Some bits and pieces of Duchesne

Indian Canyon Fire June 2012 

This canyon holds a lot of memories for me since it was where I spent the majority of my time while in 4-H Forestry. Dad also spent most of his youth in this canyon. 

 This is the Gilsonite Mine that as a 4-H student I went into and became very afraid of caves and mines. I have written about it in my history. The image below shows the opening that we thought was just one story high but when we got there it was two 10 foot levels at least.

 This house on the right was where Marie spent half of her childhood, the half in Duchesne. 

As you can tell from the top image it was right on one of the main streets in Duchesne and if you look to the middle left side of the image ou can see a tree and the end of the road more or less. Well that was where the high school was and I could sit in the front hallway of the school and see Marie as she walked to school each morning. It was only one and a half blocks.

 The above mage shows our "D" on the hill. That was where I spent initiation day whitewashing the D and removing rocks from the center of the D. This is whet they do now as the just rearrange the rocks for the current graduation year.

Below is the water tank. The telephone tower was not there when I was in school since they cell phone had yet to be invented. I would run from the school at the bottom of this hill up to the tank for cross country training each day during PE class.

 Our "New" seminary building built the year I was in 8th grade. It was between the high school and the new elementary school built the same year and we would walk past it to go to lunch at the elementary where Marie's mother was one of the lunch kitchen ladies. We always wanted lunch to come after seminary since we then had the head start on the lunch line.

 Marie's bedroom window (where I spent a lot of time outside of it talking to her) is hidden by the tree limbs on the left side of the image. Ann's bedroom is the window you can see clearly.

 This is the church that I attended all of my meetings in while growing up. 

 This was the Duchesne County Courthouse and city and county offices. 

 The hotel where Marie worked while I was completing my education at Snow and where she spent her time until we were married the following June. We also stayed in it the second night of our marriage right between rooms where her bridesmaids and some of the LD Singers were staying. They didn't know we were there.

 Kohl's grocery store where I bought candy on the way to Primary.

 This auto parts store used to be where my father worked on the school busses and where his office was located. I spent a lot of time in there waiting for a ride home.

 Al's Foodtown during my youth was Wilkerson's IGA. It was actually new when I was young as it was started when I was in high school.

 They are now drilling for oil right near the old log cabin where my mother and father spent their first year of marriage. I worked here on the ranch quite a lot starting with the job of stomping the loose hay down on the wagon before hauling it to the stack yard where the hay was then taken from the wagon with an old hay derrick.

 The following images are of the ranch and some of it's buildings.

 We loaded the horses into trucks using this loading dock.

 This old hay conveyor has been in this same spot since I was about 12 years old when it was last used by any owners of the ranch.

 The canyon that you see behind the corrals is the first canyon that I ever went into when deer hunting. It was also the only time I ever went there.

 As I understand it this was the water cistern. Notice the name on it.

 The view down the canyon from the ranch toward Duchesne 7 miles away.

 This was the Forest Service Station in Indian Canyon. I really have no idea if they still use it or not but while growing up I know they did since there were always horses there during the summer months.

 

 I can't see it now but there used to be an old log cabin here that was used by the saw mill where Uncle Lyle Clement apparently proposed to Aunt Zelma Clement, mother's younger sister.

 This is across from the view of Avinaquin at the top of Indian Canyon. I spent a lot of 4-H time in that area also.

 This was the Post Office. Our mail box combination was D-B-E was etched into my memory but I never realized how well until nearly thirty years had passed when I went into the new post office in Duchesne and discovered that they were selling the old doors for the boxes. I asked if they still had #14 and they did so they sold it to me for $5. I did not know the combination but took it and let my fingers just do what they had done hundreds of times during my youth and it came right open.

This was the sunset above Soldier Summit as we were traveling home form this little photography trip to Duchesne.