Service Learning Project
The Orson B. Adams Home Restoration Project
James Larsen & Rebecca Ward
Professor Mulderink
History 2700
29 November 2001
For our service learning project we chose to help in
the restoration of the Orson B. Adams home, a small sandstone
home in Old Harrisburg. In researching Orson B. Adams and Old Harrisburg, we learned of the significant history
relating to the Adams home. We decided that a historical plaque about the Adams home would be of great value to
the restoration project. On Thursday, September 13th, we drove to Harrisburg to explore the Orson Adams
property. We decided that we could be of assistance in the restoration project by picking up the garbage that lay
piled in the home and on the surrounding property, and by cleaning the graffiti from the interior walls of the Adams
home.
Next, we drove to the Red Cliffs Recreation Campground site, west of the Adams home, and found that the land on which the Adams home is located belongs to the Bureau of Land Management and is also part of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. The Red Cliffs Desert Reserve was established in 1996 as part of the Desert Tortoise Habitat Conservation Plan. The reserve was formed from 48,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land and 13,000 acres of private land totaling 61,000 acres. The mission of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve is to “provide critical habitat for the endangered desert tortoise.”[1] The Bureau of Land Management and the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve share jurisdiction over the Orson B. Adams home.
On September 17th, we called Bill Mader, the director of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve about our idea of a historical plaque. We also volunteered to pick up the litter surrounding the Adams property and we also proposed that we clean the graffiti from the interior walls. Mr. Mader approved our idea of a plaque and he wanted to meet with us in person to discuss the details of the plaque and our plans to clean the home. Bill Mader recommended that we contact Mike Empey to learn more about the history of Harrisburg. Mr. Empey is a local historian from Leeds who has studied Southern Utah ghost towns extensively. On Monday, September 17th, Mike Empey answered our questions about Harrisburg and the Orson Adams home through an informative email that became the foundation of the outline for the historical plaque.
Before meeting with Bill Mader, we decided to find out as much as we could about Orson B. Adams, his home, Old Harrisburg, Leeds, and the ghost town of Silver Reef. We spent the first two weeks of our project searching for information about Old Harrisburg at the Cedar City Public Library, the Washington County Library and the Southern Utah University Library Special Collections. After thoroughly researching Harrisburg and the Orson Adams home, we constructed a rough draft for the plaque containing the information we felt was of historical significance:
The Orson B. Adams home is located on property now part of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. The home was built in the 1860’s when Harrisburg was a Mormon farming community of at least sixteen families. Orson B. Adams was a Veteran of the Mormon Battalion and in the spring of 1862, Adams moved his family to Harrisburg. The Adams home is of special historical interest because of a prospector by the name of John Kemple who boarded at the home in the winter of 1866. Although there are many legends of the discovery of silver in sandstone, most knowledgeable historians credit John Kemple as being the first to find silver. He is believed to have found traces of silver just southwest of the Adams home, and by 1871, Kemple filed mining claims in the area, which would become the mining boomtown of Silver Reef (Empey 1).
We contacted several local businesses that specialize in making plaques. First, we visited with Shannon Passey at Gem Awards in Cedar City. She informed us about the
materials that would be appropriate and durable for the plaque. We submitted our rough draft of text for an estimation of the cost of the plaque. The first estimate we received was for a Holly Bronze plaque, an aluminum plaque coated to appear bronze. Due to the length of the information we wanted on the plaque, we decided to use ¼” lettering. The first estimate was for a 12”x18” plaque at $450. This amount was more than we had anticipated spending. We began to look at other options and decided to make an economy size aluminum plaque. The aluminum plaque would be 6”x12” in size and would have a black base with aluminum lettering and an aluminum boarder. The estimated cost was $350. With this information, we were ready to present our ideas to Bill Mader.
We met with Mr. Mader on Tuesday, October 16, in his St. George office. We worked in conjunction with Mr. Mader in every aspect of our service learning project. Every detail of our project was done with his permission, help, and suggestions. Mr. Mader gave us permission to clean up the litter in and around the Adams home, but he cautioned against removing the graffiti from the walls inside of the home. The Adams home is in a dilapidated state due to the collapsed ceiling and the decayed floorboards.
