given in the journal of B.H. Tolman in 1882. And although the dentists' tools don't look all that friendly today, they do not look like they did in the 1800s.

Set of dental tools from the 1800s

In his own words here is the account:

I am and have been suffering with a very painful face for about 10 days. One of my wisdom teeth has been trying to come through for a number of years but made but little headway and was very painful at times so Sunday I went to Brigham City to attend the S. S. Jubilee and went to the dentist, Mr. Slocum, to have it lanced. He gave it fits by cutting through the tough, inflamed flesh until the old lance grated on the tooth at the root, O horrible. That was about noon. It pained me severely all that night and at early morn I might have been seen wending my way to the dentists to have it got out entirely. When finally I got him at it he commenced by giving it another severe lancing (wuh!) Now comes the tug. He worked till he got those enemies of iron and steel securely fastened away down below zero and then he commenced to pull and sweat until the forceps slipped off and, O John! I thought he had pulled my lower jaw off the hinges. I never yet fainted and now I think I never can. On went the hardened steel again as if his life depended on it and O Zounds! O Whiss! A long pull and a strong pull and they slipped again. He had to rest and I, of course, I could not, but Jimminy Crickets! How long till the millennium? Somehow the time passed away and he got them things on the root again, pulled and the long legged pig ants they again missed fire. The jumping snake and tickling end of the wasps, how comforted it feels to have them machines from the lower regions fastened on. Monkeys and Jews harps! He brought the rooster to daylight, thank you, sir. The next time I have him pulled I think I will let him stay there till it doesn’t hurt to have Wisdom Extracted. I now wonder if I have atoned for my sins.

Yours truly, B. H. Tolman.

This is the ninth day and she keeps me awake nights now and very sore

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Treasures (they can be anywhere)

With all this snow on the ground I am going nuts not being able to go metal detecting.

This snow will take some time to melt

So while we were in Honeyville visiting my parents on Saturday I decided to wander up into the attic and see if there is somewhere I hadn't yet searched for old 'stuff'. Looking around I realized that the windows below, being that the the windows are in a hollow wall (with a header over it), creates a natural dam in the wall and things that may have fallen in there would only be a couple feet down. Of course this only works if you have good access to the walls and they have not been insulated (generally pre-1970).

If you have just enough space to get your arm in below the double top plate you can feel above the header

With no dust mask and in street clothes I reached down into the dirt and spiderweb infested nastiness and pulled out a few treasure in very short order.


USA Atlas - 1920

Seed packet from a seed envelope with the brochure still in it - 1916 (2 cent Washington stamp)

Ad for fountain pens - 1920

Improvement Era - 1914

Farmers' Bulletin - 1915

Liahona - 1916

This creepy doll could be yours for selling $3.00 worth of magazine subscriptions.

Additionally there were some old handwritten letters, a ceramic door knob, a spoon, mason jar lids, a college binder from 1905, empty parcel tags, ink blotter from the post office, a missionary tract, and more. Take some time to look in your attics - there are treasures to be found.

Now I just have to find a way to search 10'-0" down at the bottom of the wall (using non-destructive methods). Any ideas?

While on treasures, this little beauty below was found in Honeyville this past summer (2015). It is a silver 1891 seated liberty dime.