In regard to the historical plaque, Mr. Mader urged us to find ways in which we could cut the cost of the plaque. Mr. Mader suggested having an inexpensive wooden sign made instead of an aluminum plaque. Because of the vandalism associated with the Adams home, Mader suggested that a wooden sign would be inexpensive and easy to replace. Regarding the text of the plaque, Mr. Mader liked the brief history based on Mike Empey’s information, but he suggested that we edit the text to cut the cost of the sign. In an effort to cut the cost of the sign, we edited the text significantly. After meeting several times to discuss the text, we created four options to present to Mr. Mader, all of which reduced the original text by about 75 percent. We preferred text number three, which reads as follows:
The Orson Adams home was built in 1862 when Harrisburg was a Mormon farming community. Adams was a Veteran of the Mormon Battalion and was part of the first group of Mormons to settle in Southern Utah. The Adams home is of special historical interest because of a prospector by the name of John Kemple who boarded at the home in the winter of 1866-67. Most historians credit Kemple as being the first to find silver in sandstone just southwest of the Adams home.
With the second rough draft of text, we visited Kenworthy Signs and Monuments of St. George. Kenworthy Signs and Monuments produce signs and monuments of every imaginable kind. They gave us comparable information to Gem Awards, but they were also able to inform us about alternatives to metal plaques and plaques produced from wood, sandstone, and tile.
We also visited with Dave at Rainbow Sign and Banner of Cedar City to discuss wooden signs. He suggested that we visit the Burch-Mann home, located one block east of Southern Utah University, to view one of his most recent wooden signs. The sign was comparable to the sign Dave would do for the Adams home. The sign would be 24”x24” and would be made of maple wood engraved with painted black letters. The sign would cost $256, but would only last about seven years and would decay quickly in the desert heat. Because the price of a wooden sign was not significantly lower than the aluminum plaque, we decided that we would use Shannon Passey at Gem Awards to design the final aluminum plaque for the Adams home. The plaque would be durable and is guaranteed for 30 years.
We tried contacting Bill Mader with our edited text and new information regarding signs, but found that he was away on a two-week vacation. His secretary informed us that Dawna Ferris-Rowley of the Bureau of Land Management would eventually have to approve our project. We made another trip to St. George and began to work in conjunction with Mrs. Rowley. Mrs. Rowley was able to provide us with information about the future of the Adams home. The Bureau of Land Management plans to completely restore the Adams home in two years and the home will be used as a small museum and interpretive center.
Mrs. Ferris-Rowley approved of our plan for an aluminum plaque, but she did not approve of our edited text. She told us about Dr. Edward Larabee and his expertise of the Adams home. Dr. Larabee is the director of the Historical Sites Research of Hurricane. He was recently hired by the Bureau of Land Management to compose a 100-page history of the Orson B. Adams home. Dr. Larabee’s historical report on the Adams home is currently being edited and will not be completed until November 30, 2001. We were given 5 pages from Larabee’s rough draft to help us with our research and text. According to Mrs. Ferris-Rowley, the text for the plaque could not be completed without Dr. Larabee’s insight about the architecture of the Adams home. We began to focus on the restoration project.
While waiting for Dr. Larabee’s study we continued with our plan to improve the immediate appearance of the Adams home. On Saturday November 10th, we went to the Adams home and spent 5 hours cleaning. We cleared all the garbage from inside and around the home. We also removed foreign objects such as steel, rocks, and wood from inside the home. While at the Adams home, we met with Russell Gazette of St. George, an archeologist and historian hired by the Bureau of Land Management to make emergency repairs to the home. Mr. Gazette taught us about the architecture of the home and gave us valuable insight to the quality as well as the difficulty of the original construction.
The Adams home is weathered and worn from the harsh desert sun. The dry wooden roof has been mended again and again in an effort to keep it from collapsing on the two small rooms below. The house is simple in its two-room design; both rooms mirror each other and each has a north and south entrance, a north and south window and a fireplace. The sandstone of the home testifies of human presence and tells of the inhabitants daily activities; the bowing of the doorway sandstone due to thousands of entrances and exits, and the indentations that countless hands made on the sandstone façade as they walked through the front entrance.
The Adams home is thought to have been constructed by Glover McMullin, a stonemason born 21 February 1823 in Maine. It is believed that McMullin did the mason work in Old Harrisburg and the surrounding towns with the help of his two eldest sons. McMullin probably assisted with the Adams home from 1863 to 1865. It is assumed that the home was completed by 1865 because the Black Hawk War had begun near Manti and many of the Old Harrisburg men joined the Washington County Militia. (Larabee 5) It can also be assumed that the Adams home was completed by 1865 because John Kemple roomed with Orson Adams during the winter of 1866. Kemple is believed to have discovered silver southwest of the Adams home in sandstone. John Kemple filed mining claims in 1871 in the area known today as Silver Reef. (Empey 1)
The Orson B. Adams home was constructed during a difficult time in Harrisburg history. Priddy Meeks, a friend of Orson Adams and a Harrisburg Doctor, recorded the following in his journal, “I moved to Harrisburg and while there I saw more trouble than I ever saw in my whole life.” The Harrisburg land was difficult to irrigate and the land was marginal. The settlers of Harrisburg hoped to settle a permanent site because of the warm climate and the well-traveled wagon road from Salt Lake City to St. George. Harrisburg thrived for 50 years with 30 homes, vineyards and orchards. However, the population grew unexpectedly in 1864 when 16 families were trying to survive on 38 acres of desert land. Due to the lack of water and destruction by grasshoppers in 1869, most of the inhabitants of Harrisburg moved north to the town of Leeds (Proctor 126).
As we interviewed Mr. Gazette about his restoration work, he explained the arduous process by which the home will be restored. Mr. Gazette is currently searching Old Harrisburg for sandstone that will match the original sandstone used in the Adams home. The moisture from the sand has caused the stone on the eastern wall of the Adams home to crumble into sugar stone. The sugar stone is being replaced stone by stone. Each sandstone requires a full day of work to shape and fit into the wall. This time consuming task requires great strength and patience, even with the modern technologies used in shaping the stone. The original stone home must have required many hands and many months to complete.
After we completed our interview with Mr. Gazette and finished work at the home, we were able to supplement our research by visiting the cemeteries of Harrisburg and Leeds. In searching the cemeteries, we were able to find the tombstones of many of the original settlers of Old Harrisburg, including Orson B. Adams, Glover McMullin, and William M. Emett, the last to inhabit the Adams home until his death in 1945.
We completed our research of the Adams home using the following resources: books published about Harrisburg and the surrounding areas, websites relevant to the Orson Adams home, local historians and restoration experts. Once we have access to Dr. Larabee’s report and are able to elaborate on our text, the new text will be submitted to Bill Mader and Dawna Ferris-Rowley for approval. Once the text is approved, Gem Awards will make an aluminum plaque 6”x12” with ¼” lettering at $350. The Bureau of Land Management and the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve will fund the majority of the costs involved and we will finance the rest. The plaque will be mounted on a 3’ stand located 20’ southwest of the front entrance of the home. The plaque will be placed near the road in front of the Adams home and will be accessible by car to those who drive past the home on their way to the Red Cliffs Recreation Site.
Other than the technology used to produce the plaque, most of the technology-related resources that we have used throughout the process of our project are mostly computer related. We have conducted extensive research on Orson B. Adams, Harrisburg, John Kemple and other inhabitants of the Adams home, and Silver Reef. The computer has been indispensable to our research. We used email to contact the people we worked with. The computer was used to search for books on relevant material and the Internet was a great source of information. Through Lofthouse.com we found information about the Harrisburg cemetery and the names of those buried. Ghosttowngallery.com provided pictures by Daniel Ter-Nedden of other historical buildings in Harrisburg. Holidayguide.com contains information about modern Harrisburg and the historical significance of Old Harrisburg.
Our project has been of significance in aiding and motivating officials at the Bureau of Land Management and the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve in their plans to restore the Adams home and surrounding Old Harrisburg sites. The Orson B. Adams home restoration project is connected to another restoration project by the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve. Bill Mader is interested in preserving the decaying 1959 Hacienda movie set from “They Came to Cordura,” starring Rita Hayworth and Gary Cooper. The movie set is located about 200 yards northwest of the Adams home. Mr. Bill Mader plans to make a historical plaque, similar to the one that will be mounted in front of the Adams home, describing the materials used in making the set and the geological significance of the Harrisburg area. Bill Mader was also anxious to preserve the Adams home and the set of “They Came to Cordura” because the preservation of these historical sites will help in protecting the land reserved for the endangered desert tortoise.
The process of having a historical plaque made for the Adams home was the most time consuming aspect of our project. Unfortunately, bureaucracy does not comply with history service-learning project deadlines. Because we were unable to get a copy of Dr. Larabee’s research prior to the November 29th due date, we focused our remaining time cleaning the Adams home and property. We have continued working with Shannon Passey at Gem Awards on a size and text for an aluminum plaque as preferred by Dawna Ferris-Rowley of the Bureau of Land Management. We have also continued working with Dave at Rainbow Signs and Banners, in case the authorities prefer a wooden sign.
Because of the time we have invested in creating a historical plaque for the Orson Adams home, we will see the project through to the end. Once the text is approved, Shannon Passey will begin work on the plaque and the finished product will be available within six weeks of the approval date. We feel that the plaque will contribute greatly to the renovated museum and interpretive center. For generations to come, visitors of the museum and interpretive center will be able to learn about Orson B. Adams and the people of Old Harrisburg praised by Marietta Meriger in the following statement, “No more gentle, refined people lived than some of those grand old souls who settled Harrisburg, in spite of the hardships they endured in opening up this great west of ours.”
Sleep Harrisburg
Dream pleasant dreams
Of happy homes by sparkling streams,
Where pioneers beginnings made
For greater things in later age.
Thy children now more scattered are
Than were thy builders-yes by far!
Thy tired toilers, laid to rest
Upon yon eastern hillside breast,
So little knew, nor would they guess
How soon their homes to dust would fall
And in Earth’s bosom would be pressed,
By strangers knowing not thy son.
Thy children! Now they all are gone
To join elsewhere with History’s throng!
How few there are who now can say,
“’Twas there I saw the light of day,
And in her meadows, learned to play;
And waded in those sparkling rills,
Or gathered flowers from her hills!”
But we’ll remember to the last
The part you’ve played in our dear past!
Marietta M. Mariger
Bibliography
Adler, D. and Karl F. Brooks. A History of Washington County from Isolation to Destination. Washington County Commission Utah Centennial County History Series, 1996.
Empey, Mike. “Re: Orson Adams Home” E-mail to the author. 17 Sept. 2001
“Harrisburg Cemetery.” Washington County, Utah-Family Research Series, No.2. 1998. Washington County, Utah. 17 Sept. 2001.
http://lofthouse.com/USA/Utah/washington/cemetery/harrisbu.html
“Harrisburg, UT.” Photography by Daniel Ter-Nedden. 17 Sept. 2001.
http://www.ghosttowngallery.com/htme/harrisburg.htm
Mariger, Marietta M. Saga of Three Towns. St. George: Washington County News.
“On the Site of an Old Ghost Town.” Harrisburg Lakeside Resort. 17 Sept. 2001.
http://www.holidayguide.com/camp_usa/utah/harrisburg_lakeside/
Proctor, Paul Dean and Morris A. Shirts. A History of Old Silver Reef, Utah. Palmer, Inc., 1991.
They Came To Cordura. Dir. Robert Rosser. Perf. Rita Hayworth and Gary Cooper. Columbia Pictures, 1959